DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (93 page)

As she waited in the hallway with the constable struggling to put his boots on, Jessica couldn’t help but swear under her breath.

‘Sounds like a lovely chap, doesn’t he?’ Rowlands said quietly.

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘I do have one idea you might be interested in.’

‘There’s a first time for everything.’

‘No, seriously. Your newspaper ad thing, it was something Ruby said.’

Jessica could tell from the way he was speaking to her normally that he thought he was onto something.

Jessica peered across the table at the two individuals and pointed to the newspaper in front of her. ‘If either or both of you were responsible for this, now would be a
pretty good time to speak up.’

When neither of them answered, she looked sideways at Rowlands. He spoke with the exact tone she wanted him to, like a big brother to a younger sibling. ‘Look,’ he said chummily,
‘if it was you and you tell us now, we’re prepared to let things go. If you keep this going and we later find out it was either of you, then you will be in serious shite.’

Jessica could tell it had worked.

Terry shifted uncomfortably in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck. Richard had sensed his friend’s nervousness and slumped in his seat.

‘It was supposed to be a joke,’ Richard said quietly, refusing to look up from the table. ‘We thought Ollie would find it funny when he saw his name in the paper but
didn’t think he’d actually . . . y’know . . . a few days later.’

Jessica said nothing, allowing Rowlands to speak. ‘You do realise that in the history of school pranks, this is not only one of the shittest but also one of the most poorly
timed?’

His words echoed around the empty classroom as neither student dared look up from the table.

‘What’s going to happen to us?’ Terry asked, his voice cracking halfway through the sentence, partly through emotion, partly fear.

Jessica exchanged a look with Rowlands, holding his eye to allow the tension to build. ‘Nothing for now,’ Jessica said firmly. ‘But we both know who you are and what you did.
If either of us ever hear you’re in trouble again, then we will rain some serious shite down upon you.’

She allowed her words to hang, before adding, ‘Now get out of here.’

Richard and Terry jumped to their feet in unison, muttering a ‘thank you’ before racing towards the classroom door and the relative safety of the corridor. The truth was that neither
of the young men had committed any sort of offence, other than one of stupidity – and if they started convicting people for that, they’d need some pretty large new prisons. Jessica
didn’t think a few idle threats could do them any harm.

When the room was empty, Jessica caught her colleague’s eye. ‘I quite like our bad cop, bad cop routine.’

Rowlands smiled, then stood and walked across to stand by the window. ‘We should take it on tour.’

‘You’ll have to start speaking to me properly first.’

The constable didn’t reply for a few moments, before eventually saying: ‘Different world here, isn’t it. At my school, the toilets barely worked. Here, they’ve got their
own operatic society.’

Jessica went to join him by the window. ‘Let’s hear it then.’

‘What?’

‘How you guessed all of this. We could’ve come in here and had them tell us they didn’t know anything about it.’

Rowlands turned to face Jessica, leaning against the glass. ‘“Guess” is the right word. I think it had been floating around the back of my mind anyway after Iz told me
you’d been here to talk to Oliver’s friends. I thought about my own mates and how we’d arse around. It was never anything like this, mind, we’d hide each other’s
clothes after swimming, or give each other dead legs.’

‘Sounds mature.’

‘Well, exactly, but when Ruby was going on about boys being boys, I thought that Oliver was a bit different to us.’ He pointed towards the door Terry and Richard had just left
through. ‘Those two don’t seem the type to go around pissing in a Lucozade bottle, then leaving it around the changing rooms after rugby practice.’

‘You did that?’

The constable shrugged but offered a half-grin. ‘Maybe. The taste is about the same. Anyway, the point is I thought they’d be doing something a bit more high-brow. Placing an ad
predicting their friend’s death seemed the type of unfunny thing they’d come up with. The fact he ended up being killed days later was just . . . unfortunate.’

The way he said the final word sounded a little callous but Jessica knew what he meant. ‘Something always seemed a little off,’ she said. ‘There was never anything predicting
Kayleigh’s death and it never really fitted. The two killings were brutal, not something whimsical that someone would choose to predict beforehand.’

