Thicker Than Water (4 page)

‘Tidy, isn’t it?’ Izzy said.

‘My personal hell,’ Jessica replied. ‘I don’t know what kind of person can put everything away neatly. It’s unnatural.’

As if to emphasise the point, she slid back the door on a wardrobe to reveal orderly rows of shoes and trainers underneath lines of shirts that had been ironed and hung.

‘Anything?’ Izzy asked as she poked through a drawer underneath the television.

‘No – everything’s on a computer or phone nowadays. If he’s still missing in a day or two, we’ll have to get the tech guys in.’

‘We’re wasting our time, aren’t we?’

Jessica sat on the bed, almost bouncing because of the softness of the mattress. ‘Maybe; at least we’ve got a good idea of what he’s like. I reckon his mum still cleans his
room, so I doubt he’d leave anything dodgy around. Also, look at the movies, they all have safe age ratings. There’s the odd fifteen or eighteen, but they are mainly things which
wouldn’t offend.’ Jessica stopped to feel under the pillow and run her hand along the length of the mattress. ‘I don’t know the kid but it all seems a bit too
homely.’

Izzy had turned around to face Jessica and was leaning against the dresser. ‘You’re very cynical,’ she said. Whether it was deliberate or not, Jessica thought her
friend’s tone sounded a little harsher than usual.

Before she could reply, the constable apologised. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I just thought that, maybe, it’s nothing to do with Oliver at all. Say he is a bit naive, maybe
that’s what attracts other people who might want to harm him? Or use him for something? We don’t know if he left the Sextons’ house voluntarily, if he was taken, or if something
else happened.’

‘Actually, that’s exactly what I was thinking too.’

‘Really? I know what you said in the car but I thought that, with the questions downstairs, plus the room, it sounded like you were saying he couldn’t be
that
sheltered. I
thought you were hinting that Oliver was up to something?’

Jessica shrugged. ‘Maybe he is but I doubt it. I think that’s why Jack sent us out here.’

Izzy picked up a snow globe from next to the television and tipped it upside down, before turning it over. ‘Adam’s changed you,’ she said with a smirk.

‘Bollocks he has.’

The constable laughed. ‘Before you would’ve been annoyed at Jack, wondering why he was sending you out to a missing persons case after less than a day. Then you would have been
suspicious of Cameron, wondering if he or his wife had somehow killed Oliver – not just joking, really speculating about it. Or thinking it was a big set-up. Then you would have come here and
kicked up a stink. Now you take a step back and absorb it all.’

Jessica felt defensive. ‘Are you saying I’ve lost my instinct?’

Izzy put the snow globe back down and paced across to the window. ‘The opposite, actually. I’m saying it’s better because, instead of barrelling in, you’re a little more
. . .
refined
.’

Arching her eyebrows, Jessica replied: ‘Refined means boring.’

The constable laughed again. ‘Only you could think that. Maybe you haven’t changed after all.’

Jessica patted the corners of the sheets back into the bed to ensure she hadn’t made too much of a mess. She had a look underneath but there wasn’t even a rogue pair of shoes, let
alone a stack of animal porn or snuff videos. She didn’t want to rummage too deeply through the teenager’s possessions but a quick glance through the dresser and the rest of the
wardrobe revealed nothing interesting, aside from the fact that he folded his boxer shorts too neatly.

Izzy was in the process of checking each of the film cases individually when Jessica stopped her. ‘We may as well go. There’s not much we can do here. We’ll have to talk to his
friends and then check whatever CCTV we have from the streets near the other house to see if he was caught anywhere.’

‘His poor parents.’

Jessica let the words hang for a few moments. ‘What’s it like being a mum?’ she asked.

Izzy grinned, although her eyes looked tired. ‘It’s great. I never thought I’d want kids, it was always Mal. But now, I can’t think of a world without Amber.’

‘Why did you come back to work then?’

The constable pulled a face and, for a moment, Jessica thought her friend had taken offence. ‘Because I don’t want to be defined by it.’

It wasn’t the first time Jessica felt as if someone else was the adult in the room as she somehow struggled to keep up.

