Alistair looked at me, entirely nonplussed, and seemed to think.
“He sounds familiar,” he said after several seconds.
“And do you know where he might be?” I asked, having to force myself to be patient. Perhaps it was irrational, but I was dead certain that Alistair knew more than he was letting on.
“No, sorry. I don’t think I even know what he looks like. There were a lot of us.”
I looked at him for a long moment, and he looked back at me evenly. I patted my pockets to find my phone, determined to show the teenager Mickey’s picture and see how he reacted.
“Yeah, I’ve seen him around,” was all Alistair said in response.
“Okay,” I said finally. “Let us know if you remember anything or if he gets in touch, alright?”
I was frowning as we left the house, me and Stephen heading to our car and Sedgwick and his partner climbing into theirs.
“What’re you thinking?” Stephen asked as he started up the car, jamming on the air conditioner first, and followed Sedgwick’s car back towards the station.
“Let’s not go back to Hewford yet. Just drive around the area for a minute and park up a couple of streets away,” I told him.
“What? Why?”
“Because I don’t believe Alistair, and I don’t think his parents were entirely straight with me either.”
“Really?” Stephen made a surprised face, but he did as I asked.
“Aye, I want to have a quiet word with the neighbours.” I looked over sideways at him. “What did you think of them? Of Alistair?”
He took a breath, letting it out slowly and giving himself a moment to think.
“I don’t know, to be honest. Alistair seemed all dressed up, and that was odd. I think it’s possible that the older teenagers pushed him into it. Hell, you’ve even suggested it yourself. He’s a small kid and only fourteen.”
“True. But after seeing how he was with the group… well, you saw on the CCTV, too, right? When they were walking down the street together, he was right next to Jules, like he was fully part of things. He didn’t hang back like Mickey, did he?”
“Jules could’ve been keeping a close eye on him.”
“Aye, there’s that.”
“Plus, do you remember at the start, Sedgwick told us that it had been confirmed that some kids confronted Alistair at the school gates? A teacher saw it. So that part of his story certainly rings true, right?”
“Right,” I agreed because it was a good point. “But we don’t know what was said between them, and their relationship could’ve changed in the weeks that Alistair was away from home.”
Stephen had doubled back towards the Pumphrey’s house after a few minutes and came to a stop around the corner from their place.
“Yeah, okay, I can believe that,” he said, “but why do you suspect Alex and Grace of not being truthful? I think they want to believe their kid’s totally innocent, and can you blame them?”
“No, I totally understand it, but when I was in the kitchen, I saw these burn marks on the lawn.”
I went on to explain exactly what the blackened circles had looked like and how the Pumphrey’s response had seemed clunky and inadequate to me. Fireworks didn’t make big rings of burnt grass like that, or not in my experience, anyway.
“And you’re hoping the neighbours will know what actually made the scorch marks,” Stephen summarised.
“Precisely.”
I got out of the car, and we made our way towards the Pumphreys’ but went over to their neighbour’s door this time. There was no response from the right-hand house, so we tried the other side. A tired-looking, middle-aged man with a toddler on his hip answered it.
“Can I help you?” he said, looking concerned to see us there.
I got pretty much straight to the point, fully aware of how most people became worried when they saw police outside their door. They started to fear that their loved ones had been in an accident or involved in some terrible crime they didn’t know about. When we went to ask questions about a completely unrelated matter, I always tried to dispel that worry as quickly as possible.
“Hi, I’m DCI Mitchell, and this is my partner, DI Huxley. We’d like to ask you a couple of quick questions about your neighbour if you’ve got a moment.”
“About my neighbour? John and Sue?” His eyebrows went up, and he jerked a thumb towards the right, away from the Pumphrey’s house.
“No, your neighbours on the other side. It won’t take a moment. May we come in?”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” He stepped back into the hallway, bouncing the toddler on his hip. “Sorry, it’s a bit of a tip, you know how it is with young kids.”
I didn’t know, but Stephen made sympathetic noises. He offered us tea, but I didn’t want to keep him when we only had a couple of questions.
“So what did you want to know?” he asked once we’d sat down in the sitting room.
I’d had to shift some kids’ toys out of the way to make space, and the toddler was incomprehensibly chattering away to himself where his dad had put him down on the carpet.
“Have you ever noticed anything odd about your neighbours? The Pumphreys, I mean.”
“Oh, is that their name?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’ve barely even said ‘hi’ to them. They have a kid, right?”
“Aye, a son who’s fourteen. Have you seen him?”
“Uh, in the garden sometimes, yeah.” His eyes briefly moved away from mine as he said that, and I wondered what he’d been thinking or remembering. “Why?”
“What was he getting up in the garden?”
“I mean, I wasn’t standing there watching,” he said, slightly defensively. “I’ve got a toddler to keep an eye on, y’know?” He gave a weak smile which I returned.
“No, I appreciate that. But you must have noticed what he was doing even at a glance?”
He sighed, looking down at his son, who was trying to jam blocks into holes that were the wrong shape, making a loud clacking sound of wood against wood.
