Cry of the Children (17 page)

It was still dark when Anthea awoke. The illuminated figure on the clock radio beside the bed told her that it was five twenty. She slid softly from beneath Matt Boyd's arm; she did not want to feel behind her the erection that she would once have welcomed. He was still sleeping when she stood beside the bed, then padded away from it and crept softly down the stairs.

She pressed the button that would activate the heating, made herself tea and pulled her chair so that she could rest against the warm radiator. There was no sign of dawn yet. It might take more than dawn to raise her spirits today. She shuddered, despite the warmth from the drink within her and the growing heat of the radiator against her thigh.

She hadn't been able to remain in the bed a moment longer. She had been glad to have Matt's arm around her last night. But from the moment when she had woken, she had been appalled. She told herself that her mind was disturbed, that there was no accounting for this clash of emotions, apart from the fact that she was not her normal self and could not expect to be so.

But she could not rid herself of the idea that the hands and arms that had encircled her while she slept had been the ones that had dispatched her daughter from this bewildering world.

T
he forensic psychologist was a small, intense woman in her early thirties. She looked to Lambert several years younger than that.

He shook hands and said nervously, ‘I thought it better that we had just a private exchange between the two of us at this stage.'

‘Very wise. I'm well aware of what your average police officer thinks about psychiatrists and psychologists. We're interfering theorists who don't understand how the real world works. We get in the way of justice rather than help it. We insist on examining the blackest of villains and digging up mitigating circumstances.'

Lambert smiled grimly. ‘That's a fair summary of the way I've felt myself at times. In my younger and less enlightened days.'

‘I'm happy to talk to you alone. I've no wish to be grilled by a gang of hostile and mainly ignorant coppers.'

Lambert wondered whether to defend the police service against such unscientific generalizations. It would be inadvisable, he thought. Instead, he said, ‘If we keep this informal, we're more likely to speculate. And I'd like you to do that. At the moment, frankly, we're wondering where to go next.'

She hadn't smiled so far. He was finding her stiffness disconcerting. He couldn't think of a more serious crime than this one, but the police habit was to keep horror at arm's length with scraps of humour, or at least a wry sense of shared difficulties. Elaine Pilkington said, ‘I'm not sure I can be of much use to you here. It's much easier for us when we're called in after a number of serious crimes thought to be by the same person – a serial killer, for instance.'

Lambert wondered if he should apologize for the paucity of what he offered. He said, ‘A child killer case is what all policemen fear. Sometimes senior CID officers welcome a more normal killing, as a challenge to their experience and abilities after much duller crimes. No one wants a child murder.'

‘Maybe I should be investigating senior policemen who are excited by a good murder.' She looked at him with her head a little on one side. There was no note of humour, but John Lambert hoped she was teasing him. ‘I've read what you gave me on the Lucy Gibson case. I can only give you a few thoughts.'

‘That's good. Any pointers would be welcome.'

Ms Pilkington pursed lips that did not smile. ‘I'm not sure I can offer anything as definite as a pointer. But I'm certainly willing to think aloud with you.'

‘Good. We've had a big team investigating this, as you'd expect. They've interviewed everyone known to have been at the fairground at the time Lucy Gibson was abducted. We've isolated five people known to have had opportunity and an interest in the victim. It's difficult to speak with any authority about motive, in a case like this.'

‘Your culprit may not have an obvious motive. This isn't a rational crime. Abduction often involves women, though murder less so. Have you any women among your five suspects?'

‘One. She took a baby, some years ago. A little girl. She looked after her well in the twenty-four hours for which she held her.'

‘Limited intellect? No family of her own?'

Lambert tried not to be impressed. ‘Yes. She had a mother who wasn't much more than a kid herself, who's now a heroin addict. Julie grew up in a children's home.'

He passed her a sheet with the details of Julie's past, which Elaine Pilkington studied silently for two minutes.

‘From her background, conduct and previous reports, she's almost certainly more unstable than people think she is. But that won't be much help, because I suspect whoever did this is almost bound to be unstable to some degree.'

‘I'll make a note of that.'

‘It's that “to some degree” that is the snag. Sometimes people who haven't previously manifested personality problems succumb to stress. Do you think whoever did this intended to kill the girl when he took her?'

Lambert tried to banish the thought that he'd hoped it would be he who was putting that question. ‘I thought not.'

‘I think almost certainly not. It would be far more likely that your culprit took the child with no very clear plans in mind, then panicked when things didn't proceed as intended. Which lets your woman right back in. What age is she?'

‘Thirty-eight.'

‘Feasible. She sees the opportunity, takes the child without much forethought, simply because the opportunity presents itself. Then finds a seven-year-old has more will and resistance than a baby, and doesn't know what to do except silence her.'

Lambert said with a touch of pique, ‘That had already occurred to us as a possibility. We have the psychiatrist's report from the time she took the baby. It mentions personality defects.' He stated it reluctantly, in the interests of fairness. He found it gave him no pleasure to confirm this woman's suspicions. ‘It's not my field, but I expect that, as you say, we'll find similar tendencies in some or all of the other four we've got in the frame.'

Ms Pilkington nodded vigorously. ‘In greater or lesser degree, as I suggested. The idea may not be much use to us.'

Lambert tried to be pleased by that ‘us'. At least this stiff and difficult woman was involving herself in the investigation. He said, ‘Do you think the abductor was someone who knew Lucy?'

‘Probably, but not certainly. Sorry. I know you'd like something more definite, but we shouldn't rule out a random snatching at this stage. Paedophiles tend to be opportunists.'

‘We have one known paedophile among our five. A man of seventy. He has an eminently respectable surface, but previous history. There's something very creepy about him.'

