Play Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  ‘Thank heavens. Oh, poor kid. Why did she have to do it? I got back this morning and … Oh, God, children are not my scene. I do my best, I really do.’

  ‘I enjoyed their rooms.’

  ‘That’s something I can do. I thought she loved him. Why … ?’

  ‘Listen, I really must go and look after my grandson. I’ll give you my number and if Tessa can’t cope with him I’ll bring Toby up here this afternoon.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, thank you. You’re an angel …’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better see that Tessa’s got the doctor’s number. Nick may need a sedative.’

  ‘Yes, yes. And I must take Sophie to school. I must … Holy St Agatha …’

  Like an addict to a fix she stumbled to the telephone and jabbed at the keys. Poppy wrote her own name and Janet’s number on a pad and took a note of the Barnsley Square number. As she stole away she was aware of Ms Pitalski miming continued thanks with hands and arms while she cradled the telephone into her shoulder poised for another explosion of woe as soon as her call was answered.

  Inspector Firth was at the bottom of the steps talking to another man while they watched the activity round the car.

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ said Poppy. ‘I didn’t see much. I got here just before Ms Pitalski opened the garage door.’

  ‘This is Sergeant Levison from the Ormiston Division,’ said Mr Firth. ‘Mrs Tasker is a witness in the case I was telling you about, Sergeant.’

  He spoke with none of the warmth she had felt when she’d seen him in his office. The men’s body signals showed wariness and restraint between them. Poppy remembered something she’d seen in the Echo, a formal denial by a police spokesman of a previous story which she’d missed but which must at least have hinted at bad blood between the Ethelden and Ormiston police. The men ignored her after the nods of introduction, continuing their conversation.

  ‘Right, I’ll keep in touch,’ said Mr Firth.

  ‘Very good, sir,’ said Sergeant Levison, and turned to Poppy as Mr Firth left. She explained about Toby and told him briefly what she’d seen. He made a note of her address and likely movements and said he would send somebody along later to take a full statement, then let her go. As she rounded the corner out of the square, making for the main road, a car horn bipped softly beside her.

  ‘Give you a lift home?’ said Mr Firth.

  ‘Oh, that would be marvellous. I had to take a taxi to get here.’

  She settled thankfully into the passenger seat and the car eased away.

  ‘A taxi?’ he said. ‘That urgent, was it?’

  Instantly the simplicities of need and action lost their hold and confusion engulfed her. In the horror of Laura’s death and the urgency of Nick’s nightmare she had effectively forgotten her reason for coming to Barnsley Square. Her defences, not on her own behalf but on John’s and Nell’s, were completely down.

  ‘Well, yes … but …’ she said. ‘Oh dear … you see, I suddenly realised … Did you hear what happened at my daughter-in-law’s adoption meeting last night?’

  ‘You’ve not seen the papers?’

  ‘No … not yet … Anyway, that young man—Simon Venable, they said, but it wasn’t his real name …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I think it was some kind of social security fraud.’

  ‘We’d got that far.’

  ‘Oh … You mean …’

  ‘I don’t imagine the man who calls himself Mark Giraldi would have thrown his bombshell into your meeting if he’d not been aware that their game was up.’

  ‘No. I suppose not. It did seem a bit crazy, but I gather he’s like that. I know somebody who used to be in his group who was pretty shocked. You see …’

  She explained, stumblingly, what she knew, discovering as she did so that it was possible to leave out the bit about John being recognised from the photograph on the notice-board, and then followed. There was no way of leaving Nell out but completely, but as he knew about the squat she could imply, not mentioning Nell by name, that she had simply picked up her own knowledge as part of the play-centre gossip. He seemed to listen with care and drove more slowly than he need have, though now as she pieced her chains of guesswork together they seemed almost too flimsy to bother with. There were so many other possible explanations.

  He grunted non-committally as she finished and drove on in silence. Automatically her mind preoccupied itself again with Nick, his terror, his loss, his gesture of desolation in the bare little room which was all that now spoke to him of Laura.

