‘We was bruvvahs, innit?’ Asif said.
Paula leaned right forward in her chair, her face close to the boy. ‘Do me a favour, Asif. Cut it out. You’re a pupil at William Makepeace, not Kenton Vale. Your daddy’s a doctor, not a market trader. Don’t give me the fake street shit. Talk to us properly, with respect, or we’ll be doing this at the police station, on our turf, on our terms.’
Asif’s eyes widened in shock. ‘You can’t talk to me like that - I’m a minor. I should have an adult present. We’re only talking to you because the school said it would be best.’
Paula shrugged. ‘Fine by me. Let’s get your dad down to the station too, see how impressed he is with his boy’s big talk.’
Asif held Paula’s stare for another few seconds, then dropped one shoulder and half-turned away from her. ‘OK, OK,’ he muttered. ‘Daniel and I were mates.’
‘Nobody else seems to think so,’ Kevin said as Paula retreated back into her chair.
‘I didn’t mix with that bunch of wankers Daniel hung around with, if that’s what you mean. Me and Daniel, we did other stuff together.’
‘What kind of stuff?’ Kevin said, his imagination stumbling over the possibilities.
Asif uncrossed his feet and tucked them under his chair. ‘Comedy,’ he said, apparently embarrassed.
‘Comedy?’
He fidgeted in his seat. ‘We both wanted to be stand-ups, OK?’
One of the other lads had mentioned Daniel’s interest in comedy, but hadn’t mentioned this ambition. ‘That’s pretty wild,’ Paula said. ‘Not on the curriculum here, I bet.’
A ghost of a smile lit Asif’s eyes. ‘Not until we get our BBC3 series and make it respectable,’ he said. ‘Then it’ll be right up there in drama class.’
‘So you and Daniel shared this ambition. How did you find out you both wanted to do that?’ Kevin asked.
‘My cousin, he manages a club in town. They have a comedy night once a month. My cousin, he lets me in, even though he shouldn’t. So I was going in one night, and there’s Daniel arguing with the guy on the door, making out he’s eighteen. Which he wasn’t going to get away with, not even with the fake ID. So I ask him what’s going on and he says there’s one of the acts he really wants to see, he heard him on the radio and he wants to see his routine. So I talk my cousin into letting him in, and we get talking and that’s when I find out he totally wants to get into the comedy game. So we start meeting up every couple of weeks round my house, trying out our material on each other.’ He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘He was pretty funny, Daniel. He had this great routine about adults who try to be, like, down with da kids. And he had this, like, presence.’ He shook his head. ‘This is so bad.’
‘We think Daniel went to Temple Fields after school on Tuesday,’ Kevin said. ‘Did he say anything to you about meeting anybody there?’
Asif frowned. ‘No.’
‘You don’t sound very sure.’
‘Well, he didn’t say anything about any specific meeting,’ Asif said. ‘But the last time we got together, last week, he said he’d met somebody online who was setting up some radio show to showcase young comedy talent. Like, kids who were too young to get on stage on the club circuit.’ He shrugged. ‘Kids like us. I asked if he could get me in on it and he said, sure, but he wanted to meet the guy first, get his feet under the table.’ He looked suddenly miserable. ‘I got a bit pissed off with him, I thought maybe he was trying to cut me out, keep it for himself, like. But he said, no, it wasn’t like that, we were mates and he still owed me for getting him into the club in the first place. He just wanted to make the first contact, sort it all out, then bring me in afterwards.’ Sudden light dawned and his eyes widened. ‘Shit. You think that’s what got him killed?’
‘It’s too early in the investigation to say,’ Kevin said hastily. ‘At this stage, we don’t know what might be relevant. So it would be helpful if you could tell us anything about this contact of Daniel’s. How did they meet, do you know?’
Asif nodded. ‘It was on RigMarole. You know, the networking site? They were both in a Gavin and Stacey mosh pit - that’s what we call a sort of fan group. They liked a lot of the same stuff so they got talking in a private sidebar and that’s when it came out about him being a comedy producer.’
‘Did Daniel mention his name?’
‘No. That was one of the things I got pissed off about. He wouldn’t even tell me the guy’s name. He was, like, the guy didn’t want it spread around in case somebody jumped the gun on him. So I never knew his name. Only that he made programmes at the BBC in Manchester. Supposedly,’ he added.
‘You weren’t convinced?’ Kevin asked.
‘It just seemed like a funny way to go about things,’ he said. ‘I mean, he’d never heard Daniel do his schtick. How could he know he was good on his feet? But you couldn’t tell Daniel anything. He was, like, his own law.’
‘Did Daniel say where they were meeting? Or when?’ Kevin tried.
‘I told you. He was acting like it was a state secret. No way he was going to let the details slip. What I told you, that’s all I know.’
It was, Paula thought, a start. Not much of one, but a start at least.
Ambrose felt his spirits give a little lift when he walked into Patterson’s office to find his boss closeted with Gary Harcup. He hadn’t been looking forward to attempting to put an upbeat gloss on the odd little profiler from Bradfield. But with Gary here, there would be something to divert Patterson’s attention. There might even be a bit of something to get their teeth into.
Looking at Patterson, Ambrose saw a man who desperately needed some good news. He was pale and wan, his eyes heavy-lidded and baggy, his hair lifeless and stiff. It was always the same when they weren’t moving forward fast enough on a case. Patterson absorbed all the pressure and all the pain, till you thought he was going to crack up. Then something inside him would shift, he would see possibilities begin to open up and suddenly he’d be upbeat and full of confidence again. It was just a matter of waiting it out. ‘Come on in,’ Patterson said, waving Ambrose forward and gesturing to a chair. ‘Gary’s just this minute got here.’
Ambrose nodded to the chubby computer expert, who looked as dishevelled as ever. Hair awry, T-shirt crumpled, something adhering to his beard that Ambrose didn’t want to examine too closely; he didn’t exactly inspire confidence. But he’d come through for them often enough in the past for Ambrose not to care how he looked. Maybe he should suspend his judgement on Tony Hill. Not leap to conclusions just because the guy seemed kind of unorthodox in the way he approached things. He should wait and see if he too came up with the goods the way Gary did. ‘All right, Gary?’ he said.
Gary nodded so vigorously his belly shook. ‘Doing good, Alvin. Doing good.’
‘So, what have you got for us?’ Patterson asked. He sat back in his chair, gently tapping the desk with a pencil.
Gary produced a couple of transparent plastic envelopes from his backpack. Each contained a few sheets of paper. ‘It’s a bit of a mixed bag. This—’ he slapped the first ‘—this is a list of the machines I was able to identify. I only got about half of them. The others are out there in no man’s land, passed on second- or third-hand.’
Patterson took the papers from the folder and scanned the top sheet. When he’d done, he passed it to Ambrose. It didn’t take them long to look through the list of seventeen machines Gary had identified. Internet cafés, public libraries and one airport. ‘It’s all over the place,’ Patterson said. ‘Worcester, Solihull, Birmingham, Dudley, Wolverhampton, Telford, Stafford, Cannock, Stoke, Stone, Holmes Chapel, Knutsford, Stockport, Manchester Airport, Oldham, Bradfield, Leeds . . .’