Endangering Innocents

by Priscilla Masters

  Joanna was going to have to do the work.

  “Is it from your observations outside the school?”

  Baldwin was exercising his right to silence.

  The green eyes stared into hers.

  Korpanski’s knock on the door sounded urgent. His eyes were shining. “They’ve found something at Baldwin’s place.”

  Chapter Seven

  7 pm

  She and Mike went immediately back round to Haig Road.

  The lights were on, two police cars outside. It looked a scene of high drama. One or two neighbours were clustered around the gate, muttering. Joanna ignored them. Sergeant Barraclough met her in the doorway.

  “The team have just done a once over,” he said. “It’s only a small flat. There’s nothing obvious here. We’ll take the computer and download it. Just to see what turns him on in his spare time. But there was something they found in a box underneath the bed and thought you should see.”

  It was spread out on the bed, bright diamonds of blue, yellow and scarlet silk, a royal blue curly wig, huge, spangly joke shoes. Joanna eyed it for a moment then turned around to meet Mike’s eyes. Barra indicated a small vanity case standing on the dressing table. In it was a collection of greasepaint.

  Phil Scott handed her a small business card. “Joshua the Clown”, it read. “Children’s parties a speciality.”

  “It’s a great way to get near to children,” he said. “Parents wouldn’t suspect a thing. Neither would the little ones. Uncle Joshua. Children a speciality.”

  Deft hands stacking up cards. A clown’s grotesque disguise.

  There was more to Baldwin than met the eye. A completely new dimension.

  “Bag them up,” she said to Scott.” Get them sent to forensics.”

  “The Scenes of Crime boys will strip the joint,” Barra said. “And the garage has got some items I guess he uses in his act too.”

  “And the van?”

  “Already on to it.”

  9 pm

  This time when she observed Baldwin through the two-way mirror he was sitting with his eyes closed, his fingertips pressed to his temples as though he was playing at thought transference. Joanna pushed the door open.

  “Communicating with Madeline?”

  He didn’t open his eyes. “I wish I could.”

  “It isn’t one of your tricks then?”

  Baldwin looked almost hurt.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were Uncle Joshua, children’s funny friend?”

  “Why would I? What’s it to do with you?”

  “It brought you into contact with children.”

  Baldwin nodded. “But not for …”

  “Not for what, Baldwin?”

  “Not for what you think.”

  “We’ll see. And you attended children’s parties?”

  He waited.

  “Any of the children from Horton Primary?”

  “A couple.”

  “And yet none of the parents …”

  “Recognised me? No,” he said bitterly. “I was in disguise. I’d arrive already in my costume. And I expect you’ve seen the greasepaint. They’d never have known me in my ordinary clothes in a month of Sundays. I was the funny one. Someone they could all laugh at when I fell over or hit me head on a plank. But I was the one who astonished them too. I was the one who could find an egg behind their ear or make a sweet vanish from their own hand. I could divine the card they’d memorised or produce a bunch of flowers from an empty hat. I could do things they, with all their GameBoys and sophistication, couldn’t understand. I impressed them. I could catch them out.” He ended his speech in a note of self-satisfied malice.

  “I see.”

  “They’d let me near their children as long as I was wearing the Uncle Joshua clothes. But when I wasn’t they reported me as though I was a malicious vagrant.” He looked affronted.

  “And Madeline?”

  “She was the only one,” Baldwin said slowly. “The only one who saw through my outfit. I was cleaning off my greasepaint in the van one day after a kiddie’s party while she was waiting for her mum to come and pick her up from the party. Her mother was always the last to come and fetch her. She came and knocked on the window.” He smiled. “Sat in the van with me until her mother arrived. She is a lovely little girl. One day I happened to be passing her school when the children were coming out and she knew me straightaway. Such a clever little thing. She smiled at me. The only one.” A lonely sadness imprinted deep lines across his face. “As though I was her very special friend.”

  They were interrupted by a knock on the door.

  Korpanski stuck his head round. He was looking excited. There was a tautness about his face. Joanna knew that look. He believed he was on to something. She excused herself from Baldwin and joined Korpanski in the corridor outside.

  He hung on until she had closed the door behind her. “They’ve found a hair in Baldwin’s van,” he said. “On the front seat. Straight, very dark brown. Four inches in length. Nice bit of root for DNA. No hair colourant.”

  The image of straight brown hair framing the solemn face fitted. Yet she shook her head. “He’s just told me - voluntarily - that she sat in his van one day.”

  Mike blinked. “He’s clever, Jo,” he said. “You have to hand it to him. He’s very smart.”

  “Smart or innocent.”

  Mike grabbed her arm. “Don’t get hoodwinked by these people, Jo. They get close to children because they’re clever. It’s how they do it. They’re conmen.”

  She returned to Baldwin.

  “Did you say you first met Madeline at a children’s party?”

  “Yes.” Baldwin was becoming almost co-operative. He was beginning to relax in her presence. Starting to trust her.

  “Can you remember the name of the child whose party it was and roughly the date?”

  “Christmas time,” Baldwin said. “I can’t remember the exact day.”