Rowlands crossed the room and sat opposite Jessica. ‘I guess our killer isn’t as clever as we thought.’

Jessica made sure her friend was looking at her as she replied. ‘We could have figured this out ages ago if you were talking to me properly.’

She expected the constable to brush off the remark and pretend nothing was wrong but instead he squirmed as awkwardly as Terry and Richard had done minutes before.

‘Can I tell you something?’ Jessica asked quietly. Rowlands nodded but she couldn’t read his face. ‘I went back to see Nicholas a second time.’

‘On your own?’

Jessica nodded. ‘Iz knew. I wanted to see what he was like on his own with a woman.’

The constable loosened his tie. ‘I can guess.’

‘You wouldn’t even know the half of it.’

For as long as Jessica had known Rowlands, he’d kept up a front of bravado. Although some of his boasting about women in his younger days had no doubt been true, at least in part, it had
taken Jessica a long time to realise that he was very similar to her. As she told him Eleanor and Leviticus’s stories, she could see in his face that he was as horrified as she was.

‘. . . And you put yourself in a room alone with him?’ he replied.

‘I didn’t know all of that at the time,’ was the only justification Jessica could think of.

‘Have you told Jack or anyone else yet?’

Jessica shook her head. ‘What good can it do? All it proves is the type of person he is, which we partly knew already. There’s nothing to link him directly to Oliver or what happened
to Kayleigh.’

Dave loosened his tie further and undid his top button, breathing out deeply. ‘Do you reckon Serious Crime would be interested?’

‘Do you think Eleanor, Leviticus or Ruby might want to give evidence against him? Even if they did, much of it is dated, circumstantial or one person’s word against another. And what
would they do him for anyway, other than what they’re already looking into him for?’

Jessica could see the constable shared the same feelings of injustice she did. While they had officers out checking the speeds of motorists, someone like Nicholas Long was seemingly free to
continue going about his business.

Although there was silence in the room, there was a hum of activity from elsewhere around the school. Students were hurrying to and from lessons, others whooping on the various sporting
pitches.

‘Shall we go and tell everyone what conquering heroes we are?’ Dave asked, sliding his chair backwards with a screech.

Jessica didn’t move. ‘I miss you,’ she said quietly.

The constable stopped, hands fixed to the back of the chair as he was half-standing. ‘Sorry?’

‘I miss you mucking around and taking the piss. You’re such a dick but you made it fun coming to work. Me, you and Iz are a good team.’

Jessica had been wanting to tell him that for weeks but everything fell out in one unrehearsed sentence. As soon as she had spoken, she half-wished she could take it back but the emotion of
hearing the endless stream of degradation Nicholas had poured over those around him had worn her down.

Rowlands seemed frozen, half-bent over the chair. Jessica could feel him staring at her but she didn’t acknowledge him. Finally, he stood and walked back to the window.

‘Are you going to at least tell me what’s up?’ Jessica demanded, raising her voice.

‘Things have been complicated.’

‘That’s it?’

Jessica scraped her chair back and walked to the window to stand next to him. They both stared towards the sports fields where a group of children were playing lacrosse.

‘What type of a game is that?’ Dave asked with a forced laugh.

‘Is it to do with you breaking up with Chloe?’ Jessica asked, refusing to let him change the subject.

‘I’ve been out with plenty of girls since then.’

‘That’s bollocks. If you had, we’d have all heard about it.’

Out of the window, play stopped as one lad was tackled roughly by another. The teacher and the other students crowded around as the two started pushing and shoving. Almost simultaneously, the
familiar pitter-patter began as rain descended, bouncing off the tarmac of the car park that separated the school from the field.

‘I guess some things don’t change regardless of what school you go to,’ Dave said, as one of the boys shoulder-charged the other to the floor. The teacher dived in to try to
separate them.

Jessica didn’t reply, watching in silence as the adult pointed and shouted at both of the students before sending them towards a building on the far side of the pitch.

‘It wasn’t Chloe,’ the constable finally said.

‘So what was it? You’ve been weird ever since the fire.’

