Cry of the Children (14 page)

Rushton nodded. He liked the fact that the others did most of the interviewing, whilst he correlated all the information as it came in. In his view, that gave him a certain objectivity about suspects. He said almost eagerly, ‘Or Dean Gibson could have strung her across the carrier at the front of his bike. No one would have spotted what it was he was carrying, on unlit lanes at night.'

Hook said stubbornly, ‘Matt Boyd had his car. He claims that he came home from the fairground to get it, so that he could search a wider area. And Dennis Robson might well have had his car waiting near the wood, for all we know.'

Lambert was still perusing the report. ‘We still have no idea about exactly where Lucy died. She could have been killed within minutes of being snatched, or she could have been killed by the river up to an hour later.'

Rushton nodded. ‘We've searched that wood by the fairground and bagged up everything we've found. But it's much too near to the common. All kinds of people use it for all sorts of activities.' He spoke with some distaste, thinking of the unsavoury items he'd seen bagged in the CID section. ‘It's my belief we've got nothing crucial from there. But that doesn't mean that Lucy didn't die there. Strangulation of a child needn't leave much evidence.'

Bert said, ‘Lucy Gibson disappeared as if she'd suddenly been removed from the face of the earth. There wasn't a sound from her if we're to believe what people tell us. Could that mean that she knew the person who took her and didn't feel threatened – not at first, anyway?'

Rushton looked at Lambert, who said, ‘We can't assume that. There's a lot of noise around a fairground. Blaring and distorted music on most of the bigger rides, for a start. It's entirely possible that a child's scream wouldn't be heard, especially if her abductor threw his hand over her mouth to stifle it.'

There was silence in the room. None of them cared for the succession of images they had created. DI Rushton dragged them back to the realities of policing. ‘We need a result. The press are hounding us for information. They'll be baying for police blood if we can't give them anything in the next day or two.'

A woman was coming out of the tall Victorian house as they arrived there. They met her at the gate. She looked at them with undisguised curiosity. Hook said politely, ‘Could you tell us where we could find Miss Foster, please?'

‘You want Big Julie? She in trouble again then, is she?'

‘Not at all. We are hoping she may be able to give us a little information, that's all.' He wished he hadn't asked for help. Women like Julie Foster suffered quite enough, without their neighbours telling anyone who would listen that they'd been the centre of police enquiries.

‘She has the ground-floor flat at the back of the house. Not fit to be on her own, if you ask me. She needs some kind of warden with her.'

Bert didn't necessarily disagree with that. A lot of people with low IQs had been better five or six to a house with a warden to keep an eye on them and give them advice and assistance. The ‘care in the community' system of the last twenty years hadn't worked very well, largely because the community was busy with its own problems and didn't care much at all. He rang the bottom bell of the six available to him to the right of the solid front door.

It was almost a minute before the door was opened to them and a large woman filled most of the considerable space it had occupied. Lambert said politely, ‘Miss Foster? I'm Chief Superintendent Lambert and this is Detective Sergeant Hook. We need to have a few words with you, please.'

They showed their warrant cards, but she gave them the merest glance. When reading was a problem, you tended to ignore documents, even when they displayed photographs alongside the print. She looked at the men blankly and waited for them to make the next move. Lambert said, ‘May we come inside, please?'

She still didn't speak, but she turned and led them wordlessly down a long, narrow hall to a door on the right towards the end of it. She opened it as quietly as she could, beckoned them in and shut it with elaborate care once they were inside. ‘You can't be too careful, you know!' she said to Lambert confidentially. She spoke with the air of one imparting an original piece of wisdom.

She didn't ask them to sit down, so they glanced at each other and sat on the battered sofa, leaving her the wide easy chair with green buttoned velvet covering which was obviously her usual seat. She said, ‘I 'aven't took anything, you know. I 'aven't took anything for months, not since that woman copper took the things away and told me to watch my step. I've been doing that.' She looked down earnestly at her feet, as if she was taking the advice quite literally.

