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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 49 (всего у книги 56 страниц)

‘Aren’t things better now?’ Rowlands asked. Jessica heard his voice falter and realised he was taking it worse than she was.

Ruby smiled another toothy grin and held her arms into the air. ‘Look around, honey, this ain’t much fun either.’

Jessica had been wondering why Ruby was letting them into all of her secrets but realised the woman was past caring. As she finished stubbing out the cigarette, Jessica knew the saddest thing was that Ruby would run back to her former husband in a heartbeat if the option was there.

She wanted to comfort the woman, to tell her it couldn’t be that bad, but she knew anything she said would sound patronising.

‘There’s not much else I can tell you, sorry,’ Ruby added, straightening her clothes.

‘What was Nicky like as a child?’ Jessica asked, doubting the woman would be able to give her any information to back up what Leviticus had told her.

‘Nicholas found everything funny, as long as it didn’t affect him. Nicky would pinch and punch me and his dad would laugh along so he thought it was okay.’

‘But you still wanted custody?’

Ruby shrugged. ‘Boys will be boys. They’re always up to something. He was still my son.’ She quickly corrected herself: ‘Is my son.’

Jessica couldn’t think of anything else to ask. She had hoped for some insight into Nicky but instead ended up hearing one more awful chapter in the life of the boy’s father.

‘You can show yourselves out,’ Ruby concluded as Jessica and Rowlands stood.

As she waited in the hallway with the constable struggling to put his boots on, Jessica couldn’t help but swear under her breath.

‘Sounds like a lovely chap, doesn’t he?’ Rowlands said quietly.

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘I do have one idea you might be interested in.’

‘There’s a first time for everything.’

‘No, seriously. Your newspaper ad thing, it was something Ruby said.’

Jessica could tell from the way he was speaking to her normally that he thought he was onto something.

20

Jessica peered across the table at the two individuals and pointed to the newspaper in front of her. ‘If either or both of you were responsible for this, now would be a pretty good time to speak up.’

When neither of them answered, she looked sideways at Rowlands. He spoke with the exact tone she wanted him to, like a big brother to a younger sibling. ‘Look,’ he said chummily, ‘if it was you and you tell us now, we’re prepared to let things go. If you keep this going and we later find out it was either of you, then you will be in serious shite.’

Jessica could tell it had worked.

Terry shifted uncomfortably in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck. Richard had sensed his friend’s nervousness and slumped in his seat.

‘It was supposed to be a joke,’ Richard said quietly, refusing to look up from the table. ‘We thought Ollie would find it funny when he saw his name in the paper but didn’t think he’d actually . . . y’know . . . a few days later.’

Jessica said nothing, allowing Rowlands to speak. ‘You do realise that in the history of school pranks, this is not only one of the shittest but also one of the most poorly timed?’

His words echoed around the empty classroom as neither student dared look up from the table.

‘What’s going to happen to us?’ Terry asked, his voice cracking halfway through the sentence, partly through emotion, partly fear.

Jessica exchanged a look with Rowlands, holding his eye to allow the tension to build. ‘Nothing for now,’ Jessica said firmly. ‘But we both know who you are and what you did. If either of us ever hear you’re in trouble again, then we will rain some serious shite down upon you.’

She allowed her words to hang, before adding, ‘Now get out of here.’

Richard and Terry jumped to their feet in unison, muttering a ‘thank you’ before racing towards the classroom door and the relative safety of the corridor. The truth was that neither of the young men had committed any sort of offence, other than one of stupidity – and if they started convicting people for that, they’d need some pretty large new prisons. Jessica didn’t think a few idle threats could do them any harm.

When the room was empty, Jessica caught her colleague’s eye. ‘I quite like our bad cop, bad cop routine.’

Rowlands smiled, then stood and walked across to stand by the window. ‘We should take it on tour.’

‘You’ll have to start speaking to me properly first.’

The constable didn’t reply for a few moments, before eventually saying: ‘Different world here, isn’t it. At my school, the toilets barely worked. Here, they’ve got their own operatic society.’

