Wednesday's Child ib-6

by Peter Robinson

  “Anything else?”

  “Well, we can tell a fair bit about how it came to be there and—this is the interesting part—first, there wasn’t very much, nowhere near enough to cause loss of life. It was restricted to the bib area of the T-shirt and the dungarees, which might make you think on first sight that

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  someone cut her throat, but no way, according to Frank. At least not while she was wearing them.”

  “Then how did it get to be there?”

  “It didn’t drip. It was smeared, as if you cut your finger and wiped it on your shirt.”

  “But you surely wouldn’t wipe it on a white T-shirt and yellow dungarees?”

  “I wouldn’t, no. That’d be grounds for divorce. But Gemma was only seven, remember. How careful were you about getting your clothes dirty when you were seven? Someone else washed them for you.”

  “Still … And less of your cheek, Vic. What kind of injury could have caused it?”

  “We can’t say for certain, but most likely a scratch, a small cut, something like that.”

  “Any idea how long the clothes had been out there?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Anything else at all?”

  “Yes. In addition to the items I’ve mentioned, we received a pair of white cotton socks and child’s sneakers. There was no underwear. You might care to consider that.”

  “I will.”

  “And there was some whitish powder or dust on the dungarees. It’s being analyzed.”

  “What about the cottage?”

  “Very interesting. Whoever cleaned that place up really did a good job. They even took the vacuum bag with them and combed out all the fibres from the brushes.”

  “As if they had something to hide?”

  “Either that or they were a right pair of oddballs. Maybe house-cleaning in the nude got them all excited.”

  “Aye, and maybe pigs can fly. But we’ve got nothing to tie them in to the missing lass?”

  “No prints, no bloodstains, no bodily fluids. Just hair.

  It’s practically impossible to get rid of every hair from a scene.”

  “And it’s also practically impossible to pin it down to any one person,” said Gristhorpe.

  “There’s still the DNA typing. It takes a bloody long time, though, and it’s not as reliable as people think.”

  “Was there anything that might have indicated the child’s presence?”

  “No. The hairs were definitely adult. Some sandy coloured, fairly short, probably a man’s, and the others we found were long and blonde. A woman’s, I’d say. A child’s hairs are usually finer in pigment, with a much more rudimentary character. We found some fibres, too, mostly from clothes you can buy anywhere—lambs-wool, rayon, that kind of thing. No white or yellow cotton. There was something else, though, and I think this will interest you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you know we took the drains apart?”

  “Will Patricia Cummings ever let me forget?”

  “There’s a fair bit of dark sludge in there.”

  “Could it be blood?”

  “Let me finish. No, it’s not blood. We haven’t run the final tests yet, but we think it’s hair-dye, the kind you can wash out easily.”

  “Well, well, well,” said Gristhorpe. “That is interesting. Just one more thing, Vic.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think you’d better get the lads digging up the cottage gardens, front and back. I know it’s a long shot— most likely somebody would have seen them burying anything out there—but we can’t overlook it.”

  “I suppose not,” Manson sighed. “Your estate agent’s going to love us for this.”

  “Can’t be helped, Vic.”

  “Okay. I’ll be in touch later.”

  Gristhorpe sat at his desk for a moment running his palm over his chin and frowning. This was the first positive link between Mr Brown and Miss Peterson, who had abducted Gemma Scupham on Tuesday afternoon, and Chris and Connie Manley, who had abandoned a prepaid holiday cottage in spotless condition on the Thursday of that same week. Coincidence wasn’t enough; nor was the fact that Manson’s men had found traces of hair-dye in the drains, but it was a bloody good start. His phone buzzed.

  “Gristhorpe,” he grunted.

  “Sir,” said Sergeant Rowe, “I think there’s someone here you’d better see.”

  “Yes? Who is it?”

  “A Mr Bruce Parkinson, sir. From what he tells me, I think he might know something about the car. You know, the one they used to take that young lass away.”

