“What time do you leave for work?”
“Quarter to eight. They likes me to be there and working by eight o’clock, so I leaves every morning at quarter to, regular as clockwork.”
“And when did you get back from the Black Bear yesterday morning?”
“I don’t know exactly.” She wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t stop off anywhere so I suppose it was about ten past ten.”
“And then you went and woke your brother up?”
Mrs Spender thought for a moment. “No, I didn’t. He was already up - up and dressed, which is unusual for him. Of course he was too idle to have got his own breakfast. He was waiting for me to do that for him.”
“Did he say how long he’d been up?”
“No, and I didn’t ask him. He’s got to live his own life even if he expects me to do most things for him.”
Stafford was only slightly amused by her truculence. “Did he say what he’d been doing while you were at work?”
“Not a word.” She pointed a finger at him. “But I knew he’d been out ‘cause he’d bought a paper. I remember now - he was reading it when I got back. He said something about the prison riot at Strangeways. You know it’s in all the papers.”
“Interesting,” agreed Paulson. “What did he say about that?”
“Oh, only that he wasn’t surprised they had rioted. He reckons the screws are stirring things up all the time in the prisons.”
They were prevented from pursuing that line of discussion by the sound of feet coming down the stairs. Mallinson made some short comment and the next minute a very worried-looking middle aged man hesitantly entered the room.
This morning he was dressed in grey trousers and a clean white shirt, covered by a Fair Isle cardigan. Stafford noticed he was wearing outdoor shoes. His still-dark hair was slicked down over his forehead and he had taken the trouble to shave. A small bloodstained dab of cotton wool was stuck on a cut just below his right ear.
“This is Mister Sidney Pullman, convicted paedophile,” announced Greg Mallinson from behind him.
Both Pullman and his sister started as though shocked by his comment, but neither of them responded.
“OK,” said Paulson. “Mr Pullman, I believe you are due to report to the station today under the terms of the Restriction Order to give an account of your movements in the last week.”
“I - I was going to do that after I’d finished my breakfast.”
“Well, you don’t need to bother now. You can make your report to me,” said the inspector. There was a short pause and he continued, “So, what have you done this week?”
“Nothing really. I only got here last Sunday. Since then I’ve mainly stayed in and read - you know - newspapers, magazines, books…”
“You went out on Tuesday afternoon,” said his sister.
“Yes. Yes, I went out for a walk on Tuesday.” Pullman looked frightened.
“Where did you go?”
“Oh, nowhere really. I just walked round the town, getting to know the place. It’s the first time I’ve stayed in Torquay.”
“Loiter round any schools?” That was Mallinson in aggressive mood.
“No!” He looked at Paulson. “I promise you I didn’t go near any schools.”
“I bet you went down the beach to peer at the young birds in their bikinis,” said Mallinson.
Pullman shook his head, looking worried.
“How long were you out for?” asked Paulson.
“Oh, I don’t know. Not long.”
“You were late for tea,” said Mrs Spender. “You must have been gone more than three hours.”
“That’s a very long walk,” interposed Mallinson. “What were you doing all that time, Sidney? I bet you were up to no good.”
The man sat down heavily in a chair. He was shaking severely. His mouth opened and shut like a recently-landed fish. “I don’t know what I was doing,” he whined. “I just don’t remember.”
“OK, that’s enough.” Paulson knew he’d never get any sense out of the fellow while he was in this state. He sat down opposite him. “Now then, Mr Pullman, do you keep a diary?”
He just shook his head.
“Well, I think it would be wise for you to keep one. You can just go down to Smith’s and buy a notebook. Then you can put the date at the top of each page and the time you get up, what you do during the day with approximate times and, if you go out, make a note of where you go and what you do. Then you can take the notebook with you each Friday when you report to the station. The duty sergeant will read through and sign each page. We will only get involved if he thinks there’s something he’s not happy with. Do you understand?”
Sidney gulped. “Yes, I’ll do that from today.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he does it.” His sister turned to him. “You can see what the Inspector says is for your own good, Sidney. We want to keep you out of trouble.”
“Now then,” said Paulson, “let’s get to the real reason for our visit. A young girl has gone missing, Mr Pullman, and obviously we have to make sure that you know nothing about it.”
“I don’t know anything about any young girl. Honest I don’t.” Pullman’s voice was desperate.
“I hope not, but I have to go through the details with you. The girl is called Tracey Bostock. Do you know a young girl by that name?”
The man held his hands out anxiously. “I’ve never heard of her. You’ve got to believe me.”
“She lives quite near here, in Blandford Crescent. Have you been there on any of your walks?”
“I don’t know where that is.”
“I do,” said Mrs Spender. “It’s up the hill in the direction of Babbacombe.”
“Did you walk in that direction on Tuesday, Mr Pullman?”
“No. I didn’t go anywhere near a street of that name.”
“Now I want you to think very carefully about this before you give me your reply - since you’ve been in Torquay have you had any sort of contact - even accidentally - with any young girls at all? If so, you must tell me the full details, including their names, so that we can look into it.”
