Wednesday's Child

I

The room was a tip, the woman a slattern. On the floor, near the door to the kitchen, a child’s doll with one eye missing lay naked on its back, right arm raised above its head. The carpet around it was so stained with ground-in mud and food, it was hard to tell what shade of brown it had been originally. High in one corner, by the front window, pale flowered wallpaper had peeled away from a damp patch. The windows were streaked with grime, and the flimsy orange curtains needed washing.

When Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks perched at the edge of the scuffed olive-green armchair, he felt a spring dig into the back of his left thigh. He noticed Detective Constable Susan Gay turn up her nose as she looked at a garish oil-painting of Elvis Presley above the mantelpiece. “The King” was wearing a jewelled white cape with a high collar and held a microphone in his ringed hand.

In contrast to the shabby decor, a compact music centre in mint condition stood against one wall, a green-and-yellow budgie in a cage nonchalantly sharpened its bill on a cuttlefish, and an enormous matte black colour television blared out from one corner. “Blockbusters” was on, and Banks heard Bob Holness ask, “What ‘B’ is the name of an African country bordering on South Africa?”

“Could you turn the sound down, please, Mrs Scupham?” Banks asked the woman.

She looked at him blankly at first, as if she didn’t understand his request, then she walked over and turned off the TV altogether. “You can call me Brenda,” she said when she sat down again.

Banks took a closer look at her. In her late twenties, with long dirty-blonde hair showing dark roots, she possessed a kind of blowzy sexuality that hinted at concupiscent pleasure in bed. It was evident in the languor of her movements, the way she walked as if she were in a hot and humid climate.

She was a few pounds overweight, and her pink polo-neck sweater and black mini-skirt looked a size too small. Her full, pouty lips were liberally coated in scarlet lipstick, which matched her long, painted fingernails, and her vacuous, pale blue eyes, surrounded by matching eye-shadow, made Banks feel he had to repeat every question he asked.

Seeing the ashtray on the scratched coffee-table in front of him, Banks took out his cigarettes and offered the woman one. She accepted, leaning forward and holding back her hair with one hand as he lit it for her. She blew the smoke out through her nose, emulating some star she had seen in a film. He lit a cigarette himself, mostly to mask the peculiar smell, redolent of boiled cabbage and nail-polish remover, that permeated the room.

“When did you first get the feeling something was wrong?” he asked her.

She paused and frowned, then answered in a low voice, husky from too many cigarettes. “Just this afternoon. I phoned them, and they said they’d never heard of Mr Brown and Miss Peterson.”

“And you got worried?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you wait so long before checking up?”

Brenda paused to draw on her cigarette. “I don’t know,” she said. “I thought she’d be all right, you know…”

“But you could have called this morning. That’s when they said they’d bring her back, isn’t it?”

“Yes. I don’t know. I suppose so. I just… besides, I’d got things to do.”

“Did the visitors show you any identification?”

“They had cards, like, all official.”

“What did the cards say?”

Mrs Scupham turned her head to one side, showing only her profile. “I didn’t really get a good look. It all happened so fast.”

“Did the cards have photographs on them?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m sure I would have noticed.”

“What exactly did they say to you?” Banks asked.

“They told me their names and said they was from the social, like, and then they showed their cards…”

“This was at the door, before you let them in?”

“Yes. And then they said they’d come to see me about my Gemma. Well, I had to let them in, didn’t I? They were from the authorities.”

Her voice cracked a little when she mentioned her daughter’s name, and she sucked her lower lip. Banks nodded. “What happened next?”

“When I let them in, they said they’d had reports of Gemma being… well, being abused…”

“Did they say where they’d heard this?”

She shook her head.

“Didn’t you ask them?”

“I didn’t think to. They seemed so… I mean, he was wearing a nice suit and his hair was all short and neatly brushed down, and she was dressed proper smart, too. They just seemed so sure of themselves. I didn’t think to ask anything.”

“Was there any truth in what they said?”

Mrs Scupham flushed. “Of course not. I love my Gemma. I wouldn’t harm her.”

“Go on,” Banks said. “What did they say next?”

“That’s about it really. They said they had to take her in, just overnight, for some tests and examinations, and if everything was all right they’d bring her back this morning, just like I told you on the phone. When they didn’t come, I got so worried… I… How could anyone do something like that, steal someone else’s child?”

Banks could see the tears forming in her eyes. He knew there was nothing he could say to console her. In fact, the best thing he could do was keep quiet about how bloody stupid she’d been, and not ask her if she hadn’t heard about the cases, just a few years ago, when bogus social workers had visited homes all around England with stories just like the one they’d given her. No, best keep quiet.

