Peter Robinson
Wednesday's Child
For Sheila
“Lost in the desart wild
Is your little child.
How can Lyca sleep
If her mother weep?”
• • •
Sleeping Lyca lay
While the beasts of prey,
Come from caverns deep,
View’d the maid asleep.
William Blake
ONE
I
The room was a tip, the woman a slattern. On the floor, near the door to the kitchen, a child’s doll with one eye missing lay naked on its back, right arm raised above its head. The carpet around it was so stained with ground-in mud and food, it was hard to tell what shade of brown it had been originally. High in one corner, by the front window, pale flowered wallpaper had peeled away from a damp patch. The windows were streaked with grime, and the flimsy orange curtains needed washing.
When Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks perched at the edge of the scuffed olive-green armchair, he felt a spring dig into the back of his left thigh. He noticed Detective Constable Susan Gay turn up her nose as she looked at a garish oil-painting of Elvis Presley above the mantelpiece. “The King” was wearing a jewelled white cape with a high collar and held a microphone in his ringed hand.
In contrast to the shabby decor, a compact music centre in mint condition stood against one wall, a green-and-yellow budgie in a cage nonchalantly sharpened its bill on a cuttlefish, and an enormous matte black colour television blared out from one corner. “Blockbusters” was on, and Banks heard Bob Holness ask, “What ‘B’ is the name of an African country bordering on South Africa?”
“Could you turn the sound down, please, Mrs Scupham?” Banks asked the woman.
She looked at him blankly at first, as if she didn’t understand his request, then she walked over and turned off the TV altogether. “You can call me Brenda,” she said when she sat down again.
Banks took a closer look at her. In her late twenties, with long dirty-blonde hair showing dark roots, she possessed a kind of blowzy sexuality that hinted at concupiscent pleasure in bed. It was evident in the languor of her movements, the way she walked as if she were in a hot and humid climate.
She was a few pounds overweight, and her pink polo-neck sweater and black mini-skirt looked a size too small. Her full, pouty lips were liberally coated in scarlet lipstick, which matched her long, painted fingernails, and her vacuous, pale blue eyes, surrounded by matching eye-shadow, made Banks feel he had to repeat every question he asked.
Seeing the ashtray on the scratched coffee-table in front of him, Banks took out his cigarettes and offered the woman one. She accepted, leaning forward and holding back her hair with one hand as he lit it for her. She blew the smoke out through her nose, emulating some star she had seen in a film. He lit a cigarette himself, mostly to mask the peculiar smell, redolent of boiled cabbage and nail-polish remover, that permeated the room.
“When did you first get the feeling something was wrong?” he asked her.
She paused and frowned, then answered in a low voice, husky from too many cigarettes. “Just this afternoon. I phoned them, and they said they’d never heard of Mr Brown and Miss Peterson.”
“And you got worried?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you wait so long before checking up?”
Brenda paused to draw on her cigarette. “I don’t know,” she said. “I thought she’d be all right, you know…”
“But you could have called this morning. That’s when they said they’d bring her back, isn’t it?”
“Yes. I don’t know. I suppose so. I just… besides, I’d got things to do.”
“Did the visitors show you any identification?”
“They had cards, like, all official.”
“What did the cards say?”
Mrs Scupham turned her head to one side, showing only her profile. “I didn’t really get a good look. It all happened so fast.”
“Did the cards have photographs on them?”
“No, I don’t think so. I’m sure I would have noticed.”
“What exactly did they say to you?” Banks asked.
“They told me their names and said they was from the social, like, and then they showed their cards…”
“This was at the door, before you let them in?”
“Yes. And then they said they’d come to see me about my Gemma. Well, I had to let them in, didn’t I? They were from the authorities.”
Her voice cracked a little when she mentioned her daughter’s name, and she sucked her lower lip. Banks nodded. “What happened next?”
“When I let them in, they said they’d had reports of Gemma being… well, being abused…”
“Did they say where they’d heard this?”
She shook her head.
“Didn’t you ask them?”
“I didn’t think to. They seemed so… I mean, he was wearing a nice suit and his hair was all short and neatly brushed down, and she was dressed proper smart, too. They just seemed so sure of themselves. I didn’t think to ask anything.”
“Was there any truth in what they said?”
Mrs Scupham flushed. “Of course not. I love my Gemma. I wouldn’t harm her.”
“Go on,” Banks said. “What did they say next?”
“That’s about it really. They said they had to take her in, just overnight, for some tests and examinations, and if everything was all right they’d bring her back this morning, just like I told you on the phone. When they didn’t come, I got so worried… I… How could anyone do something like that, steal someone else’s child?”
Banks could see the tears forming in her eyes. He knew there was nothing he could say to console her. In fact, the best thing he could do was keep quiet about how bloody stupid she’d been, and not ask her if she hadn’t heard about the cases, just a few years ago, when bogus social workers had visited homes all around England with stories just like the one they’d given her. No, best keep quiet.
She had a fear of authority, probably bred into her, that meant she would believe just about anything that someone in a suit with a card, a nice haircut and an educated accent told her. She wasn’t unique in that. Most often, the phoney social workers had simply asked to examine the children in the home, not to remove them. For all the mothers who had sent them packing, Banks wondered how many had allowed the examination and had then been too afraid or ashamed to admit it.
“How old is Gemma?” Banks asked.
“Seven. Just seven.”
“Where’s your husband?”
Mrs Scupham crossed her legs and folded her hands on her lap. “I’m not married,” she said. “You might as well know. Well, there’s no shame in it these days, is there, what with so much divorce about.”
“What about Gemma’s father?”
“Terry?” She curled her upper lip in disgust. “He’s long gone.”
“Do you know where he is?”
Mrs Scupham shook her head. “He left when Gemma was three. I haven’t seen or heard from him since. And good riddance.”
“We need to contact him,” Banks pressed. “Can you give us any information at all that might help?”
“Why? You don’t… surely you don’t think Terry could have had anything to do with it?”
“We don’t think anything yet. At the very least he deserves to know what’s happened to his daughter.”
“I don’t see why. He never cared when he was around. Why should he care now?”
“Where is he, Brenda?”
“I’ve told you, I don’t know.”
“What’s his full name?”
“Garswood. Terry Garswood. Terence, I suppose, but everyone called him Terry.”
“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.