Silent Playgrounds

by Danuta Reah

‘I was going away, but there’s been a hitch. I’ve got a visitor for the weekend now, and she’s bringing her kid with her. I thought it would be a good time for Mike and Becca to meet.’

  The girlfriend. And the girlfriend had a child, and was, no doubt, an excellent and conscientious mother. ‘Becca?’ The name didn’t sound familiar. It was Carol, surely. Carol does eggs with faces on. Suzanne was playing for time, but the sense of relief, the sense of an awful weight lifting, and lifting in a way that she didn’t have to feel guilty about, was beginning to overwhelm her.

  ‘Carol’s daughter. She’s Mike’s age.’ Dave sounded cagey, defensive.

  So it was Carol, and Becca was the daughter. The relief was edged with a sharp pain, which gave a bleakness to her voice when she answered. ‘It sounds serious,’ she said. ‘I mean, it sounds as if it’s going somewhere.’

  Dave would almost never discuss his life with her, but even he had to see that she had a right to know about this, this introduction of someone into Michael’s life who might, in the end, have more rights over her son than she had herself. It hurt. ‘Well, it’s early days,’ he said now, cautious, prevaricating.

  ‘But not that early.’ She wanted to know, she had a right to know what was happening in Michael’s life. Or did she have any rights with Michael? Did she deserve any?

  ‘No.’ Dave’s tone was measured. ‘Michael and Carol have met a few times. He likes her a lot. Hasn’t he told you?’ There was a challenge here. He doesn’t talk to you about what matters.

  But he does! she wanted to say. Carol does eggs with faces on. They could have a row about this. She could refuse Dave’s request. He wouldn’t insist. He wouldn’t put himself in the wrong like that. But … She took a deep breath. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘But explain to Michael that this wasn’t my idea, that I wanted to see him. Tell him …’ Tell him I love him even if I am useless to him.

  ‘Thanks, Suze. Really, thanks.’ And he did sound truly grateful. His voice was warm the way it never was these days when they talked. ‘And I’ll make sure that Mike knows what happened. And he can come to you next weekend – we’ll be back on schedule like that.’ Trust Dave to think of the practicalities, even now. Suzanne’s once-a-fortnight weekends were her access rights, and Dave liked to have those weekends occurring at regular, expected intervals. ‘Drop in for a coffee one afternoon. That way, you’ll get to see Mike sooner. Any afternoon,’ he added expansively.

  She put the phone down a couple of minutes later. She’d sold her weekend with her son for a few grains of approval from her ex-husband and relief from the crippling anxiety that the prospect of Michael’s visits engendered. She’d see him during the week in the safe environment of Dave’s house, where she could sit with him, read him stories, listen to his chat, and she would have him at the weekend when Jane and Lucy would be there, and it would all be all right. And it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t!

  Steve McCarthy pulled the box from the top of the freezer and looked at the label. Chicken in something or other. He shoved it in the microwave and pushed the timer buttons. There was some bread in the cupboard, just about OK without toasting. It’d do.

  He’d got in about nine, dumped the files he’d brought back with him onto his desk, opened a can of beer and headed straight for the shower. There was no point in pretending he was going to do anything other than work this evening. He was starting to feel an oppressive sense of urgency, as though someone or something was trying to catch his attention, as though someone had been calling his name, but he couldn’t work out where the voice had come from. He was tired, and he found it hard to focus his mind.

  Children. The thought came from nowhere. It had started with Lucy, Lucy Fielding. McCarthy thought about the small, fair-haired child with her tales of monsters and fantasy friends, her pride in her skating prowess, her strange drawings, her closed-face watchfulness.

  Then there was a missing baby, Sandra Allan’s child born before her marriage to Dennis Allan, half-sibling to Emma. And Michael Harrison, Suzanne’s son? Surely just an observer on the sidelines?

  The timer on the microwave pinged, and McCarthy took the now slightly distorted packet out, burned his fingers opening it, and dumped the contents onto a plate. A piece of chicken steamed briskly in an anonymous white sauce. He looked at it without enthusiasm as he buttered a piece of bread. He remembered Lynne teasing him about his eating habits. You’d be happier if you could just plug yourself into a wall socket, McCarthy. Teasing, yes, but with the undercurrent of viciousness that had been the hallmark of their relationship. They had been good at finding – and attacking – each other’s weak points.

