Cry of the Children

by J M Gregson

  ‘I ’ad regular work with a builder when I was in Oldford. I can do roofing and lots of other things. Even plastering – there’s not many as can do that. But work drops off in the winter. No one wants casuals.’

  ‘And you don’t have transport. That must be a handicap for you.’

  Gibson hesitated for a moment. ‘I got a bike. I get around on that, when I need to. But they don’t want casuals in the winter. Not in a recession.’ He produced the last phrase with a bitter familiarity; it had obviously been proffered to him many times as he was turned away.

  Lambert had been content to observe closely whilst Hook elicited more than the man realized he was revealing. Now he leant forward and said, ‘We’re almost finished, Mr Gibson. But we need to know where you were on Saturday night.’

  ‘When Lucy was taken, you mean?’ He gave a bitter grin at seeing through the question so quickly. ‘Well, I wasn’t here, as that cow downstairs was so pleased to tell you.’ He had been listening to the exchanges in the hall, as they’d suspected. ‘I was in the pub up the road, the Rose and Crown.’

  ‘I see. I suppose you were drinking with someone who can confirm this for us?’

  ‘No. I was on my own. I can’t buy rounds. I have to make halves of bitter last a long time.’

  ‘But I expect the landlord will remember you. Are you a regular in there?’

  ‘No, he won’t remember me. Well, I doubt it. It’s busy on a Saturday night.’

  ‘Even early on a Saturday night, Mr Gibson?’

  There was so little room in the shabby bedroom that they were almost touching each other. Bert Hook leant forward and rolled up the frayed cuff of Gibson’s sweater. There were significant marks on the inside of the man’s forearm. Heroin. Bert looked into Gibson’s moist grey eyes from no more than a foot away. The man looked down at his exposed flesh. ‘They’re old marks, those. It’s four years since I injected.’

  ‘It’s addictive – horse.’

  ‘I was never an addict. I might have become one, at one time. Lucy stopped that. I looked at her and thought her dad couldn’t be an addict.’

  ‘But you’re still a user.’

  He looked for a moment as if he would deny it, then shrugged the scrawny shoulders and pulled down the sleeve of his sweater. ‘I take the odd pill or a bit of coke, when I can get it. Since I broke up with Anthea. You get bloody miserable, living in places like this.’

  ‘I know you do, Dean. But don’t become a user again. It will destroy you. And if the hash and the shit and the white powder don’t, the people who run the industry will.’ Any policeman, and particularly any CID man, knows the pattern. People like Gibson don’t have the money to indulge the habit. They either steal to continue it or more usually become small-time dealers, taking the risks for the bigger men who supply them. Once you’re hooked, you sell to indulge the habit, being paid in drugs, just enough to keep you hooked whilst you sell to new users in pub car parks, in the back streets around cinemas, even outside the gates of secondary schools.

  Hook was still staring into the man’s face after he had given his advice. He said softly, ‘You weren’t in the Rose and Crown on Saturday evening, were you, Dean? You were away on your bike to Oldford, weren’t you?’

  He spoke with such conviction that the jaded Gibson was convinced this was knowledge, not speculation. He was blinking furiously as he said, ‘I wanted to see Lucy. It should have been my day to see her, Saturday. But Anthea put me off because of that bugger Boyd. I knew the fair was on. I thought I might see Lucy there. I’d been planning to take her there, before bloody Boyd turned up.’

  ‘And did you see her?’

  ‘No. I must have been too late. I didn’t get there until about quarter to eight.’

  ‘How do you know when Lucy disappeared, Dean? We haven’t given a time in any of our information bulletins.’

  The grey eyes blinked furiously, but they didn’t drop away from his, as Bert had expected. ‘I don’t know, do I? I just know that I didn’t manage to see her when I got to the fair.’

  Hook looked at him steadily for three long seconds before he said, ‘You know Lucy and her background better than anyone except her mother, Dean. Have you any idea who might have done this awful thing?’

  ‘No. I’ve been asking myself that ever since I heard.’

