by J M Gregson
A woman was coming out of the tall Victorian house as they arrived there. They met her at the gate. She looked at them with undisguised curiosity. Hook said politely, ‘Could you tell us where we could find Miss Foster, please?’
‘You want Big Julie? She in trouble again then, is she?’
‘Not at all. We are hoping she may be able to give us a little information, that’s all.’ He wished he hadn’t asked for help. Women like Julie Foster suffered quite enough, without their neighbours telling anyone who would listen that they’d been the centre of police enquiries.
‘She has the ground-floor flat at the back of the house. Not fit to be on her own, if you ask me. She needs some kind of warden with her.’
Bert didn’t necessarily disagree with that. A lot of people with low IQs had been better five or six to a house with a warden to keep an eye on them and give them advice and assistance. The ‘care in the community’ system of the last twenty years hadn’t worked very well, largely because the community was busy with its own problems and didn’t care much at all. He rang the bottom bell of the six available to him to the right of the solid front door.
It was almost a minute before the door was opened to them and a large woman filled most of the considerable space it had occupied. Lambert said politely, ‘Miss Foster? I’m Chief Superintendent Lambert and this is Detective Sergeant Hook. We need to have a few words with you, please.’
They showed their warrant cards, but she gave them the merest glance. When reading was a problem, you tended to ignore documents, even when they displayed photographs alongside the print. She looked at the men blankly and waited for them to make the next move. Lambert said, ‘May we come inside, please?’
She still didn’t speak, but she turned and led them wordlessly down a long, narrow hall to a door on the right towards the end of it. She opened it as quietly as she could, beckoned them in and shut it with elaborate care once they were inside. ‘You can’t be too careful, you know!’ she said to Lambert confidentially. She spoke with the air of one imparting an original piece of wisdom.
She didn’t ask them to sit down, so they glanced at each other and sat on the battered sofa, leaving her the wide easy chair with green buttoned velvet covering which was obviously her usual seat. She said, ‘I ’aven’t took anything, you know. I ’aven’t took anything for months, not since that woman copper took the things away and told me to watch my step. I’ve been doing that.’ She looked down earnestly at her feet, as if she was taking the advice quite literally.
‘No one is accusing you of anything, Miss Foster.’
‘Not yet, you mean.’ No one came in here and called her Miss Foster. They all called her Julie – the social workers and the care people and the woman who came to talk to her about her money and how she should manage it. The only time anyone called her Miss Foster was when they were going to accuse her of something. Charge her with something, perhaps. This big tall copper must be very important. Chief super, he’d said. He’d nail her for something if she didn’t watch her step.
Lambert was already finding this difficult. He knew what he wanted to ask, but they would need to talk to Big Julie in the right way to get the best information from her. Be sensitive to her disabilities, whilst remembering throughout that she might be a child killer. He glanced hopefully at Hook. He was much relieved when Bert took on the task of talking to this woman, who had the brainpower and many of the reactions of a child, but the physical strength of a powerfully built man.
Hook said, ‘It’s about the fair, Julie. You were there at the weekend, weren’t you?’ She looked at him blankly and he said with a smile, ‘We know you were, because you’ve already talked to one of our police ladies, haven’t you? You told her that you were there on Saturday night.’
The big woman put her hands together with immense care. Perhaps she thought that the way she set her palms precisely opposite each other before she pressed them together could affect her fate with these strange men. She had a broad face, with a large, flat nose at the centre of it. Her wide, childlike, brown eyes seemed all-seeing, but capable of missing things that were vital to her understanding of the situation. ‘Saturday night. I was at the fairground, yes. It’s good, the fair, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is. Did you go on any of the rides yourself, Julie?’
‘I rode in a dragon on one of the smaller rides. I was going to go on one of the big ones, but I didn’t in the end. I don’t like going on them on my own.’
‘That’s what you told our girl in uniform who spoke to you, isn’t it? It’s good that you remember things so clearly. That’s what we want you to do.’
