Page 29 of Little Children (Detective Kim Stone #22)

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.’

Stacey waited.

‘Not many friends, respectful to teachers, doesn’t go looking for fights but always wins them, and he seemed to think his family were planning on getting rid of him.’

‘Blimey, not bad,’ she said, trying to reconcile the matchstick-model maker with the terror that his family had portrayed.

‘Yeah, and the boss wants me looking at flights to Thailand. Looks like Skidmore might be on one of them. Any luck with the footage?’ Penn asked, taking two cans of Coke from his man bag. He slid one across the table towards her.

‘Nothing so far, but…’ Her words trailed away as she glanced back at the screen. In the few seconds since she’d looked away, someone had slid into the booth opposite Lewis.

It was Kevin. The fifteen-year-old brother who said he hadn’t seen Lewis once he’d left the house.

The older boy leaned forward, elbows on the table. Lewis took another sip of his pop and stared down at it.

Despite not being able to hear the words, it was easy to see that Kevin was doing all the talking – and quite loudly.

His posture was forward and animated. Occasionally, Lewis would shake his head, but he continued to stare at his drink.

Kevin paused for breath now and then or to look around the café, but then went right back into his urgent speech.

Lewis only offered head shakes and shrugs as responses.

Kevin took something from his pocket and thrust it at Lewis. It was a phone.

Lewis refused to take it, shaking his head vigorously.

Kevin also shook his head with what appeared to be despair as he put the phone back in his pocket.

He pushed himself up and stood at the end of the table as though giving Lewis one last chance.

Lewis didn’t move a muscle, not even when his brother passed by him, balled his fist and gave him a good smack on the side of his head.

Given what Penn had just said, Stacey couldn’t help but wonder which member of his family had wanted to see him gone.