Little Boy Lost Read online

  The boy had disappeared on the Monday while walking home from school. It was feared he’d been abducted because his mobile phone had been switched off and he had never given his parents cause for concern before.

  Anna would have to talk to the team who were on the case to find out how far they’d got. But she strongly suspected that the investigation would have been hampered by the riots. After all, there was only so much the Met could cope with at any one time.

  The closer Anna got to Camberwell the more uncomfortable the journey became. She saw groups of hooded youths who were clearly roaming around looking for trouble. Roads and pavements were littered with rocks, broken glass, shopping trolleys and wheelie bins, and she counted no less than four fire-damaged cars, one of which was still smouldering.

  She got her first glimpse of actual rioting as she passed through Kennington. Traffic came to a sudden standstill because a building was ablaze up ahead, flames and smoke billowing into the sky.

  Two squad cars were blocking the road and vehicles were being directed down a side street. As Anna followed the traffic she looked to her left and saw a mob clashing with police in front of the burning building. The officers, who looked to be greatly outnumbered, were using their shields to protect themselves against a barrage of missiles.

  Anna got the impression that the rioters were relishing the thrill while at the same time showing a breathtaking sense of impunity. It was scary to think that such havoc was being unleashed all over the capital. On the radio they were now saying that it had spread across the river into East and North London. Shops were being ransacked in Tottenham, which was where the riots of 2011 began.

  Anna suppressed a shudder and told herself that however bad it got on the streets she must not lose sight of the fact that she had been given a specific task: to find the bastard – or bastards – who had imprisoned a young boy in a derelict pub cellar where he met a cruel death.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Five minutes after her mother had left the house, Chloe was still lying on the bed looking through her photographs.

  It was something she never got tired of doing. Some of the photos made her smile while others made her want to cry. As usual she flicked to her favourites, including the one that showed her taking her first paddle in the sea, and the one where she was sitting on her father’s shoulders and pulling at his hair. She touched his face with her finger and a ball of sadness grew in her chest. Despite what he had done she still missed him. A part of her wished she had never found out the truth. At least the memories of her years in Spain would not have been so bittersweet.

  As always it was like a trip down memory lane, each picture a precious moment from her previous life as Alice Miller.

  She now knew that her father gave her that name when she was two years old. He changed his own name as well from Matthew to James so that when he ran away with her nobody would ever be able to find them.

  She didn’t discover the truth until just over a month ago. That was when everything changed and she learned that she wasn’t – and never had been – the person she thought she was.

  She had always believed what her dad had told her – that her biological mother had died of cancer shortly after her second birthday. But it was a lie that carried on for ten years. And now she had to live with that. To put the past behind her and move on. A new name. A new mum. A new home.

  It was proving difficult, though, and there’d been times when she had wanted to run away from everything. From the pain, the memories, the lingering grief, the pressure to adapt to this new life.

  There were so many questions, so much that she didn’t know about her past, so much that scared her about the future.

  For one thing she didn’t want to have to go to a new school in a few weeks, but she didn’t have any choice. She wanted to go back to the school in Shoreditch where she’d spent the past three years. Most of her friends were there, including Rhona, Charlotte and Sue. But her mum had told her it was on the other side of London so it would take too long to get there and back every day.

  It wasn’t her mum’s fault. She knew that. Her mum only wanted what was best for her and she couldn’t blame her for what had happened. Her dad should never have done what he did. It was wrong and cruel, and she wished that he was still alive so that she could tell him so.

  His face stared up at her now from the album and she felt the swell of tears in her eyes. It was one of the many photos taken during those seven years they lived in Spain. He was standing in front of the bar he ran, squinting against the bright Spanish sunshine. Chloe knew it would have been Sophie who took the picture – she was always snapping shots on her phone and then had the best ones printed so that they could go into the album.

  Chloe turned the page and there was Sophie, the woman who became her adoptive mother. Black hair; kind face; wide, familiar smile. This one was taken just over three years ago during the last day they all spent on the beach together. They’d had a picnic, swum in the sea, and played ball games.

  It was a few days before Dad brought them to England, and just several weeks before he was killed.

  Her mobile phone rang, jarring her out of her reverie. It came as no surprise to see that it was her mum. Who else could it be?

  She wanted to check that Chloe was all right and to reassure her that Tom would soon be there.

  ‘I’m still fine,’ Chloe said off the back of an audible sigh. ‘You’ve only been gone about ten minutes.’

  ‘I know, but I’m almost where I need to be, and once I’m there it’ll be more difficult for me to ring you.’

  ‘There’s no need to worry. I was just about to go downstairs and make myself a cup of tea.’

  ‘Well I bought you a packet of your favourite chocolate biscuits. They’re in the jar.’

  ‘I know. I had some this morning.’

  ‘Of course you did. I forgot. Well enjoy your evening and please be nice to Tom. He really does think the world of you.’

