Page 42 of Little Children (Detective Kim Stone #22)

Forty-One

‘Anything?’ Kim asked, placing a cuppa on Penn’s desk.

‘I’ve gone back two months so far and there’s nothing that fits the age or description of our victim.’

She’d left Penn to interrogate the missing persons reports while briefing Woody. Although he wasn’t thrilled that Keats had summoned her, he understood her decision to return. He also supported her resolve that if she needed to, she’d summon the rest of her team back in a heartbeat.

Right now, her priority was in putting a name to the face she’d looked down on at the morgue.

Learning someone’s identity was always a priority, not least so the family could be informed, but also because everyone deserved to be referred to by name rather than as a body, or a corpse, or a victim.

She knew her compulsion stemmed from spending years as a nameless, faceless part of the care system as a child.

She took a seat at Stacey’s computer and logged in. Penn was taking the logical approach and working backwards. She really didn’t have that kind of time to find out if there was any chance of his death being linked to the investigation up north.

If her age estimate was right, then the boy in the morgue was around fifteen years of age.

Lewis was twelve years old. Noah was eleven.

She entered the from date search field and entered January 2020 . In the end search she entered December 2022 to cut the search in half. Penn would be working his way back towards her.

Kim began flicking through the records, glancing at the photos, confident that she would recognise the boy in the morgue. Seventeen records in and she stopped dead.

There he was.

‘Got him,’ she said.

Penn wheeled his chair around and nodded immediately at the image on the screen.

‘Joshua Lucas, twelve years old when he went missing on the fourteenth of September of twenty-one,’ Kim said as Penn took down the address.

She sat back in her chair. Joshua had been abducted three years ago and allowed to live.

Why?

And more importantly, what had been done to him during those three years?