DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (7 page)

Rachel looked at her watch. ‘We should probably head back but it’s been good catching up. It’s just a shame we’re both so busy all the time plus, give it a week, and
it’ll be dark at this time so no more park after school.’

Although it was time to leave, neither of the women moved as they watched their children contently kicking the ball around. Aside from some older teenagers standing around smoking at the far end
of the grass, the park was deserted, the boys’ laughs echoing around.

‘Right, it really is time to go,’ Rachel said, getting up. She shouted to the boys: ‘Marcus, Lloyd, come on now.’ The younger son turned but, as he did, his brother was
in the process of kicking the ball to him. It skimmed through the air, smashing into Lloyd’s face as he spun back, sending him falling.

Rachel saw the incident unfold in slow motion and dashed towards her youngest. He was sitting on the muddy grass holding his nose, his eyes wide, his face a mixture of blood and soil. Marcus
dashed across. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to.’ Rachel felt a little in shock herself as the other boys and Diane joined them.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked. For a moment it looked as if Lloyd was about to cry but then he took his hands away from his face and smiled widely, blood dripping from his top lip
to the bottom.

‘Quick, get a photo on your phone,’ he said to his mother. ‘This is well cool.’

Rachel looked back at him with a mixture of puzzlement and sympathy. ‘Doesn’t it hurt?’

‘Yeah, but get a picture first, I want to show everyone at school. David Baker reckons he fell off a rollercoaster once and landed on his head. He reckoned there was blood everywhere but I
think he’s making it up. I bet this looks well good.’

As the boy’s mother reluctantly took her phone out of her bag she failed to notice the silhouetted figure standing close to the park gates.

The person squinted into the distance wondering what exactly had happened to Lloyd Corless to make everyone run over to him. Whatever it was, it wouldn’t be long before he and his mother
were parted.

Jessica tilted her head to a slightly downward angle and tried not to launch into a volley of swear words. She had recently become a lot better at holding her tongue and was
making a conscious effort not to lose her temper as often. As she tried to smile, she thought that if there was one person who deserved to be greeted by a string of bad language, it was the
photographer standing in front of her who wouldn’t stop saying ‘smile’.

Jessica knew that anything to do with making the force look good was taken very seriously by people working for the police who weren’t actually officers. As such it shouldn’t really
have been a surprise that the press office had hired a professional photographer to take new pictures for the website relaunch. But it would have been a surprise to the photographer and on-looking
chief press officer if Jessica had picked up the man’s tripod and found a creative way to shut him up. A few potential methods had certainly occurred to her.

The photographer was tall and lanky with spiky black hair and was possibly the most enthusiastic person Jessica had ever had the misfortune of meeting. She was on her way out of the station when
Cole told her to have her picture taken before she left. The man had set himself up with his camera in the ridiculously named Longsight Press Pad, which was the room where the force held media
briefings. He seemed utterly oblivious to the fact Jessica had work to do and had no pretensions of wanting to be a model. She thought it would be a quick glance at the camera and then she would be
on her way. Instead, the photographer had perched her on the edge of a desk and was trying to get her to twist her head to the side and smile. Jessica thought she
was
smiling but,
apparently, whatever look she was giving wasn’t good enough.

‘That’s brilliant,’ the photographer said as his camera flash went off again. ‘Right, a couple more. Look down a bit, please.’ Jessica tilted her head once more.
‘No, further down,’ the photographer added.

‘I
am
looking down.’

‘No, tilt your head down then look up.’

‘I thought you wanted me to look down?’

‘No, angle down, eyes up.’

Part of Jessica’s job involved trying to get into the minds of criminals and finding out why they did what they did. As she tried to force another smile, she thought the unrelenting
cheerfulness in the photographer’s voice went some way to helping her understand what could make a person turn to violence. If anyone was unfortunate enough to share a house with this man and
ended up smacking him in his gormless, grinning face, she thought a plea of temporary insanity would be a very easy sell for a solicitor.

