Cry of the Children (6 page)

‘No.'

‘You answered that very promptly.'

‘That's because I've already thought about it. I discussed it with Matt before we rang the police last night. Dean says he still loves me; he wants us to get back together. It's me that doesn't want that. But he'd never snatch Lucy like that. And even if he did, he'd let me know. He wouldn't have me going through this.'

‘Fair enough.' But they'd track the man down as quickly as they could, nonetheless. Sometimes you didn't know even the people who'd shared your bed and fathered your child as well as you thought you did. Bitter resentment could drive people to act out of character. Hook smiled at her again, trying to take the edge off what he had to say now. ‘How long have you known Matthew Boyd, Mrs Gibson?'

The name sounded strange when they voiced it solemnly and in full like that. As if it was a different man entirely from the one who had made her laugh and made her respond so passionately to him in bed. ‘I met Matt just under three months ago.'

Ruth David recorded that in her neat, quick hand. Such precision usually meant that a woman was keen. Smitten, perhaps. So much so that her judgement of character might be impaired. Bert Hook said, ‘And where did you meet?'

‘At a singles club. My friend had taken me along.' She wondered why she needed to explain herself like that, as if apologizing for her conduct. Everyone went to such places now, didn't they? Well, everyone in her position. ‘Matt asked me if I'd like to go for a meal. I did and we got on well. We've been getting on well ever since.'

Anthea wondered if Hook would ask if they had been intimate with each other. That was an old-fashioned phrase, but he looked an old-fashioned man. She didn't wait to see how he would put the question she knew he would have to ask. ‘We became lovers six weeks ago. We get on well and Matt likes Lucy. He volunteered to take her to the fair.' She'd meant it as a compliment to him, but now it suddenly sounded sinister in the light of this awful thing that had happened. Hastily, she said, ‘Matt would never hurt Lucy. He likes her, but not in any way that's wrong.' That was clumsy, but she wanted to defend him and she couldn't think of the right phrases.

‘Thank you. We'll be speaking to Mr Boyd in due course, as you know. In the meantime, we need a clear picture from you of what happened last night. At what time did Mr Boyd take your daughter out to the fair?'

‘About six, we think. Neither of us was thinking that the time would be important then.' The tears sprang from her eyes again and she dabbed them away with Hook's gift.

‘And you think Lucy disappeared at about half past seven.'

‘That's what Matt thinks. She was having a last ride on one of the smaller roundabouts and then coming home. But when the ride stopped and he went to collect her, she just wasn't there.'

‘I see. But he didn't report that immediately and he didn't come back here until approximately ninety minutes later. Or phone you to let you know she'd gone missing?'

‘No. He thought he'd find her. He thought Lucy was playing a joke on him and would come out from wherever she was hiding. He didn't want me to worry.'

She was staring at her feet again and Hook knew in that moment as clearly as if she'd told him that she'd argued with the man in the kitchen about this. He said gently, ‘But when he couldn't find her, don't you think he should have then tried to get in touch to let you know?'

‘Well, I think he just really wanted to find her himself. He searched the woods at the top of the common and some of the streets on the other sides of it. He couldn't believe that she'd gone.' She looked up at Hook suddenly, wanting to convince herself as much as her questioners. ‘I think he was terrified of telling me that he'd lost her.'

‘I see.' Hook could see that. He wouldn't have relished the prospect himself if he'd been reporting the disappearance of the daughter she loved to a woman he'd only known for three months. ‘Was last night the first time Lucy had been out alone with Mr Boyd?'

Anthea thought for a moment. She hadn't considered this until now. It sounded sinister when the question was put like that. ‘Yes. But that's just coincidence. Lucy was happy enough to go with Matt. She'd been looking forward to it all day.'

Ruth David looked up from her notes. ‘We're just recording facts, Mrs Gibson. That's what we do, you see. I hope that by tonight we'll be recording the fact of your daughter's return home to you. What happened when Mr Boyd returned here without your daughter?'

