drive.
“I’m getting involved in this one, Alan,” he said. “At every level. I’ll not be content just to sit in my office and co-ordinate, though I’ll be doing that, of course. I’ll be spending a fair amount of time at the mobile unit and I’ll
be conducting some interviews myself. I want you to know that, and I want you to know so you don’t let it interfere with your usual way of working. I’ve always given you a pretty free hand, and it’s usually got results. I don’t want to change that. What I do want is to be present when we get the breaks. Know what I mean?”
Banks nodded.
“And there’s something else,” Gristhorpe said. “Something the ACC made very clear as a priority concern.”
Banks thought he could guess what was coming, but kept silent while Gristhorpe went on.
“Gemma Scupham might be the first,” he said, “but she might not be the last. Let’s bear that in mind.”
Banks carried his coffee through to his office, where he lit a cigarette, then stood by the Venetian blind and looked down on the market square. The facade of the Norman church and the cobbles of the market square shone pale gold in the pure light. Two more cars had arrived, and yet another was just pulling in. Banks watched the young couple get out and stand hand in hand gazing around them at the ancient square with its weathered stone cross. Honeymooners, by the look of them. The church clock rang nine.
He thought about Brenda Scupham, with her aura of sexuality, and of the sly, weasly Les Poole, and he tried to imagine what kind of parents they must have made. They can’t have had much time for Gemma, with Les always at the pub or the bookie’s and Brenda at home doing God knows what. Watching television, most likely. Did they talk to her? Play with her? And did they abuse her?
Then he thought of Gemma herself: that haunted face, those eyes that had seen much more and much worse than her young mind could comprehend, possibly lying
dead out there right now in some ditch, or buried in a makeshift grave. And he thought of what Gristhorpe had just said. He stubbed out his cigarette and reached for the telephone, No time for brooding. Time to get to work.
II
A desolate, stunned air pervaded the East Side Estate that
morning, Banks sensed, as he walked from the mobile
unit to the school. Even the dogs seemed to be indoors,
and those people he did see going on errands or pushing
babies in prams had their heads bowed and seemed
drawn in on themselves. He passed the maisonettes with
their obscene messages scrawled on the cracked paintwork,
and the two blocks of flats—each fourteen storeys
high—where he knew the lifts, when they worked,
smelled of urine and glue. Hardly anyone was out on the
street.
The school itself was a square red brick building with only a few small windows. A high chain-link fence bordered the asphalt playground. Banks looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. Gemma’s teacher should be waiting for him in the staff-room.
He walked through the front doors, noting that one of the glass panes was cracked in a spider-web pattern, and asked the first adult he saw the way to the staff-room. As he walked along the corridor, he was struck by the brightness of the place, so much in contrast with its ugly exterior. Most of it, he thought, was due to the children’s paintings tacked along the walls. These weren’t skilled, professional efforts, but the gaudy outbursts of untrained minds—yellow sunbursts with rays shooting in all directions, bright golden angels, red and green stick figures of mummy and daddy and cats and dogs.
There was a funny smell about the place, too, that transported him back to his own infants’ school, but it took him some moments to identify it. When he did, he smiled to himself, remembering for the first time in ages those blissful, carefree days before school became a matter of learning facts and studying for exams. It was Plasticine, that coloured putty-like stuff he had tried in vain to mould into the shapes of hippos and crocodiles.
He walked straight into the staff-room, and a woman, who looked hardly older than a schoolgirl herself, came forward to greet him. “Chief Inspector Banks?” she asked, holding out her hand. “I’m Peggy Graham.”
It was a big room with well-spaced tables and chairs, a notice-board full of mimeographed memos, handwritten notes and printed flyers for concerts, courses and package holidays. A couple of other teachers, sitting over newspapers, glanced up at his entry, then looked down again. One corner of the room had been converted into a mini-kitchen, complete with a fridge, microwave and coffee-maker. Here and there on the rough, orange-painted walls hung more examples of untrammelled art.
“A bit overwhelming, isn’t it?” Peggy Graham asked, noticing him looking around. “I could do without the orange walls myself, but it was a playroom before we got it, so. … Sit down. Can I get you some coffee or something?”
“If it’s no trouble,” Banks said.
She went to get it. Peggy Graham, Banks noticed, was a small, bird-like woman, perhaps fresh out of teachers’ training school. Her grey pleated skirt covered her knees, and a dark blue cardigan hung over her white cotton blouse. She wore her mousy hair in a pony tail, and large glasses made her nose look tiny. Her eyes, behind them, were big, pale and milky blue, and they seemed charged with worry and sincerity. Her lips were thin and curved
slightly downwards at the corners. She wore no makeup.
“Well,” she said, sitting down beside him with the coffee. It came in a mug with a picture of Big Bird on it. “This is just dreadful about Gemma, isn’t it? Just dreadful.”
She spoke, he thought, as if she were talking to a class of five-year-olds, and her mouth was so mobile she looked as if she were miming. Banks nodded.
“What could have happened?” she asked. “Have you got any idea?”
“I’m afraid not,” Banks said.
“I don’t suppose you could say anything even if you did have, could you?”
