Silent Playgrounds

by Danuta Reah

  There would be an inquest; there was some speculative – and critical – publicity. Brooke had been unmoved. ‘He didn’t jump as you came through the door,’ he’d told McCarthy as he pushed the bottle towards him across the desk. ‘We’ve got that well witnessed. He moved into the flat from the balcony. You got the woman away from the edge. You didn’t make him jump.’

  And both the children had survived. McCarthy wondered, as the slow night dragged on, why Reid hadn’t killed them at once, in the house or, if he was afraid of being interrupted, as soon as he’d got them to Shepherd Wheel. Killed Lucy, presumably, in revenge for his father’s abandonment. He had believed the children were dead, and he had said to Suzanne, ‘I’ve fixed him.’ But why would he think that Severini cared? McCarthy remembered the psychologist talking about Simon Walker. Maybe the only way to stop them from leaving you is to kill them. Reid had talked to Suzanne about keeping Lucy safe, about the one safe place. Would he have wanted to leave Lucy to the mercy of the world as he knew it? McCarthy shook his head impatiently. Reid was a killer, that’s what it came down to. The rest was so much bullshit.

  He went to the hospital the next day. Jane, sitting by Lucy’s bed, jumped up when she saw him and put her arms round him. Her hair smelt of flowers. ‘Steve …’ she said. He held her close for a moment.

  Lucy lay on the bed, pale and subdued. She looked at him dubiously, then sketched a smile and reached out her hand to hold his. He stayed with her, giving Jane a chance to get some fresh air and a short break. Lucy fell asleep, and he sat beside the bed, holding her hand, which clutched his tightly, looking out of the window at the bright clear sky, not really thinking, letting his mind drift.

  After he left Lucy, he’d gone along the corridor to the ward where Michael Harrison was recovering from shock, injuries to his leg and an overdose of a tranquillizing drug. Reports said that Michael was making a good recovery, and seemed less affected than Lucy by the experience, possibly because he had been in a drugged sleep for most of the time. He had muscle damage to his leg that would take time to heal, but the medics predicted a full recovery. McCarthy hesitated as he approached the ward, and turned back. He was glad that Michael was well, glad to know he was safe and secure, but he wasn’t ready for an encounter with Suzanne. Not now. Not yet.

  Lucy was discharged from hospital three days later. She was quiet and pale, her calm self-confidence replaced by a tension that McCarthy found painful to see. She was well enough to tell her story, and had agreed to do so if McCarthy could be there with her. ‘I’m sorry to involve you again, Steve,’ Alicia Hamilton had said. ‘I know that this case has been a hard one for you. She’s frightened, poor little thing, you can understand it. She wants you.’

  Lucy seemed calm and composed when he took her into the interview room, but she ignored the toys and the books and looked round for somewhere to sit where she could have McCarthy next to her. Hamilton was careful and gentle. McCarthy admired her skill as she worked at winning Lucy’s confidence and getting the nervous child to relax. She made it clear that they had as much time as Lucy needed, and gradually she moved towards the details that Lucy would find distressing. ‘Tell me who this is, Lucy,’ she said, showing her the drawing they’d found in Simon Walker’s flat – The Ash Man’s brother.

  ‘That’s Tamby,’ Lucy said. She looked at McCarthy. ‘Can I go home?’

  ‘Soon,’ he promised. ‘We need you to help us, Lucy. We need to make sure.’ She looked at him, and then nodded, slipping her thumb into her mouth, and leaning against his arm.

  Hamilton showed her a photograph of Simon Walker. ‘And can you tell me who this is?’

  Lucy looked at her coldly. ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘It’s Tamby.’ Then her lip quivered, and she looked down.

  ‘Tamby was your friend, wasn’t he?’ said Hamilton. Lucy nodded, one jerk of her head. ‘Tell me about him.’

  He was her friend, Lucy told them, and Sophie’s friend. He would sit on the grass with her and they would play games about her family in the park. ‘About my dog and my cat,’ Lucy said, ‘and all my sisters and brothers.’

  ‘Tell me what Tamby did on the day that you got lost, remember?’ Hamilton said.

