She lowered the hanky and thought for a few seconds. 'Perfectly normal. In fact she was looking forward to going to school because they were rehearsing for the end-of-term play.'
'Was she in it?' I enquired.
A smile briefly made an appearance, then fled. 'No, but it disrupted lessons. I think that's what she liked it for.'
'When did you see her?'
'Over the weekend. Miles picks me up Friday evening, straight after collecting Georgina from the child minder. He works Saturdays and likes to have a game of golf on Sunday. My husband, George, died nearly seven years ago, so I love to come here and look after Georgina.
I sometimes visit through the week, too, especially when Miles has to stay away overnight.'
'And when did you go home?'
'Sunday evening, about seven. They both took me. After dropping me off I believe they were going for a pizza. Not really my cup of tea, and far too late for Georgina, but I'm old-fashioned.'
I declined a drink and left after proffering more empty reassurances.
It's a thin line between false hopes and premature gloom. As long as we didn't know, we had to assume she was still alive. Any other attitude was pointless.
On the way back to the station I had a flash of inspiration, so I went via St. Bidulph's on the Top Road. Annabelle lives in the Old Vicarage, near the church. In the door pocket of the car was a bottle of claret, and the back seat held a rapidly fading bunch of salmon-pink roses. I stood on her doorstep, bottle in one hand and wilting blooms in the other, rehearsing my lines: 'Sorry I'm late, I was held up.'
But she wasn't in.
Wednesday morning we filmed the TV appeal. The crew set up their cameras and lights in the conference room and the producer went through the scripts with Gilbert and myself. Gilbert introduced me as Acting Chief Inspector Priest.
'What's this Acting Chief bit?' I whispered to him at the first possible opportunity.
'It goes down better with the public,' he replied in a hushed voice.
'Gives you a bit more status.'
'I don't want to be Acting Chief,' I hissed back.
'Well you are.'
'Officially?'
'Yes.'
'Paid?'
'Yes, bloody well paid.'
Our whispers were growing louder and faces were turning towards us.
'Are you trying to get rid of me, Gilbert?'
The Super's face was red with frustration and he thumped a palm with a fist.
'For Christ's sake, Charlie, I thought I was doing you a favour!'
'Oh. Well, thanks.'
I liked being the longest-ever-serving inspector. I'd been as young as it was possible to be when appointed, and then made no further progress up the ladder. It was a record I was proud of. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Mr. Dewhurst going into the toilets.
'Excuse me,' called the producer. 'We'll begin if you're all ready.
You first, Superintendent. Quiet, please.'
'You're on,' I said to Gilbert, adding: 'You won't mind if I go to wave Willy at the wall, will you?'
In the gents', Dewhurst was standing at the washbasins, running water into one of them. He looked up as I entered and we exchanged polite but grim nods. He left as I was having my pee. I washed my hands in the sink next to the one he'd used and followed him out.
There was another delay for some reason. Mrs. Eaglin was standing with Dewhurst, giving him support before his ordeal by television. He had the worst part of all. Eventually they were ready and the producer called for Gilbert again. As he was leaving me I told him: 'Your hair's sticking up at the back, Gilbert.'
He gave it a perfunctory wipe with his hand.
'No,' I said, 'it's still sticking up. You ought to comb it.'
'Bloody hell, Charlie!' he hissed at me. 'It's not a frigging game show. What's got into you?'
Gilbert had one minute to tell the story so far; then Dewhurst did his bit. It was harrowing. He broke down and wept and couldn't finish off what he wanted to say. Nearly everybody in the room was crying with him, some openly, some internally. Then I had to go on and tell people where to come with their information. I don't envy news readers I felt shagged-out when it was over.
The film was shown locally on the lunchtime news, and broadcast nationally in the evening. The response was phenomenal. We imported extra staff to man the computers. Over the next three weeks every single lead was followed, and every one of them took us up a dead end.
Georgina Dewhurst had vanished from the face of the globe as effectively as if she had never existed.
We checked over three hundred alibis and made thirty-one arrests. Of these, only two reached the 'helping us with our enquiries' stage.
'Georgina Man Detained' screamed the headlines in the tabloids. We were only going through the motions, though. The first was Billy Sunshine. Billy stands just outside the bus station most days, rocking gently backwards and forwards on the balls of his feet. He usually has a bottle sticking out of his jacket pocket and a big smile for everyone who passes by. There had been one report of a little girl being seen hand-in-hand with a man heading away from the area. A scruffy man it could have been Billy. He'd been shown the photo on the Tuesday morning and said he recognised her. We kept him in overnight and gave him breakfast. He had a better alibi than Nixon when Kennedy was shot, so we handed him over to the detox centre.
The other one was more like it. It wasn't as a result of fine detective work someone wrote us an anonymous letter. Terry Finnister lived in Workington, but had delivered a lorry load of bathroom equipment to a company in Heckley early that Monday morning. And, the letter-writer kindly advised us, he was a convicted sex offender. They went on to give us some advice on how to treat his sort. I took Nigel to Workington to have a word with him, and we brought him back to Heckley.
It was a mess. When he'd been a teenager his mother had remarried. Her new husband had a young son. Finnister served five years for buggering the child while baby-sitting. During the interview he told us that his stepfather had raped him, and that his mother had died of an overdose while he was in jail. At the time of Georgina's disappearance he'd been off-loading two dozen avocado, low-level, easy-flush toilet pedestals, and he had the invoices to prove it; plus a receipt for his breakfast, eaten shortly afterwards. We asked the local SOCO to give the cab of his lorry a going-over, but we lacked enthusiasm.
The Reverend Gerry Wilde, vicar of St. Peter and St. Paul's, was annoyed; or as annoyed as he ever allowed himself to become. His hatchback crested the brow in the road where he gained his first view of St. Peter and St. Paul's. He always looked forward to that dramatic moment. First the trees loomed up out of the ground, then they appeared to swing to one side as the road curved, revealing the majestic prospect of his church. Normally, the Union flag, taut in the stiff breeze, would have added an extra fris son of delight. The Reverend Wilde was firstly a man of God, and secondly a patriot. Not that he would have separated them in that way.
For him, the two conditions were so tightly intertwined that he could not understand how anyone could claim to be one without the other.
Certainly not if one was an Englishman. But today the flag was an aberration. Three times he'd told Joseph, the verger, to take it down; and there it still was, four days after Coronation Day, proclaiming heaven-knows-what to the parish. Soon it would have to go up again for the Duke of Edinburgh's birthday, but it made a mockery of his efforts if the two events ran together.
He put the car in its garage alongside the vicarage. He'd have to have a word with Joseph be more firm with him. He hated any form of unpleasantness, though. And, of course, Joseph had worshipped here all his life, whereas he was a newcomer, relatively speaking.
No, he'd teach by example. Jesus washed His disciples' feet; he, Gerry Wilde, would strike the flag. Then he would leave it for Joseph to put away. Maybe that would impress upon the old man that he meant what he said. He took his tower key from its hook in the kitchen and set off across the graveyard to the church.