Jessica went to join him by the window. ‘Let’s hear it then.’

‘What?’

‘How you guessed all of this. We could’ve come in here and had them tell us they didn’t know anything about it.’

Rowlands turned to face Jessica, leaning against the glass. ‘“Guess” is the right word. I think it had been floating around the back of my mind anyway after Iz told me you’d been here to talk to Oliver’s friends. I thought about my own mates and how we’d arse around. It was never anything like this, mind, we’d hide each other’s clothes after swimming, or give each other dead legs.’

‘Sounds mature.’

‘Well, exactly, but when Ruby was going on about boys being boys, I thought that Oliver was a bit different to us.’ He pointed towards the door Terry and Richard had just left through. ‘Those two don’t seem the type to go around pissing in a Lucozade bottle, then leaving it around the changing rooms after rugby practice.’

‘You did that?’

The constable shrugged but offered a half-grin. ‘Maybe. The taste is about the same. Anyway, the point is I thought they’d be doing something a bit more high-brow. Placing an ad predicting their friend’s death seemed the type of unfunny thing they’d come up with. The fact he ended up being killed days later was just . . . unfortunate.’

The way he said the final word sounded a little callous but Jessica knew what he meant. ‘Something always seemed a little off,’ she said. ‘There was never anything predicting Kayleigh’s death and it never really fitted. The two killings were brutal, not something whimsical that someone would choose to predict beforehand.’

Rowlands crossed the room and sat opposite Jessica. ‘I guess our killer isn’t as clever as we thought.’

Jessica made sure her friend was looking at her as she replied. ‘We could have figured this out ages ago if you were talking to me properly.’

She expected the constable to brush off the remark and pretend nothing was wrong but instead he squirmed as awkwardly as Terry and Richard had done minutes before.

‘Can I tell you something?’ Jessica asked quietly. Rowlands nodded but she couldn’t read his face. ‘I went back to see Nicholas a second time.’

‘On your own?’

Jessica nodded. ‘Iz knew. I wanted to see what he was like on his own with a woman.’

The constable loosened his tie. ‘I can guess.’

‘You wouldn’t even know the half of it.’

For as long as Jessica had known Rowlands, he’d kept up a front of bravado. Although some of his boasting about women in his younger days had no doubt been true, at least in part, it had taken Jessica a long time to realise that he was very similar to her. As she told him Eleanor and Leviticus’s stories, she could see in his face that he was as horrified as she was.

‘. . . And you put yourself in a room alone with him?’ he replied.

‘I didn’t know all of that at the time,’ was the only justification Jessica could think of.

‘Have you told Jack or anyone else yet?’

Jessica shook her head. ‘What good can it do? All it proves is the type of person he is, which we partly knew already. There’s nothing to link him directly to Oliver or what happened to Kayleigh.’

Dave loosened his tie further and undid his top button, breathing out deeply. ‘Do you reckon Serious Crime would be interested?’

‘Do you think Eleanor, Leviticus or Ruby might want to give evidence against him? Even if they did, much of it is dated, circumstantial or one person’s word against another. And what would they do him for anyway, other than what they’re already looking into him for?’

Jessica could see the constable shared the same feelings of injustice she did. While they had officers out checking the speeds of motorists, someone like Nicholas Long was seemingly free to continue going about his business.

Although there was silence in the room, there was a hum of activity from elsewhere around the school. Students were hurrying to and from lessons, others whooping on the various sporting pitches.

‘Shall we go and tell everyone what conquering heroes we are?’ Dave asked, sliding his chair backwards with a screech.

Jessica didn’t move. ‘I miss you,’ she said quietly.

The constable stopped, hands fixed to the back of the chair as he was half-standing. ‘Sorry?’

‘I miss you mucking around and taking the piss. You’re such a dick but you made it fun coming to work. Me, you and Iz are a good team.’