“No! I promise you. You’ve got to believe me, Inspector.”
“Well,” said Paulson, standing up. “I hope that’s correct. We have a full-scale missing person’s search under way. If I find out later that you’ve been lying to me, I promise you I’ll throw the book at you.”
“I haven’t been lying to you.” Sidney’s eyes were wide with attempted honesty, but he couldn’t keep the fear out of his voice.
“OK, that’s all for now. I sincerely hope I don’t need to visit you again.” He made for the door. “Come on, Greg.”
They left a trembling Sidney with his sister looking suspiciously at him in the sitting room.
As they made for the car Greg said, “I think you let him off too lightly, boss. I reckon he’s guilty as hell. Give me ten minutes with him and I’d make him crack.”
“I don’t doubt you could have wrung a false confession out of him, he was in such a state.” Stafford shook his head. “But it wouldn’t have been worth the paper it was written on. A decent lawyer would have you laughed out of court.”
“Still - I reckon he knows where the girl is.”
“The bloke’s only been here a week. How could he have set everything up to snatch a girl and hide her away in that time?”
“Well, what was he doing on that three-hour walk on Tuesday? He could have arranged all sorts of things in that time.” Mallinson turned to him. “I bet he’s already been in touch with a bunch of our local perverts.”
“What bunch of perverts?”
“Oh, I hear things when I’m out and about.”
“There is one thing,” admitted Paulson. “His sister, who I believe is honest, couldn’t account for his movements yesterday morning between seven forty-five and ten past ten. She was doing her cleaning job at the Black Bear.”
“There you are then,” said Mallinson. “I bet he did it.
”
“I’m sure you’re wrong,” said Paulson as he unlocked the car. “But I’ll discuss it with DCI Faraday when we get back to the office.”
He climbed into the driver’s seat and shut the door.
- 16 -
However Charlotte wasn’t there when Paulson and Mallinson got back to the office. She’d received a call from John Prendergast to say he’d come across a possible interesting witness in his house-to-house questioning.
“OK, John,” she said. “Stay there and I’ll be with you in five minutes.”
She hurried downstairs and straight out to her car. She fed the address he’d given her into the GPS and was soon on her way. The device took her directly to where John was waiting outside a small terrace house on the secondary road leading towards the town centre. She noticed it was only just round the corner from Blandford Crescent and she guessed it was on Tracey’s route to school.
Prendergast stepped out of the parking bay he’d been keeping clear for her and she was able to back straight in.
“So,” she greeted him, “you think you may have come up with something interesting?”
“I hope so, ma’am.” He grinned boyishly. “The old boy who lives here is half deaf and pretty difficult to understand, but I think you might find his information interesting.”
“OK. Let’s hear what he has to say.”
They had to knock on the door loudly and ring the bell several times without any response.
“This is what I had to do last time to get the old boy to realise we wanted to speak to him,” said John.
After another assault on his front door it was opened about three inches and a set of wizened features peered out.
“Who is it?” he croaked.
“It’s me again, Mr Smithson,” bellowed John, poking his warrant card in front of the old fellow’s nose. “Can we come in, please?”
“Oh, yes. Right you are.”
The door was closed and there was a rattle of the security chain being removed. Then the door was opened fully.
“The copper what come ‘ere after the break-in last year told I to always ‘ave it done up so no-one could bust in,” he explained.
“Very wise,” agreed Charlotte, although she doubted whether the old boy heard her.
“You a plain clothes copper too?” he asked. “Well, come on in then.”
He turned and shuffled along the corridor to the kitchen. It seemed that he was halfway through his lunch. Charlotte followed him slowly.
“Mr Smithson,” she said loudly, “I’m sorry if we’ve interrupted you while you’re eating,”
He turned and peered at her. “Don’t ‘e worry, my dear. I don’t like this stuff much anyway. I likes it when they brings I bangers and mash. I asked ‘em to give I bangers every day.” He shook his head. “But they won’t.”
In a sudden, surprising burst of energy he picked up the plate, carried it to the waste bin, scraped the remaining half of the meal into the bin and went to put the plate and the cutlery into the sink. He turned back to her, wiping his hands on the seat of his trousers.
“Now then - what was it you wanted to ask I?”
John intervened. “You told me ten minutes ago, when I was at the door, that you had seen something yesterday morning which may be important.”
“Eh?” Then the words seemed to get through. “That’s right, I did. ‘Ere. Come up ‘ere.” He gestured for them to follow him.
They went back along the corridor and turned up the stairs. He puffed his way to the top with only a single pause. Then he led them to the bedroom at the front of the house. Charlotte noticed the bed was sort-of made up and the rather tattered curtains were pulled open.
The old boy led the way to the window. “It was ‘ere,” he said and turned to face them.
There was a long pause before John politely enquired, “What was here, Mr Smithson?”
“Oh. Oh, yes.” He nodded. “I’d just got up. I always puts my dressing gown on before I opens the curtains. There it is, on the ‘ook behind the door.”
