Endangering Innocents (13 page)

The problem was that the little girl of eight years old would remember and repeatedly ask whether she had helped find the “other little girl”. Disappointment could be acute when the answer was in the negative or even in the affirmative. “The other little girl had an accident”.

It was a question Joanna would probably prefer not to answer - and for it not to have been asked in the first place.

Eight years old, looking much younger, with hair straight and shiny cut in a black bob, wearing a grey
gymslip and scarlet sweater covered over by a grey puffer jacket. Clarks Tiptoes shoes on her feet. It could
be
Madeline. Behind her Joanna heard Carly Wiltshaw gasp.

But the resemblance was superficial only. As Joanna drew closer it registered that this was a confident little girl with bright, inquisitive eyes who studied at the local stage school. This was not her first job as an actress. And she and Madeline were poles apart.

Carly Wiltshaw stood at Joanna’s side, Huke standing behind her. He must have just arrived. Joanna could sense his presence, hear his noisy breaths, smell the animal, sweaty scent of him. She shifted forward. So did Huke.

The child was surrounded by the reporters with tape recorders and note pads. Joanna eyed her through the glass panel of the school door. Huge grey furry microphones dangled in front of her. A couple of TV cameras held aloft on cameramen’s shoulders hid her from sight. There was plenty of interest, augmented by the inquisitive public as she opened the school door, peered timidly around and stepped briskly across the playground, reached the gates, unlatched them and walked out onto the road. Then she looked uncertain. The media fell back. This was not supposed to happen - an actress who had forgotten her lines? But the child was not unsure because she had forgotten her instruction. She did not know which way to turn because nobody had told her. No one could tell her because nobody knew.

Joanna held her breath. It had been deliberate. She and Mike had discussed this. And decided to let the child follow her instinct - as possibly had Madeline.

The child hesitated for only a moment. Then quite firmly and fast she looked both ways, crossed the road
and walked along the other side towards the grass verge. Joanna was puzzled. It was not the way she had guessed. But no one had instructed the little girl to do this. She had chosen this path. It was as though she was directed by someone. Not them. The media followed, now silent.

The child led.

She reached the five-barred gate of a long field which rolled in the opposite direction from Rudyard Lake, Southerly, back towards the Potteries. The gate was padlocked, the sign quite clearly forbidding entry on the grounds of foot and mouth disease. The child waited, scanned the empty field then turned back - and stopped.

And all Joanna was aware of was the complete absence of sound. Everyone was silent. Even the noise of distant traffic was absent. Missing too was the normal, background hum of the country. The sputter of tractors, the snorting sounds of animals, the mooing, baaing and barking. For even the dogs were chained up, their owners afraid they would roam and spread the invisible virus in their coats, in their breath, on their paws.

Where were the animals. In barns? On pyres?

The little girl had lost her confidence now. She stood quite still and chewed her lips. The fleeting resemblance to Madeline Wiltshaw had returned. She was close to tears.

A woman hurried towards her. Put her arms around her. Mother? Stage school teacher?

Joanna caught drifts of the conversation. “That was great. You were really good. Terrific.”

The watchers were all silent.

And Carly and Huke had disappeared.

Joanna asked the little actress why she had wandered towards the sloping field when her instructions had been to stop at the road. The answer had interested her.

“Poppet” (Stage name, her “minder” explained) had stared Joanna right out. Hazel eyes, long, curling lashes. “Because it looked so - very - pretty,” she answered in a slow thoughtful voice. “I just wanted to
be
there.”

Joanna had the feeling that “Poppet” was set to become a household name. She thanked the child and her minder and grabbed hold of Korpanski who was chatting to a couple of newpaper hacks.

“Get your wellies on, Mike,” she said. “You and I are going walkabout.”

“What about the …?” he objected.

“Sod it,” Joanna spoke stroppily. “I’m about fed up with all this foot and mouth business. We’ll be careful. We’ll wash our wellies in disinfectant if you like. But we are going to walk across that field.”

The grass was moist and long, brushing halfway up their boots. Had circumstances been different it would have been alive with animals and the grass already shorn. As it was, Joanna and Mike stepped through, alone.

“What are we looking for?”

“Anything.”

“But the fields have all been searched.”

“I know. I know. I know.”

She couldn’t keep reiterating, what else do we have? It had become too repetitive a refrain.

Even if it was true. But she had the awful feeling they
were missing something which was right beneath their eyes.

As they reached the middle of the field, Joanna looked ahead. Across a narrow lane bordered by a low hedge lay a small cottage of grey stone with smoke drifting lazily from its chimney. Like the field, it looked pretty. A Beatrix Potter picture come to life. Joanna would hardly have been surprised if Mrs Tiggy Winkle or Peter Rabbit had sauntered across the narrow lane between the field and its gate. No car was visible.