‘I’ve always been able to remember things clearly. They like that at Tesco’s. They say it makes me reliable. If Mr Burton says he needs twenty-four tins of baked beans for the shelves, I bring just that many, you see. I’m reliable.’ She enunciated the four syllables of the word carefully; it was obviously important to her.
‘That’s good for us too, Julie. It makes you a reliable witness, you see. Not everyone remembers everything as clearly as you. Did you spend long at the fair on Saturday?’
The broad brow wrinkled for the first time. ‘An hour, I think. That’s what the policewoman reckoned it must have been. I’m not always good at measuring time and I don’t have a watch. I lost it at work. Someone pinched it, I think.’
Hook tried not to be distracted by the harrowing picture he was acquiring of the way in which this limited, brawny woman lived. He wondered whether the estimate of an hour spent at the fair derived from Julie or from the young policewoman who had spoken to her a day earlier. ‘You were there for quite a long time, considering you only had the one ride. What else did you do?’
She looked suddenly threatened, as if he had accused her of something dire. As he had, indirectly, he supposed. She said, ‘I walked around, watching the big rides going round and round, listening to the music and the people shouting to one another. There was a lot of laughing and shouting, people happy. I like that.’
‘Yes. I expect it cheers you up to see people enjoying themselves. I know it does me. Did you speak to anyone?’
Again the frown of concentration, as if it was important to her that she made no mistake here. ‘No. Someone shouted at me to get out of the way and pushed me, but I didn’t speak to him. I had a go on one of the stalls, where you try to throw rings over prizes. I was trying to get myself a new watch, but a lad at work told me no one ever gets the best prizes. The man on the stall took my money, but he didn’t speak to me.’
‘Do you have a boyfriend, Julie?’
‘No. I did once, but he moved away.’
‘Girl friends?’
‘Not really. I used to go around with people, but they’re mostly married now, see. They don’t want to go out with me anymore.’
Hook looked round the high Victorian room. Its filthy ceiling was barely visible; the cheap light fitting threw the light from the single bulb mostly downwards on to the area where they were sitting. This was more a bedsitter than a flat; there would be a single bed in the alcove behind the curtain that covered most of a dark aperture. There were a couple of gloomy Victorian landscapes in battered gold-painted frames on walls that had not been decorated for at least ten years. There was no sign of a book or even a newspaper in the room.
No doubt Julie Foster was confined to this room for most of her leisure hours. It was a depressing place. A small portable television on top of a chest of drawers provided the only relief and the only link with the wider world outside. Julie was thirty-eight now; she did not read and she had only the dumbed-down world of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here and the like to while away her time. Weekends here must be bleak. Bleak enough to unhinge a woman without the personal resources to cope with loneliness? Bert said almost unwillingly, ‘You were all on your own at the fair, then?’
‘Yeah. I don’t mind, though. I’m used to it. I quite like being in a crowd, especially when people are enjoying themselves. It’s
… well, it’s sort of jolly, isn’t it? It cheers me up, when people around me are enjoying themselves.’
Bert was filled with a surge of sympathy for this woman who had been given so much to bear and who complained so little. But those feelings were ridiculous. The first thing you had to learn in CID work was to be detached; it interfered with your efficiency if you were not. He had known that for years, yet John Lambert had needed to remind him gently of the principle at intervals during their time together. Bert knew what had to come now, but he suddenly felt unable to move to it.
He looked hopelessly at his senior. Lambert took over with scarcely a pause. ‘You got yourself into a bit of trouble with the law a few years ago, didn’t you, Julie?’
He had spoken quietly, but Julie jumped as if someone had stuck a pin in her, as that cruel girl had done a couple of weeks ago when she was stacking the shelves. ‘They said that was all done with. They said that I wouldn’t need to worry about it anymore if I kept my nose clean.’
