Think of the Children (8 page)

‘Sorry,’ Jessica said.

Reynolds waved her in properly, pointing at a spot on the floor next to them. ‘Take a seat.’

‘Why are you working from the floor?’ Jessica asked but was met by pitying looks from her colleagues as if she had asked the stupidest of stupid questions.

Izzy leant across and picked up the papers that had been dislodged, then answered. ‘There’s more room down here.’

Jessica still wasn’t convinced. ‘We do have tables. Upstairs, in the incident room, in the Press Pad.’ It was clear her colleagues weren’t interested in her complaining
so she crouched and sat cross-legged next to Izzy. Reynolds winked at her to acknowledge her objections but she could see there was a serious look in his eyes.

‘We’ve already been upstairs to see the DCI if you were wondering,’ he said. ‘He’s busy trying to get an excavation team in to go through the woods properly while
we go over this. Some of the other officers have got photocopies of these documents too and are looking into things.’

Jessica said what it seemed they were all thinking. ‘Are we assuming there’s a body buried in those woods?’ The other detectives said nothing but Jessica knew that was exactly
the reasoning. She leant back against the door. ‘What have we got?’

Izzy handed Jessica a photograph of a boy with sandy-coloured short hair. He was grinning at the camera, wearing a school uniform. Izzy was clearly already familiar with the file as she spoke
quickly and confidently. ‘That’s Toby Whittaker. Fourteen years ago he was playing on a disused industrial park with some of his friends. It was just wasteland and, from what his mates
said at the time, was somewhere lots of young people would hang around playing football and so on.’

Jessica knew the ‘so on’ probably referred to smoking and drinking if not a few other things as the constable continued.

‘Toby was only eleven at the time,’ Izzy went on. ‘But it looks like most of the people who hung around there were a bit older: fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds.’

Izzy briefly paused, adjusting the position she was sitting in before pointing towards the papers on the floor. ‘There are all sorts of witness statements, not many of them that useful.
Toby went there with his friends to kick a football around but one by one they went home. There doesn’t seem to be anything fishy about their statements and none of them were suspects at the
time. It seems as if Toby was left on his own and then, at some point, he just disappeared.’

‘Did anyone see anything?’ Jessica asked.

Izzy picked up a page from the floor and skimmed it, looking for a certain detail. ‘Apparently not. Have you ever been with your mates on a night out and, before you know it, there’s
only one or two of you left standing? It sounds like that. He’d gone to play, it started to get dark and he was left by himself. A couple of the witnesses, people who weren’t his
friends but were hanging around the site, say they saw him on his own, while one of his mates say they went their own ways when it was just the two of them left. It sounds a bit odd but I remember
things like that happening when I was a kid.’

‘Eleven’s a bit young, isn’t it? How close was the land to his house?’

Izzy put down the paper and reached for another. ‘Not that far, maybe half a mile? I don’t really know the area.’

‘And how close is this site to the woods where we found the clothes?’

Izzy returned the set of papers to the floor and shuffled her position. ‘Pretty close, a few hundred yards maybe?’

Jessica said nothing for a moment but there was something concerning her. ‘Why do you think we found the clothes now? We know they were washed relatively recently and presumably buried at
more or less the same time? Someone must have been keeping them ever since Toby was taken. Not only that but the driver who had Isaac Hutchings in the back of his car had a map directly to the
spot.’

It was more a statement than a question. The similarities between the two abductions were obvious and Jessica wondered if their unknown driver was the person who had kidnapped Toby all those
years ago. If that was true, why would he need a map to the boy’s clothes? It seemed that every time they found an answer, it opened up another set of questions.

There was another short silence before Jessica spoke again. ‘So what happened with the investigation?’

