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

Автор книги: Kerry Wilkinson

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 56 страниц)

‘Are you ready?’ she asked.

‘I finished ten minutes ago.’

‘I’ve got an idea.’ Jason rolled his eyes and leant back in his seat. ‘What?’ Jessica added indignantly.

‘I know what your ideas are like. Whenever you’ve come to me with an idea before it usually ends up with me doing something I don’t particularly want to.’

‘This one’s simple. There’s a school a few hundred yards away from that supermarket. All the kids will be leaving in a few minutes. Let’s go and watch.’

Reynolds narrowed his eyes and, for a moment, Jessica thought he was going to say no but instead he started fumbling in his pockets before pulling out his car keys.

They parked around fifty metres from the school gates, just outside of some zigzag yellow lines where people were not supposed to stop. Reynolds had one of the pictures of Simon Hill on his lap, Jessica had the photo on her phone. She knew it was desperation but then so was the journey. There was no particular reason to believe the man they were looking for might be around but, as it was the only school in the area and they thought he might have some connection to either Isaac Hutchings or Lloyd Corless, it was at least worth a go.

Jessica was trying to watch as many of the adults as she could, looking for someone who could possibly be Simon Hill. As they were observing, a black 4x4 skidded to a halt on the zigzag lines, blocking their view. Reynolds motioned as if he was going to move but Jessica opened the car door. ‘I’ll handle it.’

Jessica marched around the vehicle and hammered on the driver’s side door. A woman with long blonde hair peered out of the window towards Jessica. She looked half-annoyed, half-perplexed. In case she was in any doubt about what the problem was, Jessica bashed the door with her fist a second time. The window slid down with an electric hum, any trace of confusion on the woman’s face replaced by absolute fury. ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’ she said angrily in a sharp north-east accent.

‘I’m telling you to move your car. Now.’

The driver screwed up her face even further. ‘I’ll have ya if you touch my car again.’ The woman was clearly fuming but something about her pristine appearance told Jessica she’d never been in anything that could even loosely be described as a fight. For a few moments, Jessica thought about banging on the door again just to see what the woman would do. Instead, she reached into her pocket and took out her identification, holding it up for the woman to see.

Jessica smiled just to antagonise the woman even further. ‘Tell you what, you take your shit hair extensions and stuck-on nails and piss off and I’ll pretend you didn’t just threaten a police officer.’

The driver stared at Jessica but re-started the engine and pulled away just as students began to spill out of the school gates in small groups. Jessica banged on the back of the vehicle as it moved, before turning to face Reynolds in his car. As she swivelled, her eyes were drawn to a small blue hatchback parked on the opposite side of the road a little behind the inspector’s car. A man in a red coat was roughly hauling a boy onto the back seat before slamming the door. As he turned around, Jessica got a clear view of the person’s face.

Simon Hill stared down the road before quickly stepping around the front of the vehicle and opening the driver’s door.

16

For a moment Jessica felt fixed to the spot, focusing on Simon Hill’s face. She didn’t need to check the pictures on her phone to know he was the person they had come to look for. It was only when he turned away that she fully took in the fact she had just seen him force a child into the back seat and slam the door. Jessica sprinted across the road but had forgotten about the conditions. As she reached the kerb on the opposite side, she skidded across a patch of frost, cannoning onto the pavement with a painful crunch.

For a moment she could just hear ringing in her ears but it was soon replaced by people laughing.

Children laughing.

Jessica rolled over and could see a handful of kids in school uniform standing nearby. A few of them looked concerned but some of the older ones were giggling. Jessica stood awkwardly, wincing as a jolt of pain shot from her hip. The palms of her hands felt raw but she wasn’t concerned as she looked frantically towards where the blue car had been.

It wasn’t there.

Jessica glanced quickly from side to side. Everything had happened in a matter of seconds, so it couldn’t have gone far. She stepped gingerly back off the kerb, still looking around before finally seeing a blue shape moving away from her in the opposite direction to which Reynolds’s car was facing. Jessica shook her head to try to clear it.

‘What happened to you?’ a man’s voice said.

Jessica hadn’t realised it but Reynolds was standing next to her with a hand on her upper arm.

‘It’s Hill, he’s in a blue car.’ Jessica pointed to where she thought he had headed. The inspector started to say something but instead helped her hobble across the road into the passenger seat. He did a three-point turn and began to drive in the direction Jessica had indicated.

