Endangering Innocents (15 page)

Monday May 7th 10 pm

She and Mike were alone in her office, drinking the nth cup of coffee of the day. And there would be more before they could sleep. Even then sleep would evade them. They would chew over and over each event, each clue, each tiny piece of evidence before they slept. Even then they would not be free.

They would dream about it.

“Let’s get this quite clear, Korpanski.”

He was cradling the mug with his big hands, staring gloomily into the meniscus of the drink distorting his image.

“Matthew’s post mortem has thrown up three different avenues of enquiry. The old abuse points to Huke. He fits the bill like a hand-made glove. He’s a bully, a brute, a nasty piece of work. And even more important he had the opportunity to repeatedly assault Madeline without her mother having the decency to protect her.”

“Sometimes it’s mothers who are the greatest threat to the child,” Mike said. “The number of times these single parent mums take up with the town psychopath.”

“You’re going a bit far there, Korpanski.”

“Tell that to Madeline,” he answered moodily.

“But Matthew said some of the injuries were recent - done within twenty-four hours of her death. Didn’t he say something about incomplete bruising? Which implies Huke saw her after the hue and cry was raised. Unless the owner of the dog assaulted her or the dog bite and the bruising were part of the same incident.”

She waited for some comment and got none.

“Let’s track the events. Firstly Madeline, the little girl who liked to find herself hidey-holes, slipped away from Horton School without being seen. We have a five-year-old’s statement that she had been talking to Baldwin. Now, whether innocent or guilty, we know Baldwin had an interest in the child. It’s possible even that he had arranged to meet her. But at the time Baldwin was belting home it looks as though Madeline had wandered into Crowdeane’s farm where she was attacked by the dog - with or without the knowledge of its owner. Why did Baldwin rush in and out of his house? Who beat her up? Huke was somewhere around at the time she went missing. Mike,” she appealed. “No child should suffer like this.”

They were both silent. His eyes were on her and she felt a slow flush move from her neck to her cheeks.

She dropped her face into her hands and Korpanski watched, helpless. He could do nothing except wait.

Moments later Joanna gave herself a vigorous shake and lifted her head. “Baldwin.” She stood up, suddenly energetic. “I think we’ll pop round and say hello to him.”

“Now?”

“Why not? He’ll be in.”

As they were driving along the A53, back towards the Potteries and Endon, Korpanski was suddenly talkative.

“She left the school at three-fifteen.”

She didn’t take her eyes off the road. “Correct.”

“At some point in the twenty-four hours before she died she was bitten by a dog, she was beaten and she was incarcerated.”

“What’s your point, Korpanski?”

“Just - poor kid,” he said.

The phrase flicked her thoughts through to the cell division that was taking place within her own body. She wanted to stop it. Halt its multiplication, arrest development. Let it get no further.

“You all right, Jo?”

She did look at him then. “No, Mike,” she said bleakly. “I am not all right. If I can’t sort this …” With horror she realised she had been about to call Matthew’s child a problem. She substituted “… thing,” and still felt ashamed. “… out I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“You could have …”

She hated him voicing her own silent thoughts.

“Leave it, Korpanski,” she said. She took refuge in the use of his surname. It distanced them. And she needed to do that - particularly now. The ice was thin. It would be too easy to fall through. “I can’t see Matthew agreeing to that road.”

“Does he need to know?”

Suddenly the atmosphere inside the car was suffocating.

They had arrived at The Quadrangle, a small crescent of council houses in the village of Endon. Half of them belonged to council tenants; the other half to the police. Baldwin had been settled in one of these. So far he was undisturbed. Possibly because he was still undiscovered.

The curtains were drawn, the light and noise from a television a sign of human occupancy.

She took delight in hammering hard on the door. Immediately the TV was turned down. Baldwin was behind the letterbox.

“Yes?”

“It’s Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy and DS Korpanski.”

Bolts were shot back. There was the sound of locks clicking open. Finally the door was opened. Baldwin’s frightened face connected with theirs.

“Shit,” he said. “You frightened me. I thought they was back.”

