Fordham slipped the cardboard wallet from the table and removed a photo that he handed across. It showed a man sitting in a beer garden, pint glass on a wooden table in front of him. He was wearing a white vest and squinting slightly but had the same rough stubbly chin and short dark hair as the person with whom she’d walked along the promenade. Jessica stared at the picture, wanting it to be somebody different, but she realised she’d not had a good look at ‘her’ Peter in any case. It had been dark, she’d walked by his side and they’d both been bundled up in coats. When they’d faced one another, she’d gone out of her way to not look at him properly. All there’d been was one meeting of the eyes that had lasted barely a second before she’d felt compelled to look away. They’d spent less than an hour together. If he were in front of her now, Jessica wasn’t sure she’d be able to identify him with absolute certainty.
‘Is that the man you met?’ Fordham asked.
‘I think so.’
‘Only “think”?’
‘I suppose I didn’t get much of a look at him. It probably is.’
Fordham reached out and took the picture from her, snapping the cardboard wallet closed. ‘This photo came from Peter Salisbury’s father. Mr Salisbury identified his son’s body. If that’s who you met, then that’s the same person in the morgue.’
There was a moment of silence and then Jessica’s solicitor stood sharply. ‘I think we’re done here,’ he said.
Eleven
A breeze was fizzing across the sea, sending stinging spears at anything and everything in its path. Jessica was shielded behind Mr Percy’s Mercedes in the car park over the road from the police station.
After fussing with his files, case and coat, her solicitor locked the vehicle and leaned against the outside of the driver’s door. He fished into his pockets and took out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Want one?’ he asked.
Jessica stared at the enticing gift on offer. She’d not smoked since she was a teenager, but, bloody hell, she felt like one now.
‘I shouldn’t,’ she said.
‘Your mother would probably have me strung up if she knew I was offering you fags in any case.’
‘I’m a grown adult.’
‘Do you think that would make any difference?’
‘Good point.’
Percy took an expensive-looking metal lighter with his initials on the front from his pocket. He snapped the top and lit the cigarette, taking a deep drag and holding it in his lungs.
‘Everyone at the station’s on those bloody e-ciggie things,’ Jessica said, peering back towards the words ‘BL CKPO L POLI E ST T ON’ above the entrance to the building.
‘Cowards,’ Percy spat, with a grin that didn’t seem to come naturally. ‘If one is going to smoke, the least one can do is do it properly.’
‘Bollocks to it.’ Jessica held out a hand, eyebrows raised expectantly. Percy said nothing as he passed the cigarette across. Jessica inhaled, handed it back, and then coughed herself stupid.
Percy wasn’t wearing glasses but still managed to appear as if he was staring over a pair towards her. ‘How was that?’ he asked.
Jessica was still spluttering: ‘Awful. That’s why I don’t smoke.’
‘I meant inside.’
‘Oh. That was awful, too.’
‘Did you expect anything else?’
‘That Fordham bloke was a bit friendlier yesterday. There’s normally an unspoken… thing… between our lot that we look out for one another.’
Percy was still peering over invisible spectacles. Jessica was voicing everything that those out of the force feared – one rule for them; another for everyone else.
‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Jessica added quickly.
Percy was like some sort of professional smoker – each drag perfectly executed with precision so that he could exhale for the same number of seconds every time. He held the stick like an expert, too, nestled between the V of his index and middle fingers of his left hand, even though he wrote with his right. Optimum multitasking.
‘What are you doing now?’ he asked.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Go home to Manchester. Carry on as normal and don’t tell anyone you don’t trust completely. You’ve been bailed for seven days, but the results will probably come back before then, so look out for my call. Until then, stay out of trouble. Do you have a union rep?’
‘Probably. It might be Fat Pat… Patrick, even.’
‘You might need to speak to him in case this goes… badly.’ Percy stopped for another puff. ‘From what I gather, Lancashire Police have already informed Greater Manchester Police about this.’
‘So they said.’
‘As far as I can understand, there’s no threat to your job at this stage. They can’t suspend you, because – in your own terms – all you’re doing is “helping police with their inquiries”.’
‘It sounds even stupider when you say it.’
He nodded but didn’t smile. After a glance over his shoulder towards the station, he dropped the fag end on the ground and trod on it.
‘That’s a thirty-quid littering fine,’ Jessica said.
He ignored her. ‘I’ll put a few calls in and see if there’s anything else I can find out. Are you heading home?’
Jessica squirmed. It felt like her dad asking if she was staying in for the night. ‘I thought I might hang around in Blackpool for a day or two. I have a few days off anyway.’
At first she thought he was going to tell her off but, instead, he nodded. ‘I’ll talk to you before, but, one way or the other, I’ll see you back here in a week to answer bail.’ He opened the car door but didn’t get inside. ‘And Jessica…?’
‘What?’
‘Stay out of trouble.’
She wanted to tell him that he wasn’t her dad, that he couldn’t tell her off, but he was only trying to help. He’d known her since she was a kid.
‘Um… you’re not going to tell my mum, are you?’
It took a couple of seconds, but, this time, a grin did creep onto Percy’s face. It disappeared almost instantly. ‘Of course not.’
