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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 56 страниц)

7

Jessica tilted her head to a slightly downward angle and tried not to launch into a volley of swear words. She had recently become a lot better at holding her tongue and was making a conscious effort not to lose her temper as often. As she tried to smile, she thought that if there was one person who deserved to be greeted by a string of bad language, it was the photographer standing in front of her who wouldn’t stop saying ‘smile’.

Jessica knew that anything to do with making the force look good was taken very seriously by people working for the police who weren’t actually officers. As such it shouldn’t really have been a surprise that the press office had hired a professional photographer to take new pictures for the website relaunch. But it would have been a surprise to the photographer and on-looking chief press officer if Jessica had picked up the man’s tripod and found a creative way to shut him up. A few potential methods had certainly occurred to her.

The photographer was tall and lanky with spiky black hair and was possibly the most enthusiastic person Jessica had ever had the misfortune of meeting. She was on her way out of the station when Cole told her to have her picture taken before she left. The man had set himself up with his camera in the ridiculously named Longsight Press Pad, which was the room where the force held media briefings. He seemed utterly oblivious to the fact Jessica had work to do and had no pretensions of wanting to be a model. She thought it would be a quick glance at the camera and then she would be on her way. Instead, the photographer had perched her on the edge of a desk and was trying to get her to twist her head to the side and smile. Jessica thought she was smiling but, apparently, whatever look she was giving wasn’t good enough.

‘That’s brilliant,’ the photographer said as his camera flash went off again. ‘Right, a couple more. Look down a bit, please.’ Jessica tilted her head once more. ‘No, further down,’ the photographer added.

‘I am looking down.’

‘No, tilt your head down then look up.’

‘I thought you wanted me to look down?’

‘No, angle down, eyes up.’

Part of Jessica’s job involved trying to get into the minds of criminals and finding out why they did what they did. As she tried to force another smile, she thought the unrelenting cheerfulness in the photographer’s voice went some way to helping her understand what could make a person turn to violence. If anyone was unfortunate enough to share a house with this man and ended up smacking him in his gormless, grinning face, she thought a plea of temporary insanity would be a very easy sell for a solicitor.

‘Right, that’s brilliant,’ the photographer announced, finally lowering the camera. Jessica didn’t give him an opportunity to add a ‘Let’s just try this . . .’ before standing and storming past him out of the room.

Jessica was well aware she had always been short-tempered. She could remember being a child and her mother telling her to ‘count to ten’. The problem was she would get to two, occasionally three, and be too frustrated to get anywhere near ten. She knew there was undoubtedly a psychologist, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, or some other person who stuck the letter ‘p’ randomly at the beginning of their title who was waiting to pick her apart one day. She figured the more time she spent around joyful photographers, the sooner that day would come.

Jessica stomped through reception and headed out of the station towards her car, her mood not improving as yet again it had begun to drizzle and she had again forgotten to bring a jacket. She dashed across the car park and struggled to unlock her car before finally hurling herself onto the driver’s seat and slamming the door. She took a deep breath – another piece of advice from her mother about keeping cool – and realised that a lot of her annoyance was down to the fact she hadn’t been looking forward to the day anyway.

Cole had called her the previous evening to say that Isaac Hutchings’s mother had asked if she could speak to the person who found her son’s body. In policing terms there was no particular need for Jessica to visit her because other officers had been dealing with the initial missing child aspect of the case, and a support officer would also be assigned. The woman had given several statements and certainly wasn’t a suspect. Despite all of that – and even after the chief inspector said it was her call – there was no way Jessica was going to deny a grieving mother such a simple request.

That didn’t mean she was looking forward to it.

Everyone in the force had experience of breaking bad news or dealing with people coping with extreme situations but there was no textbook to predict how a mother who had just lost a child would react.

Izzy was still in the process of looking through unsolved cases. The task was complicated because a computer system upgrade a few years previously had copied some files but not others. Everything was a mix of digital information and actual paper trails. After Cole’s call the previous evening, Jessica thought about taking Izzy with her to see Isaac’s mother but figured it would be pretty insensitive given her friend was pregnant. Not to mention it would be for Jessica’s own indulgence when the officer would be better employed going over the old files.

