Thicker Than Water (14 page)

As the bus made its various stops, Kayleigh did not move until they were outside the neon glowing sign that matched her uniform. The killer waited until she was off and then stood, ringing the
bell again to ensure the driver did not pull away. He stumbled along the aisle and muttered a ‘thanks’, before following Kayleigh, making sure there was a greater distance than before.
He knew she was untouchable at work but that wasn’t the point.

He first spent half an hour on a bench at the far end of the supermarket’s car park, waiting for the sun to fully come up. After that, he had a cup of tea in their cafe, before spending
time browsing the store as aimlessly as he could. He bought a couple of items, paying with cash, then left and returned to the bench. He knew it would be a long day, but then it was always going to
be. You had to make some sacrifices for the greater good, and this was his.

He didn’t know how long a shift Kayleigh might work but he could guess it would either be six, eight, or ten hours. With the time he had wasted inside the store, over two of those had
already passed.

Although he thought about leaving and instead going to wait near Kayleigh’s home, he didn’t want to risk her heading somewhere else, certainly without his knowledge. Instead he sat
and waited until, finally, the woman emerged not long after lunchtime. The man dumped his coat in the bin and put on the one he had bought in the store, removing his hat. While it had been easy to
stay relatively out of sight on the bench away from the store, he didn’t want to be recognised by Kayleigh on the return journey.

He hurried across the car park, reaching the bus stop before the woman, and leaning on the shelter as he watched her stagger along the pavement with two shopping bags. He could sense the
excitement building as he got on the bus, this time sitting on the very back set of seats, a few rows behind her. Each stop seemed to take an age as his mouth filled with anticipation.

Finally, the vehicle stopped close to Kayleigh’s house and he filed into the queue to exit directly behind her. He allowed her to get a lead as he trailed her back through the estate,
keeping a careful eye out for any potential bystanders. He knew it wasn’t quite time for parents to start picking their children up from school and felt his heart soar as they turned the
corner onto Kayleigh’s road, which was empty apart from a handful of parked cars. He had been planning to wait but he might never get a better time than now to act.

He quickened his pace, ensuring he was close enough and then, as Kayleigh put her shopping bags down next to the front door, he took his hands out of his pocket and stepped onto her
driveway.

Jessica lay in bed staring into the darkness, wondering why she couldn’t bring herself to ask the simple question about why Adam was being so secretive. Given his parents
had died when he was young, and his grandmother a couple of years ago, he didn’t have any other family to be communicating with. Other than the people he worked with, he had never really had
much in the way of friends, certainly not since they had been seeing each other, so Jessica had no clue. She hadn’t challenged his ‘no one’ responses and was not used to being in
such a position.

Usually, she would speak or act first and worry about the consequences later. If a suspect or witness had lied to her so blatantly, she never would have held back – and yet she could not
bring herself to question Adam. She lay awake wondering why but could not come up with anything better than the fact she didn’t really want to know the answer.

As she rubbed her tired eyes, Jessica heard her phone begin to vibrate on the floor. She let it ring for one extra time, hoping it would wake Adam, then pressed the button to answer. She was
only half-surprised by the caller’s information that something had happened at Kayleigh Pritchard’s house and that she should get there quickly.

Jessica could never remember feeling as physically sick at a crime scene as she did after getting to Kayleigh’s house. It wasn’t anything she specifically saw, it was the reality of
it all. In part it was because she had been sitting in the woman’s living room a week or so before but also, although she tried to tell herself differently, she knew it was largely due to
what was going on with Adam.

She had a quick glance around the hallway, then turned and dashed across the road into a small garden area where she hunched behind a hedge and threw up on the ground. She felt close to tears as
she rose and walked back to the door, asking one of the officers who was smoking nearby if she could have some chewing gum.

The hallway was littered with items of shopping. Jessica could see a tin of beans that had rolled towards the stairs at the far end and a bottle of washing-up liquid on its side in the doorway
that led into the living room. There was a box of cereal, two bottles of water lying in the middle of the hall and a packet of biscuits had crashed to the floor at some point, leaving crumbs across
the carpet.

