Shadow Play

by Frances Fyfield

  The car door shut with a satisfying clunk. There was an old wreck next to it which he didn’t recognise.

  Dinsdale understood the world of the nouveau riche, had been adopted into it, pushed up like a piece of forced growth under the greenhouse roof, fatally flawed and prone to insect life. He knew how to choose from his own corruptible kind. Nothing wrong, surely? He wasn’t taking bribes from murderers, merely those who wanted to keep their cars and he hadn’t even been greedy. Only two more, the ones he had already approached, maybe do something to square the one which was going wrong, one more drunk driver with a small business and a large car. Then he would think again.

  He rang the bell, a big, brass brute lacking polish; the kind of thing he would have liked on the front of his little house, with a butler to respond, instead of this shuffling, ever indolent but still suspicious slob of a night doorman whom it was best to confuse rather than persuade. The man took his time, the second ring reverberating into silence before he was on the other saying ‘Who’s there?’ but unlocking the door at the same time like a Shylock unlocking his own vault, grumbling. The doorman was flushed red, cross from afternoon sleep. Drunk, Dinsdale thought, amused for the first time in hours.

  ‘You should have phoned,’ the man said.

  ‘Should I?’ asked Dinsdale, drawling, eyebrows raised, flicking the fine mist of rain from his coat. ‘I wonder why?’

  ‘So you might. Them others did. Like Paddington Station, it is.’

  Halfway across the foyer towards the lift, Dinsdale could feel his hackles rise.

  ‘Oh yes? Which others?’

  ‘Coupla gels.’ The doorman was mimicking Dinsdale’s accent, revenge for the provocation. ‘They been sending that goods lift whizzing up and down like there was no tomorrow. Oh, by the way, don’t bother waiting for the other one, I mean, it ain’t working. Sir.’ The ‘sir’ was loaded.

  ‘Nothing changes in this hole,’ said Dinsdale, making for the stairs with elegant speed, but stopping round the first turn. On the landing, he saw a belt curled like a snake lying on the carpet. There was a slight smell which could have been urine. Two girls, looking for a warm space on a Saturday evening? He doubted that, but not his sense of unease, sat where he was and lit a cigarette.

  Everything was coming unstuck; he was never going to get what he wanted, whatever that was, though he thought that in some obscure way, it had included Helen West, if only on the periphery. He remembered them talking about evidence. She had never given him evidence of anything more than liking. Silence. He did not want to move. Sit here for a minute to make it look as if he’d come to collect something, then go home.

  The swing-doors at the top of the stair well moved. Slightly. A light appeared through the glass panels. From his vantage point in the semi-darkness, Dinsdale saw a face passing, not looking down. It wasn’t a girl.

  Helen’s breathing came quieter, even and peaceful.

  ‘We aren’t well, are we, Aunty?’ Rose murmured, coughing. ‘Neither of us. But at least we haven’t got to cope with Daddy.’

  She had moved the lamp on to the floor next to them, played with the shade, angled it against the wall so she could send out shadow signals to herself with her fingers. Beyond Redwood’s desk an enormous V-sign appeared on the yellow paint, cheering her. Rose smiled, looked down at Helen with her head pillowed on Rose’s sweater, twitching and frowning this last half-hour. With sweater and T-shirt deployed to Helen’s use, Rose was beginning to get cold. She hadn’t noticed at first.

  ‘I know you’ve got the flu and all,’ said Rose reasonably, ‘but don’t you think this has gone on long enough? If you don’t bloody well wake up soon, I’ll brain you.’ Saying that made Rose laugh. She was talking out loud, better than crying and hiding the fact that she was beginning to feel kind of guilty for being passive for so long, even though she felt as if something was being resolved in her head without her having to do anything. Querulously, she started to sing, the tune and the words coming from nowhere.