‘Did you see him turn off anywhere?’ he asked. Jessica mumbled a ‘no’ while trying to pull her phone out of her pocket. She was relieved to see she hadn’t fallen on it and dialled DCI Dawson’s phone number before passing on what had happened.

The entire time from her falling to Reynolds turning his car around was likely less than a minute, so Simon Hill couldn’t have gone far. Jason reached the end of the road as Jessica was still talking and turned right, back towards the supermarket.

Now she was sitting, Jessica was beginning to feel the pain through her body. She tried to ignore it as she ended the call.

‘Linda says the message will go out to all officers to look for a blue hatchback,’ Jessica said. ‘More cars will be on their way. She reckons the estate is so much of a maze, there’s no way he’d be able to make the main road without being seen by one of the officers on duty.’

‘He forced a kid onto the back seat?’

Jessica hadn’t told the inspector that but he had overheard her half of the phone conversation.

‘It looked like it, I only saw the end. There was some sort of struggle and he just pushed the kid in and slammed the door.’

‘Did you see if it was a boy or girl?’

Jessica winced uncomfortably and wiped grit from her hands, letting it fall into the foot well. The skin on her hands had been scraped off and her palms were red and painful. ‘Boy, I think. Maybe nine or ten?’

Reynolds took his eyes from the road for a moment, looking sideways at Jessica. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Yeah, I just slid on the frost and crashed over the kerb. If I wasn’t so concerned about that blue car I probably would have abducted one of those little shits who were laughing at me.’

Despite the seriousness of the moment, Jason laughed. ‘It was pretty funny. One minute you were standing there arguing, the next you’d taken off across the street. Then I saw you sprawling across the pavement. There’s bound to be a CCTV camera somewhere . . .’

Jessica chose to ignore him. ‘Are we heading back to the shops?’

‘Yes, these are about the only roads I know around here and that’s only because it’s where we came from.’

Jessica clung onto her mobile phone willing it to ring with news the car they were after had been stopped. She looked from side to side, hoping to see something. As the inspector turned back onto the road that circled around the supermarket and shops, Jessica banged the dashboard without thinking.

‘Stop.’

Reynolds screeched the car to a halt, much to the annoyance of the driver behind, who beeped his horn. Jessica opened the passenger door and dashed as quickly as she could given the pain in her knees and hip across someone’s front garden. This time, she was careful to keep an eye on where she was going, hopping across a flower bed and skirting around another patch of frost. Wind whipped around her, blowing her hair into her face, but Jessica kept moving, sliding around a bollard which separated the main through-road from a cul-de-sac.

As she neared her target, she felt her knee almost give way. Jessica gritted her teeth and kept moving before almost collapsing onto the boot of the blue hatchback she had seen at the school. It was parked on a driveway. Using the car to pull herself back into a standing position, Jessica peered through the rear window but there was no one there.

‘Oi, what do you think you’re doing?’ The voice was loud and angry, carrying on the wind in Jessica’s direction. She leant back onto the vehicle, letting it take her weight as she turned to see Simon Hill charging down the driveway towards her. He was still wearing the red jacket he’d had on when she had seen him outside the school but his face was full of annoyance. ‘Get off it,’ he added, pointing an angry finger towards Jessica.

She stood up straight, the man only a few feet from her. ‘Are you Simon Hill?’

He stopped, taking a half-step backwards, all of a sudden confused. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘I’m from Greater Manchester CID and you are under arrest.’

Jessica could tell Izzy was trying not to smile. ‘Go on,’ she said. ‘You can laugh, everyone else has.’

The constable’s lips crinkled upwards into a grin. ‘So all in all, you didn’t have the best of times in the north-east?’

Jessica was sitting in the Longsight canteen picking at a sausage. She rarely risked eating at work, having been warned off the food early into her career by Jason when he was a sergeant. He was very much in her bad books at that exact moment and Jessica’s dining choice was a fairly pitiful act of rebellion. ‘You could say that. At least we got something of a result from it all.’

‘Let’s hear it, then.’

‘Haven’t you already heard the story from everyone around the station?’

Jessica was still annoyed at how quickly Reynolds’s version of events had spread.

‘Yeah, but I want to hear yours.’ Izzy picked up her mug of tea and took a gulp before shuffling forward in her chair. Jessica thought it was as if the constable was settling herself down for story time. She finished off the sausage and pushed the plate away, wondering if she would regret eating the station’s food later in the day.

