I gazed up at the bleak concrete walls, streaked with rust from the reinforcing bars, and felt as if I were part of Rumania's secret police when Ceausescu was in power. "Third floor," I said, warning my nostrils to brace themselves. "We'll walk."
"Just a tick," Dave said, and strolled over to where four industrial-size dumpsters stood, next to the stairwell. He lifted a lid, looked in, closed the lid and looked in the next one.
"Bugger!" he declared. "They're empty. Looks as if the bin men have just been."
Mrs Norcup answered the door at the fourth knock, probably after doing a high-speed tidy of the flat. Her face was flushed pink but etched with concern as Dave made the introductions.
"Is it about Rory?" she demanded, a hand nervously raised to her face, her hair untidy. "Is he all right? Has something happened to him? I was just about to go back to the hospital…"
"Rory's fine," I assured her with a smile. "We've just left him and he was chatting up the nurses. May we come in and have a word?"
She looked at me, bewildered.
"Rory's fine. Can we come in, please?"
The flat was about what I expected: cheap furniture; untidy and smelling of cooking. I try not to be judgemental, lest others judge me. It was reasonably clean and the carpets didn't stick to your feet as you walked across them, for which I am always grateful. The electric fire was on low and the television on high. A man with a toupee and an orange face was talking about antiques. Dave switched off the telly and settled into the only easy chair that didn't have something on it, giving me a smile that said: "Beat you to it." I found an upright one and invited Mrs Norcup to sit on her own settee.
"The doctor told us that Rory should make a full recovery, Mrs Norcup," I said, "with no after-effects."
"Oh, thank God for that. I've been so worried about the little mite. I wanted to stay with him but I had to tell his daddy what had happened. I hadn't taken his phone number to the hospital."
"Where is Rory's dad?" Dave asked.
"He lives in Sheffield."
"Are you together?"
"No, we split up just before Rory was born. It was amicable. No one else was involved."
"Did you get through to him?"
"No, I missed him. I'll go back to the hospital and try him again tonight. I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to Rory. I just don't know what I'd do." She started to cry and excused herself. Dave pulled a face at me. f walked over to the window and looked down to where the car was parked. It still had its wheels on.
Mrs Norcup came back looking slightly tidier, her face newly washed and her hair tied back, dabbing her nose with a tissue.
"You told the doctor that Rory had eaten some baby food with glass in it," Dave said.
"That's right. Can you believe it? Who'd do something like that to a little baby?"
"What happened?"
"I was feeding him. Do you have any children?"
"No," Dave lied and I shook my head.
"It's a special time, feeding them. It's when you bond. I loved to feed him, watch him watching me. I'd tease him and he'd laugh. He has a lovely laugh. It was peach and banana, Rory's favourite."
"From a tin?"
"Yes," she replied, looking at me as if to say: "What other sort is there?"
"Go on."
"That's it. Suddenly he was crying and blood was pouring out of his mouth. I poked my fingers in, cleared his mouth out, and cut my finger on a piece of glass." She looked at her finger but decided not to offer it as evidence.
"How much had he eaten?" Dave asked.
"About half the tin."
"Have you kept the rest of it?"
"Yes, it's in the fridge."
We moved into the tiny kitchen and she produced the offending item. It was one of those with a pull-tab on the top and she'd saved the lid, too.
"Did you open the tin yourself?" I asked.
"Yes, I suppose so."
"Was there any evidence of it having been tampered with?"
"Not that I noticed. You don't look for things like that, do you? You don't expect anybody to poison your baby's food, do you? What sort of people are there who could do such a thing?"
"There are some strange people about, Mrs Norcup." I spooned some of the gooey mixture out of the tin and rubbed it between my fingers. I found a piece of glass, about four millimetres square and gave it to Dave.
"Where did you buy this?" I asked.
"At Lidl, yesterday. I still have the receipt." She found it immediately, on the windowsill, together with another one. "I bought some shampoo, too, at Wilkinson's."
I took the receipts that she offered me, looked at them and handed them to Dave. The sum of her shopping trip was one tin of baby food and one bottle of shampoo. Hardly worth the journey into town.
"It's lightbulb glass," Dave declared, passing the piece back to me. "I'll tell you what's 'appened. They make this stuff by the ton, and have conveyor belts filled with it. A lightbulb above the conveyor has broken and fallen in the food. That's what 'appened. Nobody tried to poison your baby, Mrs Norcup."
Her face lightened, the crumpled brow smoothed out and she almost smiled. "You mean… you mean, it was an accident?"
"I'd say so."
"Oh, that is a relief. I'd never have slept again if I'd thought someone had tried to kill poor Rory. An accident! Oh, that's wonderful."
"Glad to be of assistance. Now, do you think I could use your toilet, please? I've drunk rather a lot of coffee this morning."
I took Mrs Norcup back into the other room and closed the door behind us while Dave went to the loo and had a wander round. "How do you get on with your neighbours?" I asked.
"I don't," she replied. "There's a white girl lives below who's on the game, a West Indian crack dealer above, Chinese on one side who have gambling parties that last for days and two Bosnian refugees on the other side. It's not a good place to bring up a child. We'll be out of here as soon as we can find somewhere else. Rory's dad said he'd try to help.
"It's like the United Nations." I heard the sound of flushing and the creak of floorboards. "Do you see Rory's dad very often?"
"Not really. He does his best, always sends Rory a present, but he works hard. He's on oilrigs."
I didn't know if they had oilrigs in Sheffield, and Rory hadn't seen a birthday or Christmas, yet, but I let it go. Dave came in and raised an eyebrow.
"We'll need a full statement from you, Mrs Norcup," he said. "I think you ought to come to the station with us."
Alarm flashed across her face. "But what about Rory?" she said. "I ought to be with him. He'll be missing me."
"Rory'll be fine. Do you have a coat?"
She produced a big blue and yellow anorak with Michigan in four-inch letters across the back. We locked the door behind us and led her down to the car. When I'd put her safely in the back seat Dave jerked his head at me and walked a few paces away from the car.
"There's glass fragments embedded in the kitchen worktop and glass in the rug," he told me. "We need a SOCO here, soon as possible."
I made the phone call and we took Mrs Norcup to Heckley nick. There was a good chance that she'd never see Rory again.
I was making a brew when Gilbert came in to ask about developments. He accepted the offer and I spooned Nescafe into a clean mug. Pete joined us, complaining about the roadworks that had sprung up on the bypass. I pushed the coffee jar his way and gave mine a vigorous stir.
"Why do they have to cone off half a mile of road when they're only working on about five yards of it?" he asked.
"They don't realise that the amount of delay is proportional to the length of time you slow the traffic for. There's a critical point when the traffic slows so much it becomes stationary."