DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (2 page)

She stopped to take a deep breath, swallowing a feeling of claustrophobia despite being in the open. The car horns and engines, the chatter of nearby pedestrians, the patter of the rain: it was
becoming overpowering. Jessica felt a few drops of rain slide down her neck, struggling not to shiver as she made her way back towards the black car while tying her long hair into a ponytail.

The vehicle looked much more of a mess from the other side. It was a mid-size four-door model that Jessica thought of as always being advertised with a family sitting inside, as if the machine
itself was the key to parenting bliss. A scrape ran the full length of the passenger side, the front headlight a concertina of mangled metal.

Jessica blinked the water away from her eyes as she saw the flashing lights of an ambulance a few hundred metres away, the noise from the siren blaring ever louder. Her eyes were attracted to
the rear of the vehicle where the car’s boot had popped open ever so slightly. She put a hand on the metal, at first thinking about pushing it shut, but curiosity got the better of her and
she opened it instead.

If she’d had to, Jessica would have struggled to guess the contents of her own boot. There might well have been jump leads and possibly a petrol can but she wouldn’t have put money
on it. She definitely wasn’t prepared for the sight that met her in the rear of the smashed-up black car. Thick plastic sheeting was wrapped tightly around an object with heavy-looking tape
sealing it into a tight cocoon. Next to the object was a rusting spade with a muddied plastic handle. Jessica felt something in her stomach urging her forward as if she already knew what it
was.

She pushed the boot down but didn’t lock it in place. As the ambulance drew up, she ran to her own car, opening the driver’s door and digging into the well before pulling out a pair
of scissors.

Her father had always been good about keeping things in their old family car just in case but Jessica hadn’t inherited his forward thinking. She had found the scissors not long after her
dad bought her the car second-hand a decade or so ago, left by the previous owner. She dashed across the junction again, silently thanking whoever that previous owner was and feeling justified for
never cleaning out her car.

As she arrived back at the black vehicle, paramedics stepped out of the ambulance. Jessica flashed her identification and told them the fate of the driver. One of them went to check on him
anyway as another walked to where Rowlands was still comforting the woman from the blue car.

More sirens blared in the distance as Jessica returned to the black car’s boot, opening it and moving the spade to the rear of the compartment out of her way. Layer upon layer of plastic
sheeting was wrapped tightly around the object and Jessica struggled to force through the blunt blades of her scissors. As she pushed harder, it started to rain more heavily, huge drops bouncing
off the tarmac road. Jessica could feel the force of the water smashing into the top of her head. She continued to cut and finally felt the scissors push through the top few layers of the plastic.
Reaching in with her hands, she pulled hard to try to tear the material apart. Slowly, it began to give and, with a combination of her hands and the scissors, she opened up part of the
wrapping.

With the plastic pulled back, all she could see was a piece of cloth that had a flowery pattern. It reminded Jessica of the curtains her parents used to have at their house when she was a child,
a hideous mixture of yellow and brown. Still reaching into the boot, Jessica tugged at the fabric, finally freeing it with a gasp.

Jessica tried to force herself to look away but the pale skin and clamped eyelids held her hypnotically: the haunting lifeless face of a dead child.

By the time Jessica arrived at Longsight Police Station, various photographs of the crash had begun to show up on Internet news sites. Almost all of them had been taken by
passers-by with their phones but luckily none seemed to feature what she had found in the car’s boot. Instead, the news stories were focusing on the length of time the junction had been shut
and the knock-on effect it had had on the flow of traffic into the city.

Weather and a traffic jam: people’s two favourite talking points all wrapped up in one.

Jessica had no doubts about who the body in the boot was and wondered how long it would take for the real story to leak out. Isaac Hutchings was eleven years old and had gone missing almost
three weeks ago. Jessica had never been able to figure out why some missing-children stories caught on, while others were barely reported. Sometimes a kid would disappear and there would be a
national media storm that seemingly engulfed everyone. Other times, there would barely be a mention in the local papers, let alone anything wider. One of the other officers told her about an
instance where a missing-child case had next to no attention until one of his friends, a blond, blue-eyed nine-year-old boy, gave a tearful appeal that had been partly stage-managed by the force.
After that, the cameras came flooding in.

