Thicker Than Water (7 page)

‘I opened the window,’ Kayleigh said, holding the bathroom door open for them. ‘Your people took all sorts but it still smelled of . . .
it
.’ She spoke the final
word reluctantly, before adding: ‘He was in the bath.’

Jessica and Izzy entered but Kayleigh refused to move past the doorframe. As happened frequently, Jessica was struck by how normal everything appeared. There were rows of shampoo bottles on a
shelf next to the window and a green flannel in the shape of a frog was sitting on a shelf close to the shower head. Jessica could guess the curtain had been taken by the team but, if it
wasn’t for that and the faint odour she wished she didn’t recognise, she would not have known anything was untoward.

Jessica and Izzy went through the motions of checking around the enclosed area, although they knew the Scene of Crime team would have already done the same.

As they left the room, Kayleigh was leaning on the banisters at the top of the stairs, nervously biting her lip. ‘Are you all right?’ Izzy asked, placing a hand on the woman’s
arm.

Kayleigh stared straight into Jessica’s eyes. ‘How do you do this?’ she asked, before clarifying: ‘You can’t un-see things, can you?’

Jessica felt uncomfortable, as if the woman was asking something she had long not wanted to query herself. It was as true a thing as anyone could have said.

‘We have people you can talk to if you want,’ Jessica replied.

Kayleigh nodded but didn’t want to let it go there. ‘How do
you
cope though?’

Jessica could feel Izzy watching her too and suddenly felt self-conscious. She mumbled something about having ‘special training’, although she wasn’t convincing herself, let
alone anyone else. The truth was, you dealt with it in the only way you could: you got on with it. Some would use alcohol to help, others leant heavily on their partners. Jessica knew DCI Cole made
sure he didn’t take work home, instead protecting his family time as far as possible. Jessica’s own way was to immerse herself in work; it was all she knew.

They started to descend the stairs together, with Jessica at the rear. ‘Are you going to be all right here tonight?’ Jessica asked. ‘A support officer will stay with you for a
while but we should be able to help if you want to find somewhere else for the night.’

‘I’ll be okay,’ Kayleigh replied, leading them to the front door. She opened it, adding: ‘What happens now?’

‘We’ve got another stop-off, then we’re heading back to the station,’ Jessica said, taking a card from her jacket pocket and handing it over. ‘I’ll call you
later if you want. Feel free to contact me.’

Kayleigh turned the card over in her hands, smiling weakly.

‘Are we off to the Sextons?’ Izzy asked as she walked through the door. It was exactly where Jessica was planning to go but, before she could follow her colleague, she heard Kayleigh
begin to say something, before stopping herself.

‘Are you all right?’ Jessica asked.

Kayleigh smiled wearily. ‘Yes, it’s just I used to know someone with the last name Sexton.’

It dawned on Jessica that, although she had asked the woman if she knew Owen and Gabrielle, she hadn’t asked about the family whose house the body had disappeared from. ‘What was the
first name?’

She already knew the reply before it came.

‘I used to know an Ellie Sexton.’

Jessica knew there was no particular reason to have asked about the Sextons but was still annoyed with herself for not doing so. Izzy had stopped and turned and they both
realised they had been seconds away from missing something obvious.

‘How do you know Eleanor Sexton?’ Jessica asked.

Kayleigh seemed confused for a few moments, before it dawned on her who this was. ‘Ellie’s involved?’ she said, her eyes widening in surprise.

‘We can go through that at another time,’ Jessica replied. ‘We need to make sure we’re talking about the same person.’

Kayleigh said that Eleanor was married to someone called Cameron; she also knew the woman’s maiden name. ‘We used to work together,’ she added, waving the two women back into
the house and closing the door behind them. ‘It was years ago though.’

‘Can you remember how long?’ Jessica asked, leaning against the front door.

Kayleigh took the cue that Jessica was keen to get her answers and go, and didn’t move towards the living room. She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Maybe twenty, twenty-five
years back? A long time.’

Kayleigh was only forty-three, so that meant half a lifetime ago.

‘Where did you work?’

