Page 49 of Little Children

‘Okay, thanks for your time,’ Kim said, turning away. Her questions were just going to have to wait.

‘No problem, but…’

‘What?’ Kim asked, turning back.

‘I shouldn’t really say, but there’s a cellar. He keeps it padlocked, and I never clean it. I don’t know what he does down there, but whatever it is, he doesn’t want anyone to see.’

‘Okay, thanks,’ Kim said, heading for the car as she took out her phone.

Red answered almost immediately.

‘We need a warrant,’ she said, getting into the car. In an ideal world, she would have applied for the search warrant herself, but this wasn’t her force, and all official channels had to be navigated by the home team.

‘For where?’ he asked.

‘The home of Roderick Skidmore. He’s got a secret room, and he’s done a runner. He’s looking?—’

‘I’m not wasting my time,’ Red said, cutting her off before she’d even told him the best bit.

She felt her features wrinkle in confusion. ‘Did you hear what I just said? He also followed Lewis into the arcade, and now he’s disappeared.’

‘I heard you. It’s not as compelling as you think it is. The man likes to play the poker games at the arcade, and having a locked room in your home isn’t a crime.’

Kim couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘Have you seen the artwork in his house? And I know you know about his conviction.’

‘I don’t need to see it to know it’s not going to be Impressionist masterpieces, but it still isn’t gonna get me to ask for a warrant. Leave it alone. He’s not our man,’ Red said before ending the call.

Kim stared at her phone in disbelief. A known paedophile who seemed familiar with both boys had been proven to be in the same area when the first of them went missing and that didn’t deserve immediate attention from the senior investigating officer?

Red’s refusal to obtain a warrant coupled with the gaping holes in the investigation were sounding alarm bells in her head. She was beginning to think that Detective Inspector Butler didn’t really want these young boys found at all.

Twenty-Eight

Stacey’s timeline of Lewis’s movements was starting to come together after trawling through fifty-six cameras.

The hours she’d spent interrogating the footage meant she now had a good idea of camera sequence and location, so she could follow someone’s movements. There was a logic to the system that enabled her to move around it efficiently.

Lewis had been in the arcade for half an hour, and so far she had trailed his every movement for twenty-four of those thirty minutes.

He had walked through the arcade in no great rush. He’d glanced at some of the machines, paused by others. The whole time his right hand had been deep in his pocket as though clutching his five pounds tightly.

At the bottom of the ramp that led to the lower level, he’d put the five-pound note into a machine to get change.

He’d wandered into an enclosed space and had a few plays on a fruit machine and then wandered out again, before approaching the window that displayed the prizes that could be won from the ticket machines.

Stacey had been able to track his every move, and he’d spoken to no one.

He’d then dawdled back up the ramp and entered the café area, where he’d bought a can of Coke and sat at a table close to the window.

At this point, he’d been sitting alone for four minutes, sipping his drink. Stacey wondered if she’d ever seen a lonelier-looking kid. He certainly didn’t look like the troublemaker they were being told about.

She knew he left the arcade in six minutes’ time, but she refused to skip ahead. She wanted to be able to account for every second he was in that arcade. What she was failing to understand right now was how this hadn’t already been done.

‘Yo, comrade,’ Penn said, entering the war room.

‘Anything?’ Stacey asked.

‘Yeah, the kid likes making matchstick models.’