DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (15 page)

Jessica wasn’t sure if the two parents contacting each other was for the best considering the allegations Rachel had made but, considering neither of them were suspects, Adrian
wasn’t breaking any laws.

The two officers left and Jessica followed Esther to her car and climbed in. The other woman started the engine and switched on the heater. Esther phoned someone from her department and, even
from the one half of the conversation she could hear, Jessica knew there was very little happening. When she hung up, Esther confirmed just that. ‘It doesn’t sound like there’s
much going on at our end,’ she said. ‘No one’s seen anything on the CCTV cameras. None of the kids at the school saw Lloyd going off with anyone or getting into a car. I think
someone at your end is going over the traffic cams but that will take a while. It looks like he just vanished into thin air.’

Jessica sighed. Now she had spoken to both parents, the disappearance felt real. In some cases, she had to work with hardly any leads. This was the opposite; they had so much to go on but none
of it made sense. Every time they found an answer to a question, it left them with more questions.

After saying goodbye to Esther, Jessica drove home. Gritting lorries were charging along the main roads, spraying salt across a surface that already felt a little skiddy.

She was feeling tired as she pushed open her front door. Part of it was because she was leaving for work when it was still dark each morning, then returning after the sun had set too.

As she closed the door behind her, she heard Caroline calling out from the living room. ‘You’re home.’ Her friend sounded far more excited than she expected on a cold December
evening.

Jessica turned around to see Caroline bounding into the hallway, a large grin on her face. ‘I’ve got a surprise for you,’ she said.

Jessica was only in the mood for putting her feet up on the sofa, drinking a few glasses of wine, and falling asleep in front of some rubbish television show. She tried to smile and offer some
enthusiasm. ‘Go on . . .’

Caroline pointed towards the door. ‘It’s in there. Close your eyes though.’

‘If I close my eyes, I’ll walk straight into the wall.’

‘It’s only a few feet, come on.’

Jessica couldn’t be bothered arguing, although she didn’t trust herself not to collide with an inanimate object, so closed her eyes and allowed her friend to lead her into the living
room. When she heard Caroline’s excited ‘ta-da’, Jessica opened her eyes.

It wasn’t a surprise she would have expected or hoped for.

In the room was a large Christmas tree, stretching from the floor to the ceiling. It had been meticulously decorated with lights and many other hanging objects she couldn’t even begin to
describe. Across the ceiling were lines of metallic-looking streamers.

‘Well, what do you think?’ Caroline asked, an even bigger grin on her face.

Jessica tried to hide her true feelings. ‘It’s . . . bright,’ she said, with as much joy as she could muster. Lights on the tree were flashing on and off to a silent tune as
her friend, seemingly oblivious to the lack of enthusiasm, walked around the room pointing at things.

It wasn’t that Jessica disliked Christmas decorations, she just preferred things plain and simple. She didn’t want to have to come home and see all sorts of things stuck to her
ceiling, she merely wanted to enter her flat, take her shoes off, and flop in front of the television. Or, better yet, her bed.

As much as she had enjoyed living with Caroline in the past, it was quickly becoming clear that, with all the time that had passed, she now preferred living alone. She had become used to being
able to come and go as she chose and not having to worry about someone else. She was happy for her friend to stay while she sorted herself out but, with the effort Caroline had put into decorating
the room, Jessica was wondering how short-term the stay would be.

After assuring Caroline she liked the new-look living room, even though she didn’t, Jessica said she had some work to do and spent the rest of the evening in the bedroom doing very little.
She was feeling uncomfortable in her own flat but knew there was no way she would ever say anything about it.

Watching the evening news on the portable television in the bedroom, Jessica saw Lloyd’s photo. He was getting more media attention than Isaac had, although there was a mention of the
first boy’s disappearance too. Jessica used her phone to check her emails and swapped a few text messages with Dave, who told her the dig that day had barely started before being abandoned
because of the frozen state of the ground. Despite all their leads – and the unanswered questions – it seemed as if things were stalling, certainly in relation to Isaac.

