Free Endangering Innocents by Priscilla Masters

bleary-eyed, his mousy brown hair thin and dusty, sticking up all over the place. He smelt unwashed and looked as though he had not slept either. “Tea or coffee?” she asked.
    “Tea. Two sugars.” The PC was dispatched to the canteen.
    “Any news?” Baldwin asked.
    “Come on, Baldwin,” she said. “Give us a break. Whatever’s done is done. We only want to find her. Where is she?”
    It was her first direct attack, brought on by a night without sleep, a genuine worry for the child, a feeling that Baldwin was playing a dreadful game of cat and mouse with her. The colour drained from his face as he absorbed her words and her hostility. He stared back at her, chalk-faced, accepted the tea and drank it without shifting his eyes from hers. When he’d completely drained the mug, tilting it practically upside down and finishing with a noisy slurp, he put it on the desk firmly, and studied the walls of the room.
    She badly wanted to needle him
. “We have your computer,” she said.
    She and Baldwin eyed each other warily. She found him difficult to gauge. Sometimes he seemed of limited intelligence. Joshua, the clown, who tripped over buckets of water strategically placed and had pancakes aimed at his face. She had to remind herself that this was all an act. In fact everything was carefully rehearsed, like a play. Magic depended on split second timing, on a distorted time-span, a speeding up, a slowing down. Illusion. A deflection of the audience’s eye, strategic use of mirrors. A flick of the cardsharp’s hand, a piece of elastic which tugged a handkerchief up a sleeve and made it seem as though it had disappeared. Was it the same with the abduction of a child? Had he known the children would be let out of school fifteen minutes early and used that for his trick? Knowing the parents’ eyes would be distracted - on coloured, paper Easter eggs, over-excited offspring, a little boy who bumped his aeroplane wings and knocked other children over?
    Had the vanishing trick depended on when exactly Madeline Wiltshaw had left the classroom, and on everyone’s attention being diverted?
    She knew Baldwin was perfectly aware what they would be looking for when they downloaded his computer.
     
    After a further hour’s stonewalling from Baldwin it was Joanna who needed a break. She left the room, almost careering headlong into Korpanski. He must have been watching through the two-way mirror. “Not getting very far, are you, Jo?”
    “Nope.” She stared at Korpanski. “Unless we get further evidence we’re going to have to let him go,” she said. “We’ve nothing on him. Not really.”
    She could almost hear Korpanski grind his teeth. “Sometimes,” he said, “I think the old fashioned interviewing techniques are the best way to get confessions out of suspects. Not this pussy-footing.”
    “You mean the bash-it-out-of-them brigade? Oh, Mike,” she said. “You don’t even believe in that yourself. And we both know it would get our case thrown out of court and a nice disciplinary action from the C.C.”
    “Well, it would get results.”
    “It could get Baldwin off - whether he’s guilty or innocent. And another child could vanish. No thank you. We’ll get our results through police work, Mike,” she said, “through checking and rechecking, interviewing suspects, reliance on our forensic teams.”
    “And in the meantime, what happens to the child?”
    “Don’t,” she said. “Breaking all the rules won’t be what keeps her - and other children - alive.”
     
    Facing Baldwin again she felt confused. She should be able to rattle him. She had plenty of circumstantial evidence against him. Reliable witnesses - plenty of them - placed him outside the school at the time whenMadeline had vanished. He had been seen there before on numerous occasions and had been warned off. But he had been “brought in for questioning” less than an hour after Madeline had last been seen. He was a lone man who spent his