DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (80 page)

He stood before she could reply but Jessica knew there was little else she could ask anyway.

‘Let me leave you my number,’ she said. ‘If you think of anything, you can call any time. Even if you think it’s not important it might be helpful.’

She gave each of them her card and, even though it wasn’t something she would usually give out to teenage boys, wrote her mobile number on the back. If she started getting calls consisting
only of heavy breathing, then at least she would know where they were coming from.

The pair shuffled out but Jessica saw them transform almost instantly as they entered the corridor. Their backs straightened again and they stood tall as they walked towards reception. Jessica
closed the door and sat back in the seat. She took out her mobile phone, hoping she had missed a call from Izzy while it had been on silent. The screen was blank, so Jessica flipped through the
contacts and called her friend instead.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

‘“Hi” to you too. We’ve got a few things on the go but you’re not going to like them.’

‘What have you found?’

‘We know who the casino owner was but Jack told me not to tell you everything today. He said we’ll talk tomorrow.’

Jessica checked her watch. It was the end of her shift but she was still confused. ‘Why?’

‘Let’s just say it’s complicated.’

Jessica was tired of living in someone else’s property. First it was Adam’s house, which never felt like home, now it was her friend Caroline Morrison’s flat.
Adam was dealing with the insurance company and they knew that, at some point, they would be house-hunting. The house they used to live in had been seriously damaged by the fire and even if they
were given the money to repair it, neither of them was keen to return. Jessica’s problem was that she had no inclination to spend her days off traipsing around other people’s houses as
if she knew what she was doing.

When she’d been looking for a flat, before she knew Adam, her dad had advised her to ‘check for damp’. Jessica had no idea what that meant, other than physically touching the
walls to see if they were wet. He had laughed for almost fifteen minutes on the phone when she told him what she had done. If it had a roof, some walls, an indoor toilet that flushed and no holes
where there shouldn’t be, she would have declared everything ‘fine’ – which was likely why a career in surveying was never going to be on the cards. Knowledge-wise, it did
rank her above a fair percentage of estate agents, though.

Adam seemed to have some idea of what he was doing, so Jessica was more than happy for him to ‘pick somewhere’. He wasn’t as enthused about making such a big decision on his
own, which only annoyed her more.

The one aspect of Caroline’s flat Jessica would miss when they eventually left was the view. If there was nothing they liked on television, which was most of the time, Jessica and Adam
would sit on the balcony watching the whole of Salford Quays beneath them. Even if it was cold, they would wrap up in coats and jumpers, put their feet up on the railings and play I-spy. It might
seem childish but Jessica had as much fun doing that for free as she had paying for all sorts of other things.

The evening wasn’t too cold for the time of year, but Jessica was still wearing the heavy coat she had ‘liberated’ from the station’s uniform store a few years ago. Adam
was wearing a T-shirt, which annoyed her as he kept insisting he wasn’t cold, even though he had only just got out of the shower. He was wearing a bobble hat, with small strands of his damp,
long black hair poking out of the bottom of it, and he still hadn’t had a shave, leaving dark wisps of hair on his chin. He glanced over the rail in an exaggerated way, then turned to Jessica
and grinned. ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with B.’

Jessica rolled her eyes. ‘You’re not peering through some woman’s bedroom window again, are you?’

Adam laughed. ‘Not while you’re around.’

‘You shouldn’t be looking whether I’m here or not.’ Jessica paused while looking over the rail and then leant back into her seat. ‘I don’t know,
bin?’

‘Nope.’ Jessica gave an overstated ‘um’. ‘You can talk about work if you want,’ Adam offered.

Although he hadn’t asked her to, Jessica had been making an effort to try to keep office matters at the station. Largely she was succeeding but Adam must have noticed how distracted she
seemed. ‘It’s fine,’ she said.

‘What about Jason? Is he still suspended?’

Jessica paused to think, wondering if it was a good idea to bring work home. She sighed. ‘I spoke to him last week and he’s not coming back. Even if they find in his favour,
he’s done.’

‘Because he gave information to the papers?’

