DS Jessica Daniel series: Think of the Children / Playing with Fire / Thicker Than Water – Books 4–6 (5 page)

Perhaps it was Jessica’s tone but Izzy didn’t pursue the question. Instead they drove in relative silence, even when they were held up in unexpected traffic at Ardwick Green. Suited
and booted crowds were streaming out of the theatre, even though it was the afternoon, leading Jessica to assume there was a corporate event going on. If she had been driving a marked car, she
would have flicked on the lights but instead she waited with as much patience as she could muster.

Jessica didn’t know exactly where they were going but the allotments were signposted and two marked police cars were already parked in front of a wide metal gate which separated the plots
from the road. As Jessica pulled in behind the vehicles, Rowlands got out of the one at the front and came towards her.

‘Do we know who runs plot sixty-one then?’ she asked, pulling on a jacket.

‘Sort of. We found out that the council owns the land but the running of it is handed over to individual allotment societies. Each society has a secretary. The one from here is the guy
that identified the key for us. Anyway, he says number sixty-one has been registered to a “Glenn Harrison” for the best part of twenty years.’

‘I don’t recognise the name.’

Rowlands shook his head. ‘No, and we don’t have anyone in our files that would fit it either. The secretary read us the guy’s address but . . .’

‘. . . it doesn’t exist.’ Jessica finished the constable’s sentence with a slight wince as he nodded to confirm she was right. Izzy had walked around the vehicle and
heard the final part of the conversation.

‘So who pays for the land, then? Isn’t it like fifty quid a year or something?’ she asked.

‘Er, yeah. How do you know that?’ Rowlands replied.

‘My dad used to keep a plot. I think he just went there to get some peace to be honest.’

Rowlands gave her a ‘don’t blame him’ look, adding, ‘The secretary says it’s forty-eight quid a year. He checked his files and said Harrison paid in cash. He
reckons the society are trying to get people to switch to direct debits and the like but a lot of their members are older and will only deal in cash.’

Jessica spoke next. ‘So does he know who this Harrison guy is?’

‘Apparently not. He says some people pay direct to the council, others post him cheques and so on. He’s looking into it now but I think we’ll have to visit him.’

Jessica was wary of what they might find at plot sixty-one. She was only too familiar with the horrors people could commit when their identity was known, so the thought of what someone could
have been up to when it wouldn’t be traced back to them was something she didn’t want to anticipate.

With little else to say, Rowlands and Jessica led their small party through the gate. The patches were numbered sensibly in rows of ten, becoming larger as the land widened. Some of the plots
proudly displayed their numbers either on a shed or attached to a piece of wood hammered into the ground. The patches became bigger still as they moved deeper into the site, a few gardeners tending
their plants nearby. The presence of men and women in suits and police coats was undoubtedly out of the ordinary and the few who were around watched them edge through the site.

Jessica tried her best not to step on anyone’s plants as Rowlands led them along a path that cut through a selection of plots. She saw a large ‘5’ painted onto the side of a
shed and looked up ahead to see where they were going. Plot sixty-one seemed to be unmarked, the land itself relatively untended, while the wooden shed was somewhat larger than the ones close to
it. Someone had fitted guttering to the roof, which allowed water to run onto the pathway as opposed to falling on the soil.

Taking the key from Rowlands, Jessica pressed the side of the shed. It felt thick and unmoving. She looked to see if there were any windows but there seemed to be no way in other than the door,
which was secured with a heavy metal padlock. She slid the key into the lock with ease, turning it until it made a solid click, then opened the latch, taking a deep breath before pulling the door
open.

The hinges creaked as Jessica stepped around the swinging door and crossed the threshold. For the second day running no one had thought about the light situation. Jessica asked Rowlands if
he’d brought a torch but he pulled a face and held his hands up open-palmed. Jessica waved him and Izzy into the hut then asked everyone to clear away from the entrance in order to let as
much light in as possible.

