“Okay.” I nodded, marshalling my thoughts. “If you can try to find out if there’s any useful CCTV from the school or the school grounds, that would be great. I’ll call Ms White, see what state he’s in and whether he can talk to us yet.”
We got to work, Stephen on the computer and me on my phone. Sedgwick walked past as I was waiting for Mickey’s mum to pick up, and he gave me a nod. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by it, but I returned it, and he moved away.
“Hello?”
“It’s DCI Mitchell. I wanted to see how you were both doing?”
Donna gave a small, tired laugh on the other end of the phone.
“We’re okay, yeah. I’m just- I’m so grateful to have him home. Thank you so much, detective, for all you’ve done.”
“Just doing my job,” I said, swallowing around a lump in my throat. “Would Mickey feel up to having a chat with us? Nothing too strenuous, of course. We’d like to hear his side of the story.”
“Oh, let me go and ask him. His throat is still sore from all the smoke, you know, so he’s taking it easy.”
“Of course,” I said and then waited while she talked to her son and the phone went quiet.
“He’d like to talk to you,” Donna said when she came back a moment later.
“Great, that’s great. What time can we come round?”
“Well, we’re not doing much today, really. His grandparents are coming round this afternoon to check on him, so sooner rather than later, I suppose. But I’m sure you’ve got important things on, so whenever is best for you, detective.”
“That’s very kind, but we can definitely manage sooner rather than later. We’ll be over in half an hour or so.”
We agreed on that time, and she hung up. I went to fetch another cup of coffee, hot this time because it’d been so much cooler today, and then filled Stephen in on the plan.
“Here’s hoping Mickey will be sensible and tell us exactly what happened,” Stephen said, taking a sip of the tea I’d made him.
“He’d be an idiot if he doesn’t,” I muttered before rubbing my forehead. “Or maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh. He’s just been traumatised and scared to hell by that group. Maybe he won’t trust us to protect him. I don’t know.”
“There’s an officer in his house right now, isn’t there?”
“Aye, two of them to keep an eye on him. And with good reason too, if the gang were willing to set light to a bloody school to get revenge on him.”
Stephen nodded grimly, and we were silent for a moment, both thinking of the burned school and how close Mickey had come to not coming out of it alive. Stephen turned to his computer screen after a second and tapped the monitor with his finger.
“In terms of the CCTV, it’s bad news. Someone either looped or destroyed any cameras that could’ve caught anything.”
“Of course,” I said bitterly. “That’ll be Alistair’s work, then.”
“Probably. We could really do with getting hold of his laptop or computer and having Adams trawl through it.”
“Though if he’s as smart and thorough as he seems, no doubt he’s wiped it already.”
“Ugh, true,” Stephen said with a grimace.
We left the station to head over to Mickey’s not long afterwards. As Stephen drove, I had the thought to check the location of the petrol canisters, though I wasn’t expecting much. I’d assumed that the trackers could either have already been found, which would explain how the gang knew Mickey was a spy, or else they’d been tossed into the fire at the school. Either way, they would’ve been destroyed.
So when I brought up the site for tracking them, I inhaled sharply to see that they were still live and that they were in the same place they’d been originally stored. The information confused me, and I frowned at the screen, wondering whether the cans had been refilled and the gang were planning something else or if they’d just been neatly put back after the school was set alight.
“After we see Mickey, we’ll need some back-up for a house search,” I said slowly as the plan came to me.
“Which house?”
“The place where the petrol was stored. The trackers are saying that the canisters are still there, and they might have fingerprints on them.”
Stephen looked as baffled as I’d been and was silent for several seconds before he found something to say.
“So… they didn’t find the trackers?” he guessed.
“I suppose not. Otherwise, they surely would’ve destroyed them, right?”
“Unless it’s a trap for us.”
I winced. It hadn’t occurred to me, but it did sound like something the gang might do, now that I thought of it. It was certainly ruthless enough.
“Maybe, but we still need to go,” I decided. “There could be crucial evidence there.”
“If they didn’t find the trackers, how did they know that Mickey was giving us info?” Stephen wondered aloud a moment later as we were pulling up outside the Whites’ house.
“No idea. Let’s go and ask him, hm?”
A police officer answered the door almost immediately after I knocked and politely asked to see my badge before she let me in, which I approved of. She showed us through to where Mickey and his mum were already sitting in the lounge, waiting for us.
I went over to shake her hand in greeting and was surprised when she grabbed me into a hug.
“I saw the video on the news,” she said tearfully, hugging me tightly before letting go.
“On the news?”
“Yes, of you carrying Mickey.” She wiped her fingers under her eyes.
“Oh,” I said blankly, turning to Stephen to see if he’d heard of this, but he shook his head.
Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise; I’d known that there were journalists around at the Rose Heath school fire. What I hadn’t realised was that one of them must have caught me running Mickey to the ambulance on camera. I hoped Sam hadn’t seen it, or at least that she hadn’t seen how close to the burning building I’d gotten.
“We’re very grateful,” she repeated sincerely before she offered us tea and coffee and fetched it for us.