  Lucy looked at her with exasperation. ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘I told you and I told you. He took me to the playground. On his bike.’ she added. ‘I told him that Emma was chasing monsters. And he said he’d go and find her and then he’d come and get me. Only he couldn’t, because I saw the Ash Man in the playground and I ran away.’ She looked down again, and then up at McCarthy. ‘Can I make the hands go round on your watch?’ He extended his arm, and she inspected the watch for a minute, then began turning the winder.

  ‘You pull it out,’ he explained.

  ‘I know.’ She tightened her lips and gave her attention to the watch face. McCarthy and Hamilton exchanged glances. McCarthy shrugged. He couldn’t tell how it was going.

  ‘Just a bit more, Lucy,’ Hamilton said, gently. Lucy looked at her quickly under her lashes, her attention still ostensibly on McCarthy’s watch.

  ‘Look at all the numbers changing,’ she said.

  He looked. ‘You’ve made it next year,’ he said. ‘You’ve missed Christmas.’ She smiled at him, and then flashed the same quick glance at Hamilton. The message was clear. He’s my friend.

  ‘Lucy …’ Lucy’s face went closed and stubborn. She was listening, but she still looked away, playing with the winder on McCarthy’s watch. ‘Lucy, you know that someone hurt Emma, don’t you?’ A nod. ‘What did Tamby say to you about Emma?’

  She checked McCarthy with her eyes, then said, ‘Everyone had gone. Tamby said everyone had gone. Sophie had gone and Emma had gone and he didn’t know where they were. And he said he was going to watch me and keep me safe.’

  ‘Safe from what, Lucy?’

  ‘From the Ash Man,’ she said. ‘Only Tamby didn’t know it was the Ash Man. But I did. And the monsters.’

  ‘Who told you about the monsters?’

  She compressed her lips. ‘They didn’t tell me. I heard.’

  ‘Who did you hear, Lucy?’

  ‘Tamby.’ Head down, voice muffled. ‘And Sophie.’

  ‘Tell me what they said. What did they say about the monsters?’ Hamilton’s voice was gentle but firm.

  Silence. Then the glance. ‘Dragons.’ It was a whisper. ‘Emma was chasing dragons. But that was silly! Dragons don’t live in the river.’ McCarthy was cursing himself. Chasing the dragon! Lucy’s monsters hadn’t been fantasies at all.

  ‘That’s right, Lucy. They don’t.’ Hamilton paused for a moment, thinking. ‘Was there anyone else, Lucy? Anyone else who played with the monsters?’

  Lucy’s hand dropped from McCarthy’s watch onto her lap. Her face was wary. ‘It’s a secret,’ she said after a moment.

  ‘That’s all right. You can tell me, Lucy, that’s what I’m here for.’ Lucy looked up at McCarthy, who nodded a reinforcement of Hamilton’s words.

  ‘Once I saw my daddy there, just with Emma. Emma was cross. My daddy said it was a secret. He always said it was secret.’ She looked at Hamilton, and at McCarthy. ‘He was cross because I told you about Emma, but I didn’t, I said. But he was cross anyway.’ Her lip quivered. ‘I don’t like my daddy.’ McCarthy stroked her hair, the way he had seen Jane do at the hospital. ‘The Ash Man threw me in the water where the monster is,’ she whispered, so quietly he had to strain to hear it. ‘Where Emma is, all dead with the monster, and he’s all dead with the monster too.’ Drowned people and monsters, nightmares and death. McCarthy’s eyes met Hamilton’s. How did you protect a child from something like this?

  The case was closed after the inquest. The verdict on Ashley Reid’s death was suicide. There was no question in the mind of the officers who had witnessed the scene in the flat that he had jumped, not fallen, and that he had tried to pull Suzanne Milner off the balcony with him.

  The only moment of satisfaction came for Barraclough when the se
arch of Joel Severini’s Leeds flat turned up an impressive stash of pills, far more than those found in Carleton Road, far more than those found in the tower, recognizable, both from their purity and their packaging, as coming from the same source. Severini insisted he had no knowledge of them, claimed that someone had planted them. Barraclough found his protestations oddly convincing. But the pills were hard evidence. Severini faced a serious charge.

