DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (11 page)

‘Do you know where we’re going?’ he asked.

‘Sort of, have a look yourself. I read through the files and checked the location. I was trying to match the old descriptions with how it is now but it’s hard to figure it all out
online.’

Reynolds was scratching his chin, looking through the papers. ‘It looks like there are buildings on this site now,’ he said.

‘That’s exactly what I thought and why I wanted to look it over.’

Because of the intensity of the investigation, no one had actually had time to revisit the scenes from the old case. It was highly unlikely they would be able to find anything significant that
had been missed so many years ago but, having read the file to the point of almost memorising it, there was something concerning Jessica.

With Reynolds navigating, they made their way through a series of lanes back towards the main road. It soon became clear that the wasteland where Toby Whittaker had last been seen was now
anything but. An industrial park had been erected on the site, with a dozen enormous warehouses spread out on their own plots and various interconnecting roads that had been built recently. Jessica
parked her car half on the pavement and the two officers got out before examining the map together.

Reynolds pointed at a dark green building that had a large empty yard at the front. A sign bore the name of an electronics manufacturer. ‘I think he was taken from somewhere around
there,’ he said, before indicating towards the way they had already come. ‘The main road would have always been there but this bit we’ve parked on is new.’

‘Where are the woods in relation to here?’ Jessica asked. The two of them looked at the map again and turned around so they were facing in the opposite direction. Reynolds held his
arm out towards a second warehouse behind them but they both figured it out.

‘We’ve had to drive the long way around but it’s only going to be a few hundred yards over the back of there. Maybe half a mile at most?’ Jessica suggested.

Reynolds nodded in agreement. ‘What is the significance, do you think?’ he asked. Jessica’s tone had clearly indicated something was on her mind. She walked the few paces back
to her car and leant on it facing where the woods would be. Reynolds joined her.

‘Something has bugged me about that map ever since we found it,’ she said. ‘I think we can both agree that you’d only need a map if you didn’t know where you were
going, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘We don’t know if our driver was looking to bury Isaac’s body, collect the clothes or do something else – but it’s logical to think that, whatever he was doing, he
hadn’t been to the site before.’

‘Either that or he hadn’t been in a while.’

Jessica nodded, turning to face her colleague. ‘That might be true but I think this place is key. Say whoever took Toby all those years ago is our driver; maybe he was looking to bury
Isaac in the same place he’d left the first boy? The problem is that all these buildings have now appeared. Because of that, he was going to bury Isaac in the closest place to where
we’re standing. Somewhere it was unlikely to be found. We never would have found the spot in the woods if he hadn’t had that car crash.’

‘So do you think Toby is buried somewhere around here?’

Jessica shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. Maybe he is in the woods where we’re digging? I just think it’s a bit of a coincidence that we found one dead kidnapped child in
a car with a map leading us to a place so close to where Toby went missing from.’

‘Why would that person bury the clothes?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe it was some weird way of returning the clothes to Toby if that is where he was buried? Or perhaps he’s buried here like I said? It could explain the map.
Let’s say Toby was killed, and his body was buried somewhere around here before the warehouses went up. Whoever did it kept the clothes for whatever reason and then, fourteen years later,
kidnapped Isaac. At some point those clothes were buried in the closest spot to where Toby was, maybe as a sick goodbye? When Isaac was killed too, that person was going to bury his body in the
same place. It could explain why our guy needed the map because he made it when leaving the clothes after finding out all these warehouses had been built.’

Reynolds seemed slightly confused and not entirely convinced. He replied quietly. ‘I’m not sure . . . you know we’ll never be able to dig the whole area up around that
warehouse just in case there’s something there. We’d need proper evidence.’

Jessica agreed. ‘I know. I’m just thinking out loud. We need to find out who the driver is but we’re nowhere near getting that digital impression.’

‘I’ve asked, so has Jack. They say they’re having to guess the bone structure because there was so much damage done to the skull. It doesn’t sound like it’s very
simple. They have other things on the go too. We’ve been checking missing persons reports every day with no luck. It’s hard without a photo we can realistically use.’

