Game Over

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘Do you know what he was involved with just lately? I gather he’d been back home?’

  ‘Yes, since he came back from Scotland, about three weeks ago.’

  ‘What was he up to in Scotland?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, dear,’ she said. ‘It was something to do with—’ She screwed up her face with effort. ‘Oh, he did tell me. Something about water, was it? And Cadbury’s? Oh dear, I can’t remember. Cadbury’s came into it, and Beryl somebody. Not Beryl Reid, but something like that.’

  ‘Cadbury’s?’ Hart queried. ‘Their factory’s not in Scotland.’

  ‘I’m sure he said Cadbury’s. Anyway, I know it was Scotland because he’d been going up and down for months now. To tell you the truth, I don’t really understand a lot of what he goes on about, with his scientific words and all that. But I do know he said this one was very important and secret and the less I knew about it the better. He said it was high-powered stuff and it was going to cause a stink when it got out. Quite excited about it. And it’s the same one he’s been on for ages.’

  ‘Are any of the organisations involved? You know, Greenpeace and so on?’

  ‘I don’t think so. He never said they were. In fact – ’ she frowned again, considering – ‘he seems to be doing this one all alone. Usually there’s his friends tramping in and out – scruffy lot, and don’t some of ’em smell! But their hearts are in the right place, I suppose – and having meetings in his bedroom and making leaflets and placards and I don’t know what. But there’s been none of that this time, so I suppose he’s been doing it on his own. If it was deadly secret, maybe he couldn’t trust anyone else.’ She stared at nothing for a moment, and then said, ‘Except he did have this journalist person who was going to help him, a high-up, he said, who’d been in the government.’

  ‘Ed Stonax?’ Hart asked.

  ‘Could have been,’ she said. ‘Yes, I think that was his name. He was into all that eco stuff himself, this journalist, which was why Danny went to him. He sent him a load of stuff just recently – documents and that.’

  ‘Danny sent it to Mr Stonax?’

  ‘Yes, and sent it registered post, so that shows you how important it was. Danny was going up to London to see him after, only he had his accident.’ For a moment she faltered, as the jagged spike of the accident refused to fit into the woolly shape of her reality. ‘He sent me flowers,’ she went on. ‘When he heard about it.’

  ‘Mr Stonax did?’

  ‘He rang to see why he hadn’t heard from Danny, and I told him. And the next day these flowers arrived. Those big lilies that smell. Ever so posh.’ She looked round vaguely as if she expected to see them. ‘They don’t last long, that sort, but they’re nice.’

  ‘That was kind of him.’

  ‘Danny always said he was a real gentleman. A right proper sort. He was upset when he heard about the accident. It wasn’t Danny’s fault, you know,’ she added anxiously. ‘He wasn’t a tearaway. He wouldn’t have been speeding or anything. He was never in trouble that way. You can check if you like – never even had any points on his licence. It was a hit-and-run driver, they said – your lot said, only the locals, I mean. Hit-and-run.’ She paused, staring again. ‘So I suppose they’ll never find out who it was.’

  She looked strangely stunned by the end of the last sentence. Hit-and-run, Danny with a broken neck and never coming home again, were things outside her experience. At some point she would have to come to terms with them, but for the moment her mind was defending itself like anything against realisation.

  ‘Would you mind if I had a look at Danny’s room?’ Hart asked.

  Mrs Masseter jerked out of a reverie, and smiled as though she was glad to do so. ‘You can have a look, and welcome, but if it’s his papers or anything to do with his protests you’re interested in, you won’t find anything like that. Your lot have already got them.’

  ‘My lot?’

  ‘The police. A policeman came that same day and said they wanted all his papers and his computer. It was quite late when he came. Mike – my husband – had just gone, and I thought it was him come back when the doorbell rang. But no, he’d gone off home to be with her. Said she’d be upset, though what she’d got to be upset about I don’t know.’

  ‘This policeman—’ Hart prompted.

