Twenty-Four
I must have made a sound, or Jules sensed me there watching him as he spun around suddenly. We stared at each other for a tension-tight second before he bolted towards me, his face twisted into a snarl.
Purely on instinct, I jerked to the side and scrambled up the first few steps of the stairs. He couldn’t slow his momentum in time but managed to grab my jacket, trying to wrench me down the stairs.
“Stephen!” I yelled as I held onto the bannister and lashed out with my foot.
My boot connected squarely in the centre of Jules’s chest, and he fell back, his mouth open and gasping. I seized the moment and dropped down the stairs to grab his wrists and twist them behind his back. He tried to thrash, even as he was still winded and struggling for air, and I shoved him up against the wall.
Stephen came running in a moment later, hurrying over to help me. I’d used my handcuffs already on the Phillips lad, and Stephen had to use the ones on his belt. The two other officers had come over at my shout, and Drew’s mum was there too, her hand on her mouth.
“Did you know this lad was in your house?” I demanded of her, although I probably should’ve waited to interview her formally.
She wordlessly shook her head, her eyes huge in her head.
“Let’s get him loaded in,” Stephen said, and I agreed.
Stephen did the actual wrangling of Jules, who was spitting and struggling like a pissed-off cat. I opened the car door for him and pushed Jules’s head down so that he wouldn’t knock it on the top. We put Jules in the police car, sitting him in next to Drew, and I told the junior officers to take them both back to the police station. We still had more to look over here, and I saw no point in having the teens sit around in the car when they could get sorted out and processed at Hewford.
“Jules came from the cupboard under the stairs,” I told Stephen as we headed back to the house.
“Maybe there’s more than just the vacuum and some shoes in there, then.”
“It, uh, it leads to the cellar,” Tracy Phillips, Drew’s mum, told us, clearly having overheard our conversation.
“Were you gonna tell us about it?” I said, feeling painfully on edge after having Jules try to attack me.
I’d already felt what it was like to have him kick me when I was down, and the thought that it could’ve happened again was making me feel fractious and sick.
“Yes, I mean, I’ve nothing to hide,” she said timidly, making me feel like a jerk for snapping at her.
“No, of course. Thanks.”
Stephen stayed at the door while I ventured into the cupboard and down the steps inside. I’d not been in a cellar for many years since they were hardly common around here. I found the light switch on the wall which lit a bare bulb and briefly blinded me. When my eyes adjusted, I gave a low whistle.
“Jackpot,” I muttered.
Piled into the small, underground room were a whole pile of petrol cans, and I was sure they were the ones from the garage. I moved forwards to look them over but didn’t touch any of them, not wanting to disturb any evidence. In the corner of the room not taken up by the canisters, was a half-deflated air mattress and several blankets, which made me frown. A crate of packaged food and several bottles of water and pop were set by the mattress, and several bits of discarded clothing dropped on the floor.
When I’d seen Jules, I’d automatically assumed that he’d been hiding out in the house. But these things on the floor looked more long-term, as if Jules had been living down here for at least a few days, if not longer. The small room was grim, smelling overwhelmingly of petrol fumes, and even now in the daytime, it was cold enough to make me shiver in my jacket.
Shaking my head, I went back up the concrete stairs to let Stephen know that the cans were there and we’d need forensics sent in to look them over.
“There was something else down there,” I told him once we’d called the station to update them. Stephen looked alarmed, listening closely as I explained what I’d seen.
“I was worried you were gonna tell me you found blood or body parts, for a minute there,” he said, giving a shake of his head. “But, yeah, that’s strange enough.”
“I guess he knew we’d check out his own home, so he headed over here.”
“Suppose so.”
He went down to have a look like I had and came up grimacing.
“That stink is awful.”
“What’s down there?” Drew’s mum asked, looking pale and worried.
“Petrol cans. Stolen, I’m afraid.”
“Oh,” she said, blinking at me.
