DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (32 page)

Lucy sat on the sofa again, wrapping her legs underneath her as Jessica returned to her seat. ‘Did the man on the news take my son too?’ Lucy asked. Her eyes were fixed on Jessica,
who felt compelled to answer.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you just saying that?’

‘No, I really don’t know. We can’t question him because he died in a car crash.’

Lucy nodded but didn’t stop looking at her. ‘Do
you
think it was him?’

Jessica paused, thinking of how she should answer. ‘I’m not sure I should say.’

‘Why are you here, then?’ Lucy hadn’t raised her voice but there was definitely a harsher tone to her words. Jessica knew she had a point. Deep down it was why she had come
– because she wanted to tell someone what was going on.

‘I could get into trouble if I tell you things I shouldn’t.’

‘I won’t tell anyone.’

The two women were still watching each other and Jessica looked into Lucy’s eyes before making the decision. She knew it was not procedure but felt that Lucy deserved an answer. She took a
deep breath. ‘I don’t know if Benjamin Sturgess kidnapped and killed your son but I think he probably did. There’s no way we’ll be able to prove it and I’m not sure
you’ll ever get justice. I can only say I’m sorry.’

Lucy was cradling her mug of tea, interlocking her fingers through the handle and holding it close to her chest. She nodded slowly, taking in the words. ‘Why do you think it’s
him?’

‘He taught at your son’s school. I read all of the paperwork from the time and, although his name was mentioned, there was absolutely nothing to properly connect him to Toby’s
disappearance. The team back then did everything they could.’

‘Why did he take the child this time?’

‘I don’t know. I’m not sure we ever will.’

‘Did he . . . touch him? Isaac?’

‘No.’

Jessica wondered how long the woman had wanted to know the answer to that question with regard to her own child. Lucy nodded the slightest of acknowledgements.

Before either of them could say anything else, they were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. Jessica heard young girls’ voices from the hallway before the children from the
photographs came skipping into the room. The younger of the two, Natasha, stopped for a moment when she saw Jessica before stepping shyly towards her mother, sitting next to her on the sofa, and
hiding her face behind Lucy’s shoulders. Olivia was a little bolder but also sat next to her mum.

Neil walked into the room behind them. When he saw Jessica, he raised his hand in a half-wave. ‘Hi . . .’ It was as if he realised mid-sentence what her appearance might mean. His
expression changed, with his eyes widening. ‘Oh . . .’ Jessica shook her head slightly to answer his unasked question, while not letting on to the children that there was anything
wrong. Neil was halfway through a word in reply but stopped himself and turned towards his family on the sofa. ‘Have you told your mum what you got up to today, Olivia?’

Jessica couldn’t stop herself from smiling as Lucy grinned widely. ‘What have you done today, dear?’

Olivia reached into her bag and pulled out a sketchbook, opening it to show her mother something she had drawn.

‘What was that?’ Jessica asked, suddenly curious. Olivia smiled and turned the book around to show a drawing of a house with a row of people outside. The figures had oversized heads
and no shoulders but made Jessica smile.

The young girl could barely contain her excitement as she pointed from one character to the next. ‘That’s Mummy, that’s Daddy, that’s Tasha and this is me.’

‘Wow, that’s really good,’ Jessica said but it wasn’t the drawing she had been asking about, it was what Lucy had said. She paused for a moment, considering the previous
few seconds, then stood. ‘I’ve got to go now.’

Lucy stood too and escorted her out to the front door. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘Is it all right if I tell Neil everything you told me? He won’t tell
anyone.’

‘Yeah, it’s okay.’

Unexpectedly, Lucy held out her arms and hugged Jessica, who didn’t know how to react. Before she could feel too uncomfortable, the other woman released her.

Jessica walked out into the chilly winter afternoon wondering if Lucy had just solved their case without knowing it.