Jessica knew he was right. She and Reynolds climbed into the car but instead of starting the engine, Jessica took out her phone and put it on loud-speaker mode before calling Izzy’s desk
phone. The constable answered on the second ring.

‘Hello.’

‘Hey, it’s Jess. I’m with Jason. Have you got anything yet?’

‘Bits, it’s been Dave mainly to be honest. Hang on.’ The line sounded muffled for a few moments as Jessica could hear someone moving around and then Rowlands’s voice.

‘Jess?’

‘Yep, it’s me. Have you got anything yet on those men from the Whittaker files?’

Rowlands cleared his throat before answering. ‘Yes, first off, the teacher Ian Sturgess. Basically, we don’t have a clue. He moved house within about six months of Toby going
missing, then left the school he was working at around ten years ago. As far as we can tell he no longer teaches plus he moved from that other house he was living in. There doesn’t seem to be
anyone locally who matches the age and name, although we’re still trying to check nationally.’

‘What about the neighbour?’

‘We’re not sure, we might have something. We know Simon Hill moved quite a few years ago but his name is fairly common. We’ve had a few age matches and called around. We
managed to eliminate all but one. We’ve got a phone number which no one is answering but we have an address too. We’ve been waiting for someone senior to get back.’

Jessica asked him for the address and Reynolds noted it down, along with the name of Simon’s wife.

Traffic was heavy as they made their way out to Bury to the north of the city. By the time they arrived, the sun had almost set and street lights were beginning to flicker on. Any rain that
might have been around had cleared, along with the clouds, but that created a larger problem with dew already beginning to set and an overnight frost an inevitability. Jessica didn’t know
exactly where she was going but Reynolds directed her to the road where they believed Simon Hill had lived and they eventually found the correct house. The lights were on inside the property.

The temperature had dropped significantly in the last hour. Jessica shivered as she got out of the vehicle and Reynolds asked her if she was okay. She waved away his concerns, wondering how the
digging crew would fare the next day if the soil froze overnight.

She rang the doorbell of the house and instantly knew there was someone in, as she could hear what sounded like a vacuum cleaner switch off moments after the chime. The detectives waited as the
door was opened by a short woman somewhere in her late forties. She had long grey hair and was wearing a knee-length skirt and blouse, as if she had been working in an office.

‘Hello,’ she said, a puzzled look on her face.

‘Are you Paula Hill?’ Jessica asked.

‘Yes, who’s asking?’

‘I’m Detective Sergeant Jessica Daniel and this is my colleague, DI Reynolds.’ Jessica glanced down at a pad of paper and read out the address of where Simon Hill lived
fourteen years previously. ‘Can I ask if you’ve ever lived at that house?’ she added.

‘Why do you need to know?’

‘It’s complicated at the moment.’

The woman shrugged. ‘Yes, Simon and myself lived there for a few years but we moved ages ago. What’s the problem?’

‘We wanted to speak to Simon if that’s all right?’

‘He’s not here.’ Paula was beginning to sound annoyed.

‘Where is he?’ Jessica asked.

She was still looking down at the pad but almost dropped it as the woman replied. ‘I don’t know, I’ve not seen him in nearly a week.’

‘You’ve not seen him?’ It was a pretty pathetic response but Jessica blurted it out without thinking. If Simon Hill hadn’t been seen in around a week,
that would correspond with the time it had been since their nameless driver had crashed.

‘Yeah. What’s it got to do with you?’ Paula, one hand on the front door, was now sounding defensive.

DI Reynolds spoke before Jessica could. ‘Your husband’s been missing for a week and you’re not concerned?’

The woman seemed bemused. ‘Who said he’s missing?’ The three people looked at each other wondering where the confusion had come from. Paula clocked that something had gone over
her head, continuing: ‘Why do you think he’s missing?’

‘Where is he if you haven’t seen him in a week?’ Jessica asked with a little more aggression than she intended.