  ‘The day is done, its hours have run,

  And thou hast taken count of all;

  The scanty triumphs grace has won,

  The broken vow, the frequent fall …’

  Logo had found himself disorientated again. It came from being distracted, stumbling down all those stairs, knocking against something sharp, his belt snapping. All the way back down to the basement, slowly, all round it even more slowly, admiring those pipes in the ceiling which looked like links of giant white sausages, turning on the lights again and somehow knowing she wasn’t there. Thinking that maybe the woman he’d hit had been right after all, maybe Eenie had been sent home, but then, why shout for her? Then he’d found a pair of shoes which hadn’t been there before. They didn’t look like Eenie’s shoes, more like bovver boots, Eenie would never have worn those as a kid, but it was enough to make him set off again. His voice echoed round the stone passages, more confident now, loudly plaintive, then getting shaky. ‘Come out, Eenie. Come on out, my lovely. I loves you, Eenie. I always loved you, that was all.’

  He could not understand why he had begun to cry. Level with the goods lift again, he leant against the wall and sobbed. Couldn’t she see that he only wanted to love her? He punched the wall, punched the red button in frustration, startled when the lift juddered and disappeared, jumped back, thinking something was going to leap out at him just as he had done upstairs. Then he peered at the thing shrewdly, getting angry again, wiping his nose on his sleeve. They were playing games with him, and where was his knife? He began the weary march back upstairs, this time going into every single room on the ground floor, except the doorman’s where the telly was still on, making music now, above the sound of snoring. Up one more flight, beginning to move a little faster after he had stopped for a bite of chocolate. All those rooms, losing his sense of which side the street was on, looking out of windows into brick quadrangles, panicking a little until he found the goods lift on that floor and got his bearings. Up one more set of stairs, looking for it again, and there it was with doors jammed shut and his knife acting as the bolt. He stared in disbelief, working it out slowly.

  That’s what Eenie’d done, was it? Thought he was in there; tried to put him in a box and leave him there to rot, stab him with the knife again if he tried to get out. The anger rolled back like a clap of thunder, burst inside his head and descended to a low growling.

  He prowled towards the clerks’ room, hesitating to touch the knife, turning back towards the other direction as he heard the sound beyond the door of that posh room. His trousers were slipping without the belt. They felt as if they were held in place by the tightness of his stomach when he heard that sound, the sweet hesi tant sound of someone singing for courage.

  ‘… Through life’s long day, and death’s dark night,

  Oh Gentle Jesus, be our light.’

  He turned the handle quietly, but it would not be quiet. Turned it once, tried again, pushing gently. The voice faltered into silence.

  Helen stirred and moved with grumpy abruptness. Rose eased her into a sitting position, head between knees, patted her back, watching the door as she did so. She did not for a minute consider it might be the doorman; she knew exactly who it was, never really doubted that Daddy could play Houdini. Stood up now, holding the lamp, backed towards the window, stopped by the desk, not thinking much, simply reacting, put it down there with the hot shade facing the door, so the light shone on that useless barrier of the flimsy chair, waiting. If the unconscious desire to blind him was the motive, the effect was lost as he crashed through the door, a bent little man, carried far into the room by his own momentum. Rose stood, thin shoulders bare, nothing covering her bare torso but a skimpy bra, short skirt and thick tights below, no shoes, her legs apart, braced against the window frame, paralysed. The little plait lay sweetly against her neck. Logo looked at her in wonder.

  ‘I only wanted to love you,’ he said. ‘I’ve never loved anyone else and you wouldn’t understand, would y
ou?’

  She was stony faced. That look of mulish insolence which said, You stinking little worm, put it away and yourself with it. Her eyes flicked from his face to his waist. Disgust, pity.

  ‘Come home, Eenie.’

  Silence. His anger had not died. Logo went up to his silent daughter, took hold of both sides of her head and kissed her fully on the mouth. She stood as still as before, her lips sealed hard, each muscle of her body rigid.

  ‘Open your eyes,’ he commanded. Rose would not, could not. He tore at the lace of her bra, put one hand round a nipple as hard as a nut: she remained a resistant, sullen child. Then erupted into movement, her knee crunching into his groin like a hammer, making him stagger back, wild eyed.