‘No one is accusing you of anything, Miss Foster.'

‘Not yet, you mean.' No one came in here and called her Miss Foster. They all called her Julie – the social workers and the care people and the woman who came to talk to her about her money and how she should manage it. The only time anyone called her Miss Foster was when they were going to accuse her of something. Charge her with something, perhaps. This big tall copper must be very important. Chief super, he'd said. He'd nail her for something if she didn't watch her step.

Lambert was already finding this difficult. He knew what he wanted to ask, but they would need to talk to Big Julie in the right way to get the best information from her. Be sensitive to her disabilities, whilst remembering throughout that she might be a child killer. He glanced hopefully at Hook. He was much relieved when Bert took on the task of talking to this woman, who had the brainpower and many of the reactions of a child, but the physical strength of a powerfully built man.

Hook said, ‘It's about the fair, Julie. You were there at the weekend, weren't you?' She looked at him blankly and he said with a smile, ‘We know you were, because you've already talked to one of our police ladies, haven't you? You told her that you were there on Saturday night.'

The big woman put her hands together with immense care. Perhaps she thought that the way she set her palms precisely opposite each other before she pressed them together could affect her fate with these strange men. She had a broad face, with a large, flat nose at the centre of it. Her wide, childlike, brown eyes seemed all-seeing, but capable of missing things that were vital to her understanding of the situation. ‘Saturday night. I was at the fairground, yes. It's good, the fair, isn't it?'

‘Yes, it is. Did you go on any of the rides yourself, Julie?'

‘I rode in a dragon on one of the smaller rides. I was going to go on one of the big ones, but I didn't in the end. I don't like going on them on my own.'

‘That's what you told our girl in uniform who spoke to you, isn't it? It's good that you remember things so clearly. That's what we want you to do.'

‘I've always been able to remember things clearly. They like that at Tesco's. They say it makes me reliable. If Mr Burton says he needs twenty-four tins of baked beans for the shelves, I bring just that many, you see. I'm reliable.' She enunciated the four syllables of the word carefully; it was obviously important to her.

‘That's good for us too, Julie. It makes you a reliable witness, you see. Not everyone remembers everything as clearly as you. Did you spend long at the fair on Saturday?'

The broad brow wrinkled for the first time. ‘An hour, I think. That's what the policewoman reckoned it must have been. I'm not always good at measuring time and I don't have a watch. I lost it at work. Someone pinched it, I think.'

Hook tried not to be distracted by the harrowing picture he was acquiring of the way in which this limited, brawny woman lived. He wondered whether the estimate of an hour spent at the fair derived from Julie or from the young policewoman who had spoken to her a day earlier. ‘You were there for quite a long time, considering you only had the one ride. What else did you do?'

She looked suddenly threatened, as if he had accused her of something dire. As he had, indirectly, he supposed. She said, ‘I walked around, watching the big rides going round and round, listening to the music and the people shouting to one another. There was a lot of laughing and shouting, people happy. I like that.'

‘Yes. I expect it cheers you up to see people enjoying themselves. I know it does me. Did you speak to anyone?'

Again the frown of concentration, as if it was important to her that she made no mistake here. ‘No. Someone shouted at me to get out of the way and pushed me, but I didn't speak to him. I had a go on one of the stalls, where you try to throw rings over prizes. I was trying to get myself a new watch, but a lad at work told me no one ever gets the best prizes. The man on the stall took my money, but he didn't speak to me.'

‘Do you have a boyfriend, Julie?'

‘No. I did once, but he moved away.'

‘Girl friends?'

‘Not really. I used to go around with people, but they're mostly married now, see. They don't want to go out with me anymore.'

Hook looked round the high Victorian room. Its filthy ceiling was barely visible; the cheap light fitting threw the light from the single bulb mostly downwards on to the area where they were sitting. This was more a bedsitter than a flat; there would be a single bed in the alcove behind the curtain that covered most of a dark aperture. There were a couple of gloomy Victorian landscapes in battered gold-painted frames on walls that had not been decorated for at least ten years. There was no sign of a book or even a newspaper in the room.

