by J M Gregson
The rag doll that she had been clutching when last seen on the roundabout had been discovered in the woods to the west of the common. That suggested that she had been led, carried or dragged away from the fairground on that route. It wasn’t a large area, and uniformed police officers and the civilians from the SOCO team searched it diligently in the middle hours of Sunday. Little else of note was found, though much was collected and documented in case it might be of use. A stray glove, a worn and filthy cap, several cigarette ends and various other more disgusting items had been lifted between finger and thumb and bagged, against the unlikely possibility that one or more of them might provide a match with an eventual suspect. The overwhelming probability was that all of this detritus would be irrelevant to the case, but if there was even a faint possibility that one or more of them might become labelled exhibits in a serious crime case in the Crown Court, they had to be kept.
A murder case? The longer the time that elapsed before a discovery, the greater the possibility that this most innocent of victims would become the focus of such a case. No one voiced that thought, but it beat in the brains of every police officer and most of the civilians who were now involved in this empty and heartbreaking exploration.
They spread out in lines across the fields, woods and buildings around Oldford, ten civilians to every police officer, searching thoroughly and generally silently. No one could summon even a false cheerfulness in this situation. For four square miles around the terrace where Lucy had lived, every garden shed, every garage, every outhouse was searched, each one with a drawing in of breath and a feeling of sick anticipation before the seekers opened the doors and scoured the shadowy depths within. Cats watched them intently, dogs barked their outrage, the occasional rat scurried away into the undergrowth.
No small girl was discovered, dead or alive.
By five o’clock, the searchers had moved outside the town and into the fields around it. A few of the elderly and one or two people with other commitments left the volunteers, but most people stayed, well aware of what another cold late-October night without any find might mean. They were lucky with the weather, if nothing else so far. The sun was dropping over the Welsh hills by now, but there were few clouds, which probably gave them half an hour more daylight than they might have had. These conditions also presaged a frosty night, or at least a clear and cold one. No one cared to voice that thought or its implications for Lucy.
The long, disciplined lines of citizens and their police organizers didn’t expect to find anything here. Nor did they wish to; the probability was that a child lying in open country who was unable to cry for help or spot the approaching searchers was already dead. They searched barns and other farm buildings, almost invariably in the farmers’ presence and with their assistance and suggestions. This was not the tourist Cotswolds, with many unoccupied holiday and weekend homes, but they nevertheless came upon half a dozen holiday cottages where the owners were not in residence. All but one of these were searched with the cooperation of keyholders who lived nearby. The searchers peered through the small windows of the final one, a tiny two-hundred-year-old stone cottage. They could see nothing significant, and police examination of the front and rear doors confirmed that it was most unlikely that anyone had opened either of them in the last month.
Despite the clearness of the sky, the light died alarmingly quickly for the long lines of scrutineers. They searched a final field and the bulrushes round a still and silent pond, then a rambling, tumbledown, almost roofless barn which the farmer had not used for years. It was the home to various rustling and unidentified wildlife, but nothing human.
The uniformed inspector who was in charge of the hunt looked at the long, low outline of the distant ridge of high hills, with the red of the dying sun still visible in the sky above them, then at the lower and much nearer shape of May Hill, a mile or two to his left. There’d been no need to search there; the Sunday walkers who thronged the easy but rewarding slopes of May Hill, from which seven counties might be seen, would have raised the alarm long since had anything untoward been found up there. Unless – unless the lunatic monster involved in this had hidden what was left of Lucy deep in the bracken and far from any path. The sickening impossibility of the inspector’s task, even with so many willing helpers, dropped like the darkness upon the shoulders of this decent, helpless man.
The inspector gave a long, silent sigh and drew in breath to make the announcement they all knew was inevitable. ‘That’s got to be it for today, folks. Thank you all for your help; I only wish we had a better outcome to report. Unless there is some news overnight, we shall resume the search at first light tomorrow. It will be organized and directed from Oldford police station. Please ring or attend there if you are willing and able to assist in the continued police search tomorrow. I should emphasize once more that coordinated covering of the ground is always much more efficient and productive than individual initiatives in situations like this. Thank you once again for all your assistance and please keep your ears open for any scraps of conversation that might give us a clue to Lucy’s whereabouts.’
