Gallows Knot by Giles Ekins

Author:Giles Ekins [Ekins, Giles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Next Chapter

CHAPTER FORTY

SCRIBBLING YELLOW LINES ACROSS THE STICK MAN

Paul Birchall was interviewed by Balderstone and Edgely whilst in an adjacent room, Denise played happily with some crayons, watched over with a motherly eye by WPC Janet Lodge. She is drawing a stick lady with a triangular body and a stick baby in her stomach. Next to it, she draws what might be a pram but could equally be a coal scuttle or a car or a railway carriage. But most likely, it was a pram. She carefully colours it blue. There is no sign of a male figure in the picture.

‘Tell us again, sir, what you were doing in the playground with your niece without her mother’s permission?’ Edgely asks Birchall politely.

‘I’ve told you three or four times already, how many more times?’

‘Until we get it straight,’ answered Balderstone, equally politely, and you can see that this quiet politeness is getting on Birchall’s nerves. He bunches his fists as if ready to lash out and then breathes deeply to calm himself.

‘I … told … you … a thousand times … my sister Mary … is in the … Garside General Hospital … having a baby. She had … complications with Denise, giving birth to Denise, I should say … and the doctor … decided she would … be safer in hospital, … just in case. I told you that.’

‘That doesn’t explain why you took her to Millside Park, to the playground. What were you going to do after the swings, take her up into the woods? Were you going to rape her?’ Edgely said, still politely.

‘No. No, of course not, she’s my niece, my sister’s daughter. For God’s sake, how could you think I could do a thing like that?’

‘You have children of your own? A daughter maybe?’

‘No, no, I’m not married. Never have been.’

‘Why, why is that, sir?’ Balderstone asked.

‘Just never met the right woman, I suppose, not that it’s any of your bloody business.’

‘The father, where’s the father of Mary’s child? Why is he not here to look after Denise? Why you?’

‘Her husband, Sam, he’s in the Navy, he’s a lieutenant on a frigate somewhere in the east. Hong Kong, thereabouts.’

‘What ship?’

‘Does it matter what bloody ship?’ he responded angrily, his voice rising again.

‘Just answer the question please, sir, what ship?’ Edgely asks.

‘HMS Antelope. He was last home on leave, well you can work it out for yourself seeing as how his wife is about to give birth.’

‘You still haven’t answered the question, why you. Why are you looking after Denise?’

‘Obviously because I’m family. She, Mary, we, we have a sister, Kathleen, but she lives in Aberdeen, got two small kids of her own and obviously could not come down all the way from Scotland, besides, they don’t get on too well.’

‘What about your mother, Denise’s grandmother, that would have been more appropriate, wouldn’t it?’

‘Mum? Hardly, she can barely take care of herself. She’s senile, loopy, thinks it’s 1938 and she talks to my Dad all the time as

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