Free Cry of the Children by J.M. Gregson

anyone when I’d finished at the shooting gallery. I won a prize, you see. A small one, but I let Lucy choose what she wanted. All my attention must have been on her and the prizes at that moment.’
    â€˜I see. What was it you won?’
    â€˜A little doll. Just a simple rag one, with a big face and a stupid smile. But Lucy seemed to like it. She kept waving its arm at me as she went round and round in that blue bus on her ride.’
    â€˜Just a minute.’
    Lambert levered himself up without taking his eyes off Boyd and went out to the bags of exhibits that DI Rushton was beginning to catalogue in the murder room. He returned within his minute, during which Hook and Boyd had exchanged not a word. He held the polythene bag by its corner. ‘Would this be the doll you gave to Lucy?’
    Matt Boyd’s eyes widened in horror as he looked at the contents. ‘Yes. That’s the doll. It didn’t have that mud on it when I gave it to her, obviously. Where did you get it?’
    â€˜It was found in the wood you mentioned. The one where you think the abductor took Lucy.’
    The three men stared at the small, pathetic item. Matt was conscious that after a moment the two CID men had transferred their gaze to his face, but he could not move his own eyes from that piteous reminder of the girl who had waved at him from the roundabout. Lambert’s voice seemed to come from a long way away as it said with quiet insistency, ‘We need your account of the rest of the evening, Mr Boyd.’
    Matt took another huge breath. He needed to concentrate upon this above all. ‘There’s nothing else to tell. I didn’t see Lucy again.’
    â€˜You need to look at this from our point of view, Mr Boyd. You are the last person known to have seen Lucy and there is very much more to tell. You said last night that Lucy vanished at around half past seven. Do you wish to revise that?’
    â€˜No, not really. It was probably a little later than that, but not much. When I couldn’t find Lucy, the last thing I was thinking about was what the time was.’
    â€˜That at any rate is understandable. What is less so is how long you took to report her disappearance to us. Had we been informed immediately, we might have been able to help.’
    â€˜Might have cordoned off the area,’ agreed Matthew Boyd dully. ‘The uniformed man told me that last night.’
    Lambert doubted privately whether they would have had the personnel available on a Saturday night to surround such a large area. It was far more likely that they’d have been reassuring the mother that children usually turned up by the end of the evening and trying to explore all the homes to which a small girl might have fled when she panicked. But he felt no inclination to take the pressure off this thickset, apprehensive figure in front of him. ‘According to Mrs Gibson, you didn’t return to her house until around nine o’clock. Even allowing for the fact that you cannot be precise about the times, that still leaves us with a gap of at least eighty minutes. What were you doing during that time?’
    He’d expected the question, but it came across the table from Lambert more like an accusation. ‘I thought I’d find her. I couldn’t believe she was gone, at first. Then I thought she must be playing a trick on me – that she’d hidden herself away and was going to come out and laugh at me.’
    â€˜Is Lucy a frisky little girl? Would she enjoy playing hide and seek with you like that?’
    Frisky. Matt wanted to say that she was; it would help to explain his conduct, surely. But he wasn’t sure what Anthea would have told them and he couldn’t afford to contradict the girl’s mother, could he? ‘No, not really, I suppose. But I didn’t know her all that well, did I? You pointed out yourself that it was the first time we’d been out alone together. I suppose