  McCarthy had seemed unmoved by the find. Barraclough had asked him what he thought about it, and he had said, brusquely, that he didn’t see how having a father in jail on a dealing conviction was going to do the Fielding child any good. Then he’d given her a hard time about the delay in some paperwork and suggested she keep her mind on matters in hand, rather than waste her time and his speculating about cases that were over. He was back to normal, she decided.

  22

  It was nearly a fortnight before McCarthy saw Suzanne again. He arranged to meet her at Carleton Road. They were cautious with each other on the phone. It was early Friday evening, and he left his car on the far side of the park, near the house where Simon Walker had lived. He needed to walk, and to think. He didn’t know what to do. He had been wrong about her before. He had thought that she had lied to him, once about the sighting in the park, once about Ashley Reid. But the man hurrying from Shepherd Wheel had almost certainly been Simon Walker, looking for Emma, hurrying to get back to Lucy, out of his depth in the world of people rather than the world of things. And though Ashley Reid had been in Suzanne’s house, in her study, hunting for the tapes that might lead the police to him, Suzanne hadn’t known, hadn’t known about the route through the roof spaces along the row of terraces from the student house, empty and unused.

  He had planned to walk through Endcliffe Park and then on up to Carleton Road. But instead he turned into Bingham Park, towards Shepherd Wheel. A newspaper boy was standing in the entrance, looking up at the noticeboard. A piece of paper with scrawled writing on it was attached to the board. McCarthy read it. TAKE CARE BY ALLOTMENTS! The boy looked round and hunched his shoulders, preparing to leave. ‘What is it?’ McCarthy said, indicating the note. The boy looked suspicious. McCarthy took out his ID and showed the lad. ‘What is it?’ he said again.

  The boy hoisted the bag of newspapers onto his shoulder. ‘It’s up in the allotments,’ he said. ‘There’s been a man up there …’ He made a gesture of opening a raincoat. ‘You know.’ McCarthy remembered Barraclough saying there’d been reports of a flasher in the park.

  ‘So what’s this?’ McCarthy said, looking at the notice.

  ‘We leave notes if he’s there,’ the boy said. ‘On our rounds. I take the path through the allotments, see. Only I’ll not, today.’

  So that was it. McCarthy watched the boy on his way. A warning system used by the newspaper-delivery kids, a self-help group against one of the disturbed misfits who lurked in this piece of urban green. That was what Suzanne had seen, what had made her wary that morning when Emma and Lucy had gone missing. If the note hadn’t made her cut her walk short, would she have been there to see Simon walking away from Shepherd Wheel?

  He looked up at the trees that were heavy with leaf, casting deep shadows over the path. He went on, crossing the bridge to walk by the narrow channel where the conduit emptied. Shepherd Wheel was ahead of him now, through the trees. Its mossy roof glowed gold in the evening sun. The broken windows were hidden behind tight shutters. It was silent and still. McCarthy walked on up to the dam. The light on the water turned the surface opaque like steel. Leaves were drifting in the gentle current towards the overspill where the water tumbled back to the river. As McCarthy watched, the light faded, and he was looking through the surface of the water, looking into the depths of a brown mirror where it was dark and cool and fish made dim shadows against the muddy bottom.

  One last thing was nagging him. Carolyn Reid’s family. Her brother Bryan, the man who had become a bullying disciplinarian, an alcoholic, a man who had lost touch with his family through his drinking – they had never talked to him because they hadn’t been able to find him. But, according to Suzanne, Ashley Reid had.

  McCarthy remembered the face of the tramp, the unknown man who had been savagely beaten and slashed, and had died with shards from a broken whisky bottle shoved down his throat, choked on his own blood – like Emma.

  Bryan Walker had cared for his sister. He had not been able to take his anger out on the man who had abandoned her, and who, for all he knew, had been responsible for her illness. Instead, he had worked to beat the bad blood out of the son. McCarthy knew, now, who the nameless vagrant was and he knew, as well, what had happened to him.