As he pulled away, Jessica stood in the car park watching. Her phone had been turned off while she was being interviewed, but she switched it on and waited a few seconds before the missed calls started to ping through. When she was sure it had finished buzzing, Jessica called Detective Chief Inspector Topper. He was her immediate superior at the Longsight station where she worked, someone she actually liked and trusted.
He answered on the first ring: ‘Jessica?’
‘Guv.’
He was flustered: ‘I’ve been hearing… things.’
‘Like what?’
He paused for a moment. ‘How about you tell me what’s going on?’
Jessica sighed, ambling across the tarmac towards the seafront and finding a spot in an empty bus shelter. ‘It’s a bit of a mix-up,’ she said. ‘Well… not a mix-up as such. I saw this bloke the other night and, after we’d separated, someone else stabbed him. He had my card in his pocket and I’m apparently the last person to see him. CID up here had a few questions.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s just a mix-up. Well…’ Not a mix-up as such. Jessica went silent as she realised she was repeating herself.
‘Is there anything I can do?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think so. Things are going to have to play themselves out. It’s all standard stuff.’
Jessica winced, again tailing off. This was anything but ‘standard’.
‘Are you sure everything’s okay?’ he added.
‘Yep – I’m on leave anyway. I’ll be back soon.’
She heard the click of his tongue, as if he was going to ask her – again – if she was all right. ‘If you’re sure,’ he said instead. ‘Call if you need anything.’
‘I will.’
‘I mean it, Jess. Call if you need me.’
‘I will, sir.’
For a moment she wondered if the
y were going to exchange a series of ‘no, you hang up’ – but then she realised he’d gone.
The scratched plastic of the bus shelter rattled in the wind and then went still. The promenade and street opposite was nearly deserted, with only a smattering of shoppers and a road cleaner mooching up and down. An empty tram skimmed along the tracks close to the pier, passing close to the spot where Jessica had last seen Peter. This was the type of place that didn’t come to life until it was dark.
Jessica knew she should take Percy’s advice – go home and keep her head down – but she’d come to Blackpool to find Bex. Not only had she failed to do that, she couldn’t escape the sense that this had been targeted at her. It wasn’t some accident. If she went home now, it would change little. She would still be the last person to have seen Peter and Bex would still be missing.
Although the wind was still snarling and gnarling around the front, it wasn’t actually that cold. Not for the north of England, anyway. Jessica set off along the street that ran parallel to the prom, using the row of shops and hotels to protect her from the breeze. She’d only walked a short distance when she saw the orange and white sandwich board outside a newsagent. It had the logo of the local newspaper across the top and a somewhat predictable headline: ‘BODY FOUND ON BEACH’.
Jessica didn’t know how many corpses were found on the shore each year, but the statement seemed so definitive, so matter-of-fact, that it stopped her dead. It took her a few seconds to compose herself and then she entered the newsagent. She avoided eye contact with the man behind the counter. He was reading a magazine and listening to cricket on the radio. She could feel him watching her as she picked up a copy of the Blackpool Gazette and started reading, skimming the front page and then turning inside.
The details were largely sketchy – Peter Salisbury had been seen the night before last on Blackpool Promenade and had then turned up stabbed to death on a patch of rocks further down the shore. Police were appealing for anybody who may have seen him to come forward. There was a picture of the rocks on which he was found, Central Pier where he was last seen, and the photo of him in the beer garden. The rest of the article was the usual police-speak – ‘investigation ongoing’, ‘following a series of leads’, advising the public ‘not to panic’ – and so on. Those bloody press releases might as well be cut-and-paste jobs given the similarity in language. It didn’t matter where the force was based geographically, there would be some hard-nosed press officer writing as if they were paid by the word. It may as well read, ‘Blah, blah, blah – we’re on the case, all right?’
Thankfully, Jessica’s name was nowhere to be seen in the coverage. If it had been, that would mean it would be on the Internet, too. Once out, there would be no turning back. She’d be cached on various search engines from then until the end of eternity.
‘You gonna buy that?’
Jessica turned to face the shopkeeper, closing the pages guiltily. ‘Er, hang on…’ She reached into her pocket and came out with a pound coin she didn’t know she had. She paid, took her change and then headed back towards the front. The photo of Peter in the paper had left her with a thought that had previously washed over her. If he didn’t have a sister, then the picture on the poster supposedly showing Katy must belong to somebody else.
Twelve
Jessica was sitting on a bench on the seafront, ignoring the breeze and tucking into a bag of chips. They were proper chips, too – thick and deep-fried, dripping with vinegar and speckled with a person’s daily allowance of salt. People could say what they liked about Blackpool, perhaps even the north as a whole, but bloody hell, northerners knew how to do chips.
She ate with her left hand, drying her fingers on the crumpled white paper as she used her phone with her right.
The Blackpool Police website was the usual type of disjointed mess so often associated with public bodies. There was a force logo, a pixelated image of the chief superintendent and some overwritten bollocks about how he was there to protect the local community. So far, so yawn-inducing. As well as a list of press releases about locking up valuables, reporting anything suspicious and the usual array of common sense pronouncements, there was a gallery of wanted criminals, links to the force’s desperately undersubscribed social media pages and – finally – a link to an external site cataloguing missing people.
