‘Too true. Did you see anyone else? Anything suspicious?’

‘No, nothing. Just a minute, though…’

‘What?’

‘Oh, it’s probably nothing, but just after I saw Johnny, when I was crossing the bridge, I bumped into Colin Gormond, you know, that chap who’s a bit… you know.’

Colin Gormond. I knew him all right. And that wasn’t good news; it wasn’t good news at all.

Of all the policemen they could have sent, they had to send Detective bloody Sergeant Longbottom, a big, brutish-looking fellow with a pronounced limp and a Cro-Magnon brow. Longbottom was thick as two short planks. I doubt he could have found his own arse even if someone nailed a sign on it, or detected his way out of an Anderson shelter if it were in his own back yard. But that’s the calibre of men this wretched war has left us with at home. Along with good ones like me, of course.

DS Longbottom wore a shiny brown suit and a Silverhill Grammar School tie. I wondered where he’d got it from; he probably stole it from a schoolboy he caught nicking sweets from the corner shop. He kept tugging at his collar with his pink sausage fingers as we talked in Mary Critchley’s living room. His face was flushed with the heat, and sweat gathered on his thick eyebrows and trickled down the sides of his neck.

‘So he’s been missing since lunchtime, has he?’ DS Longbottom repeated.

Mary Critchley nodded. ‘He went out at about half past ten, just for a walk like. Said he’d be back at twelve. When it got to three… well, I went to see Mr Bash-combe here.’

DS Longbottom curled his lip at me and grunted. ‘Mr Bascombe. Special Constable. I suppose you realize that gives you no real police powers, don’t you?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘I thought it made me your superior. After all, you’re not a special sergeant, are you?’

He looked at me as if he wanted to hit me. Perhaps he would have done if Mary Critchley hadn’t been in the room. ‘Enough of your lip. Just answer my questions.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You say you looked all over for this lad?’

‘All his usual haunts.’

‘And you found no trace of him?’

‘If I had, do you think we’d have sent for you?’

‘I warned you. Cut the lip and answer the questions. This, what’s his name, Maurice Richards, was he the last person to see the lad?’

‘Johnny’s his name. And yes is the answer, as far as we know.’ I paused. He’d have to know eventually, and if I didn’t tell him, Maurice would. The longer we delayed, the worse it would be in the long run. ‘There was someone else in the area at the time. A man called Colin Gormond.’

Mary Critchley gave a sharp gasp. DS Longbottom frowned, licked the tip of his pencil and scribbled something in his notebook. ‘I’ll have to have a word with him,’ he said. Then he turned to her. ‘Recognize the name, do you, ma’m?’

‘I know Colin,’ I answered, perhaps a bit too quickly.

DS Longbottom stared at Mary Critchley, whose lower lip started quivering, then turned slowly back to me. ‘Tell me about him.’

I sighed. Colin Gormond was an oddball. Some people said he was a bit slow, but I’d never seen any real evidence of that. He lived alone and he didn’t have much to do with the locals; that was enough evidence against him for some people.

And then there were the children.

For some reason, Colin preferred the company of the local lads to that of the rest of us adults. To be quite honest, I can’t say I blame him, but in a situation like this it’s bound to look suspicious. Especially if the investigating officer is someone with the sensitivity and understanding of a DS Longbottom.

Colin would take them trainspotting on the hill overlooking the main line, for example, or he’d play cricket with them on the rec, or hand out conkers when the season came. He sometimes bought them sweets and ice creams, even gave them books, marbles and comics.

To my knowledge, Colin Gormond had never once put a foot out of line, never laid so much as a finger on any of the lads, either in anger or in friendship. There had, however, been one or two mutterings from some parents – most notably from Jack Blackwell, father of one of Johnny’s pals, Nick – that it somehow wasn’t right, that it was unnatural for a man who must be in his late thirties or early forties to spend so much time playing with young children. There must be something not quite right in his head, he must be up to something, Jack Blackwell hinted, and as usual when someone starts a vicious rumour, there is no shortage of willing believers. Such a reaction was only to be expected from someone, of course, but I knew it wouldn’t go down well with DS Longbottom. I don’t know why, but I felt a strange need to protect Colin.

‘Colin’s a local,’ I explained. ‘Lived around here for years. He plays with the lads a bit. Most of them like him. He seems a harmless sort of fellow.’

‘How old is he?’

I shrugged. ‘Hard to say. About forty, perhaps.’

DS Longbottom raised a thick eyebrow. ‘About forty and he plays with the kiddies, you say?’

‘Sometimes. Like a schoolteacher, or a youth club leader.’

‘Is he a schoolteacher?’

‘No.’

‘Is he a youth club leader?’

‘No. Look, what I meant-’

‘I know exactly what you meant, Mr Bascombe. Now you just listen to what I mean. What we’ve got here is an older man who’s known to hang around with young children, and he’s been placed near the scene where a young child has gone missing. Now, don’t you think that’s just a wee bit suspicious?’

Mary Critchley let out a great wail and started crying again. DS Longbottom ignored her. Instead, he concentrated all his venom on me, the softie, the liberal, the defender of child molesters. ‘What do you have to say about that, Mr Special Constable Bascombe?’

‘Only that Colin was a friend to the children and that he had no reason to harm anyone.’

‘Friend,’ DS Longbottom sneered, struggling to his feet. ‘We can only be thankful you’re not regular police, Mr Bascombe,’ he said, nodding to himself, in acknowledgement of his own wisdom. ‘That we can.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ I asked.

DS Longbottom looked at his watch and frowned. Either he was trying to work out what it meant when the little hand and the big hand were in the positions they were in, or he was squinting because of poor eyesight. ‘I’ll have a word with this here Colin Gormond. Other than that, there’s not much more we can do tonight. First thing tomorrow morning, we’ll drag the canal.’ He got to the door, turned, pointed to the windows and said, ‘And don’t forget to put up your blackout curtains, ma’m, or you’ll have the ARP man to answer to.’

Mary Critchley burst into floods of tears again.

Even the soft dawn light could do nothing for the canal. It oozed through the city like an open sewer, oil slicks shimmering like rainbows in the sun, brown water dotted with industrial scum and suds, bits of driftwood and paper wrappings floating along with them. On one side was Ezekiel Woodruff’s scrapyard. Old Woodruff was a bit of an eccentric. He used to come around the streets with his horse and cart, yelling, ‘Any old iron,’ but now the government had other uses for scrap metal – supposedly to be used in aircraft manufacture – poor old Woodruff didn’t have a way to make his living any more. He’d already sent old Nell the carthorse to the knacker’s yard, where she was probably doing her bit for the war effort by helping to make the glue to stick the aircraft together. Old mangles and bits of broken furniture stuck up from the ruins of the scrapyard like shattered artillery after a battle.

On the other side, the bank rose steeply towards the backs of the houses on Canal Road, and the people who lived there seemed to regard it as their personal tip. Flies and wasps buzzed around old hessian sacks and paper bags full of God knew what. A couple of buckled bicycle tyres and a wheel-less pram completed the picture.