Nothing But Trouble, page 26
part #11 of Jessica Daniel Series
‘Jessica, hi—’
‘How’s the engagement going? Has she come to her senses yet?’
There was a sigh: ‘If by “senses”, you’re asking if we’re both really looking forward to the wedding, then yes . . . anyway, I’m calling to give you a heads-up.’
‘What’s going on?’
‘Niall O’Brien.’
‘Oh, for—’
‘He’s called us ten times today and about a dozen times yesterday. He says people are breaking into his house but nobody at your end’s doing anything. Sounds like a bit of a nutter to me but there’s a story there.’
‘He’s not a nutter, Garry, he’s just an old bloke. We’ve been to his house and checked for fingerprints and the like but there’s no sign anyone’s broken into his house – ever – let alone the times he’s saying. He says nothing’s been stolen but that someone’s done his washing-up, or drunk his milk . . . so to speak.’
A hint of a snigger: ‘He told me they’d opened his mail.’
Jessica pinched the bridge of her nose. ‘There’s not much I can tell you, definitely not on the record. You’ll have to talk to the press office if you’re doing something. We’ve done everything we’re supposed to – more, in fact. I’ve been out there twice.’
Garry sighed, which reflected her thoughts. ‘We’re not writing about him as such, more about the stalled development for the park and new houses. He’ll be a part of it though – that’s what I was tipping you off about.’
‘Are you naming me?’
‘Not specifically but there’ll be something about the police in there.’
‘Wonderful . . . y’know, if this goes badly, I’ll sneak out there myself in the middle of the night, just to see if he’s locked his back door. If it’s open then I’ll go in and give him a piece of my mind.’
‘You’re not going to do that, are you?’
Garry was winning the sigh-off, though Jessica threw in another one, trying to keep up: ‘No . . . it’s just been a long week.’
‘Good – he was telling me something about shooting the next person to break in.’
‘Please tell me that’s not true.’
‘I think he was joking.’
‘I bloody hope so. Look, I’ve got to go – but thanks for the tip.’
Out of everything that could go wrong, the one thing GMP’s upper management feared the most was bad press coverage. Niall O’Brien’s ‘case’ – if it could be called that – had Jessica’s name all over it.
DCI Topper took Jessica by surprise when he finally turned up in her office forty-five minutes later than he’d said he’d be there. She was sure he was greyer than he had been a few weeks before, the strains of the job taking their toll.
He was checking his watch as he closed the door behind him. ‘I’ve not got long.’
‘Aren’t you going to say “wow”, or something similar?’ Jessica replied.
‘Why?’
‘I cleaned.’
Topper perched himself on the corner of the spare desk, peering around the room. ‘It looks like someone’s emptied a skip in here.’
‘Oi!’
‘It really does.’
‘It’s clean compared to this morning.’
Topper ran a hand through his hair. ‘I guess that’s not saying much. Anyway, I’m at the point where I can’t believe your previous chief inspector lasted as long as he did. What was it? Four years?’
‘Something like that.’
‘What can I help you with?’ Topper asked.
‘Richard Hyde.’
Topper shook his head. ‘Serious Crime aren’t going to let you within a mile of him.’
Jessica had expected that reply. ‘They’ve been wanting to get him in the DNA Database for years – I did them a favour.’
‘Let’s not go over that again. You know why they’re annoyed – if he ends up in court for something, his lawyer will argue previous harassment.’
‘They won’t because he’s going to plead guilty for attempting to drink-drive.’
‘Who says?’
‘He did.’
Topper’s eyes narrowed. ‘I have no idea how you get away with what you do.’
‘Talent.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Serious Crime are still not going to let you anywhere near him. What are you after?’
‘I want to know who Richie Hyde’s father is. Isaac Foster’s too.’
Topper turned as if to leave. ‘It’s none of our business – we’re not some chat show doing paternity tests. What crime are you investigating?’
‘We’re investigating a triple murder.’
He spun back. ‘So tell me how it matters – for one, you have no idea who Richie’s father might be. You can’t ask every male in the country to be DNA tested.’
‘It matters because everything to do with the Hydes, Carter, Fraser and the rest is to do with relationships and rivalries. It’s the centre of everything we do, regardless of the crime.’
‘I get that.’
‘It’s about maths too: two people unknown to each other, who share a father, are in our database. Then there’s Richie Hyde.’
‘I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. Crime runs through all sorts of families.’
Jessica was struggling to explain herself. ‘There’s Richie Hyde here, Isaac Foster in Liverpool and some girl in Southampton. These three don’t know each other. We can argue about nature and nurture, say they inherited this sort of thing from their shared father, or whatever, but that doesn’t make sense.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because if there are three people with the same father, why wouldn’t there be more? Say you’re the dad—’
‘I’m not.’
‘Say you are. You have three kids who all end up coming to the attention of the police – a one hundred per cent hit rate.’
‘Right.’
‘How many families do we know where there’s a one hundred per cent rate like that? With the worst of families, the ones who are always in trouble, even then there’s always one person who we never catch. A brother or sister, uncle or aunt who don’t get into the same hassle as the rest.’
