Cry of the Children (19 page)

‘How very well informed you are, Mr Lambert! I suppose that is part of your expertise as a policeman. Edith was a bitter and unbalanced woman. Having agreed to a divorce, I thought it better to let her have her way. I did not trouble to contest even her grosser accusations.'

‘So you left her in full possession of the family house and made also a generous financial settlement. Very generous – unless, of course, it was part of an agreement to prevent her making further revelations about your activities.'

He was plainly anxious to get them off this ground. ‘Edith was vindictive. I was glad to be rid of her. I didn't count the cost.'

‘And you retain an unhealthy interest in children.'

Lambert had expected him to deny this, but he made what they now saw as a characteristic attempt at philosophic diversion. ‘I find young people fascinating. They retain an innocence that is not possible for adults, who are inevitably affected by the views and actions of the people around them. In some other societies, my love of children would be seen as laudable. Perhaps it will be here, in another couple of generations. We used to send people to prison for sodomy; now it seems to be positively applauded.'

Bert Hook rose abruptly to his feet. It looked for a moment as if he was outraged by Dennis Robson's sentiments, but he spoke calmly enough. He didn't ask for the man's permission to move out of the room and into the rest of his single-storey home. He merely said, ‘Excuse me for a moment,' and slipped through the door and into the hall.

Robson looked as if he would like to rise and follow him. Then, with an effort to remain seated that was palpable, he said sarcastically, ‘With an agility surprising in one of his bulk, Bulldog Drummond left the room. Bulldog Drummond was very popular, when I was a lad, Chief Superintendent. I'm afraid it wasn't long before I found all that blood and thunder rather boring.' He glanced at the door. Hook's absence was plainly worrying him, but he would lose face if he tried to find what he was up to.

Lambert, noting his quarry's unease, repeated his earlier query. ‘Where were you at eight o'clock this evening, Mr Robson?'

‘I was here. Probably washing up my dinner dishes at that point. I don't rate a dishwasher; I have too few items to warrant that. But I prefer to complete the menial tasks before I relax with my glass of port; I find I enjoy my hedonism better that way.' He was back into his stride now, enjoying taunting his visitors, showing them how little he was worried by their presence here.

‘Is there anyone who can confirm that for us?'

Robson lifted his hands a little from his thighs to show how ridiculous that question was. ‘I live alone. It would be quite odd if anyone could attest to my presence here at that time, don't you think?'

‘I shall ask you formally: were you in Church Lane at that time?'

‘Ah! I now divine that you are investigating an incident that took place in Church Lane, Oldford, at around eight o'clock tonight. That is the limit of my knowledge, as I have been in here listening to our New Zealand diva for most of my evening. Thoroughly enjoyable, but I fear of no use to you and your worthy sergeant.'

It was as if Bert Hook was responding to a cue. There was but the slightest of noises before he stood in the doorway, almost filling it, staring accusingly at the man who was settled so comfortably into his favourite armchair. Like many burly men, Bert moved almost silently. He had entered every room in the bungalow and its garage during his brief absence, searching for any sign of a boy who had been captured and imprisoned. He had found none.

He had discovered something else, however. Something that demanded an explanation. He said simply, ‘You've been out this evening, Mr Robson,' but he invested the simple words with an enormous weight. ‘You've been lying to us about that.'

Dennis Robson was plainly shaken. He began to rise from his chair, then settled himself determinedly back into it. He would face this out, if that was even faintly possible. ‘And so the worthy detective sergeant returns from his spying mission in my home. What makes you think I've been out, DS Hook?'

Hook looked at him with steady distaste for a few seconds. Then he produced a pair of suede shoes and held them in front of him. ‘These are damp. They have traces of moss and mud in the soles. I'd say they've been worn outside earlier this evening.'

‘And that makes me guilty of some yet undisclosed crime, does it?'

‘It makes you a liar. And I don't believe you lie just for the pleasure of it. You've got a reason.'

‘A perfectly innocent reason, which I don't have to reveal to you.'

