The child was clearly curious.
I put down the binoculars. With one hand still on my penis, I reached with the other for the handle to the passenger window, the old-fashioned, manual sort, and wound it down. I always used gloves, of course, apart from when I was touching myself. It had to be flesh-on-flesh then. I never took unnecessary risks. Even though I knew my fingerprints were not on any police records, I wasn’t stupid. My free hand remained gloved throughout.
‘Hello,’ I said.
My voice sounded wrong, high-pitched, squeaky, forced. The girl didn’t seem to notice.
‘Is that a kitten you’ve got there?’ she asked.
I glanced down at my lap. My hand very nearly concealed my otherwise exposed penis. I wondered if she could see tufts of my pubic hair, leading her to think I was stroking some sort of pet animal. A kitten? The very idea of that stimulated me even more.
I looked back at her.
‘Would you like to stroke it?’ I asked.
She looked doubtful.
I stretched across to turn the handle on the passenger door, then pushed the door ajar. She stepped back to allow me to do so.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Jump in. It won’t bite.’
She smiled, her eyes fixed on my crotch.
It was madness of course, sheer madness. Some things a man like me knows he can never get away with, but neither can he always stop himself.
Had she realised yet that I was not holding a kitten? I had no idea. My blood was up. I wanted her to put her hands on me and stroke me there more than anything in the world. I needed her to.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
She sounded doubtful, but still interested. I pushed the door a little more open. She took another step back, still staring at my crotch. I was close to exploding. I could almost feel her touch. I could imagine her lips. I could imagine touching her private parts. Gently. So gently. I was crazy for her.
Another girl’s voice cut through the moment.
‘C’mon on, Alice.’
Alice looked away from my crotch. I looked away from Alice.
The second girl, of around the same age I thought, was standing about 100 yards away calling for her schoolmate.
Alice still seemed uncertain.
‘It’s all right, Alice,’ I said.
I knew her name now. It was always easier when you knew their names.
‘It won’t take a moment, Alice,’ I continued. ‘Jump in. You can have a stroke too. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
Alice looked back at me and smiled again.
I’d got her. Surely I’d got her. I reached out towards her with my free gloved hand. She only had to take it and I’d have her in the van quick as a flash. She’d be there for me. I’d be able to do what I liked with her. Drive away with her. Make her my own.
I was breathing fast. I was nearly out of control.
Then I heard another voice. An adult voice. Sharp and commanding. It came as a total shock.
‘Alice Palmer! What are you doing? Who are you talking to?’
The voice came from across the road, but I could tell that it was getting nearer. I looked up. I had been so preoccupied by Alice, not to mention my throbbing penis, that I hadn’t even noticed playtime had ended. The children, including those I had been only half-aware of walking past the van, were all trouping back into the school.
The woman teacher who had been overseeing the trampoline was crossing the road now, striding purposefully towards us.
‘Alice Palmer,’ she called again. ‘Come here at once. Move away from that van.’
Alice duly backed off, her face flushed and turned towards the teacher. She looked uncertain. Confused. So she might. She had so nearly been mine.
I slammed the passenger door shut, switched on the engine, thrust the van into first gear and took off with a screech of tires.
Seven
It was just after noon, when Vogel and Saslow arrived at the North Bristol Academy. This sprawling complex of red-brick buildings, dating back to the 1960s, was now reincarnated as one of the latest, educational innovations of modern government. An independently run school funded directly by the Ministry of Education.
The buildings, which were in good order, retained the feel of being from another time. They were, it seemed, the only aspect of the North Bristol Academy which was not thoroughly modern. Apart from the smell, of course. The place smelt exactly the way Vogel remembered his own school smelling twenty-five years earlier. A distinct odour of powerful disinfectant wafted his way, as they passed the cloakrooms.
The school secretary took them straight to the headmistress’s office.
The head, Christine Chapman, was a handsome woman — in her late thirties, Vogel guessed — who had the manner and appearance of a senior executive high up in the business world, rather than a schoolteacher. Well, Vogel’s idea of a schoolteacher, anyway. But he reminded himself that is more or less what head teachers had to be nowadays. The wife of one of his team in the Met had been head of a primary school. When Vogel had asked her about her work, at, for him, a rare social gathering, she’d said that the most difficult part of her job was ensuring that she did not become totally distanced, both from her pupils and the art of teaching. Head teachers, like senior police officers, were expected to be managers before anything else nowadays. A concept with which Vogel consistently struggled.
Christine Chapman rose to her feet, as Vogel was shown into her uncluttered, second-floor office, overlooking tennis courts and a playing field beyond. She stepped from behind a big, solid-looking desk made of pale wood, walked across carpeted floor and shook hands with both him and Saslow as they introduced themselves.
Christine Chapman didn’t smile. She didn’t prevaricate.
‘I do hope you are not here to tell me what I think you are,’ she said.
Vogel was momentarily surprised. Then he noticed the television mounted on the wall to the left of Chapman’s desk. The sound was off, but he saw that it was tuned to Sky News.
The head teacher followed his gaze.
‘I saw a report earlier about the body of a girl, as yet unnamed, having been found in Bristol,’ she said.
She gestured towards the computer on her desk top.
‘That led me to check this morning’s register, just in case. We have only one unexplained absentee today. Her name is Melanie Cooke. I was still trying to stop myself putting two and two together, when the office rang through to tell me that two police officers had arrived at our school. I so want you to tell me I am wrong, Detective Inspector.’
‘I am afraid I can’t do that,’ Vogel replied quietly. ‘She has yet to be formally identified but the young woman, whose body was found this morning, almost certainly is Melanie Cooke.’
Christine Chapman said nothing. She stared at Vogel for a few seconds then returned to her desk and sat down behind it. She waved an arm towards two easy chairs, silently inviting the police officers to also sit.
They did so.
‘I’ve been a teacher for eighteen years and a head for six,’ said Christine Chapman. ‘I’ve never had to deal with anything like this before. You’ll have to forgive me, Detective Inspector, I’m stunned. I can only imagine the effect this is going to have on the school, everyone…’
Her voice tailed off. She straightened a pen on the desk in front of her so that it was perfectly in line with the edge. Habit, thought Vogel. Everything about the head mistress smacked of order. This was a highly organised, capable, woman on top of her job, he was quite sure. Now she just looked stricken.
‘We are very sorry for your loss, Miss Chapman,’ said Vogel. ‘But we do need to talk to you — as a matter of urgency — and to Melanie’s class teacher, any special friends and anyone else who might be able to help us. We need to know what sort of girl she was, what her day-to-day life was like away from home. We have a brutal killer on the loose and the first twenty-four hours in a murder investigation are vital.’