Stephen arrived at the station shortly after I’d gotten settled at my desk, my hair wet from the shower and making my collar damp. The day was already warming up, and I’d closed a couple of the blinds near my desk to keep the worst of the heat out.
“If your hair wasn’t wet, I’d assume you’d been here all night,” Stephen teased.
“And if you hadn’t brought me coffee, I’d be offended by that comment.”
I gratefully accepted the mug he offered me and savoured a sip. Still nicely refreshed from my cool shower, this was the only time of the day when having a hot coffee made sense.
“How’d it go with the kid last night? Did you miss me?”
“It wasn’t too bad,” I said, ignoring his last comment. “I’ve sent you an email with the main points, but we still haven’t got names, nor the site where the teens met.”
“So it was definitely online, then?” Stephen said distractedly as he pulled up my email.
“Aye, read through that, and you’ll see.” I got to my feet and stretched, my back clicking. “I’m gonna go and see if Keira’s in yet.”
“You might want to take her a caffeinated offering, too,” Stephen said gravely, “if you’re gonna make requests of her before nine o’clock.”
“Sage advice,” I chuckled, heading for the break room.
As I’d expected, I found Keira already at her desk. Her boss was in, too, but other than him, she was the only one in the tech team who’d shown up yet.
“I hope you’ll get the next promotion, doing all these extra hours,” I told her as I came over, presenting her with a mug of coffee before she could glare at me for interrupting her.
“So do I,” she grumbled. She accepted the drink, and I guessed that it must have been acceptable because she didn’t pull a face when she tried it. “What do you want, Mitchell? I’m busy.”
“I know, I know. Do you remember me asking you to look into-?”
“A blond kid with no picture and only his first name. Yeah, I remember.”
“And have you had time-?”
“It’s not been the most urgent of my priorities,” she said, exasperated.
“Aye, I guessed that. But look, the urgency just got pushed up, okay? There have been developments.”
I explained to her concisely about the fires, the teenage gang, the elderly man currently still in hospital.
“They’re not stopping, and we don’t know much of anything about them. And this blond kid, Jules, he’s at the centre of it somehow. If you can just-”
“Okay, Mitchell, I understand,” she waved a hand at me, her nails perfectly manicured. “You send me any new, relevant information, and I’ll push it up the list.” She looked flatly at me, making it clear that it was the best I was going to get, and I gave her a nod of thanks.
“Any luck?” Stephen asked.
I flopped into my chair with a sigh. “Well, it’s Adams, you know how she is. Always busy.”
“She’s the best tech, so everyone wants her to help on their case.”
“Aye, too right,” I agreed. “But, c’mon, me and Sedgwick are the only DCIs at Hewford. Couldn’t she prioritise us a little? And I recognised her brilliance when she was brand new here.”
Stephen laughed, and I had to join him. I could imagine too well Keira’s response to my slightly whiny comments. She wasn’t one to play favourites, not for any reason. She’d work out the urgency of the tasks she’d been asked to do, and nobody would tell her otherwise, probably not even the superintendent.
“She’ll see that it’s important and get round to it,” Stephen assured me.
“I better send her an update so she knows about the online stuff. If we could find out how the teens are meeting, it would be a huge breakthrough.”
“Agreed.”
I checked over the reports I’d already completed and updated them before emailing them off to Keira. In the meantime, I asked Stephen to talk to the superintendent, Rashford, about getting a couple of junior officers to help us with researching the case. Keira was too busy to help out much right now, especially with how frenetic this summer was turning out to be, so we could do with an extra helping hand.
“She’s willing to give us one,” Stephen said as he sat back down with a sigh.
“But did you-?”
“I told her how urgent it was, and how you thought it would escalate, etc. etc.,” Stephen said, a touch impatient. “I laid it all out, but she made it clear that they’re rushed off their feet and can’t spare anyone else.”
“Okay,” I sighed. “One will have to be enough then.”
So I sent an email over to the officer who’d been assigned to help us out, laying out clearly that they were to shift through the police records, looking for any teenagers called Jules who matched the boy’s description.
“And what’ll we be doing while the rookie’s sweating over that research?”
I rubbed a hand through my hair, which had long dried off and was beginning to stick to my forehead with sweat. The day was warming up quickly, and several others around the office had copied me in shutting some of the blinds. It kept some of the sun off but intensified the feeling of being confined in the dull, hot building.
“I want you to have a look over the CCTV around the area near where the gang were last seen, okay?” I said, and Stephen nodded. “And I’m gonna try giving some of these businesses a call.”
“Which businesses?”
I tapped my list with a finger. “Companies that make custom patches. That flammable symbol is distinctive. Surely it’s traceable.”
“Mm,” Stephen said noncommittally, looking unconvinced. “The internet is a big place, Mitch.”
“I am fully aware, thanks.” I rolled my eyes. “Really appreciate that gem