They reached the edge of the field and climbed the small, wooden stile into the narrow lane.

Ahead stood a kissing gate, neatly painted in pillar-box red.

It creaked as they pushed it open. And were immediately greeted by a thin farmer, scowling, his hand knotted around the collar of a straining black and white border collie. “What the f …?”

“Police,” Joanna said quickly. “We’re searching for a missing child.”

The farmer scowled harder. “So? Your lot have already swarmed over this place,” he said. “Spreading all sorts no doubt. What do you want this time? I’ve already been asked every stupid question under the sun.”

“Can we come in?”

“What for?” The hairs on the back of the dog’s neck were bristling. “There’s no missing child been anywhere near here. Don’t you believe me? Do you think
I’m
hiding her?”

“Of course not.” Joanna felt uncomfortable. And it wasn’t just the dog. Snarling now. Something was whispering at her. Insistently. She glanced around.

Behind the farmer stood a huge Dutch hay barn. With open sides and a bowed corrugated tin roof. Half-full of
the winter’s hay. It had been a mild, dry winter, the animals left to graze - until the virus had struck. This farmer was well provided for. Fortunate compared with some of his fellows.

So what was she seeing? Apart from a prosperous landowner who lived in a small farmhouse?

Use a child’s eyes, she told herself. Unravel the scene. The inviting field. The pretty cottage. The little red gate. The hay barn. Warm, comfortable, secure, the air perfumed with the familiar scent of animals.

Something which was missing from normal life.

“Would you mind if we …?” She was aware she had no search warrant.

“Yes I bloody well would. We don’t want people traipsing all over the place. You’re not welcome - police or no police. We don’t want people trespassing.”

“Do you have a daughter?” Mike asked roughly.

Like many men who worked the land to live out their tough life it was hard to gauge the farmer’s age. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Do you?”

“Never you mind. The little girl what’s missin’ isn’t ‘ere and she ‘asn’t bin ‘ere.”

It was still snagging at the back of her mind.

Joanna moved to go. The dog settled back on his haunches. He must have sensed victory. He was seeing the strangers off his land.

Joanna detoured only a fraction. But enough to sense colour against the yellow of the hay.

Blue-bright. Sky blue.

“Fond of colouring are you, sir?”

The farmer simply stared.

“Mr …”

“Crowdeane. Fred Crowdeane.”

“The little girl who has gone missing, Madeline Wiltshaw. In her schoolbag was a packet of felt-tip pens.” Joanna moved towards the hay barn. The dog was watchful. Back on his feet. Tail quivering. Joanna covered the two steps to the barn, slipped a glove on and bagged up the blue, felt-tip pen.

Even through the latex she could feel the ridges and pits of toothmarks.

“This could be one of hers.”

The farmer watched open-mouthed. Saying nothing. The dog stole a sharp glance at its master.

Joanna used the surprise attack. She waved the bag in front of the farmer’s face.

“This alone would be enough to justify a magistrate awarding us a warrant. However - if you invite us to search …”

There was no response.

“Mr Crowdeane. We promise we will be advised by you as to what precautions should be taken to ensure the safety of your livestock.”

The farmer nodded very slowly.

“Aye.”

It was enough.

Joanna used her mobile phone to summon up the troops.

She rang the vet and asked him to take impressions of the dog’s teeth so the lab could compare them with the marks on the pen.

It took them three hours to comb the immediate farm buildings as well as the farmhouse. Once the farmer had decided it was inevitable he did not stand in their way but agreed to their invasion - even making suggestions of his own.

“You might try the ‘ayloft. Right at the back. ‘Appen she could have stole in there.”

“I’ll unlock tractor shed if thee like.”

“Try be’ind shippon.”

But there was no further sign of Madeline. Elusive as ever, the only clue that she might have been at Crowdeane’s farm was the blue felt-tip pen.

Friday May 4th

She had never been hugely optimistic about the results of a reconstruction. It could never be anything more than a device to jog the public’s memory but when, almost a week later, they had received not one phone call to further their investigation Joanna had to admit she felt depressed. All police investigations rely on footwork; routine, monotonous, boring, with much less than 1 percent of any real value. But added to that was undoubtedly the unpredictable element of luck. Maybe someone who used their eyes and ears being in the right place at the right time and recognising that the small, seemingly insignificant fact buried at the back of their mind was the vital clue to solve a case. And bringing that fact to the attention of the police.

