Endangering Innocents (16 page)

But they had not found it yet.

Huke and Carly were about to crack. Carly first but Joanna wanted a word with Colclough. She confided in him all her thoughts and he watched her, first of all with a lazy, almost patronising smile. Halfway through he suddenly sat up and his expression turned to one of respect.

“Proof, Piercy,” he said, shaking a finger at her and fixing her with a stare of his hooded eyes. She nodded.

The report had come in from the officers who had visited the farm.

“Friendly old bugger,” Phil Scott said. “Threatened to put the dog on us the minute we walked into the yard.”

“So what did he say?”

Phil Scott flipped the statement across the desk and Joanna read.

She could almost hear Crowdeane’s words.

“It were about four o’clock on the Friday afternoon. Good Friday - as it happened. I heard my dog barking out in the yard. I called ‘im to me and he came. He were excited. Kept barking around the Dutch barn. I looked but I didn’t see anyone there. I called out. No one were there. A couple of days later it was that I noticed the pen. Dog must have ‘ad it in his mouth. I threw it in the back of the barn. I didn’t see no child there. I ‘eard later on over Easter weekend that a little girl ‘ad gone missing from the school like but I never saw her. I never saw anyone.”

Crowdeane had signed the bottom in a shaky hand.

Joanna dropped it back on the desk.

It held the ring of truth.

She looked back at the two officers. “Did you notice anything?”

Both shook their heads.

Another small clue came just before lunchtime - at 12.54 pm to be precise. Six minutes before the briefing was due to start. Joanna took the call quietly, making notes as she listened, breathing a prayer of thanks to the forensic science laboratory and the P.R.A. - The Paint Research Association. She asked if they could fax the reports through, and strode into the briefing room.

A couple of officers were lounging across the tables; a few more were sunk deep into their chairs. They were tired, disheartened, demoralised.

She was about to change all that.

And they sensed it. They all stood up and watched her move to the front of the room. All eyes were on her. There was a feeling of heightened intensity, almost a frenzy of emotion and excitement.

“We’ve had the results of the forensic analysis of the shoes, of the clothes, and also from the samples taken from underneath Madeline Wiltshaw’s fingernails.”

They were even more alert. The only sound was of rapid breathing.

“Her shoes showed traces of cow manure. Fresh cow manure.” She saw Phil Scott dig PC Ruthin in the ribs. A few of the more senior officers waited.

“Beneath Madeline Wiltshaw’s fingernails were flakes of blue paint which showed high traces of lead.

“The samples have been sent to the Paint Research Association for analysis and comment. The following is their report - verbatim.

“Lead is occasionally contained in the pigments, red
and brown. However it is not normally present in blue pigment. No EEC paint manufacturer currently adds lead to paint because of its toxicity - particularly to children and in fact it is rarely used in paints particularly those specifically marketed for nurseries.”

She stopped reading and scanned the room. “There is a strong possibility that Madeline scraped the inside surface or the side of the container in which she subsequently suffocated. The PRA suggest that …” her eyes dropped again to the faxed report. “… it is likely that the object in which Madeline Wiltshaw suffocated was either imported from a country which has less stringent rules about the addition of lead to paint, eg China or India, or from an object which pre-dates the lead level recommendation, i.e. dating from the first half of the last century.”

“What sort of object are we looking for?”

She glanced at Mike. “We think we’ve found it,” she said, “but will need to re-interview Baldwin first.” She grinned at them. “Leave me with some surprises. I am an Inspector, after all.”

There was a ripple of light amusement around the room. They recognised the DI Piercy they were more familiar with.

“Phil Scott and Paul Ruthin have interviewed Crowdeane, the farmer where the felt-tip pen was found. While we can’t be sure it was Madeline Wiltshaw’s pen he admits there was a disturbance in the farmyard at about four pm. However the traces of fresh cow manure found on Madeline’s shoes combined with the fact that the vet has confirmed that the bite on Madeline’s leg was made by Crowdeane’s dog puts our child at the farmyard, probably at around four o clock. Still alive then.”

Something mean and sour crossed her face. Madeline’s image was clear in her mind. The mute appeal to help.