He wondered if the hopelessness he felt came out in the tone of his voice. He hoped not, but he was seized like the rest of his searchers with a sudden leaden exhaustion. When hope died, it affected sinew and muscle as well as brain. He turned towards home and hearth with his heart in his Wellington boots and fatigue in his limbs. There were a few muttered comments among neighbours who knew each other and had come out together to hunt for Lucy Gibson. But otherwise there was silence among the defeated and helpless army of good against evil.
As he dragged his feet wearily over a rise in the ground, the inspector stopped for a moment and looked to the west. There was a long bend of the River Wye visible from here, running like a dark ribbon of mirror beneath the crescent of moon, which was already sharp and surprisingly high in the sky. In other circumstances, it would have been a view to stop and to savour.
Now, as day crept into night, it filled those who paused to study it with a grim foreboding.
SIX
At the edge of the common on Monday morning, there was the noise of vigorous activity but only the minimum sound of human voices. The men demolishing the fair were not native to these parts and not noted for sensitivity, but they were nevertheless subdued by what had happened there two nights earlier as they took down the rides and the stalls on Monday morning.
Lambert sought out Davies, the proprietor with whom he had exchanged strong words on the previous morning. He was easily spotted, being the broadest man on the site, with a stomach every bit as impressive as anything exhibited on the stalls. He was smoking a cigar and observing the energetic activities of others when Lambert found him. The chief superintendent didn’t mince words about the person they wanted to see, and Davies offered his employee no protection in the light of the allegations that had been made against him. ‘You’re looking for Rory Burns,’ he said, ‘You’ll find him taking down the motorbikes and sidecars from the ride over there. And I wish you the best of bloody luck with him. You’ll find he’s a rough diamond!’
He tapped his cigar against the beam that supported the surrounds of a ride as he watched them go. Davies had no love of the police, but there was no point in being obstructive when they were on a case like this. He prided himself on his knowledge of public taste and the public pulse, and he wasn’t a man to take unnecessary risks.
Rory Burns had a broad face and coarse, mobile features. He was almost six feet tall, with a barrel chest, bulging biceps and impressive forearms. The ease and speed with which he was deconstructing the wooden skeleton of the roundabout showed both how he had acquired his physique and how expertly he deployed it. He was working with a ferocity that would have pleased Popeye or Superman.
Lambert and Hook flashed their warrants before his narrowing brown eyes and suggested he might wish to find somewhere more private for the questions he was about to answer for them. He stared hard at them for several seconds,
looking from one impassive face to the other to see what clues he might obtain there. Then he said churlishly, ‘Youse can come over here, I suppose.’
He led them away from the roundabout he was working on. He was already suspicious of them and anxious to give nothing away to the filth, but they noted two things immediately. He had a strong Irish accent and he led them not towards the woods into which Lucy Gibson had disappeared, which were scarcely twenty yards away, but over a different route, which involved him moving at least sixty yards away from that spot. Was he simply moving to a place where he felt comfortable, or was it possible that this physically intimidating fellow was unconsciously avoiding the scene of his crime?
Perhaps that was too fanciful; probably he just didn’t want to be overheard by his peers. He thumped on the door of a small blue hut at the edge of the fairground activity, then stumped inside when he had confirmed that it was empty. There were worksheets and what might have been duty rotas on a small folding table, but no other paperwork visible. Burns pulled out three stackable canvas seats and motioned them to sit down. The seats were claustrophobically adjacent to each other in the small wooden shed. Hook glanced around with some distaste. ‘You don’t have your own caravan, then?’
