did you tell them?’ said a man’s angry voice.
‘I’m sorry, who is this?’
‘She was here, just now. You must have told them!’
In the background, Jo heard another voice. ‘Calm down, Gordon. Please.’
Mrs Jones.
‘I’ll be making a formal complaint,’ said Mr Jones. ‘You come round here, pretending to be on our side. Dropping your little bomb and leaving us to pick up the pieces. This might just be a game to you …’
‘Please, Mr Jones,’ said Jo. ‘Tell me what’s happened. Has someone visited you?’
‘A journalist. A fucking hack!’ he said.
‘Gordon!’ came his wife’s distant exclamation.
‘Mr Jones, we didn’t contact any journalists,’ said Jo. ‘Please, believe me. We’re not sure how they’ve gotten hold of the news about Dylan.’
‘Well, you’re a detective, aren’t you? How about you find out?’
The phone went dead.
Bridges, who’d obviously overheard, was standing in the doorway to his office.
‘That sounded unpleasant.’
Jo rubbed her temples. Maybe she was better off out of the case after all. The fucking hack had to be the same woman who was at the building site. She’d thought it might have been one of the construction workers who’d sold the info for a few quid, but how had they made the link to Dylan Jones?
‘I think we need to put out a statement to the press,’ she said. ‘The Joneses got doorstepped by a journo.’
Bridges nodded. ‘Leave it with me,’ he said. ‘You’re on the Thompson gang, remember?’
Jo spent the next couple of hours piecing together the movements of the gang, cross-referencing the GPS from phone records with on-the-ground surveillance reports from an undercover they had staying in the Snow Hill flats.
She had a voicemail from Bright Futures, and recognised the receptionist’s discreet tones before she remembered the name. They wanted to know, politely, if she’d be able to call back in to amend some paperwork, because there was a problem with her bank details. Jo saved the message for later.
The Thompsons were three brothers, all with lengthy records for theft, drugs and minor violence, but they never ended up doing more than a few months at a time inside. It was thought their network of mules, distributors and money men stretched to about forty individuals, involving a complex series of drop-offs and safe houses across the south of the city.
If Jo was honest, there wouldn’t have been so much appetite for the investigation if it weren’t for a couple of deaths three months earlier – two teens found stabbed in a burned-out car, one of them a cousin of the Thompson brothers and the other a known member of a rival gang. It looked like there might be fractures in the family, and that meant a turf war was on the cards.
The intelligence was painstaking and boring beyond belief, but if they were ever going to build a case, it was completely essential. Most of the phones were anonymous burners, tossed every few days. The general consensus was that this was a case of identifying one of the middle rankers and bringing them in. Then, when they turned, everything above should fall like a game of Jenga. They didn’t really care about the footmen – as Ben put it, they’d always find ways to get arrested another day. Eighty per cent of CID business came back to drugs, one way or another.
At about four p.m., Ben and Rhani came in. Through the glass, Jo saw them booking in an untidily dressed pensioner wearing low-slung tracksuit bottoms and a striped T-shirt that revealed his abdomen and had sweat patches under the armpits. His thinning wisps of hair were matted to his head, and from the droop in the left half of his face and a badly slanting shoulder, Jo guessed he’d suffered a stroke at some point. He was grotesquely fat, the years adding more folds under his neck and blubbery upper arms, but the disinterested, almost vacant way he surveyed the room gave him away as Clement Matthews.
They led him across to one of the interview rooms, before Rhani emerged again a couple of minutes later, making for the small kitchenette area and switching on the kettle.
‘He saying much?’ asked Jo.
‘Wants a brief, sarge,’ said Rhani. ‘And a tea with four sugars.’
She made it quickly and carried it in.
Half an hour later, Samantha Gore, one of the duty solicitors, arrived and the clerk from the front desk showed her in too.
Jo waited a moment before heading to the AV suite where she could monitor the live feed to the interview room. Bridges had headed off for the day – some sort of meeting with the Local Authority. His instructions about getting involved had been clear, but what he didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.
Matthews cut a sorry figure, slouched in his chair. Sam Gore finished introducing herself for the tape, then Ben showed Matthews the photo of Dylan.
‘I’m sure you remember this boy.’
Clement Matthews peered over and nodded.
‘Can you speak up?’
‘Yes.’ His voice was slightly slurred. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘You tell us,’ said Ben.
Clement looked across at him with watery eyes, then at Sam, then shrugged. ‘I’m not under arrest, am I? I can go if I want?’
‘You’re not under arrest at the moment, but how you co-operate now will affect our decision whether or not to re-arrest you at a future point.’
Ben next turned over a photo of the derelict house, and another of the drained pool.
‘Recognise this place?’
Clement glanced down. ‘Means nothing to me.’
‘Have a closer look.’
The old man’s eyes flicked down. ‘Still nope.’
‘Perhaps you could help my client with some more guidance as to what these images show,’ Sam interjected.
Ben pointed to the second photo. ‘That’s where we found the body of Dylan Jones.’
Matthews seemed to wake up. ‘You found him?’
‘I’m afraid so. You should have buried him deeper.’
Clement Matthews chuckled. ‘Is that all you’ve got? Jesus wept.’
He folded his arms and sat back.
‘We’ve got forensics crawling all
