Connor stared at them both, his eyes narrowing, darkening, creasing the skin on his freckled nose. He’d come straight here when Pip texted him that she had an urgent update; walked out of school right in the middle of a Biology lesson.
‘What are you saying?’ he asked, nervously swivelling in her desk chair. Pip levelled her voice. ‘I’m saying that, whoever Layla Mead really is,
we think she’s been looking for Child Brunswick. And it’s not just because Jamie said it to Luke. Child Brunswick was ten at the time of the final murder in March 1999, and he was thirteen in September 2001, when the trial began. That means that right now, Child Brunswick would be twenty- nine or recently thirty. Every single person Layla has spoken to, including Jamie at first because he lied about his age, has been twenty-nine turning thirty soon, or recently thirty. And she’s been asking them lots of questions. She’s trying to work out who Child Brunswick is, I’m sure of it. And for some reason, Layla thinks this person is in our town.’
‘But what has this got to do with Jamie?’ Connor asked.
‘Everything,’ Pip said. ‘I think he’s involved in this because of Layla. He goes to meet Luke Eaton, a meeting Layla had set up, and says the words “Child Brunswick” to him, looking for a reaction. A reaction Luke doesn’t give.’
‘Because he’s not Child Brunswick?’ Connor said. ‘No, I don’t think he is,’ Pip said.
‘But then –’ Ravi stepped in – ‘we know that after meeting Luke, Jamie went immediately to the abandoned farmhouse, and it’s there that whatever happened . . . happened. So, we were theorizing that maybe . . .’ He glanced at Pip. ‘Maybe he went to meet someone else. Someone else Layla thought could be Child Brunswick. And this person . . . did react.’
‘Who? Who else is there?’ Connor said. ‘Daniel da Silva or Mr Clark?’
‘No.’ Pip shook her head. ‘I mean yes, those are the other two people we know Layla was talking to. But one is a police officer and the other is a teacher. Child Brunswick couldn’t be either of those things, and I think Layla would’ve worked that out when talking to them. As soon as Adam Clark told her he was a teacher, she stopped talking to him at all, wrote him off. It’s someone else.’
‘So, what does this mean?’
‘I think it means that if we find Child Brunswick,’ Pip tucked her hair behind her ears, ‘we find Jamie.’
‘This is crazy. How on earth do we do that?’ Connor said.
‘Research,’ Pip said, dragging her laptop back across the duvet and on to her lap. ‘Find out everything we can about Child Brunswick. And why Layla Mead thinks he’s here.’
‘Which isn’t easy when there’s a worldwide injunction on publishing anything about him,’ Ravi said.
She and Ravi had already started, reading through the first full page of article results, noting down any details they could find which, as yet, was nothing but his age range. Pip had printed out Scott Brunswick’s mugshot photo, but he didn’t look like anyone she recognized. He had pale white skin, stubble, light wrinkles, brown eyes and hair: he was just a man. No trace of the monster he had really been.
Pip returned to her search and Ravi to his, Connor joining in on his phone. It was another ten minutes until one of them spoke.
‘Found something,’ Ravi said, ‘in the anonymous comments on one of these old articles. Unconfirmed rumours that in December 2009, Child Brunswick was living in Devon and he revealed his true identity to an unnamed female friend. She told people, and he had to be moved across the country and given another new identity. Lots of people complaining in the replies about waste of taxpayers’ money.’
‘Write it down,’ Pip said, reading through yet another article that was essentially just a reworded version of the first one.
She was the next to find something, reading off the screen: ‘December 2014, a man from Liverpool received a suspended jail sentence of nine months after admitting to contempt of court by publishing photos claiming they were of Child Brunswick as an adult.’ She took a breath. ‘The claim was false and the attorney general expressed his concern, saying that the order in place is not just to protect Child Brunswick, but also members of
the public who may be incorrectly identified as being him and consequently placed in danger.’
Not long after, Ravi got up from the bed, unbalancing her. He ran his fingers through Pip’s hair before going downstairs to make them all sandwiches.
‘Anything new?’ he said when he returned, handing plates to Pip and Connor, two bites already missing from his own sandwich.
‘Connor found something,’ Pip said, skimming down another page of results for the search term Child Brunswick Little Kilton. The first few pages of results had been articles about her from last year, the ‘child detective from Little Kilton’ who’d solved the Andie Bell case.
‘Yeah,’ Connor said, releasing his chewed-up lip to speak. ‘On a Subreddit for a podcast that covered the case, someone in the comments said they’d heard rumours of Child Brunswick living in Dartford. Posted a few years ago.’