It made her feel responsible for the child’s death - even though she was not. But for a brief second she and Madeline Wiltshaw had been close enough to touch. She had had a responsibility towards the innocent child. She gave an involuntary glance downwards and shuddered.

She held up the felt-tip pen for the assembled officers to see. “When you are searching you might remember that Madeline was very proud of her set of felt-tip pens.” She stared at the colour. In her childhood paintbox it woud have been described as “sky-blue”. She could even visualise where in her own paintbox box it had lain. Right in the centre. It was a colour she had daubed often enough as a child. The sea. The sky. Bluebirds. Bluebells. Madeline had probably used the exact same colours in her own pictures.

Some wicked worm crawled through her mind. Neither Huke nor Carly struck her as indulgent or imaginative parents. In Madeline’s bedroom she had seen only one felt-tip pen - underneath the bed, another of Madeline’s hidey-holes. She recalled the space in the roof. Where Madeline had been the pens were. Her treasure trove.

But she had had them all with her on that day.

And now she knew who had given Madeline the set of pens she must face the truth.

She was culpable.

She returned to the briefing. “Korpanski and I will continue interviewing our suspects while I want you to centre your enquries and searches on three areas. Crowdeane’s farm, Madeline’s own home and Baldwin’s flat. Please contact me immediately if you believe you have found something important. Seal the area off until the SOCOs arrive and make sure you don’t destroy any
trace evidence.” She paused. “I know we’re near to cracking this case and I want to thank you for all your hard, unstinting work. We will understand what happened to this little girl and why. Please be careful and thorough. Don’t let’s risk a conviction because we hurried the last fence.”

A roomful of shrew eyes were upon her. They knew what she was saying.

She and Mike called round speak to Wendy Owen again. She was less flustered today and looked more relaxed. Maybe holidays weren’t always the halcyon times they promised.

She made a cup of tea and Mike and Joanna sat around her kitchen table.

“Well,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

“I want you to tell me more about Joshua, the clown’s act,” Joanna began.

“Just as I said,” Wendy Owen smiled. “Quite clever really. Lots of hankies disappearing up his sleeves. He was clever with eggs too. They vanished and then reappeared in someone’s ear. He was very good, you know.”

“And?”

“Coins under cups. Standard stuff really.”

“And the highlight?”

“Alice’s mirror,” Wendy Owen said. “It was so clever. He gave some introductory spiel about Alice’s Magic Looking Glass. Some birds. Doves, I think, sitting on the top of a tall mirror. He whisked a cloth over it and they were behind the mirror. Fluttering. Then he flicked another cloth. Blue - with gold stars on. And the birds were gone. The children. They just sat there with their mouths open. I think one of them whispered. ‘How did you do that?’”

“And his answer?”

“Magic.” She laughed. “Even I almost believed in it. It was so cleverly done. Magic.”

Joanna nodded at Korpanski. “Time to go back.”

As they reached the door Wendy Owen touched her
shoulder. “I’ve heard you’ve got Carly and Darren in for questioning.”

Joanna nodded and Wendy Owen stared. “I didn’t believe it when I heard,” she said. “I couldn’t bear to think …”

They left then.

Baldwin looked very frightened when they re-entered the interview room.

“We’re going for a nice little drive in the country, Baldwin,” Joanna said. “And I expect you’d like to visit your old home?”

“I haven’t got a choice, have I?”

Korpanski shook his head.

They pulled up outside Haig Road but instead of going inside the flat Joanna went straight round to the back.

As she opened the door Baldwin looked straight at her.

As the SOCOs had initially said. The garage was small - more of a shed really. Too small for a car. Like many garden sheds it was full of junk, lawnmowers and garden shears, old plantpots and a few props from his magic act. The mirror stood facing the middle, a dusty cloth draped over it. You would have sworn it had not been touched for years.

She swiped the cloth aside and stood in front of it. It looked innocuous enough, a tall, tilting mirror, her own reflection staring back at her.

Behind her Baldwin’s face swam into view.

“Show me,” she said.

Baldwin flicked the top, releasing a spring. The mirror was flexible. It dropped down and was replaced by a partly transparent sheet of thick plastic. This must be the
birds behind. She peered into the small aperture in the back. Baldwin released the spring again and they saw how tiny the space was.

