Peter Robinson: Wednesday's Child

“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.

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.