Staying two steps outside, Harry leaned forward and pushed the door further open. There was no sound except the groan of the hinges, and he could still not see a thing inside. So he risked one step nearer.
Finally, kicking the door fully open, Harry stepped inside, his stick raised. He cursed himself for not having brought a torch. There was a good one in the car. There was a knife in the car too. But in spite of his long ago meeting with Lionel Sullivan in the horror shed, he had not expected any success this day – nor any other. He still didn’t, but he had to see. After all, the police had already combed the area and discovered nothing. It was the old crying wolf nonsense, positive you wouldn’t find anything but going off to look for it anyway – and then – lo and behold -------
“I’m behind you,” Tracy said. “And I’ve got matches.”
Harry wouldn’t enter the cottage. One step into the doorway already seemed unwise, but no one jumped him, and only Tracy spoke. He heard the scratch of the match on the box, and the sudden flame flickered over his shoulder, two seconds of golden visibility, and then black nothingness again.
But Harry had seen as much as he wanted to and crashed backwards out from the little shed into the sunny fresh air. Tracy grabbed his shoulder. “What the shit? What did you see? Anything?”
Harry gulped. “It’s just a shed. There’s a pile of dirty straw and a couple of old rakes and bent spades.”
“That’s what frightened you?”
“Bloody hell, no.” Harry found his voice again. “There’s a body. It has to be a dead body, and it’s lying in a lot of dark sticky stuff. I’m guessing blood. It’s a young man. I don’t know him. And it’s not your wretched father. I think it’s someone who got hit over the head. And I’m thinking the obvious about who by.”
74
The doorway was blocked off, a squad of men dressed in white plastic and speaking softly to each other, moved around the shed, Nicholas Ostopolis pointed, moved back, and discovered something else. The sad and lonely body still lay on the unwelcoming floor, and it was out of sight that Morrison stood, speaking to Tracy Sullivan. Rita, sitting on a fold-up stool, chatted with Sylvia and Harry, both also supplied with stools.
“Don’t worry,” Rita said. “We’ll get a special truck down here. A couple of them if possible, One for poor Tammy. The other one for you two, and Tracy too if she wants a lift.”
“He’s one of yours?” asked Harry, almost whispering.
“Yes. He’s Ralph Tammy,” Rita said, “who I liked very much. Been in the force longer than me I think, at least ten years. He found that horrid little shed and arranged to reconnoitre with some of the others. Now where are they? Who did this? Why just Tammy? And what the hell is going on in this area? Could this really be Lionel Sullivan? It’s a straightforward killing and no nasty mutilations, but then, it’s a man. Perhaps he doesn’t take any interest in men. So why kill him? Or was it someone else? The owner of this silly little room of no use to anyone and abandoned for years by the look of it. I don’t know, but I’m damned furious. Tammy was a good man. A nice man and a good cop.”
“I’m sorry.” Sylvia felt almost guilty. “But you said there were five of them.”
“And it really seemed all five disappeared.” Rita tossed her curls, all in hurried knots. “But there seem to be signs. Well, three are on their phones. Morrison is handling all that. If anyone else is dead, I’m going home to cry. Then I’m coming back with an electric saw and a combine harvester.”
“I don’t know many of your men,” said Harry, slumped back against a tree trunk, his stool uneven and unbalanced on the stony ground. He was unbalanced himself, and still shaking slightly. “But I hope to God no one else was hurt. The thought of all five – it’s not possible. Against one man? Sometimes I feel we bring bad luck with us. It’s a horrible feeling.” He watched Morrison from a distance. “I suppose we’re keeping you from your own work.”
“Sullivan has a gun now,” Sylvia murmured.
“But Tammy wasn’t shot,” said Rita, twisting her fingers so tightly, they looked white. “He was killed from behind with some sharp object, maybe an axe.” She bit her lip, leaning forwards, but still spoke quietly. “What if it’s all him. I don’t understand the backwards and forwards unless now he’s got an accomplice. But this murder, and the last murder of that poor woman last week. And – think about it – the train crash. Who knew you’d be on that train? And perhaps more to the fact, who knew Tracy would be on that train?”