If there was a lightbulb over Topper’s head, it couldn’t have pinged any brighter than the way his eyes lit up. ‘There are probably more people with the same father . . .’ he said.
‘Exactly – we have no idea who killed the two Hydes and Priestley, let alone why. We need to find the father, because we need to know if there are any other children. Any of them could be doing this, or, at the very least, know something about it.’
‘Maths?’ Topper smiled. ‘Have you ever used maths as an argument for something before?’
‘At the bar when I’m counting my change.’
He nodded, unsurprised. ‘This is probably why you get away with the amount you do.’
‘There’s something else . . . the Fosters from Liverpool used to live in Manchester, but our family in Southampton didn’t. Do we really believe that those women and Lisa Hyde had an affair with the same man? With the ages of the kids, they’d have had to all be sleeping with the same man more or less at the same time.’
‘We’re not a chat show, Jess.’
‘In Liverpool, when she and her husband were talking about having children, Nicole Foster said, “You know how hard it was having Isaac”. She said she’d had problems conceiving but then it happened. When I was talking to Richard Hyde, he called Richie his “little miracle”.’
There was a pause until Topper realised what she was saying: ‘They both had fertility treatment?’
Jessica spun her monitor around, showing him the Wikipedia entry for IVF: ‘Exactly.’
‘Did Richard Hyde mention anything about that?’
‘No, which is something I don’t understand. He wanted to know if Richie was his son. If he and his wife had been for fertility treatment, he’d know. I don’t know enough about this stuff.’
‘Could she have had treatment without him?’
‘Maybe – I don’t know if you can do that. The Fosters are the really confusing ones. We were questioning who Isaac’s father was. If they’d had fertility treatment, they’d have made that clear. They’d have said that Rhys was definitely the dad because she was artificially inseminated.’
‘So you’ve shot down your own argument . . . ?’
‘Maybe. I want to speak to the Fosters to ask if they had treatment. They didn’t say so specifically, just that it was hard having Isaac. If they did, they might have the name of the doctor. If not, I’d have to go through the NHS Trust – which would take ages. That’s assuming it is NHS, it could’ve been private.’
‘You haven’t got ages.’
‘How long?’
‘The rest of today.’
‘Are you joking?’
Topper shook his head. ‘The super’s packing up and taking his investigation with him. There’s only so long we can keep going over the same things. Take Lisa Hyde – we’ve got her on traffic camera leaving the airport, we’ve got her joining the motorway, and then she disappears. We don’t know at which junction she got off, nor where she went. The next time the car’s spotted, it’s abandoned in Eccles; the next time she’s seen, she’s floating in the canal. The only witnesses who came forward weren’t witnesses at all – they saw different cars that were similar, and so on. We got ballistics for the bullet she was shot with – but knowing the type of pistol she was killed with doesn’t mean that much when it’s so common. I could go on but you’ve been in the same briefings I have. It’s the same story for Priestley and Richie Hyde. This was never something we were going to solve by the usual methods.’
‘Which is why you should give me time.’
Another head-shake. ‘The decision’s been made – they’re going to run things from headquarters.’ He pointed towards her phone. ‘If you really think knowing the father or finding any other children is going to help, then you’d best get on with it.’
41
Nicole Foster sounded exhausted when she answered her phone. Jessica was at her desk, panicking over what Topper had said. She knew she should visit the Fosters in person but there wasn’t time. A phone call was so impersonal. Jessica re-introduced herself, receiving a sighed ‘oh . . . you’. If she had actually gone there, the door might have been closed in her face.
‘Have you got a few minutes free?’ Jessica asked.
Nicole sounded more weary than angry. ‘Haven’t you done enough?’
‘I’m really sorry for everything that’s happened. I wish there was a better way for this to have come out.’
There was another sigh. ‘Rhys is off down the Legion, like usual. I don’t blame him, he feels like he’s had his life taken away. Isaac hasn’t been round in the past two days and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Neither of them believes me. Isaac keeps asking who his father is but what can I say? I was with no one but my husband when Isaac was conceived. It doesn’t make sense. If it was something I could understand, I’d be angry but all I can do is look at the piece of paper they sent us. All anyone will tell me is that the test is ninety-nine point nine nine per cent accurate. I guess I’m the point zero one.’
It felt as if Nicole had been waiting to release those feelings ever since she’d found out. She sounded lonely. ‘This is going to sound a bit odd,’ Jessica replied, ‘but you said something that stuck with me when I met you. You told Rhys that he knew how hard it was having Isaac. What did you mean?’
There was a pause, then a cough. ‘It’s such a long time ago . . . there was a long while where we didn’t know if I could have children.’ Jessica shuddered. She knew those feelings. ‘We tried for a while before we got married but it still wasn’t happening. We tried to get the NHS to look into IVF but it was harder then and they wouldn’t pay for it. We managed to save some money and did it ourselves.’
Jessica didn’t understand: ‘If Isaac’s a test-tube baby, how can his father not be Rhys?’
‘That’s not how he was conceived. We went to this clinic in Manchester for fertility treatment. It takes about four or five weeks. Do you know how it works?’
