King of the Badgers - Philip Hensher

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think he would be a bit of a life-and-soul type,’ Alec said. ‘Probably worth getting to know once we’re down there. Centre of the social life of the place, I shouldn’t wonder.’

      ‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised.’

      ‘I hope we’re not going to hit the worst of the traffic on the M25,’ Alec said.

      ‘Just our luck if we did,’ Catherine said.

      ‘Come on,’ Catherine said over the telephone to David, that same evening. ‘It’s not as if we have one foot in the grave, exactly. It’ll be perfectly all right. You’ll see.’

      ‘I wasn’t doing anything wrong,’ the man said. On the table, a range of photographic equipment, a case lying open. A policeman was poking at the back of the camera, trying to get the digital screen to switch on. ‘It’s my job.’

      ‘That’s right,’ the boyish-looking girl said—she was his assistant, she’d stated. ‘We were just trying to get some good photographs. There was nothing harmful in it.’

      ‘We’ve got to take every precaution,’ the policeman said. ‘It’s not normal behaviour, now, is it?’

      The recreation ground divided into two: the wide open grassy space, where the older kids ran and chased and played adult games, like softball and football, and the playground for the younger ones. With bright-coloured climbing apparatus and ingeniously varied swings and roundabouts, this was a popular place among the under-nines. Barnstaple Council had recently renovated the old playground, replacing the knee-crunching asphalt with some soft substance, putting in new and exotic attractions, and fencing it round. At the moment, there were few places where the young of Hanmouth could enjoy themselves. This was one of them.

      That afternoon, a mother deposited her seven-year-old there after school while she went to buy a chicken from the butcher’s for dinner. She had done it before, and thought nothing of it; there were plenty of other children there. She didn’t believe in the existence of the child-snatcher in any case. When she came back, she was surprised to see two adults she’d never seen before: one, a fat bald man, was actually kneeling inside the playground, a large professional camera at his face. He was taking photographs of the children.

      ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she said.

      The other adult, an androgynous figure, made a throat-cutting gesture. The photographer got up briskly and started walking out of the playground, straight past the mother.

      ‘No, no, no,’ the mother said. ‘You don’t just walk away like that.’

      The pair kept on walking. The mother called to her son to stay where he was, and followed them, getting her mobile out and dialling a three-figure number as she walked.

      ‘You see,’ the policeman said, in the police station, ‘that doesn’t seem a very sensible thing to do in the present circumstances. Does it?’

      ‘It’s my job,’ the photographer said.

      ‘You don’t have to photograph strange children playing, do you?’ the policeman said. ‘That’s asking for trouble, I would have thought. In the present circumstances.’

      ‘I get told what they want photographed, and I do it,’ the photographer said.

      ‘I’m not charging you with anything,’ the policeman said.

      ‘That’s good, because he’s done nothing wrong,’ the girl said.

      ‘Jess,’ the photographer said.

      ‘But I’m not going to let you walk out of here, for your own safety,’ the policeman said. ‘Feeling’s running very high round here. The lady who made the complaint, who saw you photographing her little boy without permission from her or from Mr Calvin or from anyone else, sees you, a complete stranger, could be anyone, with this case going on, unsolved, the kidnapper at large—do you see what I’m saying? She feels very strongly about it.’

      ‘Well, I’m very sorry,’ the photographer said.

      ‘That’s the ticket,’ the policeman said, referring not to the apology but to the camera, which, with a four-note tune, had switched on, showing the last of the photographs. ‘Now. I’m not going to confiscate your camera. I can see it’s the tool of your trade and I think you’ve learnt a valuable lesson here. But I am going to take the memory card out of the camera and keep that while we look at it and what’s on it.’

      ‘Can’t you look at it now and give it back to me?’

      ‘I can’t do that,’ the policeman said. ‘We need to look at it very carefully.’

      The police car pulled away from the Hanmouth community centre. The photographers in the street pressed their lenses up against the window. Some were professional, working for the press. Others were using their little pocket digital cameras or even the cameras built into their mobile phones. Heidi and Micky sat as still as they could. In the front, Mr Calvin sat next to the driver, his brown pimpled attaché case on his lap. The police liaison officer was in the back with Heidi and Micky. She was supposed to be helping and comforting them. The police driver drove. He listened.

      ‘Thank God that’s over and done with,’ Heidi said. Her little voice was accented half by London, half by America, and by Devon not at all. It could hardly sound anything but bored. ‘I hate it when they stare at us. They’ve made their minds up and they won’t help us at all.’

      ‘Who’s they, Heidi?’ Mr Calvin said.

      ‘Those snobs,’ Heidi said. ‘Those snobs who live in Old Hanmouth. I cut their hair, half of them, and the other half I reckon they’re too much snobs to get their hair cut in Hanmouth or even in Barnstaple. I reckon they go to Bristol or to London. They know me but they don’t say hello. They stare like I’m in a zoo and they’ve paid their entrance ticket.’

      ‘Everyone’s very concerned and worried for China, Heidi,’ the police liaison officer said. ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t have come to find out what’s being done if they didn’t care very deeply about China’s disappearance.’

      ‘’Ass right,’ Micky said. ‘You want to think of that, girl.’

      ‘Don’t you believe it,’ Heidi said, as the police car slowed for the level crossing. An upright woman in a headscarf with a bounding Jack Russell on a lead peered into the back of the car and quickly looked away. Someone had breached good taste here. ‘They don’t care. They just want their face on the TV.’

      ‘Oi! Oi! Oi! Look at me, Mum! I’m on the TV! I’m famous! The more people,’ Mr Calvin said, ‘that get involved, the quicker we find China. I know some of them aren’t very nice, and they don’t really take the right attitude, but they are involved. The ones who don’t want to know—I expect the police will be asking themselves why these people are keeping themselves to themselves so much.’

      Unnoticed, the driver felt his face harden into an expression of unbelief.

      ‘It would never have happened,’ Mr Calvin said, ‘if there’d been CCTV on Heidi’s street. But, of course, you put that to the police before something like this happens, and they give you a brush-off. “Not necessary, we do not consider that the above application if granted would represent a good use of current resources.”

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