Endangering Innocents

by Priscilla Masters

  Chapter Fourteen

  Matthew’s accusations were turning out to be true. But a major investigation was hard enough without having to pussyfoot around his emotions at home. She was pretending to be asleep when he came home, and heard him breathing quietly next to her, neither of them sleeping.

  Sleep should bring rest and peace. It brought her none of these and she awoke feeling nauseous and apprehensive.

  And so the days turned into weeks and still there was no clue what had happened to the child.

  Tuesday May 1st.

  She cycled in along the Moorlands road, having avoided breakfast. She must have a nervous stomach or else the sandwich she’d eaten the night before had disagreed with her. Somehow her usual bowl of muesli had held no appeal. She’d swigged down her fresh orange juice with little enthusiasm and felt glad to be out in the clean, fresh air. The moment she walked into the station with its encumbent scent of stale fat, yesterday’s chips and cigarette smoke she felt queasy again. And the locker rooms didn’t help. People’s feet encased in sturdy leather footwear day after day acquires a certain fragrance.

  She puked up in the sink and sat down, dizzy and faint.

  It was all she needed. A bug!

  Korpanski handed her a cup of tea. “But I hate the stuff,” she said. “It’s got no taste.”

  “Settle your stomach.”

  “How did you …?”

  “Dawn Critchlow happened to stick her head round the door at a critical moment,” he said, with a sympathetic grin. “Hangover?”

  “On one glass of wine drunk with a meal?”

  He made the sign of a tilting mug. “Trust me, Jo. It’ll do you good.”

  “It better had.”

  She sipped it slowly, kept it down, and an hour later felt fine. Korpanski’s medicine had worked.

  One of the junior officers had unearthed an interesting witness, so they spent the morning interviewing. Gelda Holmes was Baldwin’s one-time neighbour. Baldwin, in the meantime, was insisting he camped in the burntout shell of his flat. Joanna had tried to persuade him to accept a police house and one was being arranged. But he flatly refused to live in the local B&B - even at their expense. Gelda lived in Rochester Row, in the middle of a 1960s estate of small, box-like houses, some detached, others semis. She had been Joshua Baldwin’s next door neighbour until he had moved to Haig Road four years ago, and Joanna was anxious to fill in a little of his past. Knowing him, understanding him, may well be the key to unlock his Pandora’s box and find Madeline.

  It was from Ms Holmes that she heard the full story of Baldwin’s marriage.

  She seemed - if anything - fond of her one time neighbour. “He helped me out a couple of times, stopped a leak and fitted a new immersion. Never charged me neither except for the cost of the heater. And he sorted out my central heating boiler when it went on the blink.”

  She was a busty lady in huge, tight blue jeans and a fluffy pink fleece, aged about fortyish - with full, tanned cheeks and bleached blonde hair. And she was anxious to talk. And talk. Like many married couples Baldwin’s divorce had left him the poorer. “I’m divorced and all, you see,” she said, shooting Korpanski a distinctly, come-hither look. “So I know what he was going through. Anyway, he moved out about four years ago - a year after she left with Denise to live in America. She met a guy, you see, while she was on holiday in Florida.”

  “With her husband?”

  “Well - poor old Joshua.” She gave a long blink of her blued eyelids. “I mean - he never was the luckiest of blokes. No sooner touched down and booked into the airport than he got some sort of food poisoning. Stuck in the hotel bedroom he were all the time while Hilary sunned herself beside the hotel pool. She weren’t a bad-looking woman. And she met this guy. Big bloke he was - from New York I think somewhere. Shewed me all these pictures of him she did. And she’d giggle like a sixteen-year-old. Fooling Joshua. Well - like I said - he weren’t exactly born lucky. And she were a go-getter.”

  Joanna nodded. She couldn’t imagine the Baldwin they had met holidaying in Florida. Obviously with the divorce his circumstances had changed - vastly.

  “He was fond of his daughter?”

