by J M Gregson
Lambert smiled down at him, his face a mixture of relief and surprise. ‘We’re not going to hurt him, Raymond. We’re going to take him away and look after him. We might need to talk to you a little later, when you’ve spoken to Mrs Allen and had a good rest. You should go with PC Miller now. She’ll give you a ride in a police car. You’ll enjoy that.’
Dean Gibson took off his hat and pulled his scarf away from his face. ‘Goodbye, Raymond. I’m sorry if I frightened you.’
Then the boy was gone, and his captor was suddenly exhausted. He sank down on to the chair he had set for the boy beside the square table and said, as much to himself as to the two men who had shattered his plans, ‘I could never have hurt him. I was going to let him go today. I didn’t know what to do with him. I should never have taken him. He’s … he’s a good kid.’
Suddenly, his face was in his hands and he was weeping. Lambert gave him time. There was no hurry now. Only when the sobbing ceased and the man regained a measure of control did he say, ‘Why did you take the boy, Dean?’
Gibson shrugged his shoulders hopelessly. ‘I’ve been wondering that all night. I thought if I snatched another child who had no connection with me, you’d think it was someone else who’d taken Lucy. I kidded myself I might kill him and convince you that you had a madman on your hands, but that was stupid. He’ll be all right, won’t he?’
‘I expect he will now, yes. The medics will examine him and make sure there’s no serious damage. Physical or mental damage. Have you touched him, Dean?’
‘What? You mean abused him, that sort of thing? No! No, of course I haven’t. I would never do that to any child. I’ve scarcely touched him, apart from when I grabbed him and put him in the van that first night.’ He made it sound as if it was a week ago, rather than a mere thirty-six hours. And indeed it seemed so, to him. The time since he had snatched Raymond felt like a strange, elongated dream rather than reality. ‘I’m glad you’ve got him. Glad you’ve got me, really. I’ve been waiting for it.’ He could see that he had indeed been waiting for just this, now that it had happened. He felt an immense relief that it was over.
‘Why here, Dean?’
‘This is a holiday cottage. The guy who owns it is in Florida. I did some work for him in the spring – plastering and decorating. He gave me a key to get in. I found I still had it. It seemed a safe place to bring the lad. It’s very quiet here.’
‘Very quiet for you. Very quiet for Raymond. Scary quiet. Didn’t you think of that when you dumped him here?’
Gibson stared down at his feet, looking for a moment as if he might descend into tears again. ‘I was planning to kill him, to make you think it was someone else who’d killed Lucy and gone on to do this. Once I had him, I knew that I could never go through with it.’
It was Hook who now said, ‘I believe that, Dean. You’ve never struck me as a killer. You were going to let him go, weren’t you?’
Gibson nodded miserably. ‘Today. I was going to let him go today.’
‘But you were worried that he’d tell us all about you. That he’d recognize you.’
‘I was at first. I kept my face covered with my scarf and pulled my cap down, so that he could only see my eyes. Pathetic, isn’t it? But by today I hardly cared about that.’ A long pause, whilst he waited for questions that Hook didn’t ask. ‘I’m glad you’ve got me. I wanted to tell you all about it yesterday afternoon, to have it over with. But I didn’t.’
‘No, you didn’t, Dean. But you’re telling us now. And the more you tell us, the more you cooperate, the better it will be for you.’
Dean gave Hook a bleak smile, then shook his head. ‘Nothing can make it better for me. What was it put you on to me?’
Hook glanced at Lambert, who said, ‘You lied about using the van last Saturday. Gave us that silly tale about coming to the fair on your bike, when you’d used the van. We didn’t buy that story about only using it for work. And you knew exactly the time when Lucy had disappeared, before we’d released it to anyone. When we spoke to you yesterday about Raymond, you seemed to know more about him and how he’d been snatched than anyone else. And then our forensic boys found your old van suspiciously clean and tidy for a man doing the work you do and living as you do. It began to add up. But it was your manner yesterday as much as anything you said. We had enough to make us follow you this morning.’
‘I didn’t know you were behind me. My mind was on other things. I was trying to think about how I could let Raymond go without him telling you it was me. But I couldn’t concentrate. My mind wasn’t in it. I’m glad you’ve found me.’ It was the third time he’d told them that and this time he nodded vigorously, as if confirming to himself that startling fact.
It was Hook who dragged him back six days to the worst confession of all. He said simply, ‘What went wrong when you took Lucy, Dean?’
It seemed for long seconds as if Gibson would not speak at all. Then he said in a dull, expressionless voice. ‘I only wanted to talk to her. I wanted to hold her in my arms, to see her smile again, to make sure she was happy. I wanted to be sure that she wasn’t forgetting me.’
His voice broke on that and he sobbed silently, without any tears this time. After a while, Hook prompted gently, ‘I expect she was scared, being snatched like that?’
‘Scared. That’s what she was, yes. I should have expected it, I suppose. I thought that as soon as she recognized me she’d be delighted. I thought that she’d smile and hug me, the way she always used to.’
‘Did she cry out, Dean?’
He nodded, but didn’t speak through more long, agonizing seconds. Then he said bitterly, ‘She cried out for him, for that Matt Boyd. Said to let her go to him. I couldn’t stand that. I said that it was me who was her dad, that I always would be.’
‘That was when things went wrong, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. It was suddenly me who was scared, not her. I didn’t want her to go to that man who’d brought her to the fair when it should have been me, who was going to come after us as soon as he realized Lucy was gone. I rushed her through the woods towards where my van was parked. She screamed out. Screamed his name again. “I want Uncle Matt!” she shouted. Shouted so loud that I had to shut her up. I put my hands round her neck from behind her as we ran, wanting to stop her shouting. Wanting to scare her, just a little, I suppose, because of that name. Then she wouldn’t run, and I had to pick her up and carry her. And she struggled and screamed. And I had to stop her screaming. And when I got her to the van and put her down, she was quiet. I thought she would come round when I hugged her, when I kissed her, when I tried to give her the kiss of life. But she didn’t.’
Hook thought the man would put his face in his hands again as he relived the horror of that moment, but he didn’t. He wasn’t blinking now, as he always had before under pressure from them. He stared steadily at the window and the broadening day behind it, as if light was no longer welcome to him. ‘I couldn’t believe that Lucy wasn’t going to sit up and say it had all been a tease. I drove through the lanes and away from the fair. I couldn’t think properly. I followed roads I’d known since I was a child myself. Then I stopped and looked down at Lucy and she hadn’t moved. I don’t know how long I was there. I didn’t want to touch her any more, but I made myself do it. She was very still and getting cold. That was the moment when I knew for certain that she was dead.’
‘So you put her in the river.’
Dean Gibson was now as still and unmoving as a statue. He didn’t even nod his confirmation. ‘I knew I was quite near the Wye. I used to walk that stretch with my dad, when I was a boy. It was very still and quiet. I put Lucy in the water and watched her float away from me. I tried to say a prayer, but the words wouldn’t come.’
Hook pronounced the words of arrest more softly than he had done to any other murderer. Then he said quietly, ‘You’ll get a doctor and a lawyer and whatever help you need, Dean.’ They took him out to the Mondeo and installed him beside the chief superinte
ndent on the back seat. Hook drove swiftly back to the station at Oldford. They felt as if they had done a day’s work, but it was still not fully light. People stared at them curiously as they moved into busier streets.
As they drove, John Lambert mused anew on the frighteningly small differences between normal and criminal behaviour. And on the tiny, fateful decisions that could transform a man from an ordinary human being into one who could kill a child.