Reynolds and Izzy exchanged a look before the inspector answered. ‘From what we can tell, not a lot because there weren’t any leads. Parents, uncles, aunts, all the relatives were
accounted for and no one seemed to have a motive. Apart from the witnesses who said they saw him walking away from the site, there were no suspicious car sightings, no signs of a struggle, nothing.
There weren’t as many CCTV cameras back then, so there’s nothing from that. One of the parents said something about having a falling out with one of their neighbours because of an
incident involving Toby riding a bike across the person’s front garden but it sounds very petty and it looks as if it was discounted.’

‘So it was just unsolved and he was never found?’ Jessica asked.

Izzy nodded. ‘Exactly. When I was going through things I was surprised by how many unsolved missing children cases there are. It’s not just our district, obviously, but over the
years there are hundreds of kids unaccounted for. You never hear about them.’

Jessica knew the statement had extra meaning for the constable because of her own pregnancy. ‘Does anyone here remember the case?’

‘We’ve asked around but no one knows anything specifically,’ Reynolds said. ‘I wasn’t here but the DCI says the boundary of who investigated what was much more
blurred back then – although he wasn’t here either. I’m sure someone will remember but we’ve not really had time to properly ask yet.’

Jessica knew what he was talking about. She worked for the Metropolitan branch of Greater Manchester CID, while there were separate divisions for the north, south, east and west areas of the
city. Everything had been broken up not long after she joined as a uniformed officer around a decade ago. She knew that fourteen years back there was just one CID branch covering the entire area.
Because of that, it was no wonder the paperwork was so disorganised as detectives and officers would have been moved to new departments and things would have been lost along the way.

‘Do we at least have the name of whoever was leading the investigation?’ Jessica asked. She saw Izzy and Reynolds swap a nervous glance and felt something sink in her stomach. She
knew the name of the person involved before the inspector spoke the words: ‘It was DI Harry Thomas.’

Jessica stared at the row of six intercom buzzers and took another deep breath, her third in less than a minute. Each time she hovered her finger over the button, before
withdrawing it. She was standing at the top of a small flight of concrete steps outside the block of flats where Harry lived. She hadn’t seen him in over three years and hadn’t thought
she would ever do so again. At the station both Cole and Reynolds had offered to visit Harry instead of, or with, her but Jessica insisted she wanted to do it on her own. Both officers knew how
close Jessica had been to him at one point as they were both already detectives when she started in CID and Harry was their colleague too. As with a lot of things, probably too many, they trusted
her judgement and, on this occasion, Jessica wanted to go on her own.

In most cases where a former officer needed to be spoken to, he or she would be invited to the station formally if it was something serious, or it could be a lunchtime chat in the pub if it
wasn’t. Harry had deliberately cut all ties to his former workplace so Jessica talked her fellow detectives into letting her doorstep him. No one was confident he would be helpful if they
gave him much notice. As far as they knew he hadn’t moved to another property but there was only one way they would find out for sure.

Jessica again raised her finger to the doorbell without putting any pressure on it but her mind was made up as a pitter-patter of raindrops began to fall behind her. She hunched her shoulders
and pulled the top of her jacket over her head. It was almost as if a higher power was telling her to get on with it and Jessica finally relented, pushing the button and hearing a buzzing noise
from the intercom. The noise of the rain increased and she tried to shelter her body under a small roof that overhung the front door. If anything, it was only making her wetter as water dripped
from where she could see the eroded sealant above her.

Jessica stabbed the intercom again and, just as she was beginning to eye her car parked on the road as the only available dry spot nearby, the device finally crackled into life. ‘Who is
it?’ said a voice from the other end.

‘Harry? It’s Jessica Daniel. Can you let me in? It’s shitting it down out here.’

The intercom hissed and went silent. For a moment, she thought nothing was going to happen before a click indicated the door had opened. Jessica quickly pushed her way into the deserted hallway
and pulled her jacket back down from over her head. The rain reminded her of what Kayla Hutchings said that morning about how she would have picked her son up if it had been a wet day. Jessica
thought about how entire lives could change because of something as random as whether or not it rained.

