“If he is the one in charge of technology, he’s been playing a significant role, too.”
I made a noise of acknowledgement at that and rubbed my palm over my jaw as I thought it over. “What bothers me, still, is the timing of it all. Why has he suddenly turned back up now?”
“Maybe he got bored with living rough?”
“No, he’s smart. He plans these things out meticulously, so there’s got to be a reason.” I blinked as a thought occurred to me and turned sharply towards Stephen. “If you look at this a certain way, it looks like Alistair was creating an alibi. He’s established himself as an unwilling participant in the gang and anything they do from now on…”
I trailed off as my train of thought hurtled forwards, and I hurried to get on my computer, bringing up the trackers on the petrol canisters.
“What’re you doing?”
I cursed, loud enough to startle Stephen.
“They’ve moved the petrol, Steph, we’ve-”
But before I could get my words in order, none other than Rashford came hurrying over to us. The urgency in her face and movements made me instinctively get to my feet, ready to go, and Stephen followed my lead.
“There’s another fire,” she said when she reached us, slightly out of breath.
I closed my eyes briefly, fearing the worst already. Despite the trackers we’d put on the petrol, we’d still realised too damn late to stop it.
“Where?” I asked.
“At a school.”
I swore again and glanced over at Stephen, who looked just as grim.
“Let’s go.”
Twenty-One
Rashford couldn’t spare the time to come with us to the fire itself, but she ordered me to keep her updated. We sped off over to Rose Heath school, a small secondary school just off the main road into York, with the sirens wailing and lights on.
“Do they have some connection to this school?”
“No idea,” Stephen said tightly as he took us around a sharp corner. I reached up to hold on to the handle above the car door.
“It’s not the school of the headmaster who was targeted before.”
“No. Maybe it’s a link to one of the others,” he said, and I grunted in agreement. A moment later, he asked, “Explain to me why you suddenly checked the petrol, back at the station. You knew something was about to happen.”
“Aye, but not fast enough.” I grimaced, wishing that I’d thought to check the tracker just ten minutes earlier, but I hadn’t. “I realised that if Alistair was setting himself up with an alibi by coming home to his parents, he must have something big planned. And we knew the gang had stolen all that petrol.”
“Darren, it’s not your fault.”
“It damn well is,” I said tightly. “We should’ve confiscated the petrol straight away. I thought we could watch the trackers and act fast enough, but I was wrong. And now Alistair’s gonna get away with it, anyway.”
“You don’t know that, we-” Stephen started before we hit a knot of cars on the road, and Stephen had to concentrate on negotiating the city roads. I stayed quiet for the rest of the journey, letting Stephen put his full focus into driving. We were near rush hour now, and traffic had picked up as the day-trippers and commuters left the city to head home. The clouds had continued to gather overhead, but I wasn’t sure yet whether they’d come to anything.
Up ahead, I saw the curling plume of blackened smoke right before I smelled it. It caught the light breeze up above the buildings and carved a ragged, dark cut through the early evening sky.
A moment later, a fire engine came racing down the road behind us, and Stephen pulled the wheel sharply to the side to let it through. It thundered past, its sirens piercingly loud, and Stephen accelerated sharply after it. He followed in its wake, like a fish catching a ride behind a boat, as the fire engine ploughed through the traffic and soon arrived at the school.
The stench of acrid burning had only gotten worse as we approached, despite me closing all the car’s air vents and setting the air con to recirculating. Or perhaps it was my fear that was making the smell seem so overpoweringly strong, catching in the back of my throat.
“At least it’s the holidays,” Stephen said, just as we were pulling up in the school’s car park.
The place was crowded with spectators and emergency services personnel alike, plus the usual journalists, who somehow managed to turn up at scenes even before we did.
“Aye, that’s a godsend,” I said as we strode forwards into the fray, looking for someone who could fill us in.
Since it was still the summer holidays, I could only hope that there’d been no-one in the building at all, pupils or staff. They’d have to make sure that the caretaker or any cleaners had definitely not been on site, but I fervently hoped that we were looking at property damage here, not a risk to life.
As we got closer to the burning building, I realised that it was worse than I’d thought. The left-hand side of the building was almost fully alight, and firefighters were struggling to tackle a smaller blaze on the left, too. There was a wide-open space around the school, but it was all bone dry, and the light wind was catching the sparks and ash coming from the fire.
“Everywhere’s a tinderbox right now,” I said grimly, my words almost caught up in the roar.
“If this spreads, we’re in serious trouble,” Stephen agreed.
The school might have some space around it, but there were several clusterings of trees not far away, all of them dried out by the drought. Beyond the school’s fences was a residential area, with packed-together houses that would go up like dominos if one of them caught fire.
I turned back to the school, trying to judge whether the firefighters were winning against the flames. I had to shade my eyes against the glare of it, and the smoke