He was still looking up at Hook, trying hard to remain insouciant. It was Lambert who now cut hard across their exchange. ‘A reason that you would be well advised to reveal to us, if it's innocent. The alternative would be arrest on suspicion and more formal questioning at the station. You'd be entitled to a brief, of course.'

Robson looked at him evenly, trying desperately to disguise the fear in his heart. ‘Let me make it plain that I disapprove of this type of tactic in our police service. Against my inclination, I shall reveal to you that I went out to walk a dog. I miss having my own dog, but my solitary lifestyle makes it impracticable. I am away too often to keep a dog of my own.'

‘And a dog enables you to stalk and approach children. I seem to remember that you were accused of using your own dog for that purpose when you were questioned at length by police officers eleven years ago.'

‘I denied that I used my dog for that purpose and it was never proved. I presume that always wanting to think the worst of people is part of the equipment considered necessary for CID officers.'

Hook said, ‘You'll need to give us the address of tonight's dog.' Bert contrived, thought Lambert, to brandish his notebook aggressively, a feat he would have thought impossible.

‘Fourteen, Gleeson Terrace. The dog's name is Hector and he's an Airedale. But it's no use your trying to check that. Neither he nor his owners were at home. That was no great surprise to me. There was no prior arrangement on this occasion. It was just an impulse of mine to get a little exercise because I'd been stuck in here all day and I thought Hector might like a run.'

Hook noted the address nonetheless, then said, ‘So you now admit being out of the house this evening, but with no one to confirm exactly where you were. I note that the coat hanging in your utility room is also wet. I believe it began to rain at around eight o'clock this evening.'

‘I'm sure you're right about that – if you want to confirm the time, ask a policeman.' Dennis Robson smiled at his own witticism. Skilled in subterfuge, he was fighting to recover his self-control. ‘A light drizzle. Nothing at first, even quite refreshing, but very wetting if you stayed out in it for a lengthy period. I didn't do that, but I obviously got wet enough for a diligent and highly intrusive DS to note the condition of my footwear and topcoat.'

Lambert believed in letting suspects talk. They often revealed far more of themselves than they realized. The most difficult ones to crack were usually those who said least. But he'd had enough of the elaborate verbosity of Dennis Robson, who combined fluency with insolence so effectively. He snapped, ‘Where were you at eight o'clock this evening?'

‘On the common. Breathing in my allowance of fresh air and getting my exercise without a dog. Feeling rather foolish as it began to rain.'

‘Were you in Church Lane, Oldford, at any time this evening?'

‘No.' For once, he was reduced to a monosyllable, as if recognizing the gravity of the issue. Robson and Lambert stared hard at each other for a moment. Then he said, ‘And now I'd like you both to leave my house, please.'

He'd included Hook in his injunction without even glancing at him. Hook had still scarcely moved from the doorway into the big, rectangular room. It was from there that he said, ‘You took your car with you when you went out. The bonnet is still warm. You didn't tell us that.'

‘You didn't ask me.' But he'd been caught out again and he knew it. ‘I went round to my friend's house in the car in the hope of collecting his dog. When that wasn't possible, I drove to the edge of the common and parked there. I'm glad I took the car. I'd have got much wetter if I'd had to walk back here without it.'

‘Did anyone speak with you whilst you were parking or walking?'

‘No. I like my own company.'

Hook didn't voice the thought that not many other people would wish to share it. He told the man brusquely not to leave the area without informing them of his destination. Then they left him in a sour silence.

Bert Hook sat beside Lambert in the big car, reflecting that they had tried unsuccessfully to speak with their least articulate suspect, Big Julie Foster, before moving to the other extreme with this great balloon of words. There was no doubt which of the two Hook preferred as his prime suspect.

R
aymond Barrington was better fitted for survival than many eight-year-olds. He had spent many nights on his own before he had been taken into care two years ago. It shouldn't have been so, but that is what had happened. He was used to dark and to loneliness. He had also grown used to fear in those days, and to coping with fear.