  Chloe wasn’t so sure about that. Tom seemed nice enough, but she sensed that he wished it was still just the pair of them. Him and her mum. Two grown-ups without any kids around to spoil their fun.

  She had overheard them speaking in the kitchen just a week after she came to live here. Her mum was telling him that he wouldn’t be able to move in because she wanted her daughter to settle in first. He said he understood, but it had sounded to Chloe like he wasn’t too happy about it.

  She returned her attention to the album. The last photo on the last page. It was one of her at the age of nine. She was standing in front of the marina in Puerto de Mazarron and she was eating an ice cream.

  Minutes after it was taken, the man she now had nightmares about turned up. After that nothing was ever the same again.

  Chloe put the album back on the bedside table because she didn’t want to upset herself if Tom was going to turn up at any minute.

  She got off the bed, checked her reflection in the wardrobe mirror, and decided that she didn’t need to change her clothes. She was wearing faded dungarees over a tight, red sweater, one of the outfits that she was convinced made her look a couple of years older than she was.

  The noises outside were getting louder, and it wasn’t just the sirens she could hear. There was shouting too now and it sounded close by.

  She peered through the window. Her room was at the front of the house with a view of the road. She could see some of the neighbours huddled outside their homes talking amongst themselves – they all seemed to be looking up the street at something that Chloe couldn’t see.

  She wondered if the vandals who had been causing all the trouble across London had turned up here. She hoped not. She’d seen them on the telly doing damage to shops and throwing things at the police who were trying to calm them down. It was truly frightening.

  She gathered it was happening because a woman had been shot and this had made a lot of people very angry. But it didn’t justify what they were doing. That was what her mum had said and
she agreed. Innocent people were bound to get hurt and that wasn’t fair.

  She knew that she’d be safe so long as she stayed in the house. Even so she couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous. She swallowed down the butterflies that rose in her tummy. She’d learned from bitter experience that if bad men were determined to get at you then it was hard to stop them.

  She consoled herself with the thought that she wouldn’t be alone much longer. Despite her reservations about Tom she knew he wouldn’t let any harm come to her. Her mum would never forgive him.

  Downstairs in the kitchen she put the kettle on. It was the first time she’d had the house to herself and it felt really strange. It still didn’t feel like home and she wondered if it ever would.

  When the kettle boiled, she poured the hot water over a tea bag and carried the mug into the living room. Her mum hadn’t switched the TV off and on the screen there was a car on fire and lots of hooded men standing around it cheering.

  But Chloe was more interested in the glossy magazine she spotted lying on the coffee table. It was one she hadn’t seen before and she guessed it had been delivered with the shopping that morning.

  There was a photo of her and her mum on the cover below a headline that read:

  REUNITED AT LAST

  THE FULL STORY BEHIND A MOTHER’S TEN-YEAR NIGHTMARE

  Chloe picked up the magazine and sat on the sofa to read it. Soon she was oblivious to the sounds out of the street that were growing louder by the minute.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  By the time Anna reached Camberwell the neighbourhood was relatively quiet. The rioters had either moved on to other areas of South London or were lying in wait somewhere until darkness descended.

  They had left a trail of destruction in their wake. Rows of shops had been damaged and looted, walls had been daubed with slogans, and bins had been emptied across roads and pavements.

  Some people had begun to clean up while others stood around in groups looking shocked and bemused.

  Anna was relieved to finally arrive at her destination – a street close to Camberwell bus station that was mostly residential.

  Two police patrol cars and a forensics van were parked in front of the derelict building that used to be The Falconer’s Arms pub. It was set back from the road with a large forecourt that was littered with ash and puddles left by the firefighters.

  Three uniformed officers in hi-vis jackets were standing beyond the crime scene tape that was stretched across the entrance.

  Anna pulled up behind one of the patrol cars and climbed out of her Toyota. At once her nostrils were assaulted by the acrid smell of smoke and noxious fumes.

  She paused on the pavement to look up at the building and assess the damage that had been done to it. The two-storey structure had clearly never been an architectural landmark. It was square and bland, with a painted brick facade and a pitched tiled roof that had been partly destroyed by the fire. The front double doors had been forced open, no doubt to allow the firefighters to get inside.

  Anna was no stranger to Camberwell and she had a vague recollection of having visited the pub some years ago before it closed down. It was unlikely to have been a social visit, so she had probably come here on police business back when the area was a crime hot spot. It still was to some extent, with drug dealing a serious problem along with knife attacks. But in that respect it was no worse than most other parts of London.

  She showed her warrant card to the uniforms and one of them went to get her a paper suit and shoe covers from the forensics van. As she slipped them on she was told that two detectives were already inside the pub along with crime scene investigators and the pathologist.

  Anna ducked under the tape and trudged across the forecourt. As she approached the building, two figures wearing pale blue forensic suits stepped out through the doorway. She didn’t recognise them until they removed their face masks and lowered their hoods. Detective Inspector Max Walker and Detective Constable Megan Sweeny.

