“Did she like him?”
“No.”
“Did he ever hurt Gemma?”
“She cried.”
“Why did she cry?”
“Don’t know.”
“Did he ever hurt her, Elizabeth?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t like him. She said he smelled and he always told her to go away.”
“When did he tell her to go away?”
“He said she was a sp … sp … a spilled cat.”
“A spilled cat? Do you mean ‘spoiled brat’?”
“Yes.”
“When did he say this?”
“He wouldn’t let her have the book.”
“What book?”
“She wanted a book and he wouldn’t let her have it. He threw her other books away.”
“Why?”
“She spilled some paint on his newspaper. It too dirty. He was angry. He threw her books away and he wouldn’t let her have any more.”
“What was too dirty, Elizabeth?”
“No. It too dirty.”
Banks looked at Peggy Graham. “I think she’s trying to say ‘at two-thirty,’” she said, frowning.
“Is that right?” Banks asked Elizabeth. “She spilled paint on his newspaper at two-thirty, so he threw her books away?”
She nodded.
“What were the books?”
“Story books. With pictures. Gemma likes reading. She reads to me. I’m not very good. Please find her.” Elizabeth started crying. Peggy Graham put an arm around her. “It’s all right, dear. The nice policeman will find Gemma. Don’t cry.”
Elizabeth sniffled a few moments longer, then wiped her nose on her sleeve and left the room. Banks sighed.
“What was all that about?” Peggy asked.
“I wish I knew. Thanks for letting me talk to her anyway. I hope she doesn’t stay upset.”
“Don’t worry. Elizabeth’s tough enough.” Banks walked through the playground full of children. They were skipping, playing hopscotch, running around as usual, but like the ones coming out of the classroom they seemed much quieter, more subdued than children usually are.
He looked at his watch. Close to noon. Time to write up his notes before lunch with Jenny. Not that he had learned much from the teacher that he hadn’t known or suspected already. Gemma kept herself to herself, perhaps suffered neglect at home, but was probably not physically abused. Still, there was the business of the bruise. How had she got it? And what had Elizabeth meant about “at two-thirty” and Gemma’s books? Banks walked past the tower block with JESUS SAVES written in red on the wall and back to the unmarked car he had parked by the mobile unit.
Ill
Damn it, cursed Jenny Fuller. She had pulled up at the
lights just in time and all the essays on the back seat had
slid off onto the floor. So few of the students bothered
with paper-clips or staples; it would a hell of a job
reshuffling them. If she hadn’t been in such a hurry to
meet Banks it would never have happened. She was on
the south-eastern edge of Eastvale, coming up to the
roundabout by the Red Lion, and she only had five minutes
to park and get to Le Bistro. Still, Alan would wait.
The lights changed and the car lurched off again. To hell with the papers. She shouldn’t be teaching until October anyway, and if it hadn’t been for those American students—those American students with odd ideas of academic timetables and thousands of dollars to
spend on an English education—then she could have been relaxing on a beach somewhere.
She smiled to herself, imagining Alan Banks sitting at one of Le Bistro’s wobbly little tables, no doubt feeling out of place among the yuppie lunch crowd with their Perriers and portable telephones. He would be far more comfortable in the Queen’s Arms with a pie and a pint in front of him, not at a table covered in a coral cloth with a long-stemmed rose in a vase at its centre. But Jenny had been lecturing to the Americans all morning, and she was damned if she was going to be done out of the shrimp provencale and the glass of white wine she had promised to treat herself.
Jenny remembered her surprise the first time the Eastvale CID had brought her into a case, involving a peeping Tom, three years ago. She had guessed (correctly) that they wanted a visible female presence as a sop to Dorothy Wycombe and the Eastvale feminist contingent, WEEF, Women of Eastvale for Emancipation and Freedom. Still, she
