Cry of the Children (7 page)

Matt had heard of this man Lambert before, even though he didn't follow crime much in the press. He was locally famous, perhaps even nationally famous by now. He would be able to tell Anthea that he'd been interviewed by the great man. Well, perhaps not Anthea. Perhaps he wouldn't have many more dealings with Anthea, even if this all passed off without any trouble from the police. But he needed to concentrate hard on what was to come in the next few minutes, not think about Anthea Gibson.

He dragged his mind back to the two men who were now pulling up chairs and sitting down opposite him on the other side of the small square table. He must give this all his attention if he was to come through it unscathed. He tried to summon a smile as he looked into the long, lined face and the grey eyes that were staring at him unblinkingly. Lambert said coolly, ‘You are not under arrest and you are not on oath. Do you have any objection to our recording this conversation? You are a vital witness in this, the only one we have at present, and we may need to recall what you have to say for the rest of the large team assigned to this.'

‘No.' Matt licked his lips. ‘I've no objection to that.' In truth, he didn't like it at all. But they had him over a barrel, hadn't they? If he refused, it would look and sound suspicious, and he couldn't afford that. He tried not to notice the recording beginning as Hook set the machine in motion.

Lambert said, ‘We need to hear your account of what happened, Mr Boyd.'

‘I've already given it. I told the constable everything last night.'

‘And both of us have read his account of what you said then. But I want to hear it for myself. Twelve hours have passed since you spoke to our uniformed officer. You may have extra recollections or new thoughts to offer to us. And I'd like an account of everything that happened at the fairground, in case we can pick up anything significant from earlier events. You weren't aware of anyone watching or following you, were you?'

‘No. But then you're not even thinking about things like that, are you? If anyone was following us, I never saw him.' He gave a tiny, involuntary shudder at the thought. ‘I was giving all my attention to Lucy. It's not easy being a new man coming into the house, when a little girl's lost her dad. I was trying to tread carefully with her.'

‘I appreciate that. Describe your relationship with Lucy for us, please.'

Matt had hoped they'd be friendlier than this, that he wouldn't be questioned about how things were between him and Lucy. He told himself firmly that they weren't unduly suspicious of him, that they'd have investigated this with any man in his position. ‘I was getting on with her well, when you take all the circumstances into account. The three of us – that's Lucy and Anthea and me – had been to Hereford during the day. We went round the shops and had lunch there. Lucy was perfectly happy with me. I think she was impatient to get home and go to the fair, but I expect any child would have been.'

‘Have you children of your own, Mr Boyd?'

‘No. My marriage didn't last long. Both of us said, when we split up, that it was a good thing that there were no children to worry about.' He'd had this ready for them. He delivered it in a measured tone and looked just above Lambert's head.

‘You took Lucy to the fairground on your own. Was she happy to go there without her mother?'

‘Yes, I think so. It was Anthea's suggestion. She thought it would be a step forward. Another stage in Lucy and me getting to know each other.' The last bit sounded hollow in his ears as he recited it, but they were Anthea's own phrases, and thus surely worth using here. He watched Hook writing; the man seemed concerned to write down his exact words, even though they were being recorded.

Then Hook looked up at him and spoke for the first time. ‘Was this the first occasion you had been out alone with Lucy, Mr Boyd?'

The words flew at him like an accusation from the calm, weather-beaten face. ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose it must have been.'

Lambert said tersely, ‘Was it or wasn't it, Mr Boyd? You must surely know that.'

‘Yes. Yes, it was. I don't like the tone of your questioning, that's all.'

‘I'm concerned with the disappearance of a helpless girl and what's happened to her since. Your feelings are very much secondary to that.'

‘All right, I'm sorry. I'm as anxious to see Lucy back as you are. More anxious, because I know her and you don't.'

‘So help us get to know her. Help us to understand the state of her mind when she was taken. Because at least two people in this room are pretty sure by now that she
was
taken. Do you think she was?'