The exact ins and outs were more complicated than that but, at its core, that was exactly why the inspector had been asked to stop coming to work. The fact he had been right to do it, certainly
in her mind, didn’t really matter when it came to the wrath of their bosses. You could be as incompetent as you wanted – as long as you didn’t make them look bad.

‘Something like that. He’s going to sit it out on full pay and then quit before he gets pushed. He hasn’t told anyone else yet.’

‘What’s happening with you, then?’

Jessica thought for a few moments before responding: ‘Building.’

‘Huh?’

‘I-spy.’

‘Oh right, no.’

‘Buggy?’

Adam leant forward. ‘Where’s a buggy?’

‘I don’t know, it begins with B.’

‘All right, no, not a buggy.’

Jessica nodded at the bottle by his foot. ‘Beer?’

‘Nope.’

Taking a deep breath, Jessica put her feet down and picked up the bottle by her own feet, taking a swig. ‘I don’t know if I want to go for the job. It’s a bit more money but
it’s a lot more faffing. I don’t think I can be arsed.’

‘You can’t want to be a sergeant forever?’

‘Bird?’

‘Nope.’

Jessica swilled the liquid around and had another drink. ‘I don’t know if I want to do this at all forever. Do you want to be in a lab all your life?’

‘I don’t know,’ Adam said. ‘Maybe. I’ve not really thought about it.’

Jessica wished she could be like that. ‘Blonde?’ she said, nodding towards a tower block across the way from them. She could clearly see the woman’s hair colour as she shook a
rug over the railing.

‘Nope but thanks for pointing her out.’

Jessica whacked him playfully with the back of her hand. ‘We’ll see. They want to interview me.’ It was a conversation they’d had before and Jessica didn’t know if
he was asking to see if she had changed her mind or because he thought she should go for it.

Adam picked up his own beer. ‘How’s Izzy?’

‘She’s just Izzy. Happy being a mum, happy being at work. Now she’s had the baby, she’s back to having bright red hair and scaring some of the higher-ups. It’s good
to see her around.’

Jessica clinked her empty bottle on the railing and turned to face Adam, raising her eyebrows. ‘I’m not getting up,’ he said, reluctantly passing across his half-full
bottle.

Jessica took it and grinned. ‘I knew you’d give me yours.’ She took a swig, adding: ‘Balloon,’ nodding towards the horizon where a hot-air balloon was taking
off.

‘No, that wasn’t there before.’

‘Bus?’

‘Nope. How’s Dave?’

‘Still being annoying. He’s trying to sort us all going to see Hugo later in the month. He has this residence thing at a comedy club. Are you up for that?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Breeze?’

‘You can’t see the breeze.’

‘Yeah but I can’t think of anything else beginning with B.’

Adam pulled his hat down over his ears and Jessica wondered if he was going to finally admit he was cold. She could see the goosebumps on his arms. ‘Have you told any of them yet?’
he asked.

‘I almost told Izzy but not yet. They were all so busy congratulating me on the wedding and everything that I didn’t have the heart to tell them.’

‘That doesn’t sound like you.’

Jessica finished the beer, then picked up her original bottle and stood. ‘Come on, let’s go inside before you turn blue while still insisting you’re not cold.’

‘I’m not cold.’

Jessica rubbed his arm. ‘What are these, then? Anyway, what’s your B?’

Adam pointed towards a flat on the building next to theirs where the washing was hanging over the rail. ‘Bra.’

Jessica opened the door and stepped inside. ‘Predictable.’

‘You didn’t get it.’

‘That’s because I’m not a perv.’

After sliding the door closed, Jessica took off her coat and hung it over the handle. She walked into the kitchen and opened the cupboard under the sink, dropping the two empty bottles inside.
As she was about to close it, Jessica noticed a cardboard envelope which had been ripped in half. She took the pieces out and held them together, seeing Adam’s name and his work address
written in black felt-tip.

‘What’s this?’ she called across the open-plan room.

Adam was looking at his phone but, when he peered up, Jessica could see his surprise, even from the opposite side of the room. ‘Er, nothing. Just work stuff. I don’t know why I
brought it home.’ Jessica took another look at the envelope and was about to put it back in the bin when Adam offered another guilty-sounding: ‘It’s nothing.’

Although he had been nervous around her when they had first met, it had been quite some time since he had stuttered his way through a conversation, let alone been openly evasive.

