Locked In by Kerry Wilkinson

hope not. I hate those people.’
    Caroline Morrison was Jessica’s oldest and best friend. She was slim with naturally slightly olive skin plus long brown hair and wide brown eyes to match. If she was honest, Jessica had always been a tad jealous of her friends’ looks and especially those eyes. Caroline really was pretty whether she put any effort into her appearance or not. A few years ago, when they used to go out a lot more often than they ever managed now, Jessica always felt the need to wear more make-up and spend longer on her own hair in order to not be the “ugly friend”. She didn’t really feel unattractive but, compared to Caroline, she was always likely to be second choice.
    At the time Jessica was frustrated her skin was frequently pale, her hair wasn’t quite blonde, while her hazel eyes weren’t quite any colour. Some days they seemed green, others brown or grey. She wasn’t bothered by anything like that now; Harry’s stabbing and subsequent downward spiral had matured her in a way she couldn’t have expected. Caroline nodded towards the toast in Jessica’s hand. ‘Any bread left?’
    ‘Yeah, you might have to cut the mouldy bits off though.’
    ‘Eew... oh is that...?’
    Caroline had noticed the main picture on the paper’s front page above the murder story. Jessica closed the pages and scowled at the photo. ‘Yes. Peter Hunt.’
    ‘Is that because the court case starts tomorrow?’
    ‘I tried not to read it but probably.’
    When Tom Carpenter, the man who stabbed Harry, handed himself in, it wasn’t the police he had come to, instead it was someone altogether more sinister, Peter Hunt. Lawyers weren’t that popular with police officers in any case but Hunt was truly the scourge of the Greater Manchester Police force.
    He was a barrister that delighted in taking on cases to defend anyone with a high enough profile to get his photo into the papers and on the news bulletins. There may have been rifts between colleagues in her department but the one thing everyone Jessica worked with was united on was that Hunt was as low, if not lower, than the people he represented.
    It didn’t help that he was from the south. Being a barrister was Hunt’s first crime, while having coiffured blonde bouffant hair was another. But being born in Cambridge and speaking with a southern accent was an altogether bigger one. The fact he represented all manner of hooligans and law-breakers was the final straw.
    Public Enemy No.1 for the force wasn’t the array of drug dealers, gang members and other ne’er-do-wells that blighted their life, it was Hunt. Even the DCI, disliked by most of the officers under his care because of his pomposity and adhesion to strict form-filling, had it in for the lawyer. It was rumoured he himself regularly checked the status of Hunt’s tax disc just in case he’d forgotten to renew it on the £250,000 Bentley he drove around in.
    ‘I saw him on TV last week,’ Caroline said. ‘On one of the news channels talking about some book he’s got out.’
    ‘He’s always on somewhere giving his version of the truth. He was in the paper last week because he was launching some campaign with one of the local MPs. One of the younger lads set up a dartboard with the picture on. It was very popular.’
    ‘I wouldn’t have thought you had a good enough aim to get him in the face?’
    ‘Who said I was aiming for his head? It was a full-length photo.’
    Caroline smiled. ‘You really don’t like him do you?’
    ‘He’s an arse.’ Jessica didn’t like bringing work home but had ranted to Caroline about Hunt a few times in the past.
    When she and Harry had first met, he had been working on a case against Frank Worrall, a well-known local crook. Money-laundering is what they had tried to get him on but people-trafficking, prostitution, loan-sharking or the odd beating could have been options too. Worrall was involved in many things that caused misery for others but proving it was