For whatever reason, the disappearance of Isaac Hutchings had barely registered anywhere other than on the local police’s own website.

Jessica wasn’t part of the specialist missing persons team and hadn’t been involved in the case in any way other than the fact it had happened on her patch and she was aware of it.
But, as she stared into the pale face of the body she had found in the boot, she knew his identity immediately.

There was a nervous hum of energy in the air as Jessica walked into the Longsight station. Early information would have begun to leak back through the various ranks during the morning about what
had been found and, as when anything major occurred, it didn’t take long for the news to spread.

Jessica headed straight for the stairs at the back of the reception area but was immediately put off by a string of tinsel wrapped around the bottom of the banister. She had noticed something
similar the previous day in the canteen, where the frame around the door was decorated with bright Christmas streamers. Jessica shook her head in annoyance and then jogged up the stairs two at a
time on her way to Detective Chief Inspector Jack Cole’s office. After discovering the body, she had phoned in to the station to give the brief details she knew, giving her boss the
opportunity to start the investigation from their end while she waited for the Scene of Crime team to show up.

As Jessica reached the office, she could see Detective Inspector Jason Reynolds and the DCI waiting for her through the glass walls. Both turned to face her and she didn’t have time to
knock before being waved in.

DCI Cole had recently turned fifty. Since taking the chief inspector’s job around eighteen months ago, he had really started to look his age. When Jessica first began working with him a
few years before, they had both been in more junior positions. Back then he seemed to take everything in his stride and remained unfazed by more or less anything. After his promotion, he had begun
to change. At first it had been subtle but in recent months, Jessica had found herself less confident around him. His hair was now fully grey and new wrinkles had appeared around his eyes. His cool
approach had taken a hit and Jessica had seen him angry on a few occasions, something she couldn’t have pictured beforehand. The pressure of the job, financial cutbacks and the anxiety to
meet government targets were having an obvious effect.

Cole was sitting behind a large wooden desk with a selection of certificates on the wall above him and a couple of cardboard files on the table. Opposite him sat Reynolds, an imposing black
officer who Jessica used to share an office with. As she entered the room, the DI shuffled his chair sideways, allowing her room.

Cole waited for a moment, eyeing her up and down, then spoke with a grin. ‘Raining out, is it?’

Jessica felt puzzled for a moment, then saw her boss nodding towards the floor where she had left a trail of drips which no doubt ran the length of the corridor and all the way down the stairs.
With everything that had happened during the morning, Jessica had forgotten how wet she was. Now she shivered slightly, almost in recognition of her boss’s point. She could feel her wet hair
plastered to her left ear and brushed it away with her hand.

‘Sorry, Sir . . .’

The DCI waved his hand, realising his joke had fallen flat. ‘No, it’s fine. I don’t know if anyone filled you in but the car with the body in the boot is stolen.’ Cole
typed on the keyboard in front of him before shaking his head. ‘I’ve not got the information here but the owner reported the theft yesterday. The mother of the missing boy has been
notified and we’re hoping she can identify the body one way or the other at some point today. It’s awkward for obvious reasons.’ He leant back into his chair, running a hand
through his hair.

‘Do we know who’s doing what yet?’ Jessica asked.

Jason answered: ‘It’s all a bit of a mess because the missing persons team were involved but now it looks like a murder investigation. You know what the politics are like around here
but I think we’ll end up taking it once the body has been formally identified.’

It occurred to Jessica that she’d missed an obvious point. ‘If the car was stolen, do we know who the driver is?’

The two men exchanged a glance and Jessica realised that was what they had been talking about before she arrived. It was again Reynolds who answered.

‘We don’t know yet. The Scene of Crime boys and the coroner will be involved. If we’re really lucky he’ll have a wallet in his pocket, if not we’ll have to wait a
few days but might get a match from his DNA to the national database. Other than that, we’re going to be struggling. His face is in such a bad way, we might not be able to get a picture we
can use. Did you see anything in the front of the vehicle?’