“It was only meant for birds,” he said. “She wanted me to hide her. I told her only to go in if she heard someone outside. I forgot you can only open it from the outside. Birds can’t work it, see. Where else could she go that she wouldn’t get found? She didn’t want no one to find her. I knew you’d be around. Hunting. And if she were found ‘ere you’d be chargin’ me. So I showed her the secret spring and told her she could be invisible if she were frightened.”

It was all true.

“Tell me what happened,” she said.

“Start at the beginning.”

“I were drivin’ from Potteries towards Leek,” he said. “As I passed Ladderedge I saw her runnin’. She was bleedin’ and cryin’. What else could I do? I ‘ad to do somethin’.” Tears formed in his eyes. One rolled down his right cheek. “I didn’t know what to do. I thought. I shoved her in my garage and told her to hide well.” He was frankly crying now. “I only wanted to help her.”

He glared at Korpanski. “Then you got heavy with me. Took me in. And when you let me go you were watching my every move. I willed her to keep quiet. I whispered to ‘er through the door. Told ‘er to be a good girl and keep quiet. I was worried. But I was glad too that she hadn’t been found. What else could I do? And then he got to me. I was in hospital. And when I came out…” He buried his face in his hands.

“We’re taking you back in.”

She’d applied to the magistrate for permission to hold Huke and Carly for a further twelve hours. All was
activity. Flashing blue lights streamed up and down the small High Street and the people of the town must have sensed an arrest was near.

Every lockup and interview room was being used. They shoved Baldwin in the only spare cell and Joanna finally got to Huke.

Alone. “The injuries on Madeline’s face,” she said, “were sustained in the twenty-four hours before she died. Do you understand?”

Maybe she was kidding herself but she fancied Huke looked very slightly intimidated. Perhaps he sensed her anger. “So.” He made a vain attempt at bravado. It was paper-thin.

“It reminded me of the other, older injuries about her face. The ones you can’t remember happening or can’t explain how they got there. Someone punched that little girl right in the face. Broke her arm.”

Huke started staring at the wall.

Joanna folded her arms. She was familiar with this trick, the one of wasting the time allowed by PACE rules. She would get him in the end. So instead of pursuing the question or explaining to the twirling tape recorder that the suspect declined to answer she sat silently too.

Eventually his eyes flickered back to her. He tried to smile. It was little more than a wobble of the mouth. She gave him a confident grin back.

He was sunk. And he knew it. She was the stronger.

A face swam behind the viewing window. Korpanski was trying to attract her attention.

She dealt with the tape recorder and stood up, left PC Phil Scott and Paul Ruthin with him, pressing a finger to her lips. She wanted to use the silence.

“What have you got, Mike?”

“Traces of blood in the back of Huke’s van,” Korpanski said softly, glancing behind her shoulder.

“And?”

“Hair.”

He was teasing her. There was a merry light in his dark eyes that she hadn’t seen for a few weeks. She waited.

“And a felt-tip pen.”

“What colour?”

“Bright yellow. Canary yellow.”

She recalled the carefully coloured in Easter egg. Mike must have read her mind.

“I rang the teacher,” he said. “Vicky. They’d cut the shapes out on the Thursday but spent all Friday colouring them in. Sky-blue, purple, red and canary-yellow.”

She let out a long breath and allowed herself a silent YES.

Then she glanced back at Huke. He was leaning back in his chair, his eyes bouncing between the two police officers, trying to look nonchalant.

She had him in a poacher’s bag with a drawstring top.

She re-entered the room and Phil Scott restarted the tape recorder. “We’re curious as to how Madeline came by her injuries,
after
she was reported missing,” she said.

Huke tried to glare her out so she stroked the nail on her index finger. “Of course Carly should be able to help us out there.”

Huke half rose and sank back again, staring straight ahead as though the blank wall would help him. “I’ve nothing to say,” he said.

She went to Carly next.

“You’re Madeline’s mother,” she accused. “You should have protected her.”

Carly was at the end of her tether, wild-eyed and heavy-lidded. Her skin looked sallow and dingy, her fingers shaking as she lit cigarette after cigarette, taking deep drags on them and stubbing them out in the ashtray with a viciousness that made her seem wiry and strong.

The room smelt fusty. WPC Anderton coughed a couple of times, tried to suppress it. Carly seemed impervious.