Jessica couldn’t stop the thought going through her mind that it would be really difficult to clear up the broken bits.

‘Wait there,’ a voice said, as Jessica looked up to see a Scene of Crime officer walking carefully towards her. She recognised the woman’s face from various scenes over the
past few months but didn’t know her name. Quite often, team members would move on to other roles, the late nights and short-notice calls taking their toll on people who were usually civilians
anyway. Someone threw Jessica protective covers to go over her shoes and she steadily walked around the food until she was next to the other woman.

‘Is the body gone?’ Jessica asked, realising it was an obvious question, considering the lack of one in the hallway.

As it was, the answer was one she didn’t expect. ‘She was found in the bath upstairs. They took her about fifteen minutes ago but we’ve still got people up there.’

‘Shite . . .’

Jessica couldn’t think of anything more constructive to say. She looked around the hallway, realising she had missed a half-full carrier bag hidden behind the front door on her first look
around. Something in the bottom was weighing it down but a bottle of shampoo had split and congealed into a blue pool.

Although she had her own ideas about what had happened, Jessica wanted to hear it from someone else, so asked what the woman thought. Seemingly grateful to be asked for her opinion, she pointed
towards the objects on the floor. ‘I’d say she was attacked from behind, presumably after opening the front door.’ She indicated the positions of the carrier bags. ‘Although
the objects are spread across the floor, the bags themselves are directly below where she would have been standing, so it probably happened as soon as she stepped inside.’

‘How did she die?’

Jessica could have guessed the reply before it came.

‘Probably asphyxiation, she has all the signs, although it’ll need to be confirmed.’

If how Oliver had died was anything to go by, then Jessica guessed the killer had surprised Kayleigh from behind, smothering her with a bag or something similar.

The woman turned towards the broken biscuits. ‘It looks like she fell forwards, crushing those and possibly knocking these bottles as well.’

It sounded like a horrible way to die, face-down as someone pressed a knee into your back, pulling something tight around your mouth to stop you breathing.

‘What happened then?’ Jessica asked.

Pointing towards the stairs, the woman continued her theory. ‘Somehow, she ended up in the bath upstairs. You’re going to have to leave it with us for a day or two to find out if she
was dragged or carried. We haven’t found anything on the stairs yet, but we’re going to rip the whole of this carpet out to test for shoe prints, hairs or blood.’

‘What else have you found?’

The woman turned and crept back towards the front door, crouching and pointing to a spot on the wall. Jessica looked on from a distance, not wanting to accidentally interfere. ‘It looks
like a partial shoe print here,’ she said. ‘It’s probably too small to be a man’s, so may well be the victim’s.’

‘Was there . . . anything else?’ Jessica didn’t want to say the words but the woman took the hint.

‘You’ll have to wait for the autopsy but her clothing wasn’t torn. She could have been re-dressed, of course . . .’

She nodded over Jessica’s shoulder towards the man now standing in the doorway. Cole was wearing a large coat far too big for him and looked as tired as Jessica felt. ‘I forgot how
close you lived,’ he said, as Jessica carefully made her way across the hallway.

She thanked the woman for her help and then walked with her supervisor to the end of the driveway. As they talked, she tried to keep a distance, hoping the gum was covering the smell of her
breath.

‘Did you go upstairs?’ Cole asked.

‘No, they reckon Kayleigh was killed by her front door and then taken to the bathroom where she was found. They’re trying to keep it all clear.’ Jessica blew into her hands and
then pushed them deeply into the pockets of her coat. ‘How did we know?’

For a few moments, Cole did not reply. Jessica thought he hadn’t heard but when she turned to face him, she could see his eyes were fixed on the front door. He sighed and started walking
backwards, then turned and headed towards the garden area where she had vomited. Luckily, he walked in the opposite direction and sat on a bench just inside the gate.