‘Dartford?’ Ravi said, re-settling behind his laptop. ‘I was just reading a news story about a man in Dartford who committed suicide after an online mob spread false rumours that he was Child Brunswick.’
‘Oh, he’s probably who the rumours were about,’ Pip said, typing that in on her notes and returning to her search. She was now on the ninth page of results on Google, clicking on the link third from the top, a post on 4Chan where the OP briefly outlined the case, ending with the line: And Child Brunswick is out there right now, you might have walked past him and never knew it.
The comments below were varied. Most contained violent threats about what they’d like to do to Child Brunswick if they ever found him. A few people posting links to articles they’d already found and read. One commenter said in response to a particularly graphic death threat: You know he was just a small child when the murders happened, his dad forced him to help. To which another commenter had replied: he still should of been locked up for life, probably just as evil as his dad, bad seed and that – it’s in the blood.
Pip was about to hit backspace out of this particular dark corner of the internet when a comment almost at the bottom of the page caught her eye. From four months ago:
Anonymous Sat 29 Dec 11:26:53
I know where Child Brunswick is. He’s in Little Kliton – you know that town that’s been in the news loads recently where that girl solved the old Andie Bell case
Pip’s heart kicked up at the sight of it, echoing around her chest as her eyes doubled back over the reference to her. The typo in Little Kilton: that must be why this hadn’t come up sooner in the search results.
She scrolled down to read more in the thread.
Anonymous Sat 29 Dec 11:32:21 Where did you hear this?
Anonymous Sat 29 Dec 11:37:35
My mate’s cousin is in prison, Grendon Prison. Apparently his new cell mate is from that town and says he knows exactly who Child Brunswick is. Said they used to be friends and CB told him his secret a couple years ago
Anonymous Sat 29 Dec 11:39:43 Really? : )
Pip’s breath shortened, barely reaching her throat any more. She tensed and Ravi felt it, his dark eyes falling on her. Connor started to speak from the other side of the room and Pip shushed him so she could think.
Grendon Prison.
Pip knew someone at Grendon Prison. That was where Howie Bowers had been sent after pleading guilty to his drug-related charges. He started his sentence in early December. This comment had to be about him.
Which meant Howie Bowers knew exactly who Child Brunswick was. And that meant . . . wait . . . her mind stalled, peeling back the months, shedding them, searching for a hidden memory.
She closed her eyes. Focused. And she found it.
‘Shit.’ She let the computer slide from her lap as she stood up, darting towards the desk and her phone lying on its surface.
‘What?’ Connor asked.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ she muttered, unlocking her phone and thumbing into her photo reel. She swiped down to scroll it back, back through April, and
March, and Josh’s birthday, and all the haircut photos Cara had needed her advice on, and back through January and the Reynoldses’ New Year’s Eve party, and Christmas and Winter Wonderland with her friends, and her first dinner out with Ravi, and November, and screenshots of the first news articles about her, and pictures from her three-day stay in the hospital, and the photos she’d taken of Andie Bell’s planner when she and Ravi broke into the Bell house and, oh hey, she’d never noticed Jamie’s name scribbled there in Andie’s handwriting beside a spattering of doodled stars. Back further and then she stopped.
On the 4th of October. The collection of photos she’d used as leverage to get Howie Bowers to talk to her last year. The photos he’d made her delete and she later restored, just in case. A younger Robin Caine seen handing over money to Howie in exchange for a paper bag. But that wasn’t it. It was the photos she’d taken just minutes before those.
Howie Bowers standing against the fence. Someone walking out of the shadows to meet him. Someone who handed over an envelope of money, but he wasn’t buying anything. In a beige coat and shorter brown hair than he had now. Cheeks flushed.
Stanley Forbes.
And though the figures in her photos were static, unmoving, their mouths were open and Pip could almost recall the conversation she’d overheard seven months ago.
‘This is the last time, do you hear me?’ Stanley had spat. ‘You can’t keep asking for more; I don’t have it.’
And Howie’s response had been almost too quiet to hear, but she could have sworn it was something like: ‘But if you don’t pay me, I will tell.’
Stanley had glared at him, replying: ‘I don’t think you would dare.’
Pip captured that very moment here, Stanley’s eyes filled with desperation and anger, closing in on Howie.
And now she knew why.
Ravi and Connor were both watching her silently as she glanced up. ‘And?’ Ravi asked.
‘I know who Child Brunswick is,’ she said. ‘He’s Stanley Forbes.’
