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‘What? You left your child with this stranger? All right, so she said she was a teacher at the kindergarten, but you only had her word for it, didn’t you? And didn’t it occur to you to wonder, if you were so late, what was this so-called teacher doing wandering around outside at that time too?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think of that. Not then.’
She sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded him earnestly.
‘But I wouldn’t have left Noll if I hadn’t been certain, no matter how much of a hurry I was in. I knew she was a teacher because I’d met her in the school. On Friday afternoon when I picked Noll up. She was there. In the school. She talked to me about Noll. She said she’d just started and was trying to get to know all the mothers.’
‘But Mrs Vestey says …’
‘She’s a liar!’ cried Maguire, jumping up once more. ‘She’s the one you should be questioning. That bitch. She’s a liar, a liar, a liar!’
She was moving round the room again. But now the cat-like grace had gone, to be replaced by something much more spasmodic, angular, almost manic.
WPC Scott was looking at him anxiously. He nodded and she rose and slipped quietly out.
He said, ‘When you fainted, Mrs Maguire, the last words you said were, I quote: it’s all my fault; I shouldn’t have hit him. What do you think you meant by that?’
She came to a sudden halt, freezing to complete stillness like a child playing statues.
‘It was me who said that?’ she asked, though it was only marginally a question.
‘So I am informed.’
‘I must have meant … I suppose I meant … it was when I was getting him out of the car. That’s it. He was yelling his head off and flailing out with his hands and legs. He kicked me on the shin. It was an accident. When I looked down, I saw he’d torn my tights and I swore. I said, “Oh shit!” and he took it up. You know what little boys are like with naughty words. He just stood there shouting, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” and I hit him. I didn’t think about it. I just slapped his leg very hard like my mother used to do to me. He didn’t cry or anything. In fact he went completely silent. I’d never hit him before, you see. Then his face began to crumple up and he turned to run away, and that’s when he ran into Miss Gosling. Perhaps if I hadn’t hit him … And we never made up …’
Her body was racked with huge sobs, each one of which visibly drained her reserves of strength. She seemed to be collapsing in on herself and she had started rocking to and fro like a tower in an earthquake, when the door opened and a nurse and a doctor hurried in, with Scott close behind.
They caught her and lifted her towards the bed.
‘Do you mind?’ said the nurse angrily, as she found Cicero in her way. The doctor scowled at him with unconcealed distaste and even WPC Scott couldn’t hide her disapproval.
Dog Cicero didn’t seem to register any of this, but watched pensively as they laid Jane Maguire on the bed. The doctor said, ‘I think you’d better go now, Inspector. We can’t delay this X-ray any longer.’
‘Yes, of course. Excuse me.’
He leaned over the bed before they could draw the sheet up and looked at the woman’s shins. Then he went across to the tall locker against the wall, opened it, reached in, and emerged with a pair of tights. He held them up to the light, and stretched them out.
They were perfect.
‘Let us know as soon as she’s fit to talk to us again, won’t you?’ he said pleasantly.
He went out. The young constable followed. In the corridor he said to her, ‘You stay here, Scott. By the bedside. Whatever she says, waking or sleeping, you make a note. Get me?’
‘Sir, what do you think …? The child, will he be all right?’
‘Is he still alive, you mean?’ He regarded her steadily. ‘If you can get even money, take it, Scott.’
He walked away. She watched him go, then with a sick heart went back into the room.
4 (#ulink_67ba00be-8fdf-54aa-9d91-fedba9c06ff9)
The sign was brash and new: FAMILY FUN HEALTH CENTRE in big black letters on a white ground strewn with cameos of families having fun on exercise bikes, in a sauna, under sun lamps.
Dog Cicero had been here before. He knew if you removed the sign above the entrance you would find chiselled in the granite lintel: SHELL STREET YOUTH CLUB, OPENED MAY 1921 BY ALDERMAN CALDER DSO JP.
Last time he had stepped through these doors, he’d been fifteen, and memory programmed him to expect peeling olive green paint, worn linoleum, bare bulbs, a smell of damp wood, the stridency of punk guitars.
Instead he found pastel shades, carpet tiling, strip lighting, an odour of embrocation oil and the bounce of James Last.
Someone had turned Shell Street Youth Club into a place fit to get fit in.
Not that the woman sitting at a small reception desk looked much of an advertisement for the service. If fat was still a feminist issue, here was a profound political statement.
‘I’m looking for Granger,’ said Dog.
‘He’s in the gym. Can I help? I’m Mrs Granger. Was it one of our courses you’re interested in?’
‘No.’ He produced his warrant card. ‘Just an enquiry.’
She didn’t look surprised. Or worried.
‘Come with me,’ she said.
She led him through a door into a corridor. A willowy blonde looking like the after to the older woman’s before came towards them. Mrs Granger said, ‘Suzie, watch the desk for a minute, will you?’
There had been something euphemistically called a gym in the youth club. This too had changed; sprung floor, white pine, and enough gleaming implements to delight an Inquisitor’s heart. A couple of youths were pushing and pulling at steel levers, watched by a burly middle-aged man who came to the door in response to a gesture from Mrs Granger.
‘George, this is Inspector Cicero,’ she said. ‘My husband, Inspector.’
‘Cicero? There was a chippie called Cicero’s.’
‘My father’s. Mr Granger, if you can spare a moment, I’d like to ask about a member of your staff. A Mrs Maguire. Mrs Jane Maguire.’
The Grangers exchanged glances.
‘So what’s she been saying?’ demanded the woman.