  ‘Like that?’ he said. ‘You liked that, did you?’ He came back towards her, eyes full of tears and murder, hands stretched for her throat. Pressed himself against her so she could not kick. Her bravery was gone.

  ‘Your mother’s in the graveyard,’ he said softly. ‘Underneath someone else, the way she liked to be. So’s Margaret. Buried with her neighbour. I’ll take you too, if you like. Why can’t you love your father? I only ever wanted to love you.’ Then his hands began to tighten and she could not fight, not this time.

  They formed a strange tableau when Dinsdale reached the door. He came through the band of light, blinded for a full second, until he saw someone on the floor, clutching at the leg of a man who was braced by the window, grunting. Helen was on her hands and knees, pulling at the ankle, looking as if she was about to bite. There was a sickening glimpse of white buttock where the man’s trousers had slipped, a sound of choking, a rich, full smell, a mixture of vomit and parma violet; it made him want to retch until he saw a hand, clawing at the back of this double-headed beast, a helpless little hand. Dinsdale could not bear to see a woman abused. He simply measured the length between himself and that bent back like a football player eyeing the ball, ran forward and kicked with all his strength. Kicked again at the ankles, sensing Helen rolling out of the way, kicked again as Rose fell from the grasp of the hands at her neck and Logo twisted round. Again as the little man turned to catch the full force in the abdomen, roaring with pain. Logo seemed to trip over the trousers, scrabble for the window frame against which he fell as Dinsdale kicked him one last time, a vicious thud against the knee, he could hear the sound of bone. Logo howled this time, let go of the frame to clutch the area of pain, and then toppled backwards without a sound. For a moment, Dinsdale could not understand where he had gone, what he had done himself and why, until from far enough below, after what seemed an interval of minutes, not seconds, there rose through the rain a thin, watery scream.

  Michael had tried to talk himself out of this. So had his father. You don’t chase women, especially if you don’t know where they are, you let them chase you. That’s not what you did, Dad, grinning, feeling a bit silly. Is this the street where the office is? Do you want me to wait? Well yes, just until I see if she’s there, if she isn’t I’ll buy you a beer. It’s OK to park here, Saturdays, place is like a grave.

  They turned into the side street, Michael looking up. He knew the window of the room where Rose worked because she’d leaned out and waved at him when he’d come to collect her one night last week, no, the week before, so nice and reassuring at the time he would always want to see it again, couldn’t fail to look. Three weeks, was all, of coming here and it felt like he’d done it a million times. But all he saw was a sack of clothes hanging over the magnificent railings, probably blown there by the wind, he thought. Until, as the car stopped, he saw it flutter, jerking like a scarecrow on its back, moving all the time, the hands waving and the mouth on the upturned face open in what looked like a smile.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  They were moving offices. That was today’s news. Nothing to do with the incident two weekends before, but because the boiler had broken and, somewhere in the basement, there had been a small fire. No-one knew if the two had been connected, but speculation was rife, hidden beneath a deluge of groaning. When were they moving? Soon. In Crown Prosecution terms, that could mean months. They worked to the indifferent heat of a hundred electric fires, mostly provided by themselves, cheerful in adversity. Redwood had a meeting, but not in his own room, conceding that the recent security survey had shown that proper precautions against the IRA would take seventeen guards, six Alsatians and a bank of electronics, none of which was in the budget and, besides, the lease was up.

  His other news was that yes, rumour was true; a tramp had got in and for reasons best known to himself, jumped from a window, and yes, it was his room the intruder had chosen, yes it was fatal, no he was not going to give details, only that death was not immediate … Oh, yes, and just by the way before we finish, Helen West, Rose Darvey and Dinsdale Cotton were still suffering from a particularly virulent form of influenza and in these hard-pressed times, he would take it amiss if anyone else followed suit. Especially now, as they were expecting a surge of cases from the last big football match in North London, which seemed to have ended in a riot.

