Locked In by Kerry Wilkinson Read Free Book Online Page A

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?’
    ‘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 his work and, other than the job, there wasn’t really much they had in common but Jessica had seen Harry 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 simply 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,’ DC Rowlands said. ‘We got the guy’s fingerprints and the knife and everything.’
    ‘The prosecution are using me 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?’
    ‘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 on to 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 lavatory to avoid, even if they were on fire. It was almost as if he opened her eyes to the city itself.
    DI 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 lack of recruitment in the local area meant sergeants were getting younger all the time. In theory it meant she got to supervise the