She had a fear of authority, probably bred into her, that meant she would believe just about anything that someone in a suit with a card, a nice haircut and an educated accent told her. She wasn’t unique in that. Most often, the phoney social workers had simply asked to examine the children in the home, not to remove them. For all the mothers who had sent them packing, Banks wondered how many had allowed the examination and had then been too afraid or ashamed to admit it.

“How old is Gemma?” Banks asked.

“Seven. Just seven.”

“Where’s your husband?”

Mrs Scupham crossed her legs and folded her hands on her lap. “I’m not married,” she said. “You might as well know. Well, there’s no shame in it these days, is there, what with so much divorce about.”

“What about Gemma’s father?”

“Terry?” She curled her upper lip in disgust. “He’s long gone.”

“Do you know where he is?”

Mrs Scupham shook her head. “He left when Gemma was three. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. And good riddance.”

“We need to contact him,” Banks pressed. “Can you give us any information at all that might help?”

“Why? You don’t… surely you don’t think Terry could have had anything to do with it?”

“We don’t think anything yet. At the very least he deserves to know what’s happened to his daughter.”

“I don’t see why. He never cared when he was around. Why should he care now?”

“Where is he, Brenda?”

“I’ve told you, I don’t know.”

“What’s his full name?”

“Garswood. Terry Garswood. Terence, I suppose, but everyone called him Terry.”

“What was his job?”

“He was in the army. Hardly ever around.”

“Is there anyone else? A man, I mean.”

“There’s Les. We’ve been together nearly a year now.”

“Where is he?”

She jerked her head. “Where he always is, The Barleycorn round the corner.”

“Does he know what’s happened?”

“Oh, aye, he knows. We had a row.”

Banks saw Susan Gay look up from her notebook and shake her head slowly in disbelief.

“Can I have another fag?” Brenda Scupham asked. “I meant to get some more, but it just slipped my mind.”

“Of course.” Banks gave her a Silk Cut. “Where do you work, Brenda?”

“I don’t… I… I stay home.” He lit the cigarette for her, and she coughed when she took her first drag. Patting her chest, she said, “Must stop.”

Banks nodded. “Me, too. Look, Brenda, do you think you could give us a description of this Mr Brown and Miss Peterson?”

She frowned. “I’ll try. I’m not very good with faces, though. Like I said, he had a nice suit on, Mr Brown, navy blue it was, with narrow white stripes. And he had a white shirt and a plain tie. I’m not sure what colour that was, dark anyways.”

“How tall was he?”

“About average.”

“What’s that?” Banks stood up. “Taller or shorter than me?” At around five foot nine, Banks was small for a policeman, hardly above regulation height.

“About the same.”

“Hair?”

“Black, sort of like yours, but longer, and combed straight back. And he was going a bit thin at the sides.”

“How old would you say he was?”

“I don’t know. He had a boyish look about him, but he was probably around thirty, I’d say.”

“Is there anything else you can tell us about him? His voice, mannerisms?”

“Not really.” Brenda flicked some ash at the ashtray and missed. “Like I said, he had a posh accent. Oh, there was one thing, though I don’t suppose it’d be any help.”

“What’s that?”

“He had a nice smile.”

And so it went. When they had finished, Banks had a description of Mr Brown that would match at least half the young businessmen in Eastvale, or in the entire country, for that matter, and one of Miss Peterson — brunette, hair coiled up at the back, well-spoken, nice figure, expensive clothes — that would fit a good number of young professional women.

“Did you recognize either of them?” he asked. “Had you seen them around before?” Banks didn’t expect much to come from this — Eastvale was a fair-sized town — but it was worth a try.

She shook her head.

“Did they touch anything while they were here?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Did you offer them tea or anything?”

“No. Of course I didn’t.”

Banks was thinking of fingerprints. There was a slight chance that if they had drunk tea or coffee, Mrs Scupham might not have washed the cups yet. Certainly any prints on the door handles, if they hadn’t been too blurred in the first place, would have been obscured by now.

Banks asked for, and got, a fairly recent school photograph of Gemma Scupham. She was a pretty child, with the same long hair as her mother — her blonde colouring was natural, though — and a sad, pensive expression on her face that belied her seven years.

“Where could she be?” Brenda Scupham asked. “What have they done to her?”

“Don’t worry. We’ll find her.” Banks knew how empty the words sounded as soon as he had spoken them. “Is there anything else you can tell us?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“What was Gemma wearing?”

“Wearing? Oh, those yellow overall things, what do you call them?”

“Dungarees?”

“Yes, that’s right. Yellow dungarees over a white T-shirt. It had some cartoon animal on the front. Donald Duck, I think. She loved cartoons.”

“Did the visitors mention any name other than Brown or Peterson?”

“No.”

“Did you see their car?”