  ‘He was one like you,’ Mrs Masseter said, and as Hart was thinking he must have been black, she added, ‘not in uniform, I mean. A plain-clothes one, a detective, whatever you call yourselves.’

  ‘Did he give his name?’

  ‘Yes, it was Inspector something.’ She frowned. ‘I’ll think of it in a minute. It was an ordinary name, like Black. I think it began with a B. Or a G. Was it Green? Anyway, he said he wanted Danny’s things, and he went upstairs, and come down with all his papers in plastic bags – two lots he had to do, to take ’em all. And he took Danny’s computer – not the television bit, but the box bit that sits under his desk.’

  Hart had a bad feeling about it. It was just not the way things were done. She got out her brief and showed it to Mrs Masseter again. ‘Did he show you his identification, like this?’

  ‘No, he just said he was Inspector whateveritwas – was it Sampson? No, not Sampson, but something like that. Strong, was it? Anyway, he said could he have Danny’s papers.’

  ‘Did he say why he wanted them?’

  ‘Well, no. I suppose it was some police thing. I mean, Danny wasn’t in trouble. I suppose it was because of the accident he wanted them.’

  Hart rolled her mental eyes. ‘And you didn’t ask to see his identification?’

  She frowned a little. ‘Well, it would’ve been rude, wouldn’t it? Like calling him a liar. Strong. I’m sure now he said his name was Strong – Inspector Strong.’

  ‘But if you didn’t see his ID, how did you know he was a policeman?’ Hart asked in despair.

  ‘Well, he said he was. Anyway, who else could he have been?’

  Who indeed, Hart thought. ‘Would you mind if I just had a look at his room anyway?’

  ‘No, dear. You go ahead. It’s the one at the front.’

  Hart climbed the narrow, cardboard stairs, turned carefully on the midget-sized landing, and took the one step necessary to bring her to the open bedroom door. The room was about eleven foot square, with a window on to the street, and a street lamp directly outside which must have flooded the room all night with yellow light through the thin curtains. They were patterned with lions, and matched the duvet cover on the single bed under the window, smoothed out and pulled taut by a mother’s hand. There was no dust anywhere, the carpet had been hoovered, and there was very little lying about. Either he had been a very tidy boy – boy? He was nearly thirty, she reminded herself – or his mother had put everything away.

  The walls were bare except for two posters neatly put up with Blu-tack, one of an African elephant on the veldt, the other the famous view of the earth from outer space, all blue and white and romantic.

  Along one wall was a cheap desk unit with shelving above and a wheeled office chair in front of it. On the desk the VDU, keyboard and printer sat forlornly, their wires fed down the trough cut in the back and leading to nothing but the footprints in the carpet where the box had stood. She couldn’t know, therefore, anything about the computer, but the printer was a very good one and the screen a new-looking nineteen-inch flat. In contrast to everything else about this house, it looked as though nothing had been stinted on the IT front.

  But all the shelves and the drawers were empty. ‘Inspector Strong’ had taken no chances and cleared everything out. At the end of the desk there was a CD player with speakers, but there were no CDs anywhere to be seen. Strong must have taken those as well, perhaps on suspicion that a computer data disc might be hidden among them.

  There was hardly room for anything else, except an upright chair with a haversack resting on it. Hart looked inside just in case, but it was empty except for half of a Snickers wrapper and a box of Bluebell matches. S
he lifted up the liner at the bottom and searched in the corners of the pockets, but there was nothing there but ancient crumbs and fluff. And that left only the beside table on which stood a bedside lamp with a frieze of cut-out elephants round the shade, a travelling alarm clock, a set of house-keys attached to a rubber fried egg, a water flask on a strap of the sort runners carry, and a paperback book. Presumably it was what Danny had been reading in bed.

  Hart picked it up. Elephant Song. Either Inspector Strong hadn’t seen it – which was possible because it was behind the flask and not visible until you reached the table, and he must have been in a hurry – or he hadn’t thought it important. She flicked through to see if anything had been scribbled in it, but the pages were clean. But there was something – a piece of paper, folded into a long thin strip as though it was being used as a bookmark. She opened it out. It was a printed letter from Reading Borough Libraries. The following book(s) are overdue. Failure to return the book(s) may lead to increasing fines.

