Read Cry of the Children for Free Online Page B

drawing into the conversation the heavy, white-faced man who stood in a doorway behind her.
    Mrs Gibson looked startled, as if she had thought that she was alone in the house. Then she said, ‘Yes. Oh, yes. This is Matt Boyd. He’s not my husband. He’s – he’s a friend. A close friend.’
    Bert thought he knew what that meant. ‘We’ll need to speak to you both, but separately, I think. We find people remember things better when they speak to us alone. Is that all right?’
    The pair nodded without looking at each other. Ruth David said, ‘I think we should speak to you first, Mrs Gibson – get a few more details about Lucy to help us with the search.’
    â€˜I’ll wait in the kitchen,’ said Matt Boyd. ‘I’ll come with you to the station afterwards, if that’s all right.’
    â€˜That will be fine,’ said Bert immediately. He wondered why the man didn’t want to be interviewed with the girl’s mother around. Very few people opted to go to the police station to be interviewed; it was generally something the CID offered as a threat when people were being uncooperative. Probably this man would be trying to hear what they said to Mrs Gibson, but he couldn’t blame him for that. Bert shut the door of the living room carefully behind him and went to sit at the other end of the sofa from Ruth David. His colleague was already contemplating the tense face of the woman sitting in the armchair opposite her.
    Ruth waited until the room was still and silent, smiling gently at the young woman who was suffering this rare but excruciating torment. ‘How old is Lucy?’
    She said it easily enough, as though it was nothing other than a gentle opening question, but she was already treading carefully. It was so easy to say ‘was’ rather than ‘is’, and there was no retrieving an error like that once you’d made it.
    Speech was a small relief for Anthea Gibson. She said promptly, ‘Seven and three-quarters last Thursday.’ Then she almost burst into tears, as Lucy’s voice sounded in her ears. ‘I know because she kept telling me that all last week.’ The woman’s small, involuntary giggle showed how near she was to hysteria.
    â€˜Doing well at school, is she?’
    It seemed irrelevant, no more than a polite enquiry. But they needed to know that the girl was normal, whatever that blanket term meant. Children with mental limitations were much more likely to be abused or abducted, because vicious people recognized weakness of any kind and exploited it. Less intelligent children were less aware, less ready to defend themselves against initial advances, more liable to disappear in the way that Lucy had. The statistics showed it, and at this stage, when you had so little else to aid you, you fastened upon statistics.
    Anthea Gibson knew none of this. She said with a tiny smile and a flash of pride, ‘Yes. She’s a good reader and Mrs Copthall said her writing is coming on well. She’s doing pretty well in maths. Not quite as well as in her language work, but that’s girls for you, isn’t it?’
    Ruth didn’t respond to this disavowal of her sex, except with a small smile of encouragement. ‘She hasn’t had any problems at school that you know of?’
    â€˜No. She’s always been a good mixer, the teachers say. She likes going to school.’
    â€˜And you’re not aware of any change in that recently?’
    â€˜No. She chats to me about her friends and what’s been happening.’ Anthea’s tense face clouded with a sudden thought. ‘I’ve not been meeting her at the school gates lately. Daisy, a bigger girl who lives next door but one, brought her home from school each day last week. You don’t think that has anything to do with this, do you?’
    Ruth watched Bert Hook making a note, then said, ‘Almost certainly not, Mrs Gibson.