He silently shook his head, and I hummed. If the kids hadn’t met via school, how had they joined up?
“He’s a year older than you, right?” I asked, and Mickey nodded. “What about the others? Are they your age?”
“I guess.” He’d stiffened slightly at the question, and his reply seemed deliberately evasive.
I leaned back and looked over at Stephen as I tried to weigh up what to ask next. Stephen was frowning slightly at the kid, looking faintly troubled.
“What about the fire?” I said, trying a different avenue. “Was it your idea to set the barn alight?”
“No.”
“It’s so dry right now that that fire could very easily have spread. Mr Roberts could have lost his house, and you could have been badly burned. Did you think of that?”
Abruptly, Mickey lifted his head for the first time since he’d sat down and looked at me.
“Can I- can I ask, is that man okay?” he asked, ignoring my question. “Y’know, the farmer? Will he be okay?”
That wasn’t what I’d been expecting him to say, and it took me a moment to think of how to reply. Stephen was faster than me, though, and responded before I could.
“How did he get injured, Mickey?” he asked sternly, rather than answer. It was perhaps a harsher take than what I would’ve done with the timid kid, but I looked to Mickey regardless, curious to hear his answer.
“I don’t know,” Mickey mumbled, shrinking back into himself. His hair was sticking to his forehead with sweat.
“You must know,” Stephen pressed, “if you’re asking if he’s alright.”
I decided that playing off Stephen a little here wouldn’t go amiss and leaned forwards slightly.
“Look, lad, Mr Roberts took a nasty hit to the head, but he’ll live. I know you must be a good kid, and you must care if you want to know if he’s alright, so help us out here, okay?”
Mickey looked uncertain, chewing his lip as he looked between us.
“What happened earlier today, Mickey?” Stephen repeated firmly.
“I didn’t know they were gonna hurt him. He wasn’t meant to be there,” he murmured, almost under his breath.
“Who hit him?” I asked, gentling my voice. “It wasn’t you, was it?”
Mickey silently shook his head and didn’t speak.
“We’re trying to stop this from happening again,” I tried. “To stop other people like Mr Roberts from getting hurt like this. His animals were injured too, and he’s lost his barn. That’ll hurt his livelihood, kid, d’you understand?”
“I can’t say.” Mickey looked over at the door again almost desperately, like he wished someone would come rushing through it to save him from our questions.
“Who says you can’t?”
“If you’re worried about being hurt,” Stephen said, his tone softening, “we can protect you, kid.”
Mickey stayed mum, shaking his head and buckling down on his silence.
“The guy who told you not to tell,” I tried, thinking of the blonde boy Roberts had mentioned, “is his name Jules?”
Mickey tensed noticeably, and I watched him closely for a response but, after that first flinch, he stayed completely still.
“Mickey?” I prompted.
He wouldn’t answer, staying quiet in the face of my coaxing questions and refusing to reply to Stephen’s sterner ones too. I sighed heavily and accepted, after ten minutes or so, that we weren’t going to get anything else out of the teen, despite the encouraging start we’d had.
“Alright, Mickey,” I said. “Let’s go and see how far away your parents are.”
“It’s just my mum,” he said quietly, and I stilled before giving him a nod.
“Your mum, then. C’mon, lad.”
We moved back into the main space of the station since it was infinitesimally cooler than the cramped back room. I handed out more water and packets of biscuits to the two teenagers, who were both refusing to look at us or at each other.
“We can take it from here, sir,” DI Young came over to tell me a moment later.
“Oh?” I said, slightly amused by his directness. “You’re kicking us two out, huh?”
He blushed right down to his neck. “No! I mean, I just thought you’re busy, sir.” I was chuckling, and he raised a hesitant smile back at me as he added, “We can handle giving out biscuits to delinquent teens, sir, I promise.”
“I believe you,” I laughed. I patted the bloke on the shoulder. “Alright, we’ll be off then. Good luck with the parents, mate. They’re not going to be best pleased.”
“Oh, tell me about it,” he said with a dramatic sigh. I grinned at him, and we shook hands before Stephen and I headed outside.
The sun was beating down fiercely, and my stomach was beginning to rumble from lack of food, though I had helped myself to some of the station’s biscuits.
“You driving, or am I?”
“If you fancy it, go for it,” I said, waving my hand at the car. “This heat makes me want to take a nap.”
“I’ll do it then,” Stephen said with a wry smile. “And we’ll drop by the services, ‘cus I can hear your poor stomach from here.”
“I can’t help it,” I grumbled, climbing into the hot car with a grimace. We’d parked it in the shade when we’d arrived, but the sun had moved around. “I have a fast metabolism.”
“Sure you do.” Stephen sent me a disbelieving look. “You being a string bean has nothing to do with the miles you run every day.”
We traded friendly banter back and forth as Stephen got the car started up and set us on the route back to York. We were heading away from Roberts’ farm, but I thought I could still smell the acrid smoke on the air when I opened the window.
“Y’know what I was wondering about?” Stephen said as we sat in the motorway services car park half an hour later. I’d grabbed a pasta salad, and Stephen had picked out a Subway foot-long.
“No, what?”
“The fuel that was used to start it, right?” Stephen started once he’d swallowed his mouthful. “Where’d they get that? A petrol station?”
“I guess so,” I said with a shrug. “Or from their