But they also prayed for a moment’s inattention or carelessness on the part of the perpetrator which would present them with indisputable and invaluable forensic evidence. Without luck, the police work was even harder and more mundane. Added to that there was something strangely elusive about Madeline. It wasn’t only that they didn’t know whether she was alive or dead. More than three weeks after she had vanished they had not one concrete lead that proved anything. No body. No child. The newspapers, TV stations and radio had all done their bit, giving Madeline huge, emotive headlines and the most appealing photograph of her staring out from everywhere.

Have you seen this child? 

Apparently no one had.

She was there, in pages of publications, peering from newspaper hoardings and TV screens. You could not switch a radio on without hearing the name, Madeline Wiltshaw. And yet there had not been one positive sighting since she had last been seen in the classroom on Friday the thirteenth of April at roughly three fifteen pm.

Then at last they had their first piece of real evidence. The report on the pen found at Crowdeane’s farm came back from the laboratory late on the Friday morning. It seemed the toothmarks had been inflicted by Crowdeane’s dog. The laboratory had employed a vet with an interest in forensic dental work. Joanna read the report with a touch of gallows humour.

She glanced across at Korpanski bashing away at the keys on his computer. “So what do you think this guy does,” she asked. “Crocodile bites? Shark attacks? Dolphin nibbles?”

Korpanski grinned at her. “The mind boggles,” he said. “I wouldn’t like to share his dreams.”

“Nightmares,” she corrected. “And in great detail no doubt.” She laughed and Korpanski put his chin on his hand and studied her. “It’s good to see you can still make jokes. I thought you’d forgotten how.”

“Nearly,” she said soberly, again studying the report. She didn’t like it that Korpanski had picked up on her low feelings. “He describes the marks as nibbles rather than real bites.”

She quoted. “
As though the dog carried the pen gently in its jaws
. I wouldn’t have described Crowdeane’s hound as being exactly gentle, would you? If he’d let go of his collar that dog would have had you by the trouser leg.”

Korpanski’s eyes gleamed. “Jealous, Jo?”

“Terribly.” She threw a ball of paper at him. It bounced off his shoulder.

The pen had given them a lead. She and Mike studied the Easter egg picture Madeline had coloured on Good Friday, now removed to the Incident Room. There was no doubt that the pen which had turned up in Crowdeane’s barn had been used to colour in some of the stars. There was red, purple, orange, yellow and sky-blue. The egg had been coloured in on the last day of school. So they knew now that Madeline had left Horton Primary and unseen by anyone, including her mother, had wandered across the field, towards the pretty picture book farm. Then she had hidden in the hayloft.

It felt like the one small step which turned out to be a giant leap for the investigation.

The second envelope held a second report. This was the result of the work they’d carried out on the bag of clothes handed in. They were, almost certainly, Madeline’s clothes. They fitted the sizing and description exactly. But the abductor had put them through a washing machine. There was no trace of evidence either on the clothes or on the plastic carrier bag that had contained them. And the shoes too had been rigorously sprayed with some sort of cleaning fluid. Only one real fact had been available. And that wasn’t as helpful as it might have been. Smears of mud were found in the valley between the sole and the heel. And while the mud matched perfectly with the sample taken from the edge of Crowdeane’s field, it was also a dead ringer for the samples of mud taken from the verges outside the school. The report ended with the promise that they were carrying out further tests. So they must wait. And hope.

Joanna had no option but to take heart from a negative. No blood had been picked up on any of the articles.

The Incident Room was buzzing with activity, phones ringing, people coming and going all the time. At four o’clock in the afternoon, nothing in the ringing tone of one of the phones announced that here was another snippet of evidence about to land on her desk.

An excited Wendy Owen was on the other end.

“I didn’t know whether to speak to you or not,” she said, once she’d introduced herself. “I don’t know how reliable he is.”

“Please start at the beginning.”

“Well - Sam’s one of those kids who says things for effect. I don’t know how seriously to take him.”

“Go on.”

“Well - he says he saw Madeline talking to the man in the blue van.”

Joanna was silent and felt a sensation of cold disappointment. So the trail led back to Baldwin after all.

“Did he say when?”

“You know what five-year-olds are like.”

“Not really.”

“Well - vague about time to say the least. He just says one of the days.”

“So ‘one of the days’ he saw Madeline talking to the man in the blue van?”

“Ye-es.”

“Did he say whether they were talking for long?” Joanna shrugged at Korpanski and opened her eyes wide.

“He says for just a bit.”

“Right. Thanks for ringing, Mrs Owen.”

There was a pause then, “Well - anything I can do to
help, you know.” Another pause. “How is the investigation going on?”

“Slowly, if you want to know the truth. Slowly.”

She put the phone down thoughtfully and relayed the contents of the conversation to Korpanski. “You know more about kids than I do. How much notice would you take of Sam Owen’s statement?”

