Thicker Than Water (5 page)

‘Yes, Ian. I’ll take you up to meet him.’

Garry shuffled nervously in his seat, so Jessica spoke the words for him. ‘He’s Sebastian’s replacement.’

‘Yes.’

Sebastian was a journalist who had become too involved with his stories, creating incidents to report on and then getting carried away.

Jessica thought Garry was going to apologise so she stood before he had the opportunity, reaching into her pocket and dropping a few pound coins onto the saucer next to the espresso cup.
‘I’ll get this but I’m taking that paper. Let’s go.’

The offices of the
Morning Herald
were only a few hundred metres away from the cafe. Garry used a security pass to swipe them through the front door and they headed
for the lifts. They were in one of the tallest buildings in the city and, while Jessica knew that was where the paper was based, she had never visited before.

‘Impressive,’ she said, examining the various company names on the walls before the lift doors opened with a hum.

‘We’re only on one of the floors. It used to be two but they crammed us all into one to save on rent. You won’t think it’s that impressive when we get up
there.’

Garry wasn’t wrong about that. As modern as the building seemed, the floor he worked on looked as if a paper-bomb had gone off on it. Entire rainforests had been sacrificed, simply so the
office could be covered by an apparently endless onslaught of rubbish. As soon as she stepped out of the door, her eyes were assaulted by the clutter. Boxes of white printer paper were stacked
immediately on her right, next to a whirring photocopier. On her left, there was a wall filled with framed newspapers. At one point they would have been neat and lavish, but the frames were hanging
at awkward angles and two of them were cracked. Ahead of her was a mass of desks, each with a computer and seemingly another stack or two of paper. Jessica wasn’t tidy herself but this was
taking things to a new level.

They walked side by side, Jessica following Garry’s lead as he weaved through a bank of desks towards the far side of the room. ‘Why is it so messy?’ she asked.

‘No idea. It’s always been like this.’

Although it wasn’t overwhelming, there was a hum of noise; a mixture of fingers tapping at keyboards and journalists chatting either to each other or on the phone.

They soon reached a glass-walled office with ‘Garry Ashford, News Editor’ written on the door. In other circumstances, that might have been impressive but the impact was dampened by
the fact it had been printed on a sheet of A4 paper and Blu-Tacked to the glass. Garry held the door open for her and then closed it once they were both inside.

‘It’s not that funny,’ he said as Jessica made no attempt to stifle her giggles.

‘That is the shittiest sign I have ever seen.’

‘Someone’s coming to do it properly,’ Garry insisted.

‘Still can’t spell your own name, either.’

Garry walked around the desk and sat as Jessica took the chair across from him. From what she could tell, Garry’s office was one of the few clutter-free spaces on the floor. The walls were
a faded yellow and clearly hadn’t been decorated in a while but his desk was clear except for a computer. The only other piece of furniture was a filing cabinet in the corner.

‘I don’t even use that,’ Garry said, indicating the cabinet as he noticed Jessica looking at it.

‘How come you get your own office?’

‘Dunno really. The news editor has always had one, so I ended up inheriting it when I got the job. I spend most of my time on the floor anyway.’

‘Where’s this Ian guy?’

‘I’ll get him but, if you’re going to shout, just remember these glass walls aren’t that thick.’

‘Why would I be shouting at him?’

‘You’ve not met him yet . . .’

‘Why are you so convinced I won’t like him?’

Garry grinned knowingly. ‘Let’s just say I don’t think he’s your type. His dad is on the board of directors, which is why we had to hire him. He’s not as bad as I
thought he might be but . . . well, you’ll see.’ He stood and walked back towards the door.

Jessica might not have met him but she knew exactly what Garry was warning her about when he returned a few minutes later with a man who looked as if he had somehow been created solely to annoy
her. Ian walked with a swagger that he had neither the looks nor natural charisma to pull off. As he offered his hand for Jessica to shake, he eyed her up and down, before offering a posh-sounding:
‘I didn’t realise police officers could be so attractive.’

If Jessica could have summed him up in one word, it would be ‘floppy’. He had light brown hair with a blonde tint, which Jessica guessed was artificial, that was parted along the
centre and then drooped bouncily on either side. His face was slightly shiny, as if he had spent his lunch-break moisturising, and he wore a suit which was probably more expensive than any single
piece of equipment in the room.

