Page 82 of Little Children (Detective Kim Stone #22)

Eighty-One

She opened the gate to the storage pen and stepped inside.

She grabbed some of the things she could use and headed back out the door, taking care to crouch down into the darkness as she headed towards the van. Starting on the side furthest away from the building, she hammered a nail into every tyre and then paused.

No one was getting away in this vehicle.

There was no sound from the front of the house, so she tied a piece of rope to the drainpipe nearest the van and then crawled in front of the windows and front door. She raised the rope one foot up from the ground and tied it to the drainpipe on the west side of the house.

She looked along the line of rope. Perfect.

Then she rushed back to the barn and opened the door.

‘Ready?’ she asked, walking into the group of boys, all dressed only in underpants. Every boy except Lewis still had a metal ring attached to their wrists. Lewis had had the sense to cut at the thinnest point of the chain for speed.

Six pairs of eyes looked to her as they all stood shivering in the cold air. Their gazes shone with a mixture of fear and hope. She wanted to wrap them all up in blankets, but the priority was to get them to safety.

‘Lewis, I need you to get them away from here. Get away from the barn and hide. You don’t come out until I call you or you hear sirens – can you do that?’

Lewis nodded emphatically and led the other boys out of the barn.

She looked over to the farmhouse. The activity was still obvious through the windows, and both the man and woman had put their jackets back on.

Their return to the barn was imminent, but it had to be on her terms if she was to have any chance at all.

She had to put them at a disadvantage and retain the element of surprise and confusion.

She grabbed the can of fuel and the firelighters she’d seen and poured the fuel into the first two stalls.

She would have liked to douse every pen that had held a boy captive. Yes, she’d be destroying evidence, but she’d seen their conditions with her own eyes.

After lighting both pens on fire, she sprinted out of the barn, careful to leave the door open slightly.

She crouched down at the west side of the barn and waited.

Within seconds, the smell of smoke started to permeate the air.

What had looked to be an airtight structure was nothing of the sort, she realised as smoke began billowing out of gaps in the roof.

She could feel her heart beating in her chest as she waited, grasping the hammer in her hand firmly.

Five seconds later, she heard the front door being thrown open and urgent exclamations.

Just as she’d hoped, they both fell to the ground, having run into the taut rope. An old trick but effective nevertheless.

‘Fuck,’ the man cried out. ‘What the…?Go…go…go!’ he shouted, thinking that their meal tickets were still in the burning building.

The woman sprang to her feet and ran past Kim in the shadows, totally focussed on the flames coming out of the barn door.

Kim darted around the corner and barged into the man, who was trying to get to his feet.

He fell back down and landed on his side.

Kim was immune to his cries as she focussed on what she needed to do.

She swung the hammer down onto his right ankle and heard the bones crack beneath the blow.

She raised the hammer again, thought about the six boys in the barn, then brought it down on his left kneecap, leaving both legs incapacitated.

He screamed out in pain and reached down, trying to locate both of his injuries. Every movement elicited a howl of agony. Kim was satisfied he was going nowhere.

‘Wh…wh…who…the…fuck…?’

‘Your worst fucking nightmare,’ she hissed, reaching into his jacket pocket. Empty. She tried the other one. Bingo. She grabbed his phone and put it in her own pocket. Now he couldn’t escape or call anyone for help.

One down. One to go.

Kim turned and retreated as his accomplice returned from the barn.

‘Tom, the boys aren’t—’ The woman’s words trailed away as she saw her partner writhing and screaming on the ground.

Kim stepped out of the shadows.

A quick appraisal told her the woman was in her early to mid-thirties with short straw-blonde hair. She looked familiar somehow. Kim felt she’d seen her before.

Shaking the thought away, Kim moved towards her at speed with the hammer still clutched in her hand, but the woman was quick and dived to the ground out of reach of the weapon. She rolled against Kim’s legs, sending her crashing to the ground. The hammer fell from her grasp as she hit the dirt.

The woman hesitated before reaching for the weapon, giving Kim the opportunity to try and get herself upright.

But the hammer was just out of reach, and the woman thought better of it, choosing instead to push Kim back down to the ground.

Kim felt the wind being knocked out of her body as the woman punched her in the stomach – hard.

She writhed and bucked, but the woman had her knees clamped into Kim’s ribs. Kim punched and kicked out but couldn’t make contact with any flesh.

Another blow landed in her sternum, causing her head to spin.

She tried once more to lift the woman’s weight from her body and topple her, but the knees just dug in harder. The woman leaned down and placed both hands around her neck. Kim thrashed and moved her head from side to side, but the fingers had a vice-like grip right at the top of her throat.

‘D…do…it. F…finish her,’ Mister called out as he tried to crawl along the ground.

Kim felt the hands tighten around her throat. She tried to gulp air into her body, but it couldn’t get past the chokehold.

Come on, Bryant , she silently prayed. If you ever wanted to be a hero, now’s your time.

The woman’s face swam before her eyes as she heard the sound of footsteps on gravel. Lots of them.

‘Get her!’ Lewis shouted from the darkness.

Suddenly, hands and feet appeared from nowhere: grabbing, punching, kicking.

The pressure released from around her neck, and she began to cough.

The woman was on her back, her hands over her face as she rolled around, trying in vain to avoid the blows being rained down on her from six angry boys who had miraculously found the spirit to fight back.

Kim opened her mouth to stop them when she saw headlights coming up the drive. A siren in the distance told her she was safe, but the boys instinctively gathered around her, leaving the woman to lie groaning on the ground.

‘It’s okay,’ she reassured the boys, seeing the familiar number plate. ‘They’re with me.’

Bryant stopped the car and jumped out, sprinting towards her despite his earlier injuries.

‘Did you stop for coffee on the way?’ she asked.

He pointed to the smoke billowing from the barn. ‘Took a wrong turn somewhere, but that seemed to have your name all over it.’

She nodded her understanding.

‘You okay?’ he asked, also taking a look at the boys.

‘We’re all fine,’ she said, squeezing Lewis’s arm.

Penn approached, and both men started removing jackets and jumpers to give to the boys. Most of them took the clothing, but Lewis just leaned further into her.

‘It’s okay, buddy,’ she said, patting his shoulder. ‘You can trust these men. They’ll take care of you.’

He moved towards Bryant, who was fetching a high-vis jacket from the boot of the car.

A movement to the right caught Kim’s attention.

The woman was reaching into her back pocket.

Kim swatted her hand away and took the phone.

As she did so, the screen came to life with an incoming call.

Kim stared at the ringing phone for long seconds before raising her gaze to her waiting colleague. The last pieces of the puzzle fell into place. She finally had the proof she’d been after.

‘Bryant, I’m taking the car. Text Red immediately. This is what I want you to say.’