But this was a different and greater fear than anything Raymond had known before. He was frightened, very frightened. He had no idea where he was and that made things much worse. But he was still alive. He had thought when he was first seized that he would be dead by now. That girl Lucy Gibson, who was in the class below him at school, had been killed. She'd been strangled. It said so in the paper.

Mrs Allen had tried to stop him reading the print beside the photograph on the front page of the paper. She'd said it wasn't good for him. Well, what was happening now wasn't good for him, was it? This wasn't good for him at all. This is what Mrs Allen should have protected him from, not some silly old newspaper.

He wished he hadn't thought of Mrs Allen. The thought of her kindly bosom and her arms around him would surely make him cry. Yet, miraculously, it didn't. For a minute or two, Raymond couldn't move at all. Then he shook his head hard, as though he was jolting tears angrily away.

But there were no tears. Raymond was surprised by that. He clenched his fists and told himself he'd been through much worse things than this with some of the men his mother had brought home. They'd hit him when he spoke out of turn – or if he spoke at all, some of them. This man hadn't hit him yet. If it was a man. It might be a big woman. Raymond still wasn't sure, with that scarf wrapped round so much of the face. He wondered if he'd ever heard that voice before. But that only helped to make the thing more scary.

He decided that he would think of his captor just as the monster. That would be best. Or at any rate it might be better than wondering if this was someone who knew him. A monster was definite, not vague. The vaguer things were, the more he feared for his future.

He wondered where on earth he might be now. A long way from Oldford and the care home and Mrs Allen, he thought. He'd been flung into the passenger seat of some sort of vehicle and told to stay still whilst the belt was buckled tight across him. Then he had cowered in the dark with his eyes tight shut as they had bounced and skidded over narrow roads, made slippery by the falling rain. He had thought he was going to be killed when they stopped, and because of that he had wanted that bucking ride to go on for ever. He tried to think now how long it might have taken, but he had really no idea. You were too terrified to think of time when you were wondering how you were going to die.

But now they were stopping. They jolted to a halt outside a house which rose all on its own against the night sky. The monster undid his belt, then took his arm and pulled him towards the darkness of the door. Then he was dragged into a room and told to be quiet, for the fifth or sixth time. That was all the monster ever seemed to say to him through the scarf: be quiet. This room must be on the ground floor; they hadn't gone up or down any stairs. The monster switched on a light in the hall, but not in the room where they were. Raymond crouched fearfully on the floor and looked up at the monster, who was breathing heavily from what seemed many feet above him. But there was only the dim light from the hall behind his captor. Everything seemed to be just a collection of dark, threatening shadows.

Both of them gasped for breath and Raymond wondered what was going to happen to him. In that moment, when nothing moved, he wondered whether perhaps the monster was wondering about that too.

The monster stood very close to its victim for a moment. Raymond was very conscious of heavy shoes and trousers with splatterings of mud upon them. Then it turned and stood in the doorway, looking down the hall and towards the front door through which they had come. Raymond wondered whether he might gather his strength and escape. He would crouch on the floor like a coiled spring, then catch the monster off guard and make a run for it.

Boys did that in stories. But stories were different from real life. Raymond Barrington's real life had taught him that years ago. And where would he run to if he managed to slip past the monster and get to the front door? He would have no idea which way to turn in the darkness outside, so that the monster would easily catch him and kill him.

Perhaps the thing could read his thoughts. Anything seemed possible on this strange and horrific night. The monster reached up to the back of the door, pulled something from there and tied it round Raymond's leg. Then it tied the other end of it to something heavy, a few feet away to their left in the darkness. It was the leg of a big, heavy bed. The monster knew his way around in this house. That was one more thing that added to Raymond's fear and helplessness.

Then the monster was suddenly standing above him and Raymond cringed against the carpet, breathing in the dust and praying pitifully for the creature not to hurt him. When he dared to open his eyes, he saw the dark outline of a pillow above his head. He thought in that moment that the monster was going to bring it down upon his face and smother him, whilst he pleaded hopelessly for his life into the softness that would not let him breathe. But the monster placed the pillow almost tenderly beneath his head as he flinched, turning him upon his side, trying ridiculously to make him relax.