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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 41 (всего у книги 56 страниц)

5

Kayleigh Pritchard picked up the carrier bags from the foot well on the passenger’s side of her car. The handles strained as she lifted, the thin plastic vulnerable against the weight of the groceries inside. She wondered what the point was of having ‘bags for life’ if she never remembered to take them out of her car boot. Instead, she was building up an ever-larger collection of plastic bags in the cupboard underneath her sink, and the ones in her car certainly would last for life, seeing as she never used them. She carried the shopping to her front door and put it on the doorstep while fumbling with her keys thinking, not for the first time, that she really should clear it out.

Because it rarely seemed to stop raining, her wooden front door was permanently swollen and always needed a hard shove.

Kayleigh practically fell over the threshold as she shouldered the door inwards and, after retrieving her bags, fought the door back into place before pausing for breath. The daily battle with the door had been going on for a few years and wasn’t getting any easier.

She stifled a shiver as a draught breezed through her. Hoping she hadn’t left the bedroom window open again, Kayleigh carried her bags into the kitchen, where the actual reason became obvious. As she entered, her eyes were drawn to the broken glass scattered across the floor. Kayleigh put her shopping down and tiptoed to the back door, careful to avoid the shards.

The bottom half of the back door was wooden but the top was made from translucent bobbled glass, which now had a jagged hole in the centre. Kayleigh stared at the keyhole and cursed herself for being so lazy. Because she struggled to find her keys, she always left the back-door key in the lock. Kayleigh tried the handle to see if it would open, wincing as she heard glass splintering under her shoes. The door required as much of a yank as the front one had, but the fact it was unlocked proved someone had smashed the glass and then used the key to open it. The key was still resting in the keyhole.

Kayleigh pushed the door closed and leant against the fridge, closing her eyes in frustration. She remembered the previous time she had been broken into a few years ago, when she had carelessly left a window open and gone out for the day. Back then, she had promised herself she would learn her lesson. Over time, she had simply become lazy, constantly misplacing keys, leaving curtains open and, as was now apparent, carelessly leaving keys in locks. Although Ordsall didn’t have the best of reputations, Kayleigh had rarely experienced problems in the area since the initial break-in.

Looking around the kitchen, apart from the glass, Kayleigh struggled to see anything that was out of place. She weaved around the glass and her shopping, making her way into the living room. She didn’t own much of value but what she did have was in the main room of the house. Fully expecting to see the television gone, Kayleigh was surprised to see it on top of the cabinet exactly where it had been that morning. Next to it was her stereo which, while not worth that much, would surely be worth taking if someone had broken in. As with the kitchen, Kayleigh could not see anything out of place, with an empty glass still on the armrest of the sofa exactly where she had left it the previous evening. She stepped across to the cabinet underneath the television and opened the drawer, taking out her laptop almost so she could believe it was still there.

She was full of relief, not just because the computer hadn’t been stolen – but more because she didn’t want to lose the photos she had on it.

Realising that someone who had broken in might assume she had something valuable upstairs, Kayleigh checked her bedroom. It was still untidy but that was nothing to do with the break-in and everything to do with her own messiness. The duvet cover was half on the floor, with shoes scattered across the carpet. Kayleigh checked the side table next to her bed where she kept the spare house keys, but everything was as it should be.

The landing and spare bedroom were equally clear, so Kayleigh walked back down the stairs into the hallway, feeling confused and wondering if it was just kids who had been playing around.

She returned to the kitchen, approaching the sink and staring out of the back window. A lane ran along the rear of the property and she had long known the rotting wooden fence inherited from the previous owner offered little privacy from whoever chose to walk past. There were local gangs but Kayleigh hadn’t had a run-in with any of them and pretty much kept herself to herself.

After putting the frozen items of food in the freezer, Kayleigh wondered if she should sweep up. If anything, calling the police could bring her more attention and, with the fact that apparently nothing had been taken, Kayleigh considered whether she would be better tidying up and then getting a glazier to come out. The excess on her insurance would surely be as much as it would cost to repair the door anyway, so the hassle of standing around while a police officer took photos and left a crime number didn’t seem worth it. Then there would be the forms to fill in and the endless things to sign. As if being broken into wasn’t bad enough, they then tried to kill you off with paperwork.