  There was only one title: Analysis of Risks Associated with Nuclear Submarine Decommissioning, Dismantling and Disposal. Unsurprisingly, it had an asterisk beside it and was marked ‘Special Loan – Reading University Library’.

  Well, how’s about that for light bedtime reading, Hart thought to herself. She turned the paper over. On the blank back of the form, in a scrawly, unformed handwriting in blue biro, was a sort of list.

  Clydebrae

  Scottish War Museem St Vincent St

  Clyde Maritime and Shipping Museem (Govan)

  public records office Argyle St

  universty? Meekie book

  Hager Loch (Museem?)

  Then a word so scrawly she couldn’t read it properly. It looked like Newark. And at the bottom, scrawliest of all: cad ber.

  Hart grinned to herself. He couldn’t even spell Cadbury’s, the dipstick, never mind know where the factory was!

  She took the piece of paper with her and left the sad, empty little room to its thoughts.

  Mrs Masseter looked up eagerly when she stepped off the bottom of the stairs. ‘All right, dear? I’ve kept it nice and clean and tidy, not that there’s much left since your Inspector Strong came. I’m just boiling the kettle again – you’ll have another cup?’

  ‘I found this in a book beside Danny’s bed,’ Hart said, showing her the paper.

  She turned it automatically from the written to the printed side, and unexpectedly blushed. ‘Oh, I know, there’s been another of them just this morning. Asking for their book back, and I don’t know what to do – that inspector must have taken it with the other books because it’s nowhere in this house, that I do know. But if it’s a library book he oughtn’t to keep it, did he? I don’t want to get into trouble about it. Could you ask him to send it to them, dear? Only I don’t know where he is or anything.’

  ‘There’s some writing on the other side,’ Hart said patiently. ‘Can you tell me if that’s Danny’s writing?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Just some of his nonsense.’

  ‘Would you mind if I kept it?’

  She looked doubtful. ‘Well, if you think it’s important. Only there’s the library book to think of.’

  ‘I’ll have a word with Reading Library,’ Hart promised, and Mrs Masseter’s face cleared like fast-forwarded clouds parting.

  ‘Thank you ever so much,’ she said. Her only son had been killed and she was shut in the human equivalent of a hamster cage without him for the rest of her life, but she was so relieved the library weren’t going to chase her for an overdue library book.

  In an access of pity, Hart stayed for another cup of tea, which was not like her.

  Thirteen

  ’Orrible Merger

  Angela Barlow’s parents had little to add. They received Slider and Atherton with polite reserve, a well-to-do retired couple in a nice house in a leafy suburb, with a large garden, a Labrador, and a flotilla of framed photographs on the piano. Outside, blackbirds hopped across the neatly manicured lawn; and inside, the nice people whose lives had seemed so immutably pleasant less than a year ago revisited, at Slider’s behest, the bewildered grief that had come upon them when their daughter had killed herself.

  Angela had been their youngest, of four. All the children had received good educations and had done well. Angela had studied anthropology at university, largely, it seemed, because she didn’t have any particular career in mind. But she had worked hard and got a good degree, and immediately after graduating had done a secretarial course, because she thought the skills would be useful. The Barlows plainly felt pride in this evidence both of good sense and good will. ‘She didn’t just go on the dole like so many of her friends and wait for a job offer to come round.’ Mr Barlow said. ‘She actually got out there and did something.’

  After the secretarial course she had done some temporary work, and then asked them to fund her in a journalism course. ‘Journalism was her real interest,’ Mrs Barlow said. ‘And I’m sure she would have been a great success, because English was always her best subject at school, and she wrote very nicely. She had several things published in the school magazine.’

  Mr Barlow seemed to feel an embarrassment. ‘It’s not quite the same thing, dear,’ he said.

  She looked hurt. ‘I’m just saying she was good at writing.’