Jessica worked her way through the photographs on the site, stopping whenever she reached a young white girl with long dark hair. ‘Katy’ might not be real – but there was every chance Peter, or whomever it was she’d met, had ripped off somebody else’s missing person poster. It could have been a generic photo of someone taken from the Internet but, from what Jessica could remember, that wasn’t how it seemed. It looked like the sort of picture that was so often found on missing persons’ posters.
There were missing people of all shapes and sizes; all races; young, old – a true slice of the British public represented by the fact they’d seemingly upped sticks without a trace. As Jessica was beginning to think she was hoping for too much, she stopped with a chip halfway to her mouth as ‘Katy’s image filled her phone screen. It was the hooped earrings that stirred her memory. Jessica had forgotten about them until the picture was in front of her. The poster attached to the phone box had been low-quality, some dodgy black and white photocopy, but this was the original. ‘Katy’ wasn’t Katy at all, she was someone named ‘Henka Blaski’. In the colour image, she had brown eyes, a little too much make-up and greasy, olive skin. She looked like Bex, too – perhaps not if they were side by side, but it was in the shape of their faces, the hint of a shadow under their eyes, plus the colour and style of their hair.
As she looked at the mushy remains of her chips, Jessica was suddenly not hungry. She balled up the paper and dropped it into the bin next to the bench. More than ever, she felt set up. She wondered if that’s why Peter had chosen this photo for the poster that was stuck to the side of the phone booth. Jessica was meant to see it, to make the connection. If it had been a photograph of a missing person who happened to be male, or black, or old, perhaps she wouldn’t have phoned the number on the bottom? It had been subtle enough to manipulate her without being too obvious.
Someone wanted her to call Peter on the night he’d died.
So far, she’d been a passenger, but, as she stood, still staring at the photo of Henka, Jessica decided it was time to start fighting back.
She crossed the road, heading into the back streets away from the town centre. The further she went, the more run-down the houses, B&Bs and shops seemed to become. The promenade might be nice and shiny, but very few places stood up to scrutiny if the surface was scratched.
It didn’t take long before Jessica found the type of newsagent she was looking for – a bit grimy, with a board at the front advertising international calling rates to a long list of eastern countries. She bought a cheap Nokia and a pay-as-you-go SIM card, using cash and putting fifty pounds of credit on it. The shopkeeper held each of her ten- and twenty-pound notes up to the light, checking for potential forgery, but barely looked up from the counter otherwise.
Back outside, Jessica grappled the SIM card and battery into the phone and held in the button at the top. Thankfully, the screen flashed white and turned on. There was around sixty per cent charge – plenty for now. She copied a handful of numbers from her actual phone across to the new one. When she was done, she called Izzy.
The sergeant took a few rings to answer and when she did, she sounded annoyed. ‘Hello?’
‘Iz, it’s Jess.’
There was a pause. ‘Oh… I thought you were some telemarketer. Why are you using a different number?’
‘It’s a long story – I need a favour. Can you check the missing persons’ database for someone named Henka Blaski?’ Jessica spelled it out letter by letter and then added: ‘She was last seen in Blackpool around two months ago and there can’t be many – if any – with that last name.’
Jessica heard the scraping of a pen and the
n, ‘Okay. What do you want to know?’
‘An address if you can find it – plus anything on other family members. Brothers, sisters, mum, dad – that sort of thing?’
‘Anything else?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Jessica took a breath. ‘It’s just… when you’ve got it, can you call this number back? Forget my other one. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.’
‘No problem.’
There was no small talk, no messing around. The call dropped, leaving Jessica staring at the blank screen. As she waited, she dumped all the phone packaging into a bin outside the newsagent and then started pacing, pressing buttons on the phone and trying to see what it could do. From what she could gather, there was basic Internet, texts, the phone itself, and little else. It didn’t have a camera, an app store, or anything remotely up-to-date. It was bizarre how quickly technology became essential to modern living. Jessica couldn’t imagine getting through a day without the spangly, clever things her phone – her proper phone – could do. When she switched that off, leaving her with the new one, she felt a tiny bit more vulnerable.
Jessica jumped as the new phone started to ring. She’d been willing it to, but the tinkling, annoying ringtone was something out of a dodgy eighties movie.
‘Iz?’
‘I’ve got you a name and address,’ Izzy replied.
Danuta Blaski liked plates. Really liked them. Three of the four walls of her living room were covered with ceramic and china plates, all neatly arranged on shelves. There was a series of twelve celebrating Elvis Presley; another dozen with pictures of the British Royal Family; and many others with flowers, animals, and who knew what else. In between the plates, there were numerous Christian crosses. There was also a church created from glued matchsticks in the far corner.
Jessica was sitting in an uncomfortable armchair, sipping from a china teacup, afraid to move. There was a set of plates showing puppies worryingly close to the armrest and she feared being an errant elbow away from bringing the entire lot down.
Silent Suspect: A completely gripping crime thriller with edge-of-your-seat suspense (Detective Jessica Daniel thriller series Book 13) Page 7