Jessica had been wanting to tell him that for weeks but everything fell out in one unrehearsed sentence. As soon as she had spoken, she half-wished she could take it back but the emotion of hearing the endless stream of degradation Nicholas had poured over those around him had worn her down.

Rowlands seemed frozen, half-bent over the chair. Jessica could feel him staring at her but she didn’t acknowledge him. Finally, he stood and walked back to the window.

‘Are you going to at least tell me what’s up?’ Jessica demanded, raising her voice.

‘Things have been complicated.’

‘That’s it?’

Jessica scraped her chair back and walked to the window to stand next to him. They both stared towards the sports fields where a group of children were playing lacrosse.

‘What type of a game is that?’ Dave asked with a forced laugh.

‘Is it to do with you breaking up with Chloe?’ Jessica asked, refusing to let him change the subject.

‘I’ve been out with plenty of girls since then.’

‘That’s bollocks. If you had, we’d have all heard about it.’

Out of the window, play stopped as one lad was tackled roughly by another. The teacher and the other students crowded around as the two started pushing and shoving. Almost simultaneously, the familiar pitter-patter began as rain descended, bouncing off the tarmac of the car park that separated the school from the field.

‘I guess some things don’t change regardless of what school you go to,’ Dave said, as one of the boys shoulder-charged the other to the floor. The teacher dived in to try to separate them.

Jessica didn’t reply, watching in silence as the adult pointed and shouted at both of the students before sending them towards a building on the far side of the pitch.

‘It wasn’t Chloe,’ the constable finally said.

‘So what was it? You’ve been weird ever since the fire.’

Even though she wasn’t facing him, Jessica could hear Rowlands gulping. ‘Exactly. I saw it all, Jess. I was at your house when they put you in the ambulance. Your face was covered in black stuff and you weren’t moving. Everyone had gone to focus on Adam and I thought you were dead. I thought they’d given up on you.’

Jessica waited for a moment, the broken memories of that night running through her mind. When she replied, her voice cracked and didn’t sound like hers. ‘I know you told me Jack, Jason and everyone were there but I guess I didn’t know that meant you.’

Outside, the game was descending into farce, with players sliding in the mud as the teacher stood in the middle of the field, blowing his whistle and bellowing.

Dave didn’t take his eyes from the game as he replied. ‘There was this paramedic who asked if I was all right and it was only then I realised you were off to the hospital. Jack told me to go, so I raced away. I was driving like such an idiot that I caught the ambulance up.’

‘You stayed with me the whole day.’

‘Yes.’

‘You held my hand.’

‘You gobbed on my shoe.’

Jessica laughed. ‘I don’t remember that.’

Dave snorted too, although his voice was faltering. ‘I didn’t know if you’d wake up, Jess. All this back and forth we’ve had over the years, all the arsing around and taking the piss out of each other . . . I was sitting in the room wondering what might happen if you didn’t wake up.’

‘But I did.’

The constable didn’t reply as they watched the match come to an end. The rain was falling so hard that it looked like a wall of water instead of individual drops. Over the top, they heard the teacher’s whistle blaring as everyone, including him, turned and ran towards the building on the far side.

‘My old PE teacher would have left us out in that,’ Dave said. ‘He used to wear the same tracksuit every day, this horrible blue and white shiny thing. He was called Mr Haythorn, but we called him Mr Gaythorn when he wasn’t around.’

As childish as it sounded, Jessica couldn’t stop herself giggling.

‘He was a right bastard. If you ever turned up late, he’d make you run a full lap of the field. If you didn’t do it quickly enough, he’d make you do another one. He made us play rugby on an icy pitch once. Everyone was getting injured but he didn’t care.’

Jessica waited until all of the players had reached their building.

‘That doesn’t explain why you’ve been weird with me ever since,’ Jessica said, just loudly enough to be heard over the noise of the torrent hitting the roof.

At first, she thought the constable hadn’t heard her. ‘I’m glad things are working out for you, Jess,’ he finally said. ‘Adam’s a good guy.’

