“Did Annaleese have ways of getting money out of you?”
“I don’t know what you mean. She asked for it, that’s what she did.”
“But did she mention her father, and some knowledge she might have—”
That really did catch the woman on a weak side.
“Look,” she said, firing up, “I know my son and I love him. I know better than to take seriously the mucky imaginings of a teenage kid. I took no heed to it whatsoever. I blame the television. Anybody with a grubby tale to tell gets on TV to tell it, and the soaps aren’t much better. Some of the plots are nothing but disgusting.”
“Tell me,” said Paulson, getting up, “are you worried about your granddaughter?”
“Oh, she’ll turn up. Like a bad penny, I nearly said. She’s no sense of responsibility, and she’ll disappear or turn up just as she pleases.”
Paulson hoped she was right.
Amid a scattering of possible identifications Paulson picked out one that seemed to be promising. A woman in a block of flats in Headingley had called in about a man in the flat opposite her. He regularly used the buses, and often travelled back from Leeds in the late evening. The woman was new to the block, but neighbours told her he went to the railwaymen’s club, just next to the station. He’d been a train driver or guard in his working life. She didn’t like to be too specific on the phone, talking to a rookie constable whose inexperience showed, but she said “people talked about him” and asked to speak to the highest man on the case. It was not much, but Paulson decided to go and speak to her.
“I’ve nothing against him personally,” the neighbour said. “I’ve never done more than say ‘Good morning’ or ‘lovely day’ when we met.”
“Do you know his name?”
“Charlie Clark. Retired. I sometimes see him in the post office, collecting his pension. I haven’t seen him for a few days, but that’s not unusual. I’m not very mobile, and he uses a stick. We’re mostly shut indoors.”
“I see. You said you’d no reason yourself to think he might be the person we want to interview, but you told the constable you talked to that there was gossip about him”
“Yes, well... There’s gossip and gossip. Normally I wouldn’t pass on things like that, but in the circumstances... It’s the mothers waiting for young children at the end of the school day. There’s the Alderman Tupper Junior School and the Headingley High School pretty well next to each other. He often goes and stands near the others waiting for their littlies, but people say he’s really interested in the girls from the high school — most of them pass down that way, past the junior school on the way to the Kirkstall crossroads. They say he looks at them — you know, like he was hungry. Undressing them in his mind.”
“Hasn’t anyone talked to him?”
“Well, it’s not easy, is it? You don’t know what to say, how to put it. One mother did ask him if he was fond of children.”
“What did he say?”
“Made no bones about it. Said he was very fond of them, but he was sad because he never saw his granddaughter.”
“Why was that?”
“Said they lived too far away. Neither he nor his daughter had enough to cover the journey.”
“You can get very cheap rail fares if you book early. Especially if you’re an ex-railwayman, I would guess. What did this mother do?”
“There wasn’t much she could say. She couldn’t point out that he pretended to look at the juniors and nursery kids but in fact gave most of his attention to the seniors, the girls who are — what’s the word? — just coming to maturity.”
“Pubescent.”
“Yes, that’s it. She was young, wasn’t she — the one you’re looking for?”
“She’s young, but not that young. What I’m afraid of is that she was young enough. Young enough looking still to be attractive to him.”
When he got back to the station he checked up on Clark, C. Nothing on him at all. Totally unknown as far as the police were concerned. But Paulson had been interested in the neighbour’s story: the man not seen for several days (he could be lying dead in the flat, dead from natural causes or from suicide), his activities at the school gates, his possible alienation from his daughter — these couldn’t be said to add up to anything, but together they were suggestive. He applied for a search warrant for the man’s flat.
He wasn’t there, either dead or alive. No stretched-out body across the living room floor. Only worn, bulky furniture, a large but old television, a unit with a few ornaments, vases, and books. A cursory look at the last showed nothing with any sexual content: they were mostly sweaty, heavy-breathing, chase-across-Iceland thrillers. There were drawers with telephone directories and Yellow Pages, a very old passport, a broken cigarette lighter, a building-society book, and odds and ends. No photographic album, so no record of the younger Charlie, or his daughter.
Paulson sighed. There was no option: He would have to go through the odds and ends. He tried the envelopes first: his pension book, statements from his building society (never more than 100 pounds in credit) his union card and so on. Eventually, nearly the last, there was a flash of colour as he opened the flap.
Colour photographs. He flipped quickly through them: naked children, usually girls. They were not particularly pornographic: The children were not making sexual advances or feigning activities they were too young for. Paulson wondered where he had got them from. There was a shop right in the centre of town where he certainly could have got them — and much worse than these. Or he could have found a like-minded mate who specialised in photography.
He sighed and put the envelope in a plastic bag. He had the evidence for Clark’s interest in children. But Clark had been careful to keep nothing that would suggest an urge to kill them. Paulson thought with a heavy heart of all the children, many of them around twelve or thirteen, who had gone missing in the Leeds area and had never been heard of again. Often they had parents who were no more interested in them than Annaleese’s grandmother. Or indeed than Annaleese’s parents, who had made no contact with the police investigation.
Back at police headquarters he sat thinking in his chair. Nothing to connect this old man with violence or murder. But what about the daughter? Was she still alive and living at a distance as he had told the mother at the school gates? Not necessarily so: She could be dead, long dead maybe. And if there ever had been such a thing as a granddaughter, was she still alive? How on earth was he to trace either of them?
He was interrupted by the phone.
“Sir, I think this is for you. A Mr. Brown. He asked for the man in charge of the missing girl case. Yours is the highest profile.”
“Okay. Put him on.”
“Inspector Paulson, I believe?” came an elderly voice, making the Inspector wonder whether it was Charlie Clark. “I expect you know the Backleigh Golf Course?”
“Yes, of course. It’s not that far from the number forty-two bus stop, on the thirty-eight bus route.”
“That’s right. There’s a bit of waste ground the kids sometimes play on, and then the early holes. Now I’m a newcomer to golf, Inspector, and I’m not getting the hang of it very fast. I’m especially bad at teeing off. Still got the strength, but not a bit of the accuracy. They go off at all angles. That’s why my shot for the second hole went way off the green, and into a patch of trees, brambles, and plastic drink bottles between the golf course and the bit of waste ground.”
“And you found something?”
“I think so. I don’t want to look. There’s a filthy old blanket, probably been there for years and left by one of the rough sleepers. But underneath the blanket is something — not weeds or anything, but — well, I’ve felt with my iron and like I said, it doesn’t feel right. I’m there now.”