Thicker Than Water (10 page)

He looked at Jessica specifically as he spoke. ‘Have you heard of Nicholas Long?’

Some local criminals were notorious, their faces and names known to pretty much everyone in uniform, but this wasn’t a name that instantly rang any bells for Jessica. ‘He sounds
familiar,’ she replied, not knowing if it was because he was some sort of crook she should recognise, or if he was someone else semi-famous.

Cole held up an enlarged photograph for them to see. It showed a man somewhere in his early fifties smoking a cigar, grinning broadly. His skin was rubbery, his cheeks red and sagging, and his
forehead covered in wrinkles, with strands of hair combed across his scalp in a way that fooled nobody.

Jessica shook her head slowly. ‘I’ve definitely seen him before . . .’

‘He’s a little before your time,’ Cole said. ‘Nicholas Long is a businessman in the strictest sense of the word. He currently runs a club in the city centre but
that’s a vast scaling back of his operations. Twenty years ago, he ran the casino that both Kayleigh Pritchard and Eleanor James, now Eleanor Sexton, worked at. In between times he has run
various businesses, including employment agencies, pubs, and a snooker club.’

‘What type of club does he run now?’ Cornish asked.

‘It’s a gentlemen’s establishment,’ the chief inspector said, raising his eyebrows towards Jessica, who didn’t know why he simply didn’t call it a
‘strip club’.

Jessica was beginning to fill in the gaps but didn’t interrupt as Cole spelled it out. ‘Throughout all of this time, he’s been suspected of various criminal offences, drugs
being the main one, but prostitution and people-trafficking as well. They’ve been trying to pin illegal weapon possession on him for some time but have never been able to find anything. Apart
from GBH charges when he was a teenager, he’s somehow managed to keep a clean record. To all intents and purposes, he is a legitimate above-board businessman.’

He paused as if waiting for the question that didn’t come, then flicked through the file and took out another sheaf of papers. ‘What he may not know, although I suspect he does, is
that the Serious Crime Division have been looking into him for the past two years. They’ve been checking his books and employment records.’ He fixed Jessica with a stare. ‘This
means that we have to tread very carefully indeed.’

Jessica broke the gaze and looked towards Izzy. ‘Have we got anything else on him?’

The constable glanced sideways at their supervisor for assurance before referring to her own notes. ‘Nicholas Long is fifty-five years old and is married to Tia Long.’ She held up a
photo of a young woman with tanned perfect skin and flowing dark hair. She couldn’t have been any older than thirty at the most.

‘I wonder what attracted her,’ Jessica said.

‘He has a teenage son, also called Nicholas, with a former wife called Ruby. He comes from Moss Side where our records are a little sketchy. What is clear is that he does still have some
sort of high respect in the area.’

She passed across a photocopy of a newspaper article from a few years ago with Nicholas Long standing outside a building grinning at the camera. Jessica skimmed the first few paragraphs before
handing the page to DS Cornish.

‘As well as the boxing club he paid for mentioned in that article,’ Izzy added, ‘he also owns one of the main pubs in the area plus paid for recent renovations to a community
centre on the estate.’

‘He can’t live there, though?’ Jessica queried, knowing that a man who had that kind of wealth would probably not choose to reside in one of the most deprived areas of the city
– even if he was seemingly happy to spend money there.

Izzy shook her head. ‘He’s got a few properties but the main one seems to be a bit further south, close to the golf course in Didsbury.’

‘Nice area,’ Jessica said.

‘Clearly things are very sensitive,’ Cole said. ‘I spoke to the superintendent and the SCD yesterday and everyone is keen for us not to do anything that may interfere with
their investigation. They are looking into things like the boxing club as they figure it was a way to siphon away illegitimate money he may have made and then create something that makes that cash
harder to find – and makes him a sort of hero at the same time. This guy is not stupid.’

Jessica knew he was talking directly to her, even though he had been subtle enough to look at all three of them while speaking.

‘What would you like me to do?’ Jessica asked, refusing to take the bait.

