Endangering Innocents by Priscilla Masters Page B

hunted, Gelert, the dog, guarded and paid with his life.
    Llewelyn is ridden with remorse.
    Too late for Gelert.
    The dog paid with his life for his master’s impetuosity.
    Remorse built the mausoleum,
Bedd Gelert
. Whether the story is legend or fact the moral is the same.
    Things are not always as they seem. It can be dangerous to jump to conclusions. Joanna remembered the day she had unpacked this particular figure, laughing and dusting it with a Jiffy duster. “Circumstantial evidence,” she had said to Matthew as she put it right at the back of the shelf. “No sign of baby, blood everywhere, dog looking a bit suspicious. Blood all over its chops.”
    “So as a policeman would you have waited, Jo?”
    “We must,” she had said, serious suddenly. “We must. There was no point in Llewelyn building a dirty great big monument to his faithful dog. Gelert was dead. And he’d killed him because he jumped to the wrong conclusion.”
    She had, in the past, used her pottery figures almost as a divining tool. But the Gelert figure was not helping her. She could not read its message except as a warning not to jump to conclusions. That, and the warning that the innocent must remain so until guilt is proven.
    She replaced the figure in the cabinet and locked it, feeling terribly uneasy as her eye was caught through the glass, by the tall, pointed head of the wronged hound. Staffordshire figures are not renowned for their realism. They are crude, their faces blunt-featured. And yet she seemed to read both accusation and a plea in the dog’s painted eye.
     
    Then two things happened at once. She heard Matthew’s key in the door and the telephone rang. “I’ll get it, Jo,” hecalled and moments later handed it to her, his face a mixture of resignation, frustration and frank irritation.
    “Ma’am.”
    She didn’t recognise the voice.
    “It’s Pugh, Sir. Ma’am. I’m a Special. They asked me to phone you. We’re at Haig Road, Ma’am. There’s trouble.”
    She had no time to speak to Matthew. And the vision of the innocent dog, sword in his side, flashed warningly through her mind as she took the unlit moorland road back into Leek.
    Baldwin might be innocent.
    Baldwin might be guilty.
    She did not know. Her mind swayed between the two possibilities all the way back into town.
     
    Dramatic street scenes all look the same. A dark night, orange street lighting, houses with every light blazing. Flashing blue strobes reflect in broken glass. They sound the same too. They are noisy. There is loud shouting, overlaid by screaming and plenty of people. Arms wave. There are police cars, often a fire engine. An ambulance. An ugly, ugly mob. And behind all this drama someone is very, very frightened. Maybe hurt. Possibly even dead.
    A stretcher was being wheeled out. The blanket did not quite cover his face but Baldwin looked dead. “No…” It was an involuntary shout which had escaped her own lips. Blood was seeping through the grey woollen material that covered his body. His face was a mess, nostrils bleeding, eyes puffy and closed. His skin the colour of wax. He must have had quite a beating. There was some movement. She thought he was trying to open those swollen lids. But it might simply have been areflex. “Baldwin,” she hissed in his ear. There was a guttural sound far down in his throat. She backed away. She’d failed him. Failed to protect him. Failed to protect Madeline. Failed to
find
Madeline.
    A WPC followed Baldwin into the bright interior of the ambulance.
    The crowd was trying to melt away. The police were taking names.
    She homed in on Robert Cumberbatch. An honest, stolid, unimaginative, local lad. Not given to exaggeration or histrionics.
    “You’d better tell me what happened.”
    Behind him a couple of Specials were threading police tape around the crime scene.
    “As far as we can tell they dropped a petrol bomb inside the letter box. There’s quite a bit of fire damage inside. When he came out