  ‘You don’t know of any odd people who hung around the school gates, for instance?’

  ‘No. You should ask the school about that.’

  Hook nodded. ‘Members of our team have been doing that this morning. Chief Superintendent Lambert has told you that we only got the news of Lucy’s death on the way over here, so we don’t have many details as yet. Is there anything you wish to ask us?’

  Only now, when prompted, did he ask the question that usually sprang first to the lips of parents involved in this agony. ‘Was she … did he tamper with her, before he killed her?’

  Lambert said as calmly as he could. ‘There will have to be a post-mortem. But a preliminary examination by a pathologist has revealed no evidence of sexual molestation.’

  They stood up from the hard single bed, straightened the blankets and left him sitting on the single chair, looking up at the small, open window, listening to the innocent sounds of small children with their mothers in the supermarket car park.

  By three o’clock in the afternoon, the sun had disappeared, as if it recognized a need to cloak the dismal events in this small corner of the spinning world. The lights were already on in the CID section and in Lambert’s office, where four of the senior ranks involved in the Lucy Gibson case were discussing what they should do next on this melancholy day.

  ‘How did the mother take it?’

  All of them knew that Lambert’s routine opening query involved more than the compassion they all felt for Anthea Gibson. Had there been any tiny signal in her reception of the news of Lucy’s death that she might have been involved, or that she knew more about it than she was revealing to them? One of the worst aspects of this sort of crime was that you had to think the unthinkable. Fred West’s despicable wife was still in her closely guarded cell to remind them of that.

  Ruth David said, ‘Anthea Gibson was as stricken as you’d expect her to be. I’ve no comparisons, because I’ve never had to do this before. She was devastated by Lucy’s death, as you’d imagine, even though she seemed to be half expecting it. Chris went with me; I thought the situation warranted a DI. It was quite bizarre, but I think I was right. I think the lady appreciated that we’d allotted her little girl a senior rank to deliver the final news. Chris was very good with her.’

  Chris Rushton hoped he wasn’t blushing. Blushing wouldn’t improve the image of a DI; as a man who had been promoted young, he was conscious of his image. ‘Ruth did most of the talking. I was glad when it was over.’

  This was quite a statement for Chris. He wondered if it was unprofessional to confess as much as that. Lambert said, ‘As we all would have been. But these things have to be done and have to be done as well as we can do them. It’s the least the poor woman deserves. Did she say anything about Matthew Boyd?’

  ‘Nothing significant. I don’t think she’s seen him since we had him in here and spoke to him. He’s working around Oxford this week, she said. She doesn’t know when she’ll see him again. They haven’t made any arrangements, if we can trust what she says.’

  ‘Do you think she realizes he’s in the frame for this?’

  Ruth David said, ‘We couldn’t really investigate that. We were there to tell her that Lucy had been found dead. Her main concerns were that her daughter hadn’t been raped or assaulted and hadn’t suffered very much. My impression is that Anthea is intelligent enough to know that, as the last person known to have been with Lucy, Matt Boyd has to be a suspect until we can prove otherwise. Perhaps she even has her own doubts about him – maybe that’s why she apparently has no plans as yet to see him again. But she didn’t say anything to that effect, or even imply it.’

 
; ‘Her husband was at the fair on Saturday night. Dean Gibson cycled over here on his bike.’ Bert Hook blurted out the sentences abruptly, like a man downing unpleasant medicine as quickly as he could. He didn’t want the pathetic man he had left two hours earlier to be a man who had killed his daughter. He knew his attitude was highly unprofessional; people defeated by life were more rather than less likely to panic and do crazy, irrational things. ‘Gibson says that he didn’t see Lucy, that it must all have happened before he got there.’

  Lambert, who often disconcerted Bert Hook by knowing exactly what he was thinking, now said, ‘I didn’t like the fairground man, Rory Burns. I wasn’t impressed by either his bearing or his attitude. And he’s got form. Bert bluffed him into thinking that we knew all about it, when we didn’t. Have you turned up the details, Chris?’

