“Darren?” Sam said sharply.
I looked over at her in surprise. Both she and Stephen were looking at me with expressions of expectation, their eyebrows furrowed.
“What?”
“I’ve said your name, like, three times now.”
“His head’s in the game, that’s all it is,” Stephen said, turning back to his sandwich.
“Was that it? You looked worried,” Sam said.
“Aye, I guess I was thinking about work, that’s all.” I realised that I hadn’t eaten any more of my salad in the last few minutes and dug in, flicking away a buzzing fly. Soon we’d have to deal with the pesky summer wasps, but for now, lunch was relatively insect-free. The trade-off of a slightly chilly wind was worth it.
Sam and Stephen went back to their casual chatter, and I listened idly as I finished up my salad and picked through a packet of crisps. With the extra work over the weekend, I hadn’t managed to get in the long run I usually preferred, and my leg bounced as I ate, eager to burn off some steam.
“Y’know what you were saying about folks having to transport the drugs and that?” Stephen said, turning to me. I focused as the conversation turned back to work.
“Aye?”
“And about them storing the drugs too?” he said. I nodded. “Where d’you think Jackson was keeping his?”
I paused. The thought had crossed my mind, but I hadn’t come up with a satisfactory answer yet. Sam stayed quiet, listening, and she slid a hand over to rest on my thigh. I gave her a smile and wrapped my larger fingers around her cold ones.
“There are a few possibilities, as far as I see it,” I said to Stephen. “Either he was simply keeping them at his place, or else he shunted them off on someone else, either Max, another family member, or a stranger.”
“Do we need to search Max’s home?”
“Maybe, though I’d like some evidence to point in that direction before we disrupt his parents that much.”
“Yeah, that’s fair. We still don’t know where exactly Jackson was living, so we can’t search there.”
“Not yet. We need to look into his mother’s address, still, and then there’s this girlfriend of his, Lucy.”
“If that’s who she is,” Stephen said, and I nodded.
All we had were some slightly outdated social media pictures, and they weren’t particularly couple-y. It wasn’t enough to be certain that Jackson had been involved with this woman or that he’d still been at the time of his death.
Sam squeezed my hand. “You’ll get there.”
“We’ll get there faster if you have some info for us on the baggie and the letter,” I said with a cheeky smile.
“No pressure,” she said, looking unamused at my joke as she pulled her hand away from mine.
“Sorry. I know you’re busy, love.”
With that reminder, she checked the time on her phone and sighed. She polished off the remainder of her pasta salad before standing up.
“See you later, okay?”
I gave her a kiss before she left. “Miss you already,” I teased.
“God, you’re such a sap,” she groaned, ruffling my hair in the most annoying way before she walked off towards the station.
I grumbled as I tried to flatten my hair back down, sending Stephen an unimpressed look when he chuckled.
“It’s a lost cause, mate.”
“What is?”
“Your hair, you idiot. I think only a bucket of concrete would get those curls to stay down.”
“For once, I agree,” I said, giving up.
Stephen chuckled. He gathered up our rubbish and went to take it over to the bin before returning to lean on the wall. A few cumulus clouds, bulbous and sluggish with rain, had begun to drift in across the sky, and there was a damp pressure to the air that told me I ought to carry a brolly if I went out this afternoon. The high-up, wispy cirrus clouds were hurrying along up above the slower moving stratus clouds, their thin tails mixing with the aeroplane trails.
“What’s next then, boss?” Stephen asked after a moment.
“We need results from all the minions Rashford gave us, that’s what,” I said with a smile to show I wasn’t serious. “But in the meantime, let’s try that address Stuart gave us, huh?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
We already had everything we needed on us, so we headed straight for the car. Stephen took the wheel, following the SatNav’s instructions as we wound through the back roads of York. It didn’t take us too long to reach the property, which was a slightly run-down terrace house located near Acomb.
I got out of the car and led the way down the front path, nudging the half-open, rusty gate out of the way with the toe of my boot. Other than the hinge’s protesting squeak and the sounds of kids playing further down the street, it was quiet.
I pressed the doorbell, which was a weathered, plastic thing, and didn’t hear any ringing from inside. I gave the door a solid rap with my knuckles for good measure before taking a step back and waiting.
“Don’t think anyone’s home,” Stephen said. He’d moved over to the window on the ground floor and was having a look inside.
I backed up further down the path, so I could look up at the upstairs windows. For a moment, I thought I saw a flash of movement from the right hand, but it could’ve been a draft or just my imagination.
Stephen knocked hard on the door again, and we both waited, listening. I couldn’t hear anything from inside, and no one came to the door either.
“Damn it,” I muttered to myself.
“These curtains look pretty new,” Stephen commented, still looking in through the kitchen window.
“You hoping for home decor inspiration?” I said wryly, confused as to why he was mentioning them.
Stephen turned to give me his best unimpressed look. “Jackson’s mum would be an older woman, right? Fifties or sixties, probably. These curtains aren’t really the style of a middle-aged person.”