Throughout, Mickey stayed sitting small and quiet on the sofa. He looked pale and tired, and his stillness was in complete contrast to his mum’s nervous busyness.
“How’ve you been getting on?” I asked him, taking a seat on the settee opposite.
“Fine.” He gave a small shrug.
I nodded and leaned back, waiting until Donna was back before we started asking more questions. I really hoped that the teenager would be more cooperative with us than he had been in the past, but I also was in no way forgetting what a horrific experience he’d had in the last few days. If he couldn’t bear to talk about it or was justifiably afraid of the gang, I didn’t want to hurt him further by pushing him past his comfort zone. We’d have to take whatever he wanted to give us.
“Here you are,” Donna said, coming in with a tray of drinks. She’d made two mugs for the pair of officers keeping an eye on the house, one inside and one sitting in a car outside, and she handed those out too.
“Thanks.” I accepted mine and took a sip, finding it pleasantly strong.
The weather had definitely cooled down after the dumping of rain and, even though it was still warm, I felt unused to being back at a comfortable temperature and the heat of the coffee through my mug felt pleasant on my hands. I set the cup down after taking a sip and dug my notebook from my pocket, Mickey’s gaze following my movements.
“I want to start by saying that we appreciate you agreeing to talk to us, Mickey, and if you need to take a break or leave this interview for another day, we can do that, alright?”
He gave a stiff nod.
Stephen glanced at me before adding, “Obviously, we’re keen to pin down the people who were responsible for this, so any information you can give us today would be really helpful.”
I nodded in agreement, and Mickey looked between us silently. His mum perched on
the edge of the sofa, her hands pressed between her knees. I cleared my throat and asked whether it was okay to record this interview, which they both agreed to, though Mickey looked reluctant.
“Okay, what can you tell us about how you ended up in the school? Start from the beginning, if you can,” I said.
“They figured out I was a snitch, that’s all,” he mumbled, looking down at his lap.
“Do you know how they found that out?” It was a question that had been bugging me. Mickey shifted, looking uncomfortable.
“I dunno. They already knew something was up because of the message site, I guess, and I was just hanging out with them. I asked about the petrol or something and they- Yeah. They guessed or whatever.” He shrugged, his head dropped low enough to put his chin on his chest.
It was a relief to hear that it hadn’t been mine or Stephen’s direct actions that’d put Mickey in danger, but it still wasn’t easy to hear. I could imagine all too well how the scene had gone.
“Who realised, Mickey? Which one of them?”
“Jules,” Mickey said finally, after chewing on his lip for several, long seconds.
“Was Alistair there?” I asked, and Mickey silently shook his head. “Okay, and what happened after that?”
Mickey went quiet, giving a wordless shrug. His mum looked anxiously between her son and us, putting a tentative hand on Mickey’s shoulder. He shrugged it off.
“This is very hard for him, I’m sorry. I’ll, ah, get us some biscuits,” she said, bustling away to the kitchen.
I sat back, and we gave Mickey a breather while his mum made up a plate of bourbons and custard creams. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and my stomach was already rumbling, so I took a couple. Sam had kept encouraging me to eat recently, telling me that healing up took energy. I smiled slightly to think of her and wondered what she was doing right now.
Donna sat back down with us a couple of minutes later, giving Mickey a cup of hot chocolate. He didn’t look too impressed by it, no doubt thinking that she was babying him, but he accepted it anyway and took a sip.
“What can you tell us about the fire at the school?” I asked after a pause had passed. Mickey lowered his mug to his lap, his fingers tight around the handle.
“I don’t know. I was in it, wasn’t I? I didn’t see ‘em light it.”
“No, no, of course not,” I backtracked.
“Who was it that took you there, Mickey?” Stephen said, taking over.
“A bunch of them.” Mickey glanced over towards the front door, and I realised that he was looking for the police officer, who was standing in the hall.
“We’ll keep you safe,” I promised him quietly.
“Really? Great job of that you did before.” He glared at me.
“Mickey!” Donna chastised him.
“It’s okay if you’re angry at me, but we need to know who did this. Don’t you deserve to have them deal with the consequences of their actions?”
“I can write their names down,” Mickey said before clenching his jaw. “But you’ve gotta look after my mum, okay? What if they try to burn this place down in the night, huh? Months from now?”
“Firstly, we’re going to do what we can to make sure everyone involved is caught. And secondly, you can have a police escort for as long as you need to feel safe.”
“You swear?” he said, suddenly sounding much younger than sixteen.
“I swear.”
I was banking on Rashford letting me keep that promise and letting me use Hewford’s resources to protect Mickey. If I told her that I’d already sworn to Mickey that we’d do it, she’d honour that, even if she was mad at me. After all the kid had been through, I thought he deserved to feel secure.
“Okay.”
He straightened up a little and gave me a nod, new determination in his eyes. The sulkiness we’d seen before had actually been fear, I realised, and now he had the reassurance that the police weren’t going to leave him and his mum defenceless, he was much more willing to confide in us.
We went on to take his full statement, asking for descriptions of all the teenagers involved in dragging him over to that school. They’d left him tied to one of the desks in an upstairs classroom where the firefighters had thankfully been able to find him and get him free in time.