‘All right, fine. What do you want to hear first?’

‘Definitely the falling over.’

Jessica shook her head slightly. ‘It was basically just that. I saw Simon Hill, went running across the road, slid on some icy-frosty stuff and fell onto the pavement.’ She held her palms up for the other woman to see. Diamond did purse her lips into an ‘ooh’ shape but her eyes told a different story of hilarity.

‘It’s way funnier when Jason tells it,’ she said. ‘Is it true there were kids laughing?’

‘Yes, little bastards.’

‘Jason reckons he’s going to contact someone up there to see if there’s camera footage anywhere.’

‘There better not be.’

Izzy was clearly trying to hold it together, flicking her red hair over the back of her ears. ‘All right, so what happened when you did catch up with that Hill bloke?’

‘I was in the process of arresting him when this kid came out of the house and said, “Dad”. I knew then we were in the shite. The child I’d seen him bundling into the back seat of the car was his own. It took some getting out of him but when he realised there could be much more serious charges to face, he came clean about having two lives. Not only is he married to Paula down here, he’s got another wife with children up there.’

‘So the lorry-driver thing is all just an act?’

‘Sort of. He does it part-time which allowed him to tell both women he was off on business. He could get away with spending a couple of weeks at a time with one wife, then disappear back to the other.’

‘Christ, that sounds like hard work.’

‘I know. All that and he’ll be charged with polygamy at some point in the next week. I don’t know what is worse – that, or having to admit what he’s been doing to both of his wives. They’ll chop his boll . . . bits off.’ Jessica toned down her language as a few uniformed officers walked by. It wasn’t something she’d usually care about but, with the story of her falling over flying around the station, she was trying to keep a low profile.

‘How long has he been doing all that?’ Izzy asked.

‘Fifteen years or so. When I spoke to Harry, he said there was something not quite right about the guy and I guess it was this.’

‘Rather him than me. I find it exhausting just having one husband and . . .’ The constable tailed off but held a hand just below her stomach.

‘Are you telling people yet?’ Jessica asked.

Izzy leant in, whispering, ‘About my peanut baby? Soon.’

‘At least I’ve not blabbed it yet. How’s it all going?’

‘Not too bad. We’re just beginning to get things sorted. There’s so much to think about. There’s all the obvious stuff like a cot and that kind of thing but we need a child seat ready to take him from the hospital back to our house because you’re not supposed to just carry them. I only found that out yesterday.’

‘Did you see that story in the news about the woman who had a twelve-pound baby girl the other week?’

Izzy pulled a face. ‘Why would you tell me that?’

Jessica held a hand up to concede she had said something stupid. ‘Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I’m sure yours will be a normal size.’ Before making things worse, she hastily tried to change the subject. ‘What happened around here yesterday while I was up north being an idiot?’

‘The chief super was in. He was upstairs for most of the day with Jack and Superintendent Aylesbury. Everyone was shitting themselves about looking smart and all that kind of stuff.’

Jessica knew DSI William Aylesbury from when he was a DCI at the station. He had been her boss but, since his promotion which meant he oversaw the wider area instead of just their station, she rarely saw him. Their relationship had been awkward at first but she had come to respect him before his elevation.

‘Have you ever met the chief super properly?’ Jessica asked.

‘No, I didn’t even see him yesterday. It was just what people were saying. You?’

‘I’ve met him a couple of times. There was some function thing last year. I’m always worried when senior people know my name.’

Izzy grinned. ‘He knows who you are?’

‘Yeah, the DSI probably told him because they’d worked together but it’s like being at school. The headmaster only knows who you are if you’re a really good student, or really naughty. I’m definitely not one of the really good ones, so I dread to think what he’s heard.’

‘I wonder if he’s heard about you falling over?’

‘If he has, I’m going to start my own internal investigation into information leaks.’

Izzy laughed again. ‘What time did you get back?’

‘About one in the morning, then back in first thing today for a meeting. From what was said, things will pretty much carry on as normal for us. Orders will be coming from on high through the DCI though.’

‘So what’s going on at the moment?’