“You don’t know that. She could be a trendy sort.”
“Fine, it was just an observation,” Stephen huffed.
“How about we knock on a couple of the neighbours’ doors and see what they have to say about who’s living here, hm? Might be more reliable than interpreting the curtains.”
“You ruin my fun,” Stephen grumbled, though he was smiling.
I considered getting a couple of the DCs to go door to door for us, but without anything pressingly urgent, I’d rather do the leg work myself. Less chance of missing something important that way.
As we moved out of the terrace’s front garden, my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I fished out. I waved for Stephen to go ahead to the nearest neighbour as I read the text that’d popped up on my phone. It was from an unknown number and had been sent seconds ago.
Back off, or your family gets hurt, it read.
My stomach soured as I stared at it. I was still frowning as I slowly turned my phone off and tucked it back into my pocket. Stephen was talking to a bleach-blond woman to the right of Jackson’s mother’s house, and I waited until he was done. I’d thought my expression was fairly neutral or at least closed off, but Stephen spotted something wrong in my face the moment he saw me.
“What happened? Did Rashford call?”
I silently pulled up the text to show him, and Stephen’s brows descended into a scowl, his lips pressed into a thin line. With such a foreboding expression on his face, he certainly looked like the type of bloke you wouldn’t want to run into on the rugby field or in a dark alleyway either.
“Who sent that, then?”
“No idea. But how did they know I was involved and get my number too?”
“Good questions. We should get this to Adams, see if she can make anything of it.”
I glanced over at the other houses nearby, thinking about talking to the neighbours. We could really have done with tracking down Jackson’s mother, if she was indeed actually alive like Stuart was convinced she was, and this seemed to be our best
chance.
“C’mon. We can always come back here, but that text could be time-sensitive. You should call your mum, mate, let her know at least.”
That got me moving, and I gave a nod of agreement as we headed back to the car. I hoped and believed that the text was more of a bluff than a real threat, but you never knew for sure, especially since we were dealing with some ruthless people here, and I had a duty to protect all civilians, including my own mum.
I gave her a call as Stephen took the wheel on the way back to Hewford, my spare hand holding onto the handle above the car window as Stephen swung us around roundabouts.
“I wouldn’t be too worried about it, mum, but just be extra careful for a while, please?”
“What are you tangled up in this time?” she said, sounding more exasperated than worried.
“Oh, you know, all sorts. But you’ll try not to go out at night on your own and lock your doors at night, won’t you?”
“Really, Darren, you must think I’ve got fluff for a brain.”
I flushed. “No, I-”
“You mean well, but I’m quite capable of looking after myself, love.”
“I know, I know. I just worry, and I don’t know how serious this is. I’ll keep you updated, okay?”
“You do that. Come round and see me in person for once.”
“I will. Promise me you’ll call if anything seems off, even only a little.”
“I wish you wouldn’t fuss. But yes, I’ll call you.”
“Good,” I said, relieved.
We said our goodbyes, and I hung up with a sigh. I opened up the anonymous text message again and frowned down at it. It was so short that there wasn’t much to go on.
“She was okay?” Stephen asked.
“Right as rain and annoyed by my nagging,” I chuckled.
“She knows it’s only ‘cus you care.”
I nodded in acknowledgement as I fiddled with my phone. I got Keira on the phone and informed her about the text in short order. She grudgingly agreed to see us when I got back, though she warned me that there was probably little she could do.
“One other thing, could you look for a death certificate for us?”
She gave a long-suffering sigh. “Who for?”
“Well, uh, we’re not actually sure of her name yet, but she’s Jackson Lowe’s mother. She’d be listed on his birth certificate. There seems to be some confusion between her ex-partner and her sister about whether she’s deceased or not.”
“Right,” she said, unimpressed. “There goes the last five minutes of my lunch break.”
She hung up before I could apologise, and I shared a sheepish look with Stephen.
“We should get her some flowers or something,” he said.
“Alcohol might be preferable. Hard spirits, probably.”
He chuckled. “You may be right. I’d peg her as a whisky woman.”
“Bet you a fiver than she likes gin better.”
Stephen pulled up at a set of traffic lights, and we shook on the bet, Stephen grinning cockily.
“You’ll be buying my lunch tomorrow,” he teased.
“We’ll see. Going by our luck, she’ll probably say she likes vodka best. I wouldn’t blame her.”
“I’ll probably be wanting a shot by the end of today. It’s already been a stressful one, and we’ve still got most of the afternoon left.”
“You weren’t the one who had to speak to a roomful of judgy constables.”
“Yeah, I would’ve already been on the vodka if I had,” he said with a false seriousness that cracked me up.
Bickering good naturedly with Stephen worked well to steer my thoughts away from my worries over the text message, but they returned as we fell into an amicable silence. As we drew up outside Hewford, I made a silent vow to myself that I’d see this case through to the bitter end and that I wouldn’t let anyone else get hurt by these people. Maybe it was a vow I wouldn’t be able to keep, but I’d do my damnedest to make sure I did.
