Page 7

SIX

Rona led Gina and Jacob into one of the study rooms at the back of the library. ‘We shouldn’t get disturbed here.’

Gina entered the chilly box room while Rona turned the light on. It reminded Gina of one of the cells back at the station, only smaller and carpeted. There was a desk, a computer and one chair. Rona quickly left and came back with two folded plastic chairs. She positioned them against the wall and they all sat.

Jacob got his notebook out, while Gina shifted in the chair to get comfortable. Rona’s long, honey-streaked blonde hair flopped forward as she pulled herself in a little closer. Gina introduced herself and Jacob and Rona gave them her full name.

‘I guess you want to know what I thought of him, the man on the CCTV?’

Gina nodded. ‘He was found dead this morning and we’re following up on some leads.’

‘You two are police detectives, so you wouldn’t be here if he’d had a heart attack. Does that mean he was murdered?’

Gina scrunched her brows, wondering how much to say. ‘It doesn’t look that way, but there is more to the case, which is why we’re here. Can you tell me why you referred to him as a creep?’

Rona looked down and frowned, as if trying to work out what to say, when someone knocked at the door.

‘Come in,’ Rona called. Selma entered with a tray of drinks and left them on the desk. ‘Thanks, Sel.’ Rona handed them out and sipped her coffee.

She sighed. ‘I said what I said because he is a creep. I’m going to start at the beginning: my daughter often hangs out at the library while I work – I don’t like her being alone at home all day when she’s not at school. She’s thirteen now, by the way, and I know a lot of parents don’t mind their kids being at home on their own at that age, but she’s quite sensitive and she gets lonely. She’s like me, too, a total bookworm, so quite often she’s here sitting in the beanbag zone reading. One day, I found him – the man that Selma had up on the screen – sitting next to her. He seemed a bit too comfortable, laughing with her, telling her how much he loved Harry Potter – that’s what she was reading at the time. I heard my daughter getting carried away as they talked about the characters and who their favourites were. To me, it sounded like he was trying to groom her, and he was sitting so close it definitely made me uncomfortable. Why on earth would a man of his age sit on a beanbag and chat to a young girl?’ Rona paused.

‘Go on.’

‘Actually, that sounds a little judgy, that’s why I gave myself a bit of an internal ticking off. I mean, just because he’s a grown man, why can’t he like books aimed at kids? In fact, lots of people love them, especially Harry Potter . I also thought that, maybe, I’d not seen the situation as it was; maybe he hadn’t been sitting that close and it was just me, thinking he had. But it did make me keep a closer eye on him from that point onwards. I noticed that he came in roughly once a month and took a few books out.’

‘You can never be too careful when it comes to your children,’ Gina said, knowing what she went through to protect Hannah, when she was a baby. She’d do it all again in a heartbeat. ‘How long have you worked here?’

Rona paused. ‘Two years and three months.’

‘And when did you first see this man talking to your daughter?’

‘About two years ago, when she was eleven.’

‘Did you see him talking to your daughter often?’

She shrugged. ‘I think it’s happened maybe seven or eight times.’

Gina wondered if anything else had happened. ‘Can you tell me about the other times?’

‘About a month or two after that first time… it was winter and my daughter was helping me make a Christmas-themed book display. The others here don’t mind her helping out. After we’d finished, she went to the back of the library to do her homework. I remember it was quite late, so it must have been a Thursday. We open late on Thursdays.’ She paused. ‘I went to check on her, to see how she was doing, and there he was again. This time he was sitting on her desk. It was our first Christmas without her dad – we lost him to heart disease, so she was pretty vulnerable at the time. We were grieving badly. Anyway, it looked like they were laughing, so I interrupted. He got off the desk when he saw me, and he said something strange like, “I was just showing her a photo of my puppy”, then he quickly left.’

‘Did you ask your daughter what else he might have been saying to her?’

‘I did, but you know what kids are like. She told me he was just showing her a photo of his puppy and some rabbits on his phone. We did have a little talk about grooming and paedophiles, but she shrugged me off, saying “gross” and that he wasn’t like that, that it was just a photo of his dog and a meme with dancing rabbits in it. She accused me of overreacting.’

Gina waited for Jacob to catch up before giving Rona the nod to continue. ‘And after that?’