Jessica crossed the room and sat next to him on the sofa. ‘What’s going on?’

Adam put his phone in his pocket. ‘Nothing, it was just a letter, I was in a hurry so I brought it home. It’s uni stuff.’

Jessica had no reason to think anything different, despite his odd behaviour. ‘You were a bit of a geek at school, weren’t you?’ she said.

Adam seemed grateful for the change of subject. ‘Well, I wouldn’t put it like that . . .’

‘But you were . . .’

‘Liking science doesn’t make you a geek.’

‘What does it make you, then?’

‘I don’t know, someone who likes science.’

Jessica snorted. ‘Whatever. Anyway, what types of things did you get up to with your mates when you weren’t being scared of girls or trying to steal their underwear?’

Adam took off his hat and ruffled his wet hair. ‘I don’t know. We just hung around. We watched rubbish old horror movies and thought about making our own. One of my mates had a games
console which we used to play on. I wasn’t very good but we’d play a bit of football in this other guy’s garden. I did my homework too, unlike some people.’

He dug Jessica playfully in the ribs and she squealed. ‘Get off.’

‘Why are you asking?’

At first, Jessica wasn’t going to say but she figured Adam could only help. ‘There’s this kid we’re looking into. Everyone says he’s just normal. He likes
astronomy, he plays games, hangs around with his mates and watches television. Everything normal that you’d expect. But then he went missing, before turning up dead. No one seems to have a
clue why him.’

Adam rested a hand on her back. ‘Could it just be he was in the wrong place at the wrong time?’

‘It probably is. I guess I just want to think there’s something more to it than that.’

Adam kissed the top of her head and then stood. ‘I’m going to go dry off and then sort some clothes out for tomorrow.’

Jessica watched him walk into the bedroom, wondering what she should do with the evening. Izzy had refused to give her any further details on the casino owner, saying they had to check a few
additional things and that there was going to be a team briefing in the morning. Whatever it was, it didn’t bode well.

She reached under the sofa but couldn’t find what she was looking for, so checked the cabinet underneath the television. At a loss, Jessica walked through to the bedroom, where Adam was
leaning into their joint wardrobe. ‘Where’s the laptop?’ she asked.

Adam poked his head around the door and nodded towards the dresser at the bottom of the bed. ‘I was using it in here earlier.’

‘I’m going to email my mum while I’ve got nothing else on. She keeps going on about how I never call her – but then when I do I can’t get off the phone because
she’s busy telling me about how Gladys in the village is finally having her hip fixed or how she saw someone making a quiche on TV, or something like that. She’ll try to talk me through
it and then it’s onto whether or not I’m eating properly, how you are, how I am, how Dad’s doing. By the time I get off, it’s a week later. Emailing’s
easier.’

‘Have you at least told them that we’re not . . .’

‘Not yet.’ Adam rolled his eyes. ‘It’s easier like this for now,’ Jessica added. ‘I’ll tell them when the time’s right.’

‘You can’t leave them thinking it for too much longer.’

Jessica picked up the laptop and walked back to the door. ‘I know. I’ll sort it.’ She walked through to the living room and plugged it in, waiting for the device to boot up, as
she wandered back to the glass balcony door and stared into the darkness. She had long since regretted making the phone call from the airport to tell her parents and Izzy that she was flying out to
get married. They had all understood at the time but Jessica didn’t have the heart to tell them what had happened.

As her mind began to drift, Jessica heard the computer beeping. Each time it did something she didn’t expect, her first instinct was to whack as many keys as she could to see if it helped.
Her second instinct was to call Adam. The printer’s not working – ‘ADAM!’. The screen’s gone blue – ‘ADAM!’. Someone’s asking me to send my
bank details to Nigeria – ‘ADAM!’. If all else failed, violence – or at least the threat of it – often did the trick.

Usually the laptop would have booted straight onto a screen from where she knew she could load the Internet browser. Instead, it had stopped at a password screen and was asking for a
username.

‘ADAM!’

He came into the room holding two shirts. One was bright blue, the other grey. ‘Which one?’ he asked.

Jessica pointed to the grey one. ‘What’s going on with this?’