DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (23 page)

Jessica felt an obligation to make sure the woman was all right but wasn’t sure there was much else she could say. She stepped over the pile of letters and walked slowly up the stairs,
careful not to miss a thing. At the top was a varnished wooden landing, Jessica’s footsteps echoing loudly as she walked across it. The upper level felt a degree or two cooler than
downstairs. A few weeks had passed since she found Benjamin Sturgess in the front of that crashed car and the weather had certainly turned. Most people would now have their central-heating systems
turned on during the day but this property had been empty for that time. Somehow the downstairs had kept a degree of warmth but Jessica pulled her jacket tighter around her as she struggled not to
shiver.

She could feel a slight breeze and followed it to her left where a door stood ajar. It led into a bathroom where she saw a small window above the bath open a crack. Instinctively Jessica went to
close it but stopped herself, wondering if, as implausible as it seemed, it could somehow prove crucial when the full search team came in. She closed the door behind her, walking back onto the
wooden floor, conscious that each step she took could be heard downstairs. She was about to open another door when Rowlands called her. She went quickly down the stairs, into the living room.
Rowlands was on the sofa holding two mobile phones.

‘Where were they?’ Jessica asked.

Rowlands crouched and pointed towards a small gap between the sofa and the side table where Jessica had found the wallet. ‘There are plug sockets down here. They were on the floor
charging.’

‘Where’s Deborah?’

Rowlands shrugged. ‘I’ve not seen her.’ He handed one of the devices to Jessica. ‘What shall we do? Call the forensics team? They’ll want to look at
these.’

Jessica took the phone from him. It looked a few years old, with a sliding front panel and none of the fresh innovations many of the new gadgets had. ‘So do I,’ she said, pushing the
front upwards so she could access the keys.

Rowlands was holding a far newer model than the one Jessica had taken. She knew a few people who had two mobile phones; one was usually for work, the other was personal. She wondered why a
writer would need two. When she was younger and worked in uniform, one of the constables had two phones. The first was the one everyone he knew had the number for, be it his girlfriend, colleagues,
parents or friends. The second had a pre-pay SIM card in it and he only gave out the number to women he met while he was out.

Jessica weighed the object in her hand. She suspected any second number probably wasn’t used for giving out to women but wondered if the reason for Benjamin Sturgess having two phones was
because of a similar type of duplicity.

She tried to find a call history but using an unfamiliar phone proved harder than she thought. It had taken her weeks to get used to her own and its various functions. After accidentally muting
the device, then taking a photograph of the floor, Jessica found the contacts list but the italicised message made her even more convinced that she was on to something.

‘No contacts found’.

She found the call history similarly empty and there were no text messages in the inbox. Jessica was about to put the phone down when she noticed there was a ‘sent messages’ folder
towards the bottom of a long list of options. She felt her stomach jump slightly as two messages appeared on the screen. Both were to the same number, the date matching the day Isaac Hutchings went
missing.

Jessica held her breath as she pressed the button to display the earliest one: ‘Got him’.

The second was even more chilling: ‘Will wait til its dark then meet you at the shed’.

Jessica slid the face down on the phone and put it on the side table before turning and dashing into the hallway. The two piles of mail were still on the floor and she picked up the smaller one.
The top letter was a glossy pamphlet addressed to ‘Ian Sturgess’, a similar one underneath was for ‘Ben Sturgess’. Jessica flicked from one to the other quickly before
reaching a letter addressed to another person she had spent the past few weeks struggling to find. The shiny leaflet was clearly some sort of junk mail but the name on the front was printed in tidy
black characters.

‘Glenn Harrison’.

Still holding the letter, Jessica made for the kitchen. As Deborah hadn’t gone upstairs or into the living room, it was the only place she could be. She found the other
woman sitting on a stool staring out into the garden. Most of the light had gone and the only illumination was from the neighbouring houses. ‘Deborah?’

The woman turned; her eyes were red but she wasn’t crying. ‘Sorry, I—’

‘Who’s Glenn Harrison?’

