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

carefully nudged the air mattress to the side. I’d half expected to be disappointed, but the lump I’d thought I’d seen had been real. Wrapped in a thin towel, a bundle of something had been shoved under the mattress, presumably by Jude.

As much as I wanted to unwrap it, I didn’t want to contaminate things further, so I left the air mattress where it was and went upstairs to wait impatiently for forensics to arrive. They could tell me what was inside the towel bundle, and hopefully, it’d be something to add to our evidence arsenal.

Tracy grew increasingly anxious to leave as we waited. She was on the verge of leaving us alone in the house so that she could go to her son when forensics did finally arrive, and as soon as they were in the door, she hurried out to her car.

I showed the team where the cellar was and left them to do their work, sitting down on the sofa with a sigh.

“Sorry I wasn’t there when the kid attacked you.”

I looked up as Stephen sat down next to me, offering me a refill from the pot of coffee Tracy had made up.

“Nah, don’t worry. You came quick enough.”

“Now, racing off after Drew, I thought we’d talked about that.”

“Oh, aye, I know. But I couldn’t just let him go.”

“We could’ve got in the car, mate. Then you wouldn’t have been with him on your own with me a mile behind.”

“C’mon, you weren’t that bad,” I said, risking a smile. He groaned.

“You give me grey hairs, I swear.”

“I couldn’t tell since you shave them all off,” I teased back.

“Shut up,” he grumbled, giving me a light shove.

One of the forensics team took that moment to come into the room, raising her eyebrows at our antics. Stephen and I looked over at her like school kids caught smoking round the back of the bike shed. I cleared my throat and stood up from the sofa.

“Any luck?”

“We’ve taken multiple prints from the canisters, and we’ll take them with us as evidence. We’ve also recovered a computer from-”

“A computer? Was it inside the towel?” I said eagerly.

“Yes.” She looked none too impressed to be interrupted. “But it’s been badly bashed up. We couldn’t find any prints on it.”

“Damn it,” I muttered.

“Can we take it with us? We’ve got a tech expert at Hewford who could try to recover something from it.”

“I think we’re done with it.” She gave a nod.

“If Jules smashed it up, it must have something important on it,” I said once she’d gone to see her team as they finished up.

“Yeah, but try not to get your hopes up. It might be too badly damaged.”

He was right, and I frowned, rubbing a hand over my forehead. We carefully packed up the laptop, encased in an evidence bag, into the car and drove over to Hewford, both of us deep in thought.

“Do you think Mickey’s account and the petrol cans will be enough?” Stephen asked as we were getting near.

“Enough for what?” I said, not without bitterness. “To make sure Drew gets linked to the fires? Aye, sure. It’ll condemn anybody who had their fingerprints on the cans, for instance. We can get some of the ones we caught on the CCTV, maybe. We might get Jules, too, considering he was down in Drew’s basement, right next to the cans. But Alistair?” I shook my head. “Nah, I don’t think we’ve got enough to get him. He’s been too goddamn tidy.”

“Okay,” Stephen sighed.

Inside the station, we went directly up to see Keira. She was on the phone and barely flicked a glance at us as we came her way. The computer that Jules had messed up was in a bad way, and she gave us a deadpan, unimpressed look when I put it in front of her.

I snagged a post-it note from a pile on her desk and wrote ‘VERY URGENT’ on it, sticking it on the laptop so she’d see. She just pressed her lips together and turned back to her computer, resuming her conversation with the person on the phone.

The rest of the evidence then had to be ferried up to the lab where Sam was working. I gave her a warm smile, ignoring the stink eye her colleague was giving me, and came over to hug her once we’d brought all the evidence up.

“How’s it going?”

“You know how it is.” She gave an elegant shrug before looking around at the petrol cans and other things we’d brought her. “Looks like I’m in for a busy afternoon, hm?”

“Sorry about that. Have you had lunch already?”

“‘Fraid so, love.” She gave me an apologetic smile and squeezed my arm. “I’ll see you at home, okay?”

“Sure.” I kissed her once more before heading out.

Stephen and I went to grab lunch, sitting outside the station. Since the storm we’d had, the weather seemed to have settled into its normal, changeable pattern, and today was cloudy and slightly humid. But it was warm enough to sit out and not raining, so we made the most of it.

“Are you and Sam doing okay, y’know, with the move?”

I glanced over at Stephen, who gave me a sympathetic frown.

“I don’t know, really. I guess we are. We’re going to try to make it work somehow.”

“You don’t sound too sure,” he noted, and I turned to frown at him.

“Would you be? We’re not married, Steph, and it’s been months, not years. I love her like crazy, yeah, but…” I scowled down at the ground.

“Hey, don’t you see how she looks at you-”

“No, it’s not- I know she says she feels what I do. I believe her, okay? I just… people’s priorities change.”

“Do you think once she’s gone, you’ll want to move on, is that it? That you can’t deal with-”

“No, dammit. I’m here as long as she wants. It’s just-”

“You don’t feel worthy of her?”

I turned to stare at him, shocked and hurt. “Do you think I’m not worthy of her?” I croaked out.

Stephen cursed, putting