Matt tried to control the pulse he felt pounding in his temple. ‘Yes. I don't think there can be any other explanation. But when it happens, you just can't believe it's happening to you.'

‘I understand that. But we have to record all the facts. When a child disappears, there are very few facts at first. And we need to move fast, very fast, if we are to get Lucy back alive. Tell us what happened at the fairground last night, please. It seems that Lucy was lightly dressed, for a cool autumn evening.'

Matt tried not to consider the implications of this. He had to safeguard his own position. He must give all his attention to that. ‘She was in her best light-blue dress. Little girls like to dress up when they're going out for a treat, don't they? Her mum made her put on her beanie, and she was wearing a fleece, but Lucy was almost dancing with excitement. She was impatient to be off to the fair.'

‘And she was perfectly happy to go there alone with you?'

‘Yes. I've already told you she was.' He tried a flash of candour. ‘To be perfectly honest, I think she'd have been happy to go there with anyone, just to get to the rides. She'd been looking forward to it all day.'

‘I see. It was still daylight when you reached the common, then?'

‘Yes. But with all the lights on the rides and the stalls, it seemed darker and later than it was. Lucy clung tightly to my hand when we got there. It was the first time she'd ever been to a fair. We went to look at the smaller rides first, the ones she really wanted to go on. But they were still very busy, crowded with small children and their parents. Lucy couldn't get into the things she wanted to ride in, like the blue bus on the ride at the edge of the fairground. I said it would be quieter later, when the smaller children went home to bed. I said it would be best if we went away and looked at the rest of the fair and came back later.'

‘So where did you go?'

‘I took her on a couple of the big rides. She was a bit nervous, as you'd imagine – she isn't eight yet. I took her on the Caterpillar, which is the slowest of the big rides, and then we rode on a motorbike together on one of the others. Lucy liked clinging on to the handlebars and pretending it was a real bike. She's a game kid, and she was safe enough with me behind her.' He was suddenly aghast at his words. ‘But she wasn't safe at all, was she? She should have been. I should have looked after her!' His broad features looked in that moment as if they might crash into tears.

Lambert kept his tone even, almost matter-of-fact, despite his theme. ‘And what happened next, Mr Boyd?'

‘We went back to the small rides, where she'd wanted to go at first. I'd promised her, you see. I remember her tugging at my hand to get me back there.'

‘But you weren't aware of anyone following you?'

‘No. But there might have been, I suppose.' He shook his head wretchedly. ‘My attention was all on Lucy, you see. I wanted her to enjoy it. I wanted her to go home to her mum and say she'd enjoyed herself with me.'

‘And she went on one of the smaller rides.'

‘Yes. They don't move very quickly, so children don't need adults with them. It's not far from one side to the other on the smaller roundabouts. I still can't see how it happened. I was so unprepared for it, you see.'

‘Just tell us exactly what took place, please. Try to leave nothing out.'

‘Well, Lucy got in the blue bus she'd wanted to ride in from the start. I think she'd seen the ride being put together on her way home from school and set her heart on a ride in that bus. She was a bit nervous when they started to go round – it's only a small ride, but it was the first one she'd been on by herself.'

‘And even at this stage, you weren't aware of anyone else watching her?'

‘No. There were parents around me waving to their own children and me waving to Lucy. That was all. If the bastard who took her had been on my side of the roundabout, I'm sure I'd have seen him, even though I was watching for Lucy to come round each time and waving to her.'

‘What about the staff? Did you see anyone on the ride paying any attention to Lucy?'

‘No. I'd paid the money before it began to move, and I think most of the other adults had done the same. I didn't see anyone collecting fares or swinging around the carriages once it started.'

‘Carry on, please.'

‘Lucy waved to me, the first three or four times she passed me. Then she got more confident. She tooted the bus's horn and twisted the steering wheel and got really involved. She looked very happy.' He threatened to break down again, but he filled his big chest with a huge breath and regained control. ‘They got a good long ride, as I'd said they would. Most of the younger children had been taken home by this time, so there weren't many waiting to get on.'

