I’m just interested in who he was connecting with, what his interests were, what he was like as a person. We didn’t know him, you understand.’
She grunted. ‘I suppose. Come on, then.’ She got up and shuffled towards the door.
Pete waited until the door closed behind them, then turned to Brian.
‘I’m sorry, but it’s possible your son was killed, Mr Michaels,’ he said. ‘We need to know as much as we can about him, to find out who might have done it. If anyone in his life might have had the opportunity or the inclination. Do you have any other family?’
‘I’ve got a brother and a sister, live here in the city. His mother’s an only child. Dave’s got no kids, Beck’s got a son, five years younger than our Andrew, but they don’t see each other except birthdays and Christmas. Her husband don’t come round here, either. He works down the industrial estate. Car mechanic.’
‘And your brother? David?’
‘Retired last year. Done his back in. Been troubling him for years but it finally got too much last spring.’
‘And do you see him much?’
‘Nah. He got himself one of those disabled cars, but he don’t drive it much and we don’t drive, me and Kath. Never did. Like she said – keep ourselves to ourselves.’
‘I understand Andrew was in town when it happened. Sitting on a bench up by the Princesshay.’ Pete’s mind conjured an image of the wide, pedestrianised High Street with the glass and concrete entrance to the covered shopping centre off its east side. ‘Did he do that much?’
‘Every fortnight, when he had to go and sign on, he’d spend a few hours round the centre. Got him out of the house, change of scenery, bit of fresh air, you know?’
Pete nodded. An isolated, lonely life, broken by sitting alone among the crowds on the High Street once a fortnight. Christ, talk about sad.
His phone buzzed in his pocket and he took it out, checked the screen and saw the ID flashing up: Doc. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Michaels. ‘I need to take this.’ He hit the button and raised the phone to his ear. ‘Hello, Doc. What’s up?’
‘I’ve just heard back from the lab,’ Chambers said. ‘We have the toxicology from Jeremy Tyler. I was right, unfortunately. He had been dosed. With succinylcholine, so he was paralysed but fully aware as the fire took hold around him.’
‘So, what did she have to say while you were on your own with her?’ Pete asked as he pulled away from the kerb outside the Michaels’ house.
The sun was low in the sky, hidden behind a mass of heavy black cloud, leaving it near-dark although it was still mid-afternoon. Pete switched his lights on. The beams swept across other parked cars, pavements fronted by stretches of mown grass and low, neat walls protecting tidy gardens in front of suburban houses where situations like this were not meant to arise.
‘She loved her son, boss. Wouldn’t have a word said against him, even hypothetically. My guess – she was the reason he was so withdrawn. Overprotective, you know? Smothering. But essentially, he kept himself to himself. Had interests that most guys grow out of at about twelve. Trains, planes – stuff like that. The only vaguely social thing he seemed to be involved in was the annual model train exhibition at the local school. Has quite a big following, apparently. Draws people in from all over. As far as the West Midlands. And she was right. There was no porn on his computer, or any sign of it in the history log.’
He drove past the school she had just mentioned – the school his own daughter, Annie, attended. The one Tommy had gone to as well until just over a year ago when he switched to the local senior school. Cars lined both sides of the road outside, parents sitting patiently waiting for their offspring to emerge. The bright railings and heavy metal gates made it look like some kind of junior prison. His mind conjured an image of ten-year-old Annie, sitting at her desk, sucking on the end of her pen as she avidly watched the teacher at the front of the class, absorbing every speck of information they could provide.
In a few minutes, the scene would change completely, the ring of a bell releasing a dark tide of noisy humanity onto the quiet streets like a swarm of angry bees.
‘How’s she doing, boss? Annie? She all right?’
Pete blinked. ‘Yes, she’s great. Don’t know what I’d have done without her, the past few months, to be honest.’
‘And Louise?’
Pete glanced across. Saw the genuine concern in her expression. Jane was more than a junior officer. She was a friend. They had been partners for three years before he got the sergeant’s exam. He trusted her like no one else on the force – even their DI, Colin Underhill, who had been both a boss and a mentor through their early years in CID. ‘She’s . . . She seems to have turned a corner. The fact that Tommy was there with Rosie, that he’s still alive . . . It’s given her something to focus on. Some sort of hope. I wouldn’t want to be Simon Phillips if she ran into him, but…’
Jane laughed. ‘Not impressed, eh?’
‘Not really. It’s been almost seven months and the only real evidence he’s got is what we gave him last week, from the Rosie Whitlock case. She’s bad enough with me. Why could I bring Rosie back and not Tommy? Where is he? Why won’t he come home? What are we doing to find him? Not that I can blame her. I just wish I had the answers for her. But, if she got hold of Simon, she’d have his balls for earrings.’ He glanced in the mirror, but the school was gone from sight around a bend in the road.
*
Dave stared up at the castle-like gatehouse of the dark-brick Victorian prison with its huge arch-topped doors of incongruously bright blue.
‘Bugger, that took a can or two of paint, didn’t it?’
‘Just don’t say anything about cheap labour.’ Pete knocked on the man-sized door cut into the big gates.
‘Would I?’
The team had drawn a blank on their search for a source for the suxamethonium and on Tyler’s internet history, so Pete had sought Silverstone’s permission to talk to other people’s arrestees and brought Dave along to lighten the load and speed the job up while the rest of the team continued to search for other clues.
The door in front of them opened and a black-uniformed prison guard asked, ‘Sergeant Gayle?’
Pete nodded and flashed his badge. ‘And DC Miles.’
Dave showed his own ID.
‘Come in, gents.’ He stood back.
‘Yes, you would,’ Pete said to Dave as they stepped through. ‘But if you do, I won’t try to stop them keeping you.’
The door behind them banged shut and a bolt shot across, then another. Despite himself, Pete shivered.
‘This way, gents.’ The guard stepped past them and led them across the wide, blue-brick yard.
They signed in at the reception desk in the main block