Even though she was exhausted, Jessica again struggled to sleep. She lay on the bed next to Caroline staring at the red LED lights on the front of her alarm clock. The time was almost taunting
her and Jessica found herself trying to work out the maximum number of hours she would be able to sleep before having to get up.

Jessica drifted in and out of sleep and woke for the final time when there was still half an hour before her alarm would go off. She lay staring at the clock when her phone began to ring. At
first the sound confused her, as she wasn’t completely sure if she was awake or dreaming. It was only when Caroline began to move that Jessica snapped out of her dreamlike state and reached
out to answer. Reynolds’s name flashed on the screen. Jessica hauled herself into a sitting position and pressed the button to answer.

‘Morning,’ she said wearily.

‘Jess? You sound as if you’ve died overnight.’

‘Maybe I have.’

He sounded apologetic. ‘Er, yeah, sorry. It’s Simon Hill, we’ve traced his mobile and know where he is. I’m on my way to pick you up.’

Jessica was only two minutes into the car journey with Reynolds when she realised his claim to know the location of Simon Hill was only partially true. The man’s mobile
had been traced to a mast in the Sunderland area, a minimum of three hours away. That meant they knew the rough location of where he
had
been – but certainly not where he was. Local
officers had been dispatched to the area in the hope of finding him but Jessica and the inspector were travelling there in the hope of either discovering his location themselves, or questioning him
if he had already been picked up.

As she yawned and stretched in the passenger’s seat of Jason’s car, Jessica knew there was no way she would be lucky enough to get through a tiresome journey, then find the person
they were looking for sitting in an interview room waiting for them to arrive.

The first hour was spent driving in the dark. Jessica had always got on with Jason Reynolds but they had little in common. While she could have got through a journey and probably had a degree of
enjoyment with Dave, Izzy or even Esther, whom she had only just met, Jessica simply had nothing to talk about with the inspector. By the time they hit Leeds, rush-hour traffic was beginning to
peak and conditions had become more hazardous. There had been overnight snow which had turned to slush. Cars weaved dangerously across lanes around them as Jason drove steadily.

Jessica didn’t know what to do with herself. With conversation at a minimum and the radio firmly set to a station she didn’t think she would start listening to regularly for at least
thirty years, Jessica tried to content herself with fiddling around on her phone. The presenter was in the middle of some spiel in which he was dedicating a string of songs from husbands to wives
and vice versa. If Jessica was married, or had a boyfriend, she would have been very suspicious if her other half went through the whole procedure of contacting a radio station to ask for a special
song. She wondered if it was that natural mistrust which stopped her from getting too involved with anyone.

As it was approaching the point where she didn’t think she could take any more, they finally passed the sign indicating they were within Sunderland’s city limits. Reynolds pulled
over to the side of the road and made a phone call to whoever his local contact was. Jessica often thought Manchester was bleak but the grey overcast skies and string of run-down houses on their
route in meant she took an instant dislike to the city. She knew it was irrational and more than likely based on how tired she was but she was already desperate to get in, find their man, then get
out again.

Reynolds drove to a police station which had clearly been recently renovated. The red-bricked outside was clean with the glass on the door leading into reception completely transparent. To
anyone else, it would have seemed normal but, at Longsight, although it had been tidied up a few years ago, the constant battering by the elements meant the exterior always looked dirty. The doors
leading into the station were translucent at best with a film of brown and grey dirt coating the surface. Jessica had visited plenty of other stations both in and out of her district over the years
and whenever something else was better kept than theirs, she instinctively wondered why other areas had money to spend while theirs seemingly didn’t.

Inside, they were quickly ushered through to a ground-floor office occupied by a woman who introduced herself as DCI Linda Dawson. She was somewhere in her early fifties, with long hair dyed
brown, with grey roots coming through. Smartly dressed in a grey suit, she welcomed both officers, offering them a seat. Jessica took an odd pleasure from seeing the woman’s office
wasn’t as nice as Cole’s. It was as irrational as her dislike of the city based on the weather but Jessica was feeling strangely parochial.

