Текст книги "Jessica Daniel: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water"

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 33 (всего у книги 56 страниц)

23

Jessica sat alone in the interview room, directly underneath the security camera so that it couldn’t see her. The tears felt embarrassing but relieving at the same time. The ends of her sleeves were feeling pretty damp by the time Reynolds returned.

‘I thought you were going to listen, not talk,’ he said with a smile.

Jessica snorted and coughed. ‘You know me. I’ve got a big mouth.’

The inspector came close to Jessica and held his arms out. She allowed him to cradle her onto his shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I’ll be fine. I don’t know what’s happening to me.’

‘It’s called being human, Jess. Welcome to the race – it’s taken you long enough.’

His arms were strong and Jessica felt as if a large weight had been lifted from her – even if she didn’t know what the burden had been in the first place.

‘I sorted out one of the cars giving Anthony a lift home,’ Reynolds said, releasing her.

‘Do you think he’ll be okay?’

He shrugged. ‘Who knows? I think he’s been waiting to tell someone about it for a long time.’

‘If he didn’t burn down Martin’s house, who did? And I believe him when he said the paint and petrol can weren’t his. So who left them at his house? And who attacked Martin? Plus someone poured petrol over his front door too.’

The inspector smiled weakly. ‘I’ll talk to Jack and we’ll meet upstairs.’

‘I’ll see you in five minutes,’ Jessica said. ‘I’ve got something to pick up first.’

Cole’s office was a little less crowded than it had been a few days before as Cornish was working on an armed robbery case. When Jessica arrived, the chief inspector was behind his desk as usual, Reynolds and Rowlands across from him.

As well as collecting the item she wanted, Jessica had visited the toilets to make sure it wasn’t too obvious she had been crying.

‘I’ve told Jack about the interview with Anthony Thompson,’ Reynolds said. ‘I don’t think either of us really suspect him but we have another problem too.’

Cole spun around his computer monitor so Jessica could see it. In large capital letters was the headline ‘ARSON MAN BEATEN’, with the same picture of Martin Chadwick that the media had used to report his release from prison.

‘Bloody Internet,’ Jessica said. ‘A few years ago, you’d at least manage to wait until the next day for these things to get out. How did they find the story?’

Cole shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Our press office were just working on a release when it broke. Someone at the hospital probably? Maybe even the hotel? There were plenty of bystanders too. Martin has been all over the news, so it’s not as if the doctors, nurses and receptionists would struggle to recognise him. I don’t know if they copied it off each other but it’s been on the news channels too. Everyone has the story.’

Jessica read the first few lines of the piece before sitting back in the seat. ‘I’ve got something to show you,’ she said, reaching into the cardboard folder she had been keeping in her office and handing Cole the papers with the doodles in the margins.

‘I know it isn’t proof of anything,’ she added. ‘But Ryan Chadwick’s form tutor gave me these. I don’t know all the data protection or privacy stuff but I’m guessing I probably shouldn’t have them. Either way, it’s too late now.’

Cole looked through the pages before passing them to Reynolds to scan. No one said anything as Rowlands flicked through the pages, before handing them back to Jessica.

‘What do you think they show?’ the DCI asked, but Jessica interrupted him.

‘There’s more. When I mentioned about that private investigator the other day, I know you told me not to but . . .’

She could feel the other two officers’ eyes on her but it was Cole she stared at. ‘Sorry,’ she offered, knowing it sounded pathetic.

Cole sat up straighter in his seat and glanced towards Reynolds before returning his gaze to Jessica. She couldn’t read his face. ‘Did you . . . ?’

‘Yes . . . well, sort of.’

Her supervisor rolled his eyes and shook his head but she still couldn’t tell if he was angry. ‘What have you got?’ he asked.

‘You’ve seen the drawings. It can’t just be me that’s concerned about the flames Ryan drew?’

From the moment Cole said ‘Jess’, she knew what was coming. ‘This is nothing,’ he stated. ‘You must know we could never use it as evidence.’

‘Of course I know. It’s just something to bear in mind along with everything else that’s going on.’

‘What about the investigator?’ the chief inspector asked.

‘I asked him to follow Ryan for me. I didn’t bring any of you into it. He saw Ryan giving money to this girl. She’s the same age as Sienna and Molly. It was all secretive and away from people.’

‘Do you know who the girl is?’