“I don’t want to get them in any trouble, alright? I’ve not seen him doing it for ages, and I didn’t want to make a report or anything.”
“A report about what?” I said, straightening up.
It was a little hard for me to concentrate with the toddler making a racket in the background, but the kid’s dad seemed to tune it out, as I’d often noticed the parents of young children do. Regardless, his talk of not wanting to get the Pumphreys in trouble was enough to get me paying him my full attention, and Stephen beside me was just as focused.
“He used to burn things a lot. Wood, plastic, soft toys, all sorts of things. Sometimes, there’d be a terrible smell from it all.”
“Burning things,” I repeated.
“Yeah. Different places on the lawn, for some reason. I was a little worried about him doing it, y’know, during this heatwave-”
His son started to complain, waving his arms in the air like he wanted to be picked up, which his dad dutifully did, bouncing the toddler on his knee. He picked up where he’d left off a second later.
“But I never saw him in the garden, not recently in the last few weeks, so I guessed he’d grown out of it, or his parents had a word with him, maybe.”
“Did you ever speak to his parents about it?”
“Oh, once over the fence, yeah. His mother was very apologetic, and it was pretty awkward. I felt bad for her.”
“How long has this been going on for?”
“I don’t know, a couple of years, on and off, I suppose. When the weather’s nice, he’d sometimes come out. No more than once or twice a month.”
“And you did actually see him doing it?” I wanted to confirm. I had my notebook out now and was making a couple of key notes.
“Yeah, a few times.” He sent a frown down at my notepad. “Look, it’s never gotten out of control. Some kids are difficult, I know, so I don’t want to make things hard for his parents. They seem like decent folks.”
I set the pad down and gave him a sympathetic look. Some neighbours would’ve rushed to report an incident like the one this man was describing after it happened just once, but he was clearly compassionate towards other parents.
“I understand that, and it’s right kind of you. Unfortunately, there is a bigger picture here which I can’t disclose to you, but it’s really important that we understood the teenager’s character, okay? For the sake of other people’s safety.”
“Jesus. Is my son in danger?” The dad looked shocked.
“No, no,” I rushed to assure him. “That’s not what we’re saying. As you’ve said, the fires set in the garden didn’t seem dangerous. They were controlled, right?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Good. So we’re not concerned that you’re in any danger here, but for the sake of being safe, we do need to understand what he’s been doing. Does that make sense?”
He gave a hesitant nod, still holding his son close. We went on to ask further questions about anything else the neighbour might have seen, if he’d heard any shouting or strange noises, or if he’d talked to Alistair himself. Mostly, the answers didn’t illuminate much, and we brought it to an end shortly after, once the toddler started to get restless and grisly.
“He needs his snack, I’m sorry,” his dad said apologetically. I thanked him for his help and gave him a business card before we saw ourselves out.
We headed back to the station after our talk with the neighbour, intending to catch up with Sedgwick.
“I see,” was all he said after I’d told him about the burnt circles in the garden and the neighbour’s account.
“Did you believe Alistair’s story?” I asked, frowning slightly at him.
Sedgwick released a breath and leaned back in his chair. His narrow face was pinkened by the heat, and he was only wearing a shirt which looked oddly casual for him.
“This information does throw doubt on the Pumphreys’ version of Alistair as a perfect child,” Sedgwick admitted. “But whether it links to-”
“It has to link to the teenage gang! Alistair started fires deliberately in his back garden, and now, he’s gotten involved with a group that, wait for it, start fires!”
“I don’t appreciate your tone.” He gave me a flat look. “I hear your point, but it may yet be a coincidence. We’ll need further evidence to confirm or deny-”
Frustrated at his, in my opinion, willful refusal to accept the obvious, I threw up my hands and walked away. I heard Stephen mutter an apology before he came after me.
“Really, Darren? Blowing up at the one guy we need to work the case with? He didn’t have to bring us into that interview with Alistair’s parents at all, remember?”
I exhaled a sigh, putting my hands down on my desk and taking a breath. My ribs were aching, I was too warm, and my stomach was complaining about not having eaten since breakfast.
Stephen patted my back between my shoulder blades and seemed to read my mind when he said, “Let’s go and get lunch, okay?”
“Good idea,” I agreed.
A break from the station and the difficulties of the case was certainly in order. Without running to take the edge off, I found it hard to prevent myself from getting wound up at work, and I wondered whether my ribs would stand up to a gym session this evening.
Before then, though, Stephen and I still had plenty to be getting along with. My first priority was to look into Alistair’s background further because I couldn’t believe that there was absolutely no record of troublesome behaviour in his past. Doing things like regularly starting fires, setting alight things like plastic and soft toys, didn’t come from out of the blue, and I was convinced that there must be some evidence of it on his school record or as seen by family friends or relatives.
What we really needed to do was find out who, exactly, Alistair Pumphrey was and what we were dealing with here.
Twenty
Since it was the summer holidays still, it was difficult to get hold of the school teachers we needed to talk to.
“Don’t you think Sedgwick’s going to feel that we’re infringing on his case here?”
I glanced over at Stephen, who was looking at me with raised eyebrows, waiting for an answer.