‘I love being a mum but I don’t want to just be “Izzy, the mother”. I want to be “Detective Constable Isobel Diamond, the police officer”, “Mrs Diamond,
the wife” – all those things and more. I love Amber and I love being with her but I didn’t want to become someone who spends so long being at home that I’m incapable of
doing anything else.’

It was clear to Jessica her friend had been bottling up her speech for a while. ‘You’ll always be “Izzy the wind-up merchant” to me,’ she assured her.

‘Isn’t that why you’re not taking Adam’s name? Because you don’t just want to be “Jessica Compton, the wife”? You want to do your own thing?’

Jessica stared at her friend. ‘There is another reason . . .’

Before she could say anything else, her mobile phone began to ring. She took it out of her jacket pocket, sighing for Izzy’s benefit as she saw the caller’s identity.

‘Well, well, well,’ she answered. ‘Look who it is.’

She was slightly dismayed to hear that Garry Ashford’s voice did not waver as he replied. He was a journalist that she knew she could intimidate and certainly annoy. In the past they had
helped each other with various things and, although she’d never tell him, he was one of the few people she trusted.

‘How’s married life?’ he shot back.

‘Is that a tiny hint of jealousy?’

‘Jealous I didn’t get to see you squirming in a dress. I heard you went to Vegas to avoid everyone?’

‘Well, if you will listen to Dave Rowlands as a source, then you will be fed misinformation. Anyway, if you’ve been caught flashing in a park again, then no, I’m not going to
ask about having the charges dropped.’

She heard the man suppressing what she assumed for the benefit of her own ego was a snigger. ‘Have you got a few minutes to come to the office?’ he asked.

Jessica swirled her hand in the air to apologise to Izzy for taking so long on the call. ‘Can’t you just tell me on the phone?’

‘It’s serious.’

‘You’ve not locked yourself in a toilet cubicle again, have you?’

‘Jess . . .’

Jessica changed her tone. ‘All right, we’ll come over but we’re supposed to be on the way back to the station, so you’ll have to give me something.’

Garry took a deep breath as if wondering how to phrase things. ‘We took a call this morning from someone who said her son is missing.’

Jessica involuntarily let out a gasp, somehow knowing the woman sat in the living room below was the person who had made the call. She wondered why Oliver’s mother hadn’t told them
she had phoned the media. Garry didn’t seem to notice as he continued. ‘You know what missing persons cases are like – you won’t do anything for a day or so and we
don’t run anything unless we’ve heard from you, otherwise we’d be printing a new story every time someone had an argument and stormed out for the night.’

For a reason she wasn’t sure of, Jessica didn’t want to let on that she knew anything about Oliver Gordon, let alone that she was standing in his parents’ house. She gave a
non-committal ‘uh-huh’.

‘Anyway, we have this new guy who started two weeks ago. He’s straight out of uni and you know the type. They’re keen but don’t really have a clue what they’re
doing. We’ve been giving him the shit jobs to see what he’s like . . .’

‘Wow, what a boss you are.’

‘Honestly, Jess, if I wind you up, just wait until you meet him, he . . .’ Garry sounded as if he was about to go off on a rant before he stopped himself mid-sentence. ‘Either
way, we put this call onto him just to shut him up for half an hour. It’s not that we’re unsympathetic but you don’t know if there’s actually a story, or just some
over-protective mum who’s had a shouting match with her lad.’

‘What happened?’

‘We put this guy on the births, deaths and marriages page a few days ago. It’s a lot of work for not much reward and everyone here is always dodging it. He did a decent job but
noticed one thing after taking all the details down about the missing lad. Can I run a name past you?’

‘Who?’

‘Have you heard anything about an “Oliver Gordon”?’

Jessica felt a tingle run along her back, her suspicions confirmed. ‘What about him?’

‘We had his mum phoning in this morning to say he went missing last night – but we already ran an obituary for him two days ago.’

Jessica dropped Izzy back at Longsight Police Station where they worked, asking her if she could start double-checking Oliver Gordon’s background and also look into his
friends. She then left her car and took a marked police vehicle. The
Manchester Morning Herald
’s offices were in the centre of the city and she had no intention of driving around
looking for a parking space. Instead, she left the car half on the pavement, half on the road on a side street just off Deansgate and then walked the short distance to the cafe where Garry Ashford
had suggested meeting.