‘Yes. I spoke to her. I think she wanted to talk but got distracted.’ Jessica realised she was sounding desperate.

Cole didn’t look annoyed, just confused. ‘What are you saying he’s up to?’

‘I . . . I don’t know, just something. You have to admit it all looks bad. The link to the fires, the girls, the drawings, the money. There’s something going on there.’

There was a short pause and Jessica realised she had badly misjudged the mood of her colleagues. It was Rowlands who spoke which, in many ways, made her own desperation worse. If either of the other two had said something, they were her superiors. She not only outranked the constable but considered him one of her closest friends.

‘Jess,’ he said quietly.

‘What? I’m not saying all of this is down to him. I’m just saying we’re missing something.’

‘But this can be so easily explained. Most people draw, write and doodle when they’re bored. Just because his are flames, it doesn’t show anything. And as for the money? I don’t know, it could be for anything. Maybe he’d bought something from her?’

‘But what if it’s more?’

Cole interrupted. ‘We can’t keep having this conversation, Jess. We all love you here but . . .’

As Jessica was about to reply, Reynolds spoke. ‘Remember what you told Anthony about letting go? Whatever’s going on, you’ve got to get on and do the job. If we find any proper evidence to say Ryan is involved with either case – the fires or the suicides – then we’ll move on it. But we don’t have anything. No witnesses, no forensics . . .’

Jessica knew she was in an argument she wasn’t going to win. ‘I just wanted to tell you everything that was going on,’ she said. ‘We don’t have any other suspects or clues for either of the cases. Before they get dumped to one side as unsolved, I wanted to tell you what I had.’

Cole nodded, although she wasn’t sure if it was to accept her explanation or simply to shut her up. ‘You’ve got to tell this investigator friend of yours to stop doing whatever he’s doing if it’s on your behalf. We can’t get tied to something like this. Other than that, we’ll just have to dig deeper. You might be right that we’re missing something, so let’s go back to the beginning and look into Martin himself. Jason says his old school burned down – let’s see if we can find any way he could be connected to that, or anything else suspicious he might be connected to. When we’re done with him, we’ll move onto Ryan. If he was in a children’s home, there must be people out there who know him and paperwork to chase. If we can’t come up with anything, we’ll look further afield.’

Jessica knew that much of what he had suggested had already been done. It wasn’t as if they had sat around doing nothing for the past few weeks. She suspected he had said it for her benefit.

‘Sounds good,’ Jessica said, thinking that it didn’t.

It wasn’t often that Jessica arrived home before her fiancé but, as she opened the front door to a silent welcome, the irony of Adam not being home on one of the occasions she needed him wasn’t lost on her. The biggest problem was that she knew her growing obsession with Ryan was getting out of hand too. She had felt it festering inside her from the moment he had looked at her in his house and the way those grey eyes had stared through her. It sent a shiver down her spine at the time and it felt as if it was still happening.

Jessica went into the living room, curling up with her feet underneath her on the sofa. She took a laptop out of a drawer and turned it on. It was one of the few new things she and Adam had bought together. They’d both had bulky desktop computers, which they each donated to charity, before investing in something smaller.

Before the computer had finished booting up, Jessica’s phone started to ring. She scrambled across the room to pick it up, expecting it to be Adam, but instead Sebastian’s name flashed. Her thumb hovered over the answer button before she let it ring off, waiting for a couple of minutes before listening to the voicemail. Sebastian sounded breezy, asking if she fancied a chat, emphasising that it would be for professional reasons, although it didn’t sound like it. Jessica deleted it, trying not to picture his face in her mind.

Back at the computer, she read through the news stories about the attack on Martin, including Sebastian’s on the Morning Herald’s website. She never ceased to be amazed at how the stories got out; whether via hospital staff, the hotel workers, an eyewitness or any number of other people, somehow the things they tried to keep quiet always found their way into the news.

As she continued to skim through the articles, the front door slammed, with Adam shouting ‘hello’.

‘In here,’ Jessica called. As he entered, she couldn’t stop herself from laughing. ‘How red are your cheeks?’ she giggled, standing up and walking across the room towards him.

‘It’s cold out there and the wind’s howling.’

‘You look like a bloody robin trapped in his nest. Look at the state of your hair.’ Jessica grabbed some strands that had been blown around and pushed them back into position, before giving him a hug and nestling her head into his shoulder. ‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ she said.