  It was seven by the time he reached Suzanne’s house, which still showed evidence of the fire. The broken window had been replaced, but the door was smoke-blackened and damaged. The leaves on the cotoneaster were brown and dead where the branches had broken. The flowers had fallen.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected when she opened the door. ‘I saw you coming up the road,’ she said as they stood in the front room facing each other, in that first, difficult silence.

  ‘How are you?’ he said. It sounded more brusque than he’d intended.

  ‘I’m OK. I’m going to be OK,’ she amended. ‘How are you?’ She bit her lip. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’

  He didn’t want to pursue that. ‘Michael? Is he all right now?’ He already knew that Michael had been discharged from hospital, and that he was recovering well.

  She nodded. ‘Yes. He’s back at school. Dave says the important thing is to get everything back to normal as quickly as possible. He’s … There’s still a bit to go, but he’s getting there.’ She took a breath. ‘Michael’s lucky. Dave’s a good father.’

  McCarthy thought of Joel Severini. Severini had been given bail on the plea of his solicitor that his client’s traumatized daughter needed her father. He had skipped bail within twenty-four hours of being released. Suzanne picked up his thought. ‘Lucy doesn’t need Joel,’ she said. ‘She deserves better.’ Her face was serious, sad. She was clearly thinking of her own son, thinking that he, too, deserved better. Maybe she was right. It wasn’t a thought to pursue.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ As far as he knew, she had no work now. The recent events would hardly get her reinstated at the Alpha Centre.

  She shrugged. ‘I’ve got a few weeks’ leeway. I’m on leave, and there’s still a few months of my grant left to run. I’m not sure what they’ll do with a researcher in my position. I can make myself useful – if they’ll let me. I’m persona non grata at the moment.’ She smiled ruefully at him. ‘With them as well. But I’m job hunting. When I started my research, I thought I could do something useful, working with young offenders. But I can’t. It’s too close, too personal. I’ve got to get away from that.’

  So she knew that, at least. He leant his shoulder against the mantelpiece and watched her as she stood looking out of the window. Though the more obvious signs of the fire had gone, there were so many reminders of what had happened here. Could she sit in this room and not remember the night when the smoke had nearly choked her to death? Could she be anywhere in this house and not think of Ashley Reid, the desperate and damaged youth she had tried, however misguidedly, to help? The house was packed with bad memories. He wondered if she would stay. ‘What kind of job?’

  She moved away from the window to the centre of the room and stood in front of him. ‘Anything. Just to keep me going until I’ve had a chance to think. Maybe I’ll apply to join the police.’ Her eyes, as they met his, were deadpan, then she started laughing at the expression of horror he hadn’t been able to keep off his face.

  The laughter brought tears to her eyes, and she brushed them away impatiently. They were both teetering on the edge of emotions that were hard to control. Time to stop talking. Time to move on. He checked his watch. Half past seven. ‘Have you eaten?’ he said. She shook her head. ‘We could go out, go to one of the places down the road.’


  She held his eyes. ‘What’s wrong with dial-a-pizza?’ she said. ‘No pineapple.’

  There were still too many things left unspoken. Any future seemed a distant possibility, a view that was too remote to understand, but here and now was real. He kept his eyes on her as he pushed himself upright. She was looking up at him, trying to read his expression, trying to mask the uncertainty in her face. He could see a faint mark on her lip where the cut had healed. He touched it gently, smiled at her. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Suits me. But in an hour. Or so.’

  Catherine Walker was looking for her garden. She hadn’t done anything in the garden for a long time, and now she couldn’t find the way. The window, the garden looked all wrong. ‘Where is my garden?’ she asked the woman whom she didn’t know. What are you doing in my house?

  ‘Ready for tea, Catherine?’

  Or was it one of her dreams? She looked out of the window. It was her garden, and the children were playing there; they’d need their tea soon. She struggled to get out of her chair, but somehow she couldn’t, and then she couldn’t find the room, it was all wrong, with chairs and people in rows and … The TV should be over there and it wasn’t, and the table in the window had gone, and the window was – everything was the wrong way round. She struggled in the deep chair and pulled herself forward to stand.