Page 57 of Little Children (Detective Kim Stone #22)

Fifty-Six

Penn was true to his word, and a fresh pot of coffee had brewed by the time she got there.

A bribe in the form of a pack of donuts for Jack on the desk had secured Barney’s admission into the station.

‘I just can’t stop thinking about it,’ Penn said. ‘We’re talking about kids taken from their families and forced to fight.’

‘Or worse,’ Kim added, picturing Josh being used in the most barbaric way. ‘What do the numbers say?’ she went on, taking a seat opposite Penn with her cuppa.

‘Hard to get a clear picture based on all the forces, but by narrowing the age range to pre-teen, we’re looking at approximately thirty to fifty boys who go missing each year and are never seen again.’

‘Definitely enough for some kind of sick league, but how the hell would we find out?’

‘Gotta be on the dark web somewhere,’ Penn offered. ‘Any network needs a hub to communicate.’

‘But Cybercrime are crawling over that place. How have they not come across it?’

Penn shrugged. ‘We already know there are search engines that allow users to connect without fear of being tracked. We also know there are trading sites where people can purchase illegal goods and services.’

The idea of it always gave Kim the image of masked men parked up in dark, unsavoury areas with their car boots open. If only the dark web was no more sinister than folks selling stolen or counterfeit goods out the back of vans.

Even she had heard of sites like Silk Road, a kind of Amazon for drugs, fake drivers’ licences and countless other illegal products. Although shut down by the FBI in 2014, it had continued to raise its head in various forms over the years.

‘So, can we just search the dark web for anything to do with illegal child fighting?’ Kim asked, trying to picture it as a filthy Google.

‘Tried it,’ Penn said. ‘No joy. It’s either dressed up as something else, or we’re going to have to get more creative and go deeper to find where it’s hiding.’

‘What do you mean about being dressed up as something else?’

‘I mean it’s like buying something and it not being what you thought.

I suppose it’s like wearing a mask. Like a place that’s advertising itself as a sweet shop in its store window, but when you get in there, they’re selling drugs.

The site could be masquerading as something else, and we need a search engine that can go deeper into the code to give us what we want. ’

Kim scratched her head. ‘Bloody hell, Penn, you’re losing me.’

‘It gets worse. If the hub of the league is hiding as something else, it may not only be on the shop front.’

‘Go on,’ Kim said after groaning loudly. Every sentence he uttered pushed them further away from finding these monsters.

Penn wasn’t put off as a soft snore came from Barney at her feet.

‘Okay, back to our sweet shop analogy. Let’s say we’re looking for the word cocaine in the IP address. We’re not gonna find it because the IP address is listed as Haribo, but we don’t believe it and we access the site anyway. And now we’re in, we can search for cocaine, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Kim agreed.

‘But what if cocaine is listed as lemon sherbet or fruit burst. Heroin could be listed as?—’

‘Okay, I got it. So, you’re saying that trying to find this on the dark web is virtually impossible unless we know the codes they use?’

‘Pretty much,’ he said, pushing away his keyboard.

Kim thought for a moment.

‘Not so fast with the defeatist attitude. If we’re right, we’re talking about a network.’

‘Correct.’

‘Well, networks were around a long time before the internet, so maybe this one existed before then too. And good old networking starts how?’ Kim asked, pushing back her chair.

‘Talking, word of mouth, newsletters.’

‘Exactly. Grab your coat. I know precisely where we need to start.’

Penn followed her and Barney down to the car park, where a familiar vehicle pulled up alongside them. They barely had a second to respond before Steve Ashworth was out of the car and blocking their way.

‘Detective Inspector, long time no see.’

Yes, it had been over twenty-four hours, and she’d felt it was too good to be true.

‘Had lunch with Lydia today. You remember Lydia, don’t you? The wife of the man you?—’

‘Oh, fuck off,’ she snapped, trying to walk around him.

He stepped right in front of her, and she had to stop short so as not to touch him. She could imagine what he’d make of that. Barney growled, straining on the lead.

‘Aah, losing your cool now, Inspector?’ Ashworth goaded. ‘Probably not the first time. It’ll come as no surprise to learn that Lydia really, really hates you. So damn helpful she was. Gave me lots of dates, times. She still has them after all these years. Makes for very interesting reading.’

She attempted to step around him again as Penn looked to her for guidance.

‘Oh, and I found Amber Rose. She’s twenty-eight now, and life hasn’t been all that?—’

‘I’m not interested,’ Kim growled.

‘Oh but you were interested, Inspector. Interested enough to cause a man’s death.’

Kim stepped into his face. ‘Ashworth, so help me God, I’ll tear every?—’

‘One of those pages from your notebook,’ Penn finished, getting in the middle of them. He then stepped back, forcing her away from the reporter and giving her a second to regain her sanity.

Ashworth met her gaze with a look of triumph that he’d broken through her composure and got the reaction he’d been waiting for.

He offered her one last smirk before he got back into the car.

‘Damn it,’ she cursed under her breath as she got into Penn’s car.

Her colleague said nothing as he pulled out of the car park, but he’d done her a huge favour.

If he hadn’t got in between them, there was no telling what she would have done.