DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (27 page)

As Hugo said the word, there was an explosion of laughter from both Jessica and Chloe. Jessica was already feeling tipsy and the laughing wasn’t helping the room from stopping spinning.
‘
Trendsetter
?’ she exclaimed loudly. ‘What were you thinking?’

Rowlands looked indignantly at her. ‘I don’t know, it was just a word that stuck in my head. I thought employers would be impressed.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure the local supermarket manager would have been crying out for a “trendsetter” to stack shelves for him. What happened to the cards?’

‘I don’t know. I think I binned them all.’

Chloe was still laughing but at least making an effort to stifle it, which was more than Jessica had done.

‘All right, all right,’ Dave added, glaring at his girlfriend. ‘Calm down, it’s not that funny.’ He turned to Hugo. ‘What about you, anyway? You only took up
magic to get a girlfriend.’

Hugo shrugged, continuing to play with his hat. Jessica was appreciating his humour more and more by the second. ‘What about the speed dating?’ Hugo asked.

‘Oh, sod right off,’ Rowlands said. ‘Don’t tell them that.’

Chloe composed herself enough to cross the room and sit next to Hugo. ‘Go on, you can tell us.’

Dave leant back on the sofa, crossing his arms. ‘Did you plan all this?’ he asked Jessica accusingly.

‘If I’d thought of this, do you think I would have waited so long?’ Jessica replied. ‘I’d have had Hugo round ages ago dishing the dirt.’

‘Fine, just tell them,’ Rowlands said, sinking further into the seat. Chloe gave a small squeal and crossed back to sit next to him, snuggling her head into his reluctant
shoulder.

Hugo stopped playing with the hat, stretching himself out so he was lying flat on his back looking at the ceiling. ‘When we were freshers, there was this speed-dating event in the first
few weeks to help everyone get to know each other. Dave, me and a few other lads went along. There were about fifty or sixty people there and you got around a minute with each person before the
buzzer went and you moved on. We’d only got to the second person when we heard this shouting and Dave was having an argument with some girl.’

Jessica looked across at Dave. ‘You had a row with someone while speed-dating?’

He shrugged. ‘Yeah, I dunno, something like that.’

‘How can you fall out with a complete stranger in less than a minute?’

‘She was going on about how “Return of the Jedi” is better than “The Empire Strikes Back”.’

‘Oh for f . . . So it wasn’t even a proper argument, it was a geek argument?’ Jessica said.

‘Well, obviously it’s not better,’ Rowlands protested as Chloe hugged him tighter, a large grin on her face.

Caroline was the first to openly fall asleep, although she had been flagging for a while. Between them, they had drunk everything Jessica had bought, as well the bottles of wine brought by her
guests. Finally Dave, Chloe and Hugo ordered a taxi. Caroline was asleep on the floor so Jessica and Adam helped her onto the sofa before covering her with two blankets. Jessica was feeling tipsy
but not completely drunk. She led Adam out of the room holding his hand but as he shut the door behind them, he stopped and pulled her close to him, hugging her. ‘Did you have a good
day?’ he whispered into her ear.

Jessica pulled his arms tighter around her, then turned so she could cuddle him properly. ‘Yeah. It was great.’

‘The food was good.’

Jessica didn’t respond to his compliment but squeezed him tightly. ‘Merry Christmas.’

Adam laughed slightly. ‘Merry Christmas to you too.’

Jessica knew he couldn’t see her because her head was snuggled under his chin but she closed her eyes anyway and took a deep breath. ‘I love you,’ she whispered loud enough for
him to hear.

The police’s press conference about Benjamin Sturgess had occurred just before Christmas. With little else going on and journalists generally being off work with the rest
of the world, the story of Isaac Hutchings’s kidnapper already being dead led the news agenda for four straight days. Jessica tried as best she could to avoid the coverage but she had either
to endure it or watch no news at all. She tried to catch up with what was going on at least once a day, either on the television or through the Internet or, occasionally, by actually buying a
newspaper.