Charlotte was catching on. “So after you put on your dressing gown, Mr Smithson, you pulled back the curtains and looked out of the window.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “That’s right.”
“And what did you see?”
“I saw a big dark blue car - a beauty, it was.”
“Where was it?” she asked.
He pointed. “Just over there, outside the paper shop. I thought he’d stopped to get a paper, but you’re not allowed to stop there. You get in trouble with the cops if you stop there.” He paused, exhausted by the long speech.
Charlotte encouraged him to go on. “This car, Mr Smithson, which had stopped where it shouldn’t?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “He shouldn’t have done that.”
“So what did you see next?”
“I seen a little girl walk along the pavement and get into the big blue car.”
“What? Just like that? Did she hesitate - er - stop before she got into the car? Did somebody get out and take her into the car? Or did she just walk up to the car and get in?”
The old boy shook his head. “I didn’t see no-one else. I think she just went and got in by ‘erself.”
John handed him the photo he was carrying of Tracey in her summer school uniform of a green check dress but without a hat.
“Is this the girl?”
The old man studied it and handed it back to him. “Yes,” he declared. “That’s the one.”
“Are you sure,” asked Charlotte. “It’s important that you’re sure.”
“That’s the one all right.”
“How do you know?” John appreciated the importance of getting a positive sighting. “Could you see her clearly?”
“That’s the one,” repeated Smithson. “I know ‘cause she was wearing that frock.”
Charlotte and John looked at each other. They both realised there was no point in telling Smithson that about three hundred girls were currently wearing the same style and colour of dress.
“Could you say how old she was?” Charlotte asked.
The old boy shook his head. “Sorry, my dear, I don’t know nothing about ‘ow old girls is.”
“What about the hair?” That was John presenting the photo to him again. “Did the girl have the same hair as the one in the photo?”
“Oh, I didn’t see any hair.”
Charlotte said, “But nevertheless you would be prepared to swear that the girl you saw was the same one as the one in the photo?”
”’Course I would. I told you, ‘cause of the frock.”
Charlotte shook her head at John. It was most likely that the girl Smithson had seen was Tracey, but his evidence wouldn’t stand up to normal tests.
“So what was this girl’s behaviour like?”
He looked at her quizzically. “What do you mean?”
“What I want to know is - did she seem happy or would you say she was frightened? Did she seem quite willing to get into the car?”
Smithson showed the first sign of truculence. “Well, I told you - she got into the car, didn’t she? I just seen her do it.”
Charlotte sighed. “What we’re trying to find out is whether the girl was happy to go with the person or persons who were already in the car. Did somebody get out of the car and open the door for her to get in or did she open the door herself?”
“I told you that I didn’t see nobody else. She got in the other side of the car so I wouldn’t, would I?”
“What happened after she got in to the car?”
“What happened?” He looked at Charlotte as though she was a bit simple.“It drove off, of course. I told you, you can’t stop there. You get into trouble with the cops if you stops there.”
“Do you know what type of car it was?”
“It was a big dark blue one.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what type it was. It was big and it was posh. That’s all I can tell you.”
“I suppose you d
idn’t get the number?”
“I’m sorry, my dear. I’m afraid my eyesight isn’t very good these days.”
“And which way did it go?”
“Down that way.” He pointed down the gentle hill which led towards the town centre.
“You didn’t see whether it turned off anywhere?”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t hanging about. I didn’t know you was going to ask me all these questions, did I? I wanted my cuppa. I just pulled back the curtings and went downstairs.”
“OK, Mr Smithson. I don’t think there’s anything else we want to ask you. Thank you very much.” Charlotte took one more look across the street. “I think you are the last person to have seen Tracey Bostock before she disappeared. Now we’ve got to try and find the navy blue car.” She smiled at the old boy. “There’s a possibility that I may need to come back and get you to sign a formal statement, but I shan’t trouble you again unless I have to.”
With many a thank you they detached themselves from Mr Smithson who now seemed anxious to talk about everything from parking restrictions to the state of the weather. Five minutes later they had finally got away and were in the street.
“What do you think?” asked John as they walked to Charlotte’s car.
She put her head on one side as she considered. “Well, although the old boy wouldn’t be any good in the witness stand, I’m fairly confident the girl was Tracey. The timing is right and it’s on her route to the school. At this stage we don’t know of anybody else who might be walking down the street at that time. It’s definitely our best lead so far in this frustrating search.”
“That’s what I think too. That’s why I rang you.”
“You were quite right. Now we’ve got to try and trace this dark blue car, even though we haven’t got much information to go on. I think I’ll take you back to the office and you can start trying to trace it using the computer.”
“OK, ma’am.”
“I’ll tell Greg I’m taking you off the house-to-house enquiries.” She nodded at him “Well, let’s get going.”
- 17 -
When they got back to the office after lunch Stafford Paulson was there but he told them he’d already sent Sergeant Mallinson back to continue the house-to-house enquiries.
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