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

as he was wearing a long trench coat to guard against the cold, while his hair was back to its full
spikiness.
    ‘We’re not going in yours, are we?’ Rowlands said sarcastically as they reached the bank of vehicles.
    Jessica grinned and shivered at the same time. ‘I’m not sure, we do need something to distract from your flasher’s mac.’
    ‘Careful with that smile, there might be a
Herald
photographer around.’
    Jessica thought she might 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 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?’ Rowlands moaned 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 but also hadn’t reckoned another lead would
fall through quite so quickly.
    She hung up and turned to Rowlands. ‘Perhaps we should see if that TV magician has an alibi after all?’

8
    The locksmith’s white van with company branding was parked on his drive, making the house Rowlands and Jessica were looking for easily identifiable. Just to fit the
stereotype, he even had a red-top tabloid flopped across 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 hot drinks 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 one and whenever you were on a
training course you would have tea shoved down your throat at every 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 as soon as possible. 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. Rowlands wrote it all down but he might 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 Rowlands to ask about a