After a moment, she seemed to gather herself and absently offered us a cup of tea while we waited for forensics to turn up. I saw no reason why not, finding myself pretty thirsty after running after one teenager and getting attacked by another.
Forensics were out on another case, so it would take them a while to arrive. Stephen and I needed to sit on the evidence so it wouldn’t get messed with, accidentally or otherwise, by Drew’s mum, so we sat tight for the moment. After two cups of tea and a trip to the loo, I went back down to the cellar for lack of anything better to do.
Keeping carefully away from the pile of canisters so as not to knock into them, I crouched down by the air mattress to look into the box of food. As I did, something crunched under my feet, and I frowned, looking down. There seemed to be crushed bits of black plastic on the concrete floor, and I wondered what it’d come from.
Looking around, the bits of plastic were only on the floor near the mattress, and I cocked my head, considering. I was reluctant to move anything before forensics arrived, but my curiosity won out, and I carefully nudged the air mattress to the side. I’d half expected to be disappointed, but the lump I’d thought I’d seen had been real. Wrapped in a thin towel, a bundle of something had been shoved under the mattress, presumably by Jude.
As much as I wanted to unwrap it, I didn’t want to contaminate things further, so I left the air mattress where it was and went upstairs to wait impatiently for forensics to arrive. They could tell me what was inside the towel bundle, and hopefully, it’d be something to add to our evidence arsenal.
Tracy grew increasingly anxious to leave as we waited. She was on the verge of leaving us alone in the house so that she could go to her son when forensics did finally arrive, and as soon as they were in the door, she hurried out to her car.
I showed the team where the cellar was and left them to do their work, sitting down on the sofa with a sigh.
“Sorry I wasn’t there when the kid attacked you.”
I looked up as Stephen sat down next to me, offering me a refill from the pot of coffee Tracy had made up.
“Nah, don’t worry. You came quick enough.”
“Now, racing off after Drew, I thought we’d talked about that.”
“Oh, aye, I know. But I couldn’t just let him go.”
“We could’ve got in the car, mate. Then you wouldn’t have been with him on your own with me a mile behind.”
“C’mon, you weren’t that bad,” I said, risking a smile. He groaned.
“You give me grey hairs, I swear.”
“I couldn’t tell since you shave them all off,” I teased back.
“Shut up,” he grumbled, giving me a light shove.
One of the forensics team took that moment to come into the room, raising her eyebrows at our antics. Stephen and I looked over at her like school kids caught smoking round the back of the bike shed. I cleared my throat and stood up from the sofa.
“Any luck?”
“We’ve taken multiple prints from the canisters, and we’ll take them with us as evidence. We’ve also recovered a computer from-”
“A computer? Was it inside the towel?” I said eagerly.
“Yes.” She looked none too impressed to be interrupted. “But it’s been badly bashed up. We couldn’t find any prints on it.”
“Damn it,” I muttered.
“Can we take it with us? We’ve got a
tech expert at Hewford who could try to recover something from it.”
“I think we’re done with it.” She gave a nod.
“If Jules smashed it up, it must have something important on it,” I said once she’d gone to see her team as they finished up.
“Yeah, but try not to get your hopes up. It might be too badly damaged.”
He was right, and I frowned, rubbing a hand over my forehead. We carefully packed up the laptop, encased in an evidence bag, into the car and drove over to Hewford, both of us deep in thought.
“Do you think Mickey’s account and the petrol cans will be enough?” Stephen asked as we were getting near.
“Enough for what?” I said, not without bitterness. “To make sure Drew gets linked to the fires? Aye, sure. It’ll condemn anybody who had their fingerprints on the cans, for instance. We can get some of the ones we caught on the CCTV, maybe. We might get Jules, too, considering he was down in Drew’s basement, right next to the cans. But Alistair?” I shook my head. “Nah, I don’t think we’ve got enough to get him. He’s been too goddamn tidy.”
“Okay,” Stephen sighed.
