He gave a stiff nod.
Stephen glanced at me before adding, “Obviously, we’re keen to pin down the people who were responsible for this, so any information you can give us today would be really helpful.”
I nodded in agreement, and Mickey looked between us silently. His mum perched on the edge of the sofa, her hands pressed between her knees. I cleared my throat and asked whether it was okay to record this interview, which they both agreed to, though Mickey looked reluctant.
“Okay, what can you tell us about how you ended up in the school? Start from the beginning, if you can,” I said.
“They figured out I was a snitch, that’s all,” he mumbled, looking down at his lap.
“Do you know how they found that out?” It was a question that had been bugging me. Mickey shifted, looking uncomfortable.
“I dunno. They already knew something was up because of the message site, I guess, and I was just hanging out with them. I asked about the petrol or something and they- Yeah. They guessed or whatever.” He shrugged, his head dropped low enough to put his chin on his chest.
It was a relief to hear that it hadn’t been mine or Stephen’s direct actions that’d put Mickey in danger, but it still wasn’t easy to hear. I could imagine all too well how the scene had gone.
“Who realised, Mickey? Which one of them?”
“Jules,” Mickey said finally, after chewing on his lip for several, long seconds.
“Was Alistair there?” I asked, and Mickey silently shook his head. “Okay, and what happened after that?”
Mickey went quiet, giving a wordless shrug. His mum looked anxiously between her son and us, putting a tentative hand on Mickey’s shoulder. He shrugged it off.
“This is very hard for him, I’m sorry. I’ll, ah, get us some biscuits,” she said, bustling away to the kitchen.
I sat back, and we gave Mickey a breather while his mum made up a plate of bourbons and custard creams. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and my stomach was already rumbling, so I took a couple. Sam had kept encouraging me to eat recently, telling me that healing up took energy. I smiled slightly to think of her and wondered what she was doing right now.
Donna sat back down with us a couple of minutes later, giving Mickey a cup of hot chocolate. He didn’t look too impressed by it, no doubt thinking that she was babying him, but he accepted it anyway and took a sip.
“What can you tell us about the fire at the school?” I asked after a pause had passed. Mickey lowered his mug to his lap, his fingers tight around the handle.
“I don’t know. I was in it, wasn’t I? I didn’t see ‘em light it.”
“No, no, of course not,” I backtracked.
“Who was it that took you there, Mickey?” Stephen said, taking over.
“A bunch of them.” Mickey glanced over towards the front door, and I realised that he was looking for the police officer, who was standing in the hall.
“We’ll keep you safe,” I promised him quietly.
“Really? Great job of that you did before.” He glared at me.
“Mickey!” Donna chastised him.
“It’s okay if you’re angry at me, but we need to know who did this. Don’t you deserve to have them deal with the consequences of their actions?”
“I can write their names down,” Mickey said before clenching his jaw. “But you’ve gotta look after my mum, okay? What if they try to burn this place down in the night, huh? Months from now?”
“Firstly, we’re going to do what we can to make sure everyone involved is caught. And secondly, you can have a police escort for as long as you need to feel safe.”
“You swear?” he said, suddenly sounding much younger than sixteen.
“I swear.”
I was banking on Rashford letting me keep that promise and letting me use Hewford’s resources to protect Mickey. If I told her that I’d already sworn to Mickey that we’d do it, she’d honour that, even if she was mad at me. After all the kid had been through, I thought he deserved to feel secure.
“Okay.”
He straightened up a little and gave me a nod, new determination in his eyes. The sulkiness we’d seen before had actually been fear, I realised, and now he had the reassurance that the police weren’t going to leave him and his mum defenceless, he was much more willing to confide in us.
We went on to take his full statement, asking for descriptions of all the teenagers involved in dragging him over to that school. They’d left him tied to one of the desks in an upstairs classroom where the firefighters had thankfully been able to find him and get him free in time.
He talked about the car they bundled him into driving him over to the school and the smell of petrol. He said that Jules had been driving and that he tried to make Jules change his mind, but the older boy wouldn’t listen.
His account was difficult to listen to, and his mum started crying half-way through, though she stayed quiet and let him get it all out.
“And Alistair?” I asked when he’d finished his narration about the day.
“Ali Pumphrey?”
“That’s him. What role did he have in the gang?” I asked, and Mickey frowned.
“He was Jules’s right-hand man, I guess. He did all the computer stuff.”
“So Jules trusted him? Even though he was only fourteen?”
“Yeah, I think so. I think Ali planned some of the hits, you know. But Jules was the one who, like, got it done.”
We continued to ask Mickey about Alistair, Jules, and the other members of the gang, but he didn’t have a great deal more to tell. Still, what he had given us so far was enough to get us approval to search Alistair’s house, I was sure, and