She looked at him with a mixture of dislike, disdain, curiosity and something else which even she couldn’t identify. But it fell somewhere between respect and pity.

“We want to talk to you, Baldwin.”

He jerked his head and they followed him inside.

He paused to shoot the bolts across, slip in the three chains, turn the key and draw a thick curtain back across the doorway.

Baldwin was a frightened man.

“Why were you so interested in Madeline Wiltshaw?”

He darted glances from Korpanski to Joanna, back to Korpanski again.

She tried again. “Tell me about yourself.”

This time he dropped his eyes to the floor. “You think I’m …” he began. “But I’m not.”

“Not what, Baldwin.” Joanna could hear real anger in her voice. “Not what? What are you?”

“I am not a pervert,” he said. “I wouldn’t touch a kid like that. I just wouldn’t. I’m a normal man.”

“How normal?”

“I’ve had a wife. A kid.”

“Who left you.” It sounded brutal coming from Korpanski.

Baldwin wheeled round on Korpanski. “That doesn’t make me a queer - or a paedophile. She went because she fancied someone else. She just hopped it. If you want to know the truth she was a no-good slag who thought she’d do better elsewhere so she went. My bad luck is she took my little girl with her. I couldn’t give a
monkey’s arse about Hilary. But Denise - that was different.”

“Why did you hang around the school?”

“I just happened to pass through a couple of times on my way …”

Even he wasn’t convinced by the idea.

“You weren’t passin’ through.” Mike’s anger was strident in his voice. “You were parked up.”

“All right, all right, all right. I passed through the first time. I saw the little girl. I saw this great big guy bearing down on her. I felt sorry. I - I maybe I thought I could help. I don’t know.”

He was begging them to believe him. But they didn’t. Joanna knew there was something more.

He was still concealing something.

He tried again. “I was drawn towards her.” He licked his lips. “She looked a bit like my own little girl. And …”

“And what?”

“She believed in me. She really did think I could do magic.” For the first time Baldwin looked ashamed. He knew what he was, a deft con-artist. But Madeline had believed. That must have made him feel - no - not good. Joanna corrected herself. It had made Baldwin feel ashamed.

“You returned to your flat on the Friday afternoon. Why?”

“I told you,” he said. “I forgot a spanner.”

She put her face close to his. “I don’t believe you,” she said.

He tried to stare her out with his goat-eyes.

Fight valiantly against sin, the world and the devil.

Joanna clenched her fists. “In your ‘act’,” she said, “I expect you cover your table - your objects, things, with a cloth. What sort of cloth?”

Baldwin tried a bit of bravado.

“It’s just a cloth,” he said.

Blue, smothered with stars, bought from the Wednesday street market on the cobbles.

Baldwin’s eyes flickered around the room.

“And what else do you do in your act?”

If Baldwin’s mouth had not been as dry as the Gobi desert he would have swallowed. As it was his adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his skinny throat. They could almost hear it rasp.

Joanna stood up. “Let’s go, Mike.”

There is something sordid about a burnt-out flat. It was dark. It still stank of smoke. Objects were still soot-stained, everything a shade or two darker than it should be, the entire living room, a smoke-stained settee, a TV, a bookshelf in the corner. All were covered in a film of grime.

The kitchen was no less sad a sight, dishes piled in the sink and in here too there was a stale, sooty smell.

The bedroom contained only a single bed, blackened sheets thrown back like an exhibit in a modern art exhibition. A trunk stood in the corner, traces of fingerprint dust still on its lid.

Korpanski slipped on a latex glove, unfastened the hasp and lifted the top. There was no room for anything in here. Not even a five-year-old child. It was obviously where Baldwin kept the equipment he used for his magic act: a tall, wizard’s hat, plastic cups, juggling balls, packs of cards, a magician’s wand. The bottom was lined with material, dark, midnight blue smothered in gold stars. Korpanski lifted it out. It was a wizard’s cloak.

“Let’s look outside, Mike.”

Baldwin had a tiny garage, little more than a coal-hole and certainly not big enough to put a car. The door was secured with a stout padlock. Joanna flashed her torch through the window. Like the trunk, it was full. They caught sight of a painted wooden box and a large mirror. The contents looked undisturbed.

