Gavin looked at his watch. Seven o’clock. It had been a long shift, but he had one final call to make before going home to breakfast and then to bed. He drove through the leafy suburb of Headington in the pale morning sunshine and turned in at a wide drive between stone gateposts, with copper beech hedges on either side. This house was larger and older than its neighbours, and set further back from the road.
Gavin parked neatly alongside a large car with a disabled badge on the window. He got out and started up the sloping path to the front door. He looked at his watch again and then up at the bedroom windows. The curtains were open and there appeared to be a light on. Light also shone through the small window to the left of the door. He had been right in thinking that the family would be early-risers, even at the weekend. He pressed the bell-push and stepped back a pace to wait for a response.
The door was answered by a tall man with greying red hair.
‘Gavin! What brings you here?’ Peter Johns knew Gavin well through having worked with him during his own forty years as a police officer.
‘It’s bad news, I’m afraid. I thought you’d want to know that Wayne Major’s in hospital. He was involved in a hit-and-run on Blackbird Leys Road last night.’
‘You’d better come in.’
Gavin stepped over the threshold and wiped his boots meticulously on the mat, before following Peter through a door on the right. He looked round at a pleasant sitting room with windows on two sides, a pair of comfy chairs at the far end and a desk with a computer and other electronic devices on it. The room also contained a number of strange pieces of equipment upon whose uses Gavin could only speculate. This was the study and sitting room belonging to DCI Jonah Porter, who had been a permanent guest in Peter’s home since the death of his wife four years earlier.
‘Jonah’s getting dressed,’ Peter explained, crossing the room to a door beyond. ‘But I know he’ll want to hear about it right away.’
He opened a door at the side of the room and led Gavin into Jonah’s bedroom. It was cluttered with more of the mysterious gadgets and seemed crowded with people, now that Peter and Gavin were there. In the centre of the room, there stood a high, metal-framed bed, similar to those found in hospitals. There was another, narrower bed against the wall under the window. Pushed up against another wall, Gavin recognised Jonah’s electric wheelchair, in its reclined position so that it looked more like a hospital trolley than a chair.
On either side of the bed, two women were standing, bent over and clearly busy with some task. Gavin realised that they were engaged in putting a pair of trousers on to the occupant, who was lying motionless on his back. DCI Porter looked very different, in this helpless position, from the dynamic and demanding senior officer with whom Gavin was familiar. In his hi-tech wheelchair, the paralysis caused by a bullet in the neck nine years earlier seemed almost irrelevant. Without it, he appeared smaller somehow and painfully vulnerable.
The women looked up at the sound of the door opening. ‘Gavin!’ Peter’s wife, Bernie, recognised the big policeman at once, and at once realised that he would not be here at this hour without good reason. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘It’s Wayne,’ Peter explained. ‘He’s in hospital.’
‘He was knocked down by a car at the bus stop opposite the Blackbird,’ Gavin expanded. ‘He’s in the neuro-ICU.’
‘How? What happened? Have you got whoever did it?’ Jonah, unable to move, exploded into angry and anxious speech.
‘It looks like joy-riders to me, Sir,’ Gavin replied, addressing the senior officer in the formal manner that he was accustomed to using at work. ‘The car was reported stolen shortly after the incident took place. I don’t think they’ve traced the driver yet.’
‘What about Dean?’ Bernie’s eighteen-year-old daughter, Lucy, asked in a troubled voice. ‘You have told him?’ she added anxiously.
‘Yes. I went and got him from home and took him to the hospital,’ Gavin assured her.
‘And how’s he taking it?’ asked Bernie. The whole family were extremely fond of the two young men.
‘Shell-shocked is how I’d describe it. Doesn’t know what’s hit him. I stayed there with him until Wayne’s parents arrived. Mrs Major seems to have taken him under her wing now.’
‘That’s good.’ Bernie looked just a little less anxious. ‘I know Barbara has a soft spot for Dean. She’ll take care of him. But it must be dreadful for them too, of course,’ she added quickly.
‘Who’s in charge of the investigation?’ Jonah demanded. ‘What are they doing to track down the driver?’
‘I don’t think that’s been decided yet,’ Gavin told him. ‘It’s been a busy night.’
