Page 2 of Little Children (Detective Kim Stone #22)

One

One Month Earlier

‘You asked to see me, sir?’ Kim said, taking a seat opposite her boss.

The chair she always tried to avoid had been pulled away from his desk by a metre or so – it was going to be that kind of meeting.

Over her years working for DCI Woodward, she had learned that meetings where she was required to take a seat rarely worked out well. They could be one out of two categories.

First and most frequent were those instances where she was being questioned about her behaviour, attitude or actions following a complaint. In those meetings, Woody was irate and she calmly answered for her crimes.

Second, and less frequent, were those times when Woody was giving her an instruction that he knew she wasn’t going to like. Flip side. Then he was calm and she was irate.

What was worrying her at the moment was that he looked totally calm, a signal that he was minutes away from some kind of explosion.

He sat back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his stomach. Not a movement she was familiar with and therefore difficult to read.

‘Not been a bad couple of weeks, eh, Stone?’

‘No, sir,’ she said somewhat dubiously, as though they’d done very little since their last major case; in fact they’d been chasing clues around the Black Country for thirty-six hours straight. She was guessing that he meant more recently, since they’d had a two-week period without a body.

‘I suppose a bit of a holiday,’ he added.

She fought the urge to show outrage. He didn’t really think they’d been sitting on their hands doing nothing all day. He was leading her somewhere, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to follow.

‘Anything major at the moment?’ he asked, despite already knowing the answer. If they had anything major, she’d be briefing him about it.

‘Got an armed robbery in Gornal,’ she said.

‘That can go to Dudley,’ he answered.

‘A serious assault in Lye.’

‘Brierley Hill can take that.’

‘And the usual Monday morning reports to go through.’

It was barely nine o’clock and she’d been summoned to his office straight away, so she wasn’t sure what else might warrant their attention.

‘Which can all be passed to other teams,’ he answered.

‘Sir, do you want to just tell me the correct response here and save us both some time?’ she asked.

‘What I’d like to hear is that there’s nothing you can’t disperse amongst other teams.’

‘Okay,’ she said, wondering what exactly he was freeing her up to do. ‘There’s nothing I can’t disperse amongst…’

‘Hilarious,’ he said without any hint of humour. When his face was this set, she truly worried what was coming next. ‘I’ve had a call from an old friend of mine,’ he continued. ‘Her team could do with some help on a case they’re working.’

She tipped her head. ‘Sir, you were present in my last appraisal when you said I don’t play well with others.’

‘I like to think that was in the past, Stone.’

‘It was two months ago.’

‘I think you’ve come a long way in recent weeks.’

‘You mean Bryant is coming with me?’ she asked, referring to her long-time colleague, the man who was her conscience…and responsible for her manners.

He nodded. ‘As is the rest of your team.’

‘Sir?’ she questioned as the wariness in her stomach grew. What could be serious enough for him to want to transplant her entire team? What the hell was he getting them into?

‘Did you hear about the boy who went missing up in Lancashire?’

‘Blackpool, wasn’t it?’ She’d seen it on the news.

Woody nodded.

‘Wasn’t that a week ago?’ If he wasn’t back by now, it was looking like a totally different kind of investigation. ‘They need help on a case for a missing boy?’ she went on, confused. Even if this did turn into a murder enquiry, she was sure the local CID teams could deal with it.

‘There’s another. It hasn’t hit the wires yet, but a second boy went missing late last night.’

Okay, that shed some light on the reason for the secondment. Two boys in the same week.

‘Ages?’ she asked.

‘Twelve and eleven.’

‘And they don’t have other local teams they can draft in?’

‘You know anything about Blackpool, Stone?’

‘There are lights?’ she asked, remembering a trip there with Keith and Erica, her foster parents, when she was ten years old. It had been within the first few months of living with them, and she’d barely uttered a word to either one of them.

She recalled that the day had been grey and dismal, the arcades crowded and noisy.

The chips had tasted of sand, and the heavens had opened once they’d set off for a drive through the two miles of illuminations.

Her main recollection was of bright lights being distorted by the hammering rain pounding off the windows.

The day hadn’t ended a moment too soon.

‘They’re about to start their busiest week of the year. It’s half term. They’re about to be overrun with unrelated offences. The figures Miranda quoted are horrendous.’

‘Miranda?’ she asked.

‘Detective Chief Inspector Miranda Walker. We trained together back in the day.’

Okay, Kim kind of got it. They’d worked with other forces on joint investigations, but normally with a neighbouring force like West Mercia or Staffordshire. Surely Lancashire police could call upon help closer to home? Why involve a force from over a hundred miles away?

‘What aren’t you telling me, sir?’ Kim asked.

Woody took a breath. ‘There are whisperings.’

She waited.

‘You’re aware of the new reporting line?’

‘Of course.’

Kim knew that Crimestoppers had teamed up with forces across the country to launch a new Police Anti-Corruption and Abuse Reporting Service, available to all communities across the UK.

The line could be used to report any police misconduct with total anonymity. The information was then passed to the relevant force’s professional standards unit or specialised detectives.

‘They’ve had an anonymous tip about a member of Blackpool CID?’ she asked.

‘Two,’ he clarified. ‘No details, no names.’

‘What’s the nature of the complaints?’

‘No specific incidents or victims or even timelines, but both calls were about a specific team under Miranda’s supervision. Apparently the complaints include inappropriate police conduct, officer violence and potential corruption within the team.’

His hands were still knitted together.

‘What else?’

‘Miranda thinks the complaints may have come from within. So you can understand why she wants to find the source.’

‘Jeeesus,’ Kim said, getting a clearer picture.

DCI Miranda Walker was in an impossible position. The minute she started asking any questions, she was potentially putting team members at risk. No matter how far the police had come, snitching on your own could get you killed.

‘Sir, is there anything else?’

He shook his head and unlaced his fingers.

‘So, what’s our primary role, helping to find these two boys or trying to weed out bad coppers?’

‘Pretty much both,’ he answered.

‘To summarise, we’re off to Blackpool immediately to help a team that doesn’t want us there, to solve a case, as well as to ask questions about inappropriate police behaviour but not any that will blow our cover.’

‘Yes, that just about sums it up.’

‘Cool. Sounds like just my kind of case,’ she said before heading off to break the news to her team.