  When they had all gone back to their desks, forgetting to ask questions because it was so cold, Redwood went across to the window and looked down at the railings. It was just as well Miss West was off sick, convenient really, since hers wasn’t a bad room, and his own room was thick with tape, powder, dried blood, and locked. Dinsdale’s seat was also vacant, but in view of the shock waves which would rock the office when the golden boy was charged, it didn’t seem tasteful. They were still gathering evidence to build the wall round him.

  The day was bright and dry. Helen’s anglepoise lamp stood on her own desk. Redwood did not admire the railings as much as he had. He was full of resentment for the inconvenience, using that as a device to quell the nightmare. It was all down to Helen. She should never have provoked a defendant so much that he came in to their citadel to take revenge. And put Redwood’s job on the line. What about me? he thought to himself. What about me? Everyone who matters thinks all this is my fault and I don’t know the half of it yet. I’m having to take Counsel’s opinion on the law on exhumation. He wondered if there was such a thing as a lawyer who knew every inch of the law. A bit like someone with every volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica sticking out of his ears. Friday. He would never stay late again.

  In the corridor, waiting for the lift, he could hear a chorus of goodbyes.

  ‘What I can’t understand,’ said Geoffrey Bailey, corkscrew in hand, pretending to be calm, ‘is why you never told me. You told me about missing files, the way you sometimes tell me about work. You had me harnessed to that damn computer because you were too scared to go into the basement, you tell me nothing—’

  ‘That isn’t quite fair. I might have told you all about Rose if I’d known, but I didn’t, I didn’t bang on about Logo, because you get sick of me talking about my cases and so do I. Not hearing about yours, talking about mine,’ she added. ‘I want to hear about yours much more than I want to talk about mine; what I can’t stand is you thinking all the time that you’re boring me. You leave out all the best bits, as if I was a real lawyer who only wanted to hear what you should have noticed instead of what you did. And anyway, I don’t own you. You’ve made that patently clear. One weekend’s whole-hearted devotion is supposed to go a long way with you—’

  ‘You’re sidetracking, Helen.’

  He had got the cork out of the bottle, setting about it like an amateur, she noticed, crashing the bottle on the table. Good red wine, she also noticed. Good job she didn’t much mind about the polished surface, easy come, easy go: things were meant to be used and surfaces scarred but it was a shame to waste the stuff by spilling it, even if there was plenty more. He’d arrived at the flat, at the end of his course, with a load of supermarket bags, most of them clanking with bottles, possibly the remnants of their end-of-term midnight feast, she thought maliciously. Not enough to allay her fears, but then all the crises of the last two weeks seemed to iron one another out, le
aving her lightheaded.

  ‘What did I do wrong?’ Bailey shouted. ‘Tell me what I did wrong!’

  ‘Typical male, tums everything into a personal accusation. You didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘Well why were you so brisk with me when I phoned last Friday, before all this happened? Why not ask me to come home and help you with Rose Darvey et al, instead of just telling me afterwards about being hurt and then saying airily, “Doesn’t matter, I’m managing fine …” How do you think that makes me feel?’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to come back because it was perfectly obvious you’d rather not. I wanted a volunteer or nothing, but you were all hooked up with your course and whatever you and Ryan were up to – don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. After the weekend before, when you got here half drunk, not exactly eager—’

  ‘When you had us spending half Sunday in your office!’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it? After a week, I wanted you to be all over me, dying to see me and you weren’t, that’s all.’

  He didn’t venture to say he might have wanted the same, was silent, poured some wine with an unsteady hand. Helen had all the answers and his conscience was – how could he put it? – cloudy, like this wine.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said without a trace of bitterness, ‘you seem to have recovered from everything very well.’ Oh no, don’t do that, she thought. Don’t go back into your professional detachment. I know I haven’t been fair, I’d want to shoot you if you did to me what I’ve done to you this last fortnight, but I had to see if I could cope alone, or I never shall, and please don’t retreat like that, I want you to come out and fight.