Perseverance Street (16 page)

Four hours later Lily was sitting at Dee’s kitchen table, looking at a photograph of Michael grinning at the camera. Just behind his left shoulder was a large man talking to a woman who was sitting half out of shot to Michael’s right; both of them were oblivious to the fact that they were being photographed.

‘That’s
Oldroyd,’ Lily had confirmed. She found herself suddenly in tears, caused by the black and white evidence that she hadn’t been imagining all this. In the second shot of Michael, the Oldroyds had moved their heads so that they were both looking away from the camera.

‘They must have seen you taking that one,’ Dee guessed, ‘but I’m guessing they don’t know about the first one. Lily, girl, we have a photo of Michael’s abductor.’

The following day Dee went back to her photographer friend who isolated Oldroyd’s head and printed off half a dozen seven- by five-inch copies plus another half-dozen of the original photograph.

DS Bannister showed the photographs to Inspector Foster, explaining who they were purported to show.

‘And she wants us to print this in the papers, does she?’

‘She does, sir.’

‘And if we do – even saying it’s a man we only want to question
in connection
with the Michael Robinson abduction and he turns out to be a completely innocent man who’s had the bad luck to be in the background of a photograph, just how much damage do you think it’ll do to him, Sergeant?’

‘I don’t imagine it’ll do him much good, sir – people always believe there’s no smoke without fire.’

‘He could sue the force, Sergeant. It’s happened before. Us barking up the wrong tree and causing an innocent man damage. Could cost us hundreds, maybe even thousands, depending who he is.’

‘Sir, with respect, this is all about what happened last year, isn’t it?’

‘Of course
it bloody is, John! I’m responsible for the death of a three-year-old boy. Do you blame me for treading carefully?’

‘But can we allow what happened last year to influence how we handle this case? Last year we had protesters defending a mad woman. Mrs Robinson’s neighbours are dead against her and she doesn’t appear to be the least bit mad to me. According to WPC Morley what happened in court was a travesty of justice.’

Foster sighed, heavily, and shook his head. ‘Look, John, this is my decision, not yours. The answer is no, we don’t print the photos. Libelling a man on the word of a woman who’s recently been sentenced to serve time in a psychiatric hospital. I doubt if I’d survive something like that.’

‘Sir.’

‘I was quite surprised to hear she’d been released so soon.’

‘Discharged, sir – declared sane.’

‘Hmm … I’ve never been declared sane, have you, Sergeant?

‘No, sir.’

‘To be declared sane you have to have been insane at some stage.’

‘You know that aunt of hers, Delilah Maguire, gave us the names of several women who she said had been sexually assaulted by a Dr Freeman who ran the hospital Robinson was sent to. I sent the information through to Keighley.’

‘So I understand. Have we heard from them?’

‘This morning, sir. They’re investigating and it seems there’s some truth in what the Maguire woman says. They picked Freeman up for questioning.’

‘And do you
think there’s a link between this and Freeman giving the Robinson woman a clean bill of health? Maybe a bit of blackmail – only Maguire and Robinson didn’t keep their side of the bargain.’

‘Could be, sir, although I doubt there’s much anyone can do. Evidently, when Mrs Robinson was captured in the Town Hall she accused her father-in-law of using his influence as a magistrate to have her put away in a loony bin. According to WPC Morley it could explain why she was sentenced so severely. The in-laws have now got custody of her baby.’

‘Have they now? Well, I think the magistrates might want to let sleeping dogs lie on that one.’

‘It seems there’s more to this Mrs Robinson woman than meets the eye, sir.’

‘I’m not all sure about her – never have been.’

‘I understand that, sir. So how do we play it – bearing in mind that she could be telling the truth?’

The inspector sat back in his chair and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Bloody hell, I could do without this. Right now we’ve got a manpower problem that’s not going to be resolved any time soon. I personally think this woman’s trying to distract us from the truth.’

‘The truth, sir?’

‘Another version of the truth, John. The truth that she knows perfectly well where her son is. To have got herself out of that nuthouse in double-quick time by whatever means, she has to be a devious woman who could waste us a lot of time – time we don’t have.’

