“Aye. I feel sorry for her, I really do.”
“And for the kid.”
“For the kid, too,” I agreed. “I’m going to try to find these cousins of Page’s, and hopefully, one of them will at least be able to keep her for a short while until a more permanent solution can be found.”
It shouldn’t be too hard to track them down, I hoped since Lucy had given us their full names and told us that their numbers were on her phone. The officers who’d picked her up had seized that, and it was being held down in custody at the moment. But we’d go down and pick it up later to have a look through.
“While I do that, can you ask the other two whether they’ve made any progress with identifying Pete?”
“I mean, it’s still only nine a.m., mate, but yeah, I’ll go and ask. Maybe they put in some hours over the weekend.”
“I should say that I hope they haven’t, but it would be kind of helpful if they had,” I admitted.
He grinned. “No rest for the righteous, huh?”
“More like, no rest for the subordinates. I remember how the DI and DCIs had me running around when I was young’un.”
“So you’re getting your revenge on the new generation?” Stephen teased.
“Hey, I didn’t ask them to work over the weekend!”
He headed off to see them, chuckling, and I rolled my eyes at his back.
Getting in touch with Lucy’s cousins didn’t take me especially long, not once I had her phone contacts list. One of them, I found out, had a family of her own, and I asked her to sit down before I broke the news that we were looking for a home for Lucy’s sister, Eva.
Stephen came back having talked to the two DCs I’d asked to look into finding out who the heck Pete was and where he’d come from. We had nothing more than a first name, a description, and several witness statements saying the guy was a seriously bad apple. I could do with something more concrete, like a home address, for starters.
“Good news and bad news,” he said as he approached.
“Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“They did work over the weekend, but they struggled to find anything on the bloke. They reckon he might’ve worked at a bar a few years back, there’s a picture of him on their website, but when they called, the pub said he wasn’t there now.”
I released a weighty sigh. “Okay, that’s better than nothing. I’ve good news, for once. Page’s cousin Felicity and her partner will take Eva in, at least for the short term. I’ve linked her up with social services, and they’re figuring it out, but at least Eva won’t end up in the system.”
“Yet,” Stephen said, and I gave him an unimpressed look. “Sorry. Hopefully, Felicity will get attached to the kid, and they’ll keep her long-term.”
“That’d be ideal, yeah.”
“Okay, what’s up next, boss?”
“I heard this morning that Max is doing better and is back at home. What do you say to a visit over to his parents’ house, see how he’s getting on?”
“And see if he knows anything about Pete?” Stephen guessed.
“Aye, you got it.”
With a fresh mugful of coffee for the road, Stephen drove us the short distance across York to the Riders’ house. They lived in a picturesque part of York, all yellow stone, tidy houses and front gardens just coming into flower. The cloud that’d hung over the city this morning, cool and damp, was beginning to burn off, revealing the bright blue beyond.
“Feels like the start of summer today, right?” Stephen said. He had his window cracked open, and the breeze stirred the collar of his button-up. For now, it was still pleasantly mild.
“Sure does. Let’s hope we can wrap this up before the summer holidays come around.”
Stephen sent me a sideways glance. “I should ruddy hope so. That’s a few months off yet. If we’re not done by then, I’ll buy you a beer.”
“In this weather, I’d prefer an ice cream,” I chuckled.
We pulled up outside Max’s and stepped out of the car. The sun warmed the back of my neck, and I felt the impulse to tilt my head up and bask in the heat like a cat. The car was going to be superheated by the time we got back out here, but that was what the air con was for.
Stephen went ahead up the path, and I caught up with him as he knocked on the door. There was a short pause while we waited for an answer, and I could hear birds in the background, plus the distant roar of traffic. We were out of the throbbing heart of the city here, and it had a quieter feel.
The door clunked open, and I fixed a friendly expression on my face. It was Angela Rider at the door, and she looked startled to see us, her eyebrows rising elegantly.
“Detectives, how can I help you?”
“We’d like to step inside for a moment, if it’s convenient for you,” I said. We weren’t here because we suspected anything in particular, so I didn’t want to be too pushy.
“Of course, I’m sorry,” she said, flustered, and opened the door to invite us in.
She led the way through to the kitchen, where she fetched us a couple of cool drinks. She stood by the sink, looking out of the window, and I joined her there. Beyond the window, Max was sitting out in the garden on a picnic rug. There was a spread of books, papers and files around him, and for a moment, I had the bizarre thought that they were materials pertaining to the case. But I realised almost immediately what he was actually doing, which was revising for school.
“What’s he studying for?” I asked Angela, keeping my voice slightly down so that Max didn’t hear me through the open back door.
“He’s retaking his Maths and English GCSEs soon,” she told me.
“I’m sorry to ask, but we do need to talk to him. Will he mind being disturbed?”
She laughed a little at that. “He’ll be itching for a break, I’m sure. Take him away from his revision for a bit, and you two will be his favourite people.”
“I remember that it wasn’t much fun,” I said sympathetically. She turned to give me a look of consideration.
“Do you have children, detective?”
“Uh, no, I don’t.”
