Jessica unlocked the door and stepped inside, closing it behind her. It wasn’t that much warmer on the inside but the wooden walls offered some protection from the wind. She shone the light slowly from side to side, not knowing what to expect. The text message had told her Benjamin had communicated with someone about this place on the same day Isaac went missing, leaving her to wonder if there was something obvious they had all missed. Apart from some dried muddy footprints, the shed looked much the same as it had before. The table and decrepit chair were in the same place but the gas canister and stove had been taken, presumably by the officers who searched the place.
Jessica re-examined the desk where she had found the list but it was empty. Foam was still coming out of the rips in the chair and she pushed her hands into the material to see if it contained anything further. More foam squeezed out of the sides but there was nothing else. Jessica thought about the wording of the text message.
‘Will wait til its dark then meet you at the shed’.
Could it have referred to a different shed? She knew Benjamin was the same Ian Sturgess who Harry had been told had a close relationship with Toby Whittaker. He also used the name Glenn Harrison, meaning the cases of both missing boys could be connected to the place where she was standing. Surely this was the place he meant?
Her thoughts were interrupted by her phone ringing. Jessica took it out of her pocket and saw Cole’s name on the display. As soon as she had made the decision to visit Benjamin Sturgess’s house without calling in, she knew there would come a time when someone would want to shout at her. As good as her relationship was with her colleagues, there was always the odd occasion where she knew she had overstepped the boundaries. She had spent the past few hours allowing herself to be driven by her own determination to know what was going on, as opposed to the commitment she knew she should be showing to the job.
Aside from the torch, the illuminated phone screen was the only source of light in the room. Jessica watched Cole’s name flash on and off before finally staying off. She pocketed the device and closed her eyes, listening to the wind buffeting the outside of the building.
Jessica opened her eyelids as the chill went through her. She put the torch down in the corner of the room and peered around, wondering what she was missing. If this was where Isaac had been brought, surely someone would have heard him? He could have been drugged but unless he was either watched the entire time, or restrained in some other way, there would have been too great a chance of him being discovered. The allotment wasn’t quite a metropolitan hub of people but there was a steady enough stream to notice if something was different – or hear somebody either calling out or struggling. Jessica thought that if you were going to kidnap a child and keep him somewhere, there would be so many better options than here. In a city that had been built and developed over centuries, there were all sorts of hideaways where people could disappear.
On the other hand, Benjamin, Ian, Glenn or whatever he was called not only had access to this shed, but there was also a list of names with Isaac’s at the top.
Jessica started to pace, knowing the text message referred to where she was. At some point Ben had met someone else in this place on the night Isaac was taken.
For a moment the howl of the wind died down and Jessica noticed something – a slight difference in the sound of her footsteps. She retreated to the corner of the room, then walked to the opposite side, hearing the noise again. She thought about the previous time she had been there, when both Rowlands and Izzy had been present and how the other officers searching the area would have been in pairs at the very least. The wooden boards creaked as she stood on them but, towards the centre, the tone changed.
She sunk to her knees and began to tap the floor with her knuckles, remembering how she thought Rowlands was wasting his time doing something similar to the walls but now wishing he had been more thorough. As she switched to using her palm, Jessica could feel how there was a slight difference to the surface. She crawled across the floor, picking up the torch and returning to where she had been sitting, slowly running the light from side to side along the cracks between the boards, looking for something she had failed to see before. Eventually her eyes focused on a patch of wood she had already scanned twice. Now that she really concentrated, she realised that what appeared to be a regular grain on one of the boards was actually a thin gap. Jessica pushed a fingernail into it and slowly ran it along the length until she reached a corner. She continued to trace the outline until she reached another corner and, finally, the whole of her finger slid into the gap between boards. Jessica pushed the fingers from both hands into the thin area and pulled upwards. With almost no effort at all, a hatch popped up out of the floor. Jessica gasped and cursed herself, wondering how she had missed it the first time.
The underside of the wood had thick, shaggy light blue carpet attached which Jessica couldn’t help running her hands through as she placed it upside down on the floor. She reached across for the torch and shone it into the area underneath. The opening was around a metre square but the space below was far larger. The first thing she noticed was more carpet. The whole of the floor underneath was covered with the same fabric as the underside of the hatch. The hidden room was very nearly as wide as the shed. She guessed it was around a metre and a half deep – not as tall as she was but high enough if you were going to keep an eleven-year-old child inside. As she shone the torch into the corners of the space, Jessica could see carpet attached to the walls too. She put the torch down and reached into the room with her hand, running it along the ceiling to feel more carpet. From what she could see, the entire area was covered. It would definitely keep whoever was inside warm but Jessica assumed it would give it a degree of soundproofing too.
She lay flat on her front and again shone the torch inside. There was no blood or any other sign of a struggle. If Isaac had been killed in the room below, considering the colour and texture of the carpet, it would have been almost impossible to clean. It seemed unlikely it could have been replaced without someone noticing although, at some point, it had clearly been installed without attracting undue attention. Jessica hauled herself up, sitting with her legs dangling into the gap.
As she took her phone out of her pocket, she wondered if Toby Whittaker had been brought to this place all those years ago. She flicked her fingers across the screen and pressed the button to show her list of missed calls. Cole might be unhappy with the way she had gone about things in the past day but he certainly wouldn’t be able to accuse her of not making progress.
24
Jessica’s telling-off hadn’t been as bad as she anticipated. The first reason was that Cole had never been one to shout, swear or get upset, the second that everyone was too busy following up her leads. She was sitting in the chief inspector’s office with Reynolds, Cornish, and, surprisingly to her, Rowlands, fully expecting a dressing down but instead had simply been told to follow procedure in future. While Cole gave her the most minor of reprimands, she could sense Rowlands looking at her, wondering how she apparently got away with it every time. The truth was that running headlong into situations had got her into problems in the past and she was fully aware she hadn’t learned her lesson. Like a naughty schoolchild, she almost craved a punishment.