Jessica had been to the station on Boxing Day and most of the rest of the week. Despite Adam being off work, she was determined to get something done before New Year. She visited the allotments
but number sixty-one was roped off while a full excavation was being attempted. As with the woods where Toby Whittaker’s clothes had been found, the freezing weather was making things
difficult. Inside the shed, the floor had been pulled up to reveal the pit underneath, each piece of carpet sent off for analysis. With that gone, the hidden section seemed far less impressive and
was simply a large muddy hole in the ground.

Jessica re-read the original documents relating to Toby Whittaker’s disappearance twice to see if any of it made more sense now that they were pretty sure Benjamin Sturgess was involved.
When none of it did, she spent an hour pacing her office before deciding to go for a drive.

It had turned out even colder as Jessica pulled her car onto the side of the road fifty metres away from Deborah Sturgess’s house. It was Wednesday afternoon, the sun was setting, and she
didn’t really know what she was hoping to achieve. She wrapped herself in a thick woollen coat and watched the woman’s front door from a distance.

Reynolds had handled the questioning and, although she trusted him to do a good job, it annoyed her that she hadn’t been present. She didn’t know if she thought Benjamin’s
former wife was involved. She was certainly hard to read but perhaps it was just shock that her ex-husband had died and that a child’s body had been found in his boot. She doubted Deborah had
anything to do with Isaac’s kidnapping and murder but there was still a question over whether Benjamin had been responsible for Toby’s disappearance. They would have been married
fourteen years ago, but then, if Benjamin did have his allotment patch and hidden pit, maybe he had been acting alone? The one thing she was certain of was that he hadn’t acted by himself
when it came to Isaac – he had arranged to meet someone at the shed. For now, other than Deborah, Jessica had no idea who that person could be.

As she was watching the front door, Jessica’s phone rang. She scrabbled around for it in the well between the seats. The display showed a local number but it wasn’t programmed into
her phone so she didn’t know who was calling. ‘Hello?’

‘Is that Detective Sergeant Daniel?’ a male voice asked.

‘Who’s calling?’

‘This is Kingsley James from the Bradford Park laboratories. I tried to contact someone at the Longsight station but whoever was working there gave me your number.’

‘Okay . . .’ Jessica was always suspicious when someone she didn’t know rang her mobile.

The man didn’t seem to notice the scepticism in her voice. ‘I’ve got something you might be interested in. I’ve been in on my own today but I’ve got the phone I
think you found in the Sturgess case.’

‘Which one?’

‘We examined the smartphone first but it was pretty clear there was nothing untoward with that one. It just seemed like one used for business. There were all sorts of messages on there but
it didn’t look like much had been deleted. I’ve been working on the other one.’

‘Did you find any contacts?’

‘Not contacts, no, but I did manage to get back into the call history that had been erased. We’ve traced a number for you. It’s different from the one the text messages were
sent to. Can I pass it on?’

‘Hang on, let me get a pen.’

Jessica put the phone on the passenger seat and frantically searched in the glove box and door wells for a pad and pen. She used to keep at least one in the vehicle and could remember a time
when she had lent one to her journalist friend in a supermarket car park. Back then he had complained it didn’t work but now she couldn’t find anything at all. Jessica looked over her
shoulder but couldn’t see anything in the back seat before she had an idea. She picked up the phone and opened the car door, walking around the rear of the vehicle.

‘Okay, go ahead but read slowly,’ she instructed. Kingsley read the number and Jessica scraped the digits one by one into the thin crust of frost which had started to form on her
rear window. She thanked him for his help before hanging up and calling Reynolds with the number. She knew she should probably have contacted Cole but wasn’t ready to engage with him quite
yet. The inspector took the information and said he would start things moving.

Getting a number from the history was just the first part. The prefix made it clear the number belonged to a mobile, while they would know which operator the SIM card belonged to from the first
five digits. Things became complicated if someone decided to keep an old number on a new phone. Even when they figured that out, if a phone number wasn’t public knowledge in the telephone
directory, they had to have a warrant approved to get the mobile network operator to release the details of the person the number belonged to. Sometimes that could all happen over the course of a
morning, other times it would take weeks. In some cases, it would lead to another unregistered pre-pay SIM card that couldn’t be traced.

