Page 31 of Little Children (Detective Kim Stone #22)

Thirty

Kim timed their return to the station to ensure she’d be able to have a briefing with her own team before they joined Red Butler’s team for theirs.

Penn had just updated them all on his meetings with Lewis’s form teacher and his friend Danny.

‘Danny said Lewis never told him exactly what he overheard, but he said Lewis definitely heard his family talking about getting rid of him.’

Kim considered this admission and found there was little they could do with it.

She wasn’t as surprised as she should have been, but without knowing exactly what Lewis overheard, they had no idea where to start.

She wasn’t sure the statement of a twelve-year-old boy who couldn’t remember the exact wording of what his friend heard was going to hold weight with anyone she needed to convince.

She needed something more concrete before Red would consider there was something deeply suspicious about the Stevens family.

‘And I’ve checked with Thai Airways, the most popular airline for that destination, and Skidmore isn’t booked on any of their flights. But there are still a few airlines to check.’

‘Stay on it, Penn,’ Kim said. Roderick Skidmore may have packed a bag and told his cleaner of his plans, but she wasn’t totally convinced he was leaving the country.

Her gut said they’d been fed that story so they wouldn’t look for him anywhere else.

Especially once they found out he’d lied about being at Coral Island.

‘I didn’t see him anywhere near Lewis inside the arcade,’ Stacey said as though reading her mind.

‘Doesn’t mean he wasn’t the person in the car park and the reason Lewis didn’t move for almost a minute,’ Bryant offered.

‘True,’ Stacey admitted. ‘Next I want to interrogate every camera on that side of the building to see if anything that far back on the car park is visible.’

Kim nodded her agreement. They needed to do everything possible to find out who Lewis had been talking to before entering the arcade.

She glanced into the main squad room before speaking again. The local team was starting to drip into the room.

‘Okay, the three names that were left under Stacey’s keyboard all have a story to tell about this team.

Jasmine Swift felt intimidated by Butler after a burglary.

He got a bit too familiar and made a nuisance of himself.

She handled it herself with the help of her brother, and he hasn’t bothered her since.

No way in hell she’s raking it up again, so we have no current complainant there.

Dean Jackson says he was smacked around by two of the team.

Already tried to complain and it went nowhere. ’

‘Butler and Moss?’ Penn asked.

‘Butler and Carly Walsh apparently.’

‘Wow,’ Stacey said, obviously fighting the urge to look Carly’s way.

They all knew that eighty-two per cent of officers referred forward to misconduct proceedings were male. That still left eighteen per cent of the total complaints being about women.

‘And finally, we have Pippa Jacobs, a prostitute and drug addict who is being harassed for sex in exchange for not facing charges.’

‘Gotta be Moss,’ Penn and Stacey said together as the man himself entered the squad room, followed by his boss.

‘No chance of a complaint from her. She’s got a house exchange to Lytham next week and just wants to get away from him.’

‘You taking any of this to the chief?’ Stacey asked.

‘We’ve got nothing,’ Kim said. ‘Not one complainant on the record. We gotta go deeper. But right now we’ve got a briefing to crash,’ she said as DC Dickinson sauntered in to complete the Blackpool team.

She turned to her colleague. ‘Bryant, please don’t take offence at what I’m about to do.’

‘Okay.’

She headed for the door, and her team followed.

‘Hope you don’t mind us joining the party,’ Kim said. ‘You’ll make the drinks, won’t you, Bryant?’

His face tensed as he headed towards the kitchen.

Exactly as she’d hoped.