Tuesday May 8th 7am

She had dreamed all night, of a child who whispered in her ear. “Hide me. Make me invisible. Make me not exist.” And more disturbingly, “Destroy me.” The child had scattered felt-tip pens in fans of rainbow colours. And, as is the way with dreams, the colours were too bright to be true. They were Disney bright: shocking pink, bloody red, yellows and purples headachingly vivid. She reached out to touch the child and watched her walk towards her own mirror image until the two became one and the one became none. She had woken in a sweat and known Matthew was semi-conscious beside her. She moved only her hand but he spoke. “Jo, are you all right?” But it was a mumble and she knew he was asleep before she could make any reply.

So she lay still and thought of the innocent Gelert, until he melted into a dream-dog who snarled and snapped at her leg and then joined the stiff corpses, upside down, on the funeral pyre to destroy the disease.

She was glad when it finally grew light and slipped from the bed straight into the shower. Never would a case affect her so terribly and her own personal problems only made her more vulnerable.

She took the car, feeling she could ill afford to lose any time from the investigation. Even if it was clear thinking time. There was an urgency about it. She must deal with it. And then with Matthew. He had been asleep when she had finally arrived home last night and she had contented herself with stroking his head and mouthing
apologies into his hair. He had not stirred and she had been glad.

A briefing had been organised for 7:30 so there was only time for a quick word with Korpanski before they entered the assembly room. Fearing their continuing presence would remind the schoolchildren, they had moved the incident room back to the station soon after the school had returned from their Easter break.

She kept the briefing short and simple and rearranged a time at the end of the day when they could discuss the day’s events. It promised plenty.

Then she and Mike, Barra and Hannah Beardmore drove round to Madeline’s home. It was ironic that the address was The Sanctuary when it had proved to be anything but.

It was still early. Huke looked dishevelled and tired, Carly a wraith without even energy to argue.

Joanna addressed her. “I’m sorry, Mrs Wiltshaw, but we need to take another look round your house.”

Huke chewed his lip. “You gotta warrant?”

Joanna met his eyes and gave a small nod. “Oh yes,” she said.

Something behind his face seemed to crumple.

“Before we start, Mrs Wiltshaw, can I just confirm something. When you first realised Madeline was missing you rang Darren?”

The swift glance at Huke gave her the answer she needed. It was easy enough to get a printout of her mobile phone calls anyway.

The downstairs rooms bore no trace of the little girl. No toys, no books. Nothing except a fancy drinks trolley, a TV, DVD player and stereo system, strange picture on
the wall of a man; crouching, blackened face, in camouflages.

The kitchen was decked out in cheap, white plastic units but it was tidy and smelt of bleach. Joanna recalled Carly’s explanation of Huke’s disciplinarian habits. Ex-army.

Hannah stayed downstairs while she, Mike and Barra trooped upstairs. Ahead of them were five doors. Bathroom, three bedrooms and a fourth door which led to a large airing cupboard. There was a bolt outside, on the top. High enough for Huke to reach but Carly was small and Madeline had been smaller.

Inside were the usual blankets and towels and it was hot. The floor was empty and lined with a piece of carpet with a dark stain on. There was space enough for a child to lie - or be hidden.

Barra started removing the piece of carpet and bagging up the contents. Huke watched with flickering, guilty eyes.

They took another last look around Madeline’s spartan bedroom but this time Joanna lay on the floor and swept the bedspread aside. The child had hidden here, she remembered. There was a crayoning book, another of the felt-tip pens, the unmistakable scent of stale urine.

She could almost smell the fear.

She and Mike left Barra to collect his specimens, witnessed now by Hannah Beardmore.

“Your central heating boiler?”

Huke stumped through the kitchen, opened a door and flattened himself against it.

The central heating boiler was in a corner of the garage. Joanna gave it a swift once-over and moved on.