  ‘Yes. Only ten minutes ago, though.’ Rushton tried not to look too pleased with himself. ‘Rory Burns threw up nothing for us. That’s not his real name. He’s Gerry Clancey. And he’s got convictions for child molestation and attempted rape on an under-age girl. Did four months for it. Very lucky to get such a short sentence, I’d say. Used the usual defence – told the court the girl said she was eighteen and led him on. She denied both of those. Clancey was a bouncer in a night club at the time. I expect someone supplied him with a good brief.’

  ‘Good work, Chris. We’ll use that when we have another go at him, if we need to do that.’

  The DI nodded. He was still absurdly pleased when John Lambert praised him, though he took care not to show it. ‘There is someone we should take a look at. There was a complaint against him earlier on in the year from the local school. Probably nothing, but we should look into it. We’ve got him on our—’

  There was a sudden urgent knock at the door. The face of a flustered young female constable appeared as it opened. ‘Sorry to interrupt, sir, but there’s a woman who’s got past the front desk and is demanding to see you. I’ve tried to—’

  She was thrust aside and a small grey-haired woman in glasses stood panting in the doorway. She glared round the four surprised CID faces as if they had offered her some personal affront. ‘You need to see Big Julie and you need to see her quick! She shouldn’t be out on her own, that woman, and now this is the result! Why the hell don’t you do something about her?’

  It was the only woman in the room who defused the situation. ‘I know Big Julie Foster. And I know you, I think, don’t I? It’s Mrs Garside, isn’t it?’ Ruth David glanced at her three male colleagues. ‘I think we’ve more or less finished here for the moment. Why don’t you come along with me to one of our interview rooms where we can be private, Mrs Garside, and tell me what it is you have to say about Big Julie?’

  She ushered the irate woman away, leaving the three men at once disturbed and relieved. DI Rushton decided that he would need to open yet another new file.

  EIGHT

  They found him where they had been told they might. He was standing a hundred yards from the gates of the primary school, beside the now deserted playing field where boys and girls played team games.

  He looked all of his seventy years, but he was smartly dressed and well groomed. He was around six feet, perhaps three inches shorter than Lambert. He wore no hat, but he had a plentiful head of white hair, which was immaculately parted and brushed. Probably the style of it had not changed in forty years. The chief superintendent said, ‘Mr Robson? We need to talk to you.’

  He sighed and said resignedly, ‘I thought you might. You won’t find it very helpful. My house would be the best place, I think.’

  Lambert didn’t comment. He said simply, ‘We have a car over there. We can give you a lift.’

  The man seemed to stand more upright as he responded. ‘Thanks all the same, but I’d prefer to walk. The mothers will gossip if they see me getting into a police car. And I’ve had enough gossip to last me for the rest of my life.’

  It wasn’t far. Dennis Robson arrived as they reversed into his driveway and parked the car outside the small detached bungalow. He didn’t seem surprised that they should know the address without guidance. He opened the door and said, ‘Make yourselves at home in the living room. I’ll get us a pot of tea.’ He didn’t give them a choice about the refreshment and Lambert decided not to assert himself. You could learn things about a man by studying his surroundings whilst he was absent.

  They didn’t learn a lot here. It was a tidy but utterly conventional room. There was a good-quality three-piece suite with loose extra cushions which looked as if they were purely decorative. There were venerable black-and-white photographs of a man and woman with two children, one of whom was probably the man they could now hear in the kitchen. There was a newer photograph of a woman of about fifty, looking straight at the camera with a quizzical, humorous expression. There was an oval mirror above the sideboard where these pictures were displayed, a picture of a highland scene on another wall.

  Dennis Robson paused in the doorway of the room with a tray in his hands. ‘You’re looking at my wife, Edith, I see. No child is christened Edith now, is it? I suppose one should be grateful if kids are christened at all. That was taken a good ten years before Edith died, but I like to have it there because it’s my favourite picture of her.’

  He looked as if he expected them to ask how she died and express their sympathy, as perhaps other visitors who had sat there had done before them. He probably had his reply ready, but he did not get the question from Lambert. These were not social visitors.