Even though she wasn’t facing him, Jessica could hear Rowlands gulping. ‘Exactly. I saw it all, Jess. I was at your house when they put you in the ambulance. Your face was covered in
black stuff and you weren’t moving. Everyone had gone to focus on Adam and I thought you were dead. I thought they’d given up on you.’

Jessica waited for a moment, the broken memories of that night running through her mind. When she replied, her voice cracked and didn’t sound like hers. ‘I know you told me Jack,
Jason and everyone were there but I guess I didn’t know that meant you.’

Outside, the game was descending into farce, with players sliding in the mud as the teacher stood in the middle of the field, blowing his whistle and bellowing.

Dave didn’t take his eyes from the game as he replied. ‘There was this paramedic who asked if I was all right and it was only then I realised you were off to the hospital. Jack told
me to go, so I raced away. I was driving like such an idiot that I caught the ambulance up.’

‘You stayed with me the whole day.’

‘Yes.’

‘You held my hand.’

‘You gobbed on my shoe.’

Jessica laughed. ‘I don’t remember that.’

Dave snorted too, although his voice was faltering. ‘I didn’t know if you’d wake up, Jess. All this back and forth we’ve had over the years, all the arsing around and
taking the piss out of each other . . . I was sitting in the room wondering what might happen if you didn’t wake up.’

‘But I did.’

The constable didn’t reply as they watched the match come to an end. The rain was falling so hard that it looked like a wall of water instead of individual drops. Over the top, they heard
the teacher’s whistle blaring as everyone, including him, turned and ran towards the building on the far side.

‘My old PE teacher would have left us out in that,’ Dave said. ‘He used to wear the same tracksuit every day, this horrible blue and white shiny thing. He was called Mr
Haythorn, but we called him Mr Gaythorn when he wasn’t around.’

As childish as it sounded, Jessica couldn’t stop herself giggling.

‘He was a right bastard. If you ever turned up late, he’d make you run a full lap of the field. If you didn’t do it quickly enough, he’d make you do another one. He made
us play rugby on an icy pitch once. Everyone was getting injured but he didn’t care.’

Jessica waited until all of the players had reached their building.

‘That doesn’t explain why you’ve been weird with me ever since,’ Jessica said, just loudly enough to be heard over the noise of the torrent hitting the roof.

At first, she thought the constable hadn’t heard her. ‘I’m glad things are working out for you, Jess,’ he finally said. ‘Adam’s a good guy.’

Jessica felt the lump returning to her throat that had never been far away in the past week. She tried to swallow but instead it made her feel worse. ‘It’s not as rosy as you might
think,’ she eventually managed to say. ‘Something’s going on with him but I don’t know what.’

Rowlands didn’t move, staring out at the now-empty field. ‘Some of my friends got married and said the first few months were awkward as they got used to each other.’

Jessica bit her lip. ‘Just tell me what’s wrong.’

Dave finally turned away from the window. They were barely a foot apart, staring at each other. His eyes were a mixture of sadness and determination and she realised that she rarely looked at
him directly. With suspects or witnesses, she would draw eye contact, sometimes waiting in silence until they gave it to her. With her friends, she rarely did that, assuming she knew what they were
feeling.

His voice croaked awkwardly. ‘It’s you, Jess.’

‘What’s me?’

The rain continued to hammer on the top of the building as Jessica raised her eyebrows to query what he was saying.

‘As I sat next to you in the hospital, holding your hand, not knowing if you were going to wake up, I knew it was you.’

Jessica saw his throat begin to bob and realised he was moments away from tears. Placing a hand on his shoulder, she struggled to know what to say, feeling drawn into the emotion of the moment.
‘I woke up . . . I’m here. I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.’

Dave placed a hand on her chin, stroking it gently, and she finally figured out what he was trying to say. By the time the words came, she had already taken a half-step back in shock.

‘I love you, Jess.’

Nicholas Long surveyed the piles of cash in the club’s safe with a grin. It was one of his biggest pleasures, something he always did himself. The increase in people
paying with cards annoyed him, although, because of the type of club he ran, there were still plenty happy to pay in cash in case the name of his establishment appeared on their credit card
statement.