She gulped as Adam pulled her tight and squeezed. ‘Bad day?’

‘How’d you guess?’

‘That grumpy, moaning look on your face.’

Jessica pulled away and playfully slapped Adam in the chest. ‘Oi, you’re supposed to be nice to me.’

‘I am nice to you. Now where’s my tea?’ Adam grinned widely. Although she had been getting better – and despite a Christmas dinner she had cooked for her friends – she still didn’t do much in the kitchen.

‘Ha! Cheeky sod. Get your own tea. I’m busy.’

‘Fine. I will.’

Adam went to turn but Jessica reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him back towards her. ‘Adddddaaaaaaaammmm,’ she purred as seductively as she could manage.

‘What?’

‘Can you make me something?’

Adam laughed. ‘I knew you were going to say that. What do you want?’

‘I dunno. Something.’

‘Well, that narrows it down. You’re a bloody nuisance.’

Jessica grinned. ‘Yeah but that’s why you love me.’

‘All right but if I make you tea, do I finally get to see you in that dress?’

Jessica stared doe-eyed at her fiancé and smiled. ‘Maybe.’

When she and Adam had moved in together, they had had something of a clear-out which largely involved her sorting his clothes into three piles. The ‘stay’ pile was fairly sparse. The ‘okay but I’d rather you got rid of it’ mound contained the bulk of his wardrobe and the final ‘throw it out now, what on earth were you thinking?’ stack was quite large too. After protracted but rather one-sided negotiations, where Jessica flat-out refused to give any ground at all, Adam relented and disposed of everything she suggested. She suspected it was because she promised to buy a ‘hot dress’ to sit in the newly cleared half of the wardrobe. She wasn’t a big fan of clothes shopping but Adam had chosen an outfit he deemed ‘hot’ enough during a trip to Manchester city centre one weekend. As she promised, the dress did indeed sit in the wardrobe. But, as she consistently pointed out to him, although she said she would buy something, she had at no point promised to wear it.

‘I know that “maybe”,’ Adam replied. ‘It sounds like “maybe” but it’s actually saying “no”.’

‘How about if I say “perhaps”?’

‘Nah, I’ll just cook my own tea.’

Jessica stuck her bottom lip out in protest. ‘Oh Adddddaaaaaaaammmm . . .’

‘All right, stop moaning. Yeah, I’ll make you something.’

As the evening wore on, Jessica managed to put most of her thoughts and emotions from the day to the back of her mind. If anything, telling Anthony – who was essentially a stranger – that she cared so deeply for Adam made it feel more real. The baby-talk with Izzy was making her think that her previous nerves were down to what other people’s expectations of her might be, as opposed to her own or Adam’s.

After they ate Adam’s stir-fry, they played a game of Scrabble on their phones, which Jessica lost badly, before settling down to watch television. Jessica had her head resting on Adam’s lap as he snacked on chocolate buttons.

‘Are we going to visit some more possible venues this weekend?’ Jessica asked.

‘I’ve got a few more we can look at,’ Adam replied, dropping a button towards Jessica which hit her in the eye.

‘Oi, my mouth’s here,’ Jessica said, as she picked the chocolate from her face and swallowed it.

‘I did have an idea,’ Adam said.

‘I told you we’re not getting married at a bloody sci-fi geek convention,’ Jessica said. ‘And before you ask, no, I’m not dressing up as Princess Leia.’

Adam laughed. ‘Not that – although I’ll bear it in mind. I was thinking maybe we could do something abroad? We’re only going to be inviting your mum and dad anyway. Maybe Caroline and Dave?’

Because she had been avoiding thinking about the potential date, the idea of going overseas hadn’t occurred to Jessica. She reached up and snatched a button from Adam’s fingers and threw it at his face, laughing as it bounced off his nose. ‘Ha. That’s for getting me in the eye. Anyway, yes, maybe? Let’s look at some places this weekend and then make a decision. I reckon my mum and dad would be up for something in the sun.’

‘Have you thought about when? It’s loads of planning. Most people take eighteen months or so.’

It wasn’t the first time he’d asked but this time Jessica was in the mood. She snatched another piece of chocolate and replied as she chewed. ‘Sod that, I’ll put my mum on it. She’ll get people sorted out.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want to do more of the planning? Most brides go a bit crazy as the day approaches.’

