Silent Children (39 page)

"What are you playing at now, son? What's the game?"

Ian felt as if he'd left his breath somewhere in front of him. The hand that had been reaching for the knife had darted to the floor and helped push him backward a stumbling pace, but he didn't know if he'd been swift enough for Woollie not to have glimpsed his intention, and Woollie's expression wasn't telling. The toothless mouth lolled in a grin that looked near to idiotic, the eyes might have been watching a dream. Next door the phone continued to ring, interrupting Ian's thoughts as they struggled to put themselves together. He could find nothing to say except the truth, and suddenly he didn't care—but Charlotte, who was gazing in paralysed dismay at him over the edge of the bed, opened her mouth with such an effort he heard her lips part. "He's being a horse."

As Woollie's head jerked sideways his gaze stuck to Ian. "What's that, love?"

"He was being a horse pulling the coach."

"What are you babbling on about? Not talking in your sleep, are you? My eyes aren't past it yet, and I can't see any coach."

"The one you said was coming to get us."

"That'll be coming all right. It better had for everyone's sake." Woollie's gaze twitched closer to the surface and turned to her. "He was trying to entertain you, are you saying?"

"He was funny."

"That so, son? Were you putting on a show?"

Ian didn't respond until Woollie's raw gaze swam round to him, and then he made himself nod. As the phone in his house fell silent he realised he was moving his head not unlike a horse's, and succeeded in producing a whispered neigh followed by one somewhat louder. "All right, no need to carry on," Woollie said, and slid his hand off the stool to pat the knife as if he'd only now remembered it was there. "What are we going to do with him, love?"

"Don't know," Charlotte mumbled, and her arms shrank against her sides. "Nothing," she begged.

"Can't do that, can we? We'll have to do something with a horse that's got itself into a bedroom."

Both the mattress and the loose board emitted creaks as Ian rested his hands on the end of the bed and shoved himself to his feet. "Too late," Woollie muttered. "He doesn't want anyone thinking he's a horse any more."

He might have been addressing the room rather than his captives. When his gaze acknowledged them it alighted none too favourably on Charlotte. "Have you finished, love?"

"What?" she hardly more than mouthed.

"The sleepy children," Woollie said with little patience, jabbing a finger at the album on the bed. "Have you done with them?"

"Yes."

Ian understood why that sounded so much like a prayer, and could only hope Woollie hadn't noticed. The man thrust out a hand for the album, but Charlotte pressed her arms harder against her sides. As Woollie's mouth began to droop into a clown's exaggerated grimace, Ian grabbed the album and paced around the bed to plant it in the outstretched hand. He was on the point of doing so when he grew intensely aware of being close enough to struggle with their captor—to launch all his weight at Woollie and knock him off the stool before he could pull out the knife, and keep him clear of Charlotte long enough for her to escape. But the stool would be in the way of the door, and probably their struggle would be too, and all he would achieve would be to infuriate Woollie and terrify Charlotte. Or was he simply finding excuses not to take the risk, not to put himself in danger of being cut or stabbed? As he tried to draw enough of a stealthy breath to lend his bravery some oxygen, Woollie stretched his forefinger along the blade and raised the handle far enough to grasp. Ian had lost any chance to surprise him. He dropped the album on the man's intimidating palm with a slap that smelled of earthy leather, and backed away feeling hopelessly useless, trapped under the slab in his mind. "That didn't work, did it, son?" Woollie said.

Ian had a nightmarish sense of being unable to conceal any of his thoughts. "What?" he tried to say as if he didn't know.

"What do you reckon we're talking about? Your story and nothing else."

"Which story?" Ian had to ask.

"The one that was going to put your playmate to sleep."

The realisation that he'd strayed close to betraying himself even though Woollie hadn't been suspicious of him caused Ian to sway against the bedroom wall. Sleeplessness was catching up with him, sneaking nightmares in among his thoughts. He watched uneasily as Woollie laid the album in his lap beside the eager knife and gazed at one or the other of them. "So what's the plan now?" Woollie said.

It was only to save Charlotte from feeling expected to respond that Ian mumbled "Don't have one."