  “Fond? When she went he was like an animal who’d lost its young,” Gelda said. “The walls are thin ‘ere. I could hear him at night, crying his heart out. Thumping his pillow. Moaning. That bloody witch of a woman. Fancy taking his little girl away like that. Hairdresser, Hilary was. Went around people’s houses in a flashy car. Did whole families at a time - perms, colouring, cut their hair. She was onto a winner. Lots of people are housebound - or don’t like sitting in a shop window with people watching them all day. She was busy. She worked hard. Evenings, weekends. Ambitious. It was probably her money that paid for their house. They don’t come cheap you know. This is a good road. Desirable. And then she up and offed. And it wasn’t a great surprise to me.”

  “How long did it take Joshua to settle down?”

  “Oh. Not for ages. Still bad he was when he moved out of here. He popped over before he went. Gave me his card. Said if I needed any work doing. But he looked awful. Dishevelled. Somehow I didn’t fancy having him come round my house. He changed. He’d gone so strange. I think it was losing Denise that upset him far more than the breakup of the marriage. Used to make my heart bleed. He’d carry her clothes - her little toys - around with him in the car for ages afterwards. Maybe a year.”

  Something a little like a hot needle threaded its way into Joanna’s mind, suggesting.

  It seemed to burn a mere embryo of a picture. A flash. Imperfect. Incomplete

  Madeline’s empty bedroom, almost devoid of toys.

  “How long ago did Mrs Baldwin leave her husband?”

  “Round about five years ago.”

  “And his daughter? How old was she then?”

  “Denise?” Gelda Holmes scratched her head. “No more than a little tot. Four maybe - five. Shy little thing. Like a little mouse creeping around the place as though she didn’t want to be noticed. Mind you Hilary had a ghastly temper. More than once I’d hear her shouting at that little tot. Ever wonder she was so shy. Wouldn’t say boo to a goose.”

  “Did Denise go to school?”

  “Aye - she’d started. Just a couple of months before they went.”

  “Which school?”

  But she already knew the answer before Gelda Holmes had opened her mouth.

  “Horton.”

  “How did she travel there?”

  “Well - not with Hilary I can tell you. Too busy earning the money, cutting the hair, living the high life. No - it was her dad all right. Adored his little girl. Shame really. I don’t think he’s ever got the time and the cash together to go over to America and see her. Knowing Hilary she’d not have made it easy for him. America’s a big country - isn’t it? And I’ve never seen little Denise back in Leek again.”

  Korpanski had been holding back, his attention drifting. Suddenly he stepped forward, startling both Joanna and Gelda so she almost lost her balance. “What did Baldwin’s daughter look like?”

  “Oh funny, solemn little thing. Mind you I bet she’s changed. I mean - she’s been livin’ in America all this time. Besides - she’d be ten years old by now. Quite a big girl. I’m sure if I saw her I wouldn’t know her.”

  Not in her doting father’s mind.

  Like a conjuror producing a card Korpanski whipped Madeline’s photograph from his pocket and flapped it, face up, beneath Gelda Holmes’ nose. “Did she look anything like this?”

  Gelda stared at the picture for a few minutes before returning the glance of the detective. “A bit,” she said dubiously. “Similar hair. Different eyes though.”

  But Joanna knew Mike was barking up the wrong tree. It had not been so much the physical appearance of the child that had seduced Baldwin into mentally substituting Madeline Wiltshaw for his daughter but something else. The diffidence so obvious in the father, the head-hanging shyness described by Gelda, that desper
ate wish to fade into the background. The impossibility of entering into the rumble tumble of the playground. Madeline had been a child apart. It had been that that had triggered Baldwin’s merging of the two children. Not her hair or her eyes. And that was why he had hung around the school. Maybe. Maybe not.

  They left Rochester Row with a feeling of having stepped a little closer to the real Joshua Baldwin. But even so the case was feeling tired and stale, like them, jaded - and the missing child elusive. They needed something to envigorate them. To pep them up. To enliven them and bring back that energy that had been present at the beginning of the investigation. Something apart from delving into Baldwin’s sad little past.