Jessica sat next to him, watching her breath evaporate into the air as Cole turned to face her. ‘I think my marriage is over, Jess,’ he said.

It was perhaps the last thing Jessica expected him to say. While most of the members of the team had relationship problems in one way or another, Jack Cole had made sure his relationship with
his wife and children was strong above anything else. Even though he rarely talked about them, and certainly didn’t bring them to any official events, everyone knew he used his free time to
be the father and husband his family deserved.

Jessica did not know how to reply. All she could think was that if a relationship such as his could fall apart, then what hope did anyone else have? She answered with a pitiful-sounding,
‘Sir . . . ?’

Cole shrugged. ‘It’s been on the cards for a while, probably since I took this job. It was easier to manage the shifts in the past but you never get away.’ He held his hands up
as if to indicate the time of day. ‘I’ve been in the spare room for around four months. Obviously the kids know there’s something wrong . . .’

Jessica had never had anything even approaching such an intimate conversation with the man before.

‘I’m sure it will be all right,’ she said, thinking it sounded like the type of thing she should say and wondering quite what had happened in the previous few days that made
children and adults alike think she was a sensible person to bring their problems to. Sarcastic remarks: fine. Useful advice: there were definitely better people.

‘I know you’ve just got married,’ he continued, making Jessica feel even more uncomfortable. ‘Don’t listen to me, it really is great. I think I lost focus on what
was important. One day you’re off at the zoo with the kids, the next you’re making phone calls to say you’re stuck at work because of too much paperwork. It hasn’t helped
since Jason left.’

It wasn’t strictly true that Reynolds had ‘left’ but Jessica knew what he meant; it had put an extra strain on everyone.

‘We all think you’re doing a good job.’

Jessica had not seen eye-to-eye with the man in a while but that wasn’t because she lacked respect for him, more that she didn’t agree with certain things he had to do.

‘It’s so easy to slip into a routine,’ he replied. ‘At first it’s just staying for an extra half-hour to get through things, then it’s coming in half an hour
early. Then you realise thirty minutes isn’t long enough. Before you know it, you’re taking work home.’

Jessica knew she couldn’t talk as she did all of those things when circumstances required. It was part of the job.

‘It was one of her co-workers who called us,’ Cole said. Jessica was momentarily confused before she realised he was finally answering her question about how they had found the body.
‘Kayleigh had returned to the supermarket she works at yesterday but didn’t turn up for today’s shift. A lot of her colleagues were worried, so they tried her phone but no one
answered. One of them lived locally, so tried knocking on her door but there wasn’t a reply. I think she may have looked through the letterbox and then called us.’

‘What time was that?’

The chief inspector checked his watch. ‘Late, I suppose. Either way, one of our entry teams went in because the address matched the previous crime scene. I’ve not been to bed yet. I
got the call late last night and was waiting to hear what happened.’

He rolled his sleeve back down and put his hands into his pockets.

‘I probably shouldn’t have called you, especially as we’re going to be waiting for results anyway.’

‘I’m glad you did.’

Cole offered a thin smile. ‘You should be at home with your new husband, Jess. Go get some sleep, you look worse than me.’

‘Thanks.’

He smiled. ‘You know what I mean. You head out and we’ll catch up again tomorrow.’ After a second, he corrected himself. ‘Not tomorrow, later.’

‘Are you going to be okay?’

The chief inspector stood, then began walking back to Kayleigh’s front door with Jessica a few steps behind. ‘I’m going to go back to Longsight anyway. There’s going to
be all sorts to pull together – and that’s before we get any results back.’ Jessica was about to return to her car when he added, ‘How did your car reg thing go, by the
way?’

Although Jessica did not want to involve her supervisor too much, she had asked him for permission to trace the details of the two cars. She had access to do it herself but there had been a
recent tightening of rules in regards to who could check what because a colleague in a neighbouring district had used their access to find out details of a former partner. Cole had not asked for
anything other than the most basic of details.