Inside the station, we went directly up to see Keira. She was on the phone and barely flicked a glance at us as we came her way. The computer that Jules had messed up was in a bad way, and she gave us a deadpan, unimpressed look when I put it in front of her.
I snagged a post-it note from a pile on her desk and wrote ‘VERY URGENT’ on it, sticking it on the laptop so she’d see. She just pressed her lips together and turned back to her computer, resuming her conversation with the person on the phone.
The rest of the evidence then had to be ferried up to the lab where Sam was working. I gave her a warm smile, ignoring the stink eye her colleague was giving me, and came over to hug her once we’d brought all the evidence up.
“How’s it going?”
“You know how it is.” She gave an elegant shrug before looking around at the petrol cans and other things we’d brought her. “Looks like I’m in for a busy afternoon, hm?”
“Sorry about that. Have you had lunch already?”
“‘Fraid so, love.” She gave me an apologetic smile and squeezed my arm. “I’ll see you at home, okay?”
“Sure.” I kissed her once more before heading out.
Stephen and I went to grab lunch, sitting outside the station. Since the storm we’d had, the weather seemed to have settled into its normal, changeable pattern, and today was cloudy and slightly humid. But it was warm enough to sit out and not raining, so we made the most of it.
“Are you and Sam doing okay, y’know, with the move?”
I glanced over at Stephen, who gave me a sympathetic frown.
“I don’t know, really. I guess we are. We’re going to try to make it work somehow.”
“You don’t sound too sure,” he noted, and I turned to frown at him.
“Would you be? We’re not married, Steph, and it’s been months, not years. I love her like crazy, yeah, but…” I scowled down at the ground.
“Hey, don’t you see how she looks at you-”
“No, it’s not- I know she says she feels what I do. I believe her, okay? I just… people’s priorities change.”
“Do you think once she’s gone, you’ll want to move on, is that it? That you can’t deal with-”
“No, dammit. I’m here as long as she wants. It’s just-”
“You don’t feel worthy of her?”
I turned to stare at him, shocked and hurt. “Do you think I’m not worthy of her?” I croaked out.
Stephen cursed, putting his lunch down and turning fully towards me, gripping my arms as if he wanted to shake me.
“Jesus, no, Mitchell, for crying out loud. You’re reckless as hell, but you’re one of the best people I know. I was asking if you didn’t feel, like, I don’t know like you deserve her. You’re always saying how lucky you feel, mate, like it’s pure luck she’s with you, but it’s not. She chose you, okay?”
I looked at him for a long second. This conversation was making me feel raw, like Stephen had dragged something out that wasn’t ready to be exposed to the light yet. Something that had been buried for a long time, maybe.
“What if she doesn’t keep choosing me, though?” I said, swallowing around the lump in my throat. Stephen’s brow crumpled, and he pulled me into a firm hug.
“She will. She’d be an idiot not to, okay? You’re both besotted with each other, trust me.” He pulled back and gave me a crooked smile. “It’s kinda sickening sometimes.”
“Jeez, shut up,” I said, breaking into a shaky grin. He gave me a pat on the shoulder, picking up his sandwich again.
“You’ll be alright,” he said, and I nodded, more to myself than him. He was right. Whatever happened with Sam, I had a job I loved, a best friend in Stephen, and a community at Hewford that I could rely on.
The rest of lunch was lighter, and I went back into the station feeling more relaxed, a weight shifted off me. We went up to see if Keira had gotten time to check the laptop, finding her eating lunch at her desk while working away on her computer.
“I’ve handed it off to Lee over there,” she told me, gesturing behind her. “I don’t specialise in recovery. You’re better off with him.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Lee was just about to leave to have lunch when we arrived, but we persuaded him to wait ten minutes to talk us through the laptop.
“Good news is, I’ve got something off it. I don’t know how much use it’ll be, but I’ll send it over to you.”
“What’ve you got?”
“Files, mostly. I couldn’t recover the internet history or much else.”