In blank silence, both Sylvia and Harry gazed back, and then at each other. Finally Harry said, “Honestly, I don’t know.”
“The Nottingham police,” said Sylvia. “And that Daisy Curzon woman. But she only knew about us. I don’t believe we ever mentioned Tracy at all. I think the train crash was just kids.”
“No.” Morrison walked up behind them, Tracy following. “That bomb was not sophisticated, but nor was it the work of kids. Not unless some child is practising to become a terrorist. That happens – I’m not joking. But the situation is quite puzzling. Whether it was aimed at you, or at Tracy, or at someone else we haven’t yet identified, we can’t know at this stage. Obviously, the easiest probability is that the bomb was an experiment and had no connection to any of you. But I never believe in coincidences. However, at this precise moment, it’s Sargent Tammy I’m concerned with and the whereabouts of the other four men.” He looked briefly behind him. “The forensic team will be here for quite some days. Maybe a day or two. I have to get back to the station, and you too, Rita. Meanwhile Harry and Sylvia, I suggest you go back home and await further information. Your help may yet be needed.”
“And Tracy?”
Morrison nodded. “She’s coming with us. No, no, no threat of arrest. But there’s a lot we need to talk about.”
Rita stood, stamping her feet back into circulation. “I’ll phone later,” she told Sylvia. “And immediately I hear what happened to our other men.”
“It must have been beastly,” said Amy, her voice quivering.
Ruby was cuddling the puppy, who was tempting to eat her fingers. “It must have been ghastly. “You have such amazing adventures, Sylvikins, but they’re all so unpleasant. Aren’t you a bit tired of seeing dead people?”
“It sounds like that film,” sighed Harry.
“And first of all the horrible climb down into the pits,” Amy said, imagining the nightmare of falling into the Grand Canyon.
“Not really pits,” said Harry, somewhat pointlessly. “Just a bit of a slope down.”
“It sounds like a real platypus,” Amy shivered.
Percival looked over the top of his newspaper. “She means a precipice.”
Amy nodded at her husband as he returned to the headlines. “I get giddy-go too,” she told him. “Is that the right word, dear?”
“Vertigo,” Percival suggested without reappearing.
“That’s what I said,” Amy smiled. “Giddy-go and a broken foot as well. Poor Sylvia. You could have hit all the murderers over the head with your crotch.”
“Crutch,” Percival muttered.
“None of that was the problem,” Sylvia sighed. “It was finding that poor detective on the shed floor. I’m glad I never got that far until afterwards.”
It had been an hour earlier when Morrison had telephoned. Rita had phoned a little later, and finally Tracy had phoned from back at the pub.
“DC Crabb fell, and was injured,” Morrison said, briefly running through the details. “His telephone was smashed, and the others were out of the reception area. They stayed to patch up Crabb, but like an idiot, Tammy wanted to check on the cottage he’d seen already. He had no authority to carry on alone, but that’s what he did. Then the others couldn’t find him. Eventually they got Crabb up and found reception again back on the lower road. They still hadn’t found Tammy, but they reported in. They’re back at the station now, except for Crabb.”
“He’s in hospital,” Rita said later. “A broken leg. Same as
you, Sylvia. Seems to be all the fashion. But Tammy, well, he disobeyed orders, but I feel sick about it. He was a good man. I shall find that bastard, I promise you.”
Two hours later, Tracy told them, “The cops want to meet my Mum too. They reckon they can trace her. Well – good luck to them. There’s that poor sod’s funeral first.”
“We never knew him,” Harry said from over Sylvia’s shoulder. “No need to attend. But we still haven’t found the right cottage, have we? That wasn’t it, I’m positive.”
“No it couldn’t have been.” Tracy agreed. “Two small, too empty, and too few corpses.”
Unamused, Sylvia arranged to meet Tracy again the next day. “We have one evening and a couple of hours tomorrow morning to discover this woman’s address. How about contacting that Stoker person? He must have talked to her.”
“If he found her, so can we. And so can the police.”
“But if he already knows, it would be simpler just to ask him,” Sylvia pointed out.