The chief inspector picked up his pen and started drumming it on the table. She could tell he wished DI Reynolds was around. ‘You can go speak to him to find out if he knows either of the
two women who used to work for him, just . . . be careful with it.’

Jessica nodded as her supervisor gave them a brief rundown of what else would be going on, then sent them on their way. He and DS Cornish would lead the main briefing downstairs, leaving Jessica
clear.

Izzy and Jessica descended the stairs together. ‘Are you going to go on your own?’ the constable asked.

‘I’m going to grab Dave and force the moody git to smile at least once.’

‘I’ll call you if I find out anything but our records are awful when we start going back that far.’

As they reached the bottom they paused before heading off in different directions.

‘What are you going to do?’ Izzy added, quietly enough so that only Jessica could hear.

Jessica didn’t hesitate in her reply. ‘What I always do – go piss someone off.’

Despite being told by her boss to take a week off, Kayleigh desperately wanted to go back to work. The back door had been fixed and the police officers had finished whatever
they were doing, generally getting in the way. Although she had never minded living alone, now she felt trapped in a house that no longer seemed like hers.

Kayleigh lay in bed staring at the flaking paint on the ceiling, wondering if whoever had dumped the body in her bath had entered her bedroom. Had they looked themselves up and down in her
full-length mirror? Had they gone through her things? Was it someone she knew? She closed her eyes tightly and focused on her breathing, remembering the yoga classes she had gone to and wanting to
believe that it would help calm her enough to make everything go away. Of course it wouldn’t: you spent so much time thinking that you weren’t breathing correctly that focusing on
anything other than your breathing was impossible.

In the days since her find, Kayleigh’s friends had offered her rooms to stay in but, although she had been tempted, it also felt like to accept would have been giving in. That didn’t
make her feel any more comfortable in the house, however. It was easy to show bravado on the phone, not quite so simple in an empty home when everything was dark and quiet outside. Kayleigh
hadn’t been scared of the dark since she was a child, when she would jump at the pipes clanging around her parents’ old house, or worry about what might be in her wardrobe. Since
finding Oliver’s body, she had slept with the light on every night, struggling to drift off and instead dozing in twenty-minute bursts which made her feel more tired than if she had simply
stayed awake.

The outside sounds didn’t help either. In an area where people worked shifts and others arrived home in the early hours from the pub, there was frequently some sort of noise in the
vicinity. Kayleigh would strain her ears, trying to hear if anyone sounded close to her front door.

Feeling more tired than she had when she went to bed, Kayleigh rubbed her stinging eyes. One part of her wanted to spend the day trying to sleep but the other was urging her to get out and do
something.

Forcing herself to clamber out of bed, she ran a hand through her greasy and lifeless hair. She stepped close to the mirror, staring into her eyes, before examining the skin on her face which
looked pale and puffy. With a sigh, she took off her nightie and picked up yesterday’s clothes from the floor. The effort of hunting through her wardrobe, where the intruder might have
touched the contents, felt like too much to deal with. Shivering slightly as she finished dressing, Kayleigh turned and left the room without a final look in the mirror.

Despite the window having been fixed, Kayleigh’s kitchen still seemed cold, even when she kept the central heating on. She stifled another shiver while opening the fridge, the bright white
light hurting her eyes. Although she didn’t feel hungry, Kayleigh had been forcing herself to eat in the mornings in an effort to try to keep some sort of routine going. As she hadn’t
left the house in days, the fridge was looking decidedly empty, with only a dribble at the bottom of the milk bottle and a few salad items that could barely make a snack between them, let alone a
proper breakfast. Who wanted green stuff at a time like this anyway? If ever there was a time where you could feel justified in polishing off a packet of muffins, this was surely it.

Because she worked in a supermarket, Kayleigh was used to picking up whatever she needed at the end of her shift, and so actually going food shopping was something she had only done once or
twice in the past year.

