Play Dead (18 page)

‘Gamma do it,' he said.

‘I'm too big, darling,' she said. ‘Shall I get it out for you and you can show us?'

She fetched the spare bit of bookshelf from the slot beside the tallboy and the cylindrical log Janet had brought up from the cottage to use as a doorstop. This may not have been the equipment he'd intended to use, but it was something he'd invented a few weeks back and it satisfied him now. He laid the log on its side in the middle of the floor and balanced the shelf across it to make a simple, low-level see-saw. After making sure that Nell and Poppy were watching he edged up the ramp, waited posed and tense at the point of balance until you could all but hear the imaginary drum-roll, tilted the shelf over and charged down the far incline, deliberately falling flat on his face when he reached the carpet. Repetition kept him happy for a while, and then he taught the polar bear and tiger and Kermit the trick. By then Nelson was sufficiently sure of his new surroundings to want to join in, though he seemed to get enough excitement out of a simple charge and tumble, without going through the palaver with the see-saw. This meant that Nell and Poppy could talk almost coherently in the intervals between applauding.

‘Well,' said Poppy, ‘I'd better start by saying I was very relieved by what you've just told me. I really couldn't believe you'd have come last night if you'd known what your friends at Sabina Road were up to.'

‘I don't know. No, I don't think I would.'

‘What's more, I think you must have been even more shocked than the rest of us when his body was found in the play centre. You knew him, didn't you? And you knew who'd put him there.'

Nell shook her head.

‘It wasn't like that,' she said. ‘I knew him, of course, living in the same house, but I didn't know it was the same man they found. I wasn't living there any more, remember, and the drawings in the papers weren't that good. It wasn't till we were talking at Little Sue's next day. And I still don't know it was Mark and the others put him there.'

‘Oh, I think it must have been. Whoever it was didn't do it just for a joke. They wanted to distract attention from themselves by using the fact that he'd come to the play centre and we'd all got pretty angry and upset. That means somebody must have told them about that. That was you, wasn't it? I remember you didn't react like the rest of us. You were just as angry, but you were going somewhere, to do something about it. I expect you went and told your friends they'd got to get rid of him.'

‘He'd been hanging around Nelson already. I said either he went or I went. Mark said they'd talk to him. They called me in that evening and said he'd given them an explanation which they accepted; I blew my top.'

‘I can imagine! What on earth kind of explanation … ?' Nell shrugged.

‘Doesn't mean there was one,' she said. ‘Mark's Mark. Dirwana gets a kick out of making people do things they don't want. Proofs of loyalty, she calls it. And Buzz had brought Jonathan in in the first place. He …'

‘Don't you mean Simon?'

Nell hesitated.

‘Look,' she said. ‘I may have split with them, but it's not going to be me who lands them in the shit. I'd still go along with them in most things, in the political line and such. It's just the way they do it … Hell!'

Some kind of social security fraud, thought Poppy. Buzz had ‘brought him in'. You house and feed a number of the harmless hopeless, help claim their social security, perhaps under more than one name, dole them out pocket money and keep the rest … it would be a good reason for not wanting the police all over the place investigating a suicide.

‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘Let's call him Simon, so we know who we're talking about. You didn't leave at once?'

‘It wasn't like that. I mean Dirwana wanted me out, but she wasn't going to make it easy, and the others don't like people going. I'd been there a good time. It wasn't easy for me, either, Poppy. I just don't want this kind of life.'

Nell gestured with her head towards the rollicking children, the fitted carpet, the walnut tallboy, the music centre.

‘All right,' said Poppy. ‘Let's talk about Simon. Did they make him shave off his beard, do you know?'

‘Not before I left. Dirwana wanted that, I'd heard. Proof of loyalty again, see? But he was sticking out.'

Poppy nodded. She could too easily imagine the rigid little tyrannies embedded in the apparent democracy of the commune. Dirwana had wanted Nell out, because Nelson had been a loyalty beyond her sphere. The poor, sad young man had been proud of his beard. Perhaps it was the only thing in his life he had ever achieved for himself. Had he killed himself because Dirwana had won? Or had they shaved it after he'd died, so that he wouldn't be recognised? Did it matter, now?