“Except that we’d have to find him first,” said Harry. “But I’ll phone the publisher. They won’t tell me of course, at least, they certainly shouldn’t. It would be a terrible break of trust. But I can phone easily enough.”
“And there’s still the problem of Joyce’s grave,” Sylvia added, although more to herself. “It’s all so horrid. At least Joyce can’t suffer anymore, but him having her corpse – so sick. Of course we already know Sullivan, and we know how sick he is. If he’d been put in the same mental institution as that other man, the Howard triplet, then I doubt Sullivan could have escaped.”
“He was judged sane enough to stand trial,” Harry said. “And surely he was. He certainly knew the difference between right and wrong. The Howard kid never did.”
“Lionel was just sick enough to prefer wrong over right.” She had grabbed the telephone directory from the sideboard. “Is that mentally deranged? Surely.” She pointed out the telephone number of the same publishing firm which had accepted the offer to market Paul Stoker’s small book on the true crimes of Lionel Sullivan. “You can phone in the morning,” she told Harry. “Ask if they’ll give you Stoker’s number. They won’t. So then ask them to ask Stoker if he’ll phone us back right away. We’ll be out by lunchtime – off to find Tracy.”
Harry yawned. “Yes, I know,” he said. “I can nag, as I’m sure you know.”
He dreamed of falling down a precipice and hitting his head on a printing press with an old man watching, in charge of the press, and cackling with maniacal delight. Harry woke with a headache.
Falling out of bed and reaching for the first bit of covering he could grab, which happened to be Sylvia’s old threadbare dressing gown which she had put out for the rubbish bin, flung it on and staggered to find where the paracetamol had been hidden.
“Not hidden, darling,” Sylvia blinked and pulled open the top drawer of her bedside table. “And there’s a glass in the bathroom. Get some water. And that worn out pink flowered silk really doesn’t suit you at all.”
He gulped down the water he’d poured into the glass in the bathroom, accepted the two little white tablets his wife handed him and shrugged off the dressing gown. “So where’s the one I bought you?”
“Hanging up on the hook on the back of the bathroom door – like always,” Sylvia said. “Right next to your own.” She fetched it for him, took the empty glass and refilled it, then drank it herself. Harry shrugged on his own dressing-gown and collapsed onto the small armchair beside the bedroom door.
“I have a vile headache. I’m going back to bed for half an hour. Go and have a nice breakfast without me. Then come back and wake me if I’m not up already. Sorry – but I feel ghastly. Bad dreams.”
Half an hour later Sylvia telephoned ‘Stanhope, Grisham and Sons, Publishing and Marketing Literary Fiction.’ Since Paul Stoker’s book, written in a rush and full of mistakes, could never have been described as literary fiction, Sylvia was not expecting to speak to anyone impressively intellectual.
“Mr Stanhope, or Mr Grisham?”
“Umm. What about?”
“My name is Sylvia Joyce, and I have an urgent need to speak to one of your authors,” she told the mumble on the other end. “Paul Stoker would be extremely pleased to hear from me. He’s already mentioned my name in one of his books. I’m sure you know his details, so I’m contacting you for his telephone number.”
“Ummm.” The man was evidently thinking. “Can’t do that,” he said eventually. “Wouldn’t like it.”
“Mr Stanhope, by any chance?” Sylvia paused but received no reply. “Well, this is urgent, and I can promise you that Mr Stoker will be delighted to hear from me.”
“I can ask him first,” suggested the unnamed voice.
“I can give you my own number,” Sylvia suggested. “Please ask Paul Stoker to phone me back immediately. I’ve no time to waste and will be travelling on business within a couple of hours. If Mr Stoker can’t phone me back at once, I’d be grateful if you could phone me yourself to let me know.”
“Um, maybe,” said the publisher with vague disinterest. “So what’s so ruddy urgent? Found that creep Sullivan?”
Sylvia paused and then smiled. “You’re Paul Stoker yourself, aren’t you?” she said. “That fancy publisher’s name is all pretence. I don’t care. Congratulations on publishing that book on Sullivan yourself. You must have made a fortune.”
Silence. Then, “I could be Alfred Grisham.”
“But you’re not.”