She gave a slight, almost sad smile and looked back out the window at Max.
“They become your whole world, or mine have. I’d do anything to fix things for my child if only I knew what to do exactly.” Her shoulders sank, and my heart hurt for her.
“A parent can only do so much,” I tried to reassure her, putting a hand on her shoulder. I sent a glance towards Stephen, and he gave me a nod of approval or agreement, looking uncharacteristically serious.
She sniffed and gave me a weary smile before laughing a little, clearly embarrassed.
“Gosh, look at me. Getting weepy before ten o’clock in the morning. Please, go through and talk to him. Maybe you can help him where we couldn’t.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, nor to the fragile expression on her face, so I just nodded. Stephen and I stepped through into the warm garden, and Max looked up. Brief surprise merged into a wary scowl in a moment as we approached, and he put one of his books down on the floor.
“Hi, Max. Would you mind if we asked you a few questions?”
“Am I in trouble?”
“That’s not why we’re here,” I said carefully. “We’d like to find out if you know something that could help us.”
“And if I say no?” he challenged, petulant. He was cautious of us, that was all, I thought. He thought we wanted only to make his life difficult, and he wasn’t entirely sure how far our powers reached nor how things were going to turn out.
“Then we’ll leave,” I told him evenly.
I met his gaze when he narrowed his eyes at me, trying to let him know without words that we weren’t here to trap him but also that annoying us wouldn’t be a good choice for him in the long run. He chose the sensible option in the end and gave a stiff nod. He didn’t get up from the grass, nor did he offer for us to sit down. Still, I waved a hand at Stephen, and we settled on the ground opposite t
he teenager. We didn’t need to be looming over him quite so much while we were trying to get him to confide in us. It wouldn’t help.
“What do you want, then?” he snarked before clearly realising that his tone was out of order and looking away when I raised my eyebrows at him.
“We have a couple of pictures to show you.” I brought the images of Pete and Lucy that were on my phone and showed them to the teenager. He shaded the screen with his hand, frowning down at them.
“Do you know them?” Stephen prompted.
“Yeah,” Max said finally, handing my phone back. He looked sullen.
“Who’s the woman?”
“Lucy something.”
“Where did you see her?”
He blew out a long sigh like we were wasting his time. “I saw her at Jackson’s lots. She was his girlfriend, or lived with him, or whatever.”
I couldn’t quite read Max’s expression as he talked about Lucy, but I thought I saw his face soften slightly.
“Did you like her?” I asked impulsively.
“Like her how?” Max said, on the defensive again.
I shrugged. “Did you think she was a decent person? Was she mean to you?”
“No. She was… nice, I guess.” He looked away. “She nagged me about not getting involved, threatened to tell my parents and stuff, but she wasn’t, like, mean about it.”
That was interesting to know, I thought.
“Did you talk to her much?” Stephen wondered.
“Not that much. Sometimes I babysat for Eva.”
“Aye? When was that?”
“I dunno, just when she needed me too.”
“You went over to their house, then?”
He shook his head. “Lucy brought her over here.” He chewed on his lip for a moment before continuing. “I think she wanted the kid out of the house, y’know?”
“Why’s that?” I tried, but Max clammed up again, just giving a shrug.
“Okay, what about this guy?” I showed him the picture of Pete again, but Max only glanced at it, his thick eyebrows scrunched up.
“That’s Pete,” he grunted before muttering something rude under his breath.
“Not a fan of his, then?” I said lightly.
Max glared at me. “He’s a prick.”
“Do you know his surname?”
“No.”
“What about where he lives?”
“How would I know that?” Max snapped, clearly getting agitated. He looked towards the house like he wanted us to leave. I wondered whether his mum was watching us from the window. She probably was.
“Can you tell us anything else about him?” I said, keeping my tone level and unconcerned by his irritation. He looked down at the grass, tugging at it roughly with his fingers.
“They’d say he was down the pub,” he muttered after a long pause.
Stephen and I shared a glance.
“Which pub?”
Another shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Close by?”
“I guess.”
“How long would it-?”
“Look, I’m done, I don’t-” He got to his feet without finishing his sentence, but I knew what he meant.
He wanted us to leave because talking about Pete was freaking him out. We had something at least, however tiny, plus some titbits on Lucy too, which didn’t hurt. I wished he’d been willing to talk to us more about Pete, but to my eyes, it was clear that he was afraid. This Pete must be a formidable guy, and Max was obviously afraid of the consequences if he tattled to the police. I dusted my trousers off and stood up.
“Alright. Thanks for talking to us, Max.” I handed him another of my cards, not sure if he’d have kept the last one. He took it without looking at it. “Listen, if you’re ever in trouble or worried that someone’s after you, you can call us, okay? We can help.”
“Yeah, okay,” he muttered, looking unconvinced but eager for us to head off.
“Good luck with the exams, Max,” Stephen said before we made our way back towards the house.
My legs were stiff from sitting on the ground, and the back of my neck was warm, feeling like I’d managed to catch the sun even in the short time we’d spent outside. We bid goodbye to Max’s mum, who saw us out of the front door and headed towards the car.