‘There must have been a car or something,' she said. ‘Buzz ran an old pick-up.'

‘Could Simon have got the keys?'

‘No keys. The door locks were bust. Buzz started it by clipping a pair of wires together.'

‘What was he like, Simon?'

‘A no-hoper. You were sorry for him, at first. Very quiet. He'd a bit of an American accent, but he'd picked that up. Underneath it was Eton or somewhere. Always wanting to prove himself, but as soon as he started on anything he came running to you for help. Pathetic.'

‘I don't suppose he had a job.'

‘No chance.'

‘He must have had some money though. He pretty well chain-smoked.'

‘Not in the community, he didn't. Mark wouldn't have it. He'd have drawn four quid a week from the pool.'

‘His clothes looked quite good.'

‘Right. There was one time he'd got himself new jeans, and Buzz wanted to know where he'd found them. If you got money from somewhere you'd got to put it into the pool.'

Yes. A picture formed in Poppy's mind. That roasting summer. The path just inside the play-centre gate. Laura, grim with mysterious outrage. (Deborah beyond her shoulder, cornering the market in trikes.) ‘There's some of them will rob you blind.'

‘Laura,' she said.

‘Laura?'

‘Something she said—I think it must have been about that. I'm fairly sure she knew Simon … oh, several things. For instance, do you remember her suddenly having that outburst against the police, that afternoon at Little Sue's … ?'

‘He hadn't got a record. Buzz was always very careful about that.'

‘That doesn't mean he hadn't been in trouble with them, some time. And another thing, when you came and stayed here that time you told me a bit about Mr Capstone. How did you know that?'

‘Mark kept dossiers on people—anything he thought we could use. He'd tell us at council meetings.'

‘But they knew about me being Janet's mother-in-law, and you didn't?'

‘Must have been something that came up after they'd voted me off the council. When I said I was leaving, that was.'

‘That makes sense. You see, I suppose someone might have been able to work out about Janet being my daughter-in-law, but I never said anything to anyone about her making me join the Labour Party, except Laura. I didn't mean to, it wasn't even true, really, but I was babbling a bit because … oh, how extraordinary! And
that's
what Simon must have told your friends!'

She sat motionless, staring at the back window, not seeing the winter sunlight on the mottled ivy that clothed the garden wall. Links formed, a proliferating network. The furry lover in the sea cave. Miss Poppy! Laura had assumed Poppy had an actual lover, and told Simon. He'd persuaded Mark and his friends he'd got a reason for watching the play centre. To back it up he'd started watching outside Poppy's flat. Mark kept dossiers … And Laura needed extra money, and Simon had smoked and bought new jeans … and he'd come on the one day she wasn't at the play centre but taking Sophie to the dentist, and … ah … ‘Why must they grow up so quickly?' ‘That's the pity of it, Mrs Tasker. That's just the pity of it.'

‘I'm sorry …' she began, but at that moment Nelson, excited now into wilder and wilder tumbles, completely missed the big cushion Nell had put down for him, sprawled sideways and banged his head on the corner of the log-box. His yells filled the room. While Nell tried to comfort him Poppy fetched his mug of Ribena out of his changing bag. Toby meanwhile had exhausted his interest in using the shelf and log as a see-saw and had instead devised a sort of projectile system, resting the shelf on the log, aiming it in the general direction of his cuddly menagerie and then whooshing it forward to skittle the animals over. It was a lethal device, but far from accurate. Poppy, concentrating on Nelson's plight, wasn't aware of it until she was handing Nell the mug and the shelf cracked into the back of her ankle.

‘Ouch!' she cried. ‘No, Toby, no! That hurt! Poor Poppy! No!'

It had hurt, too. She sat down with her good foot firmly on the plank and rubbed the battered ankle. Miming angelic repentance Toby came and kissed it better, then immediately tried to prise the plank free, to begin again.

‘No,' she said firmly. ‘Tell you what—let's go and see if the machine's finished. Then we can do the wash. You can put the soap in. No. That game's over. Finished. Good boy.'