He was immediately sorry that he'd used that very unscientific word, but it brought no visible reaction from his companion. ‘There's almost always something creepy about paedophiles, to normal people like us – though, as a psychologist, I shouldn't even admit the concept of “normal”. Are you sure you're not influenced by your knowledge of his previous history?'

Lambert said irritably, ‘No I'm not! We're used to having to guard against things like that. We do it all the time.'

‘Do you think this man was watching and awaiting his chance?'

‘It's highly possible. He was at the fairground without a companion, which is very unusual for a man of his age. He probably knew Lucy; he'd been warned off by her school for lingering around the playing field and the school gates. He's ignored those warnings. He has no history of violence. He was suspected of indecent assaults on three children, but no case was ever taken to court.'

‘But in this situation, he might have panicked under pressure if Lucy resisted him fiercely. Paedophiles often get off on child pornography and their own fantasies. Sometimes they have little experience of real children.'

‘That would apply to this man. He never had children of his own.' He waited, but she made no further observation about Dennis Robson. ‘We have one man with a history of violence. He broke someone's jaw and eye-socket four years ago. He was also convicted of indecent assaults on children six years ago. We didn't know about either of these when we interviewed him, because he's been working at the fairground under a false name. We'll be going back to him now that we know about them.'

‘What age is he?'

‘Twenty-eight. Irish. He worked in Ulster for three years before he changed his name and joined the fairground staff here, but his indecency conviction was in Cork. Violent background there, though he's too young to have been involved in the troubles. He's a thug who follows the fair and is no doubt a valued employee because he's young and strong. He's aroused by young girls. Enjoys looking up their skirts. Enjoys their innocence, I expect, but I'm straying into your territory here.'

She nodded a terse acknowledgement of that but still offered no smile. ‘Oddly enough, the fact that he's well used to physical violence makes this man less likely to have panicked. On the other hand, he may find violence a habitual reaction to most challenges.' She frowned a little on that thought, then nodded again, as if admitting its validity to herself.

‘Our other two are the people we always interview first in investigations like this. The estranged husband and the new man in the mother's life. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to eliminate either of them from the enquiry as yet.'

‘Nor should you, without good reason. This is likely to have been perpetrated by someone who lives locally and who knew the victim previously. How long since the father left?'

‘Only five months. And he doesn't deny that he retained a strong attachment to Lucy.'

‘How balanced is he?'

‘I'm not qualified to pronounce on that. He seems to us a man of limited personal resources who is finding it difficult to claw his way out of a collapsed marriage. We come across a lot of those.'

‘Was he hoping to revive his relationship with his wife at the time of this crime?'

It was Lambert's turn to think furiously, so much so that Ms Pilkington said, ‘No one's going to quote you. This is a frank and informal exchange of views, as you reminded me at the outset.'

‘I think he'd welcome the chance to move back in with Anthea, yes. And a major factor in that would have been his love for his daughter. When we spoke with him, he didn't try to disguise the fact that he'd missed Lucy after moving out.'

‘So he might well have snatched her when he saw her happy at the fair with another man. It's a big step from that to murder. But then we're looking for a major departure from normal behaviour in whoever did this. What about the man who's replaced him in the family home?'

‘He's thirty-one, which makes him two years younger than the husband. He's a sales rep for a motoring supplies firm. Better looking and a better financial prospect than the husband, who's definitely gone downhill since he was compelled to leave his wife. The new man wasn't living with Anthea Gibson at the time of this death. He was what the pressmen like to call a frequent visitor. He gave me the impression that he was considering moving in permanently and that she was encouraging him.'

‘Relationship with the child?'

‘Tricky to establish. We think he was treading carefully, trying to establish closeness with a girl who still had strong feelings for her father. Hence his volunteering to take Lucy to the fair, he says. She was really looking forward to it and he wanted to capitalize on that.'

‘But you doubt what he says. You think he might have done this.'

‘We have to begin somewhere. Unless the culprit is obvious, we always investigate the last person known to have seen the victim alive. In this case, we haven't been able to eliminate him. There was a considerable delay in reporting the crime, which was wholly down to him. About eighty minutes elapsed before he returned to Anthea Gibson with news of Lucy's disappearance. He says he was looking for her in that time, much of it in his car. Even when he returned to the house, he insisted on ringing all of Lucy's friends' parents before he informed the police. She'd been gone for around two and a half hours before he allowed Anthea to call Oldford police station.'

The psychologist stared at him for a moment. ‘I think I might have behaved very similarly if I'd lost someone else's child. Wouldn't you?'

‘I can't be objective about that. I'm a policeman. I know the way our system works.'

‘Has the mother any views on who killed her daughter?'

‘She hasn't offered any. She was in no state to be formally interviewed immediately after it happened and she hasn't suggested anything since then.'

‘I can't offer you much, Chief Superintendent Lambert, even as speculation. As I said earlier, it's much easier for people like us to be helpful when there's been a series of murders and we can establish a pattern.' She looked at Lambert as if he had let her down in some way by providing only one small corpse. ‘For what it's worth, I think that your criminal was local and was probably known to his victim before he seized her. Even if very briefly known, as in the case of your fairground employee. I can't eliminate any of your five, but I think you've very probably got your killer amongst them.'

She stood up, picked up her briefcase and turned towards the door. Then she stopped and turned reluctantly back towards the man she had come to help. ‘And there's one other thing. I think you need to catch him or her quickly. Unbalanced people gather excitement from success. Outwitting a big team will give a bizarre feeling of triumph. The person who did this is quite likely to strike again.'

Ms Pilkington gave him her solitary smile at the very end of their exchanges, as she turned away from him. It was entirely mirthless.