Endangering Innocents by Priscilla Masters Page A

way. No person. Just the hands. Baldwin was absorbed. He had no idea he was being watched.
    She pushed open the door.
    He looked up, stared, unsmiling.
    She knew he recognised her.
    The officer announced her arrival into the tape recorder. She sat down opposite Baldwin and he stared deep into her eyes without fear, apprehension or emotion.
    “So we meet again, Mr Baldwin.”
    He nodded and Joanna had a vague feeling he was the one in control. Not her.
    “Why have you brought me here?”
    “A little girl has gone missing from Horton Primary.” Joanna flicked the picture of Madeline Wiltshaw across the table. The child stared, unemotionally, into the camera. Pudding face, pudding haircut, solemn, almost adult expression in Italianate black eyes.
    Baldwin recognised her too.
    “I did warn you how it would be,” Joanna said slowly, her eyes still fixed on the photograph. “A child goes missing from outside the very school you’ve been haunting. I never knew why you were there. Now I wonder. And, being a policewoman, my thoughts are not very pleasant. Where is she, Baldwin, the little girl you were so keen on defending?”
    Baldwin’s eyes were green flecked with yellow.
    Goat eyes.
    His tongue flicked over his lips. “I don’t know.”
    It was a lousy defence.
    “You were there today,” Joanna said. “Outside the school.”
    “Who saw me?”
    “That is so irrelevant, Mr Baldwin. You were seen. It doesn’t matter who saw you. We can, if necessary, get a sworn statement from a reliable witness, that you were outside Horton Primary School at the very time that the gates were opened and the children let out. Early for the Easter holidays. Now don’t play with me, Baldwin. You can have a solicitor if you like but I want to know where Madeline is.”
    He must have sensed her temper was rising. He scraped his chair back a few inches. He stopped staring so boldly. Goat eyes changed to something almost apologetic. Something a little nearer an appeal. Dominance had shifted from him to her. “I don’t know.”
    His appeal was for her to believe him.
    “Where have you put her?”
    “I haven’t touched her. But I’m sure she’s all right.”
    Joanna was taken aback by his faith. Something was not quite right here. Baldwin’s reactions were strange. She glanced down to his deck of cards neatly stacked, hands either side, steady and still.
    “Mr Baldwin. How can you say that you think she is all right? Madeline Wiltshaw is five years old. She is far too small to be making her way the four miles across open country from Horton to Leek. And there are people who would harm such a small child, unprotected. If you are sure that this little girl is all right then you must know something I do not.” Now it was she who was making the appeal. “Please. We want to find her. Alive and well. Please. Help us.”
    Baldwin shook his head. “I can’t.”
    She leaned forward across the table. “You know we can keep you here for twenty-four hours? Maybe longer.”
    He nodded.
    “You know you have the right to a solicitor - when one can be found?”
    Again he nodded.
    “And we’ve already applied for a warrant to search your flat.”
    That was when the yellow flecks in his eyes flickered and died.
     
    She joined Korpanski in the corridor.
    “Two bits of news. One, the SOCOs are working inside the flat. She definitely isn’t there, Jo. What’s more - they haven’t found any evidence yet that she ever has been there.”
    Joanna felt a mixture of emotion. To have found the child, alive, untouched, would have been a relief to them all. But the beginning of awkward questions which would have ended in criticism at the way she had handled the school complaint.
    To have found Madeline in Baldwin’s flat would have opened a huge can of worms - even if she was unharmed. Joanna’s head could still have rolled in the fallout, herintegrity be called to question, her judgement criticised. Let alone the damage done to her own conscience