‘I screamed at him, I think. I know I turned hysterical. Matt got me to ring the homes of Lucy's friends before we contacted the police. He – I mean
we
– thought it might all be a false alarm. We thought she might have run away for a joke and then got frightened or lost and gone to a friend's house. That's why it was so late when you got the call from us.'

That call had come at the worst possible time on a Saturday night, when all the uniformed men and women were dealing with the weekend drunks and trying to shepherd them home without serious trouble. When the only staff available to send here and take statements had been the newest and least experienced young officers on the force. Ruth glanced at Hook and received the slightest of nods, the signal for the pair to stand up in unison. ‘Do you have a recent photograph of Lucy we could borrow, to help us in our search?'

The girl looked even younger than her age in the photograph, absurdly innocent and absurdly vulnerable in her blue school sweater.

Matthew Boyd wasn't listening in the hall and never had been. He was in the kitchen with the door shut firmly behind him. He shuffled clumsily to his feet when Hook opened that door. ‘You can speak to us here or at the station,' Bert said neutrally to the last man known to have seen the missing girl.

‘I'll come to the station with you,' the man said immediately. He did not look at them, nor at the stricken woman who had lost her daughter, as he walked out of her house.

Anthea Gibson watched him leave and fleetingly wondered if he was going to acknowledge her at all as he got into his car. She saw him flick up his hand in the briefest of gestures as he drove past her standing in the doorway of the house.

She went back into her empty home and briefly wondered when she would see him next.

T
he spot where Lucy Gibson had disappeared was being treated as a scene of crime, even though no crime had as yet been discovered. The area was cordoned off with blue-and-white plastic ribbons.

Lambert was intercepted by the manager and chief proprietor of the fair before he could contact the scene of crime team. This was a large, very broad man with a stomach that, in an earlier era, would have been an impressive mount for a waistcoat and watch chain. He seized Lambert's arm and ushered him into a caravan at the side of the fair. He had a smooth brown face, a wide and curling black moustache, and an air of barely controlled indignation. ‘This is costing us money. Sunday should be our best day. I own four of the roundabouts working out there. You've shut down three of the smaller rides, which should be pulling in money from children all through the daylight hours.'

Lambert decided he hadn't time for a protracted argument. ‘Get real, Mr Davies! There's a seven-year-old girl missing. That takes precedence over everything. I'd shut down the whole of your damned fair if I thought it would help!'

‘You couldn't do that.'

‘I could and I would if it was necessary. Be thankful that we've let the bulk of the rides and stalls carry on as normal. If your people don't cooperate or we find a need to extend the area of our investigation, we shall certainly do so. You're welcome to complain to my chief constable if you wish to do that. I can tell you now that you won't get a sympathetic reaction. Now, let me move out of here and get on with my work, please!'

It was a relief to sound off at someone amidst his frustration and depression. He had found in this oily and unimaginative man a fitting object for his wrath. He stepped stiffly from the caravan and went over to the civilian in charge of the scene of crime team, a retired detective sergeant whom he had known since his time in the service. The chief superintendent put on the plastic foot covers necessary to avoid any contamination of the designated area and went down the path delineated within it to the man in charge.

‘Found anything, Dave?' You dispensed with the formalities when a child was missing. Time was vital. Everyone knew that the chances of finding the girl unharmed decreased dramatically after twenty-four hours.

‘Lots of things. At least, we've bagged lots of things. Which ones, if any, will prove significant is anyone's guess at this stage.' The SOCO chief indicated polythene bags with a variety of cigarette ends, a broken comb, a muddy earring, a local paper with a tyre-mark across it. ‘No trace of the girl yet?'

‘No. We've phoned every relative and friend we can think of and there's an appeal gone out on national radio and television. The usual loonies have already begun to ring in; I expect we'll have a dozen sightings claimed by the end of the day, in all sorts of places. But as yet we've no real news of Lucy.'