Jessica rolled her eyes and accepted his handshake, refusing to grimace as he deliberately squeezed tightly and smiled. ‘You must be Ian,’ she said, sitting back in the chair.

The man perched on the edge of Garry’s desk, so that he was peering down at her. Garry said he would leave them to it, suppressing a smile as he left the room and closing the door behind
him.

‘I am, what’s your name?’

‘Detective Sergeant Daniel.’

‘Do you have a first name?’

Ian was smiling in what Jessica guessed he thought was an appealing way. In reality, it made his face seem crooked, his pointed nose angled to the side and his too-thin lips slanted into what
was closer to a sneer.

‘Do you want to take a seat?’ Jessica said, ignoring his request and indicating Garry’s chair.

Ian slid off the desk, walking around it before sitting down with his legs splayed wide.

Jessica could feel her patience being pushed. He had that smug look about him, like he’d eaten the last of the biscuits and didn’t care that anyone knew. ‘I understand it was
you who took the phone call for the death announcement relating to Oliver Gordon?’

‘Indeed.’

The fact he couldn’t even answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a yes or no question was infuriating. She asked him to elaborate on exactly what the job entailed although, from
the way he described it, working on the births, deaths and marriages page was somehow equivalent to an undercover journalistic operation that was exposing corruption at the heart of government.
Seemingly, without him, the paper would come crashing down.

Jessica eventually steered the conversation around to the information she needed. She wondered if Garry had told her not to shout at Ian specifically because he knew she would be desperate to
after spending five minutes alone with him.

‘Tell me about the caller,’ Jessica asked.

‘It was male,’ Ian said.

‘Older, younger?’

The man ran his hand through his hair. ‘I don’t remember completely but he definitely sounded like an adult.’

Jessica had taken one of the notepads from the top of the filing cabinet and was making notes. ‘So over thirty?’

‘Perhaps a bit younger.’

‘So are you saying it was a young adult, between eighteen and thirty?’

‘Maybe. He could have been older.’

Jessica realised she was pushing the pen into the pad with increasing pressure. ‘How much older?’

‘I’m not sure. Maybe between eighteen and fifty?’

Jessica bit into the skin on the inside of her mouth to stop herself swearing. ‘That’s a broad age range.’

Ian had leant back in the chair, resting his foot on the opposite knee. ‘I didn’t realise it would be relevant at the time. I only remembered the name because I had to ask the guy to
spell it out.’

‘You had to ask him how to spell Oliver?’

‘It might have had a double “L”.’

Jessica tried to suppress a sigh. ‘Fine, anyway, you asked the man how to spell it. And what did he sound like? Was he unhappy? Frustrated? In a hurry?’

Ian looked back blankly at her and Jessica realised she wasn’t going to get anything of use. Aside from the actual notice in the paper, the trip had been a waste of time. Although they
would be able to get the phone records through at some point, it didn’t necessarily mean it would give them any answers. Pre-pay mobile phones could be used without credit cards, so they
could be put in anyone’s name, while phone boxes, although rarer now, could still offer anonymity. Assuming whoever had called in the notice knew what they were doing, there wouldn’t be
an easy way to track it. Ian’s description had narrowed the person down to one gender but, given his lack of awareness of the age of the person involved, she wouldn’t be certain he had
got the sex right either.

Jessica tried again. ‘Do you remember anything other than the fact that it was a male who sounded somewhere between the ages of eighteen and fifty? Did you write the name down?’

Ian brushed his eyebrow with his finger, smoothing it. He clearly wasn’t interested in the rest of the conversation. ‘Sorry, I can’t recall.’

Jessica ripped the top page from the pad, although her notes consisted of little other than ‘18–50’, then ‘knob-head’ written in capital letters. She folded it over
and put it in her jacket pocket, then stood. She had been going to hand him a business card before thinking better of it. ‘If you remember anything else, ask Garry to give me a
call.’

Ian got out of the chair and put his hands in his pockets, standing with his hips thrust forward. ‘Are you not going to leave me your number?’

‘I’m not sure there’s anything more you can tell me.’