Jessica drove back to Longsight going over what she thought she knew. It was one thing to have a theory but she needed a way to prove it – without involving Cole or
Reynolds. Apart from the odd word in passing, she had not spoken to the chief inspector since their argument before Christmas and didn’t want to risk being shot down until she had some
evidence. If she talked to Reynolds, it would simply put him in a difficult situation.

By the time she arrived at the station, the sun had almost set, even though it was barely four o’clock. Jessica parked on the road outside the main gates and phoned Dave. She asked him to
make whatever excuse he had to in order to get out, then come and join her.

As he sat next to her complaining how cold it was, Jessica told him everything. There were still gaps in her theory but she indicated who she thought the accomplice was, and another person she
believed was indirectly involved, a stranger she had never properly met whose help they would need, and why she had to break the law to prove it all.

‘I don’t mind if you go back inside and forget we ever had this conversation,’ Jessica said. ‘I know it’s not fair to ask you to help me but I can’t ask Izzy
because of the baby and I can’t take it higher.’

Rowlands didn’t hesitate in his reply. ‘Let’s do it.’

Jessica knew it would take at least a couple of days to put everything in place. Before she could do anything, she realised she had one other responsibility to fulfil. That evening, she cuddled
up to Adam on the sofa at his house and told him everything that had happened over the past few weeks. Then she told him what her plan was. Like DC Rowlands before him, Adam listened to everything
she had to say before replying. ‘Is it dangerous?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Can I help?’

‘No.’

‘Are you going to get into trouble?’

‘Probably.’

Adam held her tight and kissed the top of her head. ‘I love you.’

‘So you should.’

The next part of the plan involved checking the facts. Jessica had already read everything they had in the files but sometimes mistakes could be made. She and Rowlands avoided Izzy, who was
clearly suspicious of what they were up to, and went through every piece of information they had access to. None of it offered enough evidence to prove that Jessica was correct – but it
didn’t disprove her theory either.

With the easy jobs out of the way, Jessica again asked Rowlands if he wanted to change his mind before they went any further. Secretly she was almost willing him to say he did but, if anything,
he seemed more determined than before to help her out.

On a cold January night just before three in the morning, Dave and Jessica got out of the constable’s car and walked the few hundred metres through the deserted estate until they reached
the front of Benjamin Sturgess’s abandoned house. The official police search had been completed before Christmas but the place was now empty, secured by the officers.

Jessica was wearing a pair of old gym trainers to avoid making a crunching noise on the frost that surrounded the property. Without speaking, they moved around the side of the house, stopping by
the side door. She crouched and gently pushed the cat-flap she had noticed on their previous visit. It had been locked from the inside but that was what she expected.

‘Are you ready?’ Jessica whispered.

Reynolds nodded. ‘Just don’t crash my car.’

Jessica could barely see his features in the gloom. The street lights were too far away, the only illumination coming from the bright white moon above them. She touched him on the arm. ‘If
anything happens, just run.’

She spun and walked quickly back towards the car. After readjusting the seat and mirrors, she drove slowly and carefully until she was outside the house next door to Sturgess’s. She left
the engine idling with the handbrake on and checked her phone before taking a deep breath and then she pressed her foot down on the accelerator, increasing the rev count to the maximum. The
enhanced exhaust which so annoyed her roared into life as Jessica kept her foot on the pedal, watching the clock on her phone count twenty seconds. As soon as time was up, Jessica removed her foot
from the accelerator, put the car in first and eased the vehicle away as steadily as she could. She had done her homework, memorising the layout of the estate and drove in a loop, parking it two
streets away, before walking as quickly as she could back to the side of Sturgess’s house.

As soon as she arrived, she could see in the moonlight that Rowlands had been successful. She walked around to the rear of the house where he was pressed against the wall. ‘Dave?’
she whispered.

‘Jess.’

‘Good job.’ Quietly they walked back to the side door where the cat-flap had been kicked through, taking most of the plastic panelling with it. ‘I take it no one saw
you?’

‘Didn’t hear a soul. Like you said, anyone up and about would have only heard the car anyway.’