‘I suppose so.’ Jonah sounded distinctly dissatisfied, but he did not express out loud his frustration at the apparent lack of urgency, which he recognised was not Gavin’s fault. He turned his head to address Bernie. ‘Now hurry up and finish getting me up and into my chair. We’ve got a busy morning ahead of us.’
‘Doing what, exactly?’ Peter asked, although he already had a good idea what Jonah was planning.
Bernie and Lucy, meanwhile, hurried to fasten Jonah’s trousers and then began the process of transferring him from bed to chair, where it would be easier to put on his shirt.
‘First off, I’m going to the hospital to see for myself how Wayne’s doing,’ Jonah said briskly.
‘I want to go too,’ Lucy interjected.
‘We can’t all roll up at the ICU together,’ Peter argued.
‘Well I’m going,’ Jonah insisted. ‘I want to talk to the doctors and find out what their prognosis is. And I want to check that Dean’s OK.’
‘We all do,’ Bernie agreed, ‘but Peter’s right – if we all go, we’ll only be in the way.’
‘And then, after that, I want to call at the station to check that they’re taking this thing seriously,’ Jonah continued. ‘If it’s been put down to joy-riders there’s a danger that it will simply drown in a sea of cases that we don’t have the manpower to investigate properly.’
‘You’re not on duty over the weekend,’ Bernie pointed out, trying to sound firm but knowing in her heart that she was wasting her breath. Since his disabling injury, Jonah was supposed to stick to a strict office-hours-only working pattern, to preserve his strength and to allow him time for the physiotherapy and other time-consuming routines necessary for his well-being. This did not suit his energetic personality and, despite Bernie’s best efforts in her role as his Personal Assistant, he frequently broke the rules.
‘That’s got nothing to do with it!’ Jonah declared forcefully, twisting his neck in order to address Bernie, while Lucy leaned him forward to tuck in his shirt at the back. ‘I won’t be working – just checking that this isn’t going to be swept under the carpet.’
‘Don’t you think that for once in your life it would be a good idea to trust someone else to be able to do things right?’ Peter asked with a sigh. ‘You aren’t the only decent officer on the force you know.’ He turned to Gavin. ‘Thanks for coming. We appreciate it. Now we’d better let you get off home. At least – you’re welcome to stay to breakfast, but I imagine Chrissie will be expecting you?’
‘Yes.’ Gavin glanced down at his watch again. ‘She always does a fry-up for me when I’m on duty over Friday night.’ He looked round at the others. ‘I’ll be going then.’
‘Hang on!’ Jonah called him back. ‘Just one more thing: are you sure it was just a driver losing control? Or could it have been deliberate?’
‘How d’you mean, Sir?’
‘It just occurred to me: could this be another of these attacks that I’m looking into?’
‘Which attacks?’
‘On people who took part in the Gay Pride march last month. It started low-key, but they’ve been escalating. Could this just be the latest development?’
‘I suppose it could, Sir,’ Gavin answered dubiously, ‘but I don’t really see how they could’ve identified him. It’s not as if he was coming out of a gay bar or something. And it was dark. How would they know who he was?’
‘Nice try, Jonah,’ Bernie smiled. ‘But it won’t work. You’re not going to get yourself put in charge of this enquiry, so why not give in gracefully?’
In another home in another part of Oxford, another family was in the process of preparing for the day ahead. DI Anna Davenport had recently returned from maternity leave on a part-time basis, while she adjusted to life with her youngest child, Donna, whose unplanned arrival a few months earlier had precipitated the departure of her husband of sixteen years.
‘It’s OK, Mum, I’ll take her.’ Anna’s other daughter, seventeen-year-old Jessica, reached out for the infant who was coughing and crying in turns in Anna’s arms. ‘You get on and eat your breakfast or you’ll be late.’
‘I don’t know.’ Anna, sounding doubtful, nevertheless handed the baby over. ‘I think she may be sickening for something.’
‘I’m sure you’re wrong, but I’ve got the number of the children’s ward and our GP and the community paediatric team, so I can get help if I need it. Now eat up while I take her upstairs and change her. I can smell that she needs it! And I bet that’s all that’s wrong – she’s just uncomfortable.’
Jessica left the room. Anna watched her go, listening to the retreating footsteps mounting the stairs. It was strange. When Jessica and her brother were born, she had happily handed over their care to their father after only a few weeks, in order to return full-time to her career. This time, nearly nine months after Donna’s birth, she still found it hard to be separated from her, even briefly. Was it Donna’s disability – she had been born with spina bifida – that made the difference? Or was it her enforced career break, during which the child had hardly been out of her sight, that had made the bond with her youngest child so painful to break?