“No, I didn’t look. You don’t, do you? I just let them in and we talked, then they went off with Gemma. They were so nice, I… I just can’t believe it.” Her lower lip trembled and she started to cry, but it turned into another coughing fit.

Banks stood up and gestured for Susan to follow him out into the hall. “You’d better stay with her,” he whispered.

“But, sir—”

Banks held his hand up. “It’s procedure, Susan. And she might remember something else, something important. I’d also like you to get something with Gemma’s fingerprints on it. But first I want you to radio in and tell Sergeant Rowe to phone Superintendent Gristhorpe and let him know what’s going on. You’d better get someone to contact all the Yorkshire social services, too. You never know, someone might have made a cock-up of the paperwork and we’d look right wallies if we didn’t check. Ask Phil to organize a house-to-house of the neighbourhood.” He handed her the photograph. “And arrange to get some copies of this made.”

Susan went out to the unmarked police Rover, and Banks turned back into the living-room, where Brenda Scupham seemed lost in her own world of grief. He touched her lightly on the shoulder. “I have to go,” he said. “DC Gay will be back in a moment. She’ll stay with you. And don’t worry. We’re doing all we can.”

He walked down the short path to the patrol car and tapped on the window. “You told me you searched the place, right?” he said to the constable behind the wheel, pointing back up the path with his thumb.

“Yes, sir, first thing.”

“Well, do it again, just to be certain. And send someone to get Mrs Scupham a packet of fags, too. Silk Cut’ll do. I’m off to the pub.” He headed down the street leaving a puzzled young PC behind him.

II

Detective Superintendent Gristhorpe squatted by his dry-stone wall in the back garden of his house above the village of Lyndgarth and contemplated retirement. He would be sixty in November, and while retirement was not mandatory, surely after more than forty years on the job it was time to move aside and devote himself to his books and his garden, as the wise old Roman, Virgil, had recommended.

He placed a stone, then stood up, acutely aware of the creak in his knees and the ache in his lower back as he did so. He had been working at the wall for too long. Why he bothered, the Lord only knew. After all, it went nowhere and closed in nothing. His grandfather had been a master waller in the dale, but the skill had not been passed down the generations. He supposed he liked it for the same reason he liked fishing: mindless relaxation. In an age of technocratic utilitarianism, Gristhorpe thought, a man needs as much purposeless activity as he can find.

The sun had set a short while ago, and the sharp line of Aldington Edge cut high on the horizon to the north, underlining a dark mauve and purple sky. As Gristhorpe walked towards the back door, he felt the chill in the light breeze that ruffled his thatch of unruly grey hair. Mid-September, and autumn was coming to the dale.

Inside the house, he brewed a pot of strong black tea, threw together a Wensleydale cheese-and-pickle sandwich, then went into his living-room. The eighteenth-century farmhouse was sturdily built, with walls thick enough to withstand the worst a Yorkshire winter could throw at them, and since his wife’s death Gristhorpe had transformed the living-room into a library. He had placed his favourite armchair close to the stone hearth and spent so many an off-duty hour reading there that the heat from the fire had cracked the leather upholstery on one side.

Gristhorpe had given the television his wife had enjoyed so much to Mrs Hawkins, the lady who “did” for him, but he kept the old walnut-cabinet wireless so he could listen to the news, “My Word,” cricket and the plays that sometimes came on in the evenings. Two walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and a series of framed prints from Hogarth’s “The Rake’s Progress” hung over the fireplace.

Gristhorpe set his tea and sandwich beside the books on the small round table, within easy reach, and settled back with a sigh into his chair. The only sounds that broke the silence were the wind soughing through the elms and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall.

To retire or not to retire, that was the question that kept him from immediately picking up The Way of All Flesh. Over the past few years he had delegated most of the investigative work to his team and spent his time on administrative and co-ordinating duties. He had absolute trust in Alan Banks, his protégé, and both DS Richmond and the recently appointed DC Gay were coming along well. Should he move aside and clear the space for Banks’s promotion? Certainly Alan showed an enthusiasm for work and learning that reminded Gristhorpe of himself as a young lad. Both lacked formal education beyond the local grammar school, but neither let it hold him back. Banks was a good detective, despite his anti-authoritarian tendencies, occasional rashness and a loathing for the politics that were now becoming so much a part of the job. But Gristhorpe admired him for that. He, himself, hated police politics. Banks, though twenty years younger, was a real copper, a man who had come from the street. He also had imagination and curiosity, two qualities that Gristhorpe thought essential.

And what would he do with his time if he did retire? There was the dry-stone wall, of course, but that was hardly a full-time occupation. Nor was reading, especially with the way his eyesight had been declining of late. He was at an age when every odd ache or pain brought a little more fear than it had before, when colds lingered and settled on the chest. But he was no hypochondriac. The Gristhorpes were robust, always had been.

