Thicker Than Water (21 page)

Jessica couldn’t prevent herself from wincing but Ruby seemed unperturbed, pointing to the inside of her thumb. ‘When I was pregnant with Nicky, we were hosting this dinner party for
some people he knew. I wasn’t feeling very well and kept being sick but he barricaded me in the kitchen and told me to get on with it. I didn’t know what happened but I guess I fell
asleep for a moment because I was woken up by the fire alarm going off. It was nothing serious but something under the grill had burned. He came storming in, saying I was trying to kill him by
burning the house down. I was so tired, I didn’t even know what was going on – but he grabbed my hand and forced it onto this red-hot ring on top of the cooker. I was screaming and
could smell my own hand burning but he was shouting in my face, telling me I’d regret trying to burn his house down.’

Ruby paused to have another smoke, although Jessica had the feeling she could have catalogued many more injuries.

‘Surely there were questions from the hospital?’ Jessica asked, knowing how naive she sounded. It was a human reaction, not a police officer’s.

Ruby exhaled and smiled thinly. ‘Let’s just say I fell down the stairs a lot. If you went to a different casualty unit each time, no one even noticed.’

It was far from the first story of domestic abuse Jessica had heard but, coupled with everything else she knew about Nicholas Long, a genuinely terrifying picture was emerging.

‘Aren’t things better now?’ Rowlands asked. Jessica heard his voice falter and realised he was taking it worse than she was.

Ruby smiled another toothy grin and held her arms into the air. ‘Look around, honey, this ain’t much fun either.’

Jessica had been wondering why Ruby was letting them into all of her secrets but realised the woman was past caring. As she finished stubbing out the cigarette, Jessica knew the saddest thing
was that Ruby would run back to her former husband in a heartbeat if the option was there.

She wanted to comfort the woman, to tell her it couldn’t be that bad, but she knew anything she said would sound patronising.

‘There’s not much else I can tell you, sorry,’ Ruby added, straightening her clothes.

‘What was Nicky like as a child?’ Jessica asked, doubting the woman would be able to give her any information to back up what Leviticus had told her.

‘Nicholas found everything funny, as long as it didn’t affect him. Nicky would pinch and punch me and his dad would laugh along so he thought it was okay.’

‘But you still wanted custody?’

Ruby shrugged. ‘Boys will be boys. They’re always up to something. He was still my son.’ She quickly corrected herself: ‘Is my son.’

Jessica couldn’t think of anything else to ask. She had hoped for some insight into Nicky but instead ended up hearing one more awful chapter in the life of the boy’s father.

‘You can show yourselves out,’ Ruby concluded as Jessica and Rowlands stood.

As she waited in the hallway with the constable struggling to put his boots on, Jessica couldn’t help but swear under her breath.

‘Sounds like a lovely chap, doesn’t he?’ Rowlands said quietly.

‘You don’t know the half of it.’

‘I do have one idea you might be interested in.’

‘There’s a first time for everything.’

‘No, seriously. Your newspaper ad thing, it was something Ruby said.’

Jessica could tell from the way he was speaking to her normally that he thought he was onto something.

Jessica peered across the table at the two individuals and pointed to the newspaper in front of her. ‘If either or both of you were responsible for this, now would be a
pretty good time to speak up.’

When neither of them answered, she looked sideways at Rowlands. He spoke with the exact tone she wanted him to, like a big brother to a younger sibling. ‘Look,’ he said chummily,
‘if it was you and you tell us now, we’re prepared to let things go. If you keep this going and we later find out it was either of you, then you will be in serious shite.’

Jessica could tell it had worked.

Terry shifted uncomfortably in his chair, rubbing the back of his neck. Richard had sensed his friend’s nervousness and slumped in his seat.

‘It was supposed to be a joke,’ Richard said quietly, refusing to look up from the table. ‘We thought Ollie would find it funny when he saw his name in the paper but
didn’t think he’d actually . . . y’know . . . a few days later.’

Jessica said nothing, allowing Rowlands to speak. ‘You do realise that in the history of school pranks, this is not only one of the shittest but also one of the most poorly
timed?’

