“I don’t appreciate your tone.” He gave me a flat look. “I hear your point, but it may yet be a coincidence. We’ll need further evidence to confirm or deny-”
Frustrated at his, in my opinion, willful refusal to accept the obvious, I threw up my hands and walked away. I heard Stephen mutter an apology before he came after me.
“Really, Darren? Blowing up at the one guy we need to work the case with? He didn’t have to bring us into that interview with Alistair’s parents at all, remember?”
I exhaled a sigh, putting my hands down on my desk and taking a breath. My ribs were aching, I was too warm, and my stomach was complaining about not having eaten since breakfast.
Stephen patted my back between my shoulder blades and seemed to read my mind when he said, “Let’s go and get lunch, okay?”
“Good idea,” I agreed.
A break from the station and the difficulties of the case was certainly in order. Without running to take the edge off, I found it hard to prevent myself from getting wound up at work, and I wondered whether my ribs would stand up to a gym session this evening.
Before then, though, Stephen and I still had plenty to be getting along with. My first priority was to look into Alistair’s background further because I couldn’t believe that there was absolutely no record of troublesome behaviour in his past. Doing things like regularly starting fires, setting alight things like plastic and soft toys, didn’t come from out of the blue, and I was convinced that there must be some evidence of it on his school record or as seen by family friends or relatives.
What we really needed to do was find out who, exactly, Alistair Pumphrey was and what we were dealing with here.
Twenty
Since it was the summer holidays still, it was difficult to get hold of the school teachers we needed to talk to.
“Don’t you think Sedgwick’s going to feel that we’re infringing on his case here?”
I glanced over at Stephen, who was looking at me with raised eyebrows, waiting for an answer.
“Aye, probably. But we need answers, and Alistair is wrapped up with that gang, I’m sure of it. It’s relevant to our case too.” I gave a shrug. “Besides, Sedgwick’s case, which was to find a missing child, is essentially closed, right?”
“That’s one way to look at it. Alright, I’ll have a look over which teachers Sedgwick already spoke to about Alistair, see what we’ve got.”
“And I’ll keep trying to chase up Mickey’s whereabouts because I’m worried about him.”
But before I tried that, I first checked up on the location of the petrol canisters, which hadn’t moved from when I’d last looked.
“Do you think Mickey could be where the petrol is?” I wondered aloud to Stephen.
“I dunno, I doubt it. Why would they be together?”
“I just thought, in the worst-case scenario where they have abducted Mickey, they could keep them in the same place.”
The thought was a dark one, and Stephen pressed his lips together. I was reminded of another case we’d worked on involving stolen kids, and I very much hoped that Mickey wouldn’t turn out to be another one.
“Let’s not jump to dire conclusions. Call his mum, okay? See if she knows anything,” Stephen advised.
There’d been no call from her yet, but I rang her anyway, just to make sure that Mickey hadn’t come home. She confirmed that he wasn’t there and kept me on the phone for another few minutes, begging me for answers I didn’t have.
“I need a coffee,” I muttered once I’d put the phone down, and Stephen gave me a sympathetic frown.
“Go get your caffeine,” he said, “and when you come back, I might have something for you. Only if you bring me some tea, though.”
“Bribery, Huxley? Outrageous,” I said, managing a tired smile before I headed off to the break room.
“So Sedgwick did a comprehensive job of talking to the teachers, but there was an IT teacher who wasn’t in on the day-”
“IT? Like, you think that-?”
“If you’ll let me finish, I was going to say that the school recorded Alistair as attending an extracurricular ICT club, so we should really talk to this woman.”
“Brilliant work,” I said and slapped him on the shoulder. “So, possibly, Alistair might be the one who’s been setting up the encryption on the chat sites, and dealing with all the technical side of their operation, if you want to call it that.”
“It’s a leap, but yeah, it could track.” Stephen shrugged.
“Let’s see what this teacher has to say, then.”
It took half an hour of calling around, trying to find a private number for the teacher so that she’d actually pick it up during the holidays. Finally, I got her on the phone.
“Is this Anna Sheridan?” I asked, and she confirmed it was. “I’m DCI Mitchell. I’d like to ask you a few questions about one of your students.”
“Really? Which one?” Her voice was warm, deeper than I’d expected, and I could imagine her patiently explaining facts and information to secondary school kids.
“His name is Alistair Pumphrey.” There was silence on the other end of the phone, so I went on, “He went missing recently, though he’s safely home now. We’re looking into the full circumstances surrounding his disappearance.”
“I’m not- I can’t really talk right now, I’m babysitting for my sister. Perhaps we can, uh, speak in person?” Her voice had gone high and strained, and it took me a moment to respond.
“Of course. When could we talk to you?”
We arranged to go and see her this evening, before teatime, and she hung up, her voice still sounding strange.
“No luck?” Stephen asked, perhaps catching the consternation on my face.
“No, well, she agreed to talk to us, but she sounded off. I don’t know. It was peculiar. She’d seemed like she was fine to talk to me, but as soon as I mentioned Alistair and him going missing, her voice totally