She lifted her thick fingers to that organ now, as if she thought that had been a literal instruction. It was a gesture that seared the emotions of both men. Lambert said doggedly, ‘You took a child, didn’t you, Julie?’
‘Yes, I did. I’d been told you could have a baby without it coming out of your stomach, that you could … I can’t remember the word.’
‘Adopt, Julie? You thought you could adopt a baby?’ The word came back to him from the police report and its summary of the arguments provided in court. It had seemed absurd as he read it that anyone could have even considered offering that as a defence. Now, sitting here in the presence of this helpless woman who so needed someone to advise and guide her, it seemed quite real.
‘That’s it, yes. I went to the council offices and tried to talk to them about it, but no one there wanted to speak to me. I expect there were forms to fill in. I’m no good with forms. I need someone to fill them in for me.’
‘So you took a baby, Julie. A little girl.’
‘Yes. I didn’t mean to. It was … it was …’ Her brow puckered with fierce concentration, but the words she wanted would not come.
‘Spur of the moment, Julie? A spur-of-the-moment decision?’
‘That’s it, yes. Spur of the moment. Someone said that for me in court, but the woman on the bench said it didn’t make any difference. I couldn’t see any bench, but they were up above me, so there might have been.’
‘You looked after the baby well, Julie, but it wasn’t right to take her, was it?’
‘Ellie, she was called. Smashing little girl. Didn’t cry at all.’
‘No. That was probably because you looked after her so well.’ It was true. The one-year-old had been clean, happy and well fed. Big Julie had bought nappies, jars of baby food and baby milk, and a little teddy bear for her. The child had been expertly bathed and changed. ‘You can’t just wheel away a baby in her pram and keep her, though. You realize that now, don’t you?’
She looked at him blankly for a moment, then nodded her head sadly. ‘They’d left her outside the pub, you know. She was there for over half an hour. They said less, but I had a watch then. I didn’t move her until she started to cry. Little Ellie.’ She looked past him at the damaged mirror on the wall behind him, seeing nothing for a moment except that still vivid moment in her history.
‘A little girl was taken from the fair you know. On Saturday night, at the time you were there.’
‘Lucy. Lucy Gibson. She was the girl who was taken.’
Lambert felt Hook stiffen on the sofa beside him as she enunciated the name. He didn’t even look at his colleague. It was the telepathy they had developed over the years that ensured that his bagman now resumed the questioning.
Bert said gently, ‘You know the girl’s name, Julie. That makes it easier for us. Is that because you’ve heard other people talking about this, or did the police lady mention the name to you?’
The forehead puckered in the effort that was now familiar to them. ‘I knew Lucy. She came to our store. She talked to me. Her mum said she shouldn’t.’
Those few words summarized her present life. Hook strove to keep his tone even as he tried to confirm the picture for himself. ‘You knew Lucy before Saturday, then. And she knew you.’
‘That’s right. I talk to a lot of the children at the supermarket. I like children, you see, and they like seeing what I do at Tesco’s. They get bored, the little ones, and they like it when one of the workers talks to them.’
It was the first time he had heard anyone who was a shelf-stacker at the supermarket pronounce that word ‘worker’ with genuine pride. Someone at the store had done a great job here. ‘Did you see Lucy at the fairground on Saturday night?’
‘Yes. I said hello to her whilst she was holding on to her dad at the shooting range. He won her a little doll. I went away then, though, because I thought he wouldn’t want me speaking to her.’
It wasn’t Lucy’s dad, of course. It was Matt Boyd who’d won the doll for her. But there was no point in troubling Julie Foster with that now. Bert thought of that doll bagged up in CID, with a muddy footprint across its face, and said fearfully, ‘I expect you’d have liked a doll like that for yourself, wouldn’t you?’
The big, moon-like, revealing face looked at him in puzzlement. ‘No. Why would I want that? It was only a little rag doll. Fine for a kid like Lucy, but why would I want one? I haven’t got any kids to give it to. I don’t even have nieces and nephews like some, you know.’