Her footsteps echoing off the creaking wooden floor, Jessica surveyed the gloomy interior, noticing a metal desk pushed up against the wall opposite the door with a swivel chair underneath.
Despite the poor light, she could see yellow foam spilling out of the backrest. A gas canister and small portable stove were in another corner. From what she could see, there wasn’t anything
pinned to the walls and, apart from flecks of dried soil, very little else of note.

‘See anything?’ Jessica asked. The other two officers answered ‘no’ at the same time. Jessica wheeled the chair out from under the desk and sat on it.
‘Something’s not right about this place,’ she commented. Rowlands was tapping the walls with his knuckles for some reason. It was the kind of thing people did on property
programmes but Jessica figured they knew what they were doing while she wasn’t convinced the constable had any real idea.

‘It doesn’t
feel
like an allotment shed, does it?’ Izzy said.

‘Go on,’ Jessica answered.

‘Where are the tools, spades, rakes, sweeping-up brushes and so on you’d expect in a shed like this? I know some people might use it as somewhere to go for a bit of peace and quiet
but you’d still have something, wouldn’t you? Even just a radio?’

Jessica nodded. ‘Exactly and it doesn’t look like there’s much in the way of plants outside. Whoever’s been using this place hasn’t been doing much gardening. So
what have they been doing?’

She spun the chair around so she was facing the desk again. The entire unit looked thick and solid, a huge job for just one person to move. The right side had three drawers and she pulled the
first one, hearing the rattle of a ballpoint pen sliding to the front. Jessica went to pick it up but then stopped herself, taking an evidence bag from her pocket and sealing it inside. She doubted
there would be any fingerprints or DNA on it but it would be careless to touch it herself.

The second drawer was empty but the bottom one was stuck tighter than the compartments above it. Jessica pulled hard until it sprung forward. At first she didn’t see anything but, as Izzy
stepped to the side allowing in fractionally more light, Jessica noticed a pad of paper pushed towards the back. She took another evidence bag from Rowlands and put her hand inside, pulling the
notebook out before placing it on top of the desk.

She took her phone out of her pocket and tapped the screen making it light up, hovering the device over the paper so she could read the words. It was a list written in blue biro and there was no
doubt about the name at the top. Izzy gasped as she leant in and read it for herself.

‘Isaac Hutchings’ was written in neat block capital letters next to an address.

The mood was dark in DCI Cole’s office. Only occasionally did they find something so out of the ordinary that no one knew how to react. The pad and pen from the desk had
been sent off to the labs, which were always creaking under the sheer amount they had to do.

The three detectives each had a photocopied version of the front page of the pad. Jessica had endured another sleepless night, aware of the implications of the list.

She could hear Reynolds tutting as Cole began to speak. ‘I think we can all agree this list of names is pretty disturbing. The good news is that, aside from Isaac Hutchings, the other
eight children mentioned have all been accounted for and are safe. We’ve been discreet when talking to their parents – the last thing we need is a panic. But we have asked them to be
vigilant.’

‘Who the hell is making lists of children?’ Reynolds asked, sounding as angry as Jessica had ever heard him.

‘The only connection we know of is the dead driver of the stolen car,’ Jessica replied. ‘We’re still waiting on results to come back but as it stands we have no idea who
he is. I spoke to someone this morning and they said we might get something this afternoon – but that’s only if DNA from the body matches someone already in their database. They
haven’t been able to remove enough of the glass from his face, which means the only photo we have is so horrendous there’s no way we can release it to the media.’

She looked across to Cole, who added: ‘It’s doubtful we will get anything better but they’re trying to find a digital artist who can create a likeness of what he might look
like without all the glass. The guy talked me through a list of the injuries earlier and said there’s serious damage to the driver’s bone structure too. They’ve said it’s
going to take a while, which is code for “we don’t have enough money to pay this guy unless we really have to”.’

‘Great,’ Jessica replied. ‘The cause of death is a broken neck from not wearing the seatbelt. The airbag itself possibly killed him but there is so much damage, it could have
been one of many things.’