‘Only a little.’
‘Most of it is taking drugs. They fill you full of stuff that makes you produce more eggs, then you get hormone injections every day. The side-effects were awful – I couldn’t keep food down most of the time and, even when I could, I felt sick all the time. After ten days or so, they take out some eggs and try to fertilise them. A day later, they see if it’s worked. If so, they put them back inside you a couple of days after. That whole thing takes under a week, then you’re pregnant or not.’
‘You’ve made it sound really simple.’
Nicole blew out loudly. ‘I wish – we went through the information so many times that it’s hard to forget. The first treatment didn’t take but we had enough money to try one more time. Even if we’d had the money, I don’t think my body could have taken any more after that. Some people don’t get any side-effects but they were worse for me second time round. I remember one day where I couldn’t get out of bed. I went through the whole lot again, praying it was going to work. Then we went to see the doctor and he did his tests and said he was sorry but it hadn’t taken.’
Nicole sounded so sad that Jessica found it impossible not to be drawn into the story. A horrible, creeping suspicion was beginning to grip her, something that had been tickling the back of her mind ever since Richard Hyde told her that Richie was his ‘miracle’.
‘We went home that night and were devastated,’ Nicole continued. ‘We talked about things like adoption but it was never really serious. I think we were trying to come up with anything to console ourselves as we were so disappointed. Two weeks later, I was pregnant.’
There was a moment of silence. The story had ended so abruptly that Jessica wondered if she’d missed something. ‘Sorry . . . you were pregnant?’
‘I know, that’s what we were like. One day it looked like I’d never have children; then, suddenly, I was pregnant with Isaac.’
‘What happened?’
‘The doctor told us that the fertility drugs can kick-start things down there. It’s rare and not usually that quick, but not unheard of. I suppose he was our little miracle.’
That word again.
‘There was only a week to ten-day window,’ Nicole said. ‘That’s when Isaac was conceived. It wasn’t with the test tube, it was naturally – I wasn’t with anyone other than Rhys, so how can Isaac not be his?’
Jessica wished she had an answer. Perhaps she would in time – by the end of the day if she was going to stay out of trouble. First she needed a crucial piece of information.
‘Can you remember the name of the doctor?’
Nicole didn’t hesitate: ‘Of course – I saw him so many times, he was like family. He retired a few years ago and we went to a party in Manchester. There were hundreds of us.’
It had been fifteen days since Owen Priestley was broken out of the prison van, fifteen days in which they’d chased in circles. After all that time, Jessica was left with barely a few hours until DSI Jenkinson took his ball and sodded off home. After speaking to Nicole Foster and hearing a similar story from the family in Southampton, Jessica had managed to persuade Topper to let her snag Izzy for the rest of the day.
Jessica was in her car, driving the forty miles to Chester in order to visit Dr Matthew Layton. While she’d been arranging the details, Izzy had been looking into Layton’s background. Ideally, they would have been able to go through everything before sorting out the visit, but with time short, Izzy was skimming the printouts as Jessica drove. She’d decided that Tuesday afternoons were ideal for motorway driving. There were few cars, hardly anyone to annoy her. Even the lorry drivers were sticking to the inside lane, a rare occurrence seeing as they usually seemed to enjoy overtaking each other by travelling at the exact same speed over the course of ten miles.
Izzy was flicking through the pages. ‘How’s Niall O’Brien?’ she asked.
‘Still refusing to move out of his house, still leaving me messages. I’m not sure what to do. His son’s staying over but that’s not slowed things. He insists someone’s coming into his house but there’s nothing – literally nothing – that supports that.’
‘Have you got to visit him again?’
‘Maybe . . . I keep putting it off. There’s too much else going on.’
‘Hmmm . . .’ Izzy plucked off the top page, changing the subject. ‘It sounds like Dr Layton was quite famous in his day.’
‘Can doctors be famous?’
‘Not red-carpet well-known but he got around. He was one of those experts that the papers and the TV news always drag out when the story’s too complicated for them to understand. He’s quoted all over the place talking about fertility.’ She held a page up for Jessica to glance at. ‘Bit of a silver fox.’
‘If you say so.’
‘He’s in his seventies now – there was a piece in the Herald when he retired ten years ago. They reckon he helped more than a thousand women conceive.’
‘I don’t think I could ever trust a man who knows more about wombs and cervixes than I do. It’s too weird.’
Izzy was skimming through one of the articles. ‘It says he was a pioneer in the north west, one of the first to run what they call “an affordable private clinic for fertility treatment”.’
‘That sounds like a press release if ever I heard one.’
‘Probably – but didn’t you say the couple from Southampton came up to Manchester for treatment because of the cost? Layton would’ve attracted people from all around the country.’ She continued hunting through the pages. ‘Blah, blah, blah . . . lifelong bachelor . . . blah, blah, blah . . . writing papers up until a couple of years ago . . . most of this stuff is quite dull. He was a doctor – what were you hoping to hear?’
Jessica didn’t turn her gaze from the road. ‘Unfortunately, I think I’ve already heard it.’
