Sedgwick gave a grunt and turned away from me, effectively dismissing me. His partner, who’d been listening attentively, gave me a slightly apologetic smile and went back to her work, too. I headed back towards Stephen, pleased that there was some good news with Alistair’s case and that Sedgwick had at least heard me out.
“If they really did see Alistair, that’s a relief,” Stephen said when I told him Sedgwick’s news. “It would reinforce the idea that he’s not been kidnapped or hurt.”
“Exactly. His face has been on the local news, too, so I hope there’ll be more calls about his whereabouts if he is just up and wandering about.”
“Let’s hope he is. It’d make him easier to find.”
“So, how’s the CCTV coming?” I asked as I sat down, jogging my idle computer back to life and taking a sip of my now lukewarm coffee.
“No different from when you asked five minutes ago.”
“Okay, okay.”
The afternoon had begun to cool off as we headed towards evening, and a light, fresh draft drifted in through the cracked-open windows. I looked longingly out at the still-bright sky, the blue fading to cornflower as time wore on, but there were still no clouds to mar the summer evening.
I continued my research dive into the fires, tracking down the officers who’d be on each of the scenes, but they could tell me little more than what was on the system. I talked to one of the more senior officers, too, but though she’d noticed the increase in fires recently, she didn’t know any more about what was driving it than I did.
“It’s the warm weather, kids being kids, I guess,” she said, altogether too casual for my liking. “They stay out late, get drunk, and someone sets fire to something.”
“But the accelerants? The petrol cans? That suggests predetermined actions, doesn’t it?” I pressed.
“Look, I want them caught too, DCI Mitchell. Tell me who did it and show me the proof, and I’ll be there arresting them right alongside you.”
“I’m looking into it.”
“I see,” she said after a pause. “That’s not really your area of expertise, is it? Has the Superintendent signed off on that?”
I inwardly groaned, rubbing a hand over my face. First Sedgwick and now this; it frustrated me how territorial officers could get over their own little patch of turf. Though, I admitted to myself, I’d been reluctant to let others help with my cases in the past too.
“No, it’s not my area of expertise, but it’s possibly linked with a missing child case, and I’ve got the time on my hands to look into it. Another pair of hands can’t hurt, can it?”
“Very well,” she said, after a long pause. “Keep me updated, DCI Mitchell.”
She hung up before I could respond, and I pinched the bridge of my nose. It was getting on for six now, and Stephen had headed off home a little while ago. I was hungry enough that I was starting to get a headache, so I resigned myself to calling it a day and started to pack up.
I changed into my running kit hurriedly, wincing when I realised what the time was and that I’d be late to see Sam. I sent her off a text to let her know where I was, and she responded with a thumbs up. She’d known full well what a relationship with me would involve when we got into it, but I still felt some lingering guilt that I couldn’t give her more of my time. Especially since I wasn’t sure how much longer, we would have together before she moved over two hundred miles away.
I pushed the thoughts out of my head for now and just let myself run, stretching out the tensions and stresses of the day as my trainers ate up the distance and hit the pavement beneath me. The evening was perfect for it; pleasantly balmy without being uncomfortable, and the airless feeling from earlier in the day had lifted along with the heat, making me feel light and fast.
I took my usual route towards Sam’s place and kept my pace up so that I wouldn’t take too long to reach her. The streets were reasonably busy this time in the evening, especially with the weather so pleasant, and I had to weave around several groups of oblivious students or couples linking arms.
Perhaps it was the fact that I’d been working on incidents relating to teenagers all day, but when I glanced sideways and saw a group of young men grouped together a little way down a side road, I slowed my run. At first glance, I didn’t see anything, but a second later, I caught sight of a flash of tortoiseshell fur beyond the boys, and there was the sharp yowl of an animal.
I came to a complete stop, out of breath, and glanced around me, but the street was relatively deserted. The group of lads were laughing, nudging each other, and there was a brief scuffle as I watched from a short distance away.
One of them swore loudly before yelping, “It clawed me!”
My legs drew me towards the group before I could think anymore about it, unwilling to stand by while this lot abused a cat right in front of me. There had to be about seven of them, most of them with their backs to me, and my heart rate picked up as I strode towards them.
“Hey!” I snapped as there was another squeal from the cat. The poor thing managed to get itself free of the circle of boys and sprinted away past me as I approached the teenagers. “The hell are you doing?”
It occurred to me after I’d spoken that it would’ve been a good idea to send Stephen or Sam a text before I marched up to a bunch of boys and told them off. But it was too late now, and they all turned around, their attention fixing on me now that their previous target had run off. I could smell the drink and weed on them from here, and there was a nasty look on their faces that said that they were bored and careless.
One of them swaggered up to me with a sneering grin, and I resisted the urge to back up. This hadn’t been a good idea, I thought, much too late to do anything about it.
Seven
The teenager who’d strode up to me with the arrogance of a prince looked me cooly up and down.
“What d’you want?” he said before tossing several choice insults at me that made his friends snigger like children.