She sat down at the table and poured muesli into a bowl. Jess was right: she must get on. She could not afford to be seen as unreliable. Her boss, DCI Porter, had pulled a lot of strings to obtain her current working arrangements and there were plenty of people who would be on the lookout for an excuse to dispense with her services.
If only she could find a nursery or childminder that would take Donna on! It was strange the way they all suddenly had full books as soon as they heard about Donna’s disability. It was good of Jess to offer to look after her sister, but she had her schoolwork to think of as well and Anna was anxious that her A’ level results would be affected. In any case, working just two long shifts each weekend was unsustainable financially in the long run, as well as being a sure and certain barrier to any further promotion.
She finished her breakfast and put the empty bowl and coffee mug in the sink for Jessica to wash later. Then she went upstairs to collect her jacket and briefcase and to say goodbye to her daughters. Her son, Marcus, stumbling bleary-eyed back from a visit to the bathroom, almost collided with her as she reached the landing. He mumbled a greeting as he returned to his room intent on a few more minutes – or hours – in bed.
‘I’m going now,’ she told him. ‘There’s what’s left of yesterday’s chicken in the fridge for your lunch and you can go to the chippy for dinner if you like.’
‘OK. See you later,’ he mumbled, taking the five-pound note that she held out to him and disappearing with it into his room.
‘The restaurant will be serving breakfast now,’ Megan said quietly, looking round at Graham and Barbara Major and then finally allowing her eyes to rest on Dean, who had spent the night sitting at Wayne’s bedside with Wayne’s left hand clasped between his own two. ‘Why don’t you go and get yourselves something to eat?’
‘I don’t want to leave him,’ Dean protested almost inaudibly, his throat dry and his voice cracking.
‘Dr Weber will be here at eight,’ Megan continued. ‘She’s Dr Mutambara’s registrar. If you go and have breakfast now, by the time you get back she’ll be able to tell you how things are going.’
‘Come along!’ Graham got up. He liked to be active and in control of every situation. Watching and waiting over his son, who seemed to him to be more dead than alive, had been a difficult experience. He patted Dean on the shoulder. ‘We can’t do anything for him at the moment. Let’s go and get something to eat and then come back and see what the doctor has to say.’
Chief Superintendent Alison Brown called Anna over to her the moment she walked into the open-plan office that housed the Crime Investigation Department.
‘I’m putting you in charge of investigating a near-fatal hit-and-run that took place last night,’ she told her. ‘Sergeant Appleton will fill you in on the details. I’ve told him to wait in your office. You’d better see him first thing, before he goes off duty.’
Anna hurried to obey. This sounded a little more promising than the other cases that had come her way since returning from her maternity leave. Was it significant that this was the first occasion when a female officer had been in charge of allocating the jobs? No. She had no evidence for that. More likely it was that there had been a reluctance to trust her with important cases too soon after her return to work – or perhaps the chronic shortage of officers had left Alison with no option on this occasion.
When she got to her office, she found not only Malcolm Appleton but also Louise Otterbourne waiting for her. Malcolm summarised what had occurred and then handed over a folder of reports.
‘The car has been recovered for forensic examination,’ he finished. ‘Tracy Burton, who responded to the call reporting the theft, tells me that the owner was far from pleased at not being able to have it back, so you can expect some flak from him. He’s some sort of businessman who’s used to getting his own way. The other thing about him is … well, Louise had better tell you. She was there.’
‘It’s the dog,’ Louise explained. ‘You remember I told you Mel Stanton had PD Q tracking the driver of the car? Well, it seemed odd to her – and I agree – that the trail led to the house where the car’s owner lived. We were wondering if it wasn’t really stolen at all.’
The combination of Jonah’s warrant card and his wheelchair convinced the charge nurse who opened the door when he and Bernie rang the bell at the entrance to the ICU that he should be allowed in. He led the way to a small office where Dr Luisa Weber, a tall fair-haired woman who spoke with an almost imperceptible German accent, was giving Wayne’s family an update on his condition.
‘We’ll give him an MRI scan this morning,’ she said, as they entered. ‘’The CT scan that we did last night suggested that there’s been a small bleed in the brain. We want to check on that and also to look for any signs of increased intracranial pressure.’