‘Right, that’s brilliant,’ the photographer announced, finally lowering the camera. Jessica didn’t give him an opportunity to add a ‘Let’s just try this . .
.’ before standing and storming past him out of the room.

Jessica was well aware she had always been short-tempered. She could remember being a child and her mother telling her to ‘count to ten’. The problem was she would get to two,
occasionally three, and be too frustrated to get anywhere near ten. She knew there was undoubtedly a psychologist, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, or some other person who stuck the letter
‘p’ randomly at the beginning of their title who was waiting to pick her apart one day. She figured the more time she spent around joyful photographers, the sooner that day would
come.

Jessica stomped through reception and headed out of the station towards her car, her mood not improving as yet again it had begun to drizzle and she had again forgotten to bring a jacket. She
dashed across the car park and struggled to unlock her car before finally hurling herself onto the driver’s seat and slamming the door. She took a deep breath – another piece of advice
from her mother about keeping cool – and realised that a lot of her annoyance was down to the fact she hadn’t been looking forward to the day anyway.

Cole had called her the previous evening to say that Isaac Hutchings’s mother had asked if she could speak to the person who found her son’s body. In policing terms there was no
particular need for Jessica to visit her because other officers had been dealing with the initial missing child aspect of the case, and a support officer would also be assigned. The woman had given
several statements and certainly wasn’t a suspect. Despite all of that – and even after the chief inspector said it was her call – there was no way Jessica was going to deny a
grieving mother such a simple request.

That didn’t mean she was looking forward to it.

Everyone in the force had experience of breaking bad news or dealing with people coping with extreme situations but there was no textbook to predict how a mother who had just lost a child would
react.

Izzy was still in the process of looking through unsolved cases. The task was complicated because a computer system upgrade a few years previously had copied some files but not others.
Everything was a mix of digital information and actual paper trails. After Cole’s call the previous evening, Jessica thought about taking Izzy with her to see Isaac’s mother but figured
it would be pretty insensitive given her friend was pregnant. Not to mention it would be for Jessica’s own indulgence when the officer would be better employed going over the old files.

Jessica drove through the rain to the address she had printed off. The Hutchingses’ house was pretty similar to the one Daisy Peters was renting a few miles away. Isaac’s mother was
obviously expecting Jessica and invited her straight into their living room before introducing herself as Kayla and offering the obligatory cup of tea.

Jessica had read the Isaac Hutchings file thoroughly and knew his mother was only thirty-four, the same age as she was. As well as Isaac, she had a daughter, Jenny, who was thirteen. As Kayla
brought in two mugs of tea and placed them on a coffee table, Jessica thought she would have struggled to guess the woman’s age if she hadn’t known. The greasy unwashed black hair and
sallow skin colouring, coupled with dark bags under her eyes, made her look comfortably into her forties. Jessica was well aware it was almost impossible for someone childless, as she was, to
understand what the woman in front of her had gone through.

Kayla sat on the brown sofa next to Jessica and offered a weary smile. ‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘The person I spoke with said they didn’t know if they would be able
to arrange it . . .’

Jessica shuffled in her seat, uncomfortable at meeting the woman’s stare. ‘It’s not a problem. What would you like to know?’

Kayla stumbled over her words. ‘I . . . I don’t know really. They’ve not let us have the body back yet so we can’t even plan the funeral. My husband, Mike, went back to
work yesterday. I didn’t want him to but I think he just felt trapped in here . . .’

She indicated towards a selection of photographs pinned on the wall. Jessica had noticed them as soon as she entered the living room. They showed various shots of Isaac and his sister playing,
as well as group pictures of the parents with their children. Kayla tailed off before beginning to speak again. ‘I think I just wanted to hear what he was like when you found him.’

It was the question Jessica had expected but was dreading. She tried to choose her words carefully. ‘Mrs Hutchings, I . . .’

‘Kayla.’

‘Sorry, Kayla, I’m not really sure what I can tell you. You identified the body . . .’