  He must have known.

  The call came in at two o’clock from the front desk from an over-excited desk sergeant. For the first time in almost three weeks she could hear real anticipation in Phil Scott’s voice.

  She and Korpanski legged it fast around to the desk. She was glad Scott had had the sense to put some gloves on before he had touched the object on the counter.

  The woman who had brought the carrier bag in was in her forties with odd greying hair, peppering dark brown, neatly cut in layers to her chin. She was wearing a sad black work suit.

  “We were walking back towards the Council offices,” she said. “We’d had some lunch in Greystones. I don’t know why,” she said. “I wouldn’t normally pick a plastic carrier bag out from a rubbish bin. Only it looked so neat. So - deliberately placed there. It was as though it was waiting to be found. So I did. I picked it out.” She sounded surprised at her own audacity.

  Mike shot a swift, appraising glance at her hands. They’d need her fingerprints.

  “And then I saw it was a little girl’s clothes. All neatly folded up. Shoes at the top. Quite new ones they were as well. I just couldn’t understand it. Then I thought …” She swallowed. “I wondered if it could be hers. The little girl who went missing? I seemed to remember something about one of those grey puffer jackets. And that’s one - isn’t it?”

  Joanna slipped on some gloves herself. “What exactly did you touch?”

  “Only the shoes,” the woman said, vaguely offended. “But you see what I mean -?”

  Joanna took the shoes from the top. The puffer jacket was neatly folded underneath, the tights beneath them.

  There were procedures to follow now.

  Inside this bag was evidence.

  And there must now be the question of possible cross-contamination to deal with. Joanna was not going to watch her case tumble in court through poor procedure. On the other hand she did need to examine the clothes herself in case they held a clue as to the child’s whereabouts. Lying right at the bottom of these natural concerns was the depressing knowledge that wherever Madeline Wiltshaw was she had been stripped - and was almost certainly now naked.

  With two witnesses and a couple of large, clean forensic bags, herself and Korpanski encased in SOCO paper suits went through the contents, mentally ticking off Carly Wiltshaw’s list.

  White knickers (Carly may have not been sure but they had been white)

  Pink vest. Not originally pink. Colour washed - possibly - with the red tights.

  Grey gymslip.

  Red sweater. Acrylic, matt washed.

  Lastly she turned her attention back to the grey puffer jacket, and the black shoes - Clarke’s Tiptoes with small heel and a torn strap. And here was the only indication of force. The buckle was still attached to the strap. Threads hung where it had been pulled off.

  The bag itself was as common as seagulls circling a rubbish tip. A Safeway’s plastic carrier bag. But excellent for preserving fingerprints. She breathed a swift prayer and dropped it into the forensic bag.

  Next she searched the pockets and found a couple of sticky sweets in the coat and some red staining around the gymslip bib. All the clothes would be analysed under the forensic lab’s microscopes but by the vague scent of chemical around the stain at a guess it had leaked from another of Madeline’s felt-tip pens. Scarlet.

  Soon everything was bagged up and labelled. Two police were dispatched back to the rubbish bin to search through the remaining contents for anything more that might lead to Madeline but Joanna felt that the clothes had been bagged up too neatly. This was it. There was nothing more to find. Not yet.

  It was the old game of hide and seek. But instead of a giggling child or a frightened little girl hiding, the abductor had substituted himself. He was playing the game now. Madeline had been shoved aside. Cruelty and ruthlessness were the new rules. The stakes were different. The clothes were meant to prove the point.

  Joanna read the woman’s anxious eyes and felt queasy again. Not physically - mentally.

  Madeline was naked but not feeling the cold. She felt she knew this as though she were a clairvoyant. These were Madeline’s clothes. This would soon be proved. And they were meant to mock her for not finding the child. He was hiding in the dark, throwing an object across the room and chuckling when it landed on the opposite side and she was misled.

  She must be vigilant.

  Could she not hide her eyes and count to ten? Look again? Find her this time?

  When the abductor wanted it - unless she could outwit him.

