DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (68 page)

‘Molly and Sienna.’

Ryan was clearly struggling to comprehend what she was saying. ‘What about them? Do you think they were something to do with me?’

Jessica felt as if she were drowning. She knew that, to an outsider, between the two of them, Ryan would seem like the rational one.

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. It’s just from the moment we first met, you were so angry and then everything spiralled from then. The fires, the suicides – and
you’re central to everything.’

Ryan looked away and bit his bottom lip. ‘If I’ve been angry, then don’t you think this could all be why? When we first met, I was pissed off because you lot weren’t
going to do anything about those threats against my dad. And I was right, wasn’t I? Look at what happened. Why didn’t you have someone protecting us?’

‘That wasn’t my decision.’

‘Fine, but why pick on me after everything? Of course I was fuming. Someone had tried to kill my dad and you were standing around chatting.’

Jessica knew that wasn’t exactly true but, now he said it, she could understand why he had viewed it that way. Rowlands’s ‘why is it always you’ comment was bouncing
around her head because she could see so much of herself in Ryan. The first impression he gave of being abrupt and combative was likely the way lots of other people viewed her. The parallels were
almost too embarrassing for her to think through.

‘I’m sorry for slapping you.’

Ryan reached up to his lip. ‘You can’t half hit for a girl.’

Jessica didn’t know if she should take it as a compliment. She knew she was in the wrong. ‘Thanks.’

‘When I got in that night, I was all for reporting you but then . . .’

‘. . . you didn’t want to admit you’d been hit by a girl,’ Jessica said, finishing his sentence.

Ryan smiled. ‘Exactly, so I let it go. Why were you following me?’

‘I don’t know, instinct. It was the night after one of the fires and I was keeping an eye out.’

He picked up what was left of the pint of beer he had on the table. ‘Do you at least believe that it’s not me now?’

Jessica looked into his eyes but she already knew the answer. ‘You don’t help yourself. You never had an alibi . . .’

Ryan sipped the drink. ‘I was with Lara those nights. She can probably tell you. Well, maybe not you but someone.’

‘I thought you weren’t going out?’ Ryan raised his eyebrows as a response that Jessica read clearly. ‘Oh, it’s like that.’

‘So can I ask you some questions?’ Ryan said.

Jessica shrugged. None of the conversation had gone the way she had expected.

‘Why would I burn my own house down?’

‘To implicate Anthony and get the insurance money?’

‘I suppose but that’s a lot of hassle.’ Jessica laughed but Ryan continued. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘I’ve got better things to do than all of
that.’

‘People have gone through much more “hassle” than that to get revenge.’

‘What do I want revenge for? Some dick telling a newspaper he’s got it in for my dad? All I wanted was for you lot to warn him off.’ Jessica nodded, willing to accept his
explanation. ‘Why do you keep mentioning Sienna and Molly to me?’ he asked.

‘You called Sienna a slag, you said she was filthy. There was so much anger there. Why do you think I was associating you with her? She had just died and you were effectively saying you
hated her. Meanwhile I had a photo of her sucking your fingers as if you were involved. Those are some pretty mixed messages.’

Ryan shrugged and nodded. ‘Sienna was all about mixed messages.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well she hung around with a lesbian for a start.’

‘Molly?’

‘Yeah, everyone knew about it.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

Ryan smiled but there was nothing cruel about his expression. ‘How old are you?’

Jessica felt compelled to answer. ‘Thirty . . . something.’

The teenager laughed. ‘I don’t know about you being at school or college or whatever but what do you remember the kids being like? Did you ever have a lesbian at your school? Or
someone gay? Or someone really tall? Or short? What happened to them?’

Jessica couldn’t believe she was being lectured by an eighteen-year-old but she knew exactly what he meant. To her, it wasn’t significant if people were of different races or
sexualities. To a teenager, especially an immature one, it was something to pick on.

‘You think they were bullied to death?’ she said.

Ryan stared at her as if she had overlooked the most obvious point. ‘Of course not. Sienna was the one everyone looked up to. All the lads wanted to f—, go out with her and all the
girls wished they were her – especially because her old man had money.’