“She was only five years old,” Joanna continued, “but she had an awful life.”

Carly’s eyelids were too heavy and swollen to open but she made an effort.

“There isn’t anything you can do to blot out or change the past,” Joanna said softly. “All you can do is to pay some tribute to your small daughter’s memory. Give us the truth.”

With a huge effort Carly managed to open her eyes. Joanna looked deep into them.

“Go on.” She nodded. “It’s up to you, Carly,” Joanna said with a hard note in her voice. “But I can tell you now - we will access the truth. It might take us some time. It would be quicker if you helped us. Just remember this. If you wilfully obstruct us I won’t see you as the grieving mother but as an accessory.”

“To what?”

Joanna simply stared back at her.

Carly dropped her eyes. “I wasn’t,” she whispered. “I never.”

“When you realised Madeline had vanished you rang your partner, didn’t you?”

Carly nodded.

“For the tape recorder, please.”

“I rang him about half past three,” Carly whispered.
“I just said she’d disappeared. That she didn’t come out with the other kids and that I couldn’t see her in the classroom either.”

Joanna nodded.

“He said he’d come to the school. That’s all I really know. He didn’t get there.”

Joanna shook her head.

“Then you was called in.” She licked dry lips. “I don’t know anything for certain.”

“I think you do.”

“He told me he found her,” she whispered. “She was somewhere near a farm. Her leg was bleeding. I think he hit her and she ran away. That’s all I know. On my mother’s life, Inspector, Darren has swore to me he didn’t kill her. He just …” She took a long, sucking drag on her ciagarette. “… disciplined her. He told me this. I think it’s the truth. Someone else is responsible.”

Joanna nodded.

Someone else was responsible.

This was not a simple murder case but a sequence of events. Many people had played their part. Wendy Owen had had a party, invited a second-rate conjuror. Baldwin’s wife had given up on him and taken their daughter, so he had hung around the school and watched Madeline. The headmistress had called the police in to deal with the unwanted stalker and she and Mike had made assumptions so had brought Baldwin in for questioning. Which in turn had meant that he had not been able to free her from Alice’s Mirror and Madeline had died. Paul Wiltshaw had run off with Carly’s sister, abandoning his own wife and child to the attentions of Darren Huke. Huke himself had been heavily disciplined as a child by a tyrannical father. Even foot and mouth had played its part. Crowdeane had concealed the fact that Madeline had been there because he did not want to risk visitors who might carry the virus about their
persons or vehicles. And again the virus had stepped in, delaying the discovery of the body.

Even somehow, Daniel’s christening and her own predicament had some bearing on this case which, in the end, boiled down to vulnerability.

And the final ingredient; Madeline had been a child who had fervently believed in magic.

Through the entire sequence of events ran the thread of the coloured pens, as though Madeline had strewn clues behind her, like roses scattered on the pavement telling of a recent wedding.

She went back to Baldwin then for the answer to one last question. “Was it you who gave her the set of felt-tip pens?”

Baldwin nodded.

She sat down opposite Huke with a smile and a sigh of relief. “Good,” she said.

His eyes flickered over her. “What do you mean good? My bleedin’ partner’s kid is murdered and you’re saying good.”

She moved forwards then, her elbows on the table, her face very near his. “I meant good that we’re beginning to get some answers. No.” She folded her arms. “All the answers.”

Huke sat back, bit his lip.

“Mobile phones are wonderful things, aren’t they?”

Huke was watchful.

Joanna spoke again. “Sure you don’t want a solicitor?”

“I haven’t got anything to say,” Huke said, “except this.
If
I did ever discipline that little runt of a kid - maybe a bit over-hard - it was for her own good. It’s the way to bring up kids. It’s the way I was brought up and
it’s never done me any harm. It’s called being a dad. I’ve done more for that kid than her own dad did. Little squirt. Didn’t know or care whether ‘is own daughter was alive or dead. Unnatural bastard. You might see Madeline as something between a saint or a perfect little Barbie doll but she wasn’t. She was a cheeky little cow. A deceitful scum of a kid. Full of lyin’ and thievery. You couldn’t trust her a bloody inch.”

She knew Huke might be applying these lines to a five-year-old child just as long ago the very same words had been used to describe him.