They were in the utility room waiting for the machine's final chunter so that Poppy could open the door and load the clothes in when an unconsidered area of the network expanded in her mind, cancer-like, in fresh linkages. Simon had been watching outside the flat. He had tried to follow John. There had been a picture of John, instantly recognisable, on the notice-board at the commune. And then John had been angry, panicky. But later still, indifferent—it was only Simon, and not … who? Of course, John didn't know that Mark was keeping dossiers. Why hadn't they brought all that up last night? Tory candidate's husband sleeping with Labour candidate's mother-in-law. Ah, God!

They'd be keeping it for the actual election, of course.

I've got to talk to Laura.

4

Barnsley Square was south-east of the park, over the border into Ormiston, so Poppy took a taxi. It was probably the best address in the borough. The houses here would have cost you, at the height of the boom, £200,000 more than you'd have paid for similar space around Poppy's area. They were detached, and pretty in an almost Mediterranean way, with wide eaves and shutters, but not grand, a half-basement and then a couple of storeys above. Sometimes camera crews would spend a morning there to film an actor emerging from a door and so give the following scene the gloss of obvious wealth. The other main intrusion on the peace of the square came from driving instructors taking beginners through the early spasms of clutch-control.

It was now late morning, Poppy having timed her visit so that Laura should be back from collecting Sophie from school. She hadn't been able to ring and see if she was in as the number wasn't in the book, or if it was it was under the husband's name, which she didn't know. He was some kind of international banker, she seemed to remember from a colour-supplement piece about Sophie and Nick's mother, the stage designer Mary Pitalski. She didn't know the house number either but would recognise it from the time she'd brought Toby to tea—it would be the only one with a
trompe-l'oeil
grotto on the garage door at the bottom of the ramp by the steps. Number 17, it turned out. As she climbed the steps her mind was still a muddle of imagined conversations—with Laura, broaching the subject, with John, warning him what was going to happen, if it was. (‘I've got to see you …' No.)

The door was opened by a beaky blonde woman in an orange silk trouser suit. She was exactly like her photographs.

‘Oh, thank the kind angels!' she cried. ‘I'm at my wits' end!'

Poppy's blank look must have answered.

‘You're not from the agency?'

‘I'm afraid …'

‘Holy Saint Boniface, I can't stand it! Send me a nanny or I'll go mad! Just listen to that child!'

She paused, and Poppy heard Nick's characteristic whining wail coming from somewhere inside.

‘What's happened to Laura?'

‘If only I knew. I'd told her I'd pick up Sophie …'

A fresh wail interrupted her, but somehow different, urgent, in need.

‘I could come in for half an hour,' said Poppy. ‘Just until whoever you're expecting does turn up. He knows me from the play group. My name's …'

Ms Pitalski was in no mood for references or identification.

‘Oh, that would be divine of you!' she said. ‘Of course they'll come. Kids are downstairs. You'll have to excuse me, I'm hours late already.'

‘One moment …'

‘I'm sure you'll manage,' said Ms Pitalski, as she bent in the hallway and flung magazines, papers and sandwiches out of a briefcase. ‘And if she doesn't come the agency number's on that pad. If anyone calls tell them I'm on my way. Not if it's my mother, of course. And thank you, thank you. Mother of heaven's, what has he done with the keys?'

She had crammed a fresh lot of papers into the case and was rootling in a drawer. Now she gave up and made for the door, pausing to press a switch beside it. Poppy tried to bar her way on to the steps, saying, ‘Please listen to me …' but she pushed past.

‘I really haven't time. Later, later … Mother of God, the car's on fire!'

The switch must have activated the garage door, which had tilted and was now whining up out of sight. Bluish fumes poured out of the opening. The smell reeked into the clean winter air. Not fire, exhaust.

Ms Pitalski rushed down the steps, round and into the garage. Now Poppy could hear the purr of a large engine, idling. Her heart hammered with dread and foreknowledge. She was at the bottom of the steps when Ms Pitalski emerged, having held her breath as long as she could and now gasping for air.