  And it was true. For McCarthy, particularly when he was working, food was just fuel that kept him going: instant meals, dial-a-pizza. But for Lynne, everything had to be enjoyed, had to be as good as it possibly could be. She liked to cook. Sometimes she’d brought stuff round to his flat and turned the kitchen into a rich-smelling den of herbs and spices, turning strange, unpromising-looking items into casseroles and soups, serving them up with wonderful bread that he didn’t know you could buy and salads that were crisp or moist or pungent. It always seemed like a distraction to McCarthy, almost a betrayal, the drift into sensual pleasure in the context of a demanding case. Lynne had never seemed to see any contradictions. And she was as ambitious as he was, he knew that – he’d paid that price. He thought again about the plum promotion that he had worked for, wanted, been the obvious candidate for – the job that would have taken him up to London, given him the experience and expertise that he needed for the next, important climb up the ladder – after that, the sky was the limit. And Lynne had gone for it, and Lynne had got it. You were a close second, Steve. He remembered the consoling voice of his then superintendent. Second was no good to McCarthy.

  It wasn’t only the promotion – though he and Lynne could not have survived that – but the fact that she didn’t need him, clearly didn’t need him, that their relationship, whatever it was, had never been a factor she thought worth considering. OK, it had been his pride that was hurt, he could concede that. But he hated the idea that all through their time together – a short nine months – she had been the one who had been in control. She had decided when their relationship started, she had decided when it finished, and when they were together, it now seemed to him, it had been her tune they followed, not his.

  He realized he’d eaten the chicken without really tasting anything. He pulled his mind away from Lynne. He didn’t want to be distracted by his anger. Now he was thinking about Suzanne Milner. Another problem. There was something she hadn’t told him. He’d handled her badly, misread her at the beginning, and now she didn’t – wouldn’t – trust him. Maybe, given her background, she wouldn’t trust anyone who worked for the police. Her concern for Ashley Reid worried him, and he wasn’t sure exactly why he was worried. Did she realize that her brother, with his string of vandalisms and minor thefts, was a very different candidate from Reid? His vague concern sharpened as he thought about the set-up at the Alpha Project. Secrecy and need-to-know. She probably knew very little about what the people she was working with had done, or what they were capable of doing. She talked as though she thought they were children, or near children.

  It worried him, this naïveté. He remembered how she’d looked when he talked to her on Carleton Road, and hoped she at least had the sense to cover herself up a bit when she mixed with the Alpha youths. He wondered if she even thought about it. He’d found her disarray the other day – a just-shagged-in-the-back-of-a-Mini kind of disorder – far more disturbing than any calculated provocation. It worried him that she had been – apparently – unaware of it.

  12

  Tina Barraclough and Peter Coryin took the picturesque route from Sheffield to Manchester, crossing the Pennines over the A57, the Snake Pass. The road ran straight past fields and moorland, past the Ladybower and Derwent reservoirs and then began its twisting climb. The hills of the dark peak rose on either side, the inhospit
able wastes of Kinder Scout and Bleaklow. Barraclough had once had a boyfriend who went hill-walking in the peaks, and for a while she had shared his enthusiasm for donning heavy boots and gaiters, catching the small train or the bus out into the Derbyshire hills, and climbing up onto the tops, to the inhospitable moors and the heavy peat, where fewer people ventured. They’d gone up onto Kinder Scout often, and she could remember the bleak land that lay there, so unlike the gentle beauty of the heather moors. They’d crossed the peat uplands and navigated their way to Kinder Downfall. The fog had come down unexpectedly once, and she’d realized then why people still died on these hills.

  Now its dark height looked forbidding rather than inviting as they climbed the narrow road that took them to the top. Corvin cursed and braked as a car suddenly appeared in front of them, ambling up the steep climb, the driver, hat pulled firmly down, chatting to his front-seat companion, gesticulating at the landscape as he drove. The road was narrow and twisting. ‘We should have gone by the Woodhead,’ Corvin growled, his face dark and angry. ‘Fucking Sunday drivers.’ There was a bend in the road about a hundred yards ahead. Corvin changed down to second and flicked on the lights as he floored the accelerator. Barraclough closed her eyes as they shot towards the bend, the acceleration pushing her back into her seat. Then they were past.

  ‘That was a bit close,’ she said, trying to keep her tone mild.

