Silent Playgrounds

by Danuta Reah

  Lucy pulled away from him. ‘I don’t want to,’ she said. She looked stubborn, unforgiving. She backed away, then turned and walked towards the house. She looked back at McCarthy once more before she went in.

  The funfair was all in colours. The stalls and rides were painted blue and red and yellow, and music played as you walked past first the waltzers, then the cyclone, then the big wheel, and each music was different, loud, happy. Voices shouted as you walked past, and people screamed as the rides swooped them up and down and round. Lucy watched the octopus whirling people above her head, the waltzers spinning them round and round, and they screamed and smiled and laughed.

  Kirsten had a huge ball of candy floss on a stick, and she was letting her friends pull streamers off and eat them, and then she would open her mouth and bite into the pink mass. Lucy could feel that pink, sweet cloud in her mouth. Kirsten wouldn’t let her have any. Lucy wasn’t going to ask, but Kirsten said, anyway, ‘Lucy Fielding and all her friends can’t have any of my candy floss,’ and suddenly Lucy didn’t have any friends and Kirsten did. Even Michael had gone and had some candy floss, and now he was standing near Kirsten with his mouth all pink and sticky. Lucy didn’t care. She wouldn’t be Kirsten’s friend for all the candy floss in the fair. Candy floss was vulgar.

  ‘I don’t like candy floss,’ she said to Kirsten. ‘It’ll make your teeth fall out.’ She hoped Kirsten’s teeth would fall out. She hoped Michael’s teeth would fall out. Kirsten’s mum was calling again, ‘Keep with me, children.’ And Kirsten’s daddy was there as well, and Josh’s mum, and Lauren’s mum. Lucy had thought her daddy was going to stay, but he’d taken her to the funfair and said to Kirsten’s mum, ‘Can’t stay. Work.’ And he’d given Kirsten’s mum that special smile and Kirsten’s mum had gone all pink and said, ‘Oh, don’t worry.’

  Lucy didn’t want her daddy anyway. She wanted to have a go on something. There were stalls where you could win a big teddy bear, and stalls where you could win big plastic toys. There were hot dogs and hamburgers, and the smell of them made Lucy’s mouth water, though Mum said they were disgusting. Like Sophie with the maggots. Disgusting. Maybe the hamburgers were made of maggots.

  ‘Who wants to go on the dodgems?’ Kirsten’s mum said.

  Lucy looked at everybody shouting to go on the ride. The cars stopped and there was a scramble, and Lucy went for a car with Michael, but Kirsten was there, and Kirsten pushed her and she couldn’t get in the car, and then all the cars were full, and it was just Lucy and Kirsten’s mum watching. ‘Never mind, Lucy,’ Kirsten’s mum said. But she looked pleased. And off the cars went, and Lucy looked at the fair, and she could see now that all the colours were dirty, and the man on the dodgems had dirty hands and hairy arms, and the music was too loud. And everywhere she looked, the colours were cracked and peeling off, and the smell of the hot dogs and the maggot-burgers made her feel sick. Kirsten’s mum was calling, ‘Oh, watch out, Lauren, he’s going to—. Oh, he missed! Look out, Josh!’ Lucy stepped back. Then she stepped back again. Kirsten’s mum didn’t notice.

  There was a crowd of people watching the dodgems. She moved round them, in and out, and soon she couldn’t see Kirsten’s mum. Then she went round the next ride, and the next, and then she had the fairground all to herself. There were a lot of people, but there was no Kirsten, and no Michael eating Kirsten’s candy floss, and no Kirsten’s mum saying Never mind. The waltzers whipped past her, noise and screaming and bright colours, and at the other side of her the octopus swooped and dipped. Her daddy was going to take her on the octopus this year, he’d said. He’d promised. But suddenly she knew he wouldn’t. She watched it going up higher and higher and then coming down like flying. A voice boomed out, ‘Come and ride with us,’ and the music blared again, but in the moment’s silence, she heard it, ‘Lucy! Lucy!’