He would like to travel, he decided, to revisit Venice, Florence, Paris, Madrid, and go somewhere he had never been before — the Far East, perhaps, or Russia. But travel cost money, and a policeman’s pension wouldn’t stretch that far. Gristhorpe sighed and picked up Samuel Butler. He didn’t have to make his decision tonight; best wait for a while.

He had hardly got through the first paragraph when the phone rang. Marking the page with a leather strip and putting the book aside, he got up and walked into the hall. It was Sergeant Rowe from the station. He had received a message from Susan Gay about a child gone missing from the East Side Estate. Could the superintendent come in as soon as possible? Gristhorpe could get few more details over the phone, except that the child had been taken by a man and a woman pretending to be social workers and that she had been gone over a day. As he listened to Sergeant Rowe deliver the message in his flat, emotionless voice, Gristhorpe felt a shiver go up his spine.

Grimly, he put on his tweed jacket and went outside to the car. It was completely dark now, and the lights of Lyndgarth twinkled below on the daleside. Gristhorpe drove through the village, past the squat St Mary’s, and onto the main Eastvale road. It was a journey he had made hundreds of times, and he drove automatically, without even having to think about the dips and turns. Normally, even in the dark, he would glance at certain landmarks — the lights of the old Lister house way up on the opposite slopes of the valley; the six trees bent over by the wind on the drumlin to the west — but this time he was too distracted to notice the landscape.

As he drove towards the lights of Eastvale, he remembered that long Saturday in October, 1965, when he and dozens of other young policemen had stood in the drizzle and the biting wind 1,600 feet up the Pennines listening to their orders. There they all stood, in anoraks and wellington boots, shivering in the late autumn cold on the top of Saddleworth Moor, complaining about the Saturday afternoon football they were missing. It was eerie enough just being up there in the banshee wind, the rain and inky light, with those outcrops of rocks like decayed teeth on the skyline. All day they had searched, dragging their feet through the mud and peat, from 9:30 a.m. until well after three o’clock. The rain had stopped by then, and the weather was a little warmer, the moor shrouded in a slight mist.

Suddenly Gristhorpe had heard the shout from a searcher in the distance: a young lad, he remembered, just out of training college, who had taken a break to answer a call of nature. Those nearby, Gristhorpe included, hurried towards him, and watched in horror as Detective Sergeant Eckersley came and scraped away the clinging peat from a child’s arm bone. A little more digging revealed a head. Eckersley stopped at that. He sent for the scene-of-crime officers, and soon they all arrived, out of nowhere, the Assistant Chief Constable, police surgeons, photographers, Joe Mounsey, the lot.

They put up canvas screens and everyone but the brass and the SOCOs had to stand back. As the doctor scraped off the dirt and the flash camera popped, the whole gruesome discovery finally lay revealed. Gristhorpe caught only a glimpse of the body through a gap in the canvas, but it was enough.

They had been looking for a boy called John Kilbride, but what they had found was the near-skeletal body of a girl lying on her side with her right arm raised above her head. Close to her feet, her clothes lay bundled — a blue coat, a pink cardigan, a red-and-green tartan skirt. Instead of John Kilbride, they had found the body of Lesley Ann Downey, aged ten, another victim of the couple who came to be called the “Moors Murderers,” Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

Somehow, that day stood engraved in Gristhorpe’s memory more than any other day in his life. Months, even years, might go by and he wouldn’t even think of that October day in 1965, but when something like this happened, there it was, every bit as real and as horrifying as if he were back there on the moor seeing that arm sticking up through the quagmire as if it were waving or pointing.

He had thought of it only once in the past few years, and that was when a sixteen-year-old girl had gone missing from one of the Swainsdale villages. And now two people, a man and a woman — just as Brady and Hindley had been — had walked bold as brass into a house on the East Side Estate and abducted a seven-year-old girl.

As Gristhorpe drove down narrow North Market Street past the Town Hall, the lit window displays of the tourist shops and the community centre, he gripped the wheel so hard his knuckles turned white as he once again heard the girl’s voice in his head from the tape Brady and Hindley recorded before they murdered her: Lesley Ann whimpering and begging for her mummy and daddy to help her; Brady telling her to put something in her mouth and saying he wants to photograph her. And that damn music, that damn music, “The Little Drummer Boy.” Gristhorpe had never been able to listen comfortably to any music since then without hearing the girl screaming and begging for mercy in his head, and he let everyone believe he was tone deaf to avoid awkward explanations.

He turned his car into the parking area at the back of the station, an old Tudor-fronted building, the front of which faced Eastvale’s market square, and sat for a few moments to calm himself down and rid himself of the memory. And before he went inside, he delivered a silent prayer — not without some embarrassment, for he wasn’t a religious man — that there should be nothing, nothing to compare between this affair and the Moors Murders. No time for thoughts of retirement now.