  Robson set down his tray on the low table in front of the two stern-faced men and poured the tea, watching his hand as he did so. It shook a little with the weight of the teapot, but no more than you would have expected in a man of his years, he thought.

  He had given them the Crown Derby crockery, but they did not comment. He was offering them biscuits when Lambert said quietly, ‘Where were you on Saturday evening, Mr Robson? Let’s say between seven and eight o’clock.’

  Dennis set down the plate of biscuits, took one for himself and sat down unhurriedly in the armchair opposite them. ‘I expect you know that, Chief Superintendent. I expect that is why you are here. I was walking round the fairground. The one whence Lucy Gibson disappeared.’ He was pleased with that rather archaic-sounding ‘whence’. The use of the word should emphasize to them how cool he was – in control of both himself and of this situation.

  ‘And why were you there, Mr Robson?’

  He took his time again, wondering whether his leisurely rate was annoying them, as it would have annoyed him. ‘I like children, Mr Lambert. I like seeing them enjoy themselves.’ He decided to be even more daring. ‘It gives me great pleasure to observe their innocence, to see the way that small things give them great pleasure. That is a facility we lose quickly as we grow older. I’m sure you’ve noticed that.’ He enjoyed his use of a judicious irony in that last phrase. Let the man know he was getting too long in the tooth to play the great detective!

  Lambert was determined not to show annoyance. He was as measured and as calculating as the man who had assumed the trappings of a conventional host in what was certainly not a social situation. ‘Were you accompanying any particular children to the fair?’

  ‘No. Edith and I weren’t blessed with children, which means that I now have no grandchildren to light up my declining years. It is a source of lasting regret to me, but one I have come to accept.’ He looked from one face to the other and rolled out the conventional phrases as if they were his own invention, inviting these guardians of the law to challenge him if they found them false.

  ‘It is not usual to wander around a fairground on your own. It invites suspicion, in today’s society.’

  ‘It may be unconventional, but it is not against the law, as you are no doubt well aware. If today’s society does not approve, that says sad things about that society. No doubt you two see its flaws more than most of us, having to pick up the pieces as you do. Is that a mixed metaphor?’

  His expres
sion said that he scarcely expected policemen to understand what a metaphor was. Lambert said dryly, ‘We have more concerns here than a felicitous use of language, Mr Robson. We are questioning you in connection with the abduction and murder of a seven-year-old girl.’

  ‘Crimes with which I have no connection, Mr Lambert. Crimes that I should like to assist you in solving. But I fear I am unable to do that.’

  ‘No one can remember seeing you at the fairground after half past seven.’

  ‘And that is seen to be significant?’

  ‘It is the time when Lucy Gibson disappeared. There were no sightings of her after seven thirty. There are also no sightings of you recorded after seven thirty.’

  Dennis felt the pulse racing in his temple. He trusted it wasn’t evident to these men who studied him so unemotionally. ‘How very convenient that is for anyone wanting to make out a case against me! May I ask who provided you with this information?’

  ‘You may ask, but we won’t give you an answer. Information provided for us in this way is treated as confidential. I’m sure you will appreciate that. We have had a large team talking to people who were around the rides and the stalls at the time in question. Your presence was noted. As a lone man without any children, you stood out in the crowd. If you are now able to provide us with any useful pointers towards a murderer, you would no doubt prefer that also to be confidential.’

  Dennis volunteered a sour smile. ‘I am not able to do that, as you would probably expect. I saw one of the thugs who was collecting fares on the rides looking at the girl lasciviously, but I can’t give you more than that.’

  ‘You knew Lucy Gibson, then, Mr Robson?’

  Lambert’s calm enquiry came as softly as a stiletto slid expertly between the ribs. It left Robson almost as breathless. He wondered if the gasp he felt shaking his torso was audible or visible. Surely it must have been. ‘I … I’ve heard the reports since Saturday. I’ve read what happened in the papers. I thought I must have seen her, that’s all. Perhaps I’m quite wrong and the one I remember is a different girl altogether.’