“Anything you’ve found is helpful, thanks,” I said, though I was privately disappointed. I’d really hoped to find something about the messaging site on the laptop, but I’d take what I was offered.
The tech guy sent the files he’d recovered over to us, and Stephen and I split them between us.
“Darren!” Stephen said suddenly before hitting my arm. I’d been concentrating hard on my work, and he made me startle so badly I nearly fell off my seat.
“Damn it, Steph, what?”
“Sorry, but look at it. It shows it was all premeditated. Look, he’s got ruddy spreadsheets, graphs. See this-”
I turned his monitor towards me and stared at it, taking in all the plans. They laid out how things would escalate, what dates and times each fire would take place. ‘Experiments’ that he had done with different fuels and materials. The only thing they didn’t take into account was Mickey, it seemed, as there was no mention of him.
“These aren’t Jules’s, are they?” I said as I scanned over it.
“These ‘experiments’? No, they’re Alistair’s, surely.”
“Look at the school name. They were gonna burn a school, but it was meant to be Alistair’s, not Rose Heath.”
“Mickey’s school,” Stephen said. “They changed-”
“The plan after he betrayed them,” I finished, nodding.
“Bingo. We got them, Mitch.” Stephen grinned.
“We’ll have to link this all to Alistair and make sure Jules gets implicated too.”
“It’ll be fine, mate,” Stephen said, thumping me on the back. “Allow me to feel a little proud for a minute, will ya?”
“Proud?” I teased, giving him a crooked smile. “Who was the one who found the laptop exactly?”
He rolled his eyes at me, giving me a light shove.
“You couldn’t have done it without me,” he protested.
“I know, I know, I really couldn’t.”
We went to fill Rashford in on the find, and I went to thank the tech guy and Keira for their help. Then I headed up to Sam to let her know that there was less of a rush on the other evidence, though we’d need it eventually, of course. But at least for now, we had enough to hold Jules, Alistair, Drew, and all the others in custody until we could sort the details out.
Blame would nee
d to be allotted, court dates set, evidence coherently put together to be examined. There was a whole lot left to do before Stephen and I could confidently call the case closed for good, but it would hopefully be the home stretch from here on out. I, personally, was looking forward to seeing Alistair’s smug expression fade when he realised what had happened. I wasn’t normally the vengeful sort, but he’d very nearly killed Mickey, and he’d been so damn sure he’d get away with it scot-free.
We’d get justice for all those the gang had terrorised over the summer, and they’d get what they deserved in the coming weeks. And in the time I had off, I’d enjoy being with Sam, making the most of her being here while we still could. What’d happen when she left, I didn’t know yet, but we’d give it our best shot, that was for sure.
Epilogue
The angle of the sun had shifted as I told the winding story, and we’d shifted our chairs to follow the shade. We were getting into the evening now, and the blasted midges were starting to emerge, replacing the wasps as the main nuisance of the summer warmth. It was still bright enough that I could’ve read a book, and the light would only start to fade after nine o’clock.
“I can’t believe a fourteen-year-old…” Liam’s dad, Douglas, started and then shook his head, trailing off.
“I know,” I agreed, giving a heavy nod. Alistair’s actions had shocked me as well that summer and many other officers.
“But he went to jail, though?” Liam said, looking at me with wide-open eyes.
“He stayed at the secure children’s home, aye, and moved from there to a juvenile detention centre when he came of age.”
“Was Mickey okay?”
“Oh yes, fine, I believe. Got himself sorted and went off to uni, I think. You could probably track him down if you wanted, though I don’t know that he’d want to relive it. It was a hard summer for him. He did give us a good deal of help, though, and I’m grateful to him for that.”
“He got let off for what he did, then?” Douglas asked.
“Aye,” I sighed, settling back in my chair and waving away a whining midgie. “He wasn’t the best informant, that’s for sure, but I considered that the lad had paid his dues. He promised to get straightened out, and I advocated for him to get leniency. He got a couple of months of community service if I remember right.”
Heatwave Page 27