Jessica still didn’t understand. ‘Right . . . what am I missing?’

‘Sienna loved the attention. She would snog you and let you touch her tits and so on. It was just the way she was.’

‘But why were you so aggressive about her if that was the case?’

Ryan sighed. ‘Will you get me another beer?’

‘I thought you had money?’

‘I do but surely I deserve something for all of this?’

Jessica motioned to stand, nodding towards Lara. ‘All right but send her home. I can’t take any more of her staring me out from across the room.’

A few minutes later Jessica returned with two pints and slid in across from Ryan. ‘How’d she take it?’ Jessica asked.

‘How do you think? She’s only bothered about the money now she knows I have some. I just want to see my kid. My name’s not even on the bloody birth certificate.’

‘Why not?’

Ryan glanced sideways. ‘Let’s just say there were a few candidates and she didn’t know whose it was at first.’

Jessica wasn’t surprised. ‘Does your dad know?’

‘Not yet. I didn’t tell him straight away because I wanted it to be a surprise when he got out of prison. After the bricks and the fire, the hotel, the attack and everything . . . I
got used to keeping it a secret.’

Jessica nodded in acceptance and sipped the froth from the top of her glass. ‘So why were you so aggressive about Sienna?’

Ryan looked at the table before picking up his drink and downing half of it in one. ‘Because I liked her. I thought when she was teasing me and leading me on that it was because she
actually liked me. Then she would do it to my mates in front of me too. You got used to the way she was.’

‘But it didn’t stop you liking her?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Did you ever sleep with her?’

Ryan shook his head and drank some more. ‘Some of my mates said they had shagged her but . . . I don’t know. I think she was too much of a tease to actually go through with
things.’

Jessica thought about the self-harm marks on the insides of the girl’s thighs and knew that if she had been sleeping with a host of boys, they would have been mentioned by someone at some
point. She doubted they were the type of scars Sienna would have been happy with other people knowing about.

‘Do you know she was pregnant?’ she asked.

‘Only because you asked some of the girls about it. They came into class and told us all.’

‘Why?’

‘I dunno. You tell me. Women are weird.’

Jessica suspected the answer was that, as Molly had suggested, the other girls weren’t really Sienna’s friends and were simply clinging on because of the wealth of her father. With
that gone, it didn’t matter if they gossiped a little.

‘Do you know why she might have killed herself?’ Jessica asked.

Ryan shook his head, wiping his eye, although Jessica couldn’t see any tears. ‘No.’

‘What about Molly?’

The teenager shrugged. ‘I dunno. Everyone said she was trying to cop off with Sienna.’

Jessica already knew that but it seemed a big leap to make from Molly’s secret crush killing herself to Molly doing the same.

Ryan finished his drink with one final gulp. Jessica had barely had two sips from hers and slid it across the table towards him. ‘You sure?’ he asked, nodding towards the glass.

‘Yeah, you only have to stagger next door, I have to get all the way back to Salford.’

‘Anything else?’ he asked.

‘When I spoke to Molly about you, she . . . well, she wasn’t too willing to talk. The same with Sienna’s other friends. And Lara.’

Ryan shrugged. He seemed to be getting friendlier the more he drank, another parallel Jessica saw with herself. ‘I guess I have that effect on girls,’ he said. ‘Molly hated me
because I was a bit of a twat. I’d call her a dyke and all sorts and then Sienna would still hang around with me.’

‘What’s changed?’ Jessica asked, curious about his attitude.

Ryan scratched his head. ‘I guess you just grow up at some point. Especially when you have a kid and your house burns down.’

‘What about the reactions from the other women?’

He shook his head. ‘I dunno the girls you spoke to but, basically, they all hated us lads who would hang around with Si.’

‘What about Lara?’

Ryan snorted. ‘You’ve seen what she’s like. She’s bloody nuts.’

‘So why did you hang around with her?’

He raised his eyebrows again. ‘She does this thing with . . .’

Jessica cut him off. ‘All right, I can imagine.’ She almost added ‘kids today’, before realising how old that would make her sound. She recognised he had good answers for
all of her questions. If they did ever need to check his alibis, she thought Lara would be able to provide one. The edginess in the young women’s responses to him seemed understandable in the
circumstances.