‘I know but what was he like when you found him? I know he was in a car.’

Jessica had a tough decision to make. There were no rules she had to follow regarding disclosure of information, so she was free to tell the woman from that point of view – but it was
always a balancing act of whether the information would cause too much emotional distress. Jessica glanced up and caught the woman’s pleading eyes, which made her mind up for her.

‘He was wrapped up in some sort of sheeting in the car boot when I found him. I didn’t really look at him too much after that.’

‘Did he look . . . okay?’

Sometimes people would only give a quick glance when identifying a body, not wishing to prolong their agony. She would have been told there was no sexual element to the disappearance but that
would likely offer only a tiny amount of comfort. It was a hard question to answer. Jessica genuinely hadn’t seen that much of the boy after cutting him free.

‘He looked peaceful. His eyes were closed.’

It was about as much reassurance as Jessica could manage.

Kayla nodded, wiping around her eyes, although she wasn’t obviously crying. ‘Thanks.’ She sniffed, then continued. ‘Do you know how he disappeared?’

‘I read the file.’

Kayla nodded again but seemed keen to tell her story. ‘Everyone keeps saying, “It’s not your fault”, but it’s shit. They’re just words. I know it’s down
to me. Mike blames me and he’s right.’

‘I don’t think it’s your fault, Kayla.’

The woman offered a small shrug of her shoulders. ‘The other officers talked me through everything and I saw the CCTV footage. He was walking home from school the same way he always did. I
would pick him up if it was raining and I keep thinking, what if it
was
raining? I mean it rains up here all the bloody time, doesn’t it? It’s always pissing down but, on the
one day it would actually have helped, it was dry.’

Isaac had disappeared on his way back from school. Camera footage was limited but they had images of him on a device placed outside a newsagent’s on his route home. The next time he would
have been spotted was four hundred metres away on a traffic camera but by then he was gone. Cars going into and out of the area had been checked with no clues and there were apparently no witnesses
to anything. It was as if he had simply vanished.

Jessica was struggling to know what to say and beginning to wish she had brought someone else with her but Kayla broke the awkward silence.

‘I’ve still got his Christmas present upstairs,’ she said. ‘He wanted that new games console thing. Mike went to the city centre and waited in a queue at midnight when it
first came out because everyone was saying they’d sell out straight away. It’s wrapped up under our bed. I guess when he first disappeared I just thought he’d be back in time to
have it.’

Jessica was becoming more and more uncomfortable. She tried to say something reassuring but Kayla spoke again, this time in a slightly harsher tone. ‘No one’s told me anything. I had
someone asking me questions about a football kit, then something about a car. All everyone ever says is that they’ll keep me up to date with developments. I’ve had to keep Jenny off
school because of the other kids. She’s only thirteen . . .’

Kayla tailed off again and this time there were definitely tears. She reached forward and took a tissue from the coffee table, blowing her nose loudly.

Jessica was trying to see both sides. The woman would obviously want to know who had taken her son and why but, if she had too much information which she then revealed either to the media or her
relatives, it could end up harming the investigation. Although the press had reported on the car crash, some of the most important details had been kept back, largely because they didn’t
really know what the dead driver looked like. They hadn’t had anything back from the woodland dig, the clothes they had found or the allotment connection either.

At some point the media would be brought in but it wouldn’t do any good if they released all of the information in one go because they didn’t yet know if it all linked together.
Jessica had seen the media used in a bad way a few years previously when one murder completely unconnected to a serial killer was assumed to have been done by him. The resulting coverage had
created big problems for both investigations and she was glad people had learned their lessons.

Almost as if on cue following Kayla’s outburst, Jessica heard a voice coming from somewhere just outside the room. ‘Mum?’

A girl with straight blonde hair down to her shoulders walked in. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a tight wool jumper. She eyed Jessica suspiciously but barely got into the room before Kayla
turned around and spoke sternly. ‘Jen, I told you to wait upstairs.’