  Christ, it was coming in thick and fast now, the way it usually did after days of hard slog leading nowhere. “Hang onto him, Geoff,” said Gristhorpe. “I’ll be right down.”

  II

  Dark satanic mills, indeed, thought DC Susan Gay as she

  approached Bradford. Even on a fine autumn day like

  this, even with most of the mills closed down or turned

  into craft shops or business centres, the tall, dark chimneys

  down in the valley still had a gloomy aspect.

  Bradford had been cleaned up. It now advertised itself as the gateway to Bronte country and boasted such tourist attractions as Boiling Hall, the National Museum of Photography and even Undercliffe Cemetery. But as

  Susan navigated her way through the one-way streets of the city centre, past the gothic Victorian Wool Exchange and the Town Hall, with its huge campanile tower, Bradford still felt to her like a nineteenth-century city in fancy dress.

  After driving around in circles for what seemed like ages, she finally turned past St George’s Hall and drove by the enormous Metro Travel Interchange onto Wakefield Road. The next time she had to stop for a red light, she consulted her street map again and found Hawthorne Terrace. It didn’t seem too far away: a right, a left and a right again. Soon she found herself in an area of terrace back-to-backs, with washing hanging across rundown tarmac streets. The car bumped in potholes as she looked for the street name. There it was.

  An old man in a turban and a long white beard hobbled across the street on his walking-stick. Despite the chill that had crept into the air that morning, people sat out on their doorsteps. Children played hand-cricket against wickets chalked on walls and she had to drive very slowly in case one of the less cautious players ran out in front of her chasing a catch. Some of the corner shops had posters in Hindi in their windows. One showed a golden-skinned woman apparently swooning in a rajah’s arms—a new video release, by the look of it. She noticed the smells in the air, too: cumin, coriander, cardamom.

  At last she bumped to a halt outside number six, watched by a group of children over the street. There were no gardens, just a cracked pavement beyond the kerb, then the houses themselves in an unbroken row. The red bricks had darkened over the years, and these places hadn’t been sandblasted clean like the Town Hall. Like any other northern city, Bradford had its share of new housing, both council and private, but the Johnsons’

  part of town was pre-war, and here, old didn’t mean charming, as it often did out in the country. Still, it was no real slum, no indication of abject poverty. As she locked her car door and looked around, Susan noticed the individualizing touches to some of the houses: an ornate brass door-knocker on one bright red door; a dormer window atop one house; double-glazing in another.

  Taking a deep breath, Susan knocked. She knew that, even though the Johnsons had agreed to her coming, she would be intruding on their grief. No matter what the late Carl’s police record said, to them he was a son who had been brutally murdered. At least she wasn’t the one to break the news. The Bradford police had already done that. The upstairs curtains, she noticed, were drawn, a sign that there had been a death in the family.

  A woman opened the door. In her late fifties, Susan guessed, she looked well preserved, with a trim figure, dyed red hair nicely permed and just the right amount of make-up to hide a few wrinkles. She was wearing a black skirt and a whit
e blouse tucked in the waistband. A pair of glasses dangled on a cord around her neck.

  “Come in, dearie,” she said, after Susan had introduced herself. “Make yourself at home.”

  The front door led straight into a small living-room. The furniture was old and worn, but everything was clean and well cared for. A framed print of a white flower in a jar standing in front of a range of mountains in varying shades of blue brightened the wall opposite the window, which admitted enough sunlight to make the wooden surfaces of the sideboard gleam. Mrs Johnson noticed Susan looking at it.

  “It’s a Hockney print,” she said proudly. “We bought it at the photography museum when we went to see his exhibition. It brightens up the place a bit, doesn’t it? He’s a local lad, you know, Hockney.” Her accent sounded

  vaguely posh and wholly put-on.

  “Yes,” said Susan. She remembered Sandra Banks telling her about David Hockney once. A local lad he might be, but he lived near the sea now in southern California, a far cry from Bradford. “It’s very nice,” she added.