Jessica felt the lump returning to her throat that had never been far away in the past week. She tried to swallow but instead it made her feel worse. ‘It’s not as rosy as you might think,’ she eventually managed to say. ‘Something’s going on with him but I don’t know what.’

Rowlands didn’t move, staring out at the now-empty field. ‘Some of my friends got married and said the first few months were awkward as they got used to each other.’

Jessica bit her lip. ‘Just tell me what’s wrong.’

Dave finally turned away from the window. They were barely a foot apart, staring at each other. His eyes were a mixture of sadness and determination and she realised that she rarely looked at him directly. With suspects or witnesses, she would draw eye contact, sometimes waiting in silence until they gave it to her. With her friends, she rarely did that, assuming she knew what they were feeling.

His voice croaked awkwardly. ‘It’s you, Jess.’

‘What’s me?’

The rain continued to hammer on the top of the building as Jessica raised her eyebrows to query what he was saying.

‘As I sat next to you in the hospital, holding your hand, not knowing if you were going to wake up, I knew it was you.’

Jessica saw his throat begin to bob and realised he was moments away from tears. Placing a hand on his shoulder, she struggled to know what to say, feeling drawn into the emotion of the moment. ‘I woke up . . . I’m here. I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.’

Dave placed a hand on her chin, stroking it gently, and she finally figured out what he was trying to say. By the time the words came, she had already taken a half-step back in shock.

‘I love you, Jess.’

21

Nicholas Long surveyed the piles of cash in the club’s safe with a grin. It was one of his biggest pleasures, something he always did himself. The increase in people paying with cards annoyed him, although, because of the type of club he ran, there were still plenty happy to pay in cash in case the name of his establishment appeared on their credit card statement.

He had spent the past forty-five minutes bundling the notes into neat even piles to count the day’s takings, slowly drinking his way through a bottle of gin. Some of the people in the circles he kept preferred to stick to one type of drink but he liked the variation.

When he was happy that everything added up from the bar, Nicholas walked through to the reception area to take the entrance money. Before doing so, he went along the corridor to the front door to check that Liam had locked up properly. It was no surprise that he found the door secured as it should be; his bar manager had never failed him before in anything that had been asked of him, let alone with menial things such as shutting the club up. When he was done, Nicholas would leave via the fire exit in the way he always did.

After emptying the final till, he pushed everything into a money bag and then, suddenly feeling out of breath, turned and sat on the sofa. Nicholas could feel sweat on his head and wondered if he had eaten something dodgy. If it was Tia who had been at fault, he would make sure she knew about it the following day. He grinned at the thought of yanking her out of bed by the hair when he got home, demanding to know what she’d done to him.

Grunting as he stood, Nicholas felt a sharp pain in his chest. His eyes were drawn to the blinking light underneath the security camera in the top corner of the room, angry at his awkwardness being documented. Staggering as quickly as he could manage, he went back through the doorway into the main part of the club, using the edge of the bar to keep himself upright.

Nicholas’s mind wandered to the detective who had visited him a few days beforehand. He stared at the stool she had been sitting on, wondering what exactly it was that she wanted. There was the obvious thing, that the police had been trying to take him down for years, but she had something about her. At first, his plan had been to see how far he could push her, although he had been surprised at how she stood up to him. Still, that wasn’t anything that couldn’t be put right if it ever came to it. He always took much more pleasure from quieting those who thought they could go toe-to-toe with him.

The pains in his chest began to fade as Nicholas tried to remember what she looked like. He let go of the bar and walked as steadily as he could towards his back office. As he passed through the first door, he flicked the latch, locking it to ensure the main part of the club was sealed. The hallway felt colder than usual, although it had an almost sobering effect as Nicholas blinked away the confusion.

As he entered his office, he suddenly felt a weight of apprehension. Constantly having to look over his shoulder, having to anticipate what might be coming, was something he had become used to over the years but the recent spate of panic attacks was beginning to worry him. The biggest concern was making sure no one else got to see him in that state but Nicholas could feel something building from his stomach as he collapsed into the chair behind his desk. He was panting for breath, and grabbed at the bottle of gin on his desk, leaning back and swigging until he began to cough. He could feel the effects of the alcohol going to his head, his heart continuing to race.