  ‘No. I know this road,’ he said cheerfully. He sounded pleased that he’d managed to rattle her.

  They were at the summit soon, and then they dropped down to Glossop and began the journey through the urban sprawl towards Manchester.

  Manchester centre was very different from Sheffield. It had suffered less during the war, and its Victorian stone buildings were more or less intact. It always gave Barraclough a sense of imposing heaviness, dark and serious. Peter Greenhead had offices near Piccadilly on one of the side streets opposite the Plaza. The offices were on the first floor above the shops, an unlikely venue, Barraclough thought, for someone who was apparently a successful operator on the clubs scene.

  They climbed the narrow staircase to the first floor, and went in through dark wooden doors marked GREENHEAD HARPER. A receptionist, who looked to Barraclough more ornamental than efficient, was working at a VDU. She greeted the officers, her blonde prettiness bringing out Corvin’s rarely displayed charm. She checked their identification, the time of their appointment and the fact that it was in Peter Greenhead’s diary with a speed that belied Barraclough’s initial impression, and kept the initiative firmly with her. As officers investigating a serious crime, they could have insisted on seeing Greenhead, appointment or no, but there was no need to point that out, nor did she give them the opportunity. She pressed a button on her phone and said, ‘Mr Greenhead. Detective Sergeant Corvin and Detective Constable Barraclough are here,’ She’d remembered their names from one glance at their documentation. Greenhead’s Manchester operation was clearly more slick than it appeared. ‘You can go through,’ she told them, favouring them with an attractive, impersonal smile.

  Peter Greenhead was exactly how Barraclough imagined a slightly seedy, middle-aged businessman would be. His hair – what was left of it – was long, reaching his shoulders, and was brushed across the balding patch on top of his head. He wore a gold watch, possibly a Rolex, though she couldn’t get a close look at it. His suit jacket was slung over the back of his chair, and a slight paunch hung over the top of his belt. After her experience with the receptionist, she reminded herself not to judge him by appearances.

  He was genial, apparently happy to talk to them. Presumably he had no bad conscience about his dealings with Dennis Allan’s band, Velvet, or a confidence that whatever had happened was either sanitized by time or by the law. ‘Hello, good morning, did you have a good run over?’ He ushered them into seats in the austere but comfortable office. ‘Coffee?’ He went over to the intercom. ‘Paula. Coffee please.’

  He sat at his desk looking at them, and Corvin seized the initiative that he rather seemed to have lost. ‘Mr Greenhead. We won’t take up too much of your time. As I told you, we’re interested in Dennis Allan who was a client of yours in the seventies, I understand.’

  Greenhead steepled his fingers and thought. Corvin waited. After a moment, Greenhead spoke. ‘Is Dennis in some kind of trouble, Officer?’ He made no pretence about having forgotten the name.

  ‘Routine inquiries.’ Corvin gave the bland reassurance, and Greenhead nodded.

  ‘Well, my association with Dennis was minor. He was the founder member of a group – Velvet, as you know – and I became their manager for a short time. They were really not very good.’

  ‘So why did you take them on?’ Corvin was clearly having problems, as Barraclough was, in seeing Greenhead as a man who would bother with a group of no-hopers.

  Greenhead thought again before he spoke. He seemed cautious with his words. A man who sails close to the wind? Barraclough wondered. ‘When I say they were not very good, I don’t mean that they had no talent. The guitarist was rather good, and the singer was excellent. They’d written some songs as well. They just didn’t work as a band. It was Dennis who was the problem. He just didn’t have a nose for performance … or the talent, I’m afraid.’

  Barraclough couldn’t resist the question. ‘But you did quite well out of the songs?’

  He looked at her and smiled. ‘Yes. That was the deal. Instead of my ten per cent, they gave me rights to three of their songs.’ He shook his head. ‘Dennis was the one who signed for the rest of the group.’

  Corvin pulled out his file. ‘Did you know his wife, Sandra Ford she would have been then?’ He waited for a moment, then showed Greenhead a photograph of Sandra, one of the portraits from Dennis Allan’s flat. ‘And we’re trying to track down the people in this picture.’ Linnet, Don G. ‘Do you recognize any of them?’

