“I’ll take your word for it,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “But I mean it, I won’t take excuses about your injuries if you can’t get me some solid evidence or an arrest by next week. Things have gone way further than they should have.”
“I know, ma’am. We’re doing our best for the case.”
“Well, consider some weekend overtime, hm?” she said pointedly before ending the call.
Stephen had mostly overheard the conversation, what with us sitting close together in the car, and he gave me a troubled look.
“We’re doing our best,” he said. Perhaps it was meant to reassure me or convince himself, I wasn’t sure.
“Aye, that we are,” I sighed. “But she needs answers fast, and the only thing she can do is put pressure on us.”
We’d settled in for the evening, and Stephen got munching on a sandwich he’d picked up from the shops, making the car smell like tuna. I wasn’t especially hungry and just sipped on some juice as I watched the garage from across the road. A parked van partially hid us, and the streetlights weren’t anywhere near us, so when the sun went down, we’d be well in the shadows, I hoped.
Now, at around six, it was still warmly daylight, and I couldn’t imagine that the teens would move in this early. But we didn’t have a set time and ‘tonight’ could mean anything from the evening onwards, as far as I was concerned. So we ate a makeshift dinner in the car, watching the cars pass up and down the street as people drove home from work to their families. A few students went by, heading out for Friday night at Kuda or the like, some of them already staggering about. Some other poor officers would probably have to deal with some of them, I thought, when they were drunk off their heads and picking fights or just making a mess.
For tonight, though, Stephen and I’s job was to sit and watch the garage. The employees seemed to have all cleared out before we arrived, the car park sitting empty apart from one car. At half six, a man, presumably the owner or manager, closed up the place and took the last car out, leaving it deserted.
The sun didn’t make its way below the skyline until it was nine or a little later, the street lights flickering on a short while afterwards. Stephen snacked on Starbursts, the sugar keeping him awake, while I rationed out my coffee so that I wouldn’t be running off needing the loo when things started happening. If they ever did.
By eleven, the street felt abandoned, and the quiet was soporific, even with the caffeine in my system. I read back through my notes to pass the time, scanning over what I’d written in my reports from the start of the case and the interviews we’d done with the kids.
A question that continued to trouble me was where Alistair fit into this, exactly. He’d apparently run away from his parents by his own free will, despite a reportedly happy home life and having few troubles in school. Jules seemed to have somehow lured him into working with or for the gang, but I didn’t understand why.
My first assumption was that the younger teenager had been threatened somehow, but that wasn’t the sense I’d gotten when I’d seen Alistair interact with the others before I was attacked. Sure, the group had teased the kid a little, but it had felt like comradery and not mean-spirited or disdainful. He’d been one of the pack. So was that why he’d agreed to join up with them, to be part of a friendship group? It just didn’t quite add for me about how a seemingly good kid with everything going for him had gotten tangled up with Jules.
The details of the case continued to tick over inside my head as the time slowly crept on. Stephen and I were both struggling to stay awake as the car’s digital clock passed midnight. I resisted going on my phone, thinking that the bright light of the screen would give our location away immediately to anyone watching, which left little to do except watch and think. Occasionally, we talked a little, but the conversation had dried up after a few hours as we both got tired. Now we mostly sat quietly, waiting and hoping that something would happen.
Finally, it did. An old banger rolled up quietly around one o’clock and stopped outside the front of the garage. I straightened up, blinking myself fully awake and glancing over at Stephen. It was hard to make him out in the dim light, but I could see from his profile that his attention was on the car that’d just pulled up. He gave me a nod to show that he saw this too, and we watched in silence.
The car had parked away from streetlights, as we had, and it was difficult to make out many details of the three figures who climbed out. They looked lanky enough to be teenagers and wore dark jackets with the hoods up. At a glance, I guessed that none of them was either Alistair or Jules. Jules’s height would’ve made him stand out, and though one of the figures was short, they were much broader across the shoulders than Alistair was. It was disappointing, but I watched regardless, hoping that the teenagers would take the petrol canisters we’d tagged with them and lead us straight to where they were based. We could try just tailing their car, of course, but there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t spot us, especially when the roads were as quiet as they were at this time.
“There they go,” Stephen said quietly when the three teenagers headed straight towards the garage.
I could just about make out that one took up standing outside in the shadowy car park, the other two letting themselves into the place. I assumed one of them must have been the garage
