Endangering Innocents Read Online Free

improper behaviour towards a child. You’re a parent yourself. How would you feel about a guy simply hanging around outside a school?”
    “I’m not trying to protect him.”
    Joanna leaned in closer. “And what would it look like if Mrs Whoever-it-was-who made the complaint said we’d been informed and then a child was approached - or went missing? You think your job - or my job-would survive that?”
    “I think you’re being a bit over the top.” He gave her a sly glance. “Not like you to be so overly protective towards kids.”
    She drained her coffee cup and chucked the polystyrene beaker accurately into the bin. “So we have a man who lives alone. And we know nothing about this man apart from the fact that for some reason he hangs around a small village primary school. It doesn’t look as though Mr Baldwin has children there, so why choose that particular venue? If I remember rightly it’s an isolated little school on a straight bit of road. There’s no view apart from of the school. So why sit there other than to watch the children?”
    Mike regarded her without saying anything.
    “Right then. I suggest we pay Mr Baldwin a visit and see if we can find an answer to my question. OK?”
    Mike stood up reluctantly. “You’re the boss, Jo.”
     
    Haig Road was one of the streets of council houses towards the Northern end of the town, looping behind the Buxton Road which led out to the moors, theWinking Man and beyond. It was an area lined with post war council houses well tended by the town council. The roundabouts were freshly mown with small, flowering cherry trees in the centre and random clumps of miniature daffodils. Mike manoeuvred the car around a couple more mini roundabouts and pulled up. Number fourteen had been divided into two small maisonettes, 14 and 14A, garages at the back. Joshua Baldwin lived on the ground floor of one of the neater homes, clean and well kept with white UPVC windows fitted to the front which matched the front door. The drive was empty. Korpanski knocked and they stood back. There was no response.
    Luckily Baldwin was one of the few who hadn’t shrouded his front room with net curtains. Joanna peered in through the window, to a small, square room, a grey TV screen eyeing them blindly from the corner sitting on a dark red shag-pile carpet. A beige three-piece suite almost filled the room and a stereo tidily stacked filled the spare corner.
    “I don’t see a computer.”
    “Could be in one of the other rooms. A bedroom, maybe.” She turned around. “You’ve got a nasty mind, Korpanski.”
    He grunted. “Not just me.”
    “Well there’s nothing to be done here.”
    Mike was looking up and down the street. “We could knock up one of the neighbours.”
    Joanna shook her head. “Now that would be a bit premature. Don’t want to start a riot, do we?”
    As they walked back to the squad car Korpanski looked uncertain. “Why would anyone hang around a school unless either they had children there or were a …?”
    “A pervert? He might like children.”
    Mike’s dark look could only have been given by a parent.
    They climbed back into the car. “We’d better get to the school then.”
    “In time for the kids to come out.”
    “Yeah.”
    “He hasn’t actually
approached
any of the kids, has he?”
    “Nope.”
    “Or the teachers?”
    “It didn’t say in the report.”
     
    It was her first job, Horton Primary. She’d been lucky to land it. Class one. Little kids, years before they became impossible to teach. Vicky Salisbury scanned the classroom. Not that the reception class wasn’t without its own problems. In September half the children had cried solidly for the first few days. One had set off the entire class to a great howling boo hoo. She had almost given up then, they’d all been so miserable. Except one. She had stared straight ahead of her, registering nothing. No involvement in the collective grief, no emotion either way. Vicky couldn’t say