Nicholas had been telling himself that he should visit a doctor but he wasn’t the type to bother talking about anything. The useless bastard would probably instruct him to lose weight and stop drinking anyway, as if that was the magic cure to everything. He’d take a pill over that any day, although he knew what he really needed was someone new and exciting to keep him interested. There were a few girls in the club who were potential candidates but it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of others who would be happy with the initial money on offer to come and work for him. That had always been the way.

Finally, Nicholas began to feel his body returning to normal, the gin apparently doing the trick in settling his nerves. He opened his eyes to take in the room and, as the small voice in his head told him he shouldn’t be paranoid, he realised there was no one there.

He had been grasping the money bag tightly in his free hand and emptied it onto the table, concentrating as he stacked the notes into piles.

As he reached the end, Nicholas heard a banging from somewhere nearby. Holding his breath, he slowly opened the top drawer of his desk, sliding out the pistol he kept there. Although he had a licence for it as part of his constant efforts to keep everything above board, he was supposed to keep it somewhere secure. Still, if he were ever raided, that would be something that could be argued in court; he was more concerned about his immediate safety.

The noise had made Nicholas’s head clear completely, his vision as sharp and in focus as it had been forty years ago. He bounced the metal in his hand, feeling the weight of the gun as he quietly slid his chair backwards and edged across the room towards the hallway. He put one hand on the doorframe and poked his head out, quickly glancing each way at the empty stretch of concrete, before withdrawing back into the office.

His office was almost opposite the door which led into the club. On the left was a small cupboard where the cleaners kept their things, while on the right was one door which led into the girls’ changing room and a second where the toilet was. At the far end of the corridor was the fire exit.

Nicholas peered around the corner again, noticing a crack between the fire door and the frame. He once more withdrew to his office, trying to think of any legitimate reason why it might be open. He exited through it every night but, as far as he could remember, had closed it fully the night before.

As another bang sounded, Nicholas peeped around the frame to see the fire door clattering into place, seemingly blown by the wind. He stepped into the hall, holding the gun, flicking his eyes from side to side looking for movement but reaching the end without noticing anything. Nicholas rested one hand on the fire exit and realised it had popped back into place. He pressed down on the bar across the centre and pushed it open, instantly feeling the wind rushing across his face. Stepping out onto the path that ran along the back of his club, Nicholas checked both ways, but it felt like a gale whipping through his clothes, making him shiver.

Realising he was holding a weapon outside the club and that he should be sensible, Nicholas stepped back inside, closing the door behind him, waiting and listening. At first he couldn’t hear anything except for the wind, but then he realised his heart was pounding and the hairs were standing up on his arms. He straightened himself, and it dawned on him that the burst of adrenaline had been refreshing – he hadn’t felt that edge of excitement since the old days.

Nicholas flipped the gun’s safety device back into place and pushed it into the waistband of his trousers before nudging the toilet door open with his shoulder.

He washed his hands first, something he had done since he was young, and then unzipped his trousers as he stood over the bowl, thinking about which of his girls would make a good Mrs Long the third.

Lost in his thoughts, Nicholas didn’t hear the steps of the intruder rushing behind him. Before he knew what was happening, there was something wrapped tightly around his face as he gasped for breath. He swung his elbows back, but the person shoved him sideways, smashing his skull against the side of the sink.

Nicholas felt his head spinning as he hit the ground but the impact had at least given him a moment when whatever was around his face came loose, allowing him to take a breath. He was still facing down, desperately trying to turn around, but could feel the person’s knee hard in his back, the material tightening around his mouth.

He tried to kick his way free but Nicholas knew he was beaten. Pink stars formed around the edges of his eyes, leaving him with the sole thought that someone was going to have a good laugh when they found him dead in a puddle of his own piss.