His words echoed around the empty classroom as neither student dared look up from the table.

‘What’s going to happen to us?’ Terry asked, his voice cracking halfway through the sentence, partly through emotion, partly fear.

Jessica exchanged a look with Rowlands, holding his eye to allow the tension to build. ‘Nothing for now,’ Jessica said firmly. ‘But we both know who you are and what you did.
If either of us ever hear you’re in trouble again, then we will rain some serious shite down upon you.’

She allowed her words to hang, before adding, ‘Now get out of here.’

Richard and Terry jumped to their feet in unison, muttering a ‘thank you’ before racing towards the classroom door and the relative safety of the corridor. The truth was that neither
of the young men had committed any sort of offence, other than one of stupidity – and if they started convicting people for that, they’d need some pretty large new prisons. Jessica
didn’t think a few idle threats could do them any harm.

When the room was empty, Jessica caught her colleague’s eye. ‘I quite like our bad cop, bad cop routine.’

Rowlands smiled, then stood and walked across to stand by the window. ‘We should take it on tour.’

‘You’ll have to start speaking to me properly first.’

The constable didn’t reply for a few moments, before eventually saying: ‘Different world here, isn’t it. At my school, the toilets barely worked. Here, they’ve got their
own operatic society.’

Jessica went to join him by the window. ‘Let’s hear it then.’

‘What?’

‘How you guessed all of this. We could’ve come in here and had them tell us they didn’t know anything about it.’

Rowlands turned to face Jessica, leaning against the glass. ‘“Guess” is the right word. I think it had been floating around the back of my mind anyway after Iz told me
you’d been here to talk to Oliver’s friends. I thought about my own mates and how we’d arse around. It was never anything like this, mind, we’d hide each other’s
clothes after swimming, or give each other dead legs.’

‘Sounds mature.’

‘Well, exactly, but when Ruby was going on about boys being boys, I thought that Oliver was a bit different to us.’ He pointed towards the door Terry and Richard had just left
through. ‘Those two don’t seem the type to go around pissing in a Lucozade bottle, then leaving it around the changing rooms after rugby practice.’

‘You did that?’

The constable shrugged but offered a half-grin. ‘Maybe. The taste is about the same. Anyway, the point is I thought they’d be doing something a bit more high-brow. Placing an ad
predicting their friend’s death seemed the type of unfunny thing they’d come up with. The fact he ended up being killed days later was just . . . unfortunate.’

The way he said the final word sounded a little callous but Jessica knew what he meant. ‘Something always seemed a little off,’ she said. ‘There was never anything predicting
Kayleigh’s death and it never really fitted. The two killings were brutal, not something whimsical that someone would choose to predict beforehand.’

Rowlands crossed the room and sat opposite Jessica. ‘I guess our killer isn’t as clever as we thought.’

Jessica made sure her friend was looking at her as she replied. ‘We could have figured this out ages ago if you were talking to me properly.’

She expected the constable to brush off the remark and pretend nothing was wrong but instead he squirmed as awkwardly as Terry and Richard had done minutes before.

‘Can I tell you something?’ Jessica asked quietly. Rowlands nodded but she couldn’t read his face. ‘I went back to see Nicholas a second time.’

‘On your own?’

Jessica nodded. ‘Iz knew. I wanted to see what he was like on his own with a woman.’

The constable loosened his tie. ‘I can guess.’

‘You wouldn’t even know the half of it.’

For as long as Jessica had known Rowlands, he’d kept up a front of bravado. Although some of his boasting about women in his younger days had no doubt been true, at least in part, it had
taken Jessica a long time to realise that he was very similar to her. As she told him Eleanor and Leviticus’s stories, she could see in his face that he was as horrified as she was.

‘. . . And you put yourself in a room alone with him?’ he replied.

‘I didn’t know all of that at the time,’ was the only justification Jessica could think of.

‘Have you told Jack or anyone else yet?’

Jessica shook her head. ‘What good can it do? All it proves is the type of person he is, which we partly knew already. There’s nothing to link him directly to Oliver or what happened
to Kayleigh.’

Dave loosened his tie further and undid his top button, breathing out deeply. ‘Do you reckon Serious Crime would be interested?’