"Not good for much but telling stories, are you? You take after someone else we know." Woollie squeezed his eyes and mouth shut, possibly intending to mime slumber but looking more like a displeased corpse, then his eyes came out of hiding to check that Ian hadn't dared to move. "Tell you what you do. Give your playmate a cuddle and see if that helps her go off."

Charlotte's unhappy gaze followed Ian as he retreated to the far side of the bed. He guessed she would rather he placed himself between her and their captor, but he wanted to be able to watch the man. He swung his legs onto the rumpled quilt and lowered his head to the misshapen wrinkled pillow, his skin crawling with the stifled heat of the unventilated room. He stretched one tentative embarrassed hand toward Charlotte, and she turned to face him, hunching up her shoulders at Woollie's presence behind her. As Ian's hand settled over the small of her back, Woollie said "That's more like it. That's how the babes should be. Shut those eyes now and I'll sing you to sleep."

A shudder passed through Charlotte, then her body grew so stiff that Ian found himself stroking her back. "Don't worry," he murmured, all that he could think of to risk saying, by no means enough in itself.

"You can listen to him for once, love. Those eyes aren't shut, are they? I'll know if they're not. Yours as well, son. Set your playmate a good example for once."

"We'll be okay," Ian whispered, and rubbed her spine harder. Her thin dress began to ride up, and she tugged it down furiously and sent him a scowl he might have expected from someone his age or even older. When he moderated his touch she let down her eyelids as though acknowledging his thoughtfulness and, with a final nervous blink at him, squashed them shut. That was Ian's cue to close his own until her face was no more than a glimmer and their captor's shape a flickery silhouette. He continued to massage the taut ridged wire of her spine, which felt in danger of snapping with tension, as Woollie began to sing.

"Now I lay you down to sleep,
Close your eyes good night.
Angels come your soul to keep.
Close your eyes good night..."

Ian wasn't confident of being able to stand much of this himself, especially while he was aware how it appalled Charlotte. No sooner had Woollie croaked the lullaby in an almost tuneless murmur than he recommenced, and Ian grew desperate for a way to soothe her. As her eyelids shivered, unwilling to imprison her with whatever she might be seeing in her own dark, his hand found the nape of her neck and began to manipulate it gently as he remembered his mother once treating his when he'd been nightmarish with a fever. Her shoulders worked, suggesting that they wanted to dislodge his clasp, and then, despite the drone of yet another repetition of the lullaby, they started to relax. Her eyelids slackened into restfulness, her forehead became smooth, her breathing adopted the rhythm of his fingers on her neck. When her body curled toward him he knew she was asleep.

Woollie knew as well. He had been leaning sideways off the stool to observe her, but subsided against the door, letting Ian glimpse the movements of the hand in the man's lap, a regular movement that kept pace with his song. The notion of what he might be doing now that he was unaware of being watched came close to making Ian laugh, although there would have been no humour in it. Instead he widened the slit between his eyelids.

The album was spread open, and Woollie was running his fingers over and over a photograph as he might have stroked a child's head. It wasn't just this spectacle that horrified Ian—it was the recognition that his own hand on Charlotte's neck was following the rhythm of the lullaby. He felt implicated with their captor. He ran his hand down to the small of Charlotte's back and rested it there and closed his eyes to keep out the sight of the fingers caressing the dead picture. As long as the man kept repeating the song Ian would know where he was.

The lullaby blurred into little more than a monotonous sound. When Charlotte snuggled against him, the rise and fall of her chest was unexpectedly calming. He stroked her upper back to keep her breaths steady, then remembered he shouldn't be taking his pace from the lullaby but carried on stroking until he had to be reminded to continue by the song he'd grown unaware of hearing. If he breathed in time with Charlotte that would show him exactly how fast to rub her back, which he thought he was still doing somewhere in the distance near the song. Much further away a phone was ringing, but it seemed to have nothing to do with him, not while he felt as safe in her arms as she was in his, at the end of some old story he used to know. His breathing settled into her slow placid rhythm, and then he couldn't hear the song or the phone or feel his hand or any other part of himself.

"Are you asleep, love?"

"She isn't really."

"He isn't either."