‘No. Silly of me to ask, wasn’t it? But Lucy liked her dolly, didn’t she?’
‘Oh, yes. She was holding it tight when she was riding in her bus on the little roundabout. She waved at me with the dolly’s arm. She looked very happy.’
Now, at last, Hook did glance at Lambert. Julie Foster caught the look and studied first one and then the other of the men’s faces. Hook said heavily. ‘You were waiting for Lucy and her dolly when that ride stopped, weren’t you, Julie? By the wood at the side of the common.’
‘No. No, you’ve got that wrong, mister. I went away after I’d waved to her. Her dad was there and I didn’t want him telling me to fuck off. They do that, you know.’
‘You wouldn’t tell me lies, would you, Julie? It’s much better for you to tell us the truth now than to have other people tell it for you later. That’s what happened when you took Ellie, wasn’t it? We need to know now if you took Lucy away and things went wrong for you.’
‘I didn’t take her and things didn’t go wrong. I waved to her with her dolly. Then I left them to it.’ The big face set into a sullen immobility, as blank and inscrutable as a door shut upon their enquiries.
‘You don’t have your own transport, do you, Julie?’
Hook was expecting a routine negative, which would help to counteract the suspicion that had leapt into their minds with the discovery that she had known Lucy Gibson before the happenings of Saturday night. But she stood up, moved heavily across the room and opened the top drawer in the scratched chest. She handed them a well-fingered envelope which she had obviously been asked to produce many times before. It contained the log book, insurance and MOT certificate of a Ford Fiesta, first registered eleven years previously. Julie Foster said proudly, ‘That’s my transport. One or two scratches, but she runs real smooth. She’s a little belter. Lad I work with sold it to me. It was his gran’s old car. Everything’s in order. You check through it all.’
Hook looked dully through the different sheets. ‘It’s all in order, yes. Did you have this car with you at the fairground on Saturday?’
‘Yeah, I did. Parked at the edge of the common. I went for a drive, you see. I like doing that at night, when there’s no one to see me. I don’t speed, though.’ She looked suddenly alarmed, as if it was important that she convinced them of that.
‘I’m sure you don’t. But are you sure you didn’t take Lucy for a ride with you?’
‘Course I’m sure. I’m not daft, you know, so don’t you go telling an
yone I am.’ The sudden, alarming flash of temper showed how big Julie Foster might be dangerous if she felt threatened.
‘So who do you think it was who took Lucy away?’
But she had closed up on them now. She said only, ‘You should ask her dad, shouldn’t you? He was with her when she was on the roundabout, not me.’
They had asked Matt Boyd, the man Julie had assumed was Lucy’s dad. And they had asked her real dad, too. And the burly thug who had taken her fare on the roundabout whilst trying to look up her skirt. And the man who had watched her on her playing field and at the school gates. And now they were asking this strange, guileless woman whose very artlessness might be her most dangerous quality.
TEN
Anthea Gibson did what the police family liaison officer advised. She avoided the ordeal of identifying the body herself. Her sister Lisa did that for her. Then Anthea left the house in Oldford, which seemed now so empty and silent, and went to stay with Lisa in Gloucester.
Lisa lived quite close to the modern shopping centre of the ancient city. It was a busy place, and Anthea was glad of that. It was helpful to have noise and bustle and lots of people who didn’t know her and weren’t interested in her. The death that had taken over her life wasn’t important to these people, and their lack of interest seemed not cruel but helpful. It bore out the old cliché, which Lisa had used at least twice to her, that life must go on. It was going on all around her in Gloucester, whether she liked it or not.
But Anthea found that she could not exist for long in this strange half-world. It was no more than a substitute for her real life. It was like watching fish swimming past in a monster tank, interesting for a while but not involving you. After a certain time, it wasn’t enough. It was good of Lisa to have her and look after her and be anxious for her. This time might bring them closer together, because she wouldn’t forget her sister’s kindness.