Deborah shook her head slightly, wiping one of her eyes. ‘Who?’

Jessica held up the letter and pointed to the name. ‘Glenn Harrison. This letter was for him, you put it in a pile with the other junk mail.’

Deborah blinked furiously. ‘Oh yes. It’s a bit of an odd story. When we first moved into our old house when we were married, we kept getting mail for this “Glenn
Harrison” person. We assumed he lived there before us but there was no forwarding address and the house was sold at auction. We kept loads for about a year but ended up throwing them all away
eventually. What we started to do was that whenever we had to sign up for something where you knew you’d end up getting junk mail or phone calls, we gave the name “Glenn
Harrison”. That way, if we got a letter for him, we knew it could go in the bin. We’d have all these companies calling up wanting to talk to “Mr Harrison”. It was only for
stupid things, not bills or anything like that.’

‘Why would he still be getting letters here?’

Deborah shrugged. ‘I don’t know. When we divorced, we sold the place and got separate mortgages. I guess Ian did a similar thing with the name and his new address? I’ve picked
up one or two in the past when I’ve been looking after his house. It’s like that all the time now with junk mail and phone calls, especially if you do anything online. I do these survey
things on the Internet for a bit of extra money but they’re all for “Glenda Harrison”. It was just a little joke we had between us.’

Jessica nodded. ‘Can you wait here for a bit? I have to make a call.’ Without waiting for Deborah to ask anything else, she walked through to the living room, closing the door before
handing Rowlands the letter and pointing to the name.

His open mouth said it all. ‘Wow.’

‘Did you find anything on the other phone?’

‘I didn’t really look.’

Jessica nodded. ‘Call the station. We’re going to have to get people here to search the rest of the house plus experts to take the phones away and any laptop he might have.
Someone’s going to have to take Deborah in too, if only to question her about her husband.’

The constable realised the implication. ‘Where are you going?’

‘To the allotment.’

‘Didn’t they already check it over?’

‘I want to see it again for myself. There was a text message about it. I think Benjamin was working with someone and they took Isaac to the shed. Make sure forensics take that phone. We
need to get the number traced.’

The constable looked back at Jessica nodding, then it dawned on him. ‘But we came in my car . . .’ He tailed off as Jessica raised her eyebrows expectantly. ‘Seriously? But
you’re a dreadful driver,’ he pointed out.

‘I am not. That’s a myth, largely spread by you.’

‘You’re really going to take my car?’

‘Look at it this way, if you get it back in one piece, you haven’t lost anything. If I crash it then you were right all along. Either way, you win.’

Rowlands reached into his pockets. ‘I win if you crash my car?’

‘Yes.’

Jessica held her hand out and the constable placed his car keys in it. She pocketed them.

‘Cheers, Dave. Is there a torch in your car?’

‘In the boot. I started keeping one in there after we went to the allotment the last time and it was getting dark. Why?’

‘Why do you think? Because it’s dark.’ Rowlands groaned. Jessica was about to leave before she turned back. ‘Don’t tell anyone where I’ve gone until they get
here. I want a head-start.’

It took Jessica some time to finish sliding the seat forward and adjusting the mirrors before she could leave but she took extra care driving across the city back to the
allotment. She was hampered because the levers for the windscreen wipers and indicators were on the opposite side in her vehicle. Each time she tried to indicate, she sent the wipers flying across
the window at full speed, then tried to correct things while steering at the same time. Other than that and the annoyance of the roaring exhaust her colleague had purposefully had fitted at some
point, the rest of the journey was quite smooth, even though she heard on the radio that part of the M60 had been closed, with traffic standing still on the opposite side of the road as she drove
along Stockport Road.

Jessica had to go via the station first to collect the key for the allotment shed but she knew anyone important would already be on the way to Benjamin Sturgess’s house so there would be
no one around to question her.

Jessica remembered the route to the allotments from the previous time, parking outside the metal gate. She walked to the back of the vehicle and fumbled in the dark, using the light from her
phone as she struggled to unlock the boot. It took a while before she realised the handle she had to pull to open it was actually what she’d assumed was simply the manufacturer’s logo.
Jessica was relieved to see the torch Dave mentioned was something suitable: heavy with a wide white beam which lit up the entirety of the boot.