‘There’s one last thing,’ Jessica said.

By the time they had finished talking, she knew she had all but solved one major part of the puzzle.

Jessica knocked on the front door and stepped backwards. She could hear the television being muted from inside before the locks were noisily unbolted. The man who stood at the
door in his dressing gown eyed her suspiciously through a small crack before opening it fully.

‘I’m sorry, I know it’s late,’ Jessica said.

‘Why are you here?’ he asked.

A woman appeared in the background and Jessica acknowledged her with a smile before turning to the man. ‘I was just hoping I could come in for a short while. I promise I won’t be
long.’

‘Do you have any news about . . . ?’

Jessica shook her head. ‘I wish I did.’

The woman walked over to stand next to her husband. ‘You can come in,’ she said, pulling the door wider and stepping aside.

Jessica wiped her feet, desperate not to make a bad impression before asking the one question she had.

‘Are you all right?’ Nicola North asked. ‘We saw you on the news because of the fire and everything. It looked bad.’

‘I’m okay,’ Jessica said. ‘I was wondering if you might allow me to look around Molly’s room?’

She saw Peter exchange a slightly panicked glance with his wife. ‘I . . . don’t . . . why?’ he said.

Jessica made sure she looked them both in the eye as she spoke. ‘It sounds stupid but, when I was in her room before, it reminded me a little of my own from when I was that age. I just
wonder if something was missed.’

Nicola replied. ‘There was a group of your people in there for almost a day . . .’

‘I know, it’s not that. I’m looking for something different. Have you changed much around since . . . ?’

Nicola shook her head. ‘We tidied up after the police left. It’s as it was.’ She looked at her husband, who turned to Jessica.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘I’d rather not say – just in case I don’t find anything.’

Nicola spoke before her husband had a chance. ‘It’s fine. Let us know when you’re finished. Take as long as you want.’

Jessica couldn’t read Peter’s face but he didn’t object. She turned and walked up the stairs, remembering how she had felt when she had made the opposite journey what seemed
like such a long time ago.

Molly’s room appeared almost exactly as she remembered it, except that the light fixture had been repaired and the blood stain on the carpet was now only visible if you knew where to
look.

The bed seemed pristine, as if it had been made that morning, and the light-coloured linen creaseless. Jessica slid her hand under the mattress, before picking the whole thing up, resting it
against the wall so she could see beneath. There were wooden slats running the width of the bed frame but there was nothing on them. Jessica lowered the mattress and re-made the bed, trying to make
the corners as sharp as they had been.

She moved to the bookcase and started removing the books one by one, checking inside and then replacing them. Molly’s literary choices were wide-ranging, everything from biographies to
romance novels to science fiction. She seemed to read a bit of everything but, after flicking through each one, Jessica couldn’t find what she was looking for.

She looked down the back of the radiator and then, although she suspected the other officers would have already done it, Jessica searched through the chest of drawers and wardrobe.

She tried to stifle a cough but ended up making it worse, sputtering small spots of black and red onto her hand. She took a tissue from the box on the dressing table and wiped her palm and then
pocketed it. She didn’t want to admit to anyone that her throat was constantly sore but she had been coughing up blood and bits of black ever since the fire. She knew everyone would tell her
to go to the doctor, but she couldn’t face talking about it any more. The truth was, through her dreams and daytime flashes, Jessica had remembered more than enough and wasn’t sure if
she could cope with reliving everything that happened.

She scanned around the room, looking for any other hiding place and partly wishing she hadn’t come. When the idea had struck her after the conversation with Ryan, she knew it was a long
shot. She had seen the hope in Nicola’s eyes that she might have visited to bring them news, or offer the longed-for closure.

At a slight loss for what to do, Jessica crouched and crawled around the room, feeling into the corners of the carpet to see if there were any areas raised higher than they should be.

She ended up sitting in the centre of the room peering at the ceiling, although she couldn’t see a loft or anything similar. As she stood, she felt her back twinge and instinctively
reached around to hold it. She cursed under her breath and sat on the edge of the bed, sinking into the same spot she had on the previous occasion.