There was a faint snigger. “So, the famous Sylvia Greene, what’s so urgent now?”
“Sylvia Joyce,” she told him. “I married Harry, the one who found Sullivan’s shed the first time. We saw your interview a couple of months or so back. I presume you found Sullivan’s first wife?”
“Only wife,” he corrected her.
“So, Mr Stoker,’ Sylvia asked politely, “how do I contact Mrs Sullivan?”
“My secret,” Paul said. “I found her. You didn’t.”
“But the police will,” Sylvia answered, wanting to hit him, “and so there’ll be no secret in a day or two anyway. But I have Sullivan’s daughter Tracy with me, and she wants to find her mother too. You tell me how to find her, and I’ll arrange a meeting for you with Tracy.”
“Wow. Put her on the phone.”
“Not until I have the mother’s address and phone number.”
“Look, where are you?” the voice demanded. “Let’s meet up. I’ll even buy lunch for you and Tracy if you like. Harry too. Have you still got him?” Sylvia admitted that she still had retained her husband. “Hopefully you don’t live too far away.”
“I expect we do,” Sylvia told him. “I live in Gloucestershire, but I intend coming up to London with Harry and Tracy sometime this afternoon. I could meet you tomorrow morning.”
“Fair enough. I’ll buy breakfast. It’ll be cheaper.”
They travelled that afternoon on the express to London, Tracy nervously walking the aisle, Sylvia dozing, and Harry listening to a book on his earphones. In spite of still excellent eyesight, reading at the same time as resting his eyes had become a favourite occupation. The train trundled and surged to a stop only a few times, when Tracy distracted her nerves by flirting with a young man in the same carriage and offering him a handful of Smarties. Once they arrived at the station, she leapt off the train and stretched, smiling.
With a comb-over hairstyle, Drink in one hand and nose in a large paper handkerchief, Paul Stoker waited the next morning in the corner café, having already finished his eggs, beans and bacon. It was his napkin, stained with a blob of bean sauce, that he used as a hankie.
Tracy had been ten minutes late, so now the whole party was roughly fifteen minutes late. “You’re late,” Stoker said, screwing the napkin onto his empty plate. “I was early. Been waiting for hours.”
Harry sat abruptly. “I might add that we’ve been waiting for nearly two days,” he said, seizing the coffee stained menu from its s
tand. “You could simply have told us what we need to know on the phone.”
“Too one-sided,” said Paul. “I need something in return. So, tea and toast for everyone? And then we’ll be off.”
Sylvia scowled. “You’re coming with us?”
“The only way you’ll get the woman’s address is if I take you there.” Paul looked across the table to Tracy. “I reckon I know who you are. So you want to meet up with your mum again?”
“That’s my business,” Tracy was scowling too. “But I’ll have scrambled eggs and bacon and toast and a large tea first.”
“Same for me,” said Sylvia.
“Bloody hell,” Stoker sighed. “OK. Your mum works all night anyway, so she’ll be home by now. And it’s only round the corner.”
75
Tracy knocked first. There wasn’t any answer, so she peeped through the window. It was a tiny two up two down on the outskirts of the large council housing estate where a narrow street of attached houses remained with no gardens, but a wisp of twiggy bush in front between pavement and front door. One ground floor window was heavily curtained. The upstairs window looked simply obscure.
Tapping again on the window, Tracy called her mother. Still there was no reply.
Paul banged hard on the door. “Open up, police.” He shouted through the letterbox.
There was a rattle from inside as if someone had possibly fallen from the bed, or woken up and reached out for the alarm clock, missing and knocking it to the ground. A long pause followed, then the sound of a cat meowing. Then a voice, “What the fuck do you want?” and another scuffle. It seemed that Gertrude Sullivan was feeding the cat before bothering with the police.
Finally the door opened a crack. Tracy looked at her mother and tried to smile. “Mum?”
“Oh well, better than the cops I suppose,” said the woman, and flounced off, leaving the door open behind her. The kitchen at the back of the house was in a state of astonishing mess, but neither Tracy nor Paul seemed surprised. They sat at the central table while Gertrude put the kettle on.
The Games People Play Box Set Page 68