"Never mind trying to have a laugh with me. We haven't got time for that now."

"He's not."

"Nor's she."

"Trying another of your games, are you? Having one more go at confusing me?"

"You won't know he has till he's done it."

"Nor her, 'cos she's as sly as me."

"Only because you're making her like you," Hector snarled, lurching off the stool that was wedged between the half-open door and its frame. For a second, perhaps quite a few of them, he couldn't shake off the conviction that he had indeed heard the children talking—if not their actual voices, at least their thoughts—and he didn't know what he was about to do with the knife that had found its way into his hand. Just in time he recognised that he'd been voicing his suspicions of the children: as yet he hadn't any evidence that they were pretending to be asleep. He mustn't let himself be rushed into causing any unnecessary upset or mess, not when he was so close to summoning John's help. Though his legs felt as brittle with insomnia as the rest of him, he managed not to make a noise as he approached the bed. Flattening his free hand against the wall above the headboard, he leaned down to peer at the dim faces that were turned to each other on the pillows.

They might be asleep. When he aimed a long slow hot breath at each of them, they didn't stir. He lowered the blade toward the boy's face and twisted the point no more than half an inch from the entrance to the ear. That failed to provoke a response, although surely the girl would have been unable to restrain herself if she were able to see him apparently torturing her playmate. He repeated the trick on her ear with as little effect, then drew the duller edge of the knife across her throat and did so rather less gently to the boy. He watched the dark lines fade from both throats, then pushed himself away from the bed. A growl at the medley of aches the movement brought with it escaped through the gap where his teeth should have been, but the children didn't stir. For the moment they were thoroughly asleep, and he needn't waste time wondering if they were about to have another try at tricking him.

They thought they'd persuaded him that the boy had been imitating a horse. If they believed he'd been too quick for Hector to have seen him reaching for the knife they must be desperate, which meant they were dangerous. That was how the boy was affecting his playmate, him being too old and too spoiled by his life to value the peace she deserved—too narrowed by his own self-centred adolescence to let her enjoy a stillness he couldn't understand. Soon Hector was going to have to deal with him, but first he had to phone John. He eased the door wider and propped it with the stool and padded softly out of the room.

He'd spent hours listening for sounds of the boy's mother. He'd heard her come home just in time to answer the phone as the boy had followed his playmate to sleep. Her voice had been barely audible enough for him to tell she was having a long conversation, undoubtedly about her son. Once it was over he'd heard so little for so long that he'd begun to wonder if she could have sneaked out of the house, but the night that had darkened the room before it was dark outside had emphasised sounds her house wasn't quite able to contain. At last he'd succeeded in hearing her slow ascent of the stairs and a selection of bathroom noises followed by three muffled clicks, the latter pair in the same location toward the front of the house—her bedroom light being switched on and eventually, no doubt reluctantly, off. Since then he'd waited until the children had begun speaking in his head, unless he'd been speaking aloud on their behalf, and surely that was more than long enough for her to have fallen asleep. He slid the knife into his pocket and placed one foot on the dimmest of the stairs, and heard a stealthy movement in the room behind him.

"I hear you, son," he muttered. It occurred to him to put some kind of face around the door on the chance that the girl was awake too, but she never seemed to appreciate Hector's efforts to amuse her, and in any case he was tired of playing games. Instead he sidled noiselessly into the room.

His eyes had to adjust to the dimness again. Though they took only a couple of seconds, that was longer than he ought to have to wait. His gums clamped his tongue, his hand groped for the knife, which was ready in his grasp by the time he distinguished the figures on the bed. He thought they were pretending not to have moved until he saw that the boy's hand had slid off the girl's back and was lying on the quilt between them.

Perhaps he was indeed as asleep as he must want Hector to think, but he was less so than the girl, who hadn't shifted at all. He was the threat, not her. Things had started to go wrong once he'd intruded. If he wakened while Hector was on the phone, there was no telling what tricks he might play. Hector dodged around the bed and in one swift movement returned the knife to his pocket, sat on the boy's legs, gathered his wrists in one hand and used the other to press the boy's mouth shut, his thumb and fingers digging into the bony cheeks, as he turned the boy's head to face him.