Jessica drove through the rain to the address she had printed off. The Hutchingses’ house was pretty similar to the one Daisy Peters was renting a few miles away. Isaac’s mother was obviously expecting Jessica and invited her straight into their living room before introducing herself as Kayla and offering the obligatory cup of tea.

Jessica had read the Isaac Hutchings file thoroughly and knew his mother was only thirty-four, the same age as she was. As well as Isaac, she had a daughter, Jenny, who was thirteen. As Kayla brought in two mugs of tea and placed them on a coffee table, Jessica thought she would have struggled to guess the woman’s age if she hadn’t known. The greasy unwashed black hair and sallow skin colouring, coupled with dark bags under her eyes, made her look comfortably into her forties. Jessica was well aware it was almost impossible for someone childless, as she was, to understand what the woman in front of her had gone through.

Kayla sat on the brown sofa next to Jessica and offered a weary smile. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘The person I spoke with said they didn’t know if they would be able to arrange it . . .’

Jessica shuffled in her seat, uncomfortable at meeting the woman’s stare. ‘It’s not a problem. What would you like to know?’

Kayla stumbled over her words. ‘I . . . I don’t know really. They’ve not let us have the body back yet so we can’t even plan the funeral. My husband, Mike, went back to work yesterday. I didn’t want him to but I think he just felt trapped in here . . .’

She indicated towards a selection of photographs pinned on the wall. Jessica had noticed them as soon as she entered the living room. They showed various shots of Isaac and his sister playing, as well as group pictures of the parents with their children. Kayla tailed off before beginning to speak again. ‘I think I just wanted to hear what he was like when you found him.’

It was the question Jessica had expected but was dreading. She tried to choose her words carefully. ‘Mrs Hutchings, I . . .’

‘Kayla.’

‘Sorry, Kayla, I’m not really sure what I can tell you. You identified the body . . .’

‘I know but what was he like when you found him? I know he was in a car.’

Jessica had a tough decision to make. There were no rules she had to follow regarding disclosure of information, so she was free to tell the woman from that point of view – but it was always a balancing act of whether the information would cause too much emotional distress. Jessica glanced up and caught the woman’s pleading eyes, which made her mind up for her.

‘He was wrapped up in some sort of sheeting in the car boot when I found him. I didn’t really look at him too much after that.’

‘Did he look . . . okay?’

Sometimes people would only give a quick glance when identifying a body, not wishing to prolong their agony. She would have been told there was no sexual element to the disappearance but that would likely offer only a tiny amount of comfort. It was a hard question to answer. Jessica genuinely hadn’t seen that much of the boy after cutting him free.

‘He looked peaceful. His eyes were closed.’

It was about as much reassurance as Jessica could manage.

Kayla nodded, wiping around her eyes, although she wasn’t obviously crying. ‘Thanks.’ She sniffed, then continued. ‘Do you know how he disappeared?’

‘I read the file.’

Kayla nodded again but seemed keen to tell her story. ‘Everyone keeps saying, “It’s not your fault”, but it’s shit. They’re just words. I know it’s down to me. Mike blames me and he’s right.’

‘I don’t think it’s your fault, Kayla.’

The woman offered a small shrug of her shoulders. ‘The other officers talked me through everything and I saw the CCTV footage. He was walking home from school the same way he always did. I would pick him up if it was raining and I keep thinking, what if it was raining? I mean it rains up here all the bloody time, doesn’t it? It’s always pissing down but, on the one day it would actually have helped, it was dry.’

Isaac had disappeared on his way back from school. Camera footage was limited but they had images of him on a device placed outside a newsagent’s on his route home. The next time he would have been spotted was four hundred metres away on a traffic camera but by then he was gone. Cars going into and out of the area had been checked with no clues and there were apparently no witnesses to anything. It was as if he had simply vanished.

Jessica was struggling to know what to say and beginning to wish she had brought someone else with her but Kayla broke the awkward silence.

‘I’ve still got his Christmas present upstairs,’ she said. ‘He wanted that new games console thing. Mike went to the city centre and waited in a queue at midnight when it first came out because everyone was saying they’d sell out straight away. It’s wrapped up under our bed. I guess when he first disappeared I just thought he’d be back in time to have it.’