‘Do you think Eleanor, Leviticus or Ruby might want to give evidence against him? Even if they did, much of it is dated, circumstantial or one person’s word against another. And what
would they do him for anyway, other than what they’re already looking into him for?’

Jessica could see the constable shared the same feelings of injustice she did. While they had officers out checking the speeds of motorists, someone like Nicholas Long was seemingly free to
continue going about his business.

Although there was silence in the room, there was a hum of activity from elsewhere around the school. Students were hurrying to and from lessons, others whooping on the various sporting
pitches.

‘Shall we go and tell everyone what conquering heroes we are?’ Dave asked, sliding his chair backwards with a screech.

Jessica didn’t move. ‘I miss you,’ she said quietly.

The constable stopped, hands fixed to the back of the chair as he was half-standing. ‘Sorry?’

‘I miss you mucking around and taking the piss. You’re such a dick but you made it fun coming to work. Me, you and Iz are a good team.’

Jessica had been wanting to tell him that for weeks but everything fell out in one unrehearsed sentence. As soon as she had spoken, she half-wished she could take it back but the emotion of
hearing the endless stream of degradation Nicholas had poured over those around him had worn her down.

Rowlands seemed frozen, half-bent over the chair. Jessica could feel him staring at her but she didn’t acknowledge him. Finally, he stood and walked back to the window.

‘Are you going to at least tell me what’s up?’ Jessica demanded, raising her voice.

‘Things have been complicated.’

‘That’s it?’

Jessica scraped her chair back and walked to the window to stand next to him. They both stared towards the sports fields where a group of children were playing lacrosse.

‘What type of a game is that?’ Dave asked with a forced laugh.

‘Is it to do with you breaking up with Chloe?’ Jessica asked, refusing to let him change the subject.

‘I’ve been out with plenty of girls since then.’

‘That’s bollocks. If you had, we’d have all heard about it.’

Out of the window, play stopped as one lad was tackled roughly by another. The teacher and the other students crowded around as the two started pushing and shoving. Almost simultaneously, the
familiar pitter-patter began as rain descended, bouncing off the tarmac of the car park that separated the school from the field.

‘I guess some things don’t change regardless of what school you go to,’ Dave said, as one of the boys shoulder-charged the other to the floor. The teacher dived in to try to
separate them.

Jessica didn’t reply, watching in silence as the adult pointed and shouted at both of the students before sending them towards a building on the far side of the pitch.

‘It wasn’t Chloe,’ the constable finally said.

‘So what was it? You’ve been weird ever since the fire.’

Even though she wasn’t facing him, Jessica could hear Rowlands gulping. ‘Exactly. I saw it all, Jess. I was at your house when they put you in the ambulance. Your face was covered in
black stuff and you weren’t moving. Everyone had gone to focus on Adam and I thought you were dead. I thought they’d given up on you.’

Jessica waited for a moment, the broken memories of that night running through her mind. When she replied, her voice cracked and didn’t sound like hers. ‘I know you told me Jack,
Jason and everyone were there but I guess I didn’t know that meant you.’

Outside, the game was descending into farce, with players sliding in the mud as the teacher stood in the middle of the field, blowing his whistle and bellowing.

Dave didn’t take his eyes from the game as he replied. ‘There was this paramedic who asked if I was all right and it was only then I realised you were off to the hospital. Jack told
me to go, so I raced away. I was driving like such an idiot that I caught the ambulance up.’

‘You stayed with me the whole day.’

‘Yes.’

‘You held my hand.’

‘You gobbed on my shoe.’

Jessica laughed. ‘I don’t remember that.’

Dave snorted too, although his voice was faltering. ‘I didn’t know if you’d wake up, Jess. All this back and forth we’ve had over the years, all the arsing around and
taking the piss out of each other . . . I was sitting in the room wondering what might happen if you didn’t wake up.’

‘But I did.’

The constable didn’t reply as they watched the match come to an end. The rain was falling so hard that it looked like a wall of water instead of individual drops. Over the top, they heard
the teacher’s whistle blaring as everyone, including him, turned and ran towards the building on the far side.