Burns afforded him a superior smile. It was good to be able to patronize the pigs. ‘Youse is out of date. Thirty years out of date. We gets ourselves bed and breakfast now. We dosses down for the night over there.’ He nodded his head vaguely towards the point where the town joined the common. There were some cheap and dingy lodgings in the older part of the town, surprisingly close to the common. Hook had been into them many times; he suspected they were cleaner and better than many of the places where this man and other fairground staff laid their heads when their work took them into cities.
Lambert said abruptly, ‘You know why we’re here, Mr Burns.’
The burly man was immediately shifty, immediately transformed from truculence to defensiveness. ‘Sure I had nothing to do with this girl who was took. People should take better care of their kids.’
‘Perhaps so, with people like you around. We’ve had a complaint about your conduct, Mr Burns.’ That wasn’t strictly true, but Lambert knew they could soon translate it into a formal complaint if that became necessary.
‘I’ve done nutting. People think bad of you, just because you come from Ireland and work on a fairground.’
There was no doubt a certain amount of truth in that, but they had more solid evidence to offer. His brown eyes might prove to be a giveaway: they narrowed markedly each time he felt himself under pressure. ‘Make a habit of laying those strong hands on young girls, do you, Mr Burns?’
‘They make all sorts of things up, these kids. Not fit to be out on their own, some of them.’
‘Not safe to be out on their own, certainly, with men like you looking for opportunities to assault them. The law takes a very dim view of such things nowadays. But I’m sure you are already well aware of that.’
A hit, a very palpable hit. Rory Burns winced, not with pain but with fear. ‘I ’ain’t done nutting.’
‘Really? We have an eleven-year-old girl who raced home terrified, who thinks otherwise and is willing to talk to us. You could call in your lawyer, if you think that’s advisable.’
Lambert divined correctly that this man wouldn’t have a lawyer and wouldn’t know how to get one. Burns shifted his broad thighs on his seat and said, ‘I don’t need no lawyer. I ain’t done nutting.’
Lambert pursed his lips. ‘You’d have to pay for a lawyer, of course, if you wanted one at this stage. You’re not under formal arrest. Not as yet. You’ll be entitled to a free brief, when you are.’
‘I don’t need no lawyer, copper.’ He licked his thick lips and seemed about to add to that, but then thought better of it.
‘Your previous record’s not going to help you, of course.’
Another shot in the dark, another hit. He snarled, ‘You sods aren’t supposed to keep records. Not when there’s been no conviction.’
Lambert gave his first smile since he had entered the hut, but it was directed at Hook, not at Burns. ‘Very well informed, for a fairground employee, isn’t he? A man who reckons to learn from experience, I’d say. Though he doesn’t learn enough. If he’d learned the right things, he might have stopped indecently assaulting helpless minors.’
‘They ask for it.’
‘This one didn’t.’
‘That’s what she tells you. You don’t see them climbing all over the rides and flashing their legs at you. Flashing their tits. Flashing their bare arms and bare necks. Flashing their pants, if you know how to—’
He stopped abruptly, looked down at the tattoo of the shamrock on his exposed upper arm, fingered it slowly. It wasn’t clear whether he was using it as an aid to thought or whether it had some other association for him. Perhaps it was a token of his Irish origins which he had found useful with the impressionable young, Lambert thought.
It was Hook who responded to the man’s sudden silence by completing his sentence for him. ‘“If you know how to get the angle right and see what you want to see.” I suppose that’s what you were going to say, Rory.’
The brown eyes glanced up sharply at the first use of his forename. For the first time, there was fear as well as confusion in the dark pupils. He forced an unpleasant smile. ‘No penalty for looking.’
‘But you were touching, Rory, not just looking. We can produce a young girl to record her evidence on video for a court of law if we need to. And we know whom a jury would choose to believe if we face them with a choice between your word and that of an innocent eleven-year-old, don’t we?’
‘You’re going to frame me, are you? Pity you haven’t got one of your clever recording machines going on me now, innit?’
‘Know all about those, do you, Rory? Well, I suppose you would, with the things you’ve done in the past. Been assaulting kids for years, haven’t you?’