I scanned all of their faces, trying at once to see if I recognised any of them and to remember them in case anything happened. I found myself looking for two faces in particular: Alistair Pumphrey and the elusive Jules, but none of the boys was pale blond, and they all looked to be at least sixteen.
“Cat got your tongue?” the dark-haired jerk said, the one who was standing no more than a couple of yards away from me. He seemed to think he was hilarious and grinned at me coldly.
“You make a habit of kicking animals a fraction of your size, do you?” I said, which wasn’t the smartest thing to ever come out of my mouth, but I was struggling to think of anything else to say.
The boy’s expression darkened, and I instinctively tensed, ready to bolt if he came at me. I wasn’t sure I could outrun them for speed, but if I could get back out on the streets where there were people around, that’d be a whole lot better than staying in this narrow side street. I didn’t want to end up like that poor cat.
“You’re telling us to pick on folks our own size, is that it?” he taunted. “And you’re offering, huh?”
I pressed my lips together as I tried to think of something to deescalate the situation, but my mind had gone unhelpfully blank. Telling them I was police would do nothing but rile them up. Of that, I was absolutely sure. I also felt like backing up would only make them want to chase me, so I made myself stand my ground.
“Maybe I didn’t see anything,” I decided to say after a long minute. “My mistake.” Giving them the option to keep their pride while rubbing my nose in it seemed like the best option, and nothing was going to be gained by me provoking them further, I thought. The cat was long gone now, and me getting beaten up wouldn’t help it.
“Oh yeah? You didn’t see anything?” The teenager grinned at me, clearly pleased. “What’d you come down here for, then?”
“I thought I heard something. My bad,” I tried. I badly wanted to back up, my every instinct telling me that this group had it out for me, but I forced mysel
f to stay calm and in control.
“What did you hear, huh?” he said, clearly enjoying the game of it. We both knew I’d seen them kicking that cat, but he wanted me to pretend I hadn’t. And because there were seven of them and I was a reckless idiot who hadn’t phoned for back-up, I would play along.
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. “I must have gotten it wrong.”
The lad closed the short distance between us, and I couldn’t help but lean back as he got up in my face. The stink of spirits and weed was even stronger when he was close, and I struggled not to grimace. He laughed at whatever he saw on my face and spat at my feet.
As near as he was, he practically filled my whole vision, and I got a close-up look at an odd-looking patch or badge stuck onto his dark jacket. I focused on it as my heart rabbitted in my chest, half expecting him to land a punch at any moment, and noted the striking design. It was scarlet red and showed the flammable warning symbol that you could often see on the back of cleaning chemicals or spray deodorants.
“C’mon, lads,” the lad said, dragging my full attention back to him as he spoke to the rest of the group who had mercifully stayed back while he toyed with me. “Places to be.”
He shouldered roughly past me, walking off towards the main road. The rest of the gang headed off after him, giving me ugly looks as they left and a couple of them ramming into my shoulder as they went by. Even amongst my tense fear, I noted that the rest of them were wearing the same patch, the flammable warning sign. What was it, a membership badge?
As their footsteps and casually cruel laughter receded, I forced myself to keep still and take steadying breaths until they were definitely gone. Then I staggered over to the nearest wall and sagged against it, my heart throwing itself at my ribcage like a beached fish.
I cursed myself for not thinking twice about what I was doing before I dumped myself in trouble and rubbed the acrid fear-sweat from my forehead and under my arms. With Stephen at my side, with our radios on our belts, I would’ve faced a group like that without any such nervousness. Alone and dressed in my running clothes, which showed exactly how lean I was and didn’t add any of the bulk of my police jacket, I needed to remember that I wasn’t invincible. I gave a weak laugh of relief after a moment, my heart beginning to settle back to a semi-normal rhythm, and pushed myself off the wall.
My legs had gone weak and stiff at the same time, tight with tension but unsteady with nerves, and I winced as I stretched them out. Moving out of the side road and emerging into the street made my chest loosen, particularly when I saw a couple walking together on the other side of the road and a family strolling with a pushchair further up the street. The sight of normal people, and the fact that the teenage gang was nowhere in sight, reassured me that I could fully let my guard down.
Still, I was buzzing with pent up fight-or-flight adrenaline, which I’d had to try so hard to keep under wraps when I was speaking to the boys, and it felt good to start running again. I went hard until the adrenaline ran out, slowing to a cool down jog as I got closer to Sam’s place. I’d definitely need a good long shower once I got there to get the sweat off my skin, and I felt like I’d probably collapse into bed soon after. Now that the buzz was wearing off, the stress of the confrontation was making me feel leaden. I was only glad that I wouldn’t have to try to explain a bruised-up face to Sam, nor see the pain and worry on her face if those teens had ended up jumping me.
I turned the incident over in my mind again and again as I closed the final stretch to Sam’s house, finding myself scanning my surroundings and looking into all the little alleys that led off from the main street. They couldn’t possibly have followed me all this way without me noticing, not all seven of them and with how hypervigilant I was currently feeling, but logic didn’t override the natural stress response that made me want to check over my shoulder.