  So they must extend their search. Use heat-seeking devices, fingertips, invade the country. A child’s killer was loose. Other children would be in danger. Like the blindfold of the game, foot and mouth and the restrictions it brought would hamper their search. But not stop it. It was more important to seek. Seek properly. And ye shall find.

  Aloud she said, “Let’s get a courier to take this to the lab, Korpanski.”

  To the woman she said, “We’ll need all your details. And, I’m afraid, one of your hairs and your fingerprints.”

  The woman looked affronted until her eyes flickered across the pathetic pile of clothes landing on the poster of the solemn-faced child. Have you seen Madeline?

  “They are hers, aren’t they?”

  “We don’t know until …”

  The woman gave a tiny, cynical smile. “I’ve watched enough cop series on telly,” she said. “I know what you’ll do now.”

  Joanna bowed her head.

  The woman didn’t even know she was participating in the game.

  “And thank you,” she added. “If these are Madeline’s they were meant to be found.”

  You were nothing but a vehicle for the killer to make sure we knew he was playing now.

  “Your observations and help will bring us closer to catching whoever it was abducted her. And incidentally protect other children.”

  Again the woman’s eyes flickered away from Joanna’s face.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Tuesday May 2nd

  In one way the discovery of the bag did pep up the morale of the investigating officers. It made them feel this was a tangible, solvable case rather than a pure void. There was a body. Somewhere. They simply had to find it. But for now they had to wait for the two day delay while forensics used a nit comb to glean the evidence from the clothes. It was a process that could not be hurried. Some stray fibre might well lead to a conviction. Although underneath Joanna was not hopeful. She was aware that whoever had abducted Madeline was playing with them as a cat plays with a mouse - or a bird - for entertainment. To an alerted population it had been predictable that someone would have found the bag. As he had wanted it to be found. Would someone so confident be so careless as to have left a stray fibre on the missing child’s clothes that would lead straight back to him? She doubted it.

  The priority was that Carly should identify her daughter’s clothes but when she rang there was no answer. It would have to wait. Later on today they were planning a reconstruction. She had little faith that actually watching another small child walk out of Horton Primary would jog the memories of the public. To her it smacked of clutching at straws. But it was expected of her. And when you have nothing to clutch at, a straw can seem a lifeline. Anything was worth a try.


  Today was the first day the children were back at school after the Easter break. Amongst them the boisterous Sam Owen and his family, very recently returned from Spain. Their plane had been held up at Malaga airport for six hours so until now there had been no chance of interviewing them. They must have finally arrived back in Leek some time in the early hours of the morning.

  She left Korpanski organising the reconstruction and drove the couple of miles to the Westwood housing estate, a neat, modern estate on the Southern side of the town.

  Wendy Owen was knee deep in brightly coloured washing - shorts, t-shirts, beach towels, swimwear which still bore evidence of the sea. Sand rasped beneath Joanna’s feet as she stepped across the kitchen floor. In fact the entire house smelt of the Mediterranean - of coconut-scented suntan cream, of brine, of fish, of garlic and olive oil. With a pang Joanna realised how long it had been since she and Matthew had had a holiday together. A real holiday - not simply weekend breaks, visiting friends in London or York. But somewhere far away, alone, somewhere predictably hot. Their lives were overfilled with work. It was a mistake. There was not enough leisure time. She vowed to rectify the situation. If it was possible.

  As she briefly outlined the investigation to Mrs Owen she soon realised that the six hour airport delay followed by an exhausted tumble into bed meant that Sam’s mother didn’t know anything about Madeline’s disappearance.

  Visibly shocked, she dropped into the kitchen chair. “Oh poor Carly,” she said. “She must be feeling awful. Simply awful. What do you think has happened to little Maddy?”

  It was the first time Joanna had heard Madeline referred to by a pet name.

  She made no attempt to answer the question but shook her head and eyed Wendy Owen steadily, understanding that Sam Owen’s mum, at least, had held some affection for the quiet little girl - such a contrast to her own boisterous son.