Cole nodded, picking up the conversation. ‘I’ve been onto the labs about the clothes found in the woods. There’s not much to report. We already know the football shirt is
around thirteen years old and the trousers the same age too. They’re both children’s sizes. We asked his mother and know they aren’t Isaac Hutchings’s but beyond that,
nothing. We’re going to ask the parents of the other eight listed if the clothes belong to their children but it’s a bit of a long shot. As for their age, we don’t know what to
make of it. They could have come from a charity shop or one of those vintage places and the labs say they appear to have been washed relatively recently. Christ knows why you’d bury
them.’

‘What about Isaac?’ Jessica asked, changing the subject slightly.

The chief inspector looked pained. His own children were barely older than the boy she had found in the car boot. ‘Our people who were looking after his mother before the body was found
are still with her. We’ve all got the reports about how he went missing. All we know so far is that there was no apparent sexual assault on him. That’s one thing, I guess, but it does
leave us without a motive for whoever took him. We’ve got officers looking into the usual suspects, family members and the like, but a lot of that had already been examined when it was a
missing person’s case. There’s nothing new to report.’

There was a silence as the three detectives looked at each other, hoping for inspiration. ‘We should get someone looking into unsolved cases from ten to fifteen years ago,’ Jessica
said. ‘I know it’s a lot of work but maybe there’ll be something that could link to the clothes? If not that then I guess it’s the media?’

Cole nodded his approval. ‘We have people walking back through the woods to see if we missed anything but there’s nothing yet. Another team are heading off to the allotment later to
see if there’s anything more there. We contacted the people who run the plots on either side of number sixty-one last night but none of them say they’ve ever seen anyone around that
land. We don’t know if the driver is the person who used that shed and, even if he is, we don’t know
who
he is. We’re still looking into Glenn Harrison as the plot is in
his name but we definitely know the address listed with the allotment secretary doesn’t exist.’

The DCI paused for a moment, peering at Jessica. ‘Do you think Isaac could have been kept at the shed?’

Jessica shrugged. ‘Maybe but there was nothing there to suggest that. Unless he was drugged or subdued or something, anyone nearby could have heard him shouting. I don’t know how it
all connects together. Given the direction the stolen car was going when it crashed, it’s possible the driver could have been heading away from the allotments but we didn’t see any food
or anything that would give the game away. It just looked abandoned.’

Reynolds had been quiet for a few minutes but leant forward and spoke forcefully. ‘What I don’t get is how this list of children was put together.’ He held up the photocopy to
show them what he meant. ‘We’ve all read through this but how would you know their names and addresses? A couple go to the same school, some of the others live close to each other but
there’s nothing apparent to link them, aside from the fact they’re all boys between the ages of ten and twelve. So how would you know who they were and where they lived?’

It was something Jessica had briefly considered but not had time to think about properly. ‘I can’t see how it would be a teacher but maybe someone who has access to school admittance
records? It’d still leave a lot of questions about why those nine specifically. It could be someone who worked in a doctor’s surgery, or one of the local cub or scout leaders –
even the coach of a football team. It’s a mystery but I don’t know where we’d start.’

There was another silence but this time no one had anything else of note to add. They were all struggling to understand quite how all of the elements linked together.

Jessica eventually broke the silence. ‘If you’re both happy to take the briefing downstairs, I’ll go visit the secretary guy from the allotments. I doubt he’ll have
anything but you never know.’ The two men nodded; clearly relieved it was one job they weren’t going to have to do. ‘I’ll go downstairs and set someone looking into unsolved
cases first of all,’ Jessica added.

She stood but Cole called her back before she got to the door. ‘Oh yeah, sorry, I forgot. I know it’s a pain but we’re all supposed to be having new photos taken for the
website tomorrow. You’d think the press office would have better things to be working on but there’s some relaunch happening. I’ve got the paperwork somewhere . . .’

Jessica exchanged a look with Jason, who seemed as nonplussed as she felt.

She responded with an ‘All right, I’ll be here’, then left the office and made her way downstairs, striding through to the main floor, which seemed to be a hub of confusion,
the various officers waiting to find out what they were supposed to be doing. Jessica had no problems spotting Izzy, her flash of red hair standing out against the rest of the bodies. She moved
across the room and sat on the corner of the desk the constable was working from.