Endangering Innocents Read Online Free PDF Page A

towards the story area, glanced back once and smiled.

Chapter Three
    3.30 pm
     
    The blue van was parked a little way down the road but still in sight of the reception class window, on the edge of its view. Joanna and Mike watched from the classroom as the cars began to gather, like animals round a waterhole, as three-thirty approached. People got out and waited, shivering at the gate. They looked cold, this huddle of waiting parents, childminders and grandparents. A few stood in clusters. Some stood apart, arms wrapped around them to keep the chill out.
    The blue van stood alone - apart from the other cars - and no one climbed out. The windows were slightly steamy. Inside, the shape of one person bent forward, slightly hunched.
    Joanna kept her eye on it for a couple of minutes then prodded Mike in the side. “I’ll go out,” she said. “He’ll think I’m one of the mums. I’ll have a quiet word with him. When I’m in his car you can approach.” She grinned at him. “But don’t come over all heavy-handed. We don’t want to scare him away.”
    “Oh yes we do,” the teacher intervened.
    “To another school, Miss Salisbury?”
    The teacher shrugged. “I’m responsible for the safety of my own pupils.”
    “And we have a wider remit.”
    She left through the gate at the far end of the playground, the headmistress unlocking the padlock to let her out. Something angry flashed through Joanna’s mind. How we needed to protect children in this so-calledcivilised society. Youngsters from third world countries had problems of deprivation but they were, in general, safer than the so-called privileged offspring of the first world.
    She was standing on the pavement. The light was fading, the air dingy. And in spite of the children peeling out of school in their bright anoraks and dayglo schoolbags the scene seemed flat in colour. And dead, the families resembling nothing so much as Lowrie’s stick groups.
    She approached the van slowly and without glancing once in his direction.
    He was smoking a cigarette, his window open an inch or two to allow the waft of smoke to escape. His gaze, she knew, was focused behind her, at the school gates.
    She crossed behind him, skirted round and knocked on the passenger window. He jumped. He hadn’t noticed her coming.
    She pulled the door open.
    One has a cliched image of a paedophile. Thirties, thin, dishevelled, smelling of cigarettes and a suspicion of alcohol.
    He fitted the description.
    Add small, shifty eyes and scruffy, dirty jeans and he was described down to a T.
    “Hello, Mr Baldwin,” she said crisply, settling down in the passenger seat. “My name is Joanna Piercy. Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy. Leek Police.”
    He gaped at her, the only movement a sharp flick of the cigarette straight through the gap in his window. She heard it sizzle in a roadside puddle.
    “Do you want to see my ID?”
    His eyes moved swiftly across her face then dropped. He shook his head.
    She peered through the windscreen at the grey day. “It’s a nice sight, isn’t it, the children coming out of school - finding their families and going home, safe and sound?”
    He looked across at her again, a wary expression on his face.
    “Why do you come here, Joshua?” she asked softly.
    No answer.
    She pressed on. “Don’t you know the teachers and families - the people who care for these children - worry about people - particularly men - who hang around schools?”
    His head dropped further. It seemed an admission of guilt.
    “You don’t have any children?”
    Again he said nothing. He could almost have been briefed by a solicitor. “Look, Joshua,” she pointed out reasonably, “the teachers and the parents have noticed you here. They are concerned. They think. They believe. They don’t understand why you’re here. And I must admit I don’t either.”
    “To look after them.” It was a protestation of innocence.
    “They have their families to do that. Childminders.”
    He lifted