‘What does that mean?’ Dean asked anxiously.
‘When the brain is subject to trauma, there is often an inflammatory response, which increases the pressure inside the skull and can cause damage to the brain. We’ve been administering drugs to reduce the pressure, but we need to check that they’ve been working. If the pressure is getting too high, we may have to reduce it by using surgery. Usually that just involves drilling a small hole through the skull to drain off some of the cerebrospinal fluid.’
‘Is that dangerous?’ Dean’s eyes were wide open and scared.
‘No – it’s a routine procedure,’ the doctor assured him. ‘It’s often used for monitoring the pressure as well as for treating it, so we may decide to do it even if the pressure isn’t reaching dangerous levels yet. It’s OK. It won’t cause any permanent damage.’
‘And when will you bring him out of this coma that you’ve put him in?’ Graham asked. ‘How long is he going to be like this?’
‘That will depend how he progresses. I’ll be able to tell you more after we’ve done the second scan, and when we get the lab results back from his bloods. There are biomarkers that we can look for that indicate the degree of inflammation that has occurred.’
‘And afterwards – once he’s awake again?’ Graham’s voice was unintentionally aggressive in his desire to learn more about the longer-term future for his son. ‘How long before he’s back on his feet again?’
‘Again, it’s too soon to say,’ the doctor sighed, looking round apologetically, knowing how inadequate her answers were. ‘He may make a complete recovery. But you do need to be prepared for it to take a long time, and … and it may be that he will be left with some permanent disability. We just don’t know at this stage.’
‘What sort of disability?’ asked Jonah. ‘Are we talking the sort of thing you get after a stroke?’
‘Yes. That’s right,’ Dr Weber confirmed. ‘Traumatic brain injury is essentially the same as a stroke – and if you have any experience of stroke, you’ll know that the long-term effects are very variable. The sorts of things that we could be talking about are speech impairment, partial paralysis, difficulty with swallowing … a whole range of things, like I said.’
‘And he might never get better?’ Dean asked in a small voice.
‘I’m really sorry,’ the doctor looked round at them all again. ‘At this stage, we really don’t know.’
There was a knock at the door. The charge nurse put his head round it.
‘There’s another police officer here wanting to talk to the family,’ he told them. ‘Shall I bring her in here, or …?’
‘If she doesn’t need to speak to me, I could do with getting on,’ Dr Weber replied. ‘I’ve got other patients to see. And we’ll need this room for the interdisciplinary team meeting soon. Can you find them somewhere to talk in the waiting area?’
Jonah was pleased to see Anna waiting for them when they all trooped out after Nurse Mark Aston, who led the way to a seating area in the corridor outside the ICU.
‘Are you the SIO[1]?’ he asked. ‘I was hoping they’d find someone reliable.’ He turned to address the others. ‘This is DI Anna Davenport,’ he told them. ‘She’s one of our best. Anna – Wayne’s parents, Barbara and Graham Major, and his husband, Dean O’Brien.’
Anna shook hands with all three and then indicated to them that they should all sit down.
‘As DCI Porter says,’ she began, ‘I’m leading the investigation into this incident. Would you like me to tell you what we’ve managed to find out so far?’
‘Yes,’ Graham replied quickly, ‘and what you intend to do to bring whoever did it to book.’
‘We’ve found the car,’ Anna told them patiently, hoping that the victim’s father was not going to make trouble. ‘It’s being examined by our forensics team for evidence of who was driving it. According to the owner, it was driven away sometime yesterday evening. I’ve got officers checking out known offenders with a history of taking without consent. We’re also looking at footage from traffic cameras along the route that we think the car followed after the collision with your son.’
‘Is that all?’ Graham sounded disappointed that there was no talk of an imminent arrest. ‘What about putting out a call for witnesses? Someone must know who it was.’
‘Please!’ Dean appealed to him, ‘Don’t make a fuss. Catching them won’t help Wayne.’
‘I know it’s frustrating,’ Jonah intervened, ‘but really this is all standard police procedure in a case like this. We can’t work miracles, but don’t worry, we’ll get there in the end.’
‘We’ve got several witnesses who saw the incident,’ Anna added. I’m going to be interviewing them later today. As DCI Porter says, we’ll be working as fast as we can, but these things take time.’