Jessica reached into her pockets and took out a pair of woollen gloves. ‘I’ll be five minutes. Call my phone if there’s a problem. It’s on silent but I’ll see the
light. Just call and ring off.’

She crouched and reached through the gap in the door. Not only had Rowlands kicked the cat-flap through but parts of the white plastic had broken too. It was a tight squeeze but, because of the
flexibility in the plastic around where the flap had been, Jessica hauled herself into the kitchen of Benjamin Sturgess’s house.

If she had asked, there was a chance she might have been given the key to the property the police were currently holding. Despite that, Jessica knew there would be a problem if DCI Cole stuck to
his guns and refused. This way, if she was careful, the break-in would be blamed on an opportunist. If she had asked to be allowed into the house and been denied, it would have looked incredibly
suspicious if someone had then smashed their way in shortly afterwards.

Jessica crept through the property, not bothering to use the light from her phone until she reached the living room. She remembered how she felt when she had been in here the last time.
She’d had an almost overwhelming sense of how normal everything seemed. It was only when Lucy spoke to her daughter that Jessica realised the house was anything but regular. Hidden in plain
sight was something that she, Rowlands and all the search teams couldn’t have failed to see – except they didn’t know what they were looking at.

Switching on the light from her phone, Jessica entered the living room. The space was a mess, carpet torn up and shoved to one side, furniture piled at one end. Jessica tiptoed across the room
to the far wall where she used the light to check the photos hanging on the wall. It was the fourth one she checked that made her stomach lurch. She had spent the last few days wondering if what
she thought she had seen was true but, with the evidence in front of her, she was almost disappointed. Jessica hoped she had made a mistake but it was now clear she was right.

She turned her phone around and took a photo of the picture that could only have been left hanging by someone who knew they had got away with everything. The flash went off, illuminating the
room for a moment.

As she was about to put her mobile in her pocket, the light on the screen flashed Dave’s name before a second screen appeared to say she had a missed call.

Someone was outside.

Jessica could hear voices outside the front door. She dashed to the front window and opened a gap in the net curtain narrow enough to peek through. A uniformed police officer
was standing at the door looking at his watch. A few metres behind him on the road she could see a marked police car parked with the passenger door wide open and another officer sitting in the
driver’s seat.

She swore under her breath as she let the curtain fall back into place. Jessica didn’t know if someone had heard Rowlands kicking through the cat-flap or if her distraction had been too
overt and persuaded someone to call the police. She wondered if the officer outside knew the significance of the property, or if they had just responded to a standard call. Jessica froze, holding
her breath until the loud bang on the front door shook her into action. If it was simply a complaint from a neighbour relating to the revving car, the officer wouldn’t be knocking. She walked
quickly into the hallway and moved silently up the stairs into the front bedroom.

The search team hadn’t made anywhere near as much mess upstairs and, aside from the open drawers and cupboards, everything else seemed normal. She walked towards the window, opening the
curtain a crack. There was still an officer sitting in the car, the one below was out of sight. Jessica sat on the floor under the window and took out her phone. Rowlands’s name was still on
the front screen from the missed call. Just in case he hadn’t put his phone on silent, Jessica typed out a text message to him.

‘Where r u? U on silent?’

She pressed her back hard into the wall as the sound of the officer knocking on the front door echoed through the house. She knew that as soon as he walked around to the side, he would see the
smashed back door and the game would be up. Her phone flashed once with Rowlands’s name. She pressed the button to answer the call. ‘Dave, where are you?’ she whispered.

Dave spoke quietly making it difficult to hear but Jessica pushed the phone hard into her ear. ‘In the back under one of those plastic sheets the search team left.’

‘An officer is at the front door.’

‘Shit. I saw the car pull up. I didn’t know if they were just here because they had received a complaint. Are you stuck inside?’

‘I’m upstairs. There’s one in the car, one at the front. I don’t think they’ve noticed the side door yet.’

‘How are you going to get out?’