III

As Banks walked down the street towards The Barleycorn, he glanced at the rows of identical red brick houses. There was no doubt about it, the East Side Estate was a disaster. True, some tenants had bought the houses when the Thatcher government sold them off, and many had added a white fence here, a lick of paint there, or even a dormer window. But it was a shabby area, with junk-littered lawns, children’s tricycles left in the street, and mangy dogs running free, fouling the pavements, barking and snapping at passers-by.

And The Barleycorn was a typical estate pub, right from its unimaginative name and its squat flat-roofed exterior to its jukebox, video games and poorly kept keg beer.

Banks pushed open the door and glanced around. Little Richard’s “Good Golly Miss Molly” was playing too loudly on the jukebox. The cash register rang up another sale. Most of the tables were empty, and only a few diehard drinkers stood at the bar.

As the door shut behind him, Banks noticed the people look in his direction, and suddenly one man took off towards the back. Banks dashed after him, bumping his knee on a chair and knocking it over as he went. He caught the man by the shoulder just before he had reached the exit. The man tried to pull free, but Banks kept his grip, spun him around and hit him hard, just once, in the solar plexus. The man groaned and doubled up. Banks took him by the elbow and helped him to a table the way one escorts an elderly relative.

As soon as they had sat down, the barman rushed over.

“Look, mister, I don’t want no trouble,” he said.

“Good,” Banks answered. “Neither do I. But I’d like a small brandy for my friend here, just to settle his stomach.”

“What do you think I am, a bloody waitress?”

Banks looked at the man. He was about six feet tall and gone to fat. His nose looked as if it had been broken a few times, and old scar tissue hooded his left eye.

“Just bring the drink,” Banks said. “I won’t have anything myself. Not while I’m on duty.”

The barman stared at Banks, then his jaw dropped. He shrugged and turned back to the bar. In a few seconds he came back with the brandy. “It’s on the house,” he mumbled.

Banks thanked him and passed the glass over to his companion, who sat rubbing his stomach and gasping for breath. “Here’s to your health, Les.”

The man glared at him through teary eyes, knocked back the brandy in one and banged the glass down hard on the table. “You didn’t need to have done that,” he said. “I was only off for a piss.”

“Bollocks, Les,” said Banks. “The only time I’ve seen anyone run as fast as that to the bog they had dysentery. Why were you running?”

“I told you.”

“I know, but I want you to tell me the truth.”

Les Poole was well known to the Eastvale police and had been a frequent guest at the station. He had congenitally sticky fingers and couldn’t stand the idea of anything belonging to anyone else but him. Consequently, he had been in and out of jail since Borstal, mostly for burglary. No doubt, Banks thought, had he the intelligence, he might also have risen to the dizzy heights of fraud and blackmail. Les had never held a job, though rumour had it that he had, in fact, once worked as a dustbin man for six weeks but got the sack for wasting too much time rummaging through people’s rubbish looking for things he could keep or sell. In short, Banks thought, Les Poole was little more than a doodle in the margin of life. At least until now.

Les was an odd-looking character, too, like someone who had fallen through a time warp from the 1950s. He had greased-back hair, complete with quiff, sideboards and duck’s arse, a triangular face with a Kirk Douglas dimple on his chin, a long, thin nose, and eyes as flat and grey as slate. About Banks’s height, he was wearing a black leather jacket, red T-shirt and jeans. His beer-belly bulged over the belt. He looked as if he should be playing stand-up bass in a rockabilly band. Why he had always been so attractive to women, Banks couldn’t fathom. Maybe it was his long dark eyelashes.

“Well?” prompted Banks.

“Well what?”

Banks sighed. “Let’s start this again, Les. What we’ll do is we’ll back up and lead nice and slowly to the question. Maybe that way you’ll be able to understand it, all right?”

Les Poole just glared at him.

Banks lit a cigarette and went on. “I came down here to ask if you know anything about young Gemma’s disappearance. Do you?”

“She was taken away, that’s all I know. Brenda told me.”

“Where were you when it happened?”

“Eh?”

“Where were you yesterday afternoon?”

“Out and about.”

“Doing what?”

“Oh, this and that.”

“Right. So while you were out and about doing this and that, a man and a woman, both well-dressed and official-looking, called at your house, said they were child-care workers, talked their way inside and persuaded Brenda to hand over her daughter for tests and further examination. Now what I want to know, Les, is do you know anything about that?”

Les shrugged. “It’s not my kid, is it? I can’t help it if she’s so fucking daft she’ll give her kid away.”

The barman appeared at Banks’s shoulder and asked if they wanted anything else.

“I’ll have a pint, Sid,” Les said.