  ‘She would have had pictures of him,’ she said.

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was thinking about Laura.’

  ‘You knew her well?’

  ‘No. She wasn’t that sort of person. But I’d taken Toby there for tea and of course we saw quite a bit of each other at the play centre.’

  ‘How did her behaviour strike you?’

  ‘Just what you’d expect from an old-fashioned nanny. Strict but conscientious and fundamentally caring. The children she looked after were her life. That’s what …’

  ‘But responsible? Sane?’

  ‘Oh, yes. She was terribly upset since the young man was found, of course, but …’

  ‘I may as well tell you that she came to the station next morning and insisted on seeing someone. At first it seemed she might have information for us, but in fact she refused to tell us anything and launched into a tirade about police persecution and communist murderers. We put her down as paranoid. A nutter. You get a lot of them, cases like this.’

  ‘Oh no … well, I don’t think so. I mean, she may have thought the people in the squat had killed him—she wouldn’t have put anything past them. And if he’d had problems with the police—he’d have told her, making out it was never his fault, of course, and she’d have backed him up and taken his side … Just put me down at the corner, then you won’t have to back out.’

  He pulled in to the side of the road.

  ‘And the pictures?’ he said.

  ‘Oh. I looked into her room, you see, while I was trying to get Nick to sleep. You see, nannies like Laura, they keep up with the families they’ve worked for, some of them, anyway. They have photographs of babies and schoolchildren, and postcards from first trips abroad, and weddings, and the next lot of babies, and little presents and mementoes, a complete clutter, every shelf, every table … Laura didn’t have anything …’

  ‘Did you look in the drawers?’

  ‘No. I suppose she might have … or the dustbins … or burnt them. Wiping everything out. Nick knew.’

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘The baby. He knew something was badly wrong. I mean, he cried a lot anyway. The neighbours used to complain. They’d had an NSPCC inspector round once. But this was different. I could feel it.’

  He was silent again, but as she reached for the door-handle he said ‘Hold it.’

  She waited.

  ‘You’re telling me she was a very dedicated nanny,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes. Most of them are, you know. The girls too.’

  ‘She would have done anything to protect one of her charges?’

  ‘Yes. Pretty well anything.’

  ‘Our chap, the one in the play centre, had a biggish shot of heroin just before he died. Getting on for an overdose. There were other needle scars on his arms, but old. The natural assumption is that he wanted to go out happy.’

  ‘It wasn’t that kind of squat. They wouldn’t even let them smoke.’

  ‘That’s what we heard.’

  He picked up his in-car telephone, called a known number and asked for an extension.

  ‘Firth here, sir. I’m afraid I’ve got a tricky one. It ties in with our man in Rattigan Park. Apparent suicide in Barnsley Square, car exhausts … Ormiston, sir … no, sir, I just looked in, told Serg
eant Levison about the connection, didn’t ask any questions … Not yet … She was the family nanny, but she seems to have known our chap, a possibility that she nursed him when he was a child … No, sir, but I’m told a child in the house appears to have been seriously frightened, and that she was a dedicated nanny who would have done anything to protect him. That would have been a way of achieving the same result …’

  He put his hand over the mouthpiece.

  ‘How old is the kid? Talking yet?’

  Poppy shook her head.

  ‘No luck, sir … Right, I’ll leave it to you … I’ve got some new lines on the Rattigan Park case, if they tie in … Right.’

  He called off and put the telephone down.

  ‘I needn’t tell you that’s confidential,’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t going to tell anyone.’

  ‘And I’d like to talk to your Sabina Road informant.’

  ‘Oh … I don’t know … I’ll try … It’s better if she comes to you, isn’t it?’

  ‘If possible.’

  ‘I’d need to give her some idea how serious it is. She’s very left-wing, very anti-police, but that doesn’t mean …’

  He smiled at her confusion. He looked very tired; his job put him under extraordinary pressures, his family life had been taken from him, but he still had time to make space for people to be themselves.

