‘Oh . . .’

‘We were thinking about adopting or fostering, but it’s awkward with the job . . .’

‘So you have to choose between one or the other?’

It was an honest question – a natural one – but Jessica suddenly felt that itch at the back of her throat as if tears were near. She’d tried to block out the fact that the choice was as simple as that. Izzy combined the two, as did so many others, and yet Jessica knew that wasn’t her. As with anything in her life, it was all or nothing.

You’re either living life at 100 m.p.h., or you’re not living at all.

Jessica just didn’t know which of the two camps she was in.

‘Sorry,’ Bex said.

Jessica shielded herself behind half a biscuit. ‘Don’t be.’

Bex drew her mug up in front of her face and began to speak. ‘I didn’t know my dad – never met him, never knew his name. I was brought up by my mum in Hulme. My first memory is of waking up early in the morning, a bit like this I suppose. I was maybe five or six and it was cold, so I got up to see if I could find my mum. It was only this little two-bed place and her room was next to mine but there was no one in her bed. I heard voices downstairs, so I crept down into the living room and she was there with two blokes. I thought . . . well, I didn’t know what I thought then. It’s obvious now – it all is.’

Bex pulled the blanket tighter under her chin, leaving one bony arm sticking out, clutching her mug. ‘I used to think she was ill because there were needles everywhere. She’d say they were because she was feeling poorly but you don’t know any differently when you’re a kid. If I ever asked about my dad, she’d get furious, saying he was no good and that I shouldn’t worry about him. Then I’d have all these “uncles”. There was always someone there.’

She paused, then added: ‘When you’re a kid, you think normal is what’s in front of you.’

So young, so wise.

‘How long have you been on the streets?’

‘I don’t really know – a couple of years, maybe? When I was a kid I really enjoyed school but there was never any pressure from home to do well and when I got a bit older I started hanging around with the wrong people. We’d bunk off, smoke in the park, see if we could get some booze. No one said anything, so we just kept doing it. Then Mum started seeing this bloke named Stu. By then, I pretty much knew what was going on with the needles and so on but it was normal. I was still sleeping at home and this one night I woke up and he was just there at the bottom of my bed, watching.’

Jessica gurgled a noise of revulsion, not knowing what to say.

‘He didn’t say anything but he was . . . well, you can guess.’

‘How old were you?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘And how old are you now?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I started screaming at him, telling him to get away.’

‘Did he?’

‘He turned around and walked out of my room as if nothing was wrong but I’d woken up my mum by shouting. She came stumbling in from her room, screaming back – wanting to know why I’d woken her up. I was telling her what Stu was doing at the bottom of my bed but she shrugged and asked what the problem was.’

Jessica couldn’t stop herself: ‘No . . .’

Bex took another biscuit and crunched into it. ‘I spent the rest of the night sleeping up against the door and then the next day I packed all the clothes I had into a bag and left. I knew the parks pretty well and there was usually an unlocked toilet or a pagoda somewhere. During the summer, it’s not too bad . . . well, it’s not great but it’s not the worst. But then it was winter.’

‘What did you do?’

‘You get into the hostel where you can. Sometimes the woman on the desk lets you in but other times, when they have a bunch of people in, you have to pay. When you need eight quid a day for a roof, you become pretty good at figuring out the types of people who are a bit careless with their wallets.’

‘You did that for two years?’

Bex finished the biscuit and put her mug on the floor, curling herself up entirely under the blanket and edging closer to Jessica. She seemed more childlike than ever. ‘More or less. There are always blokes saying they’ll do this or that to help you but it’s pretty easy to figure out what they actually want.’

Jessica felt the need to defend Adam. ‘Not everyone’s like that.’

‘Maybe . . .’

‘Why did you decide to come here?’

Bex yawned widely. ‘I don’t know – why did you invite me?’

The yawn was infectious and Jessica found herself trying, and failing, to stifle one herself. ‘I don’t know . . . instinct.’

Bex indicated the sofa and Jessica’s sleeping arrangement: ‘Are you and Adam going to be okay?’

‘Yes; it’s just the job.’

‘Are you going to have to choose between being a police officer, Adam, and children?’

Jessica couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘Not yet.’

26

Jessica and DC Archie Davey spent the morning trapped in what would have looked to outsiders like an elaborate yawning competition. Jessica didn’t want to spend time in her office in case DCI Cole came looking for her, so, instead, they holed up in the back corner of the canteen – somewhere neither he, nor anyone with intestinal problems or taste buds, would go anywhere near. Archie complained that the job was taking a toll on his social life but Jessica could do little other than laugh and yawn. ‘Get used to that,’ she advised.

Hamish had been kept in overnight while his story was checked out. The first-hand sighting at the massage parlour was as much of an alibi as they were going to get and there wasn’t much desire to haul all the girls in for interview. Sandra had likely been right about one thing – off-duty officers would be known faces at some of those establishments, and in a model of mutually assured destruction conducted through the media, the police would come off worse if they caused too many problems.

For the most part, the massage parlours weren’t the problem anyway – the girls who worked there knew what they were doing and the blokes who lumbered in on the way home from work knew what they were paying for. Sandra knew that too: if she and her girls didn’t create a problem, then they wouldn’t get one, even if the books might struggle to hold up to the closest scrutiny. It was the people-smuggling that GMP’s Serious Crime Division was desperate to get a handle on – mainly of Eastern European girls – but if they were going to close that down, then leaving a safe alternative was probably for the best too. It was on the borderline of legality but it served most people’s interests to leave it be. Well, unless you lived next door to one – and then you were screwed either way. Literally, if that was your thing.

That left Jessica with a problem, because if Hamish wasn’t driving his cab in the area Cassie and Grace had disappeared from, then who was? He insisted it had been left on his driveway while he’d gone for a walk to Sandra’s. He’d spent two hours – and a hefty chunk of change, no doubt – at the parlour and then headed home. Because of the shift Arianna worked, Sandra had practically been able to give them a clocking-in and -out time for Hamish’s appearances, ruling him out of killing either woman. He said that his cab was exactly where he’d left it when he got home and that, although he hadn’t checked in the evenings, the keys were still on the table where he’d left them by the next morning.

That left them with two options:

1) Someone had broken into Hamish’s house, stolen his keys, stolen the cab, picked up both women, beaten, killed, cut up and dumped them – all without making a mess in the vehicle, then returned the taxi and keys unnoticed, possibly simultaneously inventing a time machine; or