They left Barra and Hannah to their work and left, feeling Carly and Huke eyeing them from the window.
Next they drove back round to Haig Road. Joanna was not a fervent believer in the mysticism of visions but as a psychologist she knew that the mind often tussles with problems under the guise of an imaginative dream. When you are relaxed you allow your mind to explore possibilities it would reject in a fully conscious state.

As a child she had loved the book,
Alice, Through the Looking Glass
and had spent hours trying to peer into mirrors. She could identify with Madeline Wiltshaw’s desire to believe in magic, in the impossible, in invisibility, the potency of magic and an alternative world. It had been Baldwin’s conjuring which had drawn the child to him. She wanted to look again at the contents of his shed.

Korpanski levered the lock. It was obvious that the objects were all part of his act. Gaudily painted boxes and stands. Folded cloths and silk hankies. She stood in front of the mirror. From this angle it appeared a normal cheval mirror. But it was unnecessarily deep. Something could hide behind it.
Alice could enter the looking glass world.

She and Mike fiddled with the side of the mirror, tapped the back, pressed the wooden struts that held the mirror in but nothing budged.

Baldwin would have to reveal his secrets.

They left the shed and she made a few calls on her mobile phone. Detailed a couple of officers to interview Crowdeane again, bring Carly and Huke in for questioning.

They were already at the staion, waiting, when Carly and Huke arrived.

She wanted to separate them.

Huke was spoiling for a fight. She knew that instantly.
In the interview room he tilted back his chair, folded his arms and fixed his eyes straight ahead.

But she was no Carly to be intimidated. In a way, she welcomed the challenge. She felt cold with dislike for the man but disguised it with the warmest of smiles.

It unnerved him. He expected people either to cower or square up to him so he could punch their lights out. She was doing neither. She was ignoring his aggression, failing to acknowledge it at all. As though it didn’t exist.

She smiled again. Huke scowled back, confused.

She sorted the formalities out swiftly, under PACE rules. She had never lost a case yet through side-stepping any one of the legal loopholes strewn across the path of police officers which could allow the guilty or unwary to run free. And she wasn’t going to start now.

“Mr Huke. I expect you’re wondering why we’ve asked you to come in and chat to us.”

Huke hesitated. His fingers played around his forearms. He was puzzled.

“Chat?” he said disparagingly.

“That’s all it is,” Joanna said pleasantly. “Just a chat.”

He half stood, shoved the table in her direction. “Then I can go.”

“Oh - no.”

“Why not?”

“Because your partner’s daughter, Madeline, had some injuries.”

“She was murdered. That’s why.”

“
Old
injuries, Mr Huke. Some serious. Some as old as eighteen months. Round about the time that you started meeting up with Madeline’s mother.”

“So?”

“You were there, Mr Huke. Living with her mother. A
caring partner?” He didn’t even recognise the words for sarcasm.

“So how did Madeline …” Joanna glanced down at her notes, “break her shoulder bone?”

“I don’t …”

“But you were one of the two adults in charge of her. You would have noticed an injury as serious and painful as a broken shoulder, surely?”

He was trapped. He jerked his chin up, pulled his jaw forward. His eyes darted towards the corner of the room.

Joanna ignored all the movements.

She glanced back at her notes.

“A skull fracture sustained roughly a year ago. Maybe through a fall? Straight on her head? The doctor told me you might have noticed she was increasingly drowsy or disorientated. She might have complained of a headache.”

Huke glared at her. She knew he hated her. If she had been small and cowering, like Carly or Madeline, he would have broken something of hers too.

She didn’t care. She welcomed his hatred. And he knew it. His eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“Her right wrist too, again about a year ago. She would have suffered pain - great pain. She would probably have been unable to use it for a month or so. You didn’t notice any of these injuries, Mr Huke?”

Huke swallowed the spittle he would have liked to have gobbed in her face.

“I’m surprised.” She knew many officers would have found it hard keeping their cool during an interrogation like this. But let the suspect once know you were touched as a person they would goad you until you lost your temper. And the case.

She let her eyes drift back down to Matthew’s report.
“Fingers. Four, broken at different times. And on different hands. Ribs too. It strikes me Madeline was a very unlucky child.”

“Clumsy,” he managed.