He talked about the car they bundled him into driving him over to the school and the smell of petrol. He said that Jules had been driving and that he tried to make Jules change his mind, but the older boy wouldn’t listen.
His account was difficult to listen to, and his mum started crying half-way through, though she stayed quiet and let him get it all out.
“And Alistair?” I asked when he’d finished his narration about the day.
“Ali Pumphrey?”
“That’s him. What role did he have in the gang?” I asked, and Mickey frowned.
“He was Jules’s right-hand man, I guess. He did all the computer stuff.”
“So Jules trusted him? Even though he was only fourteen?”
“Yeah, I think so. I think Ali planned some of the hits, you know. But Jules was the one who, like, got it done.”
We continued to ask Mickey about Alistair, Jules, and the other members of the gang, but he didn’t have a great deal more to tell. Still, what he had given us so far was enough to get us approval to search Alistair’s house, I was sure, and that was plenty to be going on with.
After half an hour or so, Mickey was looking distinctly tired, and I began to round up the interview. Donna dabbed under her eyes, fixing her mascara, and saw us to the door when we finished.
“Let us know if he remembers anything else that could help us,” I asked her.
“Of course. Anything we can do, we want to help.”
“I hope Mickey heals up quickly,” I said, with a tight smile and a nod, and then Stephen and I headed out into the sunlight outside.
It wasn’t as bright as it’d been recently, but I definitely preferred the milder warmth compared to the baking heat, and I turned my face up to the sky briefly, breathing it in.
“That was helpful, right?” Stephen said once we were back in the car.
“Oh, aye. Now we’ve just got to nail the two jerks who’ve been causing all this mayhem.”
Jules and Alistair. Together they’d been spreading fear and hurt all summer, but I knew we were so close to catching them now. They’d gone too far with Mickey and I had every intention of making them pay for it.
Twenty-Three
Before we could go to search Alistair’s house, we needed to speak to Rashford. She listened attentively as I explained exactly what Mickey had told us and how I was certain that Alistair had played a big role in the events that had taken place, even though he hadn’t been there in person.
“With the teenager’s statement and the neighbour and teacher’s word, you’ve got my go-ahead,” she said with a nod.
“Great, thanks, ma’am,” I said, relieved. “And, if Alistair’s there, we can bring him in?”
“Absolutely, as long as you’ve got the evidence to hold him. I’ll give Adel Beck a call to see if they’ve got space for another juvenile. Alistair is under fifteen, correct?”
“He’s fourteen, yes ma’am.”
Adel Beck was a secure children’s home for young offenders under the age of fifteen, and where Alistair would be held if he was deemed a risk to the public. I strongly believed that he was. If we could get hold of Jules and prove his role in the crimes committed this summer, he would go to a young offender’s institute since he was seventeen.
After that, it was a matter of getting an extra couple of officers together to accompany us since I didn’t trust Alistair not to have something nasty up his sleeve. He and Jules had been one step ahead of the police since April, but no longer.
“His parents are gonna be crushed,” Stephen said as we were driving over.
“Aye, but they could’ve gotten their kid some help when he started burning holes in the lawn, in my opinion.”
“They probably didn’t recognise the seriousness of it. It’s hard to know when you’re a parent, whether you’re justifiably worried or overreacting.”
“You’re probably right,” I said.
Privately, I thought that Alistair’s parents were in some denial about their child’s personality. If they’d recognised the signs of Alistair’s behaviour earlier, it would’ve been better for everyone. That wasn’t to say that I blamed them because I didn’t. At the end of the day, a parent could do everything right and still have a child who turns out vastly different to how anyone expected.
The two police cars, us included, turned up outside Alistair’s house. It was no doubt overkill for a fourteen-year-old, but I wasn’t falling into the trap of underestimating Alistair because of his age. Stephen and I led the way up to the front door, and I knocked hard on the wood.
Alistair’s mum was blatantly shocked to see us standing there on our porch, stumbling backwards with a hand on her chest.
“Can I help you?” she asked shakily.
“We’re here for your son and to search the house,” I told her, gently but firmly. “Please step aside.”
She inched backwards with a dazed, horrified look on her face, and I led the way into the hall.
“Where is Alistair?” I asked her.
She pointed weakly up the stairs, and I led the way. A small part of my mind felt bad for tracking muck up across the upstairs carpet, and I had the sudden image of one of Alistair’s parents having to hoover it up after we’d left, taking their son with us. But I pushed the thoughts away. I could feel sympathy for Alistair’s parents whilst at the same time being absolutely certain that we were doing the right thing to ensure the safety of the community.
Alistair’s bedroom turned out to be at the end of the hall after we’d pushed open two others first. Stephen and I hesitated in front of it before I gave a nod and pushed it open. I’d worried briefly about Alistair having set up some kind of awful trap or set a fire to ignite when we entered, but none of that happened.
Alistair sat cross-legged on the bed, looking straight at us. He had his laptop balanced between his knees and his headphones around his neck. He looked completely unconcerned and unworried to see two police officers come into his room, with two others behind us. Stephen took the lead, taking handcuffs from his belt and moving forwards.
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