“You could say that,” she said, coming around to my side of the computer. “I’ve sent you an email. Click on the link.”
Bemused, I did as she asked, startled when my screen shifted into dark tones. It took me a moment to figure out what I was looking at.
“Some kind of messaging site? A message board- oh damn,” I said, realising what this was. “This is where they’re talking?”
“And meeting, yes. I looked into the blond boy, Jules, and followed the nickname, or codename, that Mickey White had given you.”
“That’s how you found this?”
“I searched for anything linked to the nickname, and this is what came up.”
“Adams, you’re amazing.” I gave her a grateful smile before turning back to the screen, scrolling through the messages.
“It was behind some level of encryption,” she said. “Weirdly sophisticated considering we’re talking about seventeen-year-olds.”
“Kids are tech-savvy these days,” I said absently.
“No, it was more than that.” Her words were firm enough to make me look up. “One of them, at least, is talented. And that group is talking some big game on there,” she warned me. “Anti-police, anarchist, violent stuff.”
“Terrorism?” I asked, alarmed.
“No, not yet.”
“Christ,” Stephen muttered. He’d been listening in, and we shared a dismayed look.
“Thanks for this, seriously,” I said, scanning through the messages and grimacing at what was there. This was worrying, to say the least, but it was also a big step in the right direction. Better to know about a threat so we could worry about it, I thought, than to fumble around in blind ignorance.
“I’d say anytime, but I’d be lying,” she said dryly. “Try to survive without my help for a bit, hm?”
“You got it,” I said, my attention focused on the messages.
“Is there any mention of the thing Mickey was telling you about?” Stephen asked once Keira had left.
“I’m looking for it.”
But the messages were mostly angry rants, with three or four different teens bouncing off each other and working themselves up. Others popped up to contribute on occasion, and there were over fifty in total who could read the chat.
Stephen brought up the message board on his computer, too, using Keira’s link to bypass the need for an invitation of any kind and, presumably, to cut through the encryption they were using.
“Do you think Jules is the one who knows the tech stuff?” I wondered aloud. “He’s the oldest, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know. He might be delegating that. He’s the leader and, presumably, charismatic enough to get a whole bunch of teens to follow him. That doesn’t necessarily mean he’s the brains behind this.” He gestured towards the messaging site. “Right?”
“True. He could have recruited one of the younger teens to do that bit.”
I read through more of the messages, scrolling right back to the start to see when they began. Much as I’d expected, they started shortly before April this year, when the first of the fires had happened. The name of the chat itself was ‘Phoenix’ as if we needed any more confirmation.
“Some teenager probably thought that was right clever,” I muttered when I noticed it.
“Probably,” Stephen snorted. “Rising from the ashes. Poetic.”
“Hardly,” I muttered.
The phone on my desk rang just as I came back from fetching myself a cup of coffee. The day was already too warm for it, but I needed the caffeine.
“DCI Mitchell speaking,” I said before wincing as I took a sip of coffee.
My shirt was clinging to my back, and I shifted uncomfortably, sending a wistful look outside, where a breeze was making the limp branches of a nearby beech stir lazily.
“Uh, hello,” a woman’s voice said, one that I didn’t think I recognised. “You called about some patches that had been ordered?”
“Oh!” I put my coffee down. “Right. What’s your company name, please?”
She told me before going on to explain that they’d had an order for patches just like the ones I’d described.
“We haven’t been asked to do any orders like this before,” she added. “I double-checked back through our recent ones after you called. This order came through about an hour ago.”
So they’re using different companies, I thought.
“What can you tell me about who ordered them? Their name, address, phone number?” I asked.
She was a little reluctant to share customer information with me, so I offered to hold a video call with her to show her my badge. She agreed after that, filling me in on the information she had.
“The order should be delivered to the address within a few days, though it is a bigger order, so it may take longer.”
“How many patches do they want?”
“Fifty.”
“Crikey,” I muttered as I took notes on what she’d said. “Can you let me know when they’ve been dispatched, so we can track them? And if they order any more.”
“Of course.”
I thanked her and hung up a moment later, settling back in my seat. The patches would cost a fair amount of money, more than I would’ve thought comfortable for an average teenager, so I wondered where they were getting it from.
“Maybe they charge membership or something,” Stephen guessed when I mentioned it.
“More importantly, if they’re ordering fifty more patches,” I thought aloud, “they must be expanding their ranks, right?”
“As if this wasn’t enough of a mess already,” Stephen grumbled.
“Aye, but we have an address now. Most likely, they don’t live there, judging from how careful they’ve been so far, but hopefully, we can grab one of them in the act, hm?”
“We’ll see.” Stephen didn’t look too hopeful. “It might just be the house of a lackey, someone even lower than Mickey who knows next to nothing.”
“Maybe so. But maybe we’ll strike lucky, and Jules himself will come to pick them up, right?”
“Is it worth stationing a car to keep an eye on them, though? I don’t know that Rashford will sign off on it.”
“We can try.” I gave a shrug. “C’mon, it’s not like you to be so pessimistic. This is progress, mate.”
“I’m too damn hot, that’s the problem.” He fidgeted with his collar, tugging it away from
