DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (50 page)

‘And this is Ryan’s?’ Jessica asked.

‘Yes.’

‘How long ago did he write it?’

‘Maybe two months ago? Not long.’

Jessica flicked back to the first page. The sheet was covered in untidy blue ink but it wasn’t the words she was interested in. Through the margins of all five sheets, Ryan had apparently
been unable to stop himself doodling. Footballs and three-dimensional cubes were on the first two pages but it was the final three which concerned Jessica. Crudely drawn daggers and knives littered
the third, with the fourth and fifth littered with a mass of spiky horizontal lines that was undoubtedly meant to be a wall of flames.

Jessica waited at the station after her shift had finished, not wanting to sit in yet more queuing traffic for her journey home. She hadn’t mentioned the drawings to
Reynolds but couldn’t resist flicking through them as she sat in her office by herself. Jessica tried to see a way that the final sheets could be anything but flames but there was no
mistaking them.

The memory of how she used to constantly draw along the bottom margins of her exercise books when she was younger was at the front of Jessica’s mind. She would doodle hearts and elephants.
She couldn’t draw anything else with any amount of accuracy but the hearts were easy and, for whatever reason, she had a vague talent for sketching an elephant which actually looked like
one.

As for Ryan’s art, she might be able to accept the knives because of their simplicity in the same way that she used to draw hearts. The fire seemed too close to home considering what his
father had done, not to mention his own house had burned down. The thought had crossed her mind that maybe he had set the fire, although the reasoning made little sense.

Jessica put the papers back into the cardboard folder, wedging them underneath a stack of files on the edge of her desk, not knowing what to do with them. Reynolds didn’t want to know
about what she had and, given where they had come from and the grey area – at best – surrounding data protection and confidentiality issues, Jessica wasn’t sure she should take
them to Cole, especially since he knew about her trespassing. On their own, the sketches proved very little.

After making sure the document folder wasn’t exposed, Jessica made her way out to her car. From what she had been told, very little else had happened while she had been at the college.
Anthony hadn’t been found and initial tests on the paint tin and petrol can revealed nothing except for fingerprints they could test against Anthony’s when they finally found him. Not
that it would matter if they couldn’t connect the objects to the scene. The team going door-to-door on the Chadwicks’ street had failed to come up with any suspicious sightings or
information about who could be responsible for the arson. Depending on how the Crown Prosecution Service saw things, it could even be attempted murder.

Jessica had timed her journey well and cruised home so easily that the lack of red traffic lights was almost unnerving. The stop-start nature of commuting across the city was incredibly
frustrating but was always there in the same way that grey skies were.

As she walked through the front door, Jessica could smell something intoxicating drifting from the kitchen. She walked through the door ahead, where Adam was standing with his back to her facing
the cooker. Even from behind, she could tell exactly which T-shirt he was wearing. It was the crimson one with an enlarged head of a comic-book character printed on the front. She’d known he
was a bit of a nerd for cartoons before she moved in but only realised what she was letting herself in for when it was too late. At least a third of all his tops featured some sort of character she
either didn’t recognise or hadn’t seen since she was a child.

‘You’re late,’ he said, without turning around.

Jessica strolled across the kitchen and put her arms around his waist, snaking them up around his chest until she was hugging into the back of him. His straggly shoulder-length black hair
tickled the side of her face as she replied playfully, ‘Whatcha cooking?’

‘Nothing for you.’

Jessica hugged him tighter as he stirred a pot of what looked like dark red sauce. ‘That’s a lot for just one person to eat.’

‘It’s for on-time people.’

She kissed the back of Adam’s neck in the spot she knew would make him giggle. Jessica felt his body crease from his hips upwards until he turned to face her with a large smile on his
face.

‘That’s cheating.’

Jessica grinned back. ‘What can I say? I’m a cheater.’ She pulled him into her and hugged him tightly. It was her way of telling him she had not been having a good day at the
station. Jessica always felt cagey sharing her work thoughts with anyone and she could see Adam had learned over the short while they had been living together that she would tell him things if she
wanted to. Other than that, he never asked about how everything was going.