Kayleigh pulled the dustpan and brush out from underneath the mass of carrier bags in the cupboard below the sink and crouched, swishing the fragments of glass into the pan, while being careful not to kneel on any. The hole in the window wasn’t that big but Kayleigh found small slivers of glass in far-flung corners of the room. When she was finished, she emptied the pan into the large wheelie bin outside the back door and then found the phone book in the living room, before calling the first glazier on the list.

With everything sorted as best it could be, Kayleigh filled up the kettle with water and set it to boil, wondering why life couldn’t be easy. She went to sit in the living room, where she could watch through the living-room window for the work van to arrive, but instead felt the all too familiar pressure on her bladder, so headed upstairs.

As soon as she opened the bathroom door, she realised something wasn’t right. The hole in the back door had made the air fresh downstairs but the bathroom smelled of something that reminded her of a summer a few years ago when the bin men had gone on strike. Rubbish had been left to rot for three weeks and the lane at the back of her house where everyone put their bins reeked of rotting, decaying waste. Kayleigh flashed back to that summer as she stepped into the room, eyes drawn to the bath. She had taken a shower that morning and always left the curtain half-stretched along one side of the tub so it could drip dry.

It was then she knew someone had been in her house.

The curtain was pulled the entire way around the bath, shielding her from whatever was inside.

She crept forward until she had one hand on the shower curtain but the smell was finding a way to seep through her senses even though she was holding her breath. The stench almost made her gag. Feeling the need to breathe in, Kayleigh closed her eyes and quickly pulled at the thin sheet. She heard the plastic rings at the top clattering into each other and then slowly opened her eyes.

Kayleigh felt strangely calm. She had watched television shows and films where people would go running and screaming and, although her head was telling her to close the door and call the police, her first thought was that she wouldn’t be able to take a shower any time soon.

And then she finally breathed in, her senses taking control of her body.

Kayleigh closed her eyes to take away the scene but this offered no protection from what was now etched in her memory. Even in the semi-darkness, she could see everything clearly.

It wasn’t the young man’s body which had been dumped in her bath that terrified her as much as the way his eyelids were hanging open, exposing small red blotches in the whites of his eyes in a way she knew she would never forget.

6

In the days it had taken for Oliver Gordon’s disappearance to become an official case, Jessica had guessed it would only be a matter of time before his body turned up. They had decided not to publicise the fact the boy’s death had been predicted in the pages of the Herald and no one else had apparently noticed. As soon as the call came through that a woman had found a body in her bathtub following some sort of break-in, Jessica knew it would be Oliver.

With Reynolds still suspended and DCI Cole busy trying to manage more than his own workload, Jessica grabbed Izzy and headed out to the address in Ordsall. If she had been at home, it would have been a ten-minute walk at most from Salford Quays but, instead, Manchester was its usual static self. Jessica skipped through as many side streets as she could remember before finally emerging into the network of terraced redbrick houses where the flashing blue lights of an ambulance and two police cars were already waiting.

Now that she was back at work Izzy seemed determined to throw herself back into the job as much as she could. That didn’t stop Jessica from regretting bringing her when she saw the state the body was in. The Scene of Crime team had already attended the house and taken what they needed and Jessica had only managed a quick look at the corpse before it was covered and taken out. It would have to be identified formally but, seeing as she had spent the past few days staring at photos of Oliver, she had no doubt it was him.

‘Any idea what happened?’ Jessica asked the Scene of Crime officer.

The man was clearly in a hurry but stopped for a few moments to talk to them. ‘I wouldn’t want to say a hundred per cent but probably some sort of asphyxia. I’m sure you’ll hear for sure in a day or two.’

Everyone who investigated crimes was used to dealing with knife attacks and Jessica had seen various horrific aftermaths, where people had been left with parts of the body hanging out. Gun crime had been increasing in the city in recent years too, especially as their Longsight base was in the middle of a known gang area. Despite that, there was always something she found more brutal about crimes involving suffocation.

Jessica could vividly remember being shown a public awareness video at school. It was during an assembly and she had spent the first few minutes giggling and messing around. But her eyes had soon been drawn to the screen, where the tape showed two young girls playing with a plastic bag. It warned of the danger of playing around with such a dangerous object and, even though it was completely overblown, large parts of it remained in the back of Jessica’s mind even now.