‘So, what do we do, sir? We can’t ignore a missing child.’

‘No, but we
can
ignore
its devious mother. We’ll continue to conduct our enquiries along our own lines. In the meantime I think we send these photos to the Grassington plod.’

‘I don’t think he’s the enquiring type, sir.’

‘Luckily that’s
not our problem, Sergeant.’

They were walking down the street towards Dee’s motorbike. Lily didn’t know whether to be angry or distressed. Angry was better, she knew that, but she also knew that the police thought she was a murderer. They hadn’t spoken since Bannister had come to the front desk to tell them of Foster’s decision not to publish the photographs.

‘I think I’ll buy a van,’ Dee mused. ‘This motorbike and sidecar’s OK for a single girl but it’s highly unsociable when you’ve got company. You and me can talk in a van – discuss tactics and stuff.’

‘They think I murdered my boy,’ said Lily. ‘They think I’m a murderer. There’s no point even bothering with the police if that’s what they believe.’

‘I think you’ve got that right, girl. You and me can handle this on our own.’

‘We’ll have to handle it on our own,’ Lily said, ‘the police aren’t going to be any help to us now. Trouble is, what do we do next?’

‘We go to Grassington,’ said
Dee. ‘We find the café where you took the photographs and we ask around – see if anyone recognises Oldroyd and his wife, or whoever he really is.’

An hour and a half later they were in the Dales Café in Grassington showing the photographs to the proprietor, who was shaking his head.

‘Passing trade most probably,’ he said. ‘Like ninety per cent of our trade. Very few locals coming here to buy a cup of tea, they’ve all got their own kettles and teapots at home. I’ll show it to the wife, see if she recognises either of them, but I doubt it.’

He took the photographs through a door behind the counter and came back a minute later still shaking his head. ‘No, sorry, like I said, they must have been passing trade. Were they anybody special? Long-lost relatives or summat?’

‘Not relatives as such,’ said Dee. ‘But they’re people near and dear to us who we’d like to get in touch with.’

‘There might be a reward, say two pounds or something,’ said Lily. ‘If someone knew where they are.’ She looked at a board in the window displaying many local advertisements. ‘Would it be OK if we stuck the photos in the window for a few weeks?’

‘For a tanner a week you can have them both in for as long as you want.’

Dee took out her purse and handed a two-shilling coin over to the man. ‘There you go, we’ll have it in for a month. Do you have a piece of paper we can stick them on and write a little reward notice with a telephone number?’

Five minutes later they were
both standing outside the café looking at the notice they’d just placed in the window. It read:
Do you know the identity and whereabouts of either of the people in these photographs? If so please ring Bradford 36214. £2 reward
.

Lily nodded at it approvingly, then wondered, ‘Do you think we should have gone over the top and made it five pounds?’

Dee shook her head. ‘No, if we offer too much money we might get too many chancers ringing us up. As it is, I think we might get quite a few time-wasters.’ She clapped her hands together decisively. ‘Right, seeing as we’re in the district I think I’d like to take a look at this mystery house. Is it far?’

‘It is if you’re walking, with a full-term baby in your belly,’ said Lily. ‘But it’s about five minutes by motorbike.’

Five minutes later they were walking up the pathway that led from the road to Lark House. Lily stood back as Dee looked through all the windows and walked all around the house. When she’d finished her inspection Dee returned to Lily who was sitting on a garden seat on the overgrown front lawn.

‘Seen enough?’ asked Lily.

‘Yeah, I just wanted to get the full picture. To see what you saw that day. To try and get an idea of how you must have felt. I imagine coming back here must bring back bad memories.’

‘Good and
bad, actually,’ said Lily. ‘Good when I came here with Michael, and bad, really bad, when I came here the last time. I expected Michael to be here, probably in the back garden, or leaning over the fence feeding the horses, or maybe playing in the stream. What I found was what you see now: an old, empty house, with no one in it. No people, no furniture, no Michael … nothing.’

‘And you nearly nine months’ pregnant,’ said Dee. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘The trouble is I
do
think about it. I have to think about everything, and to try and make some sense of it. Somewhere there’s a clue as to where Michael is.’

