Close to Home (DI Adam Fawley #1)(72)

Azeem watches as Jamie reaches into the man’s jacket and takes out the mobile phone. He glances up to make sure the man isn’t watching but he’s far too busy flirting with the women in the corner. Jamie taps at the screen for a while. Then he smiles. It’s not a nice smile. He puts the phone back where he found it and when the man comes back some minutes later, Jamie gets up. The man makes a perfunctory attempt to get him to sit down again, but Jamie just brushes him off. He picks up his bag and makes his way through the tables to the door. He stops on the pavement a moment to light a fag, then dodges between the cars to the other side of the road. Azeem sees the man in Starbucks sit back in his chair and take a deep breath, then pick up his coffee spoon. There’s no mistaking the relief on his face.

Jamie taps on the window and Azeem leans over and opens the car door.

‘Bloody sodding shitty bastard,’ says Jamie through gritted teeth, chucking his bag in the back seat.

‘I told you, man. Wankers like him. Dey only care about demselfs.’ Azeem watches a lot of American TV.

‘Yeah, right,’ says Jamie. ‘I could do without the sodding I told you so’s.’

Azeem shrugs. He hasn’t seen his father in years.

Jamie takes a deep draw on his cigarette and looks across at Azeem. ‘I did for ’im though. Good and proper.’

‘What, you mean the phone?’

Jamie grins, his eyes narrowing. ‘Yeah. The phone. Didn’t even have a bloody password on it. Stupid twat.’

The two of them laugh and then Azeem starts the engine and pulls out screeching into the traffic, only just missing the rear bumper of the black Nissan Navara parked in front of them. A small boy in the back seat watches them go, then turns to look again at the man in the Starbucks window.

He’s moved over to the corner table.

*

In the incident room the following morning, there are no jokes, no banter, in fact not much of anything. The muted room goes utterly silent as I take my place at the front. They probably think I’m bearing bad news.

‘I suspect most of you already know that Janet Gislingham was taken into hospital yesterday. If I hear anything – anything at all – I’ll let you know, but at the very least we should assume that Chris will be off work for the next few days, so we’ll need to make sure we have cover. Quinn, I’ll leave you to sort that out.’

Quinn gets up from where he’s been perched on the edge of his desk. ‘Boss, I also need to bring everyone up to speed with what happened last night. We got a call from a woman who saw a man in high-viz clothing dumping something in a skip the afternoon Daisy disappeared. She thought it was suspicious because there aren’t any builders on that site yet. Anyway, we checked it out and recovered a package wrapped in newspaper. The Guardian, to be precise. Dated the day before, July eighteenth.’

‘What was it?’

‘A pair of extra-large cut-resistant gloves. The sort builders wear. Grey plastic stuff on the palms and fluorescent orange on the back. And there’s blood too, I’m afraid. As well as some other stains on the back that are a reddish colour that I think are something else. Forensics are testing them now.’

I look around the room. ‘So just when we thought Barry Mason might be looking less likely as a suspect, he’s right back in the frame.’

‘There’s another complication too.’ It’s Everett this time.

‘I just got off the phone with David Connor. You know – Millie’s father? He’s been talking to her again, and she told him something she hadn’t told them before. About the day before the party. When the kids went round to the Connors to try on their costumes. Apparently Daisy begged Millie not to tell anyone.’

‘Something about Daisy?’

‘No, boss. About Leo.’

*

‘How are you doing?’

Leo glances up at me and then down again. He’s wearing a Chelsea football shirt that’s too big for him and a pair of shorts. He has scabs on his knees and all down one leg. Derek Ross is sitting next to him on the other side of the table and Sharon is in the adjoining room, with her lawyer and the video feed. In her sundress and white shrug she looks like she’s just popped in on her way to a regatta.

Everett passes a can of Coke across to the boy and smiles. ‘Just in case you’re thirsty.’

‘Now, Leo,’ I begin. ‘I’m afraid I have to ask you some questions and some of them might be a bit upsetting. But if you do feel upset, I want you to let us know, OK? Do you understand?’

He nods; he’s playing with the ring pull on the can.

‘You remember the firemen who came to your house to put the fire out?’

Another nod.

‘When there’s a fire like that, the fireman in charge has to make a report, to find out what happened.’

No reaction.

‘Well, they just sent me a copy of that report. Shall I tell you what it says?’

He won’t look up, but the can suddenly buckles and the ring pull comes away.

‘It says they don’t think the petrol bomb came in from the towpath after all. They thought that at first, but now they’ve realized they were wrong. It’s all about how the window broke, apparently. It’s a bit like those cop shows on TV. Finding all the bits of glass and putting them back together.’