Page 37 of Little Children

‘Come on – let’s go see what this is about,’ she said. The more time and distance they put between themselves and Skidmore, the cleaner they’d feel.

He plugged in the postcode. ‘It’s only a couple of miles,’ he said, starting up the engine.

Maybe just long enough for Kim to work out how she was going to approach this. She had no idea if the names left on Stacey’s desk were linked to the case of missing boys or about the actions of the squad.

One thing it did prove was that a member of Red’s team wanted to share information. DCI Miranda Walker was right to be concerned.

Kim found herself thinking of some of the police misconduct cases that had made headlines.

Stephen Cloney from Merseyside had sold addresses of drug dens so his contacts could raid the properties and steal the drugs. He’d been jailed for five years.

In May 2019, PC Benjamin Kemp had been approached by a child with mental health issues. He’d pepper-sprayed her and beat her more than thirty times with a baton. He’d been dismissed from the force but not charged with any offence. Unlike PC Benjamin Monk, who’d tasered Dalian Atkinson for thirty-three seconds and kicked him in the head. He’d been convicted of manslaughter.

Met police officer David Carrick had admitted forty-nine charges. Twenty-four of which were rape.

Her own force wasn’t squeaky clean. In the last nine years, over seven officers had been convicted of various offences. Plus there was the infamous Serious Crime Squad that had operated from 1974 to 1989, when it had been disbanded following an investigation into incompetence and abuses of power. The team had been guilty of falsifying confessions, partially suffocating suspects to get confessions, and abusing payments to informants. More than sixty of their convictions were later quashed, including those of the Birmingham Six and the Bridgewater Four.

But that didn’t make corruption elsewhere any easier to stomach. They all had a duty to root out and put an end to any behaviour from police officers that went against the code of conduct, and she hoped the first person on the anonymous list would help them with that.

* * *

Within a few minutes, Bryant was pulling up in front of a small townhouse with an almost-new electric car on the drive.

‘How are we doing this?’ he asked as they got out of the car. ‘We don’t even know why we’re here.’

‘Minor point,’ she said, approaching the front door.

A Ring cam peered at her from the frame.

A woman answered with a single, ‘Hello,’ through the speaker. Kim had no idea if she was home or not.

‘Jasmine Swift?’ Kim asked.

‘Who are you?’ she responded without answering the question.

‘Detective Inspector Stone and Detective Sergeant Bryant from West Midlands police,’ she said, holding up her identification.

‘Hold it closer, please.’

Kim did so. If the woman was home, she was on her own.

‘What do you want?’

‘A face-to-face conversation if that’s possible.’

There was no verbal response, but she heard footsteps approaching the front door.

It opened on the chain.

‘ID again, please.’

Kim was happy to show it again. She preferred people to be cautious, and it was telling her enough to know how to start the conversation.

The woman who opened the door was in her early thirties with a mane of black silky hair tied in a ponytail. Her attractive face was enhanced with just the right amount of make-up so that she looked like she was barely wearing any. She wore a purple V-neck tee shirt cut high enough not to be revealing but low enough to show she didn’t mind showing off her body. Her black jeans hugged her frame, showing shapely curves. On her feet were oversize dinosaur-feet slippers with claws.

The woman caught Kim’s lingering gaze on the footwear.

‘Perks of working from home. Not visible on a Zoom call.’