Thicker Than Water (8 page)

‘Is that the same for you?’ Jessica asked Terry.

The second boy had sandier-coloured hair but a posture which perfectly matched his friend’s. ‘I’ve been here since I was nine,’ he said. ‘We became friends not long
after Rich and Ollie started, so five years too.’

They both spoke in a considered fashion and Jessica couldn’t quite work out if it was because they had been trained in the same way they had clearly been taught how to sit, or if it was
because they were both in some sort of shock. Still, if that headmaster bellowed at her to sit up straight and pronounce her words properly, she’d probably do it.

She nodded towards Richard, waiting for him to look towards her. ‘How about you start? Just tell me about what Oliver was like.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘What type of things did you do together?’

The young man shrugged dismissively before responding and Jessica was pleased to see not every aspect of being a teenager had been coached out of him. ‘He liked scientific things, he was
interested in the stars and constellations. He was talking about doing astronomy at university.’

‘He was pretty good at art too,’ Terry added. ‘But I’m not sure that’s what he wanted to do, even though he could.’

‘I noticed a few computer games at his house . . .’

For the first time, Jessica saw the two boys interact. They looked sideways at each other, sharing a grin. ‘We used to go to Ollie’s to play games,’ Richard said. ‘My mum
and dad wouldn’t let me have any and Terry lives too far away.’

Jessica nodded. ‘What about girls? Was there anyone Ollie was seeing?’

The smiles vanished almost instantly, both young men’s gazes returning to the floor. Jessica suspected their awkward behaviour was simply because they weren’t used to being in a room
on their own with a woman.

‘He wasn’t going out with anyone,’ Richard said.

‘Do you know that for sure?’

‘Definitely, we would have known. He was more interested in other things.’

From everything she had seen, Jessica had no reason to doubt that. ‘Were you into anything else? There seems to be a lot on offer around here: sports, trips, visits and so on.’

‘None of us really do sports,’ Terry replied. ‘It’s sort of encouraged around here but it’s not our thing.’

‘What about the trips?’

‘We’ve gone on a few,’ Terry replied. ‘It’s no big deal. Some people get involved in everything around here. They’re in every club and go on every
visit.’

‘You don’t, though?’

‘Nope.’

For the first time, Jessica had an inkling that, although the trio might well be uncomfortable around girls and perhaps a little naive, they weren’t as perfect as everyone made out.
Terry’s pronunciation had sounded carefully coached until the ‘nope’, when it had slipped back into his local accent.

Jessica slouched slightly in her chair. ‘So what do you get up to away from school? Come on, I know what it’s like being a teenager, you can’t just sit around playing games all
day? You must have a laugh somehow? I got up to all sorts of stupid things when I was your age.’

Instead of getting the chummy reply she was hoping for, both young men sunk backwards. She could see any forced confidence they had drain away. Terry started to speak but, as the other
boy’s body language tensed, he stopped and turned it into a cough.

Jessica looked from one to the other. ‘We’re talking privately,’ she assured them.

The silence told her the moment was lost. She had missed something but wasn’t entirely sure what.

Richard glanced at his watch, then at Jessica, this time looking directly at her. ‘We’re going to be late for a class . . .’

He stood before she could reply but Jessica knew there was little else she could ask anyway.

‘Let me leave you my number,’ she said. ‘If you think of anything, you can call any time. Even if you think it’s not important it might be helpful.’

She gave each of them her card and, even though it wasn’t something she would usually give out to teenage boys, wrote her mobile number on the back. If she started getting calls consisting
only of heavy breathing, then at least she would know where they were coming from.

The pair shuffled out but Jessica saw them transform almost instantly as they entered the corridor. Their backs straightened again and they stood tall as they walked towards reception. Jessica
closed the door and sat back in the seat. She took out her mobile phone, hoping she had missed a call from Izzy while it had been on silent. The screen was blank, so Jessica flipped through the
contacts and called her friend instead.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked.

‘“Hi” to you too. We’ve got a few things on the go but you’re not going to like them.’

‘What have you found?’

‘We know who the casino owner was but Jack told me not to tell you everything today. He said we’ll talk tomorrow.’

Jessica checked her watch. It was the end of her shift but she was still confused. ‘Why?’

