Lost Girls Read Free

are not saying a word.’
    Kim nodded her understanding. If she recalled correctly the same had been attempted the last time but the news had broken by day three. Later that day the surviving child had been found wandering along the roadside and the other had not been found at all.
    â€˜I'm still a little confused as to what …’
    â€˜You've been requested to head this case, Stone.’
    Ten seconds passed, during which she waited for the punchline. None came.
    â€˜Sir?’
    â€˜Of course, that's impossible,’ Baldwin said. ‘You are certainly not qualified to head an investigation of this magnitude.’
    Although Kim didn't disagree she was tempted to mention the Crestwood case where she and her team had captured the killer of four teenage girls.
    She turned in her seat so she faced only Woody.
    â€˜Requested by?’
    â€˜One of the parents. She's asked for you specifically and won't even speak to anyone else. We need you to take the initial details whilst we assemble a team. You'll report back here immediately and hand over to the Officer in Charge.’
    Kim nodded her understanding of the process, but he still hadn't fully answered her question.
    â€˜Sir, can I have the names of the girls and the name of the parent?’
    â€˜Charlie Timmins and Amy Hanson are the girls. It’s the mother of Charlie that has requested your involvement. Her name is Karen, says she’s a friend of yours?’
    Kim shook her head blankly. That was impossible. She knew no Karen Timmins and she definitely had no friends.
    Woody consulted a sheet of paper on his desk.
    â€˜Apologies, Stone. You might know this woman better under her maiden name. Her name was Karen Holt.’
    Kim felt her back stiffen. The name lived safely in her past; a place she rarely visited.
    â€˜Stone, your expression says you do indeed know this woman.’
    Kim stood and aimed her gaze only at Woody.
    â€˜Sir, I will go and carry out the initial questioning to hand over to the appropriate Officer in Charge, but I assure you this woman is no friend of mine.’

Three
    K im steered the Ninja through a line of traffic to the front of the queue. As the amber light promised to illuminate she spurred the machine into life and roared across the intersection.
    At the next island her knee air-kissed the tarmac at forty miles an hour.
    As she travelled south she left the heart of the Black Country, named due to the thirty feet of thick iron ore and coal seam outcrops in various places.
    Historically, many people in the area had held an agricultural smallholding but supplemented their income by working as nailers or smiths. By the 1620s there were twenty thousand smiths within ten miles of Dudley Castle.
    The address she'd been given was a surprise to Kim. She hadn't envisioned Karen Holt living in one of the finer parts of the Black Country. In fact, she was marginally surprised the woman was still alive at all.
    As she headed through Pedmore, the properties began to recede from the road. The plots grew longer, the trees higher and the houses further apart.
    The area had originally been a village in the Worcestershire countryside but had merged into Stourbridge following extensive house building during the interwar years.
    She pulled off Redlake Road into a driveway that crunched beneath the tyres of the bike. She rolled up to the property and whistled in her head.
    The detached house was double-fronted and Victorian, perfect in its symmetry. The white brick looked recently painted.
    Kim stopped the bike at an ornate portico entrance supporting a balustraded balcony above. Bay windows protruded on both sides.
    It was the kind of house that said you'd made it. And Kim had to wonder what the hell Karen Holt had done to get here. If Bryant had been with her they’d have played their usual game of ‘guess the house value’ and her opening bid would have been no less than one and a half million.
    Parked beside a