Kayleigh first checked the back door was locked, even though she had done it the night before, and then walked around the ground floor, ensuring each of the windows was also secure. Twist one
way, then the other. Rattle, rattle. Tug it, push it. Definitely closed.

After going back upstairs to take her house keys out of the bedside cabinet, she re-checked each possible point of entry a second time, before hunting through the cupboard under the stairs to
find her warmest coat.

As she left the house, Kayleigh locked the door, lifting the handle half-a-dozen times before finally admitting to herself that it was secure. She knew she was becoming obsessed but that
didn’t mean she could stop herself. If she had been that conscientious before, the events of the past week might never have happened.

Kayleigh turned, surveying the street in front of her. Although she had lived there for a few years, it now seemed alien. A woman pushed a buggy along the pavement at the end of her pathway,
which somehow made her want to go back into the house. Her enthusiasm to get back to work feeling misplaced, she wondered if the person with the buggy might be connected to whatever had gone on.
Perhaps they used the buggy to keep stolen goods in and now they were coming back to re-examine the scene? It was the perfect cover.

Taking deep breaths to calm down, Kayleigh slowly assured herself it was simply someone on their way home from dropping their children off at school.

She breathed in through her nose, focusing on letting the air out through her mouth. Maybe those yoga classes weren’t so bad after all? When that seemed to work, Kayleigh walked to the end
of her drive before setting off towards the local shop. Each time anyone passed her on the pavement, she felt edgy and kept her hands firmly in the pockets of her coat. It only took her five
minutes to make the journey to the main road, where there was an express version of a supermarket. She bought bread, milk and some fruit, ignoring the worker’s small talk, avoiding the allure
of the cakes, biscuits and chocolate, and quickly exiting. As someone who worked in a similar environment, Kayleigh felt guilty about snubbing the checkout girl as she always hated it when
customers refused to talk to her. Some of them wouldn’t even look at her, presumably thinking they were too good to be interacting with someone who worked in a supermarket.

As she walked through the sliding doors at the front of the shop, she jumped as a man reached out and touched her on the arm.

If she hadn’t been so shocked, she would have yelped but he spoke before she could say anything. ‘Do you know the time?’

Kayleigh stumbled over a reply but he continued. ‘My phone’s out of battery and there are no clocks anywhere. I’m supposed to be going for an interview but I don’t know
where it is. My bus was late and now I think I’m late.’

Kayleigh noticed the shoulders on the man’s suit were far too big for him and he was nervously glancing from side to side. He was at least six inches taller than her and smelled of cheap
aftershave, like one of her ex-boyfriends. The one who ‘stayed late’ at work a lot. Kayleigh struggled to speak and he offered a ‘sorry’ before entering the shop. She
didn’t know if it was her expression or his haste which had made him walk away.

Realising she could feel her heart beating hard, Kayleigh turned and walked back the way she had come, keeping her head down and moving as quickly as she could without breaking into a run. As
she reached her front door, she half expected it to be open and tried the handle before digging into her pocket to take out the key. She almost fell inside, shoving the door with a bang behind her,
and leaning against the inside of the frame trying to catch her breath.

Kayleigh scanned the hallway, looking to see if everything was as it had been when she had left. It took a while but after convincing herself no one had been in the house during her absence, she
crept through to the kitchen and put the shopping bag on the floor before peering through the window to see if anything in the back garden was out of place. She hated the feelings of unease but
could not stop herself and wondered how long it would be before she could leave the house without double-checking every door and window. Or how long it would be before she could see a stranger
without thinking they might be out to harm her.

As someone who had previously been confident and relatively outgoing, Kayleigh hated the person she knew she was becoming, detesting even more the person who had put her in this position by
breaking into her house.

Resolving that the best way to start pulling herself together was to clean herself up a bit, Kayleigh put the shopping away and made her way upstairs to the bedroom where she picked up a fresh
towel. She knew the reason she hadn’t been keeping on top of things was because she dreaded going into the bathroom. The police team had spent days testing everything and taking samples but
she couldn’t see past finding Oliver’s distorted body.