‘Yeah, I’m not most brides though, am I?’

Adam laughed. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever said anything more true.’

As the show they were half-watching finished – and Adam had finished picking up chocolate buttons from the surrounding furniture – he heaved Jessica to her feet. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed,’ he said.

‘Are you going to carry me?’

‘Not after all the chocolate you’ve just put away.’

Jessica jumped up from the sofa and stuck her fingers just below Adam’s ribcage in the spot she knew he was most ticklish. He squirmed away from her. ‘Oi, that’s cheating,’ he protested.

‘I told you, I’m a cheat.’

‘You lost at Scrabble.’

‘Maybe you’re a bigger cheat?’

Jessica reached out to try to tickle Adam but he grabbed her arm and picked her up. ‘Ah, so you are going to carry me upstairs,’ she declared.

‘Yeah, if it’ll shut you up.’

Jessica wrapped her arms around Adam’s neck as he opened the living-room door with his foot and steered her around the corner. ‘Watch my head,’ she reminded him.

‘Stop wriggling.’

Jessica grinned and locked her hands behind his neck. As Adam hoisted her higher and said that he loved her, Jessica couldn’t help but hate herself for the thoughts of Sebastian which filled her head.

As her mind slowly drifted awake, Jessica coughed slightly. She had the beginnings of a headache which was pounding in her head. At first she wasn’t sure if the throbbing was something she was dreaming, or it was real. She opened her eyes as little as she could get away with in an attempt to look at the numbers on her alarm clock. Instead of the red glow, the area it should have been in was dark. Jessica reached onto her bedside table and picked up her phone, pressing a button on the side that made it light up and show her that it was 3.31.

The bright white stung her eyes and she quickly closed them again, putting the phone back on the table and coughing gently a second time. She wondered whether there was a problem with the clock or if they had simply had a power cut.

Shuffling sideways, Jessica reached out towards Adam and wondered why he never seemed to wake up at the silly times she did. She rested a hand on the base of his back before realising the pulse in her head wasn’t just a headache, there was actually something making a noise below them. Jessica rolled onto her back and sat up, staring towards where the clock should be glowing.

She had never been the best morning person but her head felt woozier than usual and her throat was dry. She reached out and took a drink of water from the glass next to her. ‘Adam,’ she mumbled, reaching out to touch him again. When he didn’t stir, she shook him gently. ‘Adam, there’s something making a noise downstairs. The power’s off.’

Again he didn’t move, so Jessica swung her legs out of the bed and stood up. Her bare feet brushed across the carpet but, despite the fact she was only wearing a pair of shorts and a large T-shirt, she didn’t feel cold. She breathed in, coughing heavily again. Although she sometimes got the sniffles and minor colds like most people, there was something that felt different as she breathed in and tried to clear the dryness in her throat.

Jessica stumbled towards the door and flicked the light switch up and down but nothing happened. There was still a noise coming from below but she wasn’t awake enough to understand what was happening.

‘Adam, where’s your fuse box? The power’s off,’ she called but he didn’t move.

She turned back to the door and, in the fraction of a second it took to open it, she found herself falling to her knees as thick smoke poured through the gap into her lungs.

24

Jessica collapsed onto her back and kicked the door closed. She wanted to scream at Adam to wake him but her throat was so dry she couldn’t swallow. In the dimness of the street lamps shining through the curtains, she could see a thin cloud of smoke billowing above her.

It seemed so obvious now that the beeping was the smoke alarm placed on the living-room ceiling directly below them. To begin with, her drowsy brain hadn’t made the connection. Jessica stared at the ceiling, desperate to move but struggling to clear her head and breathe. She rolled away, pushing her face into the carpet and inhaling slowly and as deeply as she could. She spluttered slightly but the mildly stale taste of the floor was preferable to the smoke drifting around the room.

With her head marginally clearer, the warmth of the floor suddenly became obvious. She knew there was a fire burning directly below her.

Feeling weak, Jessica crawled along the floor before reaching out and taking a large gulp from the glass of water. She knew she had to get out of the house but staying calm and trying to breathe slowly was the only way she was going to be able to manage it.

She picked up her phone and switched on the torch, sending a bright white light onto the ceiling. Jessica looked up again, where she could see the remnants of the swirling smoke she had let into the room. She shone the light around until it was pointing at the door. Thin wisps of dark mist were cascading under the frame and drifting airily upwards.