Jessica was becoming more and more uncomfortable. She tried to say something reassuring but Kayla spoke again, this time in a slightly harsher tone. ‘No one’s told me anything. I had someone asking me questions about a football kit, then something about a car. All everyone ever says is that they’ll keep me up to date with developments. I’ve had to keep Jenny off school because of the other kids. She’s only thirteen . . .’

Kayla tailed off again and this time there were definitely tears. She reached forward and took a tissue from the coffee table, blowing her nose loudly.

Jessica was trying to see both sides. The woman would obviously want to know who had taken her son and why but, if she had too much information which she then revealed either to the media or her relatives, it could end up harming the investigation. Although the press had reported on the car crash, some of the most important details had been kept back, largely because they didn’t really know what the dead driver looked like. They hadn’t had anything back from the woodland dig, the clothes they had found or the allotment connection either.

At some point the media would be brought in but it wouldn’t do any good if they released all of the information in one go because they didn’t yet know if it all linked together. Jessica had seen the media used in a bad way a few years previously when one murder completely unconnected to a serial killer was assumed to have been done by him. The resulting coverage had created big problems for both investigations and she was glad people had learned their lessons.

Almost as if on cue following Kayla’s outburst, Jessica heard a voice coming from somewhere just outside the room. ‘Mum?’

A girl with straight blonde hair down to her shoulders walked in. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a tight wool jumper. She eyed Jessica suspiciously but barely got into the room before Kayla turned around and spoke sternly. ‘Jen, I told you to wait upstairs.’

‘I know but I’m hungry.’

Jessica stood, knowing it was a good time to go. Kayla rose too and peered from Jessica to her daughter then back again. ‘Are you leaving?’ she asked.

‘I’m not sure there’s anything else I can help with,’ Jessica said.

The woman blew her nose again, pocketing the tissue. She gave a small, entirely unconvincing smile. Jessica returned it, then took out a business card and left it on the coffee table before saying her goodbyes and walking back to her car. She knew the meeting hadn’t gone well but had no idea how she could have made it any better.

As Jessica arrived back at her vehicle, she took out her mobile phone. There was a single text message from Izzy: ‘Know uve got big morning & dint wanna interrupt. Call when u can.’

Jessica phoned her colleague. ‘Did you want me?’

‘We found something in the old case files,’ Diamond said. ‘It’s not been transferred to the computers and the whole thing’s a bloody shambles but we think we know where those clothes in the woods come from.’

‘You’re joking?’

‘Nope but it’s going to sound horribly familiar. Fourteen years ago an eleven-year-old boy went missing from around here. He was never found but, when he disappeared, he was wearing a light blue Manchester City shirt and a pair of jeans.’

8

Jessica struggled with what to say before finally managing to get the words out. ‘Why didn’t anyone remember this? There must be people around now who were working back then?’

‘I have no idea, I’m just pulling everything together. Are you on your way back?’

‘Yeah, I won’t be long.’

Lunchtime traffic was as infuriating as ever but Jessica avoided the main roads and managed to arrive at the station without too much swearing. She walked purposefully through to the main floor but Izzy was nowhere to be seen. Rowlands told Jessica their colleague was in Reynolds’s office, which was down the hallway from her own. While Jessica’s half of her office was a complete mess, the inspector was definitely one of the tidier colleagues she knew. An outsider would never have guessed after Jessica knocked and entered his room. His desk had been shunted off to the side, while he and Izzy were sitting on the floor with a mass of papers spread across the surface. As Jessica opened the door, a gust of air sent half-a-dozen sheets of paper blowing across the room to disapproving looks from both of them.

‘Sorry,’ Jessica said.

Reynolds waved her in properly, pointing at a spot on the floor next to them. ‘Take a seat.’

‘Why are you working from the floor?’ Jessica asked but was met by pitying looks from her colleagues as if she had asked the stupidest of stupid questions.

Izzy leant across and picked up the papers that had been dislodged, then answered. ‘There’s more room down here.’

