“At least you look less like a panda,” Stephen said, glancing sideways and seeing what I was doing.
“Sam offered me some make-up. Might try it out tomorrow, now that the swelling’s down.”
“Yeah, you don’t want to put foundation over big, puffy bruises.”
“Sounds like you’re saying that from experience,” I noted, raising my eyebrows.
“Well, I do play rugby, mate.” He grinned. “It’s a contact sport, y’know.”
“Alright, alright, point taken.” I shook my head. “I thought you’d be proud to show off your war wounds, as a teenager anyway.”
“Oh sure, but my mum wasn’t too keen on me looking like a bruiser at school. So she’d make me look a bit less purple.” He shook his head with a laugh. “The boys took the mickey, I’m telling you, but it’s come in handy when I need to come to work not looking like I face-planted a pole.”
“Do that often, do you?” I teased.
“Hey, I used to be pretty hands-on when I was a rookie. Big bloke like me, I was always getting the short straw to grapple with the drunks.”
“I bet,” I laughed. “That’s why I aimed higher. Can’t go wrestling with lairy folks all the time when you’re a skinny runner like me, aye?”
“I don’t know. You seem to throw yourself into trouble, anyway.” He gave my face and ribs a pointed look.
“Trouble comes after me,” I grumbled.
“So that time you jumped in the river? Was that an accident?” He raised his eyebrows, his mouth curled up into a smile, though he hadn’t found the incident very funny at the time. “Did you actually slip in, and you’ve been pretending it was some heroic action this whole time?”
I snorted. “Sure, Huxley, whatever you wanna tell yourself.”
“And the time you ambushed that enormous bloke in the dark, on your own, and got your head bashed in-”
“He ambushed me, and you know it.” I pointed at him and shook my head, even as I was smiling wryly. “Get your facts straight.”
“You know, you’re right.” He rolled his eyes. “You’re just a ruddy trouble magnet. If we wanna catch the teenagers, we should just plonk you out on the street, and they’ll come to you.”
“Aye,” I said, sobering up at the mention of the teens. “That was pretty much what happened on my run, yeah.”
“Ach, sorry.” Stephen winced. “We will get them, mate, for sure.”
“I know,” I said, with more confidence than I felt.
He swivelled his chair to face me. “What’s our next step, d’you reckon?”
“You know what Adams was saying? About the tech?” I said slowly, thinking aloud as I went.
“Yeah?”
“It’d be good to find out which teen is responsible for that, don’t you think? I reckon we should do some phone calls to the parents of the teens we do know of and see if any of those kids has a history of computer knowledge.”
“Sounds good to me.” Stephen gave a nod. “Have you got a guess about who it is?”
“Not yet. I don’t reckon it’s Mickey, ‘cus I hope he would’ve told us if it was him. And Jules doesn’t strike me as the type. So maybe one of the lackeys? We can try to find out, anyway.”
I gave Mickey a call anyway, just to ask the question, while Stephen phoned Jules’ house to speak to the teenager’s parents.
“I don’t know much about tech, sorry,” Mickey told me.
“It wasn’t you who set up the messaging site then?”
“No.”
“So who did?” I pressed.
There was a long silence, and I could picture Mickey’s troubled expression. Despite saying he’d help us, he seemed to find it difficult to commit to giving us information when the time came. I gave him a moment and let him work it through in his head. Finally, he sighed.
“Look, I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but I’d guess that it’s the short kid. The one who talks back to Jules and gets away with it, whatever his name is.”
“Alistair Pumphrey? Or, I think you guys call him Ali?”
“Yeah, that’s him. That one.”
“Huh,” I said, surprised. I wasn’t sure why I should be surprised, though. The kid had seemed smart when I’d spoken to him, and it definitely seemed clear to me that Alistair wasn’t a kidnap victim but a willing participant in the gang’s aims.
“Alright, thanks,” I said to Mickey. “Has there been any other news?”
“Not that I’ve heard, sorry.”
I thanked him again and hung up the phone, waiting for Stephen to finish his call to Jules’ parents.
“You got something?” he asked once he put the phone down.
“You go first.”
“Not much to say, unfortunately.” He gave a shrug. “Jules wasn’t there, apparently, and his mum didn’t think he had any particular interest in computers. Well, she said he loved video games, but that’s not exactly a sign of tech genius; loads of teenage boys like those shoot ‘em up games, or whatever.” He shook his head. “Probably encourages their violence, all that killing things for hours on a screen.”
“Nah,” I countered, “there are studies saying that video game players have no increased likelihood of committing violence compared to people who don’t play and that video games can actually help mental health. It’s a myth that it gears kids up to be violent. They’re perfectly capable of differentiating between fantasy and reality.”
“I didn’t know you’d looked into it,” Stephen said, looking at me with his eyebrows raised.
“I was curious,” I said with a shrug. “Anyway, I had better luck with Mickey. He’s not interested in tech or hacking either, but he said he suspected it was Alistair.”
“Alistair? The fourteen-year-old? Really?” Stephen looked distinctly sceptical, and I was reminded of his mistrust of any information Mickey gave us. Which was a valid mistrust, to be fair, but he was the best we’d got right now.
“I believe him,” I decided. “You didn’t see how Alistair was around the gang, Steph. He wasn’t being pushed around or anything. He seemed like one of
