Endangering Innocents

by Priscilla Masters

  He looked up, frowned suspiciously. Not ready to trust her yet.

  “How did you know that Madeline had problems at home?”

  “I could see,” he said. “I’ve got eyes. I saw the way they’d drag her along the pavement like a misbehavin’ puppy.”

  “Her mother?”

  “She wasn’t so bad,” Baldwin admitted. “But that big guy with the tattoo who always wore vests. Made me cringe, it did, the way he was with her. He should have been shot.”

  Joanna was thinking fast. Darren Huke wouldn’t have been the first stepfather to be responsible for the harm done to his stepdaughter. Maybe Baldwin was innocent.

  Was it possible that Joshua Baldwin was some kind of a guardian angel rather than the pervert they had all labelled him? What if …? She began to toy with a new idea. What if Madeline Wiltshaw had run out of school straight into the arms of …?

  No. She rejected the idea instantly. Carly Wiltshaw had reported her daughter missing straight away. Joanna was silent for a moment. Frustrated that no one had seen the child leave school. She needed to read through the statements of all the parents who had waited outside Horton Primary at 3.15 pm on Friday the thirteenth of April. But, as she eyed Baldwin across the interview table, she wondered. Maybe instead of talking to Baldwin she should be speaking to Carly Wiltshaw and her paramour.

  She got up from the table, feeling Baldwin’s eyes on her. He knew what she was thinking, reading her agitation. Perhaps his exercises in thought transference were paying off. His eyes held a desperate, pleading look.

  “Excuse me,” she said and the PC switched the tape off.

  “Now what?” Mike met her again in the corridor.

  “I’m going to talk to Colclough again,” she said. “My instinct is to let Baldwin go. We can’t hold him beyond twenty-four hours without something more concrete.” Mike didn’t need to say anything for his disappointment to communicate but he thumped one big fist into his palm and swore.

  “I know,” she said. “We can check the computer files. But if there’s nothing there …”

  Bridget Anderton was still downloading when they walked in. “So far nothing,” she said, “and I’ve gone back almost a month. Looks like our suspect was more interested in magic than little girls. Suppliers of card tricks from the States, a couple of hide-in-the-box tricks from China,” she flicked the mouse down, “and others from the UK.” She swivelled round in her chair to face Joanna. “How to do tricks like vanish live pigeons which might upset Animal Rights Protesters but that isn’t what we’re looking for, is it? There are no sex sites at all. His emails, however, are a little more enlightening.” She swivelled back in her chair to flick through the screen. “A little girl called Denise seems to have an affection for him. Look.” She pressed a few keys, slid the mouse across the mat and produced Baldwin’s emails. Denise1@hotmail.com.

  There were plenty to choose from.

  Hello, I hope yoo are beying good. I am.

  PC Anderton laughed. “Great spelling,” she said. “At a guess not very old either.”

  Love from Denise XXXXXXXXXXX”

  “The rest are very much the same. She’s going here and there with Mummy and a guy called Wade.”

  “Anything suggestive?”

  Bridget Anderton looked serious. “It depends how you look at it. There’s mention of her going swimming and wishing he was going to be there. There’s lots of hugs and kisses. A mention that Mummy doesn’t wash her hair properly.” Her shoulders sagged. “I don’t think I really know what innocence is any more, Joanna. It all seems open to interpretation. The most innocuous statements when read under a different light can appear suggestive.”

  Joanna scanned a couple more emails. “Thanks. It’s given me another line of questioning. I’ll go and tackle him on this one.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Korpanski was ahead of her.

  “Frighten the poor guy to death?”

  Korpanski held both hands up in the great sportsman’s disclaimer. “I just want to listen, Jo. That’s all I want to do.”

  “OK.”

  Baldwin was having another cup of tea with a rich tea biscuit when they returned. His eyes flickered over Korpanski and he was instantly wary. Joanna was treated to the ghost of a smile. He thought they were allies, he and she.

  “Who is Wade, Joshua?”

  Baldwin’s hands bunched up into fists and he stared straight ahead pretending he had not heard.

  Joanna repeated the question and got the same response.

  “OK then. Who is Denise?”

  “It’s nothing to do with this.”

  “Prove it.”

  Baldwin continued staring straight ahead.

  “Someone called Denise emails you. She sounds like a little girl. She sounds as though she’s fond of you. Who is she?”

  She waited a full long minute for a response. “OK then,” she said, wearily. “Where is she?”

  “Far away.”

  “Far away enough for you not to molest her?” Mike couldn’t stop himself.

  Baldwin’s face tightened up. “I don’t do anything like that with little girls,” he said. “You’re not listening to me, you scum.” He was including Joanna in the epithet. She had lost whatever she might have had with him.

  “You’ve got nothing on me,” he said. “You’ll have to let me go.”

  There was an urgency in his voice that alerted Joanna. “Why are you so anxious to go?”

  “Because it’s the law.”

  She left Baldwin while she went to discuss the case with Colclough and as was the Chief Superintendant’s habit he let her finish before offering his suggestion.