Jessica still wasn’t convinced. ‘We do have tables. Upstairs, in the incident room, in the Press Pad.’ It was clear her colleagues weren’t interested in her complaining so she crouched and sat cross-legged next to Izzy. Reynolds winked at her to acknowledge her objections but she could see there was a serious look in his eyes.

‘We’ve already been upstairs to see the DCI if you were wondering,’ he said. ‘He’s busy trying to get an excavation team in to go through the woods properly while we go over this. Some of the other officers have got photocopies of these documents too and are looking into things.’

Jessica said what it seemed they were all thinking. ‘Are we assuming there’s a body buried in those woods?’ The other detectives said nothing but Jessica knew that was exactly the reasoning. She leant back against the door. ‘What have we got?’

Izzy handed Jessica a photograph of a boy with sandy-coloured short hair. He was grinning at the camera, wearing a school uniform. Izzy was clearly already familiar with the file as she spoke quickly and confidently. ‘That’s Toby Whittaker. Fourteen years ago he was playing on a disused industrial park with some of his friends. It was just wasteland and, from what his mates said at the time, was somewhere lots of young people would hang around playing football and so on.’

Jessica knew the ‘so on’ probably referred to smoking and drinking if not a few other things as the constable continued.

‘Toby was only eleven at the time,’ Izzy went on. ‘But it looks like most of the people who hung around there were a bit older: fifteen– or sixteen-year-olds.’

Izzy briefly paused, adjusting the position she was sitting in before pointing towards the papers on the floor. ‘There are all sorts of witness statements, not many of them that useful. Toby went there with his friends to kick a football around but one by one they went home. There doesn’t seem to be anything fishy about their statements and none of them were suspects at the time. It seems as if Toby was left on his own and then, at some point, he just disappeared.’

‘Did anyone see anything?’ Jessica asked.

Izzy picked up a page from the floor and skimmed it, looking for a certain detail. ‘Apparently not. Have you ever been with your mates on a night out and, before you know it, there’s only one or two of you left standing? It sounds like that. He’d gone to play, it started to get dark and he was left by himself. A couple of the witnesses, people who weren’t his friends but were hanging around the site, say they saw him on his own, while one of his mates say they went their own ways when it was just the two of them left. It sounds a bit odd but I remember things like that happening when I was a kid.’

‘Eleven’s a bit young, isn’t it? How close was the land to his house?’

Izzy put down the paper and reached for another. ‘Not that far, maybe half a mile? I don’t really know the area.’

‘And how close is this site to the woods where we found the clothes?’

Izzy returned the set of papers to the floor and shuffled her position. ‘Pretty close, a few hundred yards maybe?’

Jessica said nothing for a moment but there was something concerning her. ‘Why do you think we found the clothes now? We know they were washed relatively recently and presumably buried at more or less the same time? Someone must have been keeping them ever since Toby was taken. Not only that but the driver who had Isaac Hutchings in the back of his car had a map directly to the spot.’

It was more a statement than a question. The similarities between the two abductions were obvious and Jessica wondered if their unknown driver was the person who had kidnapped Toby all those years ago. If that was true, why would he need a map to the boy’s clothes? It seemed that every time they found an answer, it opened up another set of questions.

There was another short silence before Jessica spoke again. ‘So what happened with the investigation?’

Reynolds and Izzy exchanged a look before the inspector answered. ‘From what we can tell, not a lot because there weren’t any leads. Parents, uncles, aunts, all the relatives were accounted for and no one seemed to have a motive. Apart from the witnesses who said they saw him walking away from the site, there were no suspicious car sightings, no signs of a struggle, nothing. There weren’t as many CCTV cameras back then, so there’s nothing from that. One of the parents said something about having a falling out with one of their neighbours because of an incident involving Toby riding a bike across the person’s front garden but it sounds very petty and it looks as if it was discounted.’

‘So it was just unsolved and he was never found?’ Jessica asked.

Izzy nodded. ‘Exactly. When I was going through things I was surprised by how many unsolved missing children cases there are. It’s not just our district, obviously, but over the years there are hundreds of kids unaccounted for. You never hear about them.’