Jessica swung the phone around and reached up onto the bed, breathing slowly but deeply and closing her eyes before pulling as hard as she could until the duvet fell on the floor. Her eyes felt heavy, her arms ached, but she used her feet to push the duvet across the carpet until it was blocking the gap under the door. She shone the light around the rest of the frame and, although fragments of smoke were seeping through at the top, the bed linen was blocking most of it.

Clambering onto the bed, Jessica rolled Adam over on his back. She shone the light across his closed eyes while shaking him as hard as her weary arms would allow. ‘Adam,’ she hissed into his ear but he didn’t respond.

She felt tears in her eyes again as she slapped him across the face. Her arm felt limp but, despite the lack of force, she knew it should have been enough to wake him. She held the light close to his face and lifted one of his eyelids, not knowing what she was looking for but hoping he would respond in some way. His pupils had rolled back into his head and Jessica allowed his eyelid to droop. She rested her head on his chest, feeling it rise and fall ever so faintly, wanting to cry but knowing she had to get out of the house first.

Still resting on Adam, she flipped her phone around and dialled 999. She spoke quietly, thinking it might conserve more oxygen if she didn’t raise her voice. The female operator took her address as Jessica said she was a police officer, hoping the woman would contact someone at Longsight.

Jessica’s voice was croaky and, although the operator said she would wait on the line, she hung up, wanting to use the torch again. She kissed Adam on the forehead and climbed across his body until she was at the window. Her legs felt weighed down from the effort of moving and she knew the way she was trying to conserve the oxygen could only last her so long. Her brain seemed alert but her limbs were languid and sore. She lay on the floor, reaching up and pulling open the curtains slowly from the bottom.

As the faint light from the street lamps outside dribbled into the room, Jessica could still hear the beeping of the smoke alarm through the floor. Her eyes were desperate to close but she fought it by focusing on the noise.

She reached up and grabbed the curtain, heaving herself gradually to her feet. When she was nearly standing, she heard a crack and suddenly found herself falling. Things seemed to happen in slow motion as she collapsed onto her back, the curtain and rail landing on top of her. For a moment, Jessica struggled to comprehend what had happened. Thoughts seemed to flood her head but figuring out what they were telling her was hurting.

She rolled back towards the bed, shaking herself free of the curtain and only then realising she had pulled it down. Jessica lay on her back, staring at the ceiling. She could feel the weight of her phone in her hand and shone it upwards, trying to count to ten and calm her thoughts. When she reached five, she twisted her body around until she was on her knees, using the corner of the bed to raise herself up.

Even with small breaths, the air instantly felt harder to digest. She knew she had to stay low, so she crouched and stepped across to the window. As she turned, she peered towards Adam. He was spread-eagled on his back, his eyes closed, one arm hanging limply off the bed. She knew she would have been in tears at any other time but her throat was so raw that it felt as if there was no moisture in her system at all.

Jessica pressed herself against the window, the glass cool against her skin. She let the phone drop onto the window sill. Her eyes again felt heavy, as if willing her to sleep, but she put a finger and thumb above and below each eye, physically pulling them apart. Jessica coughed heavily, huge heaves of thick phlegm rolling up her windpipe into her mouth before she spat it onto the floor. Her throat was still sore as she pressed her thumb onto the button of the window’s locking mechanism.

Usually, she would have been able to push it in and twist the handle. As she tried, Jessica felt a slow sense of panic flowing through her as she realised the button wasn’t giving way. With the tip of her thumb, Jessica could feel the outline of a small keyhole and recalled that Adam made a point of locking all the windows when they weren’t at home. She remembered him telling her the previous weekend just before they left the house that he was going to check everything was locked. She’d sat in the car complaining about the length of time he was taking but now wished she had gone with him.

Jessica fell to her knees, partly through exhaustion but also because she knew she had to stay low. She reached onto the sill, fumbling for her phone and pulling it towards her. She shone the light along the length of the frame, hoping to see the key somewhere nearby. She could picture what it looked like. It had been a silver colour at some point but was now faded to a scuffed grey and was barely larger than the fingernail on her big toe.

Just in case she had somehow swept past it, Jessica ran her hand the full length of the sill but there was nothing there. She sank down until she was sitting directly under the window facing the rest of the room. A thought ran through her head that she could smash the window if she could find something heavy enough but the part of her brain still thinking rationally remembered a locksmith once telling her how hard it was to get through double-glazing.