Korpanski looked dubious. “Kids are funny,” he said. “It depends what’s been said in front of him. They do make things up. I don’t care how many child psychologists say they don’t. They do. But on the other hand there’s probably an element of truth in what the little tyke says. My guess is at some point our little girl did talk to Baldwin - probably on more than one occasion. When you think about it it’s obvious, Jo. He sat outside the school just to see her, didn’t he? So it’s no surprise if he approached her.”

“And the real question, Mike?”

“I’d put money on him.”

And she nodded and felt weighed down, defeated and somehow disappointed by the investigation.

She gave a huge sigh. Korpanski looked across at her then back at his computer screen and said nothing.

Neither did she.

So far only Mike had picked up on her attitude to this case. He was right when he commented about her loss of sense of humour and optimism. She had tackled many serious, upsetting and baffling cases before. Throughout the Moorlands she was gaining a reputation for being an intelligent and methodical detective. Promotion to Chief Inspector was openly talked about. While she did always worry that the current case would be beyond her this time there was a new aspect. Added to an inexcusable
depression for the first time in her life, Joanna felt tired and nauseous for much of the time. She hadn’t mentioned it to Matthew, telling herself it was probably a virus. But underneath she was worried. It was unlike her. Defeat to her had always been a challenge. Not an excuse for flopping into chairs feeling washed out and sorry for herself. She had initially put her lassitude down to the failure of the case to progress but now some of their work was beginning to pay off. Cases were like this. One tiny break was what led to a solution and conviction. She’d been a detective long enough to know this and not let it affect her. Maybe she was simply tired. The investigation had lasted more than three weeks so far. It may well last a while longer. She decided to take the weekend off. It encompassed a Bank Holiday which she fully intended to ignore, but Matthew would be free and they needed the time together.

They spent a damp weekend traipsing some of the country lanes which criss-crossed the Peak District, Joanna filling her lungs with fresh, clean air laundered of pollution and city smog and trying to ignore the fact that all the footpaths were closed and the fields devoid of farm animals.

By Monday morning, May 7th - yet another Bank Holiday - she felt relatively fit and ready to resume the investigation. Baldwin had finally agreed to be rehoused in an empty police semi in Endon, a small village a few miles south of Leek. The local force were keeping a watchful eye on him which freed them up to resuming the search for Madeline.

At eight am she was cycling across the ridge between Waterfall and Leek, feeling refreshed, optimistic and full of her customary vigour.

But it was to be a day of bombshells.

The moment she entered the station she caught a waft of stale, greasy chips and the queasiness returned.

As chance would have it Korpanski was right behind her. He gave a low whistle as he caught sight of her face. “Well, Inspector,” he said, teasingly. “Whatever you’ve been up to I’m glad I was at home looking after the kids all weekend. You look rough. Coffee?”

“A glass of water,” she said, already padding towards the ladies locker room. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

They joined up in the office and he handed her a welcome polystyrene cup of crystal clear chilled water. She sipped it and felt her colour return.

“Skinful?” he asked sympathetically.

“No. I haven’t even fancied alcohol for a week or two. I must have caught …”

Suddenly Kospanski’s face was a merry picture, as though she had told him a really good joke.

“Share it, Mike.”

But he was alight with fun. “Well I can’t say I’m exactly an expert on these matters.”

“What matters?”

“Well,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “It strikes me …”

“I’ll
strike you in a minute, Korpanski,” she warned.

“I don’t suppose there’s the tiniest chance that …”

“Get on with it,” she growled.

“You’re not much of a detective, are you, Jo?”

“Korpanski,” she warned again.

“Could you possibly be heading for the land of happy motherhood?”

She stared at him. “Not a … I’m on the …”

Then she fell silent.

She’d never been very good with dates and frequently
linked one three week cycle of the pill to another. But it did seem to her that her box of Lilets was gathering dust on the bathroom windowsill. She couldn’t remember when she’d last had a period.

“But I’m …”

Mike simply lifted his eyebrows. “So was Fran when she fell for Ricky.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Puked up the pill or something.”

That bloody christening. Those rancid vol-au-vents. Prawns.

Even now the thought of them made her want to throw up.

“Excuse me.”

She raced up the High Street until she located a chemist’s to make her purchase then locked herself in the toilet. She knew it should be an early morning specimen but she needed to know. Right away.

Predictor predicted all right. Early morning specimen or not the thin blue line spelt out disaster. Joanna stood over the sink frozen, unable to move or think.

She dropped her head down onto her hands.

The knocking at first seemed a long long way away.

Then it came closer.

“Jo.”

Korpanski. All she needed.

“Jo.”

“For goodness sake. I’m in the - “

“Jo.” The urgency in his voice alerted her.

She opened the door.

“They’ve found a body.”