  ‘I leave it to you,’ he said.

  Both babies were asleep, Nelson in a nest of cushions on the sofa.

  ‘I need some gin,’ said Poppy. ‘It’s absolutely against all my rules but I don’t bloody care. What about you?’

  ‘Well, if you’re going to … Oi! about a quarter of that! Ta! You all right, Poppy? You’ve had a time!’

  ‘It’s worse than you think. Listen, the people at Sabina Road. How far would they go? Would they actually kill someone, do you think?’

  Nell stood still, her mouth half open.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Poppy. ‘I don’t think they did. There’d be no point in faking a suicide and then drawing attention to it by putting the body in the play centre like that.’

  ‘Fake a suicide? How … ?’

  ‘You give him a shot of heroin to make him pass out, so you can fix the van up. That makes it look as if he’s fixed it himself and then taken the heroin so that he goes out happy.’

  ‘Not Jonathan—Simon. He’d have needed someone to show him how.’

  ‘Listen, Nell. You’re not going to like this. I told Inspector Firth what I’d guessed about Laura knowing Simon. I didn’t say more than I had to about the commune, but now … I mean it’s different­, isn’t it?’

  Nell put her gin down and combed her fingers slowly down through her glistening hair.

  ‘What about Laura?’ she said. ‘Same with her?

  ‘Not the heroin. You’d never get her to—she’d fight, and there’d be marks. But suppose you persuaded her that you were going to do something terrible to Nick … Suppose you actually showed her …’

  ‘He’d scream and scream.’

  ‘You could … Oh, God, I know! You could shut him into the oven and set the timer!’

  ‘No!’

  ‘There was something that really upset him that side of the room. I must ring Tessa and tell her not to take him downstairs …’

  ‘But where were the parents, for God’s sake? Surely …’

  ‘Ms Pitalski said something about getting back this morning. I don’t know about the husband. Look, I’m just guessing. All I know is that Nick was absolutely terrified of something in the kitchen, and he knew Laura was gone.’

  A long pause.

  ‘OK, I’ll tell them,’ said Nell. ‘Who do I ask for?’

  ‘I’m sure that’s the best thing. Oh, Nell, I can imagine what it costs …’

  ‘Let’s talk about something else. Can I have another gin? What shall we give the kids for dinner?’

  Nelson woke drowsy and fractious. Nell had to coax him, spoon by spoon. She was waiting with another mouthful poised when she said, ‘Oh, sorry, I forgot. A man phoned. He said his name was John. He wouldn’t give his number, but he told me to tell you he was in Geneva.’

  ‘Oh. Thanks … I’m afraid I’m going to cry. Don’t worry, it doesn’t mean anything.’

  Woozy with her huge gin, she let the sobs shake her. ‘How does it feel to know your lover is a murderer?’ But Geneva? It had to be true. You could prove it with airline tickets and things. Air hostesses would remember a face like that. Thank God, oh thank God!

  5

  The doorbell woke her. Where was she? Oh yes, sitting in her own armchair with dried drool on the side of her mouth and the rasp of snoring in her throat. The television was on, a Czech or someone in front of a patriotic statue haranguing the camera about democracy. God! Ten past nine!

  She’d turned on the TV to see if there was anything about Laura on the Channel Four news, but fallen asleep and woken now nearly two hours later with a sore throat and a filthy face and a hangover

  The bell rang again. She lurched into the hall, scrabbled the chain into its slot and opened the door those few inches. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me. Jim Bowles. Gone to bed, have we?’

  Oh, God, what did she want? Peace. Oblivion. Night and no moon. No, she’d better talk to someone, anyone … She let him in.

  ‘Hang on a mo,’ she said. ‘I went and fell asleep. I’ve got to tidy myself up. And I haven’t had supper yet, and nor’s Elias.’

  She rinsed her face, tugged a comb through her hair, swallowed an aspirin and made for the kitchen. He followed her.

  ‘No room for two,’ she said. ‘You can have my stool in the passage. OK?’