  She looked round, but there was no one there. The noise from the waltzers was too loud. She slipped round the back of the ride, and she was at the edge of the fairground, where she could see wires trailing on the ground, and machines made strange noises, and there weren’t colours any more. There it was again. ‘Lucy!’ She looked. Over in the trees, across the stream. Over in the woods in the shadows, she could just see him, like a shape in the darkness, and he was waving to her. Come here, come here. Tamby. And the cold, achy feeling that had been inside her went away. Tamby! She could feel the smile stretching her face. She waved back and began to scramble over the wires and cables. Tamby was back and he would keep her safe; he would know what to do now the monsters were in the house.

  She skipped over the last cable and began to run, towards the trees, towards the dark shadows where he was waiting for her, when she heard voices calling. This time they came from the funfair. ‘Lucy! Lucy!’ She looked over her shoulder. Kirsten’s daddy was climbing over the wires, waving at her. She didn’t want to be found. She was going to find Tamby, and then Tamby would take her home. She didn’t want to be at Kirsten’s treat any more. She turned back to the trees where Tamby was waiting, but he wasn’t there any more. She stopped and looked. Trees and shadows, dark places where there might be monsters. But there was no sign of Tamby. Tamby, she whispered. But there was just the silence in the trees and the music of the funfair.

  17

  McCarthy sat at Suzanne’s desk and scrolled the transcripts down the screen. ‘I’ll need to print these,’ he said. ‘Take them back with me.’

  ‘There’s nothing there, is there?’ she said, her voice still strained from the smoke damage to her throat.

  He was angry with her, and his encounter with Severini hadn’t helped, but his first white-hot rage had cooled a little. Maybe he had expected too much. He remembered that she had tried to tell him something, just as they were leaving his flat, and he’d been too preoccupied to pay much attention. He looked at her, feeling that confused mix of exasperation and anger – and other things that he couldn’t afford to acknowledge. ‘There might be,’ he said. ‘I think there is.’ The name Simon had leapt off the screen at him as soon as he’d seen it. The rest looked like gibberish, but he needed to go through it, and he needed the tapes to help him make sense of it. ‘I wish you’d told me about these,’ he said.

  She looked away from him, and bit at her thumbnail. ‘I didn’t think …’

  ‘You didn’t,’ he said sharply. ‘That’s exactly what you didn’t do.’ He hit the print button and watched as the paper began to slide through the machine. He was angry with her about so many things. She’d had some kind of contact with Ashley Reid and hadn’t told him. If they’d been able to find Reid earlier, he would probably still be alive. She’d had tapes with what might prove to be important information, and she hadn’t told him. She’d left his bed and gone straight off in pursuit of Reid. If he was going to be honest with himself, that made him angrier than anything, that they could have shared all of that, and she’d still gone off after Reid.

  She seemed to be reading his mind. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I … Listen! Ashley’s never been here. I didn’t know where he was.’ He ignored that and took the papers out of the printer, checking to make sure he’d got everything. She tried again. ‘I didn’t find him. He found me.’

  He suppressed an urge to meet her halfway. It would be so easy to accept what she said, accept that she’d made some bad mistakes – but that they were mistakes. Then he could take her home with him and spend the night blotting out the last forty-eight hours. He kept his voice neutral. ‘Let’s stick to the facts for now,’ he said. He saw her flinch at that, and part of him – part of him he didn’t like very much, but couldn’t seem to control – felt pleased. ‘I’m going to need you to go over these transcripts with me. I need to make sense of them.’

  For an hour, they focused on the sheets of paper. In the absence of the tape, he had to rely on her knowledge of it, and kept pushing her to remember. He wasn’t happy with her belief that some of the tape just didn’t make sense. ‘It made sense to him. I want to know what that sens
e was,’ he said. ‘This bit. Exactly how did he say it? Come on, Suzanne. How did he say it?’

  The garage. With … Lee’s name on … and … em … so… sometimes, not now. She struggled as she tried to remember. He made notes, moved on to the next bits. I’m telling you. It was in the park and so she said she was going… No… By the flats… em… Simon brings the stuff so she didn’t like that… It was loose, you see, and so didn’t want …

  He went over and over it and, after a while, what had looked like meaningless nonsense began to form itself into some kind of sense. He was beginning to see patterns, and something was tugging at his mind, the signal that told him he’d seen more than he was aware of, and needed time to let these things come to the surface. He looked at her. ‘OK, I think that’s as much as we can do here. I’ll …’ Belatedly, his conscience stabbed him. She looked ill. Her face was white. She hadn’t recovered from the effects of the fire and he’d bawled her out and put her through a gruelling interrogation about the transcripts. He touched her hand. It was cold. ‘You need to rest,’ he said. ‘You should be in bed.’