“Aye, probably. But we need answers, and Alistair is wrapped up with that gang, I’m sure of it. It’s relevant to our case too.” I gave a shrug. “Besides, Sedgwick’s case, which was to find a missing child, is essentially closed, right?”
“That’s one way to look at it. Alright, I’ll have a look over which teachers Sedgwick already spoke to about Alistair, see what we’ve got.”
“And I’ll keep trying to chase up Mickey’s whereabouts because I’m worried about him.”
But before I tried that, I first checked up on the location of the petrol canisters, which hadn’t moved from when I’d last looked.
“Do you think Mickey could be where the petrol is?” I wondered aloud to Stephen.
“I dunno, I doubt it. Why would they be together?”
“I just thought, in the worst-case scenario where they have abducted Mickey, they could keep them in the same place.”
The thought was a dark one, and Stephen pressed his lips together. I was reminded of another case we’d worked on involving stolen kids, and I very much hoped that Mickey wouldn’t turn out to be another one.
“Let’s not jump to dire conclusions. Call his mum, okay? See if she knows anything,” Stephen advised.
There’d been no call from her yet, but I rang her anyway, just to make sure that Mickey hadn’t come home. She confirmed that he wasn’t there and kept me on the phone for another few minutes, begging me for answers I didn’t have.
“I need a coffee,” I muttered once I’d put the phone down, and Stephen gave me a sympathetic frown.
“Go get your caffeine,” he said, “and when you come back, I might have something for you. Only if you bring me some tea, though.”
“Bribery, Huxley? Outrageous,” I said, managing a tired smile before I headed off to the break room.
“So Sedgwick did a comprehensive job of talking to the teachers, but there was an IT teacher who wasn’t in on the day-”
“IT? Like, you think that-?”
“If you’ll let me finish, I was going to say that the school recorded Alistair as attending an extracurricular ICT club, so we should really talk to this woman.”
“Brilliant work,” I said and slapped him on the shoulder. “So, possibly, Alistair might be the one who’s been setting up the encryption on the chat sites, and dealing with all the technical side of their operation, if you want to call it that.”
“It’s a leap, but yeah, it could track.” Stephen shrugged.
“Let’s see what this teacher has to say, then.”
It took half an hour of calling around, trying to find a private number for the teacher so that she’d actually pick it up during the holidays. Finally, I got her on the phone.
“Is this Anna Sheridan?” I asked, and she confirmed it was. “I’m DCI Mitchell. I’d like to ask you a few questions about one of your students.”
“Really? Which one?” Her voice was warm, deeper than I’d expected, and I could imagine her patiently explaining facts and information to secondary school kids.
“His name is Alistair Pumphrey.” There was silence on the other end of the phone, so I went on, “He went missing recently, though he’s safely home now. We’re looking into the full circumstances surrounding his disappearance.”
“I’m not- I can’t really talk right now, I’m babysitting for my sister. Perhaps we can, uh, speak in person?” Her voice had gone high and strained, and it took me a moment to respond.
“Of course. When could we talk to you?”
We arranged to go and see her this evening, before teatime, and she hung up, her voice still sounding strange.
“No luck?” Stephen asked, perhaps catching the consternation on my face.
“No, well, she agreed to
talk to us, but she sounded off. I don’t know. It was peculiar. She’d seemed like she was fine to talk to me, but as soon as I mentioned Alistair and him going missing, her voice totally changed, and she said she couldn’t answer my questions right then after all.”
“You might read too much into it, maybe something came up, and she changed her mind. You can’t see peoples’ expressions over the phone.”
I accepted that with a nod, but I wasn’t convinced. It made me tentatively hopeful that the teacher would have something to tell us when we went to see her later today. Still, I stopped myself from getting too carried away with ideas and theories before we’d even spoken to her.
The afternoon seemed to pass painfully slowly as we crept closer to the time when we were due to meet her. I tried chasing every lead I could think of to find Mickey but didn’t turn up anything. The kid seemed to have vanished, his phone staying off and no news from his worried mum.
At Anna Sheridan’s house, she offered us tea and biscuits, and Stephen accepted. Once the food was in front of me, I realised how hungry I was and took a couple of digestives before we launched into questions.
Sheridan herself was a young woman who looked anywhere from her late twenties to mid-thirties, with strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a loose bun and a smudged, pink birthmark on her left cheek. She was polite and welcoming, but there was an air of tension around her, and I didn’t know her well enough to tell whether the anxiety was simply from us being there or if it was something else.
“You wanted to know about Alistair?” she asked after she’d given us our cups of tea. I quickly set mine down and picked up my notebook.
“Aye, you’re the ICT teacher at his school, right? We heard you run an after-school club for the kids, and Alistair is one of the members.”
“Was,” she corrected. “He was one of the members.”
“Why did he leave?”
She grimaced, little more than a tightening of the lips and a slight frown, but it was definitely there.
“He was asked to leave, actually.”
“Really?” My eyebrows raised. “Why was that?”
“He, uh, there was some violent behaviour towards another child. That was the biggest thing.”
Heatwave Page 22