No doubt Julie Foster was confined to this room for most of her leisure hours. It was a depressing place. A small portable television on top of a chest of drawers provided the only relief and the only link with the wider world outside. Julie was thirty-eight now; she did not read and she had only the dumbed-down world of
I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here
and the like to while away her time. Weekends here must be bleak. Bleak enough to unhinge a woman without the personal resources to cope with loneliness? Bert said almost unwillingly, ‘You were all on your own at the fair, then?'

‘Yeah. I don't mind, though. I'm used to it. I quite like being in a crowd, especially when people are enjoying themselves. It's … well, it's sort of jolly, isn't it? It cheers me up, when people around me are enjoying themselves.'

Bert was filled with a surge of sympathy for this woman who had been given so much to bear and who complained so little. But those feelings were ridiculous. The first thing you had to learn in CID work was to be detached; it interfered with your efficiency if you were not. He had known that for years, yet John Lambert had needed to remind him gently of the principle at intervals during their time together. Bert knew what had to come now, but he suddenly felt unable to move to it.

He looked hopelessly at his senior. Lambert took over with scarcely a pause. ‘You got yourself into a bit of trouble with the law a few years ago, didn't you, Julie?'

He had spoken quietly, but Julie jumped as if someone had stuck a pin in her, as that cruel girl had done a couple of weeks ago when she was stacking the shelves. ‘They said that was all done with. They said that I wouldn't need to worry about it anymore if I kept my nose clean.'

She lifted her thick fingers to that organ now, as if she thought that had been a literal instruction. It was a gesture that seared the emotions of both men. Lambert said doggedly, ‘You took a child, didn't you, Julie?'

‘Yes, I did. I'd been told you could have a baby without it coming out of your stomach, that you could … I can't remember the word.'

‘Adopt, Julie? You thought you could adopt a baby?' The word came back to him from the police report and its summary of the arguments provided in court. It had seemed absurd as he read it that anyone could have even considered offering that as a defence. Now, sitting here in the presence of this helpless woman who so needed someone to advise and guide her, it seemed quite real.

‘That's it, yes. I went to the council offices and tried to talk to them about it, but no one there wanted to speak to me. I expect there were forms to fill in. I'm no good with forms. I need someone to fill them in for me.'

‘So you took a baby, Julie. A little girl.'

‘Yes. I didn't mean to. It was … it was …' Her brow puckered with fierce concentration, but the words she wanted would not come.

‘Spur of the moment, Julie? A spur-of-the-moment decision?'

‘That's it, yes. Spur of the moment. Someone said that for me in court, but the woman on the bench said it didn't make any difference. I couldn't see any bench, but they were up above me, so there might have been.'

‘You looked after the baby well, Julie, but it wasn't right to take her, was it?'

‘Ellie, she was called. Smashing little girl. Didn't cry at all.'

‘No. That was probably because you looked after her so well.' It was true. The one-year-old had been clean, happy and well fed. Big Julie had bought nappies, jars of baby food and baby milk, and a little teddy bear for her. The child had been expertly bathed and changed. ‘You can't just wheel away a baby in her pram and keep her, though. You realize that now, don't you?'

She looked at him blankly for a moment, then nodded her head sadly. ‘They'd left her outside the pub, you know. She was there for over half an hour. They said less, but I had a watch then. I didn't move her until she started to cry. Little Ellie.' She looked past him at the damaged mirror on the wall behind him, seeing nothing for a moment except that still vivid moment in her history.

‘A little girl was taken from the fair you know. On Saturday night, at the time you were there.'

‘Lucy. Lucy Gibson. She was the girl who was taken.'

Lambert felt Hook stiffen on the sofa beside him as she enunciated the name. He didn't even look at his colleague. It was the telepathy they had developed over the years that ensured that his bagman now resumed the questioning.