What I didn’t know was how the hell they’d found out. Had we been seen when we went to tag the petrol, or when we were staking the place out? Had Mickey let something slip? But the ‘how’ wasn’t important right now, not when we needed to find out where Mickey was and if he was safe.
“There’s no answer at his house,” Stephen concluded a moment later.
“I don’t think I have his mum’s mobile.” I flopped back in my seat and groaned, looking up at the ceiling. “We need to put this on the system. Maybe he’s turned his phone off and gone for a joy ride, but this is worrying enough that we need the word out.”
“On it.”
Stephen inputted it in, alongside a picture of Mickey he got from the teenager’s social media page and uploaded it onto the missing persons database.
“We need to get hold of his mum.” I straightened up, picking up my water bottle to take a slug, the stress and heat making my mouth dry. “Let’s go round to his place, anyway. Perhaps Ms White is in the garden, and that’s why she didn’t answer the phone.”
“Or she’s at work.” Stephen glanced at his watch. “Are you sure you didn’t get another contact number for her? It doesn’t seem like you to forget a detail like that.”
I shook my head but flicked back through my notes to double-check.
“Oh, that was it, she said her phone was broken, so she gave me the house phone and that- no, wait, I did get a work number from her.” I grunted in annoyance at my own faulty memory. I glanced over at Stephen as I plugged the numbers into my phone. “Give Rashford a brief update while I call this, could you?”
“Do I have to?” he sighed, getting to his feet despite his words. “She’s not going to be pleased.”
I paused. “Aye, you’re right. Here, you call Donna White. I should probably be the one to see Rashford, anyway.”
“Really? You sure?”
I waved him off, giving him my phone and heading over to knock on Rashford’s office door. The conversation went about as well as I could’ve expected, by which I mean that Rashford was frustrated and worried to hear about Mickey not being in contact. But the news about the petrol cans somewhat pacified her, and I promised that we were doing all we could to find Mickey and get him safe.
“Missing children are not a good look for Hewford,” she reminded me firmly.
As if I could’ve forgotten, I thought, but I simply nodded.
“Alright,” she sighed. “Good luck, Mitchell. I do appreciate the work you’re doing. Go find that kid, okay?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Stephen had an expression on his face that I couldn’t read as I walked back to our desk, and I looked at him expectantly, eyebrows raised.
“Good news is that his mum picked up. She is at work. The bad news is she has no idea where her son is. Apparently, he was meant to be home today, and he’d promised her not to run off anywhere.”
“Great,” I groaned, dragging a hand over my face and then wincing at my still-tender nose.
“She’s coming back from work now. I tried to tell her that there wasn’t much she could do at this point, but she was adamant.”
“That might be helpful if she has any ideas for where he might’ve gone,” I said thoughtfully.
“Yeah, though she said she didn’t, off the top of her head. Just that he was probably out with those ‘no good boys’ again.”
“I don’t know if we did the right thing, encouraging him to carry on running around with that lot. What if he’s just been totally drawn back in?”
“That’d be better than them finding out he’s been feeding us information, right?”
“God, yeah, absolutely,” I agreed quickly.
“Well, she said she’s due home in ten minutes, so we might as well drive over and speak to her. You can keep obsessively checking the trackers and Mickey’s phone on the way.” He tried for a small smile, but I couldn’t manage to return it.
“Let’s go then.”
We headed out again, the mood sombre between us, and it wasn’t long before we reached Mickey’s house. His mum, Donna White, couldn’t seem to stay still after she’d shown us inside, flitting around nervously so that it put me on edge just to watch her.
“I know he’s been in some trouble, but he’s a good kid,” she insisted, not for the first time. “What if he’s hurt? Or something’s happened?”
“I promise, we’re doing everything we can to find him. Plus, it’s entirely possible that Mickey has merely broken his phone and is absolutely fine, right? He’s only been out of contact for a few hours, so let’s hope for the best.”
She reluctantly accepted that with a small nod. We went on to quiz her about Mickey’s possible whereabouts, when she last saw him, what time she left the house today and whether she’d been in touch with him. But her answers weren’t especially helpful, and she clearly knew it, the expression on her face heartbroken that she didn’t have any information that could help us locate him.
My phone rang as we were preparing to leave, and I politely excused myself. Seeing Sedgwick’s caller ID was a surprise, and I hastily picked it up once I was out of earshot.
“DCI Mitchell speaking.”
“Alistair Pumphrey’s parents have reported him found,” he told me, gruff and to the point as usual.
“What? He’s gone back home?”
“Yes.”
“Well, damn,” I muttered, blindsided by the news. “Have you been round to talk to them?”
“Not yet. I thought you would want to sit in,” he said, surprisingly thoughtfully.
“Aye, that’d be great, really great. Thank you. We can be over there in ten.”
He grunted an affirmative and hung up, leaving me slightly bewildered but nonetheless immensely curious to see what Alistair would have to say for