  After Christmas had been when Baldwin had begun to haunt Horton Primary. Joshua, the clown, had attended a children’s party and befriended a five-year-old child. So the chain of events had been set up which had led directly to today.

  “And the name of the little boy or girl whose party it was?” She didn’t even know whether it bore any relevance.

  Baldwin looked shifty. “I don’t know the child’s name. The parents’ name was Owen. I think the little boy is in the same class as Madeline. I’ve seen him there. Noisy child.”

  Joanna thought for a moment. They would check out Baldwin’s statement as they checked everything. But there was no point or reason for him to lie.

  Baldwin cleared his throat noisily, as though to remind her he was still there.

  She met the full force of his goat-eyes. “Why did you keep going back to Horton School - even after we’d warned you off?”

  “Do I have to have a reason?” He was getting cocky.

  “Frankly, in the light of recent events - yes.”

  “To see the children.” Baldwin almost whispered the words.

  But she knew it wasn’t children - in general. One child. One small girl. Madeline. Who must have obsessed him. He didn’t fool her. She leaned across the table. “Why?”

  He didn’t answer. She had to repeat the question. “Why did you want to see the children?”

  “I just like them.” She knew he was sliding away from the subject. That she had asked the question in too clumsy a manner.

  “All?”

  Baldwin looked away. “You told me,” he said accusingly, “at the beginning - that I didn’t have to say anything.”

  “We also told you that witholding information might look bad for you if we charge you and you haven’t given valid and believable reasons for your silence.”

  Baldwin’s eyes looked wary. “Charge me? Charge me with what?”

  “I obviously have to remind you. Madeline Wiltshaw, the little girl of whom you were so fond, is missing.”

  “Well I haven’t got h
er. Have you looked at her home?”

  “She isn’t there, Baldwin. The police are in contact with her mother.”

  He put his face close to hers, crooked, stained teeth inches away. “How do you know for certain that she isn’t home, Inspector? Maybe she’s hiding from her mother or from the thug who pretends he’s her father.”

  “Why would she do that?”

  “You police don’t understand,” he said, “not anything. A little girl goes missing. You haven’t the sense to try and find out anything about her or what’s really happened. You simply put your hand on the nearest collar of anyone who appears a bit different. And when you can’t make his story fit your theories you get stuck. You’re just pointing the finger at me without looking around you. And …”

  He pressed his lips together to stop them from saying more.

  “Joshua.”

  Eyes instantly wary.

  “Did you see Madeline leave school today? After all …” Quick encouraging smile, “you were outside at the time the children were let out.”

  “And within an hour your lot had picked me up.”

  “That’s right. But not before you’d returned to your flat. What for?”

  Baldwin’s eyes gleamed with a stroppy intelligence. “I was in my flat for less than a minute. I actually just went back to pick up a spare tool. I’d forgot it earlier on. Now what could I have done to a little girl in such a short time?”

  It felt like a challenge. She stared at Baldwin, searching his face for some clue. There was nothing. He met her eyes with a bland stare of his own, a sort of pseudo-innocence that terrified her. Was he teasing her? Or was he - in fact - blameless and declaring. She didn’t know.

  And she had run out of questions. She checked the clock. Ten-thirty. She may as well grant him his eight-hour break. She only prayed he would not squander the time sleeping.

  Baldwin may have the right to an eight-hour break to sleep but she didn’t. It was almost two when she crawled into bed beside a sleeping Matthew. She altered the alarm to six and lay, her hands under her head, staring up at the black void of the ceiling and wondering. This was the worst of a missing child case. One lay in bed and imagined a frightened, cold little girl in a thin anorak, as night fell.

  And that was if she was simply lost. Anything else was simply a nightmare.

  Matthew rolled over to put his arm around her. “Go to sleep,” he mumbled.

  But she couldn’t.

  Chapter Eight

  Saturday April 15th

  She was awake long before the alarm went off. But not sleepy, instantly alert, like a bloodhound, ready for action. She reached out and flicked the switch off. Matthew need not wake for hours. She managed to slip out of bed without disturbing him and stood underneath the shower for a few minutes, her face tilted upwards to meet the full force of warm water. She spluttered coming out, wrapped herself in a huge, white towel and crept back into the bedroom to fish some trousers out of the wardrobe and a fuschia coloured sweater from a drawer. She ate her breakfast quickly, cleaned her teeth, brushed her hair and smeared some lipstick and mascara on. Her skin she left bare, disliking the greasy look and feel of most foundations.

  She was in the station well before Korpanski, ready to resume questioning Baldwin the second his eight hours PACE rest was up.

  Half-past six prompt she had him brought from his cell. He looked bleary-eyed, his mousy brown hair thin and dusty, sticking up all over the place. He smelt unwashed and looked as though he had not slept either. “Tea or coffee?” she asked.

  “Tea. Two sugars.” The PC was dispatched to the canteen.

  “Any news?” Baldwin asked.

  “Come on, Baldwin,” she said. “Give us a break. Whatever’s done is done. We only want to find her. Where is she?”