‘He could tell that I wasn’t happy with him speaking to Molly – that’s my daughter’s name – so he backed off. He’d come in, get some books and go. I soon forgot all about him until… June this year.’

‘What happened in June?’

‘I saw them talking, again . She seemed to be twiddling her hair between her fingers, and he was leaning against a rack of books. I stood at the other side of the shelf and listened. He was telling her about his daughter and how alike they were – I thought that explained the children’s books, but I still didn’t trust him.’ She swallowed. ‘He was telling Molly how much she’d get on with his daughter. He said she was home-schooled and didn’t have many friends, and he asked if he could give her his number so that he could arrange for them to do something together. He said that his daughter was a similar age and they both loved reading. That’s when I interrupted them. I told him that my daughter wasn’t going to his house, and I grabbed the bit of paper he’d written his number on and I stuffed it back in his pocket.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He shook his head and looked at me like I was crazy, then he went on about his daughter and that he had meant every word. I didn’t believe him. Then?—’

‘Did you report it?’

She blew out a breath. ‘I was going to, but me and Molly argued like mad. She said I’d embarrassed her and myself. She said he’d told her all about his daughter before and that she was in a wheelchair. He’d even shown her some photos, and she thought he was a great dad and that I was mean. It got me thinking that maybe I was wrong.’

‘Did you tell anyone else your worries?’

‘Only my other colleague, Francis, but she always seems stressed so I don’t like to burden her with my problems. She cares for her elderly mother who’s always having falls. I briefly mentioned him to her, but she didn’t know who I was talking about.’

‘Did you mention him to Selma?’

‘No, she’s only been here two months. I’ve been showing her the ropes. I mostly train Selma.’

Gina knew she had to ask about the last time that Rona had seen their dead man. ‘When did you last see him?’

‘Saturday, when I was on shift. I don’t see him anywhere else, though, and I use all the shops around here.’

‘How did he seem?’

She inhaled and breathed out slowly. ‘Er… he tried to avoid me, for obvious reasons. He didn’t spend long looking for books, and I saw him checking them out on the self-service. He looked a bit of a mess. When he used to come in and talk to Molly, he always looked quite, er…’ – she looked up – ‘fashionable, I suppose? Jeans, trainers, T-shirt and overshirt. Combed hair. Last Saturday, his T-shirt was crumpled and he had a short unruly beard. He looked like he wasn’t looking after himself. I was just glad Molly wasn’t there and that he left quickly. That really is everything.’

Gina glanced at Jacob. They were dealing with a man who appeared to have developed a bit of an obsession with a teenage girl. She wondered, too, if the man really had a disabled daughter at home, who needed him when he was never coming home.

Was she the girl in the photo? But it was highly suspicious that he was using a library card that wasn’t his.

She thought about the note in his car. Why would he want them to save her?

There was a girl somewhere who needed to be found.

She had to speak to Molly; find out if the man said anything to her that she didn’t share with her mother. ‘Ms Sailsbury, where is your daughter now?’

‘Her friend’s parents have taken them to Drayton Manor for the day.’

‘Can you come into the station after work to make a formal statement?’

‘Of course. Was I right to worry about him?’

Gina pressed her lips together, not knowing how much to disclose. ‘We don’t know, but it would also really help if we could speak to your daughter.’

‘She’ll be home about six this evening. Shall I come then and bring her with me?’

Gina nodded. ‘Yes, please. That would really help our enquiries.’

Rona stood and grabbed her coffee cup off the desk. ‘I’ll see you then.’

She opened the door and Gina saw a line of tiny children, all laughing and chatting as they headed to the beanbag area.

Her phone beeped. It was Detective Constable Paula Wyre, calling from the station.

‘Guv, we have a witness. Someone has come forward after seeing the board on the road. He saw a man standing on the railway bridge last night, about half a mile down the road. The witness pulled up in his car and tried to talk the man down. The man got down off the bridge and told the witness to get lost. The witness thought he saw him throwing a phone over the bridge before he walked off.’

Gina glanced at Jacob. ‘Can you ask the witness to come in and make a formal statement? We need some officers down at the bridge, too, to see if they can find the phone.’

‘Yes, but there’s more. The witness said he walked off muttering to himself, something on the lines of, “I’m sorry, someone will come for you. I’m a monster.”’