Page 59 of Little Children (Detective Kim Stone #22)

Fifty-Eight

Warren was just closing the door to the gym when they got there.

Kim placed her toe against the frame as an extra measure of insurance.

‘Hey, buddy, got a minute?’ she asked with more manners than she felt. The confrontation with Steve Ashworth was still rattling her nerves.

He looked down at her foot, the positioning of which belied the fact he had a choice.

She forced the reporter from her mind. She was watching Warren’s micro expressions more closely this time and detected a shadow of fear.

She liked that. People who were nervous had something to hide, which meant that there was something he didn’t want her to know.

That made her even more determined to find out what it was.

He stepped back into the gym and flicked a switch that illuminated only the lobby area, leaving the rest of the vast building in eerie darkness.

‘So, how do you pick ’em?’ Kim asked, taking a seat on the sofa.

‘Sorry? Pick what?’

‘The kids who are good enough for the league?’

‘What league?’ he asked without enough confusion in his voice.

Kim sighed. ‘Warren, you are going to have to assume that we’ve come back here with a lot more information than we had earlier.’

‘I honestly don’t have a?—’

‘Fella, we know for a fact that Josh’s time away from his family was spent fighting.

We also know he didn’t go willingly. The kid was walking home.

As it’s unlikely he spent four years fighting with himself, we can assume there’s another kid involved.

And why stop at two when you can just lift anyone off the streets or arrange to have them abducted. ’

Warren swallowed loudly, telling her a lot. He knew something, and he was terrified.

‘You know kids are going missing, and that kids are turning up dead and beaten. From abduction to murder, I’m working out how many crimes I can arrest you for.’

‘I don’t do anything, I swear,’ he said, almost falling onto the sofa.

For his legs to fold on him so easily, Kim believed him.

‘But you know stuff, so let’s start there.’

‘I can’t. They’ll know. They’ll hurt me.’

‘We can do this down at the station if you’d feel safer.’

‘God, no, definitely not. I just can’t put my family in that kind of?—’

‘Everyone’s got a family, Warren. But okay, let’s talk hypotheticals.’

He nodded.

‘Is it possible that boys from this gym have been trafficked into an underground fighting league?’

‘It’s possible,’ he said, looking behind him even though the place was in darkness.

‘And is it possible that your boss, the gym owner, might be heavily involved?’

Warren nodded.

‘Was the fire a set-up? A distraction to make Josh’s abduction easier?’

Again, he nodded.

‘When did you know?’

‘I didn’t know for certain,’ Warren said as the air seemed to leave his body.

His flesh crumpled in on itself. ‘I got suspicious that something had happened when I questioned the camera angle the following day. The same company’s been servicing them for years.

They’d never left one positioned like that before. ’

‘You think your boss moved it?’

Warren nodded.

‘Why Josh?’ Kim asked. There must have been hundreds of boys passing through these doors.

‘Josh had talent. He had skill from the minute he stepped into the ring. He had a gift that couldn’t be taught and the right amount of anger to go with it. He could have been a professional,’ Warren said with fondness in his tone.

Kim took out her phone and thrust it towards him.

‘That’s Josh now.’

Warren’s mouth dropped open as his face drained of all colour.

Kim could see that he wanted to look away but couldn’t. Not until his own body betrayed him and he turned to the side and vomited.

Penn grabbed a wastepaper bin and placed it beside him.

‘Okay, okay, put it away,’ he begged before making more retching noises.

Kim waited.

‘Th…that’s not boxing.’

‘Oh, he boxed all right. Did it for years, and he’s got the broken bones to prove it. But poor Josh, who had such a gift for it, sustained an injury that put him out of action, so they used him as a punching bag instead before strangling him and throwing his body in the canal.’

Warren turned and puked again, but Kim wasn’t prepared to go easy on him. He’d known something about Josh’s disappearance and had chosen to do nothing. Josh could have been home safe and sound if this man had spoken up about what he knew.

‘Imagine having to go and explain that to his family, Warren.’

Warren raised his head. There were tears streaming over his cheeks.

‘You mentioned your family, so I’m gonna take a wild guess that you’ve got kids.

I’d like you, for the purpose of true empathy and understanding, to imagine one of your children being hung up like a dead animal: terrified, alone, starving, wondering why you haven’t rescued them from being punched repeatedly until their internal organs pop inside their?—’

‘Okay, I’ll tell you everything I know, I swear.’

Kim sat back and waited.

For the first time she actually believed him.