‘And if we take shortcuts, we may not be able to make a charge stick,’ Jonah continued. ‘Just knowing who did it isn’t enough. We need to collect sufficient evidence to get a conviction.’
Reluctantly, Graham accepted this argument and sat back in silence while Anna went through some questions with Dean about Wayne’s movements the previous evening and checked the contact details of the friends that he had been with in the pub. After obtaining the Majors’ address and mobile phone numbers, she got up to go.
‘Thank you all for your help.’ She shook hands all round again. ‘And can I say again how sorry I am that this has happened and assure you that we will be doing everything we can to find out who was responsible.’
Jonah followed her out, without stopping to take his leave. Bernie said brief goodbyes to Dean and the Majors and then hurried after him. She caught up with them in time to hear him telling Anna that he intended to accompany her back to the police station. Ignoring Bernie’s protestations that this was not his case and anyway he was not on duty that day, Jonah insisted that he had some important additional information and must be allowed to share it with Anna’s team.
‘I’m convinced that you ought to be considering the possibility that this wasn’t just a random incident,’ Jonah told Anna a short while later, in the privacy of her office at the police headquarters. ‘It could be a targeted attack.’
‘What sort of attack? And why would you think that?’
‘I’m wondering if it could be linked to this spate of homophobic attacks that we’ve seen since the Oxford Pride parade last month. All the victims have been people who were featured in the Oxford Mail item on Gay-led Businesses that it published as part of reporting on Oxford Pride this year. Have a look here.’
A slight movement of the fingers of his left hand made the computer screen attached to his wheelchair rotate allowing Anna to see a sequence of photographs and accompanying text. The first picture was a wide-angle shot showing a large group of people, several of them carrying rainbow banners, many in colourful clothes, one drag queen towering above the rest of the crowd on impossibly high heels.
‘This is just a general view,’ Jonah said, manipulating a small joystick to move a pointer across the screen. ‘But even in this, some people are easy to spot.’
Bernie’s eye was immediately drawn to two figures at the front of the picture, holding hands with their backs to the camera. Even if Wayne’s muscular physique and Dean’s wiry build had not been sufficiently familiar to enable her to identify them, the green jackets with their prominent white lettering would have made them instantly recognisable.
Anna, on the other hand, was struck by another couple.
‘Isn’t this Monica Philipson?’ she asked in a puzzled tone, pointing at another face from the crowd in the picture on Jonah’s computer screen, ‘with her arm around Alice Ray?’
Jonah turned the screen around again to look more closely. ‘Yes. That’s right,’ he confirmed.
‘But -,’ Anna began. ‘I mean … are you telling me they’re …?’
‘Didn’t you know?’ Bernie asked. ‘They’ve been together for … six months, would it be?’
‘About that,’ Jonah agreed. ‘I suppose it all happened while you were on maternity leave.’
‘But Monica isn’t … She can’t be,’ Anna protested weakly. ‘A few years back she had a serious crush on you, Jonah.’
‘But get on and show Anna the article,’ Bernie urged to fill the uncomfortable silence that ensued. Jonah obligingly scrolled down to show more pictures and text.
‘The newspaper thought it was running a story about the contribution that gay entrepreneurs make to the local economy and showing the range of activities that they are involved in,’ he told Anna. ‘They particularly homed in on businesses, like Wayne and Dean’s, which have a positive social aspect to them.’
‘Wayne Major and Dean O’Brien head up Design Ability a small design and engineering firm dedicated to promoting independence for disabled people,’ Anna read out, studying the photograph of two young men standing next to a green van with white lettering on the side.
‘The first incident was at this company,’ Jonah said, scrolling down to show a picture of a row of three cars parked outside an ordinary-looking shop-front. ‘It’s just an ordinary private hire firm, whose owner just happens to be gay. They have a special scheme, working with a local charity, to provide transport at cost for people who can’t afford things like visiting relatives in hospital or getting to the old folks club. After the article in the Mail, the shop was vandalised and then a few days later a note was pushed through the door telling them to get out or else. Based on the content of the note, the issue seems to be the fact that cabs from this firm are used to supply transport for the school run. All the drivers have had their criminal records checked and all the paperwork is in order, but it seems that some people still don’t like the idea that their child could be in a car with a gay man.’
‘So these people are equating gay with paedophile?’ Anna asked.