  ‘Had a rough day, then?’

  ‘Have I not? I’ve spent half the morning and all the afternoon holding someone else’s baby while he had the horrors.’

  ‘Yes, I heard about that. What do you reckon they did with him?’

  Poppy told him, and he shook his head slowly and whistled. She opened a tin of sardines, put one in Elias’s dish and covered it with Whiskas so that he didn’t get to it straight off.

  ‘I’m not going to offer you gin,’ she said, ‘or I’ll want some myself and I’ve had enough.’

  ‘Cup of coffee, then.’

  ‘In a minute. My need is greater than yours.’

  There were some cold cooked potatoes. She chopped an onion, set it to fry, chopped the potatoes and added them, fished the chunks of tomato out of the remains of yesterday’s salad, put them in too, and then the sardines, grated stale cheddar over the resultant mess and shoved it under the grill. While it browned she made his coffee.

  ‘Ta,’ he said. ‘Two sugars. Things some people will eat, though! I’m surprised at you.’

  ‘I’ll get it down somehow, I expect. Let’s go into the living-room. I don’t think I want to listen to music, I know I don’t want to have to resist your advances, and I’m not sure I want to talk about this beastly business.’

  ‘Ah. Reckon it’ll rain tomorrow, then?’

  She laughed and felt better. Elias had found and eaten his buried sardine and, scorning the Whiskas, had followed the smell of hers into the living-room. He settled in front of the gas fire, watching her every mouthful, wide-eyed.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You can tell me what they’re saying at the police station.’

  ‘Don’t know that much. Your little friend came round and spilled the beans about Sabina Road. Pity about her. She could’ve been an eyeful, if only she’d dress right. She a dyke, you reckon?’

  ‘No, and it wouldn’t matter if she was.’

  ‘No offence, Poppy.’

  ‘Well, I find it very offensive, and saying “No offence” only makes it worse. I don’t know why men have to f
eel so threatened by women who choose to live their lives as something other than an appendage of the male animal. I mean I do know, and I think it’s stupid. It took a lot of courage, and basic honesty and decency, for Nell to overcome all her prejudices and go and see Mr Firth, and if any of your friends tell you any different you can talk to them the way you talked to that young man who tried to follow me. At bottom they’re behaving just the same as he was, and with less excuse.’

  She hadn’t often felt so vehement about anything. The headache and the anger and the knowledge of what had been done to Laura, and perhaps to Nick, bore in on her, creating the pressure. Jim was looking at her, miming innocence of her accusation.

  ‘You’ll tell them, won’t you?’ she said.

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘About this other woman, Poppy …’

  ‘Laura?’

  ‘That’s right. What sort was she?’

  ‘Well, until a few weeks ago I’d have said she was a very ordinary, old-fashioned, highly responsible nanny. I was surprised how upset she was when the body was found in the play centre, but if she knew the man, and loved him, which I think she did … And even then, the day after he was found, do you remember how wet it was? She’d gone out to Linen Walk without proper rain-clothes, and she was very upset and rather strange while we were there, but she was still very careful about Sophie and Nick, seeing they stayed dry and so on. I believe if the world had been ending she’d still have done her best for them … In fact, I think that’s just what she did. Oh dear. Who’d have thought I’d ever want to cry for Laura?’

  ‘Don’t mind me.’

  ‘It’s all right. Carry on.’

  ‘Point is, would she have let just anyone in? No sign of forcible entry. Chain on the door, like yours.’

  ‘She was expecting Ms Pitalski back. She mightn’t have set it.’

  ‘Still, suppose someone rang, she’d’ve used it then, wouldn’t she, same way you did just now?’

  ‘Yes. Of course she would.’

  ‘So it looks like someone she knew. Any ideas?’

  ‘I know so little about her. She didn’t seem to have any friends, any life outside her work. She was going to start looking after Toby on Saturdays—I know she wanted the extra money, but it didn’t sound as if she’d got anything else to do with her spare time. But if she was killed, and the young man in the park was killed by the same person …’