‘But you didn't see Lucy again after she left that little bus on the roundabout.'

‘No. I waited for the ride to stop and Lucy to climb out and run to me, all excited. But when it stopped, the bus was exactly opposite me on the other side and I couldn't see across the other cabins to where she would have got off. I waited for a moment for her to come round to me. I was afraid that if I went to collect her, she might choose the other side of the ride from me and panic if I wasn't where she'd left me.'

‘So you stood quite still for a moment and watched for Lucy coming back to you. How long would that be?'

‘I'm not sure. It seemed a long time, as I gradually realized that she wasn't coming. I was worried, but I didn't really panic at that stage. I thought Lucy would be standing still on the other side of the ride, waiting for me to collect her. She's a sensible girl. I suppose I stood waiting for about thirty seconds before I moved – certainly not longer than a minute.'

‘You're probably about right in that guestimate. A minute is a long time when you're standing quite still and waiting for something to happen.' Lambert was thinking of how long a minute seemed when there was no noise and no movement at eleven o'clock on Armistice Day. He dismissed that death-laden image furiously from his mind. ‘This is very important, Mr Boyd. When you stood watching and waiting for Lucy, you must have been acutely aware of other adults around you. Did you see any movement towards the spot where Lucy must have been when the ride stopped and she left her bus?'

Matt shook his head unhappily. ‘I've been over that moment a dozen times. I've told myself that I must surely have seen something – someone – who had a hand in her removal. I can see the ride and its lights and the other children getting off it and running back to their parents quite clearly in my mind, as if it were a film loop being run over and over again past my eyes. I can even hear some of the things the other kids said to their adults, but I can't see or hear any sign of Lucy, or any shadow of a movement towards where she must have been.'

He waited for an agonizing moment as Hook completed his note on this. Then the DS looked up at him and said, ‘So how do you think you missed her, Matt? Do you think she lost her bearings and wandered off in the wrong direction, or do you think some person or persons unknown abducted her?'

Matt noted the first use of his forename. The man seemed friendly, but was that merely a tactic to soften him up? ‘Someone took her, didn't they?'

‘It certainly looks like it. But if she wandered off and fell into the wrong hands, it could have been later in the evening rather than by that roundabout.'

Matt thought about it. It was a possibility he hadn't considered. He tried desperately to work out how his answer might affect his own position, but he couldn't think it through. He shook his head vigorously, as though trying to rid his face of a troublesome fly. ‘No. I think someone grabbed her as she came off the ride. Probably someone who came out of the wood. It comes right up to the edge of the common at that point. The trees can't be more than a few yards from that ride and the point where Lucy climbed off it.'

Lambert nodded. ‘Eleven yards.' He'd paced it out less than an hour ago when he'd talked to the SOCO team. ‘Mr Boyd, your evidence is vital. At this moment, you are the last person known to have seen Lucy Gibson.' He bit his lip. Familiarity with dozens of homicides had almost led him to say ‘the last person known to have seen Lucy Gibson alive'. He must not allow the increasing foreboding that was weighing upon him to enter his speech. ‘You will be asked to sign a statement in due course, Mr Boyd. Is there anything you feel you have missed out in your account of what happened last night?'

Boyd's forehead twisted into a frown above the broad features. ‘There's one thing. When we were on our way from the big rides to the edge of the fair where the smaller ones were, we passed a shooting gallery. I stopped and had a go to try to win a prize for Lucy or her mum. She didn't leave me, even when I was shooting. I can remember her clinging on to the leg of my trousers when I had both hands on the rifle. But my attention was obviously on the target I was shooting at, for perhaps two minutes. I suppose someone might have been watching us, sizing up his chances of snatching Lucy.'

‘Indeed someone might. I take it this would be only about ten minutes before she vanished?'