‘Let’s just say it’s complicated.’

Jessica was tired of living in someone else’s property. First it was Adam’s house, which never felt like home, now it was her friend Caroline Morrison’s flat.
Adam was dealing with the insurance company and they knew that, at some point, they would be house-hunting. The house they used to live in had been seriously damaged by the fire and even if they
were given the money to repair it, neither of them was keen to return. Jessica’s problem was that she had no inclination to spend her days off traipsing around other people’s houses as
if she knew what she was doing.

When she’d been looking for a flat, before she knew Adam, her dad had advised her to ‘check for damp’. Jessica had no idea what that meant, other than physically touching the
walls to see if they were wet. He had laughed for almost fifteen minutes on the phone when she told him what she had done. If it had a roof, some walls, an indoor toilet that flushed and no holes
where there shouldn’t be, she would have declared everything ‘fine’ – which was likely why a career in surveying was never going to be on the cards. Knowledge-wise, it did
rank her above a fair percentage of estate agents, though.

Adam seemed to have some idea of what he was doing, so Jessica was more than happy for him to ‘pick somewhere’. He wasn’t as enthused about making such a big decision on his
own, which only annoyed her more.

The one aspect of Caroline’s flat Jessica would miss when they eventually left was the view. If there was nothing they liked on television, which was most of the time, Jessica and Adam
would sit on the balcony watching the whole of Salford Quays beneath them. Even if it was cold, they would wrap up in coats and jumpers, put their feet up on the railings and play I-spy. It might
seem childish but Jessica had as much fun doing that for free as she had paying for all sorts of other things.

The evening wasn’t too cold for the time of year, but Jessica was still wearing the heavy coat she had ‘liberated’ from the station’s uniform store a few years ago. Adam
was wearing a T-shirt, which annoyed her as he kept insisting he wasn’t cold, even though he had only just got out of the shower. He was wearing a bobble hat, with small strands of his damp,
long black hair poking out of the bottom of it, and he still hadn’t had a shave, leaving dark wisps of hair on his chin. He glanced over the rail in an exaggerated way, then turned to Jessica
and grinned. ‘I spy with my little eye something beginning with B.’

Jessica rolled her eyes. ‘You’re not peering through some woman’s bedroom window again, are you?’

Adam laughed. ‘Not while you’re around.’

‘You shouldn’t be looking whether I’m here or not.’ Jessica paused while looking over the rail and then leant back into her seat. ‘I don’t know,
bin?’

‘Nope.’ Jessica gave an overstated ‘um’. ‘You can talk about work if you want,’ Adam offered.

Although he hadn’t asked her to, Jessica had been making an effort to try to keep office matters at the station. Largely she was succeeding but Adam must have noticed how distracted she
seemed. ‘It’s fine,’ she said.

‘What about Jason? Is he still suspended?’

Jessica paused to think, wondering if it was a good idea to bring work home. She sighed. ‘I spoke to him last week and he’s not coming back. Even if they find in his favour,
he’s done.’

‘Because he gave information to the papers?’

The exact ins and outs were more complicated than that but, at its core, that was exactly why the inspector had been asked to stop coming to work. The fact he had been right to do it, certainly
in her mind, didn’t really matter when it came to the wrath of their bosses. You could be as incompetent as you wanted – as long as you didn’t make them look bad.

‘Something like that. He’s going to sit it out on full pay and then quit before he gets pushed. He hasn’t told anyone else yet.’

‘What’s happening with you, then?’

Jessica thought for a few moments before responding: ‘Building.’

‘Huh?’

‘I-spy.’

‘Oh right, no.’

‘Buggy?’

Adam leant forward. ‘Where’s a buggy?’

‘I don’t know, it begins with B.’

‘All right, no, not a buggy.’

Jessica nodded at the bottle by his foot. ‘Beer?’

‘Nope.’

Taking a deep breath, Jessica put her feet down and picked up the bottle by her own feet, taking a swig. ‘I don’t know if I want to go for the job. It’s a bit more money but
it’s a lot more faffing. I don’t think I can be arsed.’

‘You can’t want to be a sergeant forever?’

‘Bird?’

‘Nope.’

Jessica swilled the liquid around and had another drink. ‘I don’t know if I want to do this at all forever. Do you want to be in a lab all your life?’