John Lambert stated the name firmly. It was important to him now that this was a real girl and that everyone thought of her as Lucy. He had no doubt that Hook and David would come back to the station with a picture of a smiling, carefree seven-year-old. A seven-year-old who by now might be terrified in some isolated building. A seven-year-old who might have endured unspeakable things in the last twelve hours. A seven-year-old who might already be dead. Lucy.

He looked at the still and silent roundabout where Lucy Gibson had taken her last ride. A joyful ride, the man who ran it said. The girl had been smiling happily and waving to the man who had brought her here. A man and a woman from the SOCO team were lifting fingerprints from the bus in which Lucy had ridden and from every other carriage on the ride. There'd be hundreds of them, and all useless. Apart from one, perhaps. But how quickly and certainly could they isolate that one? Even if there was a match with the print of some paedophile who might have taken the girl, how long would it take to establish that match? And what would have happened to Lucy in the meantime?

Lambert fought against an overwhelming feeling of helplessness, the worst possible emotion for a detective. He hadn't had many cases like this in his now lengthy experience, but none of them had ended well. This wasn't the Moors murders, with Brady and Hindley and those awful torture tapes which had sickened hardened policemen. But the outcome might be just as horrific for one small, terrified girl who did not understand how the world had turned ugly upon her.

The photographer was busy, for there was much here that had to be preserved, though most, if not all, of it would prove irrelevant to the case in the end. The ground at the edge of the fair site was damp and soft, for here the stalls and roundabouts had been in shadow for the last three days. Lambert watched the man carefully framing shots of footprints left by trainers, boots and more anonymous shoes, both male and female. Had one of these been left by the man or woman who had spirited Lucy away so soundlessly and swiftly from everything that she knew and trusted?

He walked a little further, to where common merged with woods. This was where the designated crime scene, as delineated by the police ribbons, came to an end. Five yards into the woods, a woman in the scene of crime team was picking up something gingerly with the finger and thumb of a gloved hand, taking care to leave as little of herself as possible on the thing she had lifted.

Lambert went over and held open the plastic bag for her, so as to make it easy for her to deposit her find without handling it further. She did so with extreme care, her tongue flicking at the edge of her mouth like that of a fiercely concentrating child. Once the top of the bag was sealed upon its contents, she looked up at the chief superintendent who was in charge of all this. Then both of them gazed down in silence for a moment, feeling the pathos of her find. There was a muddy footprint across the centre of what lay beneath the plastic. Lambert looked at it for a moment, then made a decision. ‘I'll take this back to the station with me. I'm about to speak to the man who was with Lucy last night.'

It was a small rag doll with a fixed and cheerful smile.

Matt Boyd had been in an interview room at a police station once before. It wasn't any more pleasant the second time.

He wondered if the fuzz had left him there to soften him up for what was to come. They hadn't been unpleasant, the two who'd followed him here from Anthea's house, but they hadn't been friendly either. Reserved, he supposed; that was probably the best word to describe it. Careful, perhaps. Well, he'd been careful himself, and he was determined to remain so. It was a nasty business this, whatever way you looked at it. He wished at this moment that he'd never gone near Anthea Gibson at that singles meeting.

He'd liked the woman officer who'd talked to Anthea. She was a real looker, which was a good start, and she'd been polite and pleasant with him, soft and tender with Anthea. Soft and tender; those words set him thinking of Lucy, the girl he'd lost last night, and what might have been. That way madness lay. He dragged his mind back to Detective Sergeant Ruth David. She'd be impressed if he remembered her name and rank. Women liked that sort of thing and it was one of the things he was good at. He'd trained himself, over the years.

But when they finally attended to him, DS Ruth David did not appear. It was the burly Detective Sergeant Hook again, but he had a much taller man with him, who paused for a moment just inside the room to inspect Matthew Boyd. He looked rather like a biologist considering the possibilities of a specimen frog he was about to dissect. Hook said, ‘This is Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert, who is now in charge of this case.'