  ‘I don’t think these gentlemen want to know about that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’m interested in everything you want to tell me,’ Slider said gently.

  Angela’s photograph was looking at him across her mother’s shoulder from the top of the piano and it made him feel both angry and sad, as such reminders of lives lost always did.

  The Barlows resumed. Degree, secretarial diploma and journalism course notwithstanding, no journalism jobs presented themselves for their daughter, and after several months at home, driven by the example of her successful older siblings, Angela had taken a job at a PR agency rather than remain unemployed. She had quite enjoyed it, but after three years had wanted a change, had seen a recruitment advertisement for the civil service for press officers, and had decided it would at least be closer to journalism than where she was.

  ‘She thought it would give her good experience, and lots of useful contacts, so that she could make the move to journalism in a year or two,’ said Mrs Barlow.

  ‘And did she do well in the job?’ Slider asked.

  ‘I think so. She seemed to be enjoying it, and was quite excited about her prospects. She went to live in London, of course, and we didn’t see so much of her after that. She was very busy, and only managed to get home once or twice a year. Of course, she had a very lively social life, from all accounts, so she didn’t really have time—’ She stopped abruptly and gave her husband a haunted look.

  ‘We didn’t know,’ he took up gently, ‘how lively it was. We can’t understand how she was so led astray. It could only have been high spirits, because there was never any bad in her. She was a good girl and a good daughter. I suppose her liveliness must have got her into bad company without realising the danger she was in. And then – then it all broke like a storm over our heads. It was so sudden. We never had an inkling anything was going on until those terrible pictures appeared in the papers.’

  ‘You didn’t hear from Angela beforehand that anything of the sort was likely to happen?’

  ‘No, of course not. I don’t think she knew any photographs had been taken. They were – they were—’

  ‘We know,’ said Slider, to save him having to describe them. ‘I’m so sorry. It must have been a terrible shock for you.’

  ‘We felt she must either have been very drunk at the time, or have been taking some drugs. We hoped the former rather than the latter. She’d never taken drugs before, to our knowledge, but I understand it’s quite common in those circles – cocaine and so on.’ He paused, almost enquiringly, but Slider did not commit himself. ‘But either way,’ Mr Barlow resumed, ‘she had let herself down very badly. And then they sacked her. We didn’t know ab
out that at first.’

  ‘She didn’t tell us, because she was too ashamed,’ said Mrs Barlow.

  ‘Then she telephoned and said she wanted to get away from London and asked how we’d feel about her coming home.’

  ‘We said of course she should come, this was her home,’ Mrs Barlow said, with a speed and emphasis that suggested to Slider it had not been as automatic as all that at the time. Harsh words were probably spoken and harsh thoughts certainly harboured before the black sheep was taken back into the fold; and harsh regrets were now desperately trying to rewrite the script.

  ‘And did she speak to you about what had happened?’ Slider asked.

  Mrs Barlow shook her head. ‘She didn’t want to talk about it. She was terribly depressed. She said, “Mummy, I’ve let you all down.” She was most worried about what her brothers and sister felt about it all. Well, they were shocked, of course. And it’s only natural that they should want to distance themselves from it at first, while the scandal was fresh, because they all have partners and children to think about.’

  ‘But they would have got over it,’ Mr Barlow said. ‘It was just that Christmas.’ His face was drawn, reliving some domestic horror. Slider could imagine the scenes. ‘Well, that Christmas wasn’t easy. And Angela grew even more depressed. And then one day . . .’

  He couldn’t go on. He rested his forehead on his knuckles in a curiously awkward attempt to hide his eyes.

  Mrs Barlow took the story up with a desperate courage, looking straight at Slider and Atherton as if daring them to pity her. ‘One day she said she was going out for a walk. It was snowing, and I said put something on your head, you lose forty per cent of your body heat through your head. She said, “Don’t fuss, Mummy,” and went out. And later – well, they found her hanging from a tree in the wood down by the stream. The police came, and—’ Now she couldn’t continue.