‘He works as a lorry driver . . . he’s often away for a week or two at a time, then he’s home. What’s going on?’

With a little persuading the two detectives managed to get invited in. Jessica insisted the woman had nothing to worry about, they were simply looking into new leads for old cases. Paula
didn’t seem entirely convinced but answered all of their questions.

She and Simon had moved into a smaller house because, at the time, they were struggling to pay the mortgage on the property they owned. Paula then got a job working as a clerk for a legal firm
and they moved to the place they were now in. Everything from that point of view seemed perfectly fine but Jessica still wondered about the woman’s husband. Paula reluctantly gave them the
details of the haulage firm employing Simon and they left.

Before they got back to the station, Jessica tried calling the company but they were closed for the evening. They could have followed things through by trying to find the owner, then contacting
him, but Simon Hill was still not a suspect in either case, and his wife’s explanation for his whereabouts seemed legitimate.

It was an annoying end to an equally frustrating day as Jessica dropped Reynolds at Longsight. He put a hand on her shoulder and told her to get some sleep as he said goodbye. She thought she
must look bad if someone she considered a friend was saying she needed to rest, even though it was barely early evening.

As she opened the door to her flat, it took Jessica a few moments to remember Caroline was staying. A delicious smell was drifting from the kitchen, something which had barely happened the
entire time Jessica had lived there. Her usual diet consisted of either microwaved food or takeaways and the only thing she trusted herself to cook was toast and occasionally either a fried egg or
some baked beans. Her friend Hugo had cooked for her a few times but, aside from that, her kitchen was mostly unused.

It was probably because Jason had implied she looked exhausted but Jessica spent large parts of the evening yawning and telling Caroline she wasn’t tired. While she was doing that, she
could clearly see her friend trying to act as if everything was normal. She told Jessica she had spoken to Thomas and told him she wanted to separate – and that she meant it. She didn’t
want to elaborate and Jessica thought there was probably more to the situation, although she wasn’t going to push the point.

She made up her mind that evening to not bother calling Simon Hill’s employers the following day; instead she would go there unannounced. She checked the address on the Internet and
realised it was less than five minutes away from Rowlands’s house. After clearing it with Reynolds, Jessica sent a text message to Rowlands to tell him she would pick him up in the morning
because they had somewhere to go.

After another night’s sleep broken by a nagging feeling she had missed something, as well as not being used to sharing a bed with anyone – even if it was her best friend –
Jessica was already in a bad mood by the time the morning came. It didn’t get any better when she left the flat only to find her car frozen under a thin coating of ice. She didn’t fancy
another trip upstairs to boil a kettle, so spent ten minutes hacking at the ice to clear the windscreen.

The icy roads made what Jessica thought would be a routine half-hour journey across the city a frustrating series of start-stop manoeuvres punctuated by an increasingly irate string of swear
words. She even turned off the radio because every station seemed to be playing festive music, something else she couldn’t stand. It wasn’t that Jessica disliked Christmas but she never
decorated her house largely because she knew that it would still be up in the summer.

By the time she reached Rowlands’s house, she definitely wasn’t in the mood for his ‘What took you so long?’ greeting as he got into the car.

‘Sod off. Why are you so cheery anyway?

‘Am I?’ Rowlands put his seatbelt on as Jessica pulled away.

‘Were you out with Chloe last night?’ she asked.

‘I was actually.’

His upbeat tone of voice was infuriating. ‘Oh, for f . . . Can you please stop being so nice?’

‘What?’

‘Just take the piss out of my car or something. All these pleasantries are weird.’

Dave smiled. ‘Are you jealous?’

‘No, I just preferred it when you were unhappy.’ Jessica spoke with a laugh but realised there was a little truth in the statement too. Everyone seemed to be moving on, while she was
stuck doing the same thing. In many ways she felt better about her own life when her close friends were stuck in the same rut as she was.

Before Rowlands could answer, Jessica tried to gloss over what she had said. ‘What did you get up to last night then? And spare me the graphic details.’