Jessica knew the statement had extra meaning for the constable because of her own pregnancy. ‘Does anyone here remember the case?’

‘We’ve asked around but no one knows anything specifically,’ Reynolds said. ‘I wasn’t here but the DCI says the boundary of who investigated what was much more blurred back then – although he wasn’t here either. I’m sure someone will remember but we’ve not really had time to properly ask yet.’

Jessica knew what he was talking about. She worked for the Metropolitan branch of Greater Manchester CID, while there were separate divisions for the north, south, east and west areas of the city. Everything had been broken up not long after she joined as a uniformed officer around a decade ago. She knew that fourteen years back there was just one CID branch covering the entire area. Because of that, it was no wonder the paperwork was so disorganised as detectives and officers would have been moved to new departments and things would have been lost along the way.

‘Do we at least have the name of whoever was leading the investigation?’ Jessica asked. She saw Izzy and Reynolds swap a nervous glance and felt something sink in her stomach. She knew the name of the person involved before the inspector spoke the words: ‘It was DI Harry Thomas.’

Jessica stared at the row of six intercom buzzers and took another deep breath, her third in less than a minute. Each time she hovered her finger over the button, before withdrawing it. She was standing at the top of a small flight of concrete steps outside the block of flats where Harry lived. She hadn’t seen him in over three years and hadn’t thought she would ever do so again. At the station both Cole and Reynolds had offered to visit Harry instead of, or with, her but Jessica insisted she wanted to do it on her own. Both officers knew how close Jessica had been to him at one point as they were both already detectives when she started in CID and Harry was their colleague too. As with a lot of things, probably too many, they trusted her judgement and, on this occasion, Jessica wanted to go on her own.

In most cases where a former officer needed to be spoken to, he or she would be invited to the station formally if it was something serious, or it could be a lunchtime chat in the pub if it wasn’t. Harry had deliberately cut all ties to his former workplace so Jessica talked her fellow detectives into letting her doorstep him. No one was confident he would be helpful if they gave him much notice. As far as they knew he hadn’t moved to another property but there was only one way they would find out for sure.

Jessica again raised her finger to the doorbell without putting any pressure on it but her mind was made up as a pitter-patter of raindrops began to fall behind her. She hunched her shoulders and pulled the top of her jacket over her head. It was almost as if a higher power was telling her to get on with it and Jessica finally relented, pushing the button and hearing a buzzing noise from the intercom. The noise of the rain increased and she tried to shelter her body under a small roof that overhung the front door. If anything, it was only making her wetter as water dripped from where she could see the eroded sealant above her.

Jessica stabbed the intercom again and, just as she was beginning to eye her car parked on the road as the only available dry spot nearby, the device finally crackled into life. ‘Who is it?’ said a voice from the other end.

‘Harry? It’s Jessica Daniel. Can you let me in? It’s shitting it down out here.’

The intercom hissed and went silent. For a moment, she thought nothing was going to happen before a click indicated the door had opened. Jessica quickly pushed her way into the deserted hallway and pulled her jacket back down from over her head. The rain reminded her of what Kayla Hutchings said that morning about how she would have picked her son up if it had been a wet day. Jessica thought about how entire lives could change because of something as random as whether or not it rained.

Jessica had visited Harry at his flat in the past and started to walk up the hard, echoing concrete steps at the back of the porch. The place where he lived was in a row of old civil-service buildings not far from the city centre. Each property had been converted into six flats around twenty years ago, and then sold off to private investors. At some point they would have been attractive places to live but Jessica could see paint flaking from the once-cream walls as she walked up the stairs.

Harry lived on the third floor and Jessica was dripping water up the steps as she moved. She wondered if the man she once thought she knew so well might be waiting for her but the landing on the top floor was as deserted as the rest of the building seemed to be.

The falling rain echoed on the roof as Jessica walked along the corridor to Harry’s flat. She knocked but the door swung inwards as it had been left on the latch. Jessica stepped over the threshold and closed it behind her, unclipping the button which allowed it to lock.

‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Harry?’

No one replied and she couldn’t hear any noise. Jessica could only vaguely remember the layout. She was standing in a hallway with two doors on her left, one directly in front of her and another on her right. All of them were closed but she knew the one at the far end led into the living room and dining area. She opened the door, immediately spotting Harry in an armchair watching a portable television in the corner of the room.