“That didn’t go terribly,” Stephen said as I set us back on the road towards Hewford.
“It didn’t go brilliantly, either, but I wasn’t really expecting it to.”
“So our next job will be trawling around the local pubs, will it?”
“Yep. We’ll go to that one you mentioned first. What was it called?”
“The one whose website he was? The Swan.”
“Right. Then we’ll try the ones closest to Max’s house, I guess.”
“There’s a ridiculous amount of pubs in York, you know that?” Stephen sighed.
“Aye. You told me how many once. Something like three hundred?”
“Close enough. If we do two a day, we might be finished in six months.”
I sent him a look that said I didn’t appreciate his negativity. “We won’t do them at random. Besides, if you have better suggestions, I’m all ears?”
“Unfortunately, I’m all out. Oh no, I have an idea.”
“Aye?” I said. He sent me a grin.
“We should get some elevenses from Costa.”
“Jeez, Steph, you’re such a big help on this case, honestly,” I groaned, though I couldn’t help but smile. I adjusted our route so that we’d go past the drive-through.
“Hey, the caffeine will help,” he protested, still smiling.
“Whatever you say.”
Back at the station, I munched on the fruit salad I’d bought and flicked through my records on the case, trying to spot whether I’d missed anything. Stephen had polished his croissant off in the car, though he still had pastry flakes on his suit jacket as he focused on researching local pubs. He’d called several already, hoping to hear that they had a Pete on staff who matched our description, but no such luck.
“Do you really think he’s working in one of these places?” Stephen said after a while. He rolled his neck, which clicked loudly. “If I was a cold-hearted, successful drug dealer, I don’t think I’d waste time working in a bar. Just saying.”
I’d already considered that, but I nodded all the same. “We’ve had two mentions of him being in a pub, so I reckon it’s worth at least trying. But you’re right. He’s more likely to be a patron or an owner at a pub than a bartender.”
“Exactly.”
While Stephen continued to search, I drank my coffee and picked up Lucy’s phone. I’d locked it up in my desk drawer whilst we were out, but I’d got it out again and looked at it now. It wasn’t any sort of impressive model, just a run-down Android that looked in decent nick, considering it was probably several years old. The screen wasn’t cracked, but the rim was chipped, and the back scratched.
“You find anything on there?” Stephen asked.
“I didn’t really have a chance to look,” I admitted. “I went straight for the contacts for Lucy’s cousins and didn’t look at much else before we were heading over to Max’s.”
“Have a look through the pictures gallery or something, then,” Stephen said.
“Is that a suggestion or an order?” I teased, already doing as he’d said. He flushed.
“Ah, sorry. Only a thought, mate.”
“And a good one,” I assured him.
I felt mildly uncomfortable about flipping through Lucy’s photo gallery and hoped that she hadn’t saved anything on there that’d make me even more uncomfortable. Luckily, almost every picture was of Eva or a cat I presumed belonged to a neighbour since there’d not been one on the property when we searched it. There were no pictures of anything incriminating nor of Pete. There were only a scant few of Jackson himself, and Lucy looked slightly pained in all of them.
I tried her text message history next and immediately struck gold.
“Steph, look at this.”
I handed the phone off to him, and he looked down at the messages, his eyes moving back and forth as he read.
“Well, damn.”
I nodded in agreement. I wasn’t the only one who’d been getting threatening messages from an unknown person. Lucy had too. I didn’t know what exactly that meant yet, but I was sure that we’d find out.
Nineteen
“You don’t know this bloke?” I double-checked, my heart sinking. The bartender, who looked half-awake and none too impressed with all my questions, shook his head dully.
“Never seen him before,” he grunted.
I sighed. “Okay, thanks. If you do see him around, give us a call, okay?”
The bartender muttered an affirmative, but I expected he had no intention of tattling on his own customers.
“He was helpful,” Stephen said bitterly.
“Aye, not so much,” I agreed. “Look, we’ll try the one down the road and then be done for the afternoon.”
“Sounds great to me. Annie’s gonna have my head if I let myself get burnt, and that sun is hot, man.”
I could similarly feel the heavy pressure of the heat in the air, thickening the atmosphere into something lazy and dense. A good rainstorm was needed to break it, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.
“I hear you.”
We kept on down the street to the pub Google Maps told me was there. It was a smarter place than the last one we’d visited, and the sign told me that its name was ‘The Horse and Coach’. The windows were polished clean, something my mum had always sworn by when choosing a place to eat at, and the prices on the menu outside suggested that the place catered to more refined tastes.
“Maybe Pete fancies himself as going up in the world, huh?” Stephen said, spotting the same signs that I had.
“Maybe he does.”
We headed inside, finding the place fresh with air conditioning rather than close and sweaty like the last couple of pubs.
“I’m sorry, but we’re not open until five,” an apologetic server hurried over to us. She was dressed in a monochrome uniform and had her hair pulled back into a perky ponytail. She came to a surprised stop when she saw us properly and blinked. “Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you were customers. Um.” She cleared her throat. “What can I do for you officers?”
Country Lines (A DI Mitchell Yorkshire Crime Thriller Book 8) Page 18
