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.’

8

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.