She closed her mouth and tried inhaling steadily through her nose. As she shone the light upwards, she could see there was a greater amount of smoke drifting around the top of the room. Jessica couldn’t resist shining the light back to Adam’s body. He hadn’t moved since she had tried to rouse him but she crawled back across to the bed and pulled herself near to him, placing her ear close to his mouth. She was hoping to hear him breathing but there was nothing. Her mind drifted back to primary school where her class had been taught how to take a pulse. She had been at the back punching Peter Jenkinson hard on the shoulder to see if she could bruise him. He would grimace and then punch her back. Jessica wished she had paid attention. Even through the police training, taking a pulse was something she had never mastered.

Jessica shone the light back down to his chest and felt her heart skip as she watched his chest rise a tiny amount before falling again. She rolled onto her back, resting her head next to Adam’s and trying to think where he might have left the key. It had to be in the room because it didn’t fit any other window. She knew what Adam was like and leaving the key near to the lock so he didn’t lose it was something he would do.

Although he would have left it close, he definitely wouldn’t have left it within sight. She remembered telling him about a case where someone had used a hook to steal car keys through a letterbox and he had made a point of keeping things out of sight ever since then.

Jessica could still hear beeping from below her, knowing fire engines would arrive without sirens at this time of the morning. She closed her eyes, fighting the tiredness but trying to picture the layout of the room. Adam slept closest to the window, which meant the key would almost certainly be somewhere in that half of the room.

She slid onto the floor, opening her eyes and lying as flat as she could comfortably manage. She doubted he would have left the key in the wardrobe at the foot of the bed and, if it wasn’t on the window sill, the only other place it was likely to be was the bedside table next to him. As Jessica pressed her palms into the carpet, she could feel the heat from underneath. It was almost too hot to touch but Jessica’s aching limbs wouldn’t allow her to move any quicker.

Slowly, she edged along the side of the bed until she could reach out and touch the cabinet. Somewhere along the line she had dropped her phone but she wasn’t sure she had the energy to find it. Her eyes felt painful and she could not force them to stay open.

Jessica ran her hands across the front of the wooden bedside table and fumbled the top drawer open without opening her eyes. She reached inside, pulling out socks and underwear, letting them drop to the floor and listening for the clang of a key.

As she removed the final item, Jessica smoothed her hand along the inside of the drawer but could not feel anything metallic. She shuffled back to the floor, pushing the items of clothing around and groping underneath in case she had accidentally pulled out the key already.

Feeling like giving up, Jessica returned to the cabinet, opening the next drawer and reaching inside to feel metallic bottles that must have been deodorant cans. She forced her eyelids apart but her head was heavy and the rush of air seemed as if it was stabbing her in the eyes. With her phone lost, there was barely enough light from the window to see the contents of the drawer but Jessica fumbled for each item one at a time, taking out the toiletries and dropping them onto the floor.

As the final one fell, the rush she had felt moments ago disappeared, almost as if it had a physical presence which had been taken away. Jessica’s mouth was parched and she wanted to cry so much that her stomach ached. She rested her forehead on the top of the cabinet, reaching in the drawer and tracing along the edges. There was nothing at the front but as she reached towards the back left corner, her fingers felt something cool.

She tried to tell herself to stay calm but, in her rush to pull the key forward, Jessica could only shunt it further into the drawer. She could feel her entire arm shaking with anticipation and frustration and settled herself to try again, this time taking the small object between her thumb and forefinger and moving it into her palm.

For a moment, Jessica wanted to relax and enjoy the success of the moment but the warmth of the floor was telling her she had to keep going. She used the bed to help pull herself up and felt her foot touch her phone. Bending down, she picked it up and staggered back to the window, dropping the phone and key on the sill.

Under her breath, she mumbled ‘concentrate’ but instantly wished she hadn’t as it launched her into another coughing fit. Jessica could feel the pressure through her chest. Part of something was coming up her windpipe each time she coughed. Again, she rested her forehead against the glass, allowing its coldness to keep her alert. For the first time since she had woken up, a chill went through her.

Jessica picked up the key and reached up to the window lock. She tried pushing it in, but couldn’t make her fingers obey as the metal scratched either side of the hole, instead of sliding into the centre. She stopped, closing her eyes and counting to ten.