“Two weeks ago, on Friday the twenty-first, between five and five-thirty, can you remember your whereabouts?”
He scratched his jaw, like he actually had to think about it. I’d been in touch with the newsagents where the car he’d tried to steal was parked. I requested their surveillance tapes but, and I knew this wasn’t a coincidence, the camera was angled in such a way that it hadn’t caught him.
“It’s hard to remember such a specific time, you get me?” said Trevor right before Stu stepped up, a hostile slant to his mouth.
“You were with me, bruv, down at the garage, remember?”
“Oh, right, yeah. That’s where I was. At the garage.” Trevor nodded.
I looked between the two of them, still incredibly aware of Lee at my back. He had this way of making me feel entirely seen, like he sensed just how uncomfortable I was under his watch. The thought made me even more determined not to let his brothers away with their blatant lie. I should have known that one of them would give Trevor an alibi, though.
“Is there anyone else who can corroborate this? Any other workers at the garage?”
“Of course there are. The place is closed for the weekend, but you be sure to pop over on Monday, and we’ll get you speaking to some of the boys,” said Lee, coming to stand next to me. I sucked in a small breath and tried to remain in control, which was hard to do, considering I was surrounded by Cross brothers amid a crowd of football supporters. I finally allowed my eyes to meet Lee’s, and the way he was looking at me caused me to swallow thickly.
“Yeah, I’ll, uh, I’ll do that,” I answered, a little befuddled, before looking back to Trevor and Stu. “You all enjoy the game.”
I was stepping away when Stu called after me, “We will, and you tell Lexie I was asking for her.”
Resisting the urge to roll my eyes, I gave him a quick nod. Stu was drop-dead gorgeous, but his attempts to win Alexis back were pointless. Her heart belonged to another. Lee’s shoulder brushed mine as he turned to follow his brothers, and I couldn’t for the life of me explain why, but I reached out to grab his wrist.
Steve, Tony, and Keira were just yards away, but the area was so crowded that they’d never be able to see I was touching him. He glanced down at my fingers before his eyes rose to my face, and he looked intrigued.
“Can I talk to you for a second?”
I breathed heavily when his thumb slid slowly along my palm before rubbing tenderly at the inside of my wrist. Withdrawing my hand like I’d just been burned, I saw his lips twitch in amusement.
“What is it, Snap?” he whispered.
“I, uh, I….” Jesus Christ, was I tongue-tied?
“Karla,” said Lee, and he sounded concerned, “are you all right?”
I blushed, unable to help it, before summoning my resolve. “Yes, I’m fine. I’d just like to ask if you could quit with the nickname. It suggests a familiarity we don’t have, and it undermines my position as a police constable. I have a feeling that’s why you do it, and to be perfectly honest, it’s patronising.”
Sticking my chin out, I looked him dead in the eye, and his expression softened. “If that’s how it comes across, then I’m sorry. But I don’t call you Snap to patronise you — I do it because I like you.”
Damn, why did I have to find his honesty so disarming? He looked like he wanted to touch me again, which made me feel the need to move swiftly on. I wasn’t looking directly at him, but somewhere in the vicinity of his shoulder, when I continued, “Anyway, the other thing I wanted to talk to you about is Trevor. If he’s lying — and I’m not stupid, Lee, he and Stu are clearly lying — then he could find himself in big trouble down the line. He seems like a good kid, but you need to teach him to be smart. And I’m not saying this to be cruel — it’s just the truth — but a boy who looks like him in prison? That wouldn’t end anywhere good.”
I finally managed to meet his eyes, and when I did, I was shocked at what I found. For a second Lee looked guilty, his every feature filled with remorse before it was replaced with something that looked a lot like anger. He took a deep breath and ran a hand over his jaw.
“Are we done here?” he asked curtly.
Soberly, I nodded, and he turned and walked away. It was ridiculous that I felt bad about what I’d said, but it needed to be done. Somebody had to remind Lee of the reality of how his family was living, and exactly where it would lead.
When I went to rejoin the others, I noticed Steve looking in the direction Lee had gone.
“Were those the Cross boys you were talking to just now?” he asked curiously.
I glanced at him. “Uh-huh.”
“What have they been up to this time?”
Tony stepped in to answer for me. “Karla and I had a run-in with one of them a couple weeks ago. Found him trying to nick a car. Never caught him, though.”
Steve chuckled derisively. “Well, you wouldn’t.” He paused and eyed me. “You see the two younger ones? You’ll never catch either of them. At least, not on foot. They’re into all that free-running business. Little shits will be halfway down the side of a building before you’ve even stopped to catch your breath.”
“Seriously?” said Tony.
My mind reeled as I remembered Trevor jumping a ten-foot wall like it was nothing. So it was definitely him. Tony and I shared a glance, like we were both thinking the same thing, and my determination returned. Maybe I would pay a visit to Lee’s garage on Monday after all. It couldn’t be that difficult to catch one of his employees out on a lie.
Don’t get me wrong — I wasn’t doing it because I wanted to put Trevor in a jail cell. I was doing it because I thought it might be enough of a scare to get him to start abiding by the law.
Once the crowds had dispersed and everybody was inside the stadium watching the match, Keira and I went to grab some coffees and sandwiches for an early lunch. After that there were a couple of incidents to handle while the game was on, mostly drunk and disorderly behaviour. Sport plus alcohol generally equalled a bunch of rowdy imbeciles.
The game finished 3-1 to Spurs, which meant there was going to be a whole lot of pissed-off Arsenal fans coming our way, including Lee and his brothers. We were controlling the flow in such a way that the fans of opposing teams didn’t mix. Unfortunately, a group of Spurs supporters, not wanting to wait in line, managed to jump one of the barricades. Before we knew it, they’d mixed in with the Arsenal fans.
I’d experienced a number of riots in my time, but had never actually witnessed the moment that instigated it all. It was amazing how something so small could lead to such chaos. One guy wearing a Spurs jersey knocked into an Arsenal fan, heated words were exchanged, and before I knew it, punches were being thrown. I looked to my left and right, but Keira and Steve were too far off, and they wouldn’t be able to get past the crowd on time. I’d have to deal with this myself.
My hand instinctively went to my baton; I wouldn’t hesitate to use it should things get out of control. It was times like these that I really wished all UK police carried firearms. People generally backed off when you were pointing a gun at them. We had armed units, but the main workforce carried only an extendable baton, CS spray, and a Taser. I tried to use the spray and Taser only when absolutely necessary, and usually the sight of my baton was enough to keep most people in line.
The problem in this particular situation? Alcohol.
Both men were angry drunk, the worst kind, so I knew I was going to have a battle on my hands.
“Hey! That’s enough, fellas,” I called out as one man threw a left hook at the other guy’s jaw. A crowd was starting to gather, gangs of people egging them on. Out came the baton, and an onlooker to my left blew a low whistle. This was where my martial arts training came in handy, because a baton was about the same length of an eskrima stick. It wasn’t exactly ethical, but to a certain level you could adapt the skills.