Cry of the Children (24 page)

Raymond wasn't quite sure what it meant to make your way in life, but it sounded impressive. He couldn't see any similarity between Mr Kennedy and the monster.

The day passed slowly, but Raymond didn't mind that, because he didn't want the monster to come back. There was a small bookcase against one wall, with all kinds of rather battered books on its three shelves. There was one with a picture of a woman with her tits threatening to burst out of her dress on the cover. The big boys in school and at Bartram House talked a lot about tits, when the girls weren't there. One of them had said Mrs Allen had luscious tits, and the others had all laughed and made funny groaning noises. Raymond hadn't liked that, even though he didn't know what ‘luscious' meant. But he'd kept quiet and been careful not to annoy the big boys. He had a go at reading the book with the tits on the cover, but it had lots of big words and didn't seem very interesting, despite its cover.

It was at this point that Raymond found he needed to do number twos. He looked in panic at the locked door, then round the room. He saw the bucket and realized why the monster had left it there. Raymond didn't want to use it. He held out for perhaps twenty minutes, then knew that he would have to go. The bucket felt very uncomfortable, but he did ones and twos in it quite quickly. He looked in the big plastic Tesco's bag the monster had left and found a toilet roll there. He'd made a horrible stink, but that wasn't his fault, was it? Please God the monster would realize that.

Raymond had never been quite sure about God – he'd heard very little of him until he'd been taken into care. Now he asked God fervently to look after him. Raymond listened carefully, but he couldn't hear the answering voice he would have liked to hear. In those stories of saintly boys he had heard at school, they usually seemed to hear Jesus calling to them. Perhaps he wasn't a good enough boy to be that close to Jesus.

Raymond found a magazine on the bookshelves and placed it carefully on top of the bucket to keep in the smell. Then he found some Enid Blyton books, but he thought the Famous Five were a bit below him now. His teacher had said that he was ready for more advanced books than Blyton, and that had made him feel quite grown up. He found a book that he hadn't read by someone called C.S. Lewis. It was called
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
and he'd seen one of the older girls at school reading it.

Raymond set it upon the square table where he'd eaten his cereal and began to read. He was soon caught up in it, despite the danger he felt here. He went through the back of the wardrobe in the book and moved out of the prison of this room. He understood nearly all of the words and the book gripped him, making him forget for minutes on end where he was and the awful peril he was in.

Presently, he became very daring. He took his shoes off and lay on top of the big bed to which he had been tied during the night. He turned so that the light from the window fell directly upon the book and read on. He lost all sense of time. When he felt hungry, he went to the window and put his face right against it, gazing up to see as much as he could of the sky. The sun had risen as high as it was going to go and was definitely dropping now, he judged. That meant it must be well past midday. He went back to the table, took some slices of bread from the packet and spread them with the margarine from the tub. On some of them, he spread chunks of the jam the monster had left for him.

He hadn't realized quite how hungry he was until he began to eat. Even the plain white slices without the jam tasted wonderful. He couldn't believe it wasn't butter he'd spread thickly over them; he looked twice at the tub to check. Some of the women who worked at Bartram House joked about that. Raymond didn't understand properly, but apparently there'd been some television advert once about not being able to tell margarine from butter. The thought of the care home and its safe and cheerful rooms brought him near to tears, but he seized the bread with jam on it, and that tasted even better. He closed his eyes and deliberately ate it very slowly, wondering again why this simple stuff tasted better in his mouth than any food he had ever eaten before.

Perhaps it was danger that made you extra hungry and able to enjoy your eats so much. Raymond poured some milk from its container into the plastic cup and sipped it slowly. It tasted as good as the bread and marg.

Raymond looked out of the window. The sun was behind clouds now, but he could see that it was getting quite low. He climbed on to the bed again, stretched himself luxuriously and plunged back into
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
. He read on and on, conscious of the fact that the light would go soon, wanting to cover as many pages as he could before dark. Presently, with the book clutched still in his hand and the room growing dimmer, Raymond Barrington fell softly asleep.