‘Is there somewhere we can talk? If you’re not too busy.’ He glanced into the quiet gym.
‘We fill up later on,’ said Granger defensively. Dog looked at his watch. Ten to five. He recalled what Maguire had said.
Granger led the way to a small office. Three was very much a crowd in here, especially when two were built like the Grangers. He had clearly eaten at the same table as his wife even if he had been rather more successful in preserving the fat–muscle ratio.
‘Right, Mr Cicero, let’s hear it.’
There was an edge of something there. Aggression? Anger? Defiance? Endo said, just keep dealing the cards, son, and sooner or later they’ll tell you what they’re at.
He asked, ‘What time did Mrs Maguire get to work this morning?’
Another exchange of glances, this time puzzled. Then the woman said with remembered indignation, ‘Ten to ten. I had to start her aerobics class.’
Dog thought of Maguire’s lithe athletic figure and nodded gravely.
‘And did she leave at her usual time? That’s two-thirty, I believe.’
‘No!’ exploded Granger. ‘She did not!’
‘You mean she left early? Why was that?’
‘She left early because I fired her! That’s why she left. What’s she been saying, Inspector?’
‘You fired her?’ said Dog. ‘For being late?’
Again he got the bewildered reaction.
The woman said, ‘I think you’d better tell us why you’re asking these questions, Inspector.’
‘No,’ said Dog equably. ‘I think you’d better tell me why you’re giving these answers. Why did you dismiss Mrs Maguire, Mr Granger?’
He looked at his wife. She nodded permission. He said, ‘I sacked her because there was a complaint. I’d asked her to give one of our regular clients a massage. It was about midday. Some little time later I heard her voice raised in the treatment room and then she came out. I went in to see what was the matter and the client made a very serious complaint which left me no alternative but to sack her.’
‘What exactly was this complaint?’
Granger said hesitantly, ‘Well, he, the client, accused Mrs Maguire of … making an indecent suggestion.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Dog.
‘For heaven’s sake, George,’ interrupted Mrs Granger impatiently. ‘She offered to jerk him off. For twenty-five pounds, Inspector!’
She sounded more indignant at the price than the proposal.
‘And what did Mrs Maguire say when you put this to her?’ said Dog to the man.
‘She told me it was her business. She said she was only offering what these men really wanted. And when I told her she was fired, she became very abusive and said if it was the Centre’s good name I was worried about, I’d better forget it, because by the time she was finished with me, it would stink.’
‘And then she assaulted him,’ said Mrs Granger.
‘What?’
Granger looked embarrassed.
‘It wasn’t anything.’
‘She punched you in the stomach,’ retorted his wife. ‘He was doubled up with pain. I wanted him to call the police. If it had been a man he would have done, and in my book a violent woman’s just as dangerous as a violent man.’
‘It would have made me look silly and not done the Centre’s reputation any good,’ said Granger. ‘The same about the other thing. Sacking her and letting the whole thing drop seemed the best course.’
‘And your client went along with this?’ said Dog.
‘Oh yes,’ said the woman. ‘He’d got a name to protect too. Mud sticks.’
‘And what is this name he’s protecting?’ asked Dog.
The man said, ‘I daresay you’ll know it, Inspector. It’s Jacobs. Councillor Jacobs. So you see, Mrs Maguire picked the wrong man when she picked on him!’
They were right. Councillor Jacobs was the amplifier through which the still small voice of God was heard plain in Romchurch. The scourge of corruption, the trimmer of budgets, the guardian of the public purse and, as chairman of the Police Liaison Committee, the answer to the Chief Constable’s prayers.
He asked a few more questions then left. On his way past the desk, he paused and smiled at the skinny blonde. She looked about twenty and had a cheerful, open face. He said, ‘Do you know Mrs Maguire?’
Her expression lost its openness.
‘Who’s asking?’ she said guardedly.
He told her and she said, ‘Is it about her getting the boot?’
‘That’s right,’ he lied easily. ‘Were you around?’
‘No. I had to go out at lunchtime. I had a dentist’s appointment.’
She opened her mouth as though inviting him to check. He looked in and she ran her moist pink tongue along her upper teeth and grinned as he looked away.
‘Is it right she belted old George in the gut?’ she asked.
‘Did you know her well?’
‘No. Hardly at all. She was a bit stuck up, know what I mean? But she’ll be OK, won’t she?’
Dog said, ‘Any reason she shouldn’t be OK?’
‘No!’ she asserted strongly. ‘Not as if she hasn’t got someone to take care of her, is it?’
A boy friend, you mean? I thought you said you didn’t know her socially.’
‘That’s right, but I know a dreamboat when I see one. I could have eaten him for supper, numb gums and all.’
‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Dog.
‘Her boy friend, of course! He was looking to meet her after work this afternoon, only he wasn’t to know she’d got the heave, was he? So he came in when she didn’t come out at half two like she usually does, and asked where she was.’
‘And what did you tell him?’
‘Nothing at first. I just played him along to see how well attached he was. We were getting on fine till I told him she’d left early, then he took off pretty smart so it must be serious, worse luck.’
‘Describe him.’
‘Well, like I say, he was gorgeous.’ Seeing from Dog’s face that more was required, she went on, ‘Like Tom Cruise, know what I mean? Only really blond. And he had this sexy accent, Scotch or maybe Irish, they all sound the same, don’t they? And his name was Billy.’
That was it, but it was enough. In a lot of child abuse cases there was a boy friend on the scene, not the child’s father. Maguire had denied having a man in her life. Another question mark. Sometimes you couldn’t see the answers for the questions.