  “I think so,” said Mrs Johnson. “I’ve always had an eye for a good painting, you know. Sometimes I think if I’d stuck at it and not… .” She looked around. “Well … it’s too late for that now, isn’t it? Cup of tea?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Sit down, dearie, there you go. Won’t be a minute. Mr Johnson’s just gone to the corner shop. He won’t be long.”

  Susan sat in one of the dark blue armchairs. It was upholstered in some velvety kind of material, and she didn’t like the feel of it against her fingertips, so she folded her hands in her lap. A clock ticked on the mantelpiece. Beside it stood a couple of postcards from sunny beaches, and three cards of condolence, from neighbours no doubt. Below was a brown tiled hearth and fireplace, its grate covered by a gas-fire with fake glowing coals. Even though it was still warm enough indoors, Susan could make out a faint glow and hear the hiss of the gas supply. The Johnsons obviously didn’t want her to think they were stingy.

  Before Mrs Johnson returned with the tea, the front door opened and a tall, thin man in baggy jeans and a red short-sleeved jumper over a white shirt walked in. When he saw Susan, he smiled and held out his hand. He had a narrow, lined face, a long nose, and a few fluffy grey hairs around the edges of his predominantly bald head. The corners of his thin lips were perpetually upturned as if on the verge of a conspiratorial smile.

  “You must be from the police?” he said. “Pleased to

  see you.

  It was an odd greeting, certainly not the kind Susan was used to, but she shook his hand and mumbled her condolences.

  “Fox’s Custard Creams,” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “That’s what Mother sent me out for. Fox’s Custard Creams.” He shook his head. “She thought they’d go nice with a cup of tea.” Unlike his wife’s, Mr Johnson’s accent was clearly and unashamedly West Riding. “You think I could get any, though? Could I hell-as-like.”

  At that moment, Mrs Johnson came in with a tray bearing cups and saucers, her best china, by the look of it, delicate pieces with rose patterns and gold around the rims, and a teapot covered by a quilted pink cosy. She set this down on the low polished-wood table in front of the settee.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked her husband.

  He glanced at Susan. “Everything’s changed, that’s what. Oh, it’s been going on for years, I know, but I just can’t seem to get used to it, especially as I’m home most of the time now.”

  “He got made redundant,” said Mrs Johnson, whispering as if she were telling someone a neighbour had cancer. “Had a good job as a clerk in the accounts department at British Home Stores, but they had staff cutbacks. I ask you, after nearly thirty years’ loyal service. And how’s a man to get a job at his age? It’s young ‘uns they want these days.” Her accent slipped as she expressed her disgust.

  “Now that’s enough of that, Edie,” he said, then looked at Susan again. “I’m as tolerant as the next man—I don’t want you to think I’m not—but I’d say things have come to a pretty pass when you can buy all the poppadoms and samosas you want at the corner shop

  but you can’t get a packet of Fox’s blooming Custard Creams. What’ll it be next? that’s what I ask myself. Baked beans? Milk? Butter? Teal”

  “Well, you’ll have to go to Taylor’s in future won’t you?”

  “Taylor’s! Taylor’s was bought out by Gandhi’s or some such lot months back, woman. Shows how much shopping you do.”

  “I go to the supermarket down on the main road.” She looked at Susan. “It’s a Sainsbury’s, you know, very nice.”

  “Anyway,” said Mr Johnson, “the lass doesn’t want to hear about our problems, does she? She’s got a job to do.” He sat down and they all waited quietly as Mrs Johnson poured the tea.

  “We do have some ginger biscuits,” she said to Susan, “if you’d like one.”

  “No thanks. Tea’ll be fine, Mrs Johnson, honest.”

  “Where do you come from, lass?” asked Mr Johnson.

  “Sheffield.”

