Page 12 of Little Children (Detective Kim Stone #22)

Eleven

Unsurprisingly, the house next to the Stevenses’ was the exact same layout. It was owned by a couple in their early sixties – Joyce and Dennis Smith.

Joyce had happily invited them in, and Dennis had put down his newspaper and turned off the television to accommodate them.

Although the house had the same bones of the property next door, that was where the similarity ended.

To Kim’s eye, the walls had been freshly papered, and the paintwork was sharp and clean.

The difference in the style of windows told her that this couple had bought their council house and a great deal of pride was taken in its upkeep.

The same pride continued into the garden from what Kim could see.

Kim had seen places like this before. At a guess, she would say that the couple had moved in decades ago when the estate wasn’t as rough. It had probably deteriorated around them, but they were happy in the home they’d made.

‘How may we help?’ Joyce asked once Kim and Bryant were sitting on the sofa.

‘We’re investigating the disappearance of the boy next door.’

The woman’s lips pursed slightly, but she nodded, waiting for a question.

‘Do you know Lewis well?’

They both shook their heads.

‘I mean, we tried,’ Dennis offered. ‘When they first moved in, they only had the two boys. We invited them round, but they never came. Tried chatting to them out back, but they’d just go back in. You can only try so many times,’ he finished.

Joyce looked like she wanted to say something. Kim waited.

‘I’m not being mean, but I think they’re just not very nice. We’ve not seen many friends dropping by over the years. Not for them or the children.’

Kim wasn’t too fussed about that. Many families liked to keep themselves to themselves.

‘Have they ever given you any trouble?’ Kim asked.

They lived next door to a fifteen-year-old, a twelve-year-old and a bunch of toddlers.

They both shook their heads no, surprising her. At the very least, she’d have expected a bit of noise.

‘And the parents?’

‘Not directly,’ Dennis answered. ‘They’re a bit loud sometimes, arguing and shouting. It’s been worse since he lost his job. Money troubles, I should think. A lot of mouths to feed, so a lot of yelling and banging of doors. That last fight was awful.’

Joyce nodded. ‘Funnily enough, it was the night the boy went missing. We saw him go out, then the older boy went out, and then the parents had a huge humdinger of a row, and then Bobby stormed out. There was no more noise, and we went to bed. First we knew that Lewis was missing was seeing the police car come to the house the next morning.’

‘You didn’t see any of them out searching, calling his name?’ Bryant asked.

Often parents of missing children couldn’t keep still. Even if it was a fruitless mission, they had to be out doing something: knocking neighbours’ doors, searching last-known places, talking to the child’s friends.

Joyce shook her head. ‘They called the police the last time he ran away, so we thought he might have done it again.’

Yeah, that seemed to be the general consensus from everyone, Kim thought.

‘Are they close?’ she asked. ‘The parents and the kids, I mean. Did you see that?’

Joyce grimaced before shaking her head. ‘No, I don’t think so. They don’t seem to spend any time with the older boys. I see Kevin with a couple of friends now and again, but Lewis is always on his own. Gets into trouble a bit for fighting I think.’

Yes, they’d already heard that as well.

‘They had the police come and talk to him to straighten him out once. Scare some discipline into him. Same ones who came after the break-in.’

‘They were burgled?’ Kim asked, starting to wonder what else they didn’t know.

‘A couple of months back now. Never caught the robbers, but you don’t really now, do you?’

Joyce’s question wasn’t at all malicious, and Kim understood why she’d said it. Burglaries were not easy to solve without some kind of hard evidence, and so many of them became embarrassing statistics.

‘And they asked those officers to come talk to Lewis to straighten him out?’ Kim clarified.

Joyce nodded.

If it was Red and Roy, she could now understand Mrs Stevens’s use of their first names.

‘Well, it’s what I heard anyway,’ Joyce said with a pensive expression.

‘Joyce…’ Dennis warned.

Again, Kim waited.

‘I know, love, but he’s been gone for days now,’ Joyce said.

Kim sat up straighter.

Dennis sighed then looked at the two of them before continuing. ‘There are things we know for sure which we’ve told you, and things we’ve only heard that we haven’t mentioned to anyone,’ he said. ‘We don’t want to send you looking in the wrong direction.’

‘That’s very considerate of you, but as police officers we have to consider every option. Please continue.’

Joyce hesitated again, but Dennis nodded for her to spill whatever beans were in her mouth.

‘Well, when we first heard Lewis was missing, we thought it was some kind of punishment gone wrong.’

Kim felt the hairs on her neck prickle. ‘Why would you think that?’

‘We heard that once his brother was told to take him miles away to somewhere he didn’t know and dump him there with no food and no money to teach him a lesson.’

‘You really think he did that? Take his brother and put him in danger like that?’ Kim asked.

Joyce shrugged. ‘I don’t know them well enough. It was something I heard at the hairdresser’s. The mother of a friend of Kevin’s said her son had been involved in the punishment.’

‘Did anyone tell the police?’ Bryant asked.

Joyce shrugged. ‘By the time it came to me, it was third hand, so I didn’t do anything.’

Kim wondered if there was any truth to the story, or if it was one of those myths that grew from nowhere when a child was missing.

‘Have you heard about anything else like that?’ she asked.

Joyce shook her head.

Kim stood to leave and then remembered the question she’d come here to ask in the first place.

‘Just out of interest, do you know why there’s been no community involvement, posters, local searches, social media groups, that kind of thing?’

‘They were asked,’ Dennis told her. ‘Sarah in the end house, who does a bit of cleaning for us, she offered to set stuff up. She asked for a recent photo to print some fliers, but they wouldn’t give her one.

They said they didn’t want any fuss or attention cos they were just going to look stupid when he came waltzing back with his tail between his legs. ’

‘When was this?’ Kim asked.

‘The first full day he was missing. Trust me, if anyone could have mobilised the troops, it would have been Sarah.’

Maybe the Stevenses had thought that the first day, but they still seemed stuck on that belief ten days down the line.

Kim thanked the couple before heading back to the car.

Why was everyone so happy to believe the kid had just run away?

Her thoughts were stuck on a twelve-year-old boy who was clearly unhappy with something, and who seemed to find no joy either at home or school.

That was a situation she’d encountered many times during her career when dealing with missing children, but in Lewis’s case, she was experiencing one new element. This twelve-year-old boy had vanished into thin air and not one person appeared to be bothered to look for him.