84

A morning mist lay across the surface of the Thames. Soon it would burn off for the sun was already bright in the sky. Despite the brisk edge to the air, it was looking like it might turn out to be a very nice day.

The building site was now a massive crime scene, taped off and under investigation. The raging fire which had enveloped the place the previous night had been put out and the blackened aftermath was being picked over by a multitude of police and other emergency personnel.

Even though it was now the next morning, Bailey still hadn’t left the scene despite the police telling her she didn’t need to be there, and the paramedics telling her she should really have a rest and a change of clothes following her immersion in the freezing river. Brushing aside all of their objections, she had firmly insisted on staying there until she received some news of Jennifer. She was now sitting on the bumper of a large concrete mixer lorry, glumly watching the emergency workers as they poked through the ashes with rakes and shovels in the search for further human remains. So far they’d found the charred corpses of a number of men, but nothing resembling the body of a woman in her early thirties. However, some of the remains they were finding, particularly those close to the epicentre of the explosion where the heat had been most intense, were so badly burnt that proper identification would prove to be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

With no body yet found, was there still hope for Jennifer? Could she still be alive somehow? More than anything, Bailey would have liked to believe so, but she’d seen that inferno with her own eyes and she knew there was no way that Jennifer could have survived.

With a sad sigh, she tried to think what she’d tell her parents. She couldn’t even begin to contemplate how she would start to explain it all to them. The more she thought about it, the more she realised that it would be better that they never knew. Sitting there in the morning sun, she made the difficult decision not to tell them. And if her father did ask about Mister Snigiss, as he was wont to do, she would just have to grit her teeth and tell him that her search had so far been fruitless, but that she’d keep on with the quest all the same, even after he passed away. It galled her to have to lie to him like this, but sometimes a lie was the best option when you had someone else’s interests at heart.

Bailey’s mind turned to the Molloys with a cold rage. Nancy, Rick, Stephen… she was pretty certain that they’d survived the blast, and that they would have evaporated into the night as soon as it became apparent that the explosion would bring the emergency services down on the place. Already their construction company was touting the line that it was an industrial accident caused by trespassers on the development. Bailey knew that whatever she might say to the contrary, trying to prove it would be another thing entirely.