She still remembered interviewing a woman who had reported her husband for domestic abuse after he had punched and kicked her, then slammed her up against a wall and throttled her. As the woman tried to talk about the events, her voice drifted between being audible and not, while Jessica could not stop looking at the purple and black mark around her throat.

Stabbing or shooting someone could be an instinctive act but actually choking them to death, however you did it, was a fierce, savage choice.

After the body had been taken away, Jessica and Izzy were led into the living room by a support officer, who introduced her to the house owner.

Kayleigh Pritchard acknowledged the detectives with a blank nod. Jessica would have guessed her to be somewhere in her early forties. She was still wearing a uniform from a local supermarket, her dyed black hair hanging limply around her shoulders. The woman was cradling a mug in her hands, her legs wrapped underneath her as she sat in what looked like an uncomfortable position in an armchair.

Kayleigh seemed unwilling to meet Jessica or Izzy’s eyes, instead staring into whatever was left at the bottom of her mug.

‘I know you’ve had quite the shock,’ Jessica began. ‘But, if it’s okay, we would just like to run through your afternoon with you.’

Kayleigh talked them through how she had arrived home from work and found a hole in the glass of her back door. She spoke about how she had been burgled in the past but, because nothing seemed to have been taken, she assumed it was just kids messing around.

‘I was worried about my laptop,’ Kayleigh added. ‘I’ve got all these photos from nights out. There are pictures from when I was younger too. All sorts of stuff I didn’t want to lose. When I saw the broken window, I assumed my computer and television and everything would have been taken. It was a relief when they were still there but then . . .’

Jessica could see the parallels to what had happened at the Sextons’ property, although that scene had taken on a different light because they now knew Oliver’s fate. They would have to look at whether someone had knocked on the door and then attacked the babysitter. Although they had found no signs of a struggle, Oliver didn’t have the largest of physiques and could easily have been overpowered, especially if he had been surprised. Jessica was struggling to concentrate on Kayleigh’s story, and had to stop her mind wandering back to the previous scene.

Kayleigh lived alone and had been in the house for around five years. After checking the necessary details such as her workplace, Jessica asked the woman to show her the back door. The Scene of Crime team would have already been through the house but Jessica didn’t like relying on photographs, preferring her own memory.

She could not stop herself shivering as they entered the kitchen. Kayleigh instantly apologised. ‘I’m sorry, I cleaned up. I know I shouldn’t have but I thought it was kids at the time. I didn’t think it was worth getting you involved.’

‘Did you tell the crime scene team that?’

‘Yes. They took all the glass and everything and used that powder stuff on the door handle but I had already touched that too.’

‘I’m sure they’ve got everything they need,’ Jessica replied as reassuringly as she could.

As Jessica had been checking the door, Izzy had been pacing around the kitchen. ‘Was there any stone or brick or something like that inside?’ she asked.

Kayleigh shook her head. ‘I don’t remember, your people asked the same thing but I’ve not cleaned up anything like that.’

Jessica had been thinking along the same lines. It meant whoever had broken in had likely planned what they were going to do. Along with the brutality of the method of killing Oliver, she was concerned at the way the perpetrator had made it hard for themselves to leave the body. Dumping it in the canal, leaving it in a ditch or even burying it in a shallow grave somewhere were all relatively easy ways to dispose of a body, but someone had gone out of their way to ensure it would be found – and, apparently, left it specifically in this house. Jessica wondered if Kayleigh realised the implication.

‘Is there anyone you know could have a grudge against you?’ Jessica asked, not wanting to spell it out exactly.

Kayleigh had clearly thought it through already and shook her head. ‘I’ve been trying to think. It’s not the best neighbourhood, but there’s no one around here I’ve had a problem with.’

‘Any upset ex-boyfriends or anything like that?’

‘No, I’ve been single for a while. I keep myself to myself, go to work, come home. Sometimes I’ll go out with the girls from work but we never get in any trouble. Every now and then we get a bit of noise at night time but I don’t even complain about that. You never know how people are going to react.’

Although Jessica had suspected that would be the answer, she also thought there must be something which related either to Kayleigh or the house itself which had invited this. Until she could get a team of people looking into things, she held her tongue.

Jessica indicated towards the woman’s uniform and asked what she did at the supermarket. Kayleigh worked in the bakery section and appeared enthusiastic as she spoke about it. That type of day-in, day-out familiarity would have driven Jessica crazy but she had always held a curious admiration for people who were quite happy to do that. Adam was the opposite. He had recently moved from being with the forensic science service to working at the university. He did small amounts of teaching, while generally helping out with the research projects and he enjoyed the routine of having certain days and times when he was working.