  She pushed her hair back from her face. ‘I don’t know what else I can say.’ He didn’t want to get into that. He didn’t even want to think about it. He’d just get angry and say something he’d – probably – regret later. ‘I don’t want to go back,’ she said, ‘not while Joel’s there.’ She stood up and looked round. ‘I’ll just stay here till Jane gets back.’

  McCarthy thought she looked ready to fall over. He was tired of being a bastard. He still didn’t know what he thought, he still felt angry, but he said, ‘You need to look after yourself.’ Then, against his better judgement, he added, ‘I’ll phone you. We need to talk. I’ll phone in a couple of days.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘But I’m fine, honestly.’ She watched him as he went down the stairs.

  After Steve had gone, Suzanne went back to her desk. She printed out another set of transcripts, and began to go through them again. Her thoughts seemed to be slow, as though her mind had lost all its energy. She found herself staring at the papers and seeing black lines of print running meaninglessly down the page. The sound of the phone made her jump, her arm knocking the papers from her desktop onto the floor. Her heart was thumping in her throat as she picked it up. ‘Hello.’

  ‘Suzanne.’ It was Dave.

  ‘Oh. Dave.’ She tried to keep the flatness out of her voice.

  ‘I heard what happened,’ he said. ‘Are you all right?’

  How could she answer that? She wasn’t all right. But that wasn’t what he meant. ‘I’m OK,’ she said. ‘Sore throat, a few bruises, nothing major.’ Steve hadn’t asked. He hadn’t said, Are you all right? He’d just been angry. Except his anger at the hospital had been the anger of anxiety. It had been later that they found those fingerprints, things she couldn’t explain. And now he believed that she and Ashley … She didn’t know what he believed. He wouldn’t talk to her.

  ‘Suzanne?’

  Dave had said something and was expecting an answer. She pushed her mind back. ‘Sorry. The line’s a bit …’

  ‘Listen, is your place habitable? What are you doing?’ Surely he wasn’t going to offer her accommodation.

  ‘I’m staying with Jane, just for a few days.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Good.’ He seemed to be filling in time, as though he wanted to say something and couldn’t quite bring himself to. She waited. ‘Listen, Suzanne, Mike heard about the fire. It was all over the playground apparently. He’s upset. I was wondering, I don’t like to ask when … but if you’re at Jane’s … and if you’re sure you aren’t too bad …’

  It wasn’t like Dave to hedge. ‘You want me to have Michael to come and stay?’ Dave had never – never – asked her to have Michael outside of her official access.

  ‘He asked,’ Dave said. ‘He’s worried that you’re hurt. If …’ He sounded quite embarrassed. Then his voice changed, became brisker. ‘It’s not reasonable when you’ve got all the rest to cope with. Drop in for a coffee, let Mike see you’re OK, that’ll do.’ He sounded happier now he was taking control.

  ‘No. Just a minute.’ Suzanne felt something she couldn’t quite identify. Michael thought something had happened to her. He was upset. He wanted her. ‘He can come and stay. Of course he can. He can share with Lucy. They love that.’ Dave demurred, but she overrode his sudden misgivings. Maybe Michael did need her, just a bit. It would be safe if they were staying at Jane’s.

  They ended the phone call in a few desultory pleasantries, and she put the phone down realizing that now she had something she needed to do.

  When McCarthy got back to the incident room, he copied the transcripts and his notes for circulation at the briefing. He knew that there was no point in sitting and staring at them any longer. He needed to let his mind work on them, come back to them later. He directed his mind away from the picture he had of Suzanne’s white face as she told him she was fine. That led to other pictures of her – pictures of her lying in the heather, pictures of her in his bed. Did it matter, did it really matter that she’d lied to him? She had hardly known him, not well enough to trust.

