Aidan steadied himself as if his moment of nervousness had never happened. He gazed at Jessica again. ‘Oh right. Um, Ryan’s a . . . complicated character.’

She could not have thought of a better word herself but wanted specifics. ‘How do you mean?’

‘He’s not the easiest person to communicate with. Sometimes he seems happy, other times not. Sometimes he’ll join in with the group but then he can be a loner too. He’s the type of person where you’re never quite sure where you stand with him.’

Everything Aidan was saying backed up Jessica’s own impressions of Ryan. ‘I’ve heard he’s perhaps a little more than just friends with Sienna,’ Jessica added, trying to make it sound as if she knew more than she did and fishing for information.

Aidan seemed a little surprised at Jessica’s question, his eyebrows deepening before he shrugged slightly. ‘I guess. I’ve seen them talking in registration but I don’t know much more than that. They’re all at a bit of an awkward age in regards to opening up. Some of them are all right with you but others are still stuck in the moody teenager phase.’

Jessica glanced at Reynolds, letting him know she was finished. Aidan must have noticed the gesture because he continued to speak. ‘I . . . um . . . it’s a bit awkward . . .’

Jessica looked back to the tutor, eyebrows raised expectantly. Aidan seemed to be struggling with something. He was sucking nervously on his top lip. ‘I might have something for you regarding Ryan but . . . there are confidentiality rules and I . . .’ He tailed off without finishing the sentence.

Reynolds tensed further in the seat next to her. Listening to whatever Aidan might have would be a legal grey area at best, perhaps even an outright breach of various protection laws – if not on their part then certainly on his.

Jessica sensed it could be important but didn’t have time to reply before the tutor spoke again. ‘If you’re off to talk to other people, can you give me maybe an hour? I have to check a few things out.’

Jessica didn’t bother to wait for her supervisor’s approval. ‘We’ll see you in an hour.’

11

As they exited Aidan’s office, Jessica could feel Reynolds’s discomfort. She waited for him to close the door and then he crossed the corridor, standing and staring at her. His dark hair was beginning to grey around his ears and at the front, the colour contrasting with the darkness of his skin.

‘Well?’ he said.

Jessica shrugged. ‘You saw what Ryan was like when we were at the house but you didn’t see the aggression after the fire or the way he talked about Sienna. It’s not what he said, it’s the way he said it.’

‘That doesn’t mean you should let his tutor break the law, let alone condone it.’

Jessica looked away, unable to meet her supervisor’s eye. She wondered how he might have taken her excursion to Anthony Thompson’s house. ‘There’s something not right,’ she said.

‘Like what?’

‘Just . . . something.’ Jessica didn’t know what it was herself. ‘Everything seems to be revolving around him. Did you see the way Aidan shifted around when I mentioned him? After the fire, he shoved Dave out of the way, even though he must have known he was an officer. He didn’t care.’

Jessica didn’t mention the way she had been barged.

‘That still doesn’t mean . . .’

Jessica interrupted before the inspector could finish. ‘What if Aidan has something that says Ryan has done something serious?’

Reynolds looked away, staring down the deserted hallway. ‘I can’t be involved.’

‘What if we miss something?’

The inspector turned to face Jessica, his face stern but his eyes wide. ‘I can’t be involved.’

His implication became clear. ‘Oh,’ Jessica replied. ‘Right.’

As she sat listening to the endless stream of ‘yeah’, ‘y’know’ and ‘y’what’ responses, Jessica remembered why her friend Caroline had been the only person worth hanging around with at school. Teenage girls really were annoying. Well, maybe not all of them but certainly the four she had spoken to so far. Sienna’s ‘clique’ as Aidan had called them didn’t seem to recognise the seriousness of their so-called friend killing herself.

The first young woman Jessica spoke to looked as if she was dressed for a night out rather than a class, her nails almost long enough to be offensive weapons. Her ‘Yeah, it’s like really bad about Si innit, y’know?’ was more or less the most literate thing she came out with.

As Jessica and Reynolds worked their way through talking to the rest of the group, the responses and concern did become a little more apparent – but Jessica had a constant nag in the back of her mind that the girls’ distress seemed to be more for themselves than their dead friend. It all added to her feeling that something wasn’t quite right about Sienna. None of them claimed to know she was pregnant, with all of them edgy about the nature of Sienna’s relationships. They all said she had no boyfriend but admitted she was friendly with Finlay Pierce – the name Ryan had given them. Even more curious was the reaction they gave when Jessica mentioned Ryan’s name. At first they all acted as if he was just a passing acquaintance, concluding that, although Sienna may have been friends with him, none of them really knew him.

Jessica knew Ryan had been in the fast-food restaurant with at least two of the girls when Andrew had taken photographs of them but she couldn’t figure out why they might lie. All she was sure of was that everything seemed to be revolving around him. A thought even ran through her mind that perhaps Anthony wasn’t missing through choice.

As the fourth girl left the classroom, Jessica looked at Reynolds sitting next to her. She lowered her voice as the rest of the room was empty and everything they said seemed to echo. ‘They don’t seem the best of friends, do they?’

The inspector shook his head and smiled wearily. ‘Are all teenage girls like this?’

‘I bloody wasn’t. Last summer I got caught in traffic on the way home because there was some prom going on at the high school. There were limos, horse-drawn carriages, double-decker buses and all sorts trying to pull into the car park. They had these dresses like giant parasols. Do you know what I did after my final day at school?’

Reynolds rolled his eyes. ‘Go on.’

‘I went to the park with a few mates and a giant bottle of cheap cider and we got pissed behind the bandstand. These kids today don’t know they’re born.’

‘Are you about to go off on one about the kids of today?’ Reynolds’s eyes twinkled as his smile widened.

Jessica slapped his arm. ‘You’re older than me.’

They were interrupted as the door opened and their final interviewee walked in. Because no one was under any suspicion and they were all eighteen, there was no need for any of the girls’ parents or any legal representation to be present. Jessica had assured the head teacher they were simply looking for background on Sienna. She didn’t mention that she was also trying to suss out Ryan.

The last young woman looked a little different from the four that had come before. Jessica could see it straight away from the way she walked. There was less confidence about her and she was not as dressed-up as her friends. She had short straight black hair tucked behind her ears and was wearing a pair of jeans with a checked shirt over a white vest-top. Jessica noticed a small mole in the dimple of one of the girl’s cheeks and, while she could see how young males might go for the almost airbrushed looks of the other girls, there was something more naturally attractive about the woman in front of them.

‘Are you Molly North?’ Jessica asked, checking the note she had written.