  “You need to get out there, Piercy. Speak to other people, teachers, parents. Somehow you’ve barked up the wrong tree, lost the first twenty-four hours of the enquiry. Let him go. If he’s got anything to do with it you can soon bring him back in. You’ve got his van? And his computer?”

  She nodded.

  “Then detail someone to keep an eye on his place. There’ll likely be trouble.”

  Again she nodded.

  Baldwin looked part relieved, part scared when she told him he was free to go. She explained they would be keeping his van for a little longer but that they would deliver it back the minute they’d finished with it.

  “And my computer?”

  “You’ll get it back.” She bit her lip. “Would you like a lift home?”

  Baldwin sneered. “You must be joking,” he said. “I arrive back in one of your Panda cars and I’ll be as good as hanged.”

  She would remember those words.

  Chapter Nine

  Saturday afternoon 14th April.

  After the elation of collaring a suspect right away there was inevitable deflation as she and Mike faced each other across the desk.

  “So - we’re back at the beginning.” Joanna was tucking into a cheese and pickle sandwich. She rarely lost her appetite - even in the throes of a major investigation. “Colclough’s got a point. We’ve lost time fingering Baldwin. We should have spread the net wider.”

  “We haven’t lost time.” Korpanski was on the defensive. “Plenty’s been going on all the time we’ve been questioning Baldwin. Searches, interviews.”

  “OK,” she said dejectedly. “It’s just that…” She crossed to the window. “I thought we were so close. I thought we had him.” She clenched her fist. “Right here, Mike. I thought there was a good chance we’d find Madeline alive. We got him so quickly. It all seemed so obvious.” She chewed her sandwich. “Too obvious. And now it’s just as much of a mystery as ever.”

  He patted her shoulder. “Come on, Piercy,” he said, chummy to the extreme.

  She stared out of the window at the blank, brick wall. “I wonder where she is.”

  Mike didn’t even try. “Let’s get back over to the Incident Room,” he said. “Briefing at four.”

  She wished she could cycle over there. The fresh air and exercise would be the perfect
catalyst for working out what had happened to the child. While her body worked her brain could be thinking right from scratch. Back to the classroom, to the teacher, hassled as she tried to button the children into their coats. Suppressing the excitement. Good Friday, the last day of school.

  Not such a good Friday.

  She tried to picture Madeline buttoning up her own coat, her flat, solemn face and then the few slow steps across the linoleum floor, towards the front door.

  Unseen in the throng of excited children leaving the safety of the school and their teachers. Vulnerable for short moments until their parents stretched out their arms.

  Not for Madeline.

  She and Mike drove through the dull grey to Horton, alongside lush, green fields, the grass already too long to have been recently grazed. The scene was illuminated by a sudden and rare burst of sunshine. She glanced across and wondered that the entire valley, rich green pastureland, tiny fields, hedges, stone walls - was empty. She could see not one tractor working and not a single animal in the fields. As Mike manoeuvred the car along the tight bends towards Rudyard she reflected that the sight of animals grazing had always been one she had taken for granted. She knew now she never would again. The empty fields depressed and worried her almost as much as the missing child.

  They turned left at Rudyard Lake, climbing the steep hill at the side of the stretch of water to drop over the ridge into Horton. More a hamlet of scattered cottages than a traditional village with a centre, post office, shops and pub. Mike inched his way along the single track lane as dark as night from overhanging leaves, its sides grey rock smothered in dripping moss, the road slippery beneath their tyres. The school lay ahead of them, a neat, low, red-brick village school.

  Four police cars were pulled onto the playground. More vehicles lined the road, parked where only yesterday the mothers had been waiting for their children, Carly Wiltshaw among them. The school doors were propped open. They passed through, turned left and made their way along the picture-lined corridor to the reception class and met up with Will Farthing outside. He’d been waiting for them, anxiety etching lines between his thick eyebrows.

  “We’ve had to let Baldwin go,” she said quietly. “We didn’t have the evidence to hold him. We’ll keep an eye on him and rearrest him if anything crops up. But for now…”

  She felt like apologizing. But she was doing her job. Properly. Innocent or guilty Baldwin must be assessed according to the letter of the law. Anything less would be thrown out by the Crown Prosecution Service. Yet she knew as Farthing broke the news to the waiting officers that this would be a savage blow. Many of those present were parents themselves. Leek was not a large town. Horton was an idyllic location. Not some inner-city squalid place where children were on their guard. Superimposed on the investigation of this crime was that fact that the police had been called in before the child had gone missing. It was inevitable that they all wondered what they could have done differently to have prevented the little girl’s disappearance.

  There was a tension immediately apparent as Joanna and Mike walked in. All eyes were fixed on her as though she could provide inspiration, answers. An explanation. What had gone wrong? She knew how important it was to keep morale up in an investigation like this when each hour that slipped away represented fading hope for finding Madeline alive and the officers’ accumulated lost hours of sleep. Even when they should sleep she knew they wouldn’t. Like her the image of the small girl with the solemn face framed with straight dark hair would imprint on their eyelids the moment they closed them. It was the way an investigation as poignant as this intruded into their minds. Day and night. Asleep or awake it would be there. And as she relayed to them the news of Baldwin’s release she felt she had, in some way, let them down. Again she felt she should apologise.