Seven
“Alright, tell me what you’ve got,” I said, leaning my hip against the desk. I had a fresh cup of morning coffee in hand and was as awake as I was going to get.
The constable whose desk I was leaning against sent me a slightly nervous glance before he licked his lips and settled back in his chair. He fiddled with a biro as he outlined what the team had been up to so far, with him acting as their spokesperson for the time being.
“We contacted a number of Mr Lowe’s friends from his social media sites, a total of just over twenty in all. About half had solid alibis for where they were on Friday night, whilst the other half all seemed to have gone to the same house party. They all acted as alibis for the others, sir.”
“I see. So none of them was with Jackson when he went out?”
“No, sir. Nor did they know he was going out, apparently.”
I made a noise of frustration in my throat. I supposed it was possible that Jackson did go out and get drunk and high with his cousin alone, but it seemed unlikely, in my opinion. People usually met up in groups for these things.
“Did you give them a warning about what Jackson had taken?” I checked. I’d sent them all a note on the bottom of an email about the toxicity of the drugs Jackson had taken and how we needed to warn anyone who might be in possession of them.
“Yes, sir.”
“Did they give a location for this house party?” I asked, and the constable nodded. “See if you can contact the neighbours, ask whether there was loud music and people around that night.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Max’s friends?”
“We talked to a group from Max’s school-”
“How did you gather that they were his mates?”
“From the teachers and his parents, sir.”
“Alright, go on.”
“They all said they weren’t out with Max that night, and they hadn’t seen him in ages, actually.”
I nodded to myself at that. Victims of country lines often distanced themselves from family and friends.
“We did get something useful from one of them, though, a teenager called Duncan Farrell, who seemed keen to please. He spent time with Max and Mr Lowe in the past, he said, and he gave me some of their names.”
“Aye? And did they match up with the people you’d already identified?”
“That’s the thing, sir. They all did apart from one. Duncan gave us a detailed description of this bloke who Jackson was apparently close friends with, but he couldn’t remember his name.”
“Damn, that’s a shame. A close friend of Jackson’s, huh? Did you show the kid pictures of Jackson’s social circle?”
“Yeah, sir, but he said it wasn’t any of them.”
“Great,” I muttered sarcastically. “Well, see if you can get this teen to work with an artist on a mock-up of this guy. It might be nothing, a dead-end, but it’s worth looking into.
“Will do, sir,” the constable said, making another note on the pad of paper he had out on his desk. His handwriting looked like it was worse than mine as if a dying spider had been dragged across the paper, and I couldn’t believe he could actually read it.
“Good. Good work.”
He gave me a toothy smile, his front teeth slightly crooked in an endearing sort of way. “Thanks for the doughnuts this morning, sir. Custard is my favourite, but nobody ever buys them.”
I huffed a laugh. “I like those best, too, unfortunately.” I cleared my throat and ran a hand through my hair, which was no doubt sticking up all over the place already. “Let me know how you get on. What I also need from you guys, if you get a minute, is to look through the city CCTV. If we can catch Jackson and Max on camera, it might help us figure out who was with them and where they went.”
I’d previously checked whether or not there was CCTV in the street where Jackson and Max had been found, and there wasn’t any. Doing a wider search would’ve taken more time than Stephen and I could’ve managed alone, so I’d prior
itised hunting down other leads. Now that we had a team to help us out, though, I could afford to set them on the task.
“I’ll pass the message on, sir.”
“Good work. Keep me in the loop.” I straightened up, patting the constable’s desk with my palm before I left him to it and moved back over towards Stephen.
“How d'you like ordering your lackeys around?” Stephen teased as I sat down, taking a sip of my fast-cooling coffee.
“Honestly, it’s good to see their results. They seem pretty efficient and switched on, too, or else their spokesperson is good at spinning it to look that way,” I chuckled.
“Is there anything left for us to do, or can we put our feet up for a bit? Take forty-winks?”
“You wish, mate. I’ve been thinking about how country lines usually work since we’re assuming that’s what we’re looking at here, and we haven’t done much work into the recruitment process yet.”
“I dunno about that. We’ve been investigating the social media aspect, haven’t we?”
“Aye, sorry, I should reword that. Social media was mostly being used to target teenagers, especially teenagers who wanted to act out or who needed more cash, right? But we haven’t looked at the adult side of things.”
“Where would we even start with that?”
“I was looking over other case files from similar operations yesterday-”
“That sounds like thrilling bedtime reading,” he said dryly.
“Shut up, Steph,” I said lightly. “As I was saying, other officers have used engaging with local pharmacies to find out who might’ve been contacted and/or recruited by these drug dealers. Vulnerable people, who’d be targets for blackmail, bribery or coercion.”
Stephen turned that over in his head for a minute, and I let him process it.
“The pharmacy would know what drugs people were on. I suppose it’s something to do with that.”
Country Lines (A DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thriller Book 8) Page 7