The smell was the first thing that struck Jessica. It wasn’t exactly bad but it was as if she had walked through an invisible wall where everything on the other side had a stale odour. It made her remember being fourteen. She had left her PE kit in a bag over the summer holidays and only found it as she was sorting out her belongings for the new term. Her polo shirt and skirt were still caked in soil and grass and it was that exact smell which met her as she walked into Harry’s living room. The place hadn’t been cleaned in a very long time.

He didn’t acknowledge the door opening or even Jessica repeating ‘Harry?’ as he continued watching the screen. It dawned on Jessica that the television was muted but she walked around his chair so she was facing him.

‘Harry, are you okay?’

The man was wearing what would have been smart suit trousers at some point but the black material was grubby and fading. Harry was in his mid-fifties but looked older. He’d been overweight when she worked with him but he had put on at least another stone and a half since then and his belly was bulging against a blue-and-white checked shirt that was only half-buttoned, allowing grey chest hairs to poke out from the top. He used to sweep his hair across his head but had clearly given up and now had a large bald streak. The skin on his face was blotched and red.

Harry finally glanced up at her but wouldn’t meet her eyes, staring off to Jessica’s right. He started as if to speak but began coughing before clearing his throat loudly, then finally found his voice. ‘Detective Sergeant.’

It was an acknowledgement of sorts but his words had no real warmth to them. His north-east accent sounded heavier than Jessica remembered.

‘Are you all right, Harry?’

He nodded but didn’t speak. Jessica saw a bottle of whisky wedged in between his thigh and the chair’s armrest. Perhaps it was because she had seen the bottle but all of a sudden she could smell the alcohol. It was more of an undercurrent to the stale odour she was becoming used to but the sharp scent was distinctive. Harry must have noticed her eyes because he pushed the bottle towards the rear of the seat. When it was clear he wasn’t going to answer, Jessica spoke again. ‘I’m here because I was hoping you could help.’

Harry shifted his gaze back to the television and mumbled quietly, ‘I’m retired.’

‘I know but it’s about a case you worked on fourteen years ago. It’s important.’

He shuffled in his seat and Jessica didn’t think he was going to say anything. Not for the first time that day she was struggling to know how to handle a situation when Harry finally replied. ‘What’s the name?’

Jessica had deliberately left the file in her car because she didn’t want to involve Harry too heavily and didn’t have a photo of the dead driver anyway if he was their link from the old case to the new one. She remembered the name of the missing boy, having read everything available before leaving the station. She guessed they would be two words she wouldn’t be forgetting in a while. ‘Toby Whittaker.’

Harry answered immediately but still didn’t look away from the television. ‘The missing boy.’

It wasn’t a question.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you find him?’

‘No, we . . . think we found his clothes.’

‘A Man City shirt.’ Again it wasn’t a question; Harry knew what he was talking about.

‘Yes, buried in some woods along with a pair of jeans.’

‘Did you find a body yet?’

‘No, a team’s going to excavate around the trees where we found the clothes. It’s a bit strange because the clothes were washed recently and bagged up before being buried. Someone’s kept them all this time.’

Harry nodded, picking up a remote control from a small wooden table next to his chair and switching the television off. He finally looked at Jessica, who was still standing, meeting her eyes. She could see a small twinkle in his that reminded her of working with him and, if you could look past the state of his skin, made him look younger. ‘I knew there was something not quite right but I couldn’t figure it out,’ he said.

‘We’ve been reading back through the files but it doesn’t look as if you ever had a suspect.’

Harry shrugged, sitting up straighter. It was almost as if he was a new person as he spoke with enthusiasm. ‘Are you re-opening the case?’

‘We don’t know. It’s too early to say and it’s not up to me but I would think so.’

‘How did you find the clothes?’

Jessica winced a little, not wanting to go into too many details. ‘We were led there.’

‘There was another body, wasn’t there?’

Jessica didn’t want to shut down Harry’s enthusiasm as she still needed answers. ‘Yes, another child’s.’