‘That certainly looks like one aspect of it,’ Jonah agreed, ‘but I’m not sure that it covers all the cases. This one, for instance, doesn’t really seem to bear quite that same interpretation.’
The next picture was of a hairdressing salon, which Anna recognised as a well-known business in the centre of Oxford. She had been there herself once or twice, but found the prices too high for anything except very special occasions.
‘Marcus Antonio – or to give him his real name, Mark Brown – has had this shop for thirty years. He claims he’s never had any trouble until now. His customers are almost all women and he reckons they actually enjoy being attended to by a camp gay man. I rather get the impression that he revels in it and goes rather over the top to promote this image. His shop has been vandalised too. He reported it right away, but didn’t link it to the Gay Pride article until later, when he received a death threat through the post.’
‘At his shop?’ asked Anna, ‘or at home?’
‘At the shop. It came the same day as the taxi firm reported getting their note. That’s what made us think they might be linked.’ Jonah scrolled down further. ‘Finally, we have social enterprise, which takes unemployed youngsters and trains them in bicycle maintenance. They get given old worn out bikes, and they fit them out and sell them on - mainly to students, who use them while they’re at the university and then sell them back at the end of their course. Again, there’s no particular reason to associate this with anxiety about paedophilia. As before, there’s nothing very remarkable about the organisation or its manager, except that he just happens to be gay and to have featured in the article in the Mail. Again, his business premises were vandalised, but this time, they went further and attacked him personally.’
‘How?’
‘Just verbal abuse and threatening behaviour,’ Jonah admitted, a little regretfully Anna thought. ‘A man approached him as he was leaving work and shouted out a load of expletives. He got on his bike and headed for home and he thinks he lost him, but he’s worried in case he followed him and now knows where he lives.’
‘Did he recognise the guy?’ Anna asked.
‘No. He said he’d never seen him before. We tried to get a description from him, but he was too shaken up by the incident to remember anything much.’
‘Do you think it really was a targeted attack?’ Anna asked. ‘Couldn’t it have just been chance encounter with a drunk looking for a fight?’
‘Perhaps,’ Jonah conceded, ‘but the incidents do seem to be escalating, and isn’t it too much of a coincidence that it happened at the same time that the other businesses were targeted.’
‘And is Design Ability the only business featured in the article that hasn’t been attacked?’ Anna asked.
‘No. There’s also a wedding planning service run by a lesbian couple and a lingerie shop belonging to a trans woman. They haven’t reported any incidents. I’ve got it on my to do list to check that it isn’t just that they don’t trust the police enough to tell us about it.’
‘Very much aimed at gay men then,’ Anna murmured. ‘I wonder if that tells us anything.’
‘That’s the one thing that doesn’t seem particularly strange about the incidents,’ Jonah answered. ‘There are always far more attacks on gay men than gay women. But everything else about them seems all wrong. They’re not at all like normal homophobic attacks – if it’s acceptable to talk of any attacks as “normal” – which are usually drink-induced and done on impulse. This looks more organised and pre-meditated, as if someone has a grudge.’
‘And you think Wayne’s “accident” could actually be a further ratcheting up of the attacks?’ Bernie asked.
‘That’s right.’
‘But, as Gavin so astutely remarked,’ Bernie objected, ‘it seems incredible that the driver of a speeding car could recognise Wayne from behind in the dark.’
‘You recognised him in that picture,’ Jonah countered. ‘They didn’t recognise Wayne; they just recognised the lettering on his jacket.’
‘Well, I suppose it makes sense for you to include this as potentially part of the pattern of attacks, but I’d better get on with investigating it as a hit-and-run,’ Anna said decisively. ‘Here’s my list of witnesses who were there and saw the car.’
Jonah and Bernie scanned down the list that she held out to them.
‘Leroy Gilbert?’ Bernie asked. ‘Living in a flat in the Windrush tower?’
‘That’s right. How did you know?’ asked Anna.
‘He’s a friend of ours – well, sort of. His family were Peter’s neighbours when he lived down Cowley Road.’
‘He was in the bus shelter when it happened,’ Anna told them. ‘The other witnesses were all on the other side of the road – outside the pub. I’m going to interview them all later today. I’ve also got a list of kids from the Blackbird Leys estate with histories of joy-riding. So there’s plenty to keep me busy,’ she concluded, with a wry smile.
[1] Senior Investigating Officer: the officer leading the investigation into a crime.