Free Locked In by Kerry Wilkinson Page A

mac.’
    ‘Careful with that smile, there might be a Herald photographer around.’
    Jessica thought she may as well remind the locksmith who they were if he started looking at his watch too quickly so they took one of the marked police cars. She told DC Rowlands the address and said he could drive. Her mood was better than it had been in days but she still couldn’t be bothered with the other idiots on the road. Sometimes being in a marked car simply aggravated things. You could always tell the worst drivers; they were the ones who slammed on their brakes and pretended they were doing the speed limit the minute they saw you in their mirror.
    The journey wouldn’t take very long but they had barely reached the bottom of the road when Jessica’s phone rang.
    ‘Will you change that bloody ringtone?’ DC Rowlands said as she fumbled in her bag for the device.
    The caller was one of the other officers from the station. They had done some checking on the house’s previous owners. The couple that owned it before had emigrated to Canada when they moved out five years ago and were still living there.
    ‘Not a bad alibi,’ Jessica said to the caller. She hadn’t thought the previous occupiers would be a serious avenue to explore anyway but also didn’t think another lead would fall through quite so quickly.
    She hung up and turned to DC Rowlands. ‘Perhaps we should see if that TV magician guy’s got an alibi after all?’

EIGHT
    The locksmith’s white van with company branding was parked on his drive making the house the two detectives were looking for easily identifiable. Just to fit the stereotype, he even had a red-top tabloid sat on the dashboard as they walked around it to get to the front door. The man invited them in and offered to make some tea. Jessica never really drank tea when she was younger but when you joined the force it became almost inescapable. Every time you went to a house to interview someone you were offered a hot drink and whenever you were on a training course you would have tea shoved down your throat at every given opportunity.
    One of Harry’s favourite places to get himself out of the station, aside from the pub, was a cafe which refused to serve coffee. On questioning this, the owner had told Jessica: “This is England, we drink tea. The French drink coffee.” She didn’t really get that statement then or now. Even when you were at your desk in the station, whoever you were sitting next to seemed to ask at least once every hour or so if you fancied a tea from the machine. Whether what the machine spewed out could be classed as “tea” was another issue, of course. She would love to get forensics involved in that particular investigation.
    After their phone call, Jessica thought it would be a quick ten-minute trip where the locksmith would want them back out the door quickly. But, far from keeping an eye on his watch, he actually seemed to enjoy showing off his knowledge. He talked about multipoint locks, five-lever dead locks, security hinges, double-locking handles and all types of other things that generally washed over the two of them. DC Rowlands wrote it all down but he may as well have written down “super special double-locking lock locks that can’t be opened, not even with special fairy dust” for all the use it was to Jessica.
    ‘Could someone pick this type of lock?’ Jessica asked.
    The guy rocked back in his chair, almost spilling the cup of tea he was cradling and laughed as if she had just told a particularly-funny joke no one else got. ‘You’ve been watching too much TV, love.’
    She forced DC Rowlands to ask about a skeleton key, which brought even more laughter. The locksmith’s point was pretty clear – as long as they had been fitted correctly, it was more-or-less impossible to break through double-glazed doors and windows that were secured.
    Aside from the fact their visit hadn’t really got them anywhere, being called “love” was the final straw