by J M Gregson
‘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.
FOUR
The 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.’
Matt had heard of this man Lambert before, even though he didn’t follow crime much in the press. He was locally famous, perhaps even nationally famous by now. He would be able to tell Anthea that he’d been interviewed by the great man. Well, perhaps not Anthea. Perhaps he wouldn’t have many more dealings with Anthea, even if this all passed off without any trouble from the police. But he needed to concentrate hard on what was to come in the next few minutes, not think about Anthea Gibson.
He dragged his mind back to the two men who were now pulling up chairs and sitting down opposite him on the other side of the small square table. He must give this all his attention if he was to come through it unscathed. He tried to summon a smile as he looked into the long, lined face and the grey eyes that were staring at him unblinkingly. Lambert said coolly, ‘You are not under arrest and you are not on oath. Do you have any objection to our recording this conversation? You are a vital witness in this, the only one we have at present, and we may need to recall what you have to say for the rest of the large team assigned to this.’
‘No.’ Matt licked his lips. ‘I’ve no objection to that.’ In truth, he didn’t like it at all. But they had him over a barrel, hadn’t they? If he refused, it would look and sound suspicious, and he couldn’t afford that. He tried not to notice the recording beginning as Hook set the machine in motion.
Lambert said, ‘We need to hear your account of what happened, Mr Boyd.’
‘I’ve already given it. I told the constable everything last night.’
‘And both of us have read his account of what you said then. But I want to hear it for myself. Twelve hours have passed since you spoke to our uniformed officer. You may have extra recollections or new thoughts to offer to us. And I’d like an account of everything that happened at the fairground, in case we can pick up anything significant from earlier events. You weren’t aware of anyone watching or following you, were you?’
‘No. But then you’re not even thinking about things like that, are you? If anyone was following us, I never saw him.’ He gave a tiny, involuntary shudder at the thought. ‘I was giving all my attention to Lucy. It’s not easy being a new man coming into the house, when a little girl’s lost her dad. I was trying to tread carefully with her.’
‘I appreciate that. Describe your relationship with Lucy for us, please.’
Matt had hoped they’d be friendlier than this, that he wouldn’t be questioned about how things were between him and Lucy. He told himself firmly that they weren’t unduly suspicious of him, that they’d have investigated this with any man in his position. ‘I was getting on with her well, when you take all the circumstances into account. The three of us – that’s Lucy and Anthea and me – had been to Hereford during the day. We went round the shops and had lunch there. Lucy was perfectly happy with me. I think she was impatient to get home and go to the fair, but I expect any child would have been.’
‘Have you children of your own, Mr Boyd?’
‘No. My marriage didn’t last long. Both of us said, when we split up, that it was a good thing that there were no children to worry about.’ He’d had this ready for them. He delivered it in a measured tone and looked just above Lambert’s head.
‘You took Lucy to the fairground on your own. Was she happy to go there without her mother?’
‘Yes, I think so. It was Anthea’s suggestion. She thought it would be a step forward. Another stage in Lucy and me getting to know each other.’ The last bit sounded hollow in his ears as he recited it, but they were Anthea’s own phrases, and thus surely worth using here. He watched Hook writing; the man seemed concerned to write down his exact words, even though they were being recorded.
Then Hook looked up at him and spoke for the first time. ‘Was this the first occasion you had been out alone with Lucy, Mr Boyd?’
The words flew at him like an accusation from the calm, weather-beaten face. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it must have been.’
Lambert said tersely, ‘Was it or wasn’t it, Mr Boyd? You must surely know that.’
‘Yes. Yes, it was. I don’t like the tone of your questioning, that’s all.’
‘I’m concerned with the disappearance of a helpless girl and what’s happened to her since. Your feelings are very much secondary to that.’
‘All right, I’m sorry. I’m as anxious to see Lucy back as you are. More anxious, because I know her and you don’t.’
‘So help us get to know her. Help us to understand the state of her mind when she was taken. Because at least two people in this room are pretty sure by now that she was taken. Do you think she was?’
Matt tried to control the pulse he felt pounding in his temple. ‘Yes. I don’t think there can be any other explanation. But when it happens, you just can’t believe it’s happening to you.’
‘I understand that. But we have to record all the facts. When a child disappears, there are very few facts at first. And we need to move fast, very fast, if we are to get Lucy back alive. Tell us what happened at the fairground last night, please. It seems that Lucy was lightly dressed, for a cool autumn evening.’
Matt tried not to consider the implications of this. He had to safeguard his own position. He must give all his attention to that. ‘She was in her best light-blue dress. Little girls like to dress up when they’re going out for a treat, don’t they? Her mum made her put on her beanie, and she was wearing a fleece, but Lucy was almost dancing with excitement. She was impatient to be off to the fair.’
‘And she was perfectly happy to go there alone with you?’
‘Yes. I’ve already told you she was.’ He tried a flash of candour. ‘To be perfectly honest, I think she’d have been happy to go there with anyone, just to get to the rides. She’d been looking forward to it all day.’
‘I see. It was still daylight when you reached the common, then?’
‘Yes. But with all the lights on the rides and the stalls, it seemed darker and later than it was. Lucy clung tightly to my hand when we got there. It was the first time she’d ever been to a fair. We went to look at the smaller rides first, the ones she really wanted to go on. But they were still very busy, crowded with small children and their parents. Lucy couldn’t get into the things she wanted to ride in, like the blue bus on the ride at the edge of the fairground. I said it would be quieter later, when the smaller children went home to bed. I said it would be best if we went away and looked at the rest of the fair and came back later.’
‘So where did you go?’
‘I took her on a couple of the big rides. She was a bit nervous, as you’d imagine – she isn’t eight yet. I took her on the Caterpillar, which is the slowest of the big rides, and then we rode on a motorbike together on one of the others. Lucy liked clinging on to the handlebars and pretending it was a real bike. She’s a game kid, and she w
as safe enough with me behind her.’ He was suddenly aghast at his words. ‘But she wasn’t safe at all, was she? She should have been. I should have looked after her!’ His broad features looked in that moment as if they might crash into tears.
Lambert kept his tone even, almost matter-of-fact, despite his theme. ‘And what happened next, Mr Boyd?’
‘We went back to the small rides, where she’d wanted to go at first. I’d promised her, you see. I remember her tugging at my hand to get me back there.’
‘But you weren’t aware of anyone following you?’
‘No. But there might have been, I suppose.’ He shook his head wretchedly. ‘My attention was all on Lucy, you see. I wanted her to enjoy it. I wanted her to go home to her mum and say she’d enjoyed herself with me.’
‘And she went on one of the smaller rides.’
‘Yes. They don’t move very quickly, so children don’t need adults with them. It’s not far from one side to the other on the smaller roundabouts. I still can’t see how it happened. I was so unprepared for it, you see.’
‘Just tell us exactly what took place, please. Try to leave nothing out.’
‘Well, Lucy got in the blue bus she’d wanted to ride in from the start. I think she’d seen the ride being put together on her way home from school and set her heart on a ride in that bus. She was a bit nervous when they started to go round – it’s only a small ride, but it was the first one she’d been on by herself.’
‘And even at this stage, you weren’t aware of anyone else watching her?’
‘No. There were parents around me waving to their own children and me waving to Lucy. That was all. If the bastard who took her had been on my side of the roundabout, I’m sure I’d have seen him, even though I was watching for Lucy to come round each time and waving to her.’
‘What about the staff? Did you see anyone on the ride paying any attention to Lucy?’