“Bring me one too, this time,” Banks added. “I feel like I bloody well need it.”

After the barman had brought the beer, which tasted more like cold dishwater than real ale, Banks carried on.

“Right,” he said, “so we’ve established you don’t give a damn about the child one way or another. That still doesn’t answer my questions. Where were you, and do you know anything about it?”

“Now come on, Mr Banks. I know I’ve been in a bit of bother now and then, but surely even you can’t suspect me of doing a thing like that? This is what they call persecution, this is. Just because I’ve got a record you think you can pin everything on me.”

“Don’t be a silly bugger, Les. I’m not trying to pin anything on you yet. For a start, I couldn’t picture you in a suit, and even if you’d managed to nick one from somewhere, I think Brenda might still have recognized you, don’t you?”

“You don’t have to take the piss, you know.”

“Let’s make it simple, then. Do you know anything about what happened?”

“No.”

“Right. Another one: what were you doing?”

“What’s that got to do with anything? I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything. I mean, if you don’t suspect me, why does it matter where I was?”

“Got a job, Les?”

“Me? Nah.”

“I don’t suppose you’d want me to know if you did have, would you? I might tell the social and they’d cut off your benefits, wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t have a job, Mr Banks. You know what it’s like these days, all that unemployment and all.”

“Join the rest of us in the nineties, Les. Maggie’s gone. The three million unemployed are a thing of the past.”

“Still…”

“Okay. So you don’t have a job. What were you doing?”

“Just helping a mate move some junk, that’s all.”

“That’s better. His name?”

“John.”

“And where does he live, this John?”

“He’s got a shop, second-hand stuff, down Rampart Street, over by The Oak…”

“I know it. So you spent the afternoon with this bloke John, helping him in his shop?”

“Yeah.”

“I suppose he’d confirm that?”

“Come again?”

“If I asked him, he’d tell me you were with him.”

“Course he would.”

“Where’d you get the nice new television and stereo, Les?”

“What do you mean? They’re Brenda’s. She had them before she met me. Ask her.”

“Oh, I’m sure she’ll back you up. The thing is, they don’t look that old. And Fletcher’s electronics warehouse got broken into last Friday night. Someone took off with a van full of stereos and televisions. Did you know that?”

“Can’t say as I did. Anyway, what’s all this in aid of? I thought you were after the kid?”

“I cast a wide net, Les. A wide net. Why did Brenda wait so long before calling us?”

“How should I know? Because she’s a stupid cow, I suppose.”

“Sure it was nothing to do with you?”

“What do you mean?”

“She said you had a row. Maybe you didn’t want the police coming to the house and seeing that television, or the new music centre.”

“Look, I told you—”

“I know what you told me, Les. Why don’t you answer the question? Was it you persuaded Brenda to wait so long before calling us?”

Poole looked away and said nothing.

“Do you know Gemma could be dead?” Poole shrugged.

“For Christ’s sake, don’t you care?”

“I told you, she’s not my kid. Bloody nuisance, if you ask me.”

“You ever hit her, Les?”

“Me? Course I didn’t. That’s not my style.”

“Ever see Brenda do it?”

Poole shook his head. Banks stood up, glanced at the beer in his glass and decided to leave it.

“I’m off now, Les,” he said, “but I’ll be around. You’ll be seeing so much of the police in the next few days you’ll think you’ve died and gone to hell. And I want you to stick around, too. Know what I mean? Be seeing you.”

Banks left The Barleycorn for the dark autumn evening. He was wearing only his sports jacket over his shirt, and he felt the chill in the air as he walked back to Brenda Scupham’s with a terrier yapping at his heels. Television screens flickered behind curtains, some pulled back just an inch or two so the neighbours could watch all the excitement at number twenty-four.

As he turned up the path, he thought of Brenda and the enormity of what she had allowed. He could have told her about the recent Children’s Act, designed to protect parents from overzealous social workers, but he knew he would only get a blank stare in return. Besides, telling her that was as clear an example as you can get of bolting the stable door after the horse has gone.

He thought again about Les Poole and wondered what he was hiding. Maybe it had just been the criminal’s typical nervousness at an encounter with the police. Whatever it was, it had been evident in his clipped answers, his evasions, his nervous body language, and most of all in the guilty thoughts Banks could see skittering about like tiny insects behind the slate eyes.

IV

Gristhorpe tried to recall whether he had left anything undone. He had informed the ACC, made sure the press had all the information they needed, set up a mobile unit on a patch of waste ground at the end of Brenda Scupham’s street, drawn up a search plan, arranged to draft in extra personnel, and got someone working on a list of all known local child-molesters. Also, he had faxed the bare details and a copy of Gemma’s photograph to the paedophile squad, which operated out of Vine Street police station, in London. Soon, every policeman in the county would be on the alert. In the morning, the searchers would begin. For now, though, there was nothing more he could do until he had discussed developments with Banks.