  But he had work to do. Now wasn’t the time for personal stuff. They’d found the links between the victims. The common link was their father, Phillip Reid. Phillip Reid who had run off to America, abandoning his pregnant girlfriend, Phillip Reid who had left his wife in another country with a young child and twins on the way, Phillip Reid who had come back and fathered Emma, then vanished again. But he had been near, had been around, had had some kind of contact with Emma, his daughter – a sexual relationship, Dennis Allan said. A business relationship, Polly Andrews had implied. Had he been in contact with any of the other children? Had Carolyn’s letter to Sophie allowed her to track her father down? Had Sophie led him to Ashley and Simon? And Simon had turned out to have a talent he could use – Simon, isolated by his condition – Simon was valuable. Unless the investigation got too close to the drugs. Then Simon would no longer be an asset, he would be a danger. They had to find him!

  Liam Martin was sorting through the papers they’d collected from Simon Walker’s room. McCarthy went across to have a look. He picked up a folder and flicked through it. ‘Looks like a load of junk, sir,’ Martin volunteered. The folder McCarthy was looking at contained half-completed forms, each one stopping at a smudge or a crossing out, as though Walker had been unable to accept any error and had had to start again. But then he’d kept the incomplete forms. McCarthy flicked through them. Applications for a driving licence. Applications for a student travel card. Bank forms, job applications, research grants. Several pieces of notepaper with the address of the Hall of Residence and the words Dear Sir. Definitely a few bricks short.

  A second folder contained personal documents and included a passport. McCarthy looked at the photograph. Simon Walker had his brother’s dark hair and eyes. The passport had never been used. There was also a birth certificate, exam certificates, GCSE and A Level. Whatever else Simon Walker had had problems with, he had passed his exams to date with commendably high grades. Martin showed him the papers they’d already sorted. In among the mountains of irrelevant junk – he’d apparently kept every leaflet, every flier, every circular – were more links with Sophie, Emma and Ashley. He had cards with addresses on, lists of personal details. He had photographs, each one carefully marked: Sophie, Emma, Ashley. There was one of Sophie in the park, smiling in the sunlight. There was one of Ashley and Emma, taken in front of a wall of pictures, frustratingly indistinct. Emma was laughing, her head on Ashley’s chest, her eyes glazed, her pupils black wells. Ashley had his arms round her, supporting her. His face was serious. McCarthy looked at the picture. He’d only seen Ashley Reid on police records, and, finally, in death. He thought about the ugliness of the swollen, congested face that Anne Hays had showed him, the ruin of this pale, dark-eyed beauty. No wonder Suzanne had been beguiled.

  But nothing they had found told them about Walker’s curr
ent whereabouts, or the whereabouts of Phillip Reid.

  Lucy sat on the carpet and pulled the yellow knitted pyjamas onto her teddy bear. She hadn’t played with her teddy bear for quite a long time. She was too big for a teddy bear really, but tonight she was going to take it to bed with her. Michael was watching television. She looked at the screen as he started laughing. It was The Simpsons. Sometimes that made Lucy laugh too, but tonight she didn’t feel like laughing.

  Tamby was safe. She’d seen him. But Tamby had gone away again, and even though she’d sat in the garden watching, even when Michael got cross because she wouldn’t play, and then Mum had said, ‘Come and play with Michael, Lucy,’ she’d waited, but he hadn’t come.

  She could hear her daddy’s voice. He was cross again. He was cross with Mum about Michael. ‘… her fucking brat,’ he said. She wished her daddy would go back to his house, go back to his house in Leeds. Now Mum was talking in the voice she used when Lucy wouldn’t take her medicine. ‘It’s just for a night …’ Lucy shuffled herself across nearer the door. ‘… just great, just fucking great. Listen, Jane …’ and she heard cups banging in the kitchen. Her daddy was making coffee. Mum never banged cups. Mum never got cross.

  Then Lucy heard footsteps in the passage outside, and the door opening. Suzanne came into the room, carrying sheets and quilts. She had Michael’s racing-car quilt. Lucy thought it was silly. She didn’t want a quilt like a car, she wanted a quilt that was a horse. Mum was going to make her one. Suzanne smiled at them, but her smile looked all wrong to Lucy. It looked more like someone crying only pretending they weren’t. ‘Shall we do your bed?’ Suzanne said to Michael. She looked at Lucy. ‘Do you want to help?’

  Lucy thought about it. ‘OK,’ she said, standing up. Michael stood up too, his eyes staying on the TV screen as the three of them left the room.