  Greenhead was looking genuinely thoughtful now, as if he couldn’t quite decide what to say. Corvin stepped in. ‘Sandra Ford, Sandra Allan, that is, died earlier this year.’ He paused, and Barraclough could see he was weighing up whether to tell Greenhead that the death wasn’t considered suspicious, or whether the man would co-operate more if he thought that the crime they were investigating was Sandra Allan’s death. He waited.

  ‘I see,’ Greenhead said slowly. ‘Well, I’m talking about over twenty years ago, you understand.’ He looked at the officers to make sure that they did. ‘I don’t like to speak ill … Velvet did some tours, bottom of the bill for bigger groups, you know. Sandy came along as an unofficial extra. I didn’t know about that, not until after. She was a bit … wild. The roadies called her the tour-bus bike.’

  ‘And she got pregnant,’ Barraclough said.

  Greenhead shrugged. ‘So I understood from Dennis. He tried to get some money off me for her – he said I owed the group. Most of this was after my involvement.’ He looked at the two officers. ‘Oh, I don’t think it would have been his child. He was a bit quixotic about her.’

  He looked at the other photographs. ‘That’s the guitarist. I can’t remember his name. They called him Don G. That’s the singer,’ he said, pointing to the woman Dennis Allan had called Linnet. ‘I tried to persuade her to go solo, but she wasn’t interested. It was just a bit of fun for her.’ He looked genuinely regretful. ‘She had real star quality. In my opinion. She left the group to have a baby shortly after I ended the contract.’ He smiled. ‘There was a lot of it around. She was a nurse.’

  ‘What was her name?’ Corvin said. ‘Apart from Linnet?’

  Greenhead frowned. ‘Bloody silly name,’ he said. Corvin nodded. ‘Let me think. It was … Linnet, Linn … Linn … Carolyn. That was her name, Carolyn.’

  Barraclough felt the jump of recognition. Greenhead looked at her and raised his eyebrows. She felt irritated with herself for being so easy to read. Maybe she should take some lessons from McCarthy. ‘Just remind me, Mr Greenhead,’ she said. ‘When did that contract end?’

&
nbsp; He smiled blandly at her. ‘I didn’t say, Officer. But I can tell you. It was in 1977, autumn 1977.’

  As soon as she and Corvin were out of the office, she said, ‘Did you hear that?’

  Corvin nodded. ‘Carolyn. Ashley Reid’s mother was called Carolyn.’

  ‘And his brother was born in 1978 – so that fits as well, her leaving the band to have a baby.’ She thought for a moment. ‘I should have realized. The DI asked me to find out what happened to Simon Reid. I couldn’t find anything. But he isn’t Simon Reid – she wasn’t married then. Do you remember, her sister-in-law, that Walker woman, said they got married to go to America. So her son might have been registered as Simon Walker. Maybe they never got round to changing it before they left.’

  Corvin whistled between his teeth as they walked back to the car. ‘Did you notice something else?’

  ‘What?’ Barraclough was still trying to work out how they could check if ‘Linnet’ was Carolyn Reid, the name she had seen in Ashley Reid’s file.

  ‘He knew Sandra Ford.’

  ‘Well, he said so.’ Barraclough was puzzled.

  ‘No, he knew her as soon as I mentioned the name. Didn’t you notice? And he wasn’t surprised when I told him she was dead.’ He whistled happily as they walked back to the car. ‘You drive,’ he said. ‘I need to talk to base.’

  Suzanne made her mind turn to practical things. It was Friday. It was her weekend with Michael. Only she wasn’t seeing him this weekend after all. The strawberry yoghurts, the special ham and the cheese triangles – she hadn’t had to buy them. The bed with his racing-car quilt – she took the cover off and put the quilt away. It wouldn’t be needed.

  She looked at her watch. It was after nine. She was getting into bad habits. She showered and pulled on a pair of old jeans and a T-shirt. She went up to her study, but the general disarray in the usually neatly ordered area depressed her. Even her desk was disorganized, with papers and tapes scattered over it. She thought she’d tidied it. There was no point in doing any work anyway. Not just now. She went downstairs to the kitchen and remembered that she hadn’t made it as far as the dishes, either. The kitchen was still relatively clean, but the sink was full of a daunting mass of cups, plates, cutlery, floating in a soup of cold water. It smelt. She plunged her hand into the sink and pulled out the plug. The greasy water drained away. She ran water over the dishes until the room smelt fresher, then filled the sink again with hot water and detergent. She’d let them soak for a bit.