When they were settled, Dawson began to skim through the notes on a pad in front of her. ‘Obviously you know Mr Hill’s SIM card was traced to a mobile phone mast,’ she said.
‘We’ve been in contact with the network operator but there haven’t been any further hits so far. Has either of you ever been up here before?’

Jessica and Reynolds shook their heads.

‘Okay, his signal was traced to somewhere in the Pennywell area, which is a mile or so away. I know your DCI spoke to someone at the phone company. I’ve been in contact with him all
morning. By all accounts, they can trace the call to within a few hundred yards. There is a row of shops not far from there which seems like a good place to start. We’ve had officers going
door-to-door with the man’s photo. So far, nothing’s come back but I figured I can take you out there and we can have a look around for ourselves.’

With little else they could do, it seemed as good a plan as any. Jessica and Reynolds followed DCI Dawson and a constable, who went in a separate vehicle. They stopped at the back of a
supermarket car park where frost still sat on the ground in an area in shade. The sun had begun to appear through the clouds but that was making the day even colder. Jessica was glad she had
remembered a coat that morning and picked it up from the back seat of the car. The two local officers removed heavy coats from the boot of their vehicle and put them on before the four of them
walked towards the supermarket. Across the road, Jessica could see a row of red-brick semi-detached houses with black slate roofs. The supermarket was close to a row of shops and all of the local
buildings were similar in appearance.

DCI Dawson stopped when they were a few feet away from the shops. As the other officers moved towards her, she spoke quietly to ensure it was just them who heard. ‘It’s a very
densely populated area around here,’ she said. ‘There are literally thousands of houses all within a small radius and a few flats too. That means your man, assuming he wasn’t just
passing through, would find it very easy to hide – if that’s what he’s trying to do.’

Jessica took three copies of the same photo of Simon Hill out of her pocket. They had been printed on standard paper from the station and were grainy to start with. The quality looked even worse
because of the creases from how she had folded them but Jessica flattened them against her stomach, handing a copy to each of the other officers. She had emailed the photo to her phone and was
happy to use that herself.

From the headshot, Simon Hill had a shaven head and, judging by his double chin, was quite overweight. Jessica looked around at the handful of people walking past the shops and realised an
instant problem that everyone was wrapped up in a mixture of jackets, hats, scarves and gloves. Everyone looked overweight when you took into account the large padded coats being worn, plus anyone
who had a shaven head would most likely be wearing a hat, or a hood.

It was always going to be a long shot to go looking for the man based on the location of a phone call but the odds of finding him were now even lower.

Dawson walked them past the shops until they reached the supermarket’s entrance. ‘Has anyone been in the shops showing that photo around?’ Jessica asked.

The chief inspector was clearly trying to hide how cold she felt but Jessica saw the other woman’s face twitch as she suppressed a shiver. ‘Yes,’ Dawson answered. ‘This
was the first place we started. Without getting a bus into the centre, this is where most people who live around here would see each other.’ She pointed towards the supermarket. ‘There
are CCTV cameras inside and out, which we’ve requested images from but we haven’t been given the okay yet. We could go for a warrant but everything’s happened really quickly and,
to be honest, we don’t know if your man’s been in. The mobile signal was just from somewhere around here.’

Jessica caught Reynolds’s eye and gave him her best ‘We’re wasting our time’ look. It wasn’t quite as good as her ‘Stop being such a dick’ face, or her
‘Sit down and shut up’ expression, both of which she had perfected through working with Rowlands, but it did appear to be successful.

‘I think we might go for a drive around the area,’ the inspector said to Linda. ‘While your team are out and about, I’m not sure there’s much we can do. At least
this way we’ll get a feel for the place.’ Jessica thought he could have added, ‘And it’s bloody freezing out here’, but he didn’t.