Jo caught up with Reeves and Dimitriou as they were pulling out of the car park and waved them to stop. He wound down the window.
‘Wait up,’ she said. ‘I’m coming too.’
Dimitriou flinched. ‘We don’t need hand-holding.’
‘Don’t be a spoilsport.’
The younger woman began to climb out of the passenger side to make room in the front.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Jo, though the show of deference impressed her. ‘I’m just observing.’
‘Sure thing, ma’am,’ said Reeves.
As they drove, Dimitriou filled Jo in on their suspect – Blake Matthis had been picked up numerous times in the last five years for possession, assault, and threatening behaviour. Currently registered as living at home with his mother, Tracy Grimshaw, he was known to visit his sibling and father in prison once a fortnight. Enough time to pass on info and receive instructions about the family business. He was also seventeen, as of that morning.
‘You’re going to ruin his birthday,’ said Jo. Her eyes were still drawn to Dimitriou’s moustache, and he seemed to realise.
‘Can you stop that?’ he said. ‘You’re making me self-conscious.’
‘Sorry,’ said Jo. ‘It’s … nice. You think Blake will give us anything?’
‘Probably not, but no harm in rattling cages. If Xan was executed on their patch, they must have an idea who did it.’
‘Might have been the Matthis family themselves. Maybe Xan was screwing them.’
‘The thought had occurred,’ said Dimitriou. ‘Despite the low level trouble-making, Blake’s managed to keep his nose clean so far. I doubt he pulled the trigger.’
Jo turned her attention to Reeves. ‘So how are you finding it?’
‘Good,’ she said.
‘Tell Jo about the OD,’ said Dimi.
‘What’s that?’ asked Jo.
‘I’d rather forget it,’ said Reeves.
‘A squat in Abingdon,’ said Dimitriou. ‘Girl had been dead for a while. Let’s just say they had a rodent problem. It was nasty. Mel Cropper was licking his lips.’
Jo smiled. Cropper headed up the crime scene team. He had a taste for the macabre and apparently no sense of smell.
‘Carrick’s a great gaffer,’ said Reeves, as if keen to change the subject.
‘A definite improvement on his predecessor,’ Jo agreed.
‘Yeah, I heard he gave you a hard time,’ said Reeves.
Jo wondered what exactly Reeves had been told about her, by Dimitriou and the others. Since moving to Thames Valley, she’d worked two cases that yielded positive results, but made national headlines, and required some serious public relations handling. In both, lengthy inquiries had absolved her of wrongdoing, but the notoriety lingered. Phil Stratton, her former DCI, hadn’t been so lucky. From her perspective, he’d hampered the investigations, refusing to listen to his officers, and she only guessed the rest of team had put the boot in too when giving their own evidence. In the end, just as she went on maternity leave, he’d been unceremoniously shown the door. Ostensibly it was an early retirement, but he and everyone else knew that was a weasel way of saying he was surplus to requirements. He was only forty-eight, and he hadn’t even been given time to clear his desk and say farewell. Jo had actually bumped into him in the supermarket while pushing Theo around, about a fortnight after the C-section. He’d insisted, with slightly too much enthusiasm, that he was enjoying some time away. The microwave meals for one, and the two bottles of whisky in his basket, suggested otherwise.
* * *
The Matthis house, a sixties semi, was on the edge of Blackbird Leys Park, in the centre of a sprawling estate south of the city. Mostly built as social housing, it had had a reputation for many years as a high-crime area, but things were improving. It still accounted, however, for a significant proportion of low-level call-outs, like anti-social behaviour, petty theft, and domestics.
They parked a few doors down, and attracted a few sullen stares from some local teenagers hanging around outside a shopping parade opposite. One took out his phone. The fact Jo and her colleagues weren’t wearing uniforms hardly mattered. Their sort could smell police a mile away.
As Dimitriou and Reeves led the way, Jo couldn’t help but admire the latter’s attire. It helped she had the confidence and shape to make it work, but the suit was no off-the-rail number like her own. Jo thought they were probably about the same height in socks, but Reeves’ heels boosted her stature considerably. She obviously hadn’t dressed expecting any sort of foot-chase, and Jo wondered how much beat work she’d done previously.
They reached the front of the house. The TV was on inside and Dimitriou rang the doorbell. A dog barked within, and through the marbled pane beside the door Jo saw it hurtling towards them, before its paws began clubbing and clawing at the inside.
They waited for half a minute before Dimitriou rang again, this time banging the door with the fleshy part of his fist as the dog continued to go nuts. ‘Ms Grimshaw, it’s the police. We’d like a word, please.’
Jo looked around, checking their surroundings. At the shops, one of the youths was still speaking into his phone, watching them.
Another shape appeared through the marbled pane, and the door opened. A morbidly obese woman, maybe not quite forty, stood there. She held the short lead of the equally rotund Staffordshire bull terrier, head like an anvil, tail held stiff as a car aerial. Dimitriou held his ground and Jo was glad to be a few steps back: she’d never got on with dogs.
‘What do you want?’ Tracy was breathing hard, and her cheeks were red, as if they’d interrupted a workout, though it seemed more likely it was just the exertion of getting to the door.
‘We were hoping to speak to Blake,’ said Dimitriou.
‘He’s not here,’ she said.
‘Any idea when he’ll be back?’
‘No.’
She began to shut the door, but Dimitriou put his foot over the threshold and blocked it. Tracy Grimshaw’s features went from bored to lethal in a blink. ‘Be careful where you put that,’ she said. ‘Niko here likes bacon.’
Dimitriou left his foot in place while he fished out a card, and offered it to her. ‘If Blake puts in an appearance, we’d love to have a chat.’
Grimshaw looked at the card but didn’t take it. After a second or two, Dimitriou withdrew his foot. The door slammed in their faces.
‘I think that could be the start of something beautiful,’ said Jo.
Dimitriou posted the card into the letterbox, where Niko promptly set about attacking it, and they turned back towards the car.
As they were getting in, Jo noticed that the boy who’d been on his phone outside the shops was slipping between parked cars towards an archway leading under the parade. He was still looking her way. It might be nothing, but …
‘Hey, I’m just going to talk to those kids,’ said Jo.
Reeves nodded. Dimitriou remained by his open door. ‘Suit yourself.’
Jo crossed the street towards the shops. ‘What’s up?’ said one of the kids – he looked about ten or eleven, slouched on an oversized mountain bike and sucking on a cigarette. Jo ignored him, and followed the route taken by the boy with the phone. The back of the shops opened up on a large block of flats, buttressed by external stairwells at intervals, leading up to three tiers of identical front doors. Jo couldn’t see the kid at first and was thinking about turning back when she heard a metal screech coming from her left. It was another passageway, underneath the main block of flats, which she guessed led to the main estate artery, Brook Street, on the other side. She quickened her feet towards the opening, and stepped into a darker passage. It was about fifty metres long, with narrow garages, more like lock-ups, on either side. The boy she’d followed was standing by the door of one at the end. He clocked Jo at once, then turned and ran, shouting, ‘Cops!’