So instead, I ran the encounter over in my head, recalling the teens' faces as best I could, as well as their ages and what they’d been wearing. None of them, unfortunately, had said their names whilst I’d been there, but I was reasonably confident that I could have picked them out of a line-up. I’d make notes as soon as I could so that the memory didn’t fade.
It was possible, probable even that I’d never get to use the information, that it was a one-off incident and I’d never see the boys again. But with all the trouble going on with teenagers recently, I couldn’t help but think that this might fit into the pattern somehow. Which didn’t make a huge amount of reasonable sense, but my brain wanted to find meaning in the scary event, and for now, I let it run with it, too tired to reason with myself.
Those patches, for example, weren’t like any I’d seen before. If they were merchandise for a band or company, I’d never seen them anywhere else, and the fact that every one of the gang had been wearing them made them feel more significant than that. Like there was a unity between them. I tried to remember if I’d seen any such patch or badge, with the same flammable warning sign, on Tiger or Mickey, the two teens we’d interviewed earlier. I didn’t recall seeing any, and the patches the older teens had been sporting had been a vivid red, immediately noticeable.
There was probably no link at all between me and Stephen’s case and what had just happened. Neither Jules nor Alistair had been with them, and they hadn’t been setting fires but tormenting that unfortunate cat, though it had at least been well enough to run away after I’d, unwisely, gotten involved.
Finally reaching Sam’s door, I leant over my knees and caught my breath. I took my time doing my stretches, already knowing that I’d be sore tomorrow. Stress had a way of making me achy in a way that even intense exercise didn’t manage, and I’d run myself pretty hard too.
I briefly considered not telling Sam what had happened on my way back before dismissing it. She’d be angry at me, of course, she would, just like I’d be furious with her if she’d done what I just did. That anger came from concern about each other, and it wouldn’t be right to lie to her by admission, not least to say that she’d probably end up hearing about it from Stephen, anyway. He’d probably want to commiserate with her about my recklessness, and I wouldn’t ask him to keep it from her either.
After lingering outside for another few minutes, I rang the doorbell and slipped off my trainers. Pulling my fingers through my hair, which had twisted itself into a tangle, I prepared to face the music.
I filed a report on the incident with the teenagers at the station the next day, but I didn’t expect anything to come of it. I’d made a record of the boys’ faces as best I could remember, but it was duty more than hope for a positive outcome that made me submit the report.
“I just can’t believe you did that,” Stephen muttered, not for the first time, as we stood in the break room. I’d made myself an eye-wateringly strong coffee and was still waiting for the caffeine to hit.
“It wasn’t my finest moment,” I agreed. “Sam was pretty unimpressed, to say the least.”
That was an understatement; she’d walked out of the room when I told her and had to come back after she’d calmed down. She’d explained in detail how stupid and reckless I’d been, and I’d agreed with her.
“I’m glad you’ve got someone to talk some sense into you since you never listen to me.”
“It was spur of the moment,” I said weakly. “The cat-”
“The cat managed to run off on its own, Darren. Chrissakes, you could’ve gotten left in hospital again.”
I just sighed and took another too-hot sip of my coffee. I wasn’t going to win this one, and there wasn’t any point arguing. It was done now.
“I wish I knew what those patches meant,” I said. “I feel like they’re important.”
“They could be specific to that group,” Stephen said, allowing the change of topic. “Like, I don’t know, a friendship bracelet for punks.”
I snorted at that. “They weren’t punks. The spirit of punk is anti-establishment, not pro-animal abuse.”
“Yeah?” Ste
phen said, sounding amused. “Spend some time as a punk, did you?”
“Maybe in my wild, misspent youth,” I grinned.
I shifted out of the way as another couple of officers came into the break room to make their drinks, and Stephen and I moved back to our desks.
“Y’know what Gary was telling me this morning?”
Gary was an older bloke who often manned the custody suites and supervised the junior officers. He was well known for being the first to hear of just about anything, and if there was any gossip round the station, he’d know.
“No, what?”
“There’s been teenagers kicking off across York recently, apparently.”
“Kicking off how?” I raised my eyebrows, my coffee cup paused in between the table and my mouth.
“Fighting outside McDonald's, harassing people, egging houses, trespassing. Even a bit of light burglary.”
“But not fires?”
“I did ask, but nah, he said he hadn’t heard about fires in particular. He chalked it to the hot weather and all the high-schoolers being on their summer holidays.”
“And do you agree?” I asked.
“God knows, honestly. I was going to have a look at the statistics from this time last year and see if there’s a difference. This heatwave is unusual, though.”
“Climate change,” I said absently as I thought about what Stephen had said.
I felt like there was a pattern in all this, but I couldn’t yet make it out. Beyond that, I wasn’t sure whether I was trying too hard to make it fit, like looking up at the clouds and picking shapes out of the clusters of water vapour. Our brains were designed to see patterns and shapes in nature that weren’t actually there, because spotting the vague shape of a tiger through the undergrowth might’ve saved our life once upon a time. However, it wasn’t much use to me when I was trying to separate my imagination from reality. The information we’d been gathering felt significant, but could I trust that feeling?
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