‘What’s it like working a four-day week?’ she asked as he released her and turned back to the stove.

‘Good. What’s it like working a seven-day week?’

Jessica laughed. ‘I don’t work seven days.’

‘It seems like it.’

It didn’t take any of Jessica’s skills for her to know there was a lot of truth in Adam’s words.

‘How is the job?’ she asked, trying not to dwell on what he had said.

When they had met, Adam worked in the laboratories which served the police force. Almost a year ago, when they weren’t seeing each other, he had applied for a job working for the science
department at Manchester Metropolitan University. After hearing nothing, he had forgotten about it until they called him unexpectedly a few months previously asking if he was still interested and,
if so, whether he could start in the new year. It was a research-based job with a small amount of support teaching but Jessica was convinced he had it easy because he worked four ten-hour days and
always had weekends off.

‘It’s hard work,’ Adam replied, not turning around. ‘I’m going to have to start bringing stuff home soon because we’re working on a big project. It could be
worth millions to the university.’

Jessica asked for more details but he replied with a string of science-sounding gobbledygook. ‘You’ve just made those words up, haven’t you?’ she said.

‘It’s not my fault I have an education, Jess,’ Adam replied with his standard argument whenever she accused him of being a ‘science geek’.

The gnocchi and meatballs Adam prepared were quite a treat and Jessica even suggested sitting at the dining table in the living room, as opposed to eating from their laps, in order to do the
meal justice. Adam said they could open a bottle of wine but Jessica didn’t feel like having any. She wondered if he knew her well enough to realise she was refusing because she wanted to be
able to drive just in case a call came through that something else had happened. If he did see through her, he didn’t complain – but then he rarely did.

In some ways, that annoyed Jessica more. She wanted him to be angry with her and object to the way she left her phone on and how she stayed at work late. He would offer little digs every now and
then but he was too nice to really have a go at her.

After the meal, Jessica did the dishes, which seemed only fair, before cuddling up to Adam on the sofa to watch something on television that neither of them were particularly interested in.

Jessica curled her feet underneath her, resting her head on his shoulder. ‘How’s Caroline?’ Adam asked.

‘She’s all right. She sent me one of her long emails at work yesterday, saying how the divorce is all sorted but they’re going to rent out the flat over on the Quays that they
own. They don’t want to make a loss selling. She was going out with this other lad but I don’t think it’s going anywhere.’

‘You should invite her over.’

‘I have. I think she’s still a bit embarrassed about the divorce. After that, it was a bit awkward when we were living together again.’

As Jessica was talking, her phone began to ring. She unwrapped herself from Adam and reached to answer it. Mouthing a ‘sorry’, she pressed the button to answer Andrew Hunter’s
call.

‘Been following any more young girls around with cameras today?’ she asked jokingly, walking out of the living room.

‘Good evening to you too,’ he replied.

‘What are you after?’

‘A bit of information perhaps?’

Jessica climbed halfway up the staircase, before turning around and sitting, resting her head against the wall. ‘You know there isn’t much I can tell you about anything.’

‘I told you everything I knew about Ryan, Sienna and Harley,’ Andrew insisted.

‘That’s because I work for the police and you had to!’

Jessica could hear Andrew laugh at the other end of the phone. ‘Yeah, I didn’t think that line would work but figured it was worth a try.’

‘Go on, what are you after?’ Jessica put on a deliberately weary voice as if to tell the investigator she was going out of her way to even listen to him.

‘I was wondering if Sienna’s death had been confirmed as suicide?’

Jessica knew she shouldn’t technically give any information away but Andrew had found the body and she had the feeling he was more affected by it than he was willing to let on.

‘It’s not a hundred per cent but it seems almost certain,’ she replied.

There was a long pause at the other end of the line, except for Andrew’s breathing. ‘Why did she do it?’ His question sounded almost desperate.

‘Are you asking for personal or professional reasons?’ Jessica asked. ‘We haven’t been able to go back to her father with anything concrete yet. He’s not asking
through you, is he?’