Jessica shook her head. ‘It was a bit of a mess with the airbag and blood and everything. After I went to the boot, I didn’t look anywhere else.’

DCI Cole picked up the phone from his desk. ‘I’ll check to see if anyone on site found a wallet or something to get us moving. Someone’s going to have to take another statement
from the person whose car was nicked but we can come back to that.’

He dialled some numbers and then leant back in his chair, the receiver to his ear. Jessica offered a thin smile to Reynolds after he caught her eye as they listened to one half of a conversation
which seemed to consist largely of acknowledging grunts.

After a couple of minutes, Cole put the phone down and looked up at the other two detectives. He scratched his chin and grimaced slightly, accentuating the wrinkles around his eyes.
‘They’ve not found much,’ he said. ‘No wallet or ID on the driver and it’s going to take a little while for them to test the blood to see if they can get a match. For
now we have no idea who he is.’

Reynolds hummed in response but Cole continued. ‘They did find two things on the passenger seat. They might be nothing but . . .’ He tailed off as Jessica felt the hairs on the back
of her neck stand up. It could have been because of the dampness of her clothes but something in the tone of her boss’s voice made it sound significant. It was almost as if he had paused for
dramatic effect. The chief inspector started to shuffle papers on his desk again before picking up a pad and pen and beginning to write. ‘They’re going to have to check them for
fingerprints and the like, but there was a key and a map. We’ll get them handed over later today or early tomorrow when they’re finished with them.’

‘What type of key?’ Jessica asked.

‘I don’t know. We’ll have to wait.’

Jessica thought about the state of the vehicle when she had arrived on the scene. The passenger’s side was far more damaged than the driver’s and, because of the airbags and
condensation, that was probably why she had missed the items. She was still annoyed with herself for not spotting them though. Cole looked up from his pad and held it up for them to see. He had
written the number ‘61’.

‘Does this number mean anything to you?’

Jessica stuck out her bottom lip and looked at Reynolds as they both shrugged their shoulders.

‘In what context?’ the inspector asked.

Cole put the pad back down. ‘The keys were attached to some sort of fob with the number sixty-one on. It could be a key for someone’s flat but it seems unlikely you’d have your
own door number on it.’

‘Maybe it’s from a hotel room?’ Jessica suggested.

The two men nodded before Cole spoke. ‘Perhaps. We’ll have to wait for it to be analysed and released back to us.’

‘What about the map?’ Jessica asked.

‘They still need it but someone’s going to email over digital photos. The guy reckons they’re clear enough to use if we want to follow them up before we get the actual
map.’

Jessica stood. ‘Right, let’s go follow the map.’

She knew it wasn’t really her call to decide which cases she was allocated but, having found Isaac’s body in the boot, she wasn’t ready to stand aside and let someone else take
it up. From their reactions – and considering how well they knew her – there were no objections from either of the other two.

Cole nodded. ‘Jason’s on this too. I don’t know where the site is yet but you’ll need a team with you. Start sorting that and I’ll forward you the emails when they
arrive.’

As Reynolds and Jessica exited the office and began to walk down the corridor, the DI put one hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you all right, Jess?’

‘Yeah, just wet.’

‘I mean the body you found. I know what you’re like, just breezing through everything. I found the body of a child once . . .’ He tailed off but Jessica didn’t give him
an opportunity to continue.

‘I’m okay. But I could do with a towel.’ She knew that wasn’t the question her colleague was asking but she didn’t want to stop working. Reynolds knew her well
enough not to push.

‘All right, you sort yourself out and I’ll get a few calls in.’

Jessica was glad to get away from the inspector. It wasn’t that she didn’t like or respect him but she never enjoyed it when anyone asked questions that might make her think about
her own well-being too much. She went off to dry her clothes and hair as best she could before finding Dave in the large open-plan area which the constables shared on the station’s main
floor.