Dean Gibson was in his working clothes when he came into the station at Oldford. He looked years older than when they had talked to him at his digs in Ledbury three days earlier. He was quite tall, but what little hair he had around his prematurely balding head was dishevelled and held traces of the white plaster he had been working during the morning. His face was grey with fatigue, his eyes were watery and he looked much older than his thirty-three years.

‘You look as if you haven't been sleeping well,' said John Lambert, who was himself feeling the strain of a child snatch and murder which had been followed by a second child abduction only four days later.

‘I haven't. Would you sleep well if your daughter had been murdered at the weekend?'

Lambert nodded. ‘Fair point. I have daughters, but I won't even pretend that I know what it feels like to lose one like that.' He sighed. ‘But it's our job to find out who took Lucy and killed her, Mr Gibson. I'm sure you want us to do that.'

Dean nodded, tight-lipped, waiting for the real business to begin. He didn't want to talk about Lucy, unless they were near to a solution. But Lambert delayed matters further by saying, ‘You aren't under caution, Mr Gibson. But I'd like us to have this conversation on record, to avoid any misunderstandings. We have a query about what you told us on Monday, which we'll take up later.'

Dean was conscious of the two men studying him, as if looking for a reaction. Perhaps they were waiting for a break in his concentration, but he was beyond worrying about that now. He wasn't even going to be alarmed by the mention of what he'd said to them on Monday. He just wanted this latest ordeal to be over, so that he could be out of here and alone with his thoughts. Eventually, because it seemed to be expected of him, he said dully, ‘Have you found who killed my girl yet?'

‘No. We have our thoughts, but we haven't established anything definite yet. We need evidence. Or a confession from someone.' Gibson's grey, hunted eyes looked up at him on that challenge, then blinked two or three times in quick succession, as they had done in their first interview on Monday, when they'd been forced to give him the news of Lucy's death. It was the first time his eyelids had fluttered so violently in this meeting. Perhaps his weariness and the fact that he was so near to breaking point had atrophied his normal physical reactions. Lambert was watching him as intently as ever as he said gently, almost apologetically, ‘And now we have this new horror to contend with.'

‘What horror is this?' Dean spoke flatly, as if convention demanded that he ask the question, when he had no real interest in the answer.

‘You haven't heard?'

‘If it's something round here, I wouldn't have. I went straight to my work from Ledbury this morning. We're working on an extension to a house in Breinton, up near Hereford. I spent the morning plastering.' He lifted his hands a little, then dropped them back to his sides, as if explaining his appearance. Bert Hook wondered if he was aware of the white plaster powder in his sparse hair.

Sitting beside Hook, Lambert seemed not to be blinking at all, as if he sought to balance the reactions of the man across the table, who was now blinking furiously and unpredictably. He stared grimly at Gibson as he said, ‘A boy a year older than Lucy was taken last night. He was snatched from Church Lane in Oldford when he was on his way back to Bartram House. No doubt you know the place.'

‘I know it, yes. Church Lane is not far from where I used to live, when I was still with Anthea.' It was a relief to confess something so undamaging. He said suddenly, ‘How is Anthea?'

‘Our family liaison officer tells me that she is doing as well as can be expected. I understand she stayed with her sister for a few days.'

The faintest of smiles twisted the bloodless lips for no more than a second. ‘In Gloucester, yes. That would be Lisa. She never liked me, Lisa. She thought Anthea could have done better. I suppose she was right.'

‘Forgive me, Mr Gibson, but we need to—'

‘Is that man with Anthea? The one who was with Lucy when she went missing. That Matt Boyd?'

‘I don't think so. But we are not here to talk about Mr Boyd, Mr Gibson. Do you know a boy called Raymond Barrington?'

‘No. Is that his name – the boy who was taken from Church Lane? It is, isn't it?'

‘That is his name, yes. Where were you last night, Mr Gibson?'

‘At home. Or at least in the place I have to call home now, in Ledbury.'

‘And is there someone who can confirm that for us?'

