Page 70 of Little Children (Detective Kim Stone #22)

Sixty-Nine

‘Hang on. Slow down,’ Red said, holding up his hands.

After Bryant had failed to answer his phone, Kim had called Red, who had luckily been pulling into the car park after receiving a call to return for a final handover.

In the long minutes it had taken for him and Adil to reach the office, Penn and Stacey had been blowing up both Bryant’s and Roy’s phones to no avail, while Kim had been making a big decision.

Despite the fact that Red’s tentacles seemed to have touched every area of their investigation, she was forced to confide in him.

She knew she couldn’t find her colleague without him.

Right now, she didn’t know if she could trust him, but she had no choice but to trust him with this.

‘You’re saying that Roy and Bryant have gone out on a call?’

‘There was no call,’ Kim snapped with exasperation. She really wished he’d catch up without her having to explain it to him.

‘There was no call from dispatch,’ she said again. ‘Roy pretended there was to get him out of here under false pretences.’

‘For what reason?’ Red asked in disbelief.

Adil looked far less surprised.

‘Red, do you have any idea what kind of man Roy is?’ she cried, aware of every passing minute.

He shrugged, still unsure what the conversation was about. ‘He can be a bit rough around the?—’

‘He’s bent, Red. I mean, really bent. Not just a little bribe or an occasional blind eye.’

Red began to shake his head, but she detected an imperceptible nod from Adil.

‘He’s a racist, sexist, disgusting human being. He has photos on his phone from crime scenes. Victims, Red – female rape and murder victims.’

‘No, he would never…’

‘He’s shown them to Bryant. You know what else? He raids the home of a woman named Pippa Jacobs regularly to get sex in return for not shopping her. The first time she refused he planted drugs in her house, and she ended up in prison. She was clean, and he set her up.’

‘I was there when she was busted. It was a good arrest.’

‘What was your intelligence? How did you know to raid her place? Don’t answer because you don’t need to. It was Roy, wasn’t it?’

He was nodding but only half-heartedly. ‘I saw the drugs being?—’

‘Of course you did. He’s pretty clever. But what you didn’t see was the visit earlier in the day where Pippa Jacobs refused to give him sex for silence. She dared to say no to him, and look what happened.’

Kim couldn’t work out if the look of disgust on the man’s face was real or forced…but he was still shaking his head.

‘And did he tell you about his impromptu visit to the morgue yesterday after visiting Justin Holmes? Or that a long blonde hair was coincidentally found on the body of Jasmine Swift after his visit?’ Kim stopped herself from asking if he already knew about it.

‘You’re saying he’s framing a man for murder?’

‘You gotta agree that it’s a little suspicious. He’s as bent as they come, Red, and right now he’s got one of my officers alone somewhere. If anything happens to him, I swear you’ll?—’

‘What do you want me to do? How the hell would I know where?—?’

‘I know,’ Adil said quietly before turning to his boss.

‘He does take photos. He showed me one, and then when he could see how disgusted I was, he warned me to keep my mouth shut. That was at the Sainsbury’s car park.

He said he could push me over the edge and no one would question a thing. He’s probably taken him there.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Red said, running his hand through his hair.

‘Stay put,’ Kim said to her team as she grabbed her jacket.

Red was already heading out the door.

She ran after him and prayed to God that they weren’t already too late.