‘I don’t know,’ Adam said. ‘Maybe. I’ve not really thought about it.’

Jessica wished she could be like that. ‘Blonde?’ she said, nodding towards a tower block across the way from them. She could clearly see the woman’s hair colour as she shook a
rug over the railing.

‘Nope but thanks for pointing her out.’

Jessica whacked him playfully with the back of her hand. ‘We’ll see. They want to interview me.’ It was a conversation they’d had before and Jessica didn’t know if
he was asking to see if she had changed her mind or because he thought she should go for it.

Adam picked up his own beer. ‘How’s Izzy?’

‘She’s just Izzy. Happy being a mum, happy being at work. Now she’s had the baby, she’s back to having bright red hair and scaring some of the higher-ups. It’s good
to see her around.’

Jessica clinked her empty bottle on the railing and turned to face Adam, raising her eyebrows. ‘I’m not getting up,’ he said, reluctantly passing across his half-full
bottle.

Jessica took it and grinned. ‘I knew you’d give me yours.’ She took a swig, adding: ‘Balloon,’ nodding towards the horizon where a hot-air balloon was taking
off.

‘No, that wasn’t there before.’

‘Bus?’

‘Nope. How’s Dave?’

‘Still being annoying. He’s trying to sort us all going to see Hugo later in the month. He has this residence thing at a comedy club. Are you up for that?’

‘Definitely.’

‘Breeze?’

‘You can’t see the breeze.’

‘Yeah but I can’t think of anything else beginning with B.’

Adam pulled his hat down over his ears and Jessica wondered if he was going to finally admit he was cold. She could see the goosebumps on his arms. ‘Have you told any of them yet?’
he asked.

‘I almost told Izzy but not yet. They were all so busy congratulating me on the wedding and everything that I didn’t have the heart to tell them.’

‘That doesn’t sound like you.’

Jessica finished the beer, then picked up her original bottle and stood. ‘Come on, let’s go inside before you turn blue while still insisting you’re not cold.’

‘I’m not cold.’

Jessica rubbed his arm. ‘What are these, then? Anyway, what’s your B?’

Adam pointed towards a flat on the building next to theirs where the washing was hanging over the rail. ‘Bra.’

Jessica opened the door and stepped inside. ‘Predictable.’

‘You didn’t get it.’

‘That’s because I’m not a perv.’

After sliding the door closed, Jessica took off her coat and hung it over the handle. She walked into the kitchen and opened the cupboard under the sink, dropping the two empty bottles inside.
As she was about to close it, Jessica noticed a cardboard envelope which had been ripped in half. She took the pieces out and held them together, seeing Adam’s name and his work address
written in black felt-tip.

‘What’s this?’ she called across the open-plan room.

Adam was looking at his phone but, when he peered up, Jessica could see his surprise, even from the opposite side of the room. ‘Er, nothing. Just work stuff. I don’t know why I
brought it home.’ Jessica took another look at the envelope and was about to put it back in the bin when Adam offered another guilty-sounding: ‘It’s nothing.’

Although he had been nervous around her when they had first met, it had been quite some time since he had stuttered his way through a conversation, let alone been openly evasive.

Jessica crossed the room and sat next to him on the sofa. ‘What’s going on?’

Adam put his phone in his pocket. ‘Nothing, it was just a letter, I was in a hurry so I brought it home. It’s uni stuff.’

Jessica had no reason to think anything different, despite his odd behaviour. ‘You were a bit of a geek at school, weren’t you?’ she said.

Adam seemed grateful for the change of subject. ‘Well, I wouldn’t put it like that . . .’

‘But you were . . .’

‘Liking science doesn’t make you a geek.’

‘What does it make you, then?’

‘I don’t know, someone who likes science.’

Jessica snorted. ‘Whatever. Anyway, what types of things did you get up to with your mates when you weren’t being scared of girls or trying to steal their underwear?’

Adam took off his hat and ruffled his wet hair. ‘I don’t know. We just hung around. We watched rubbish old horror movies and thought about making our own. One of my mates had a games
console which we used to play on. I wasn’t very good but we’d play a bit of football in this other guy’s garden. I did my homework too, unlike some people.’