  Each officer reported the results of the interviews with the parents and it was instantly obvious that no one they had spoken to had seen what happened to Madeline.

  DS Hannah Beardmore put it into words in her soft, clear voice. “The classroom assistant remembers seeing her struggling with her coat. She was about to give her a hand but was distracted by another child. When she turned around Madeline had slipped away. She assumed she’d either returned to the classroom to wait or that her mum or Darren - or someone had - been waiting outside and had picked her up.”

  “Or someone?” Joanna frowned.

  “Quite a variety of different people seemed to pick her up from outside school.”

  “How would Madeline know who was waiting to pick her up?”

  “Oh - apparently she seemed to know.”

  “Only that wasn’t what happened, was it?”

  Hannah Beardmore shook her head. “Not this time. Carly was waiting outside but she didn’t see Madeline. Neither did she return to the classroom after buttoning her coat. She just disappeared.”

  “You’ve interviewed all the parents?”

  “Except the Owen family. They went straight from the school to Manchester airport. According to neighbours they’re expecting to be away for a week in the south of Spain.”

  “In a hotel?”

  “No - camping. And no one seems to have an address for them.”

  “Right. Well - we’ll just have to wait until they get back.”

  “Let’s go over Baldwin’s movements yesterday again. Dawn?”

  WPC Dawn Critchlow spoke up from the back. “He was working out of town in Brown Edge, putting a shower in an old lady’s bungalow. According to her he was fidgety all day, kept glancing at his watch and saying he’d have to leave early with it being Easter. About three o’clock he suddenly shot off.”

  She continued. “His story was that he’d forgotten some tool.”

  Joanna took over. “He admits he went to the school. Then home, to pick up a spanner and then we picked him up.”

  Korpanski spoke in her ear. “But we didn’t pick him up until nearly five. That leaves about forty-five minutes unaccounted for. He claims he decided not to return to the bungalow in Brown Edge but drove around. There was an adjustable spanner in the back of his van and he would have needed one to plumb in the shower. I’m only surprised he’d managed without it all day.”

  She met his eyes, nodded slowly, then turned back to the room.

  “Is there anything else?”

  They all shook their heads.

  “And the search?”

  “Again nothing.”

  She detailed PCs David Timmis and Eddie McBrine to visit local farms, spiralling out from the small, village school. The farmers were tetchy towards visitors at the best of times. Now their gates were padlocked shut. The threat of foot and mouth had made them paranoid. There were reports of farmers lifting shotguns to defend their animals against intruders who might carry the invisible virus which could destroy generations of livelihood. But the two constables had worked for the Moorlands police for years. They were locals - their names and faces familiar. If anyone could gain access and accompany the farmers’ searches without provoking aggression they could. The farmers trusted them. So did she. She could have used the option of warrants to search the farms with force and sent entire teams in. When a child was missing it was easy to gain access anywhere. But she knew if the alternative was put to the locals, they would make their own choice and accept Timmis and McBrine, together with their team of junior officers which they would take full responsibility for. So the barns and outbuildings, land and cowsheds would be searched as thoroughly as though it was their own child who had slipped away.

  She watched the officers file out with a sense of impotence and futility. They were scurrying around, looking busy. Like rats in a nest. But they were achieving nothing. And they knew it. In their hearts they were switching their question from whether Madeline was dead to the question of when they would find her body.

  See me. Find me. Play my hide and seek. But you will never find me until I allow you to. Because I - am - invisible.

  And now came the part she had been d
reading.

  She had to explain to Madeline’s mother and Huke why they had released their prime suspect and she anticipated running the gauntlet of their fury and prejudice. They had both already been interviewed at length and their hostility and blame towards the police force had simmered all the while, bubbling away as their home had been searched by a couple of officers.

  The child had been brought up in a neat home; small, semi-detached, modern, sporting three UPVC windows and a matching door with a brass knocker. The red Nissan Micra stood outside. Madeline’s home was on the Southern outskirts of Leek, on a development shaped like a horsehoe consisting of thirteen or so houses. There were no garages and it was eerily quiet for a Saturday afternoon. No children played outside. The tiny, open-plan front gardens were empty, the grass sodden and still sparkling with dew. Apart from the Nissan not one car was on the road.

  “Does anybody actually live here, Mike, or is it a ghost town?”

  Korpanski shrugged and said nothing. Even the car door slamming echoed round the road, like a futuristic post nuclear war movie. All it needed was a bouncing ball of dead vegetation lashed like a hoop and whipped by the icy wind to complete the illusion. They covered the few feet to the front door of Number Twelve, the Sanctuary. And still there was no reaction. No curtains twitched. No faces appeared at the window. No doors opened. This was a street where people kept themselves to themselves. They valued privacy.

  She listened for a moment, realising she could not even hear a radio thumping out bass. This was a rare and uncomfortable state of silence. She gave an uneasy smile. “Does anyone live here, do you think?”

  Mike grunted. “Saturday afternoon. They’ll all either be shopping in Hanley or watching the footie.”

  “Kids too?”

  He nodded.

  The door was flung open at the first knock.

  “Have you …?”