Free The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill Page B

excitement of it, the pride, the sense of achievement, woke with him every morning. Serrailler had been spot on. No one from his background hadever made it to Lafferton CID before, let alone to sergeant. He didn’t intend his climb up the career ladder only to stop here.
    He pushed the swing door open with his shoulder and went on towards the CID room but, as he passed, the DCI called out. The door to his room was open.
    ‘That for me?’ Serrailler held out his hand.
    ‘Course it is.’
    ‘Thank you.’
    He took the paper cup of cappuccino whichNathan had fetched not from the vending machineat the end of the corridor but from the new corner café in the next street, run by a Cypriot couple and kept going mostly by policemen.
    ‘DC Dell will just have to go out for his own.’
    The DCI sat back in his chair. It’s daft, Nathan thought, he looks younger than me, looks about the right age to be starting on the fast-track graduate scheme, notwell up the ladder already. Serrailler’s hair, white blond and disarranged as ever, shone in the light coming from the window behind him. ‘Dishy DCI’ Emma called him. Freya Graffham had thought so and they would have been just right. And then maybe …
    Maybe nothing.
    ‘Bring me up to speed.’
    ‘Been a bit too quiet.’
    ‘Don’t say that.’
    ‘Only one thing giving us grief has been this gang … kids,only they don’t act like kids. I went up to the Eric Anderson last week, saw the head, saw a couple of teachers. They know who it is, pretty much. They’re all no-hopers, they bunk off most of the time and nobody at home gives a toss. It started with small stuff only now it ain’t so small. Now it’s pretty well-organised shoplifting, hanging about in the evenings targeting people walking home from workand grabbing handbags, mobiles that sort of stuff … then there’s the cars. They’ve started nicking top-of-the-range motors but it ain’t for joyriding, they’re cleverer than that, these motors are vanishing into thin. I reckon they’re in with some much bigger villains.’
    ‘How old are these kids?’
    ‘Fourteen, fifteen … last couple of years at school. GCSE supposedly. Ha.’
    ‘Names?’
    ‘I’ve got somebut they’re fly – slippery as eels. Learned a lot of stuff from brothers and dads who’ve done time.’
    ‘OK, let’s target the brothers and dads. Check up on everyone who has been inside, in the last three years … better include those who are still there as well. There’s plenty the kids can learn when they visit. We’ll have a list of prisoners and then follow up children in this age group. I’ll havea word with uniform about stepping up presence … known times. All that’ll do is move them somewhere else, of course.’
    ‘We reckon the cars are being moved at night – two, three in the morning.’
    ‘OK, the names the head teacher gave you … get to some homes, talk to the mothers, see if they’re aware of their kids getting up and going out at two in the morning … or perhaps not even coming in fromthe night before.’
    ‘Guv.’
    ‘Any other excitements?’
    ‘The cathedral was broken into one night. Some damage done, nothing taken … some weird graffiti on a couple of the pillars. Seems like some religious thing.’
    ‘Who handled it?’
    ‘I went to talk to the Dean … he was very nice. Bit too nice …’
    ‘Ah, forgiveness, you mean?’
    Nathan aimed his paper cup at the waste-paper bin, threw and missed.
    ‘If there’s nothing else, I’ll get on to this gang of kids. They want slapping down sharpish. It gets on my wick. They have everything handed to them and what do they do?’
    ‘Everything but decent parenting.’
    ‘Right. Thanks, guv. You have a good holiday by the way?’
    ‘Very peaceful. I had to cut it short … one of my family was in hospital.’
    ‘I’m sorry … everything OK?’
    ‘Yes. It was my sisterbut she’s fine.’
    Nathan Coates went out, closing the door, and Simon sat thinking