  It was her first direct attack, brought on by a night without sleep, a genuine worry for the child, a feeling that Baldwin was playing a dreadful game of cat and mouse with her. The colour drained from his face as he absorbed her words and her hostility. He stared back at her, chalk-faced, accepted the tea and drank it without shifting his eyes from hers. When he’d completely drained the mug, tilting it practically upside down and finishing with a noisy slurp, he put it on the desk firmly, and studied the walls of the room.

  She badly wanted to needle him. “We have your computer,” she said.

  She and Baldwin eyed each other warily. She found him difficult to gauge. Sometimes he seemed of limited intelligence. Joshua, the clown, who tripped over buckets of water strategically placed and had pancakes aimed at his face. She had to remind herself that this was all an act. In fact everything was carefully rehearsed, like a play. Magic depended on split second timing, on a distorted time-span, a speeding up, a slowing down. Illusion. A deflection of the audience’s eye, strategic use of mirrors. A flick of the cardsharp’s hand, a piece of elastic which tugged a handkerchief up a sleeve and made it seem as though it had disappeared. Was it the same with the abduction of a child? Had he known the children would be let out of school fifteen minutes early and used that for his trick? Knowing the parents’ eyes would be distracted - on coloured, paper Easter eggs, over-excited offspring, a little boy who bumped his aeroplane wings and knocked other children over?

  Had the vanishing trick depended on when exactly Madeline Wiltshaw had left the classroom, and on everyone’s attention being diverted?

  She knew Baldwin was perfectly aware what they would be looking for when they downloaded his computer.

  After a further hour’s stonewalling from Baldwin it was Joanna who needed a break. She left the room, almost careering headlong into Korpanski. He must have been watching through the two-way mirror. “Not getting very far, are you, Jo?”

  “Nope.” She stared at Korpanski. “Unless we get further evidence we’re going to have to let him go,” she said. “We’ve nothing on him. Not really.”

  She could almost hear Korpanski grind his teeth. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think the old fashioned interviewing techniques are the best way to get confessions out of suspects. Not this pussy-footing.”

  “You mean the bash-it-out-of-them brigade? Oh, Mike,” she said. “You don’t even believe in that yourself. And we both know it would get our case thrown out of court and a nice disciplinary action from the C.C.”

  “Well, it would get results.”

  “It could get Baldwin off - whether he’s guilty or innocent. And another child could vanish. No thank you. We’ll get our results through police work, Mike,” she said, “through checking and rechecking, interviewing suspects, reliance on our forensic teams.”

  “And in the meantime, what happens to the child?”

  “Don’t,” she said. “Breaking all the rules won’t be what keeps her - and other children - alive.”

  Facing Baldwin again she felt confused. She should be able to rattle him. She had plenty of circumstantial evidence against him. Reliable witnesses - plenty of them - placed him outside the school at the time when Madeline had vanished. He had been seen there before on numerous occasions and had been warned off. But he had been “brought in for questioning” less than an hour after Madeline had last been seen. He was a lone man who spent his leisure time entertaining children in a clown’s guise. While this could be an innocent and lucrative hobby, it could also be clever manipulation to gain access to children. Parents over-protected their children - or most of them did. Others needed their children protecting from them. Baldwin had hinted that Madeline fell into this category. Maybe this was something she should not ignore. Baldwin had openly confessed to having a particular interest in - a sympathy with - Madeline. And it was Madeline who had vanished. It was not exactly a giant leap to string all these pieces of circumstantial evidence together.

  The trouble was, as she had said to Mike, the evidence she had was purely circumstantial. She had nothing concrete. No piece of evidence. She needed something. But Colclough’s warning was ringing in her ears. “Just because you have a hot suspect …
”

  Baldwin might be a hot suspect but if she was wrong and he was innocent her face was turned away from the truth.

  One should not ignore gut reactions. But what was her gut reaction? She didn’t even recognise it herself.

  She replanned her mode of questioning.

  It was time to play the friendly detective. Give Baldwin some “best friend” advice.

  “Joshua,” she said, looking him full in the face and treating him to her widest, warmest smile, “you said something about Madeline’s home circumstances. Tell me a bit about them. Tell me what she told you.” Another conspiratorial smile. “I shall have to call round and talk to her parents later on. It’ll help me know how to interview them. Give me an angle?”

  “Not both her parents. No father. It all stems,” Baldwin said slowly, “from the man her mother is with. You see - like many women - she’s weak.”

  “Physically?”

  “Both physically and in her character.” Baldwin said. “She wasn’t sticking up for her daughter. Not looking after her. Not properly. Women don’t, you know. They want another man so bad they sacrifice their children.”

  It was an unfortunate word, sacrifice. It had connotations. The Aztecs had sacrificed crying children. Primitive cultures sacrificed victims to appease a hostile force. And she had the impression he had chosen the word deliberately. He wasn’t talking only about Madeline. But about someone else. Real pain - and pity, fury and frustration - had flashed, unbidden, across his face.

  Maybe if she could winkle out these emotions … “You have personal experience of this?”

  Baldwin’s hands started fidgetting. It was a very different action from the steady control when he was shuffling his playing cards. “I don’t see it’s any of your business.”

  Another smile. “I’m only trying to understand, Mr Baldwin.”