“About my neighbour? John and Sue?” His eyebrows went up, and he jerked a thumb towards the right, away from the Pumphrey’s house.
“No, your neighbours on the other side. It won’t take a moment. May we come in?”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” He stepped back into the hallway, bouncing the toddler on his hip. “Sorry, it’s a bit of a tip, you know how it is with young kids.”
I didn’t know, but Stephen made sympathetic noises. He offered us tea, but I didn’t want to keep him when we only had a couple of questions.
“So what did you want to know?” he asked once we’d sat down in the sitting room.
I’d had to shift some kids’ toys out of the way to make space, and the toddler was incomprehensibly chattering away to himself where his dad had put him down on the carpet.
“Have you ever noticed anything odd about your neighbours? The Pumphreys, I mean.”
“Oh, is that their name?” He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I’ve barely even said ‘hi’ to them. They have a kid, right?”
“Aye, a son who’s fourteen. Have you seen him?”
“Uh, in the garden sometimes, yeah.” His eyes briefly moved away from mine as he said that, and I wondered what he’d been thinking or remembering. “Why?”
“What was he getting up in the garden?”
“I mean, I wasn’t standing there watching,” he said, slightly defensively. “I’ve got a toddler to keep an eye on, y’know?” He gave a weak smile which I returned.
“No, I appreciate that. But you must have noticed what he was doing even at a glance?”
He sighed, looking down at his son, who was trying to jam blocks into holes that were the wrong shape, making a loud clacking sound of wood against wood.
“I don’t want to get them in any trouble, alright? I’ve not seen him doing it for ages, and I didn’t want to make a report or anything.”
“A report about what?” I said, straightening up.
It was a little hard for me to concentrate with the toddler making a racket in the background, but the kid’s dad seemed to tune it out, as I’d often noticed the parents of young children do. Regardless, his talk of not wanting to get the Pumphreys in trouble was enough to get me paying him my full attention, and Stephen beside me was just as focused.
“He used to burn things a lot. Wood, plastic, soft toys, all sorts of things. Sometimes, there’d be a terrible smell from it all.”
“Burning things,” I repeated.
“Yeah. Different places on the lawn, for some reason. I was a little worried about him doing it, y’know, during this heatwave-”
His son started to complain, waving his arms in the air like he wanted to be picked up, which his dad dutifully did, bouncing the toddler on his knee. He picked up where he’d left off a second later.
“But I never saw him in the garden, not recently in the last few weeks, so I guessed he’d grown out of it, or his parents had a word with him, maybe.”
“Did you ever speak to his parents about it?”
“Oh, once over the fence, yeah. His mother was very apologetic, and it was pretty awkward. I felt bad for her.”
“How long has this been going on for?”
“I don’t know, a couple of years, on and off, I suppose. When the weather’s nice, he’d sometimes come out. No more than once or twice a month.”
“And you did actually see him doing it?” I wanted to confirm. I had my notebook out now and was making a couple of key notes.
“Yeah, a few times.” He sent a frown down at my notepad. “Look, it’s never gotten out of control. Some kids are difficult, I know, so I don’t want to make things hard for his parents. They seem like decent folks.”
I set the pad down and gave him a sympathetic look. Some neighbours would’ve rushed to report an incident like the one this man was describing after it happened just once, but he was clearly compassionate towards other parents.
“I understand that, and it’s right kind of you. Unfortunately, there is a bigger picture here which I can’t disclose to you, but it’s really important that we understood the teenager’s character, okay? For the sake of other people’s safety.”
“Jesus. Is my son in danger?” The dad looked shocked.
“No, no,” I rushed to assure him. “That’s not what we’re saying. As you’ve said, the fires set in the garden didn’t seem dangerous. They were controlled, right?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Good. So we’re not concerned that you’re in any danger here, but for the sake of being safe, we do need to understand what he’s been doing. Does that make sense?”
He gave a hesitant nod, still holding his son close. We went on to ask further questions about anything else the neighbour might have seen, if he’d heard any shouting or strange noises, or if he’d talked to Alistair himself. Mostly, the answers didn’t illuminate much, and we brought it to an end shortly after, once the toddler started to get restless and grisly.
“He needs his snack, I’m sorry,” his dad said apologetically. I thanked him for his help and gave him a business card before we saw ourselves out.
We headed back to the station after our talk with the neighbour, intending to catch up with Sedgwick.
“I see,” was all he said after I’d told him about the burnt circles in the garden and the neighbour’s account.
“Did you believe Alistair’s story?” I asked, frowning slightly at him.
Sedgwick released a breath and leaned back in his chair. His narrow face was pinkened by the heat, and he was only wearing a shirt which looked oddly casual for him.
“This information does throw doubt on the Pumphreys’ version of Alistair as a perfect child,” Sedgwick admitted. “But whether it links to-”
“It has to link to the teenage gang! Alistair started fires deliberately in his back garden, and now, he’s gotten involved