Because Jessica knew the name of the victim, even though it wasn’t official, she decided to try a new tack. ‘Do you know someone named Oliver Gordon?’ she asked.

Kayleigh didn’t seem to realise that the name could be the identity of the victim. She stuck out her bottom lip, shaking her head slowly. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘How about an Owen or Gabrielle Gordon?’

The woman thought for a few moments, then shook her head again. ‘I’ve never heard of them. Should I have?’

‘No, it’s fine,’ Jessica assured her. ‘Can we see upstairs?’

Kayleigh led them back through the house and up the stairs. The Scene of Crime team had taken their time examining the area before removing the body and although there would be photos of how things had been left for Jessica to see, she thought it would be best if she had some idea of what the area looked like.

Cole had asked Jessica to hold off on instantly attending the crime scene when they had received news through of the body find. They knew the house would be cramped with the paramedics, uniformed officers and Scene of Crime team, while recent force policy had been shifting more power into the hands of the science team and away from CID, partly due to one of their colleagues in the Northern division, who had accidentally trampled across a scene, destroying evidence in the process. It was the type of thing everyone who didn’t work in his division found partially funny, relieved it hadn’t happened to them.

‘I opened the window,’ Kayleigh said, holding the bathroom door open for them. ‘Your people took all sorts but it still smelled of . . . it.’ She spoke the final word reluctantly, before adding: ‘He was in the bath.’

Jessica and Izzy entered but Kayleigh refused to move past the doorframe. As happened frequently, Jessica was struck by how normal everything appeared. There were rows of shampoo bottles on a shelf next to the window and a green flannel in the shape of a frog was sitting on a shelf close to the shower head. Jessica could guess the curtain had been taken by the team but, if it wasn’t for that and the faint odour she wished she didn’t recognise, she would not have known anything was untoward.

Jessica and Izzy went through the motions of checking around the enclosed area, although they knew the Scene of Crime team would have already done the same.

As they left the room, Kayleigh was leaning on the banisters at the top of the stairs, nervously biting her lip. ‘Are you all right?’ Izzy asked, placing a hand on the woman’s arm.

Kayleigh stared straight into Jessica’s eyes. ‘How do you do this?’ she asked, before clarifying: ‘You can’t un-see things, can you?’

Jessica felt uncomfortable, as if the woman was asking something she had long not wanted to query herself. It was as true a thing as anyone could have said.

‘We have people you can talk to if you want,’ Jessica replied.

Kayleigh nodded but didn’t want to let it go there. ‘How do you cope though?’

Jessica could feel Izzy watching her too and suddenly felt self-conscious. She mumbled something about having ‘special training’, although she wasn’t convincing herself, let alone anyone else. The truth was, you dealt with it in the only way you could: you got on with it. Some would use alcohol to help, others leant heavily on their partners. Jessica knew DCI Cole made sure he didn’t take work home, instead protecting his family time as far as possible. Jessica’s own way was to immerse herself in work; it was all she knew.

They started to descend the stairs together, with Jessica at the rear. ‘Are you going to be all right here tonight?’ Jessica asked. ‘A support officer will stay with you for a while but we should be able to help if you want to find somewhere else for the night.’

‘I’ll be okay,’ Kayleigh replied, leading them to the front door. She opened it, adding: ‘What happens now?’

‘We’ve got another stop-off, then we’re heading back to the station,’ Jessica said, taking a card from her jacket pocket and handing it over. ‘I’ll call you later if you want. Feel free to contact me.’

Kayleigh turned the card over in her hands, smiling weakly.

‘Are we off to the Sextons?’ Izzy asked as she walked through the door. It was exactly where Jessica was planning to go but, before she could follow her colleague, she heard Kayleigh begin to say something, before stopping herself.

‘Are you all right?’ Jessica asked.

Kayleigh smiled wearily. ‘Yes, it’s just I used to know someone with the last name Sexton.’

It dawned on Jessica that, although she had asked the woman if she knew Owen and Gabrielle, she hadn’t asked about the family whose house the body had disappeared from. ‘What was the first name?’

She already knew the reply before it came.

‘I used to know an Ellie Sexton.’