‘Yes, boss,’ Rachel said, fingers twirling her pen like it was a marching baton.
‘Kevin, see about making a prison visit,’ Gill said.
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Arson – the same accelerant, petrol, was used in the previous arson attacks at the mosque and the school.’ Gill summarized what they had from the fire investigation officer. ‘What more do we know?’
‘No joy so far on the garages,’ Kevin said. ‘Also following up on two incidents of theft from vehicles. Siphoning.’
‘Whereabouts?’ Gill said.
‘One Royton, one Middleton.’
‘Bit risky,’ Janet said, ‘you could be caught by the owner, seen by neighbours.’
‘Yes, but you won’t be on CCTV like you would if it was station forecourt,’ said Kevin.
‘Good point,’ Gill told him and almost wished she hadn’t when he started to preen. She indicated the boards. ‘And the Perry twins?’
‘They attended an EBA, Bulldog Army, meeting earlier in the month,’ Lee checked his notebook, ‘at the George Inn on Sunday.’
‘Yes,’ Gill said, ‘where talk was heard about “sending a message”.’ She wiggled quote marks with her fingers.
‘We know this how?’ Janet said.
Gill smiled, raised an eyebrow. ‘I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you.’ Intelligence from infiltrators was a double-edged sword. You couldn’t reveal a source without jeopardizing an ongoing investigation and risking an informant’s safety. Sometimes that informant would be a CI, a community informant, someone willing to risk spying on friends and neighbours for a regular few quid to help get by. The other informants were officers in deep cover. Gill couldn’t think of anything worse than pretending to be a lowlife or a fascist or a fanatic. And sometimes infiltration went horribly wrong, with officers going rogue or crossing the murky lines into deeply unethical territory, as had happened with those policemen who’d infiltrated various protest movements, sleeping with the activists, fathering children. Disastrous.
Janet caught on soon enough. ‘Classified?’ she said. ‘We’re treading on someone’s toes?’
‘We might be,’ Gill said, ‘except we are going to focus our attention on the machinations of the far right, neo-Nazis, only in so far as it relates to the murder of Richard Kavanagh.’
‘This could be a hate crime,’ Lee said. ‘Homeless people are at increased risk of violence, seen as other, dirty parasites.’
‘Possible,’ Gill said. ‘The Perry boys are still our only leads. We’ve not found any more evidence on them so I think rather than hang on we arrest them on suspicion, tomorrow morning.’
‘Do we need an armed response unit?’ said Mitch. ‘They may still have the firearm.’