She locked the car and swung around to face the gate. It wasn’t that high but the beam from the torch showed a strong-looking padlock fastened to one side. Jessica climbed the gate and
landed with a splash on the other side. She could feel water flowing over the top of her shoes into her socks and winced as she shone the light down to see her foot had gone straight through the
top of a lightly iced patch of water into a brownish puddle. Jessica stepped steadily out of the water but the squelching sound made her cringe a second time as she walked slowly along the edge of
the plots towards where she knew number sixty-one was.

She could feel a breeze blowing sideways across the open land and, having not expected to spend the final part of the day somewhere like this, she could feel her teeth chattering in the cold
December air. Even as a rational adult, Jessica struggled not to think of what was in the dark while she walked. The combination of the wind, the temperature, the night and the noises that came
with it felt creepy in a way she knew it shouldn’t. She could feel her sodden sock sliding forward in her shoe with every step but tried to ignore it as she reached the turn where she knew
the path led to plot sixty-one.

Jessica had not been back to the allotment since finding the list. After that, a handful of officers had investigated the site and she could see the plot of land next to the shed had been
thoroughly excavated. Mounds of dirt were placed at the side, crystallised by the frost. She headed straight to the shed, taking the key she had signed out of the evidence store and putting it into
the lock. Jessica had seen the reports of the team finding nothing of interest at the site. There was certainly nothing buried in the immediate area, while, exactly as Izzy had pointed out at the
time, the interior was strangely empty.

Jessica unlocked the door and stepped inside, closing it behind her. It wasn’t that much warmer on the inside but the wooden walls offered some protection from the wind. She shone the
light slowly from side to side, not knowing what to expect. The text message had told her Benjamin had communicated with someone about this place on the same day Isaac went missing, leaving her to
wonder if there was something obvious they had all missed. Apart from some dried muddy footprints, the shed looked much the same as it had before. The table and decrepit chair were in the same
place but the gas canister and stove had been taken, presumably by the officers who searched the place.

Jessica re-examined the desk where she had found the list but it was empty. Foam was still coming out of the rips in the chair and she pushed her hands into the material to see if it contained
anything further. More foam squeezed out of the sides but there was nothing else. Jessica thought about the wording of the text message.

‘Will wait til its dark then meet you at the shed’.

Could it have referred to a different shed? She knew Benjamin was the same Ian Sturgess who Harry had been told had a close relationship with Toby Whittaker. He also used the name Glenn
Harrison, meaning the cases of both missing boys could be connected to the place where she was standing. Surely this was the place he meant?

Her thoughts were interrupted by her phone ringing. Jessica took it out of her pocket and saw Cole’s name on the display. As soon as she had made the decision to visit Benjamin
Sturgess’s house without calling in, she knew there would come a time when someone would want to shout at her. As good as her relationship was with her colleagues, there was always the odd
occasion where she knew she had overstepped the boundaries. She had spent the past few hours allowing herself to be driven by her own determination to know what was going on, as opposed to the
commitment she knew she should be showing to the job.

Aside from the torch, the illuminated phone screen was the only source of light in the room. Jessica watched Cole’s name flash on and off before finally staying off. She pocketed the
device and closed her eyes, listening to the wind buffeting the outside of the building.

Jessica opened her eyelids as the chill went through her. She put the torch down in the corner of the room and peered around, wondering what she was missing. If this was where Isaac had been
brought, surely someone would have heard him? He could have been drugged but unless he was either watched the entire time, or restrained in some other way, there would have been too great a chance
of him being discovered. The allotment wasn’t quite a metropolitan hub of people but there was a steady enough stream to notice if something was different – or hear somebody either
calling out or struggling. Jessica thought that if you were going to kidnap a child and keep him somewhere, there would be so many better options than here. In a city that had been built and
developed over centuries, there were all sorts of hideaways where people could disappear.