The small coffee shop was in an area surrounded by swanky new glass-fronted buildings, looking as if it had been dropped into the wrong century. A bell tinkled over the door as Jessica walked
in. The smell of exotic teas was both pleasant but strange as she immediately spotted Garry sitting in the corner drinking from an espresso cup, one leg crossed over the other. The walls were
brown, almost as if stained by the fumes, and Garry’s outfit blended perfectly as he was wearing a pair of brown corduroy trousers, with a matching jacket over the top of a white shirt. His
hair had grown since she had last seen him, scraggily hanging below his ears.

He was jabbing at his phone screen but looked up when Jessica scraped back the chair opposite him and sat.

‘Still not got a mirror in your house then,’ she said.

They had met in this exact cafe a few years ago. Back then, Garry would have squirmed awkwardly but instead he grinned. ‘It’s good to see you, Jess.’

‘You too but your girlfriend can’t seriously be happy about going out in public with you wearing stuff like that? And what’s going on with the tiny cup? Can’t you drink a
proper mug of coffee?’

Garry finished the espresso and put the cup on the table. ‘Ever the good mood.’

Jessica ignored him. ‘Let’s hear it then.’

Garry pocketed his phone and leant forward, reaching into a bag on the floor and taking out a copy of the
Morning Herald
. He flicked through the pages then laid it flat on the table,
which wobbled as he put pressure on it. ‘This is from two days back,’ he explained, pointing to a square box towards the bottom of the page. Jessica leant in to read.

The notice concluded with a date and ‘taken too young’.

‘How often do you run these?’ Jessica asked.

‘Twice a week.’

‘How does it work?’

‘It used to be something you would pay for but that stopped a few years ago because there were so many places people would put notices for free on the Internet. The bosses figured they
would rather have people buying the paper to read the notices and make some money than make more or less nothing because people weren’t paying for the spots and the pages were relatively
empty.’

‘How popular are the pages? I’ve never looked at one.’

There was an awkward smile on Garry’s face. ‘It’s not really for people like you. You’ve not got kids. For people who have children, this is something they’ll keep
plus, because they’re often involved in other activities with other new parents, they all look out for each other’s too. You’re only going to put a marriage notice in if you want
it to be seen by others, which doesn’t sound like you at all, and then you have the death notices. Although you do get the odd younger person, it’s the page that is most read by the
older folk because they aren’t generally looking for these things on the Internet. They check for names of people they might know who have passed away.’

It sounded pretty morbid to Jessica. ‘These are the most popular pages?’

Garry shook his head. ‘Actually, that’s the crossword.’

‘Seriously?’

‘God forbid you ever get a clue wrong. Once we printed the wrong grid and we were taking calls for three days about it. People were going crazy, phoning up and saying, “I’m
never buying your rag again” and so on. We got this letter handwritten in green ink saying they were going to fire-bomb the building.’

‘Over a crossword?’

Garry laughed, seeing the senselessness in his description. ‘I know.’

‘So if people only ever buy the paper for the crossword and the births, deaths and marriages bit, why even bother with all the news?’

Jessica was trying to wind him up but he answered seriously. ‘Half our managers think the same thing. I wouldn’t mind but, if we get a detail in a story wrong, no one bothers
us.’

Trying to bring him back around to the subject, Jessica pointed to the death notice. ‘Do people email these in?’

‘They can but this was phoned in.’

‘Have you got any way of checking who calls you?’

‘Not directly. You’d have to check with the phone company. I can get you the details.’

‘Do you usually take the name of the person who has placed the notice?’

‘Initially but the paper doesn’t keep the information long-term because we don’t take any payments and have no real need. We used to have vast filing cabinets full of it all
but it was getting ridiculous, then some management guy had this big thing about data protection and so on, so we shred it. I had a look for a name before I called you but there’s nothing on
the spike. We have these recycling people that come around, so I guess it went out with that.’

Jessica nodded in reluctant acceptance. ‘So you’ve just got this new guy who took the call?’