Heatwave by Oliver Davies (the red fox clan txt) 📗

We couldn’t be certain they were in there because the tracker could’ve been taken off the canisters, and this was nothing more than a decoy. But I was reasonably sure that if they’d found the trackers, they would’ve just destroyed them, or that was what I was banking on. Mickey, too, had told us that his being found out hadn’t been related to the trackers, so we could only assume that the little pieces of tech were still right where I’d stuck them. It felt like ages ago, now, that Stephen and I had gone to the garage and then led the stakeout, but it wasn’t really so long. Time became strange during a case, especially a high-tension one, as it seemed to stretch and contract against the normal law of things.

We pulled up round the corner from the property, which looked as innocuous as it had when Stephen and I had driven past it the other day. I turned to check that the two junior officers were behind us and then went to knock on the front door.

There were footsteps from inside, and a middle-aged woman with tired eyes opened the door, a dachshund barking in her arms.

“Can I help you?” She frowned upon seeing us standing there.

“I’m DCI Mitchell, this is DI Huxley,” I said, letting the other two officers introduce themselves. “We’re looking for something that we believe is on your property. We’ll need to search it.”

“Don’t you need a warrant or something to do that? What’re you looking for? I haven’t-”

“Mum?” a teenage boy said, appearing from down the hall.

His eyes went huge when he saw us, and I immediately recognised him. He froze rigid, and I stared at him, not sure if he was going to run. He was one of the kids I’d seen on the CCTV but whom Mickey hadn’t been able to put a name to.

The teen’s mum saw that I was looking behind her and turned around.

“Drew, what’s going on? Have you done something?”

“I- Sorry, mum,” he choked out and then bolted.

“You two, stay here,” I barked over my shoulder at the junior officers before gently pushing past Drew’s mum and racing down the hall after the teenager.

He broke out of a back door and skidded round to a side gate which let out onto the street. Slowed down by having to open the gate, I managed to grab his t-shirt, but he burst forwards and broke my grip. My ribs throbbed as I ran down the road after him, Stephen’s heavy footsteps following some way behind me.

The teenager wasn’t very fit, and it only took a couple of streets before I managed to catch up with him. I wasn’t at my fittest after being injured in the fight, and I had to push past the cramp in my side as I grabbed at the teen’s shirt and dragged him to a stop.

“Wait, wait, I haven’t done anything!” he tried to plead as I took his wrists and clipped the handcuffs on him, reading him his rights as I did so. He was panting heavily and didn’t put up anymore struggle once I’d caught him, letting me lead him back towards his mum’s with his head down. “I swear, man, I had nothing to do with it-”

“We can discuss that at the station,” I said.

“C’mon, my mum’s gonna kill me.”

“Aye, well, you should’ve thought of that before running off and giving me a stitch, hm?”

Stephen caught up as I was walking Drew back, and he gave me an unimpressed look, probably for running off after a perp on my own again. But once he’d seen that I wasn’t injured and had it all in hand, he gave me a nod and walked back to the house.

He took Drew from me when we reached the car, loading the complaining teenager inside. While he did that, I went to speak to his mother, who was standing on the porch step, looking shaken and distraught.

“You’re Drew’s mother?” I asked to start with, though I knew she was.

“Yes. Tracy Phillips, that’s me. What’s he done? Where are you taking him?”

“We can discuss that in full in a moment,” I told her, gently as I could. “Right now, I need to search the house.”

“I’m not sure- Do I need a lawyer?” She stood, protective but uncertain, in the doorway.

“You can access legal advice for your son if you wish, public or private. But I have permission to enter the premises and preventing me from doing so could count as obstruction of justice.”

Though I spoke seriously, I tried to keep my tone unthreatening. After a moment, she gave a shaky nod and stepped aside. The two junior officers, standing just outside the front door, looked to me for instructions.

“If you two could take the downstairs, we’ll start upstairs,” I told them. I wanted to have a look over the teen’s bedroom, which I expected to be the most likely place to find anything.

But, nearly an hour later, we’d yet to turn up anything.

“The tracker definitely points to here? Not to the neighbour’s, or-” Stephen wanted to know.

“For the tenth time, Steph, it’s definitely here.” I sighed, frustrated that we couldn’t find anything. I’d tried asking the teen in the car but, despite his earlier protestations of innocence, he didn’t want to say anything now.

Instead, I went downstairs to talk to Drew’s mum. Just as I reached the bottom of the stairs, I heard a creak of floorboards and caught a glimpse of a figure dressed in grey moving away down the hall. None of the people I knew to be in the house wore grey.

I eased my way down the rest of the stairs and stuck my head round, sucking in a sharp breath. There was a door under the stairs which had been left ajar and, further up the hall near the kitchen entrance, a tall, blond teenager had his back to me.

It was Jules.

Twenty-Four

I must have made a sound, or Jules sensed me there