‘Maybe I could take it for non-professional reasons?’ Jessica couldn’t be sure but she thought Ian winked.

‘I’m all right, thanks.’

‘If you’re sure.’

Jessica opened the door and walked out before Ian could add anything else. Garry was standing a few desks away talking to one of the staff but she managed to catch his eye as she headed towards
the lift. He caught up with her as she pressed the button to go down. ‘You’ll need my pass to get out,’ he said.

‘How do you put up with that guy?’ Jessica replied.

The lift pinged into place and they both stepped inside. ‘I don’t really. I put him in a corner and let other people give him work. He’s only here because of his
dad.’

‘He’ll probably be running the place in eighteen months.’

‘Don’t even joke. Still, it was him who noticed the name match-up.’

‘At least he’s an observant idiot and not just an idiot.’

As the lift opened onto the ground floor, Jessica and Garry stepped outside. He used his card to swipe her through the security check and then waited by the door with her. ‘If he thinks of
anything else, I’ll drop you a line.’ After a short pause, he added: ‘What’s going on with this kid? Is he missing? Dead?’

‘Who are you asking as? Journalist or interested bystander?’

Garry grinned sheepishly. ‘A bit of both.’

‘I guess it doesn’t matter seeing as his parents have been on to you. Either way, he’s missing. We don’t know any more than that yet.’

‘What do you think?’

‘I think that if someone was calling your paper predicting his death a few days ago, then we have a pretty serious problem.’

Kayleigh Pritchard picked up the carrier bags from the foot well on the passenger’s side of her car. The handles strained as she lifted, the thin plastic vulnerable
against the weight of the groceries inside. She wondered what the point was of having ‘bags for life’ if she never remembered to take them out of her car boot. Instead, she was building
up an ever-larger collection of plastic bags in the cupboard underneath her sink, and the ones in her car certainly would last for life, seeing as she never used them. She carried the shopping to
her front door and put it on the doorstep while fumbling with her keys thinking, not for the first time, that she really should clear it out.

Because it rarely seemed to stop raining, her wooden front door was permanently swollen and always needed a hard shove.

Kayleigh practically fell over the threshold as she shouldered the door inwards and, after retrieving her bags, fought the door back into place before pausing for breath. The daily battle with
the door had been going on for a few years and wasn’t getting any easier.

She stifled a shiver as a draught breezed through her. Hoping she hadn’t left the bedroom window open again, Kayleigh carried her bags into the kitchen, where the actual reason became
obvious. As she entered, her eyes were drawn to the broken glass scattered across the floor. Kayleigh put her shopping down and tiptoed to the back door, careful to avoid the shards.

The bottom half of the back door was wooden but the top was made from translucent bobbled glass, which now had a jagged hole in the centre. Kayleigh stared at the keyhole and cursed herself for
being so lazy. Because she struggled to find her keys, she always left the back-door key in the lock. Kayleigh tried the handle to see if it would open, wincing as she heard glass splintering under
her shoes. The door required as much of a yank as the front one had, but the fact it was unlocked proved someone had smashed the glass and then used the key to open it. The key was still resting in
the keyhole.

Kayleigh pushed the door closed and leant against the fridge, closing her eyes in frustration. She remembered the previous time she had been broken into a few years ago, when she had carelessly
left a window open and gone out for the day. Back then, she had promised herself she would learn her lesson. Over time, she had simply become lazy, constantly misplacing keys, leaving curtains open
and, as was now apparent, carelessly leaving keys in locks. Although Ordsall didn’t have the best of reputations, Kayleigh had rarely experienced problems in the area since the initial
break-in.

Looking around the kitchen, apart from the glass, Kayleigh struggled to see anything that was out of place. She weaved around the glass and her shopping, making her way into the living room. She
didn’t own much of value but what she did have was in the main room of the house. Fully expecting to see the television gone, Kayleigh was surprised to see it on top of the cabinet exactly
where it had been that morning. Next to it was her stereo which, while not worth that much, would surely be worth taking if someone had broken in. As with the kitchen, Kayleigh could not see
anything out of place, with an empty glass still on the armrest of the sofa exactly where she had left it the previous evening. She stepped across to the cabinet underneath the television and
opened the drawer, taking out her laptop almost so she could believe it was still there.