“Please.” Her facial expression conveyed her disdain. But the word, listened to on the police tape could, conceivably, be construed as an expression of sorrow for a dead child who had already suffered much in her brief life.

“You accept that since you moved in with Carly Wiltshaw you were
in loco parentis?”

Huke’s face tightened.

Explanation was necessary. “Acting in parental capacity, Mr Huke.”

She waited.

“So how do you explain these injuries - mutliple and serious.”

He gaped.

“Do I need to spell this out to you, Mr Huke? Your silence may well be the object of attention in court. And it may well be interpreted as an indication of guilt. Do you understand?”

“Shut it,” he said. “And get me a fag.”

“Sorry.” She wiped the smile from her face. “Don’t smoke.”

As she left she again smiled, but this time at the police tape recorder.

She’d left Korpanski with Carly Wiltshaw but he hadn’t got anywhere. He came out of the room in response to her knock with an expression of frustration making him scowl. “She just buttoned up completely, Jo. Wouldn’t answer a thing. No bloody wonder when we’re busy telling them ‘that they do not have to say anything’.
Makes my blood boil. How can a woman allow that sort of treatment to her own child?”

“She was fond of Madeline?”

“I don’t know. Bloody unnatural mother if you ask me.”

Unnatural mother. Unnatural mother.
The words pealed in her ears.

So would she be. Matthew may well be a natural father but she would be an unnatural mother.

As though in response she felt a strange quickening in the pit of her stomach.

It made her feel sick.

She pushed open the door to Interview Room II. Carly Wiltshaw’s head shot around. With fear? Apprehension?

She looked reassured by the sight of Joanna who dropped into the seat opposite.

“Hello, Carly.”

“Why have you brought us here?”

“Because we’ve got a bit of a problem,” Joanna said. “that we believe you and your boyfriend might be able to help us with.”

Madeline’s mother looked instantly wary.

Joanna began what would inevitably turn out to be a traumatic interview with a gentle statement. “You must have loved your daughter very much.”

A hard look crossed Carly’s thin face. “Of course.”

It hadn’t been the answer Joanna had either expected or wanted. She smiled at Carly and wondered how best she could melt the ice that had frozen around the woman’s heart.

She knew the best approach would be to identify them as “sisters under the skin”. But somehow she couldn’t use it.

She needed to start right at the beginning.

“You were married to Madeline’s father?”

“Paul?” There was distinct dislike in her voice. “We was married. Back in ‘95. Got pregnant nearly straight away.”

“What was Madeline like as a baby?”

“Bawled and puked a lot. Like they all do.” She took a cigarette out of her bag, lit it with a lighter held between shaking fingers and faced Joanna with a defiant expression.

“And her father, was he very proud of her?”

“Yeah. So-so. Till he made off with that tart, Crystal. Then he acted like he didn’t know he ‘ad a kid. That was that. See? Forgot about her. And who was left holdin’ the baby? Me. Muggins ‘ere. Couldn’t get money out of him. CSAcouldn’t get no money out of him. Bloody waster.”

“And how did Darren get on with little Madeline? She must only have been - what - three? when he moved in with you.”

The question earned a long, cool calculating stare.

“What are you after, Detective?”

Joanna leaned forward and stared unflinching at Madeline’s mother. “I’m after the truth, Carly.”

“What truth?”

“The pathologist noted some old injuries on your daughter.”

Carly leaned forward and stubbed the cigarette out in the ash tray. “She was a clumsy kid.”

Joanna sat very straight and still for a moment then she said quietly, “That just wasn’t true, was it?”

Carly had little fight left in her now. “What are you saying?”

“What do you think I’m saying, Mrs Wiltshaw?”

And quite suddenly, like a breach in a flood defences
wall, Carly’s resolve finally broke. The sobs leaked out between her fingers, jarring and strong, sad and bitter. Behind it lay the catalogue of cruelty.

The sobs jerked Carly’s shoulders for a few minutes before she could control them enough to speak intelligbly.

“Do you think he …?”

“Do you?”

The sobs began again.

Joanna knew now they were near the truth.