Furious blinking. ‘No. I don't think there is.'

‘What about your landlady in Ledbury?'

‘She wouldn't do that. She's a right cow who hasn't any time for me. She'd like to see you arrest me over this boy.'

‘Are you saying that she'd tell us lies to get you in trouble? Are you saying that she'd say that you were out last night, even if you were in your room all night?'

There was such a long silence that it seemed he wasn't going to respond at all. Then he said wearily, ‘I
was
out last night.'

‘At what time?'

‘I can't be sure of that. I was tired after work. I had a good wash, then lay on the bed for a while. Then I went out for something to eat. I'm not sure what the time was when I went.'

‘Where did you go for your food?'

‘Fish and chip shop.'

‘In Ledbury?'

‘Yes. I doubt if they'd remember me. The place was busy. Often is on a Wednesday night, apparently.' His eyes blinked furiously, but they couldn't interpret that as a sign of strain or dishonesty; it was plainly a nervous reaction to stress which he could not control.

‘So can we presume that you weren't out for long?'

‘I don't know how long I was out. I sat and ate the fish and chips in the van. I had a Mars bar for afters. But then I sat in a lay-by for a long time. I was thinking about Lucy and Anthea and everything that's happened.'

He spoke with such conviction that Lambert was sure that all this had happened at some time. Whether it had happened last night was what concerned him now. And Gibson's mention of the van provided the cue for questioning, which they had already agreed was to be DS Hook's concern.

Hook said quietly, ‘You told us on Monday that you rode a bicycle.'

‘Yes. It's old but it's reliable. I've got lights on it. It's all quite legal.' When Hook didn't respond, he added impetuously, ‘It's a Raleigh. The gears work well and the change is easy.' He'd hoped that piling on the detail would make his story more convincing, but he knew as he spoke that it merely sounded ridiculous.

‘You told us that you'd ridden this bike to the fair in Oldford on Saturday night. That wasn't true, was it, Dean?'

Dean tried to control the welter of eyelid flutterings that now hit him. They were so fierce that they seemed to move his head about. He needed to look and sound convincing, and he couldn't do that with this damned affliction. He gripped the edge of the table and said, ‘No, that wasn't correct. I'm sorry. I came in the van.'

‘And did you put Lucy in it and take her away?'

‘No!' The tortured monosyllable thundered his pain around the walls of the interview room.

‘Then why lie about it? Why did you pretend that you had ridden over from Ledbury on your bike?'

He stared at the table. ‘The van isn't mine. It belongs to the man who is at present employing me. I'm allowed to use it for work and to collect supplies from the builders' merchants. I thought Frank Lewis might be annoyed if he found I was using it for pleasure.'

‘Even for a short trip at the weekend to see the daughter you'd had to leave behind enjoying herself at the fairground?'

Dean clamped his eyes shut. It was surely better to speak with them shut, however odd he might look, than to have them fluttering ridiculously as he tried to convince these two watchful, experienced men. But it was no good. He was blinking again as he said, ‘I haven't worked for him long and I need the work. He's a bit – well, a bit unpredictable, Frank Lewis. But he pays well and I can do the work. Frank might take me on as permanent if I can impress him and he thinks I'm reliable. I did a good plastering job for him this morning – there aren't many casuals as can do good plastering.'

‘But isn't it understood when you're allowed the use of a van in these circumstances that you're going to use it in your private life as well? Not to drive to Cornwall or up to Scotland, perhaps, but to run around locally, to see your daughter or go to the chip shop?'

‘I suppose so. I suppose Frank Lewis expects that: he's not daft. But I didn't want to go telling the police I was using his van like that. Not with the situation I'm in at present. I need the work.'

He repeated the phrase plaintively. Hook studied him for a moment, then nodded. ‘So we need to amend the statement you signed on Monday. On Saturday night, you came to Oldford in Frank Lewis's van, not on your Raleigh bicycle. Did you in fact arrive at the fair in time to watch Lucy on the rides, rather than too late to see her, as you told us on Monday?'