‘I’ve ’ad pigs like you trying to frame me for years, more like.’ But it was token defiance. There was no ring of conviction or outrage in his voice.
John Lambert had been studying his man like a sample under a microscope whilst Hook had pressed him. There had been a thin film of sweat upon his bare arms when they had come here, but now his forehead was wet as well. Burns had now been softened up enough for the main dissection. Lambert said very quietly, ‘What did you do with Lucy Gibson after you had abducted her on Saturday night, Mr Burns?’
Again the brown eyes narrowed for a moment in that strange reaction the two men now recognized as characteristic. This wasn’t craftiness, as it would have been in other men of his background, but a nervous reflex of tension and alarm. Sure enough, his eyes opened after a couple of seconds into round glass marbles of fear. ‘I didn’t touch that kid. I know nutting about this.’
‘You’ll need to do better than that, Mr Burns. A lot better. You saw Lucy on your ride a quarter of an hour before she was snatched. She rode on one of the motorbikes, with her adult guardian behind her. You took the fares from him and you spotted Lucy. When she rode on her own on the small ride next to your big one, you saw your chance. What did you do after you’d rushed her away through the woods?’
The brown eyes shut completely, as if the world’s threat could be banished when it could not be seen. But all three of the men in that narrow, sweaty hut knew that they would have to open again very quickly. Burns was now a strange combination of physical strength and mental fragility. ‘I didn’t touch your damn girl! I finished my stint after she’d ridden on that feckin’ motorbike with her man. You can check with Gary Ruddock who relieved me. I had a date on Saturday night and I wanted to get away. I’d been on the rides since ten in the morning.’
His words came in a rush, tumbling one upon another as if speed itself could convince them of his innocence. Lambert said calmly, ‘We’d better have the name of the girl. If she can confirm a time for us, she could be your alibi.’
Now there w
as a pause, so quiet that his noisy, uneven breathing sounded as it bounced off the wooden slats like that of an older man. ‘Dora,’ he said. ‘I don’t know her second name. I might have got it from her on Saturday if she’d turned up.’
‘You’re telling us you had a date with a girl whose full name you don’t know, who chose not to turn up and meet you. Not very convincing, is it? Can you suggest how we might contact this girl?’
‘No. She’s no bloody use to me anyway, now she didn’t turn up. Youse lot just don’t want to believe me.’
Lambert had a shrewd suspicion that this squalid man had arranged to meet an underage girl who, not surprisingly, had made the arrangement to get away from him and had never intended to keep it. But he couldn’t pursue that idea whilst the mystery of Lucy Gibson remained to be solved. He didn’t like this man and he didn’t like himself for the way he was conducting this interview. It was too rambling and indeterminate. He said harshly, ‘You dragged Lucy away through that wood.’ He twitched his head towards the invisible trees beyond the thin wooden panels of the shed. ‘What did you do to her? Where is she now?’
‘I didn’t take her. I haven’t a fucking clue who did take her.’
‘You’ll need to prove that, Burns. You haven’t a scrap of evidence in your favour.’
It was a mistake. Rory Burns wasn’t an intelligent man. But he’d dealt with a lot of police questioning in his twenty-nine years and he knew enough to spot a weakness. ‘I don’t need any scraps of evidence, copper. Innocent until proved guilty, in this country. The country some of us fought to defend against the IRA scum. You prove I snatched that kid on Saturday, or you fuck off and leave me alone. That’s the way it works, and youse lot can’t do a feckin’ thing to change it!’
He shifted on his seat, made himself a little more comfortable, looked even more squat, powerful and unpleasant. There was no way of challenging his stance until they had some more powerful evidence to fling against him. Bert Hook said quietly, ‘We’ll get what we need to make an arrest if you did this, Rory. Even people who won’t normally help us come forward when it’s a child that’s disappeared. With your record, people are going to want to believe the worst of you, aren’t they? If you didn’t do this and you have any idea who might have done it, this is the moment to speak. It’s the only way you can help yourself.’
