Page 66 of Little Children

‘But surely?—’

‘My man, you gotta throw away the book you’re living by. Up here, we do real police work, and you should already have realised, Toto, that you ain’t in Kansas any more.’

Forty-One

‘Anything?’ Kim asked, placing a cuppa on Penn’s desk.

‘I’ve gone back two months so far and there’s nothing that fits the age or description of our victim.’

She’d left Penn to interrogate the missing persons reports while briefing Woody. Although he wasn’t thrilled that Keats had summoned her, he understood her decision to return. He also supported her resolve that if she needed to, she’d summon the rest of her team back in a heartbeat.

Right now, her priority was in putting a name to the face she’d looked down on at the morgue. Learning someone’s identity was always a priority, not least so the family could be informed, but also because everyone deserved to be referred to by name rather than as a body, or a corpse, or a victim. She knew her compulsion stemmed from spending years as a nameless, faceless part of the care system as a child.

She took a seat at Stacey’s computer and logged in. Penn was taking the logical approach and working backwards. She really didn’t have that kind of time to find out if there was any chance of his death being linked to the investigation up north.

If her age estimate was right, then the boy in the morgue was around fifteen years of age.

Lewis was twelve years old. Noah was eleven.

She entered the from date search field and entered January 2020. In the end search she entered December 2022 to cut the search in half. Penn would be working his way back towards her.

Kim began flicking through the records, glancing at the photos, confident that she would recognise the boy in the morgue. Seventeen records in and she stopped dead.

There he was.

‘Got him,’ she said.

Penn wheeled his chair around and nodded immediately at the image on the screen.

‘Joshua Lucas, twelve years old when he went missing on the fourteenth of September of twenty-one,’ Kim said as Penn took down the address.

She sat back in her chair. Joshua had been abducted three years ago and allowed to live.

Why?

And more importantly, what had been done to him during those three years?

Forty-Two

Having never visited the seaside resort before, Stacey was still trying to work out if she liked Blackpool or not.

She’d spent the last twenty minutes walking around armed with Google Maps and a few postcodes.

Her travels had taken her along a selection of back streets that had probably been thriving in the town’s heyday. Empty properties still bore the signs of what had once been inside: markets, craft shops and cafés. The last back street had spat her out on a long road that, according to Google, would lead her all the way to Coral Island, but she didn’t really want to go that far, just far enough to see with her own eyes where Lewis had disappeared from the view of the camera.

The bed and breakfast establishments on her right were gradually giving way to gift shops and knick-knack stores, chip shops and burger bars as she neared the centre.

The car park Lewis had crossed was coming into view, and now she began to pay attention. She saw from the sign that the space held over three hundred car parking spaces, and right now, at 10 a.m., it was almost full.

She continued along the road, looking at the premises on her right and then over to the car park.

A sinking feeling grew in her stomach as she neared the spot on the pavement that lined up with where Lewis had stopped to chat with someone. So far, she hadn’t seen one camera on any of the nearby premises that would be any use to her.

She walked another fifty feet and guessed she was now probably level with the exact spot. Behind and to her left was a tiny café, no camera. Directly behind was a dry cleaner’s, no camera. To her right was a kebab shop… and in the top corner, above the sign, was a camera.

Please, please, please don’t be a dummy device, Stacey prayed as she knocked on the door. A light shining in the back of the premises told her that someone was there despite it not yet being open.

A dark-skinned male with an apron, a mop and a face full of irritation headed towards the door.