  ‘We saw you arrive, guv,’ Walker said. ‘Welcome back to duty. Did you have much trouble getting here?’

  Anna shook her head. ‘There was a pitched battle going on in Kennington, but I managed to avoid it.’

  ‘You were lucky then. And so were we. Soon after we left headquarters a mob of rioters turned up outside and I just heard that it’s getting nasty there.’

  ‘Well I was expecting things to be a lot worse here,’ Anna said.

  A muscle flexed in Walker’s jaw as he wiped a hand across the fine film of sweat that had gathered on his bald head.

  ‘They’ve moved on to Peckham,’ he said. ‘A few hours ago it was pretty bad here apparently. A group of about a hundred crazies tore along Camberwell New Road and spread out into neighbouring streets to cause havoc. Some stopped off at this place and a petrol bomb was lobbed through an upstairs window. So far we haven’t found any witnesses who saw who actually did it, and I’m not sure we’re going to. It took only minutes for the fire to spread, but most of the damage was to the roof and first floor. The brigade was quick off the mark and got here before the whole lot collapsed into the cellar. By then the rioters had cleared off.’

  ‘If it had there’s a good chance the boy’s body would never have been found,’ Sweeny added.

  Anna could tell from the pained look on the detective’s face that she’d been affected by what she had encountered inside the building. But having joined MIT just over three months ago, at the age of thirty-five, Sweeny still sometimes struggled to cope with the harsh realities of the job. Anna was the first to admit that it did take some getting used to.

  ‘I gather the pathologist is here already,’ she said.

  Walker nodded. ‘It’s Gayle Western. She arrived about half an hour ago. She’s already made arrangements for the body to be removed after you’ve seen it in situ.’

  ‘Then let’s get to it. Are you sure it’s Jacob Rossi?’

  ‘One hundred per cent. He’s wearing the school uniform Jacob had on when he disappeared on Monday. And there’s a name tag sewn into the inside of his blazer.’

  DC Sweeny stayed outside so that she could make some calls, and Walker led the way into the building, warning Anna to tread carefully because it was structurally unsafe. ‘Just so you know we’ve had to ignore the advice from the fire brigade, which was not to come in here until they’ve carried out a full risk assessment,’ Walker said. ‘They’ve got so much on their plate with the riots that it could be days or even weeks before they get around to it.’

  ‘We’ll just have to do what has to be done as quickly as we can,’ Anna said.

  The interior was a total mess, with wet, charred rubble everywhere. Part of the ceiling had collapsed and above it light shone through the damaged roof, revealing clouds of ash and smoke swirling in the air.

  Walker stopped in the middle of what would have been one of the pub’s bars. He pointed to a crime scene investigator who was examining an open door at the rear of the building that hadn’t been touched by the fire.

  ‘There are two doors and five ground-floor windows that look out onto a small car park round the back,’ he said. ‘They’re all still intact because the fire didn’t reach them. So we’re able to see that the lock on one of the doors is broken and the boarding has been removed from two of the windows, along with the glass. It’s my guess that whoever brought the boy here gained access through one of them.’

  ‘So why wasn’t the building more secure?’ Anna asked.

  Walker shrugged. ‘That’s a question for the estate agents who’ve got a for-sale sign out front. They’re bound to say that they thought they’d done enough to keep people out. But you and I both know that vandals and homeless people are breaking into derelict buildings all over London every day.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Anna said. ‘So where is the cellar?’

  ‘We’re standing on top of it.’ Walker gestured towards an interior door to their left that stood open. ‘That leads to the stairs. It was closed
when the brigade entered the building after they’d put the blaze out. But there’s extensive damage to the floorboards next to it and the cellar was filled with smoke. The fire officers who went down there reckon it was so thick they didn’t spot the boy’s body until one of them almost tripped over it.’

  Anna could feel the blood pounding in her ears as she followed Walker down the rickety stairs into the cellar. It was much larger than she’d expected it to be, stretching almost the entire length of the building. There was no electricity, but natural light came from above through the damaged ceiling.

  A lead weight formed in Anna’s chest as she took in the scene. At one end of the room the parts of the ceiling that had come down were piled up on the soaked floor. There were no windows and the bare brick walls were festooned with fixtures that had once been attached to beer kegs.

  Four forensic officers were present, and one of them was the pathologist, Gayle Western. She was crouched down next to a grey, inflatable mattress on which lay the body of the dead boy.

  Anna experienced a cold shiver as she stepped forward and confronted a scene that she knew would haunt her forever.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Chloe loved reading, so she had no problem wading through the magazine article that ran to four whole pages.

  It mostly repeated what had already appeared in newspapers and on the television during the past month. But there were more details and more photographs. She found it odd the way the writer kept switching between the names Alice and Chloe, and she wondered if readers would find it confusing.

  The photos were all in colour and each of them provoked a different reaction. There was only one that she hadn’t seen before and it was of Sophie on her wedding day. The man she married was standing next to her with a wide grin on his face.