His stomach rumbled, and he remembered the cheese-and-pickle sandwich left uneaten on the table at home, the tea going cold. Leaving a message for Banks, he went across the street to the Queen’s Arms and persuaded Cyril, the landlord, to make him a ham sandwich, which he washed down with a half-pint of bitter.

He had been sitting hunched over his beer at a dimpled, copper-topped table for about ten minutes, oblivious to the buzz of conversation around him, when a voice startled him out of his dark thoughts.

“Sir?”

Gristhorpe looked up and saw Banks standing over him.

“Everything all right, Alan?” Gristhorpe asked. “You look knackered.”

“I am,” said Banks, sitting down and reaching for his cigarettes. “This Gemma Scupham business…”

“Aye,” said Gristhorpe. “Get yourself a drink and we’ll see what we can come up with.”

Banks bought a packet of cheese-and-onion crisps and a pint, then told Gristhorpe about his suspicions of Les Poole.

Gristhorpe rubbed his chin and frowned. “We’ll keep an eye on him, then,” he said. “Give him a bit of slack. If we bring him in over that Fletcher’s warehouse job it’ll do us no good. Besides, we can hardly cart off the poor woman’s telly when someone’s just abducted her child, can we?”

“Agreed,” said Banks. “OK. So far we’ve got six men working on the house-to-house, questioning the neighbours. Phil and Susan are with them. At least there’s a chance someone might have seen the car.”

“What about the mother? Who’s with her?”

“Susan stayed for a while, then she offered to get a WPC to come in, but Mrs Scupham didn’t want one. I don’t think either she or Les feels comfortable with the police around. Anyway, she’s got a friend in.”

“I suppose we’d better start with the obvious, hadn’t we?” Gristhorpe said. “Do you believe the mother’s story?”

Banks took a sip of beer. “I think so. She seemed genuinely shocked, and I don’t think she’s bright enough to make up a story like that.”

“Oh, come on, Alan. It doesn’t take much imagination. She could have hurt the child, gone too far and killed her — or Poole could have — then they dumped the body and made up this cock-and-bull story.”

“Yes, she could have. All I’m saying is the story seems a bit over-elaborate. It would have been a hell of a lot easier just to say that Gemma had been snatched while she was out playing, wouldn’t it, rather than having to make up descriptions of two people and risk us finding it odd that no one in the street saw them. They’re a nosy lot down on the East Side Estate. Anyway, I had the officers on the scene search the house thoroughly twice and they didn’t come up with anything. We’ve got a SOCO team there now doing their bit. If there’s any chance Gemma was harmed in the house then taken somewhere else, they’ll find it.”

Gristhorpe sighed. “I suppose we can rule out kidnapping?”

“Brenda Scupham’s got no money. She might be fiddling the social, making a bit on the side, but that hardly makes her Mrs Rothschild.”

“What about the father? Custody battle? Maybe he hired someone to snatch Gemma for him?”

Banks shook his head. “According to Brenda, he’s not interested, hasn’t been for years. We’re tracking him down anyway.”

Gristhorpe waved a plume of smoke aside. “I don’t like the alternatives,” he said.

“Me neither, but we’ve got to face them. Remember those stories a while back? Paedophiles posing as social workers and asking to examine people’s kids for evidence of abuse?”

Gristhorpe nodded.

“Luckily, most parents sent them away,” Banks went on. “But suppose this time they succeeded?”

“I’ve checked on the descriptions with the divisions involved,” Gristhorpe said, “and they don’t match. But you’re right. It’s something we have to consider. Someone else could have got the idea from reading the papers. Then there’s the ritual stuff to consider, too.”

Not long ago, the press had been rife with stories of children used for ritual abuse, often with satanic overtones. In Cleveland, Nottingham, Rochdale and the Orkneys, children were taken into care after allegations of just such abuse involving torture, starvation, humiliation and sexual molestation. Nobody had come up with any hard evidence — in fact, most people thought it was more likely that the children needed to be protected from the social workers — but the rumours were disturbing enough. And Gristhorpe didn’t fool himself that such a thing couldn’t happen in Eastvale. It could.

That Satanists now existed out in the dale was beyond doubt. There had been trouble with them recently, when local farmers had complained of finding sheep ritually slaughtered in copses and hollows. There was a big difference between sheep and children, of course, as there was between Satanism and witchcraft. Gristhorpe had been aware of local witch covens for years. They consisted mostly of meek husbands and bored housewives in search of an evening’s naughtiness dancing naked in the woods. But the Satanists were a different breed. If they could go as far as killing sheep and draining their blood, what would they stop at?

