DS Jessica Daniel series: Locked In/Vigilante/The Woman in Black - Books 1-3 by Kerry Wilkinson Read Free Book Online Page A

work.’
    ‘Has he told you what actually happened with . . . y’know?’
    ‘I’ve not spoken to him in five months. He doesn’t answer his phone and, assuming he hasn’t moved, he doesn’t open his front door either.’
    ‘People have been saying he didn’t cooperate with the investigation.’
    ‘Who knows? I think he just feels embarrassed by it all.’
    ‘Surely it wasn’t his fault he got stabbed?’
    Jessica sighed. ‘The thing is, Dave, I just don’t know.’
    Eight months ago, Harry had gone to the pub after shift for a late drink. She didn’t know for certain but Jessica assumed it was something he did most nights. In general Harry
wouldn’t go near the police pubs; he preferred the ones far more dimly lit where the landlord was happy to let his clientele hang around after closing for a cheeky final drink. Or five.
    The drinking never seemed to affect Harry’s work and, other than the job, there wasn’t much they had in common but Jessica had seen him mellow somewhat. After they had been working
together for six months, she had even persuaded him to go to the same pub the rest of the crew went to. He had let her buy him a drink: ‘Not that Scotch shite, a proper drink, bourbon,’
is what he had told her to order.
    That is exactly what he had been drinking when some boozed-up thug knifed him in a dingy pub at the end of a bright September day. He survived but spent weeks in hospital and never returned to
the force. Jessica had visited him but he wasn’t the same person.
    Faced with the mandatory counselling sessions before being allowed to return fully, he took early retirement. He didn’t even seem that interested in helping the police’s own
investigation. Whether it was the shame of drinking himself into a vulnerable position or simply not being able to defend himself, she didn’t know.
    ‘From what the papers said, it sounded pretty clear cut,’ Rowlands said. ‘We got the guy’s fingerprints and the knife and everything.’
    ‘The prosecution are using me as a character witness at some point. I know people were saying Harry hadn’t cooperated properly with them but they didn’t tell me any of that
when we met up last week.’
    ‘But if they’ve got the knife and everything, what else do they need?’
    Jessica shrugged. ‘From what the lawyer said, the problem is the CCTV from the pub is more or less unusable. There were plenty of people in there at the time but mysteriously they all
seemed to be in the toilets at the same time.’
    ‘Oh right, like that then.’
    ‘Exactly, no one wants to say anything.’
    Tom Carpenter was someone who couldn’t handle his drink and happened to carry a knife in his back pocket. Regardless of the witness problems, his fingerprints had been all over the knife
left sticking out of Harry’s guts. A string of low-level thefts meant they’d had no problems identifying who he was.
    At the time Carpenter might not have realised he had stabbed a police officer but, when the papers and news programmes got hold of the story and started flashing his photo around, there
weren’t too many places to hide and he handed himself in.
    Jessica hadn’t known how to take the news when she found out. She had certainly done plenty of hard graft working with Harry but he had always been fair with her. The years of exams you
had to take before getting onto CID could teach you the things you might need to be a detective but Harry had helped her
become
one. He had introduced her to his sources and shown her how
to find her own. He told her which journalists you could trust and which ones you should nip to the public lavatories to avoid, even if they were on fire. It was almost as if he opened her eyes to
the city itself.
    Cole had been promoted when it was clear Harry wasn’t coming back and it was a sad fact she had almost certainly been promoted to detective sergeant to fill a gap left by him walking away.
It had seemed like a quick promotion but a