Read Cry of the Children for Free Online Page A

Hook and Detective Sergeant David to go to the girl’s home and divine whatever they could there. Bert Hook was experienced and sensitive, and Ruth David was intelligent and alert to all the possibilities in a situation. And it was always advisable to have a woman to speak to a mother in these appalling circumstances.
    Detective Inspector Rushton would coordinate and computerize the vast array of information that would accrue unless the girl was found alive in the next few hours. Lambert would go immediately to the point where the seven-year-old had last been seen. He was a dinosaur among modern chief supers in demanding to be out and about in pursuit of a solution, rather than coordinating the investigation from behind a desk. But DI Rushton did that job very effectively and Lambert’s methods worked. His chief constable was enough of a pragmatist to tolerate and encourage him.
    Bert Hook and Ruth David did not speak to each other much as Bert drove the police Mondeo to Anthea Gibson’s house. They were an unlikely pair, physically very different. Bert had the sturdy physique of the Minor Counties fast bowler he had been for fifteen years; he was just under six feet tall and broad of shoulder and beam. He subscribed to Fred Trueman’s theory that you needed a powerful backside to bowl fast. He had a countryman’s complexion and an air of sturdy reliability. One of his great advantages as John Lambert’s bagman was that people assumed he was less intelligent than he was and underestimated him. Beneath his PC Plod exterior there lurked a shrewd brain. Hook had completed an Open University degree the previous year – a source of much police ribaldry but also considerable well-concealed respect.
    No one would have assumed that Ruth David was unintelligent. She was seventeen years younger than Bert, possessed a Cambridge degree and had joined the service under the graduate recruitment scheme. She had the tall, willowy figure of an athlete, ash-blonde hair and dark green eyes. She was the source of many male sexual fantasies among the raging hormones at Oldford police station, but with a bearing too formidable for these to give her any problems.
    These two very different physical specimens had great respect for each other. Bert had taken the decision several years earlier not to go for the detective inspector role that would undoubtedly have been his by now had he pursued it. But it was Bert Hook who had told Ruth a month ago that she should now be moving on and becoming an inspector. She had said that she didn’t need the money and preferred for the moment to remain in John Lambert’s team, because she thought she was learning more there than she would elsewhere.
    They drew up outside Anthea Gibson’s house and studied it for a moment before leaving the car. It was a small end-of-terrace. It looked far too unremarkable and far too much like its neighbours to contain the potential tragedy that was unfolding within it. The police pair stood looking at the unmown lawn and the weed-infested borders of the small front garden for a moment before steeling themselves to approach the green front door.
    Anthea Gibson ignored the warrant cards and stared straight into each face in turn. ‘Is there any news?’
    â€˜Not yet, I’m afraid,’ said Ruth David. ‘It’s early days. We’ll have a better chance of finding her in the daylight.’ She was ashamed of herself for the clichés, but she had nothing better to offer. ‘Mrs Gibson, I know you spoke briefly with a uniformed officer last night, but we’re CID. We need a few more details from you to help our search. May we come in?’
    â€˜Yes. Yes, I’m sorry, of course you must.’ She glanced past them and looked up and down the road, as if she hoped to see Lucy’s small face peeping round a hedge and banishing her nightmare.
    â€˜And who is this?’ said Bert Hook, as affably as he could,