Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

Amid a scattering of possible identifications Paulson picked out one that seemed to be promising. A woman in a block of flats in Headingley had called in about a man in the flat opposite her. He regularly used the buses, and often travelled back from Leeds in the late evening. The woman was new to the block, but neighbours told her he went to the railwaymen’s club, just next to the station. He’d been a train driver or guard in his working life. She didn’t like to be too specific on the phone, talking to a rookie constable whose inexperience showed, but she said “people talked about him” and asked to speak to the highest man on the case. It was not much, but Paulson decided to go and speak to her.

“I’ve nothing against him personally,” the neighbour said. “I’ve never done more than say ‘Good morning’ or ‘lovely day’ when we met.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Charlie Clark. Retired. I sometimes see him in the post office, collecting his pension. I haven’t seen him for a few days, but that’s not unusual. I’m not very mobile, and he uses a stick. We’re mostly shut indoors.”

“I see. You said you’d no reason yourself to think he might be the person we want to interview, but you told the constable you talked to that there was gossip about him”

“Yes, well... There’s gossip and gossip. Normally I wouldn’t pass on things like that, but in the circumstances... It’s the mothers waiting for young children at the end of the school day. There’s the Alderman Tupper Junior School and the Headingley High School pretty well next to each other. He often goes and stands near the others waiting for their littlies, but people say he’s really interested in the girls from the high school — most of them pass down that way, past the junior school on the way to the Kirkstall crossroads. They say he looks at them — you know, like he was hungry. Undressing them in his mind.”

“Hasn’t anyone talked to him?”

“Well, it’s not easy, is it? You don’t know what to say, how to put it. One mother did ask him if he was fond of children.”

“What did he say?”

“Made no bones about it. Said he was very fond of them, but he was sad because he never saw his granddaughter.”

“Why was that?”

“Said they lived too far away. Neither he nor his daughter had enough to cover the journey.”

“You can get very cheap rail fares if you book early. Especially if you’re an ex-railwayman, I would guess. What did this mother do?”

“There wasn’t much she could say. She couldn’t point out that he pretended to look at the juniors and nursery kids but in fact gave most of his attention to the seniors, the girls who are — what’s the word? — just coming to maturity.”

“Pubescent.”

“Yes, that’s it. She was young, wasn’t she — the one you’re looking for?”

“She’s young, but not that young. What I’m afraid of is that she was young enough. Young enough looking still to be attractive to him.”

When he got back to the station he checked up on Clark, C. Nothing on him at all. Totally unknown as far as the police were concerned. But Paulson had been interested in the neighbour’s story: the man not seen for several days (he could be lying dead in the flat, dead from natural causes or from suicide), his activities at the school gates, his possible alienation from his daughter — these couldn’t be said to add up to anything, but together they were suggestive. He applied for a search warrant for the man’s flat.

He wasn’t there, either dead or alive. No stretched-out body across the living room floor. Only worn, bulky furniture, a large but old television, a unit with a few ornaments, vases, and books. A cursory look at the last showed nothing with any sexual content: they were mostly sweaty, heavy-breathing, chase-across-Iceland thrillers. There were drawers with telephone directories and Yellow Pages, a very old passport, a broken cigarette lighter, a building-society book, and odds and ends. No photographic album, so no record of the younger Charlie, or his daughter.

Paulson sighed. There was no option: He would have to go through the odds and ends. He tried the envelopes first: his pension book, statements from his building society (never more than 100 pounds in credit) his union card and so on. Eventually, nearly the last, there was a flash of colour as he opened the flap.

Colour photographs. He flipped quickly through them: naked children, usually girls. They were not particularly pornographic: The children were not making sexual advances or feigning activities they were too young for. Paulson wondered where he had got them from. There was a shop right in the centre of town where he certainly could have got them — and much worse than these. Or he could have found a like-minded mate who specialised in photography.