Jessica leant closer to her colleague, lowering her voice. She wasn’t uncomfortable telling the constable information but didn’t want to be overheard just in case. ‘Basically, not much. There’s no sign of Lloyd. Nothing’s come back from the students at the school, the CCTV cameras didn’t see anything and the traffic cameras are still being viewed, although no one’s really expecting much from those. The dig at the woods is crawling along because of the weather but they’ve not come across anything yet. They’re looking for remains of Toby Whittaker but I’m not sure they’ll find him. Meanwhile, the allotment lead, along with the hunt for the Glenn Harrison guy, has turned into a bit of a dead end. The most important thing is to find Isaac’s murderer but that’s going nowhere either. How have you been doing with that Ian Sturgess teacher guy?’

Izzy finished off the contents of her mug and put it on the table. ‘I’ve not really had time. First we had people coming in to help with the workload, then they were taken away. I’ve been working on other things. All I know is that there’s no one called “Ian Sturgess” who matches the age group we’ve been looking for. I can’t find any teacher in the country called that either. It’s like he vanished.’

‘Just like Lloyd . . .’

Jessica spoke without really thinking. After the experience they’d had chasing one loose end with Simon Hill, it seemed unlikely her bosses would let her work on another. ‘How busy are you at the moment?’ she added.

Izzy smiled. ‘About sixty per cent of my time is being taken up with telling people about you falling over. Other than that, I really am snowed under.’

‘It’s nice to know I have the support of my colleagues,’ Jessica said sarcastically. ‘Is there any chance you can keep hammering away at this Ian Sturgess guy when you get some time? Don’t do anything that could get you in trouble but, if you find anything, let me know.’

‘Do you think he’s important?’

‘I don’t know, probably not. I think mobilising most of Sunderland’s police force to find a guy guilty of polygamy has probably soured things a little when it comes to following these old leads. The word from this morning’s meeting was to focus on finding Lloyd and we can come back to the rest.’

‘Aren’t we doing that anyway?’

‘Yeah, but it’s all about appearances. Kid goes missing and the press want pictures of police officers trawling through fields or walking the streets. It looks better than a load of people sat at desks . . .’

‘. . . or falling on their arses,’ Izzy interrupted.

‘Yeah, or falling on their arses. Either way, it’s all about looking good at the moment. We could do with people here to follow everything up but instead they’re going around in circles hoping for the best. I think they’re worried about news of that list of children getting out too. There wasn’t much else we could do other than tell the parents to be vigilant – which we did – but if it gets leaked we had Lloyd’s name before he was taken, everyone’s in trouble.’

‘What have they got you on?’

Jessica allowed herself to smile slightly. ‘I’m sort of being allowed to do my own thing. As long as I stay broadly within the remit of looking for Lloyd, I’ve got a bit of freedom. It’s all because the kidnap squad are also involved. Neither side wants to hand over jurisdiction to the other. They’ve got an officer staying with the mother while we’re doing the legwork. Like most things, I think it’s all about budgets. If we give way to them or the other way around, it could seem like we’re passing on responsibility, meaning the other side needs more money. You know what it’s like, everyone’s really laid back until money comes into it, then they just scrabble for whatever they can get.’

‘Have you met the kidnap person?’

‘Yeah, she’s called Esther. She’s pretty sound. We’ve got each other’s numbers. I don’t think she’s too arsed about office politics either.’

Izzy sighed and checked her watch. ‘I’m going to head back. Are you okay?’

Jessica looked at her scuffed palms. Her hip had been stiff that morning but considering how hard she had hit the concrete, she was actually feeling all right. ‘I’m fine, just a couple of grazes.’

‘I meant, are you okay?’

Jessica knew her colleague was talking about her state of mind. They had become good friends and, although it wasn’t something she would talk about, Izzy knew Jessica could become emotionally involved in cases.

‘I’ve just . . .’ Jessica paused to sigh. ‘. . . I’ve just never known a case with so many leads before. Usually if you had half of what we’ve got, we’d have someone charged in the cells and be moving on. Here, there’s almost too much: Toby, Isaac, Lloyd, the woods, the allotment, the driver, “Glenn”, Toby’s clothes, Ian Sturgess, that list of names and so on. I’ve worked on cases with no leads where I’ve felt like I’ve got more idea what I’m doing.’

There wasn’t much Izzy could add, other than offering a smile and a vague suggestion about meeting up after work one evening. Jessica knew the constable had enough on her plate considering the pregnancy, while her own problems weren’t isolated to work either, with the tension she was feeling around Caroline. Altogether, she wasn’t having a good time of it – and that was before she had fallen over in the street.