Dee turned to look back at the house, ‘Oh, if only you could talk, big old house. If only you could give us that clue.’

‘Maybe we could get some flyers printed,’ Lily suggested. ‘Stick them all around the Dales.’

Dee suddenly turned back to Lily and slapped the palm of her hand against the side of her head in exasperation.

‘You idiot, Maguire! Why didn’t you think of this before?’

‘Think of what?’ Lily asked.

‘The
Craven Herald
.’

‘What about it?’

‘It’s the Dales newspaper, in Skipton. I know a reporter there who might help us, in exchange for a good story.’

‘Do you think they’ll run the photographs?’

‘I imagine so. It covers a decent area – a lot wider than a café in Grassington.’

Lily got up and took a last look at the house she hoped she’d never see again; the house which had been the cause of all this misery. She followed Dee to the motorbike.

The
Craven Herald and
Pioneer
was one of very first newspapers to publish photographs; the first example was a society wedding in 1905. Forty years later Lily and Dee were hoping they’d publish a photograph of Michael’s abductors. Dee’s reporter friend had already been working on the
West Yorkshire Pioneer
for fifteen years when it was taken over by the
Craven Herald
in 1934. Henry Smithson was a fifty-year-old graduate of what he called the school of hard knocks. He was married to a woman whom he called Frosty Freda and he supplemented his inadequate conjugal rights with a weekly liaison with Madge from the typing pool. There had been a time when he’d set his cap at Dee but Dee told him straight, she was many things but not a marriage breaker. They were, however, good friends, with Dee having a more understanding ear than Madge. Between them, according to Henry, she and Madge made a far better wife than Frosty Freda. He studied the photographs at his desk in the corner of the newsroom which wasn’t quite as busy as Lily imagined a newsroom would be.

She told him her story in full including her time at the psychiatric hospital. It shocked him. He lit his pipe which, Lily found, had a pleasant aroma. The pipe matched the man, as did his sports jacket complete with leather elbow patches. He wore a red and white spotted bow tie, three pens clipped into his breast pocket and a regimental badge pinned to his left lapel.

‘I can see why the police were reluctant to have these photographs published in connection with your son’s abduction. It’d be difficult to write an article along with these photographs and that article not be libellous.’

‘Henry, are you
not going to take my word that this man abducted Lily’s son?’

Henry looked at Lily through narrowed eyes as if assessing her character. She returned his gaze with a similar one of her own, which made him smile. He leaned back in his chair with the pipe jammed into the corner of his mouth, linked his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.

‘He’s thinking,’ said Dee. ‘He does a lot of that.’

After a long minute Henry opened his eyes again, withdrew the pipe from his mouth, said, ‘Blast!’ and proceeded to light it once again.

‘Let me get this straight,’ he said. ‘All you want to do is to locate these people? You’re not planning on making a citizen’s arrest or anything daft like that?’

‘For now, that’s all I want,’ said Lily. ‘I just want to know where they are and preferably who they are.’

‘We can take it from there,’ said Dee.

‘And God help them,’ said Henry. ‘What I can do is print these photographs as though they’re missing people, with concerned relatives trying to locate them. We mention nothing about the boy’s abduction, nothing that can be construed as being in any way libellous.’

With his pipe relit he resumed his recumbent position, smoke billowing while he puffed vigorously. He looked from one woman to the other.

‘So, how does that sound?’

‘It sounds good,’ said Lily.

‘And I get the exclusive rights to the story?’

‘You do,’ said Dee, ‘providing you give us any help you can along the way.’

‘Sounds like we’ve
got a deal,’ said Henry, happy now that his pipe was behaving itself. He leaned forward and thrust a hand towards Lily. She took it happily, knowing that this man was also on their side. Now there were three of them. Henry shook hands with Dee and got to his feet. ‘Right, ladies. It’ll be in next Thursday’s edition, hopefully on
page two
.’

‘No chance of the front page then?’ said Lily.

‘No chance at
all,’ said Henry. ‘The front page is reserved for advertisements, better known at this newspaper as our bread and butter.’

‘You knew it was a real diamond didn’t you?’