Page 70 of Little Children

And yet the ex-boyfriend was the person they’d visited first.

‘Family next?’ Bryant asked, clipping in his seat belt.

Roy shook his head as he pulled away from the kerb. ‘Nah, someone else is taking that call. There’s somewhere else we need to be.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Bryant said.

‘The morgue,’ Roy answered before turning his attention back to the road.

Bryant frowned. They’d seen the body less than an hour ago. Why the hell did they need to see it again? What was Roy up to?

Forty-Four

Gornal Wood was one of the three small villages, along with Upper and Lower Gornal, forming the larger Gornal area.

Located on the western boundary of the Dudley Metropolitan Borough, it contained a small shopping area and was the location of the Crooked House pub, a famous landmark due to its wonky appearance as a result of mining subsidence, and notoriously destroyed by fire in 2023.

The area also housed the Straits Estate, a housing conurbation built in the early sixties.

Kim still found it amusing that all the streets within the Straits were named after famous poets and writers. She smiled as they took a left on Chaucer Avenue to turn into Kipling Road.

Her smile disappeared as she remembered what they were here to do.

The vast majority of the houses they’d passed were semi-detached and well kept.

‘I think this is it,’ Penn said, parking at the bottom of a sloping red-brick drive that ended at a single-car garage to the right of the house.

Kim squeezed between the two small cars on the drive to reach the front door. She took a deep breath and readied herself before knocking on it. Informing family members of a death didn’t get any easier with practice, especially in the case of a child.

The door opened and for a second her heart stopped.

She did a double take. Any doubt she’d had about being in the right place evaporated.

Standing before her was Josh Lucas’s double. Well, Josh Lucas if he’d been alive, fit, healthy, well nourished and not covered in a hundred bruises.

‘Hi, is your mum home?’ Kim asked.

‘Well, one of them is,’ the teenage boy offered with a smile.

Kim smiled back in response. There was something engaging about this kid.

She was reaching for her identification when a casually dressed woman appeared behind him.

The smile instantly froze on her face.

Kim left her identification where it was. She didn’t need it. The woman knew exactly who they were.

‘May we come in?’ Kim asked gently as the colour began to drain from the woman’s face.

The boy looked from one to the other. ‘Is this about Josh?’ he asked.

Kim said nothing.

‘Harry, go to your room,’ the woman said without looking at him.

‘I’d rather stay,’ he said, stepping back and taking his mother’s hand.

She regarded him for just a second before squeezing his fingers and motioning for them to enter.