Jessica had barely got back into her car when Reynolds returned her call. ‘That was quick,’ she said.

‘Yeah, don’t get your hopes up. It’s just to say that the number definitely isn’t publicly available, we’re going to have to stick a request in. I’ll get the
paperwork moving tonight but you know what it’s like at this time of year.’

Jessica returned to the station to find the forensics worker had emailed her the rest of the details, including when the call from Benjamin Sturgess’s second phone had been made and how
long it had lasted. She crosschecked the dates with when Isaac Hutchings was reported missing and noted the call had been placed somewhere between three and four days before the boy had
disappeared. The timing wasn’t damning and proved very little but it was at least roughly in the time frame they would have expected.

Knowing there was little more she could do, Jessica phoned Adam. They had spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day with Caroline at Jessica’s flat but were planning to sleep at Adam’s for
the rest of the week. ‘On my way,’ she said. ‘Dinner better be on the table.’

Adam laughed. ‘What do you want?’

‘Just warm some of that turkey up with something. We’ve still got enough to get us through most of the next six months.’

As she drove back to Adam’s house, Jessica couldn’t stop herself from grinning. Many times over the past few years, her life had become dominated by things that were going on at
work. She was still determined to find whoever was working with Benjamin Sturgess but, for the first time in a long while, Jessica was actually enjoying her life away from the station.

With another three-day weekend coming up, Jessica had largely expected things to drift into the new year before any details relating to the phone number were passed on. But in
the middle of Friday morning, the information arrived. She was sitting in her office when Reynolds walked in with a pad of paper. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘The name and address of whoever Benjamin Sturgess called.’

‘Anyone we know?’

‘No, but there’s one little snippet which should interest you – our guy’s a teacher.’

Reynolds read out what details he had. Nathan Bairstow taught at a primary school on the outskirts of the city but, perhaps more importantly, his house was on the same estate as Daisy
Peters’s. From what they could tell, he was single and lived alone. The information answered at least two of the things Jessica had been trying to figure out. Firstly, he lived close enough
to Daisy to have noticed her circumstances if he was looking and, secondly, his position might give him access to the details on the list they had found in Benjamin’s allotment shed. Nothing
had been proven yet but the fact Benjamin had contacted Nathan in the days leading up to Isaac’s disappearance was an important breakthrough.

Jessica stood. ‘When are we going?’

‘Jack’s sorting out a team to go with us.’

‘Have we got a photo?’

‘Nothing on file.’

‘Do we know if he’s in?’

‘No idea. The information only came in ten minutes ago and I got one of the constables to sort the rest out. We’ve moved as quick as we can.’

Jessica made a humming noise. ‘What was the DCI like?’

‘Professional. You should apologise.’

It was good advice but Jessica wasn’t ready to give in. ‘I’m not sorry.’

‘You should be. He’s doing his best to protect us while taking a lot of stick from above.’

Jessica knew he was right but didn’t want to admit it. ‘Let’s get going,’ she said, ignoring his point.

The decision had been made to go in softly but with a large backup. Jessica and Reynolds would knock on the door and, as delicately as possible, arrest Nathan Bairstow and bring him to the
station. A larger team of officers would be waiting at either end of his road in case he tried to run. The problem with mounting any kind of big operation was the amount of attention it would
attract from regular members of the public. It could make things complicated for any number of reasons, from having civilians in the way, to – on certain notorious estates – giving the
suspect a head-start. The area Nathan lived in was perfectly respectable and Jessica didn’t envisage any problems there but, because so many people would be home from work in the week between
Christmas and New Year, there was a much greater chance of unwanted attention.

Jessica and Reynolds travelled in his car, while the rest of the officers took unmarked vehicles. A secure van would be minutes away if it was required. The roads seemed to be full of families
packed into cars stuffed full of bargains picked up in the sales. The traffic was worse than usual during rush hour, which left Jessica shuffling around restlessly in the passenger seat as the
inspector drove.