“But you know what I’m thinking about most of all, don’t you, Alan?” Banks was one of the few people Gristhorpe had talked to about his small role in the Moors Murders and the lasting effect it had on him.

Banks nodded.

“Different way of operating, of course. Brady and Hindley snatched their victims. But there could be reasons for that. It’s the couple aspect that bothers me. A man and a woman. I know there’s been a lot of argument about Myra Hindley’s degree of involvement, but there’s no doubt they acted together. Call it what you will — maybe some kind of psychotic symbiosis — but without the other, it’s a good bet neither would have committed those crimes. Alone, they were nothing, nobodies living in fantasy worlds, but together they progressed from Hitler-worship and pornography to murder. Hindley acted as a catalyst to turn Brady’s fantasies into reality, and he acted them out to impress her and exercise his power over her. Christ, Alan, if a couple like that’s got hold of little Gemma Scupham, God have mercy on her soul.” Again, Gristhorpe remembered the tape, Lesley Ann begging, “Please don’t undress me!” Brady telling her, “If you don’t keep that hand down I’ll slit your neck.” And that other gruesome touch, the children’s choir singing carols in the background.

“We don’t know,” said Banks. “We know bugger-all so far.”

Gristhorpe rubbed his brow. “Aye, you’re right. No sense jumping to conclusions. On the bright side, let’s hope it was some poor young childless couple who just went too far to get themselves a kiddie.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense, though, does it? If they took the child out of love, how could they reconcile themselves to the mother’s pain? There’d be too much guilt to allow them any happiness. And I doubt they’d be able to keep a secret like that for very long.”

“I’ve asked Phil if he can tie in with HOLMES on this,” Banks said. “Remember that course he went on?”

Gristhorpe nodded. HOLMES stood for Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. Developed during the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, HOLMES basically allows all reports coming out of an investigation to be entered and organized into a relational database. That way, a key word or phrase can be tracked more accurately through previously unrelated data than before.

And that was as far as Gristhorpe could follow. The rest, like most computer talk, was gobbledegook to him. In fact, the mere mention of megabytes and DOS brought out the latent Luddite in him. Still, he didn’t underestimate their value. An enquiry like this would generate a lot of paperwork, and every statement, every report, no matter how minor or negative, would be entered, and cross-checks would be made. He wanted no cock-ups along the lines of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, where the left hand hadn’t seemed to know what the right hand was doing.

“Phil says he’d like computers in the mobile unit,” Banks added. “That way the officers can put everything on disk and pass it on to him without any retyping.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Any more ideas?”

“Just a couple. I’d like a chat with the girl’s teacher, see what I can find out about her. I’m damn sure there’s been some abuse involved. Both Poole and Brenda Scupham deny it, but not convincingly enough.”

Gristhorpe nodded. “Go on.”

“And I think we should consider bringing Jenny Fuller in. She might at least be able to give us some idea of what kind of people we’re looking for.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Gristhorpe said. He liked Jenny Fuller. Not only was she a competent psychologist who had helped them before in unusual cases, but she was a pleasure to have around. A right bonny lass, as Gristhorpe’s father would have said.

“Should we bring Jim Hatchley back from the seaside?” Banks asked.

Gristhorpe scowled. “I suppose there might come a time we’ll need him. Leave it for now, though.” Detective Sergeant Jim Hatchley had been transferred to a CID outpost on the Yorkshire coast, largely to make way for Philip Richmond’s promotion. Gristhorpe had never much liked Hatchley, but grudgingly admitted he had his uses. As far as Gristhorpe was concerned, he was an idle, foul-mouthed, prejudiced slob, but his brain worked well enough when he took the trouble to use it, and he had a list of dirty tricks as long as your arm that often got results without compromising procedure.

Banks drained his glass. “Anything else?”

“Not tonight. We’ll have a meeting first thing in the morning, see what’s turned up. You’d better get home and get some sleep.”

Banks grunted. “I might as well have another pint first. There never seems to be anyone in these days.”

“Where’s Sandra?”

“Community Centre, still organizing that local artists’ exhibition. I’ll swear she spends more time there than she does at home. And Tracy’s out at the pictures with that boyfriend of hers.”

Gristhorpe caught the anxiety in Banks’s tone. “Don’t worry about her, Alan,” he said. “Tracy’s a sensible lass. She can take care of herself.”

Banks sighed. “I hope so.” He gestured towards Gristhorpe’s empty glass. “What about you?”

“Aye, why not? It might help me sleep.”

While Banks went to the bar, Gristhorpe considered the night ahead. He knew he wouldn’t be going home. For years, he had kept a camp-bed in the station storeroom for emergencies like this. Tonight, and perhaps for the next two or three nights, he would stay in his office. But he doubted that he would get much sleep. Not until he found out what had happened to Gemma Scupham, one way or the other.