Page 33 of Little Children (Detective Kim Stone #22)
Thirty-Two
Kim could tell from her colleague’s hard stare that something had happened in the kitchen. She wondered briefly what it was costing him to maintain this charade. She’d check on him once the briefing was over.
‘Hope you don’t mind me jumping in,’ she said, moving to the front of the room.
‘But we really need to merge these investigations and assume the disappearance of Lewis and Noah is linked,’ she went on, even though she wasn’t totally convinced they were.
The Stevens family were hiding something to do with Lewis, which suggested otherwise, but there was a nagging feeling in her stomach that the two cases were connected somehow.
Additionally, linking the investigations would allow her to keep closer tabs on the Blackpool team.
Red began to shake his head. ‘You gotta trust us on this. Lewis is a runaway. We’ve investigated?—’
‘And you’ve identified the person Lewis talked to in the car park for more than thirty seconds?’
This time Red looked at Adil, Dickinson and Carly, who all remained silent.
‘And you absolutely have to know that Kevin, the brother who already dumped him somewhere in the past as a punishment, caught up with Lewis in the arcade café, shouted at him and smacked him before storming off?’
Red was saved from answering when his phone rang. He held up his hand to excuse himself and took the phone into their mini squad room, closing the door behind himself.
Kim stole a glance at Stacey, who gave a slight shake of the head to indicate that nothing concerning the three names they’d been sent was on show.
Red paced back and forth a couple of times while looking their way.
‘Don’t think anything you’ve said is grounds to change the way we’re investigating,’ Roy said, folding his arms over his stomach.
‘Sorry, Roy, didn’t hear your boss temporarily promote you while he stepped out to take a call,’ Kim said, meeting his gaze. His expression left her in no doubt about his feelings for her and she couldn’t care less.
‘That was Bobby Stevens,’ Red said, rejoining them. ‘Kevin left the house after being grounded, and they can’t reach him on his mobile phone.’
Roy started to clap. ‘Bravo, Inspector. Two for the price of one. That poor family now has two missing boys.’
‘Shut up, Roy,’ Red snapped at him, surprising everyone in the room, before looking her way again. ‘They don’t want you to visit them again.’
‘You don’t find that suspicious?’ Kim asked. ‘And since when did we take instruction from suspects?’
‘They’re not suspected of anything. They’re missing one child, and now they’re missing another. For the time being, I’d prefer you didn’t contact?—’
‘Hang on. We’ve uncovered more about Lewis’s disappearance in twenty-four hours than?—’
‘Wait one minute,’ Red said as his entire team gave her daggers. ‘Let’s not get personal and keep this about the case. Whatever their reasons, the Stevenses are still victims right now, and we’ll honour their request.’
The atmosphere in the room was charged.
Kim was guessing she wasn’t popular with any members of the local team right now and that was okay with her. As long as the rest of her team remained open and approachable, there was a chance they could finish what they’d come here to do.
‘Right, let’s call it a night,’ Red said as Iris walked in with her vacuum cleaner.
‘Temperatures are way too high. Dickinson is stopping by the Reids on the way home, and we’ll debrief about Noah first thing.
I’ll consider your suggestion that the cases are linked, but for now I need to go and ask uniforms to keep an eye out for Kevin Stevens. ’
‘Mind if Penn tags along to the Reids’?’ Kim shot out. ‘He’s very good with families.’
Red hesitated before shrugging. Good, she’d hoped he was done battling for one night. And it would be useful for one of her team to get a read on the other family while spending some time with one of the quietest members of the home team.
Dickinson stood, and Penn took his cue, following the Blackpool detective constable out the door.
The rest of the local team filed out with silence and dark looks.
‘And the Miss Congeniality award once more goes to Detective Inspector Stone,’ Bryant said, once they were alone. ‘What I don’t get is why you should have all the fun?’
‘Perks of the job,’ she said, checking the time on her watch. ‘Okay, guys, nothing more we can do until they let us into Noah’s case tomorrow. Back to the hotel, get a good meal and a good night’s sleep. The only question I’ve got left is what happened in the kitchen, Bryant?’
‘Crime scene photos on his phone. Young female, raped and murdered.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Stacey said, shaking her head.
Bryant was struggling to speak in full sentences, as though he wanted the filthy words out of his mouth as quickly as possible.
‘He didn’t even know her fucking name,’ he said as his voice rose. ‘What kind of man, never mind police officer, attends the scene of a girl raped and murdered and can’t even remember her fucking name?’
Stacey was busying herself with something on her screen. No one liked it when Bryant lost control of his anger.
‘Bryant, calm?—’
‘No offence, guv, but being told to calm down has never induced someone to actually calm down.’
Kim showed no reaction, but his language and his tone told her he was having an extreme reaction to Moss. Completely understandable, especially as he was father to a daughter himself.
She agreed that Moss’s actions were beyond despicable. No victim or their family deserved that kind of indignity. But if it was a single incident, it wasn’t going to get him thrown off the force, and that was exactly what they needed to do.
‘Stace, head down to the car,’ Kim instructed.
Stacey gathered her belongings in record time. Kim only spoke again once she’d left the room.
‘Bryant, if you haven’t got the stomach for this, tell me now. I won’t judge you, and I’ll send you back down to our patch.’
He didn’t answer immediately, and when he did it was barely more than a whisper.
‘Let me sleep on it, guv. You’ll have my answer in the morning,’ he said, heading towards the door.
She followed him silently down to the car.
She could ask no more of him than that.