Page 53 of Little Children (Detective Kim Stone #22)

Fifty-Two

The first thing Kim noticed when she entered the morgue was that Josh Lucas’s body was still on the table and that the white sheet had been pulled up to his neck as though he’d been tucked in for sleep.

Keats offered compassion and respect to all his charges, but there seemed to be an added element of tenderness employed on this occasion.

‘Okay, Keats, what we got?’ she asked, coming to stand beside the body.

‘More injuries than I can count at the minute.’

‘Go on,’ Kim said, stepping back and leaning against the countertop. Penn remained standing beside the body as though he couldn’t be so presumptuous.

‘General health first. It’s clear to anyone that the boy is undernourished. The weight range for his age is between a hundred and two pounds to one hundred and seventy-two pounds. Josh weighs in at ninety-four pounds.’

‘Six and a half stone?’ Kim asked.

Keats nodded. ‘But it’s important to note this hasn’t always been the case. Neither his organs nor his digestive system show signs of long-term starvation. This is recent.’

Why would he have been kept in good condition for years and then suddenly starved? Kim wondered.

‘There are no remnants of solid food in his stomach, and his last meal was some kind of health shake.’

Kim took a moment to process the information before nodding for him to continue.

‘The boy has had many broken bones over the years. Every fracture leaves a trace, and I’ve counted seventy-six separate injuries. Some are scattered around his body, a couple of toes, three in the ribs, but by far the highest concentration, forty-four to be exact, are in his hands.’

‘Boxing?’ Kim asked.

‘Yes, and not the good kind. Actually, there is no good kind, and the sport should have been outlawed years ago.’

‘The guy at the gym told us there are safeguards though?’ Penn said.

‘Oh, dear boy, let me take a minute to disabuse you of that opinion. Do tell me what regulating body can foresee whether knocking a person unconscious will cause a concussion or permanent brain damage. Tell me how they regulate the force needed to knock a person out or kill them. Name me one governing body that can predict the later onset of a degenerative brain disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which has no cure and which begins gently enough with mood and personality changes and then turns to memory loss, confusion and problems with movement.’

‘But boxers know?—’

‘Did he know?’ Keats shouted, making Penn jump as he pointed to Josh.

Her colleague hadn’t read the signs.

The summons back from Keats with as few words as possible.

The absence of banter at Kim’s expense.

The thoughtfulness extended to the victim.

Very few cases got to Keats emotionally, but this one had.

‘You said this was the bad kind?’ Kim asked, feeling that Penn had suffered enough.

‘Bare-knuckle boxing. You see, early fighting had no written rules. Head-butting, eye-gouging, chokes, et cetera were all permitted. Bare-knuckle boxing originated in England and had a resurgence as we came into the twenty-first century.’

‘But he’s a kid,’ Kim whispered, wondering what kind of sick individual wanted to watch kids beat the shit out of each other.

‘There’ll be money behind it somewhere, just like the legal stuff. It’s big betting, but you won’t find the odds at William Hill.’

‘Underground,’ Kim said.

‘Probably fixtures and a league,’ Penn added.

Given the number of boys missing in recent years, she couldn’t help but wonder what the hell they’d stumbled upon.

‘Okay, Keats, thanks for?—’

‘Yeah, that’s actually not why I called you. You were probably minutes away from figuring that much out yourself.’

He stood at the foot of the body and gently pulled the sheet down to the toes.

‘In addition to the multiple fractures to every phalanx in his hands, there is one recent fracture to both the triquetral and the hamate.’

She frowned, and he grabbed her by the hand and then squeezed at the point where her hand met her wrist.

‘Okay,’ she said, pulling her hand away.

‘Bear that in mind as you take another look at his bruises.’

Kim said nothing. The extensive bruising looked exactly as it had when she’d seen it earlier.

‘He’d had a really bad fight?’ Kim asked.

Keats moved around the table, talking as he went. ‘A bruise starts off red as the blood appears under the skin. In one to two days, the haemoglobin in the blood changes, and the bruise looks blueish, purple or black.

‘Bruises turn green or yellow somewhere between five to ten days. After ten to fourteen days, they are yellowish brown or just brown. Mild bruises can last a few days to a week. Severe ones can last several weeks or longer.’

‘That’s a lot of fights,’ Kim said, seeing the timeline of the bruises everywhere on this young boy’s body.

‘Take a look at his wrists and remember what I said about the most recent injury.’

Kim saw what looked like rope marks on both wrists.

‘That injury to his hand meant he couldn’t fight,’ Kim said as Keats’s discovery began to dawn on her.

‘He wouldn’t even have been able to make a fist.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Kim said, putting together the clues Keats had laid out for her. The malnutrition, the injury, the wrists, the bruises.

‘I don’t get it,’ Penn said, looking from one to the other.

Kim had to swallow down nausea before answering.

‘He was no use to his captors as a fighter, but he had one last purpose as he slowly starved to death.’

She took a breath before saying the words that told her they were dealing with monsters.

‘He was tied up and used as a punching bag.’