Jessica had visited Harry at his flat in the past and started to walk up the hard, echoing concrete steps at the back of the porch. The place where he lived was in a row of old civil-service
buildings not far from the city centre. Each property had been converted into six flats around twenty years ago, and then sold off to private investors. At some point they would have been
attractive places to live but Jessica could see paint flaking from the once-cream walls as she walked up the stairs.

Harry lived on the third floor and Jessica was dripping water up the steps as she moved. She wondered if the man she once thought she knew so well might be waiting for her but the landing on the
top floor was as deserted as the rest of the building seemed to be.

The falling rain echoed on the roof as Jessica walked along the corridor to Harry’s flat. She knocked but the door swung inwards as it had been left on the latch. Jessica stepped over the
threshold and closed it behind her, unclipping the button which allowed it to lock.

‘Hello?’ she called. ‘Harry?’

No one replied and she couldn’t hear any noise. Jessica could only vaguely remember the layout. She was standing in a hallway with two doors on her left, one directly in front of her and
another on her right. All of them were closed but she knew the one at the far end led into the living room and dining area. She opened the door, immediately spotting Harry in an armchair watching a
portable television in the corner of the room.

The smell was the first thing that struck Jessica. It wasn’t exactly bad but it was as if she had walked through an invisible wall where everything on the other side had a stale odour. It
made her remember being fourteen. She had left her PE kit in a bag over the summer holidays and only found it as she was sorting out her belongings for the new term. Her polo shirt and skirt were
still caked in soil and grass and it was that exact smell which met her as she walked into Harry’s living room. The place hadn’t been cleaned in a very long time.

He didn’t acknowledge the door opening or even Jessica repeating ‘Harry?’ as he continued watching the screen. It dawned on Jessica that the television was muted but she walked
around his chair so she was facing him.

‘Harry, are you okay?’

The man was wearing what would have been smart suit trousers at some point but the black material was grubby and fading. Harry was in his mid-fifties but looked older. He’d been overweight
when she worked with him but he had put on at least another stone and a half since then and his belly was bulging against a blue-and-white checked shirt that was only half-buttoned, allowing grey
chest hairs to poke out from the top. He used to sweep his hair across his head but had clearly given up and now had a large bald streak. The skin on his face was blotched and red.

Harry finally glanced up at her but wouldn’t meet her eyes, staring off to Jessica’s right. He started as if to speak but began coughing before clearing his throat loudly, then
finally found his voice. ‘Detective Sergeant.’

It was an acknowledgement of sorts but his words had no real warmth to them. His north-east accent sounded heavier than Jessica remembered.

‘Are you all right, Harry?’

He nodded but didn’t speak. Jessica saw a bottle of whisky wedged in between his thigh and the chair’s armrest. Perhaps it was because she had seen the bottle but all of a sudden she
could smell the alcohol. It was more of an undercurrent to the stale odour she was becoming used to but the sharp scent was distinctive. Harry must have noticed her eyes because he pushed the
bottle towards the rear of the seat. When it was clear he wasn’t going to answer, Jessica spoke again. ‘I’m here because I was hoping you could help.’

Harry shifted his gaze back to the television and mumbled quietly, ‘I’m retired.’

‘I know but it’s about a case you worked on fourteen years ago. It’s important.’

He shuffled in his seat and Jessica didn’t think he was going to say anything. Not for the first time that day she was struggling to know how to handle a situation when Harry finally
replied. ‘What’s the name?’

Jessica had deliberately left the file in her car because she didn’t want to involve Harry too heavily and didn’t have a photo of the dead driver anyway if he was their link from the
old case to the new one. She remembered the name of the missing boy, having read everything available before leaving the station. She guessed they would be two words she wouldn’t be
forgetting in a while. ‘Toby Whittaker.’

Harry answered immediately but still didn’t look away from the television. ‘The missing boy.’

It wasn’t a question.

‘Yes.’

‘Did you find him?’

‘No, we … think we found his clothes.’

‘A Man City shirt.’ Again it wasn’t a question; Harry knew what he was talking about.