  “I thought it were Yorkshire, but I couldn’t quite place it. Sheffield, eh.” He nodded, and kept on nodding, as if he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I’m sorry to be calling at a time like this,” Susan said, accepting her cup and saucer from Mrs Johnson, “but it’s important we get as much information as we can as soon as possible.” She placed the tea carefully at the edge of the low table and took out her notebook. In a crucial interrogation, either she would have someone along to do that, or she would be taking the notes while Banks asked the questions, but the Johnsons were hardly suspects, and all she hoped to get was a few names of their son’s friends and acquaintances. “When did you last see Carl?” she asked first.

  “Now then, when was it, love?” Mr Johnson asked his

  wife. “Seven years? Eight?”

  “More like nine or ten, I’d say.”

  “Nine years?” Susan grasped at a number. “You hadn’t seen him in all that time?”

  “Broke his mother’s heart, Carl did,” said Mr Johnson, with the incongruous smile hovering as he spoke. “He never had no time for us.”

  “Now that’s not true,” said Mrs Johnson. “He fell in with bad company, that’s what happened. He was always too easily led, our Carl.”

  “Aye, and look where it got him.”

  “Stop it, Bert, don’t talk like that. You know I don’t like it when you talk like that.”

  Susan coughed and they both looked at her shamefacedly. “Sorry,” said Mrs Johnson. “I know we weren’t close, but he was our son.”

  “Yes,” said Susan. “What I was wondering was if you could tell me anything about him, his friends, what he liked to do.”

  “We don’t really know,” said Mrs Johnson, “do we, Bert?” Her husband shook his head. “It was nine years ago, I remember now. His twenty-first birthday. That was the last time we saw him.”

  “What happened?”

  “There was a local lass,” Mr Johnson explained. “Our Carl got her … well, you know. Anyway, instead of doing the honourable thing, he said it was her problem. She came round, right at his birthday party, and told us. We had a barney and Carl stormed out. We never saw him again. He sent us a postcard about a year later, just to let us know he was all right.”

  “Where was it from?”

  “London. It was a picture of Tower Bridge.”

  “Always did have a temper, did Carl,” Mrs Johnson said.

  “What was the girl’s name?” Susan asked.

  Mr Johnson frowned. “Beryl, if I remember correctly,” he said. “I think she moved away years back, though.”

  “Her mum and dad still live round the corner,” said Mrs Johnson. Susan got their address and made a note to call on them later.

  “Did Carl keep in touch at all?”

  “No. He wasn’t even in much after he turned sixteen, but there’s not been a dicky-bird si
nce that postcard. He’d be thirty when he … when he … wouldn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Susan said.

  “It’s awful young to die,” Mrs Johnson muttered. “I blame bad company. Even when he was at school, whenever he got in trouble it was because somebody put him up to it, got him to do the dirty work. When he got caught shoplifting that time, it was that what’s-his-name, you know, Bert, the lad with the spotty face.”

  “They all had spotty faces,” said Mr Johnson, grinning at Susan.

  “You know who I mean. Robert Naylor, that’s the one. He was behind it all. He always looked up to the wrong people did our Carl. Always trusted the wrong ones. I’m sure he wasn’t bad in himself, just too easily led. He always seemed to have this … this fascination for bad ‘uns. He liked to watch those old James Cagney films on telly. Just loved them, he did. What was his favourite, Bert? You know, that one where James Cagney keeps getting these headaches, the one where he loves his mother.”

  “White Heat.” Mr Johnson looked at Susan. “You know the one. ‘Top of the world, Ma!’”

  Susan didn’t, but she nodded anyway.

  “That’s the one,” said Mrs Johnson. “Loved that film, our Carl did. I blame the telly myself for a lot of the violence that goes on these days, I really do. They can get

  away with anything now.”

  “Did you know any of his other friends?” Susan asked her.

  “Only when he was at school. He just wasn’t home much after he left school.”

  “You don’t know the names of anyone else he went around with?”

  “Sorry, dearie, no. It’s so long ago I just can’t remember. It’s a miracle Robert Naylor came back to me, and that’s only because of the shoplifting. Had the police round then, we did.”