Jessica thought she saw the woman wince slightly but it could have been a shiver because of how cold it was. ‘There was this casino thing in the centre. It’s not there any more. We
worked on the floor, serving drinks and looking pretty, trying to get customers to stay for longer.’ She smiled wryly. ‘I was a bit younger back then.’

‘Were you good friends?’

‘I guess, I mean as close as you can be with work people. We didn’t hang around much outside of work but we got each other through the days.’

‘How long ago did you leave that job?’

Kayleigh sighed and started counting on her fingers. ‘I only worked there for around a year. I started when I was twenty-one, so I guess that’s twenty-one years?’ She looked
towards Jessica to check that her maths was correct.

‘Did you stay in contact much after that?’

She nodded. ‘Sort of. It wasn’t as easy back then of course, we didn’t have mobiles and computers and the like. I lived in this flat and didn’t have a phone, while she
was living with her parents. She would write me letters a couple of times a year but I was never very good with that kind of thing. We lived on opposite sides of the city but met for coffee once or
twice a year.’

‘Have you been in contact recently?’

‘No, we drifted apart. She started going out with Cameron and her priorities changed.’ Before anyone could speak, she quickly clarified her remark. ‘It wasn’t a problem,
I know these things go in cycles. Sometimes you’re really close, sometimes you grow apart.’

‘How long ago was that?’ Jessica asked.

‘Not long after they got married, so maybe ten years ago? I went to the evening thing but you know what it’s like; there are so many people around, you don’t get time to speak
to each other. We hadn’t really been friends for a few years and I think she only invited me because we’d once been close. The last time I saw her was on her wedding night.’ She
paused for a moment and then added: ‘Is she okay?’

Jessica nodded, wanting to offer reassurance without giving much away. ‘Why did you leave the casino?’

Kayleigh shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess it wasn’t what I wanted to do. It was only ever about the money – and even that wasn’t so good.’

‘Did you leave at the same time?’

Kayleigh stopped looking at her, instead glancing towards the wall and then the floor. ‘More or less. We’re both around the same age and wanted to do something else.’

‘Did you have another job lined up?’

‘Not at the time. I’ve done a few things since.’

‘You’ve not worked with Eleanor since, though?’

‘El-ea-nor . . .’ Kayleigh rolled the word around her tongue as if it felt uncomfortable. ‘She was always “Ellie” when I knew her . . .’ She tailed off before
remembering what she had been asked. ‘Sorry, no, we’ve not worked together since.’

Jessica nodded and took a few final details before reaching around to reopen the door. ‘Okay, well, if you think of anything else, don’t hesitate to get in contact.’

The two officers made their way back to the car in silence. Once the doors were closed, Izzy asked what they were going to do next.

Jessica didn’t know if she should defer upwards but could guess the response would be along the lines of getting on with things as there were no officers free. ‘I’ll take you
back to Longsight. There’s not much point in going to see Eleanor – Ellie – until we know some facts. Have a good look into this casino place, let’s find out who ran it and
why it shut down, then see if you can find anything else to link these two women together, or to Oliver or his family. Check Eleanor’s maiden name and see if anything else pops up through
that. Get Dave involved if you can stop him moping for five minutes. Call me if you find anything.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going off to be annoyed by teenage boys.’

Izzy seemed slightly confused but laughed anyway. ‘Fair enough.’ After a pause as if weighing up whether she should ask, she added: ‘Do you want to finish telling me what you
were going to say about there being another reason for you not taking Adam’s name?’

Jessica switched on the engine and kept her eyes facing the front. ‘Let’s go.’

Oliver had attended a private school in Worsley on the far west of the city. Jessica had to jump through a couple of hoops in order to be able to speak to the two main friends
his parents had told her about. First, she needed their parents’ permission, which had been granted on the condition any interview took place on school property. Because of that, she then had
to gain additional permission from the school. If either of the boys had been suspected of anything, it would have been far easier but Jessica was simply trying to get some background from
them.