‘No, sorry. I know I shouldn’t be asking. Honestly it’s nothing to do with Harley. I don’t know why I called.’

Jessica had a feeling he was being genuine. ‘We don’t know why she did it. I went to talk to her school friends but none of them appeared to know very much. Her father didn’t
seem to know enough about her and one of the other officers questioned the boy you saw her kissing. He insists he’s not her boyfriend and that he couldn’t have got her pregnant because
they had never slept together.’

Jessica didn’t know why she had used the word ‘boy’ to describe Finn, who was eighteen. Despite their age, something about the behaviour of them all seemed immature. Hanging
around fast-food restaurants and having a snog in a dark corner weren’t the types of thing she associated with adults.

For a few seconds, she could only hear Andrew’s breathing before he finally replied. ‘Thank you.’

‘What are you doing now?’ Jessica asked.

‘It’s complicated. Harley is still paying me. I’ve told him there isn’t much I can do because it’s a police investigation but he says you’ll never get to the
bottom of it. He can’t fathom why his little girl might have killed herself. He’s desperate to know who got her pregnant. I guess he thinks the person could be involved with what
happened.’

‘If you do find out, you’d better tell me first.’

Jessica was serious. She hadn’t met Harley but she didn’t want to risk him getting hold of the young man before she did if he was as suspicious and angry as Andrew made him
sound.

Andrew didn’t reply at first and only half-answered the request when he finally did. ‘I won’t do anything stupid.’

‘Have you got anything else?’ Jessica asked.

‘No, but . . . can you tell me when you get a final verdict about Sienna?’

‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Thanks.’

Jessica ended the call and made her way down the stairs, clutching her lower back. Although the carpet was comfortable, the position she had twisted herself into ultimately was not. She had been
feeling a few twinges in her back and legs in recent months and didn’t want to admit to herself that it could be age-related. Adam knew better than to suggest anything along those lines.

Jessica made her way back to the sofa but Adam had changed the way he was sitting, making it uncomfortable for her to cuddle into him. She didn’t know if it was deliberate.

‘Everything all right?’ he asked.

‘Just work stuff.’

Adam didn’t say anything but she knew he was annoyed, even if silently so. She thought he would sit quietly watching the television but instead he surprised her. ‘Do you think
it’s time to set a date yet?’

It was the first time he had mentioned it in around six weeks but Jessica knew then that it would come up again. They had got engaged months previously and he bought her a ring – even
though it had been her who’d popped the question. Since then, nothing had happened.

At first Adam seemed keen to look for venues and start thinking about dates but Jessica had stalled, saying she was busy at work, which was partly true. She still liked the idea of marrying him,
just not everything that went with it. The dress, the cake, the tearful parents, the negotiations over guest lists and the rest of it seemed like things other people did. Things that adults
did.

She also didn’t know how to tell him that she wanted to live somewhere else. This house had belonged to his grandmother and he had inherited it after her death. She knew that meant he felt
a connection to it and didn’t want to take that away from him. As she lay awake at night, scenarios would run through her mind of the best way to bring the matter up but she had never been
good at talking about serious issues or explaining her feelings to anyone. She had grown closer to Adam than anyone she had ever known, including Caroline and her parents, but, for whatever reason,
she couldn’t bring herself to confide her latest insecurities.

‘Maybe the summer after this one,’ Jessica replied, thinking it was vague enough to not commit her to anything.

Adam had also inherited some money when his grandmother died. It wasn’t a huge amount but he insisted it should be used to pay for the wedding. After becoming engaged, Jessica was all for
telling her parents over the phone in order to play it down as much as possible. They lived around a hundred miles north in the Lake District and Adam was adamant they should tell them in person.
She agreed to do things his way and, after mockingly getting down on his knees to thank Adam for taking her off his hands, Jessica’s father said he wanted to pay for the ceremony too. That
all meant money wasn’t a problem, leaving Jessica’s own feelings the only obstacle in their way.