“Lookouts,” Stephen said and pulled an expression that might’ve been surprise or dismay, or a mix of the two.
“I guess,” Clive said with a nod. He had a gold earring in his right ear, I noticed, and it moved when he shifted his head. “I was properly watching them now and thinking about getting my phone, y’know? I was told this was a good area, a safe area, when I got the house. I don’t want anything going on over the street; my kids are right out back, for chrissake.”
“Absolutely,” I agreed. “We’re glad you took an interest, that’s for sure. Where were you watching from?”
“Right there,” he said, gesturing over to the front sitting-room window. The downstairs of the house was fairly open plan, and the kitchen, where we were sitting, connected directly to the lounge.
“Did any of the teenagers stand out?” I asked. “Anything distinctive about them?”
“Uh, I don’t know, really. There were a couple of girls, I think, but the rest were lads. And they were all sorts of heights. I didn’t get a good look at their faces or anything like I said.”
I held back a sigh. I’d been hoping Clive would mention a blond-haired teenager, Jules, but it wasn’t to be.
“Did you see them carrying anything?” Stephen queried.
“Can’t say I did.”
One of them must have had the jerry can unless they’d stashed it near the house earlier in the day. But it was perfectly possible that Clive just missed it since he only saw them briefly and was watching from across the road.
“And did you hear anything? Did they yell anything?”
“I saw ‘em run off, and they were shouting a bit then, yeah,” he said. “But nothing I could make heads or tails of, like.”
“How long were they at the house before they ran off, do you think?”
“Aw, I couldn’t say. Not long. A few minutes, maybe.”
“And there were about ten of them? Did you count?”
“Nah, that’s just a guess,” he said with another shrug. “But there was quite a group of them. Could’ve been as many as fifteen, maybe.”
He sucked his teeth in disapproval and seemed about to say more, but a girl of eight or so came running in. She was wearing a t-shirt and shorts but was soaked head to toe, dripping water all over the carpet.
“Come join in, Dad,” she demanded of Clive before she seemed to notice Stephen and me and shrunk back slightly. “Who’re they?” she asked her father.
“Christ, Cindy, you’re getting water everywhere. I’ll be out in a minute, okay. Scram.”
“We’ll leave you to it.” I got to my feet and gave Clive a grateful smile. His daughter went running out the room back towards the garden, leaving a damp patch on the floor.
“Enjoy the afternoon with your kids,” Stephen said.
“We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us,” I added, and Clive nodded.
“No problem. Can’t believe they did it in broad daylight, to be honest. Absolutely crazy.”
I agreed with him, and we saw ourselves out, leaving the family to muck around outside with the hosepipe and make the most of the sunshine.
“It is bizarre that they’re doing this in the daytime, isn’t it?” Stephen said as we were sitting in the air-conditioned car and slowly cooling down. “Why not wait until it’s dark?”
“More attention?” I guessed. “I don’t know, honestly. Doing it in daylight when there are more people around is riskier, but maybe they like that.”
With nothing else to follow up on for the moment, Stephen and I went to collect the junior officer from where she’d been standing by the burned house. Police couldn’t keep an eye on the place indefinitely, and standing under the sun for hours was unthinkable on a day like today, so we put police tape up and a warning about it being unsafe and left it at that. If someone got hurt going inside, it wouldn’t be on us.
The junior officer happily accepted a drink from Stephen’s water bottle, and the three of us picked up some more iced drinks on the way back to the station. The day was wearing on now, but we still weren’t over the heat of the day, and the sluggish, lethargic feeling lingered on me.
Back at our desks, I sweated within the confines of the station as I typed up what the witness had said and our assessment of the fire. Stephen had gone to drop the jerry can off at the lab, and I’d sent Sam a quick text to let her know I was thinking of her. I regretted having to run off at lunch and cut our time together short, but the case had demanded it, and I knew that Sam understood the demands of the job. If an urgent request had arrived at the lab, she could just have easily been called back to attend to it and then it would have been her rushing off early.
I sent off an email to Rashford with my report attached, keeping her updated on our progress and the way the case seemed to develop, as well as my concerns. Whilst I was looking at my inbox, an email came in from a junior officer, the one I’d asked to look into Jules for me. It’d been a big ask, and I’d been a little sceptical about whether it would return any results, but the sight of the email made me tentatively hopeful.
They’d helpfully screenshotted several pictures of the police system, as well as providing links, and I scanned over it with mounting interest.
“Huxley,” I called when I saw Stephen approaching across the office. “Get over here.”
Even though my attention was primarily on my computer monitor and not on Stephen, I knew that he’d rolled his eyes.
“What’s so important that it couldn’t wait for me to walk ten yards over here?” he demanded as he sat down. His face was red just from the little bit of walking he’d done around the station,