As she drove onto the school’s grounds, Jessica couldn’t help but be impressed. The first thing she noticed was how much green there was. Her school had one playing field at the back
that was on a slight slope. Each winter, someone painted the markings of a football pitch while after the Easter term break, they would return to find it had become an athletics track.

Everything around her was a world away from that. She could see a pair of tennis courts on one side, a cricket pitch on the other and what she thought was a running track with a proper synthetic
surface beyond that.

She followed the signs until reaching a small car park at the back of a large mock-Tudor building. It was bright white, with black-painted beams running the length and height of it and baskets
of bright flowers hanging down. Jessica got out of the car and took a step back to survey everything. It was so far away from her own experiences of education, let alone the comprehensive schools
she had visited at various points around the city, that they were barely comparable. Some places had an almost menacing aura about them, where it would have been no surprise to find out there was a
murky underworld, even among young teenagers. Here, it felt like an environment where people would be free to learn.

As Jessica well knew, that didn’t mean there wasn’t something under the surface.

She walked into the main reception, where she was met by posters advertising ski trips, formal dances and a weekend visit to see an opera in London. She remembered one of her own school trips to
a former cotton mill. It wasn’t even a current working one, instead half an empty warehouse, half a museum. Quite a difference.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the receptionist asking if she could help. After having her identification checked – which included a phone call to the station, a lot of foot-tapping,
finger-drumming and plenty of general hanging around – Jessica was finally led through to meet the head teacher.

Although the man was friendly, Jessica could see straight away that he had a presence that intimidated even her, let alone students. His voice was the sort that boomed across playgrounds,
scaring the shite out of anyone even thinking about getting up to no good, while he wore a suit which fitted him perfectly and showed off a trim physique despite his grey hair. Of everything, it
was the man’s gaze that showed his authority. Jessica knew eye contact could be an important factor when she was interviewing people, but the head took that to the extreme, locking himself
into a stare with her and forcing her to look away first.

Despite the intensity, there didn’t seem to be anything untoward about his manner. He spoke of the entire school’s shock at Oliver’s death and explained there had already been
a special assembly after he went missing. That would be followed by a second when it came to the young man’s funeral. He told Jessica how the school catered for children of all ages from
nursery all the way up to eighteen-year-olds, with the emphasis on creating responsible adults. Still, that’s what they all said. Blah, blah, blah ‘social awareness’-this, blah,
blah, blah ‘effective policy’-that. One day, Jessica would stumble across a broken head teacher who admitted, head-in-hands, the kids in their school were sodding awful.

After his own interrogation, he took Jessica through to an empty office and then left, before returning a few minutes later with two young men.

There didn’t appear to be a formal uniform for sixth-form students but both were dressed in smart black trousers, with a dark jumper over the top of a shirt. They sat next to each other,
shuffling nervously and not looking up from their smart, highly polished, black leather shoes. Jessica already knew their names but had to clarify which one was ‘Terry’ and who was
‘Richard’.

‘I’m Richard, miss,’ one of them replied.

Jessica tried not to wince at the word ‘miss’. It made her feel old. She didn’t know if she should be correcting them, so let it go. His voice was clearly local but he had lost
some of the twang that could make a simple ‘How are you today?’ sound like a threat depending on the strength of the Mancunian accent.

‘I’d like to get a bit of an insight into what Oliver was like,’ Jessica said. ‘I’ve spoken to his parents and the head but I’m guessing you guys know him a
little differently than everyone else?’

The two half-shrugged, half-nodded almost in unison and Jessica knew she was going to struggle. She thought it might have helped to bring Rowlands with her. Even though he’d had the hump
since breaking up with Chloe, he could still turn on the matey-charm thing with other young men, banging on about ‘the footy at the weekend’ or some stupid video he’d seen on the
Internet.

‘How long have each of you known Oliver?’ Jessica asked.

They were both sitting up straight, hands in their laps, with Richard slightly the taller of the two. His brown hair was neatly side-parted, his skin showing a few acne scars. Regardless of
upbringing, there was no escaping certain aspects of being a teenager. He peered towards Jessica but stared at a spot just to her right. ‘We’ve been coming here since we were thirteen,
so five years.’