Silent Playgrounds (10 page)

Suzanne closed the door on her study and set to work to clean up the house. She worked meticulously from the top to the bottom, dusting, vacuuming, washing, until the distracting disorder was replaced by something closer to the order and system she had in her study. It took her nearly three hours, and by the end she felt tired, hot and grubby – but was filled with a sense of achievement.

A plan was beginning to form in her mind. Her research at the Alpha Centre was under threat. Richard hadn’t actually said so, but … She could put all her energies into producing a really good analysis of the little bit of material she had, but that wouldn’t be enough to impress the people who made the decisions. She needed to undo the damage she had – unintentionally – done. She wanted to do that anyway. She owed it to Ashley.

She thought about the first time that she’d met him.

He’d just been a face in a crowd at first. She had a vague memory of a boy with dark hair and eyes and a sudden, warm smile – someone fleetingly, but disturbingly, familiar. With hindsight, she knew that he had been interested in her, curious. It was his attention to her that had drawn her attention. But it had been a week or so before they finally spoke to each other.

She had been in the coffee bar one day – a big, high-ceilinged room with an assortment of chairs, some tables, a drinks machine in one corner. Like the rest of the building, the coffee bar was shabby, showing the wear and tear of constant use but no personal ownership. Rules about vandalism were strict, and there was little graffiti at the Alpha Centre, but the damage of constant use, the damage of poverty and the damage resulting from damaged people with damaged lives had all made their mark.

The air always smelt of frying, steam and cigarettes. There was a serving hatch at one end of the room that was locked and shuttered at that time of day. A metal grill protected its brown painted wood. The main part of the room was taken over by a full-size snooker table, which was one of the few things at the centre that the lads evinced enthusiasm for. There was always a game going on, whether it was officially break time or not.

She was idly watching two of the Alpha’s clients, Lee and Dean, experimenting with fancy shots. Richard had suggested that these two would be good candidates for the first stage of her research, and she was trying to get to know them. Dean she found hard to read, and
though he had shown her no overt hostility, there was something about him that worried her. She always felt edgy when he was around. Lee, on the other hand, had seemed friendly in the middle of his hyperactivity and fast-talking wit. That day, he’d offered to teach her how to play snooker, and though she knew the basics, she’d accepted, seeing this as a way of breaking down some more of the barriers. She’d caught Ashley’s eye as Lee was demonstrating how to hold the cue, and he had, almost imperceptibly, shaken his head as if in warning.

And the muffled comments and laughter as she’d leant over the table lining up her cue, the way Lee positioned himself behind her, the loose-lipped smile on Dean’s face made her realize that she was being turned into a target of sexual innuendo and mime. She’d made the fundamental mistake of assuming that superficial friendliness meant they had no hostility towards her. She didn’t know how to cope with that kind of behaviour from a group of youths – it was more unnerving and more demeaning than careless innuendo on the street. It was focused, personal, malicious. She’d walked away, knowing that this was acknowledging defeat, aware of muffled comments and laughter, and met Neil’s eye from where he’d been standing in the door of the reception office watching unseen. His face carried the unspoken comment:
I told you so.

She’d moved across to the far side of the coffee bar, lit a cigarette, trying to make herself less visible, feeling angry with herself for not handling the situation well, when Ashley had caught her eye again and given her
a sympathetic smile. A few minutes later, he’d sat down beside her, where she was aimlessly turning the pages of her work folder.

‘Don’t mind them,’ he’d said. He’d bought her a Coke from the machine, and she found that, and his support, oddly comforting. Then he’d looked at her folder. ‘What are you doing?’ he’d asked. His voice was quiet, his accent broad Sheffield. She’d told him a bit about the university, and asked him about his interests, his plans. He didn’t really have any, he’d said. He hadn’t bothered with school much. But he liked drawing. ‘I’d like to do art at college,’ he’d confided. A brief exchange, but encouraging.

Another time, he’d pulled a small sketch pad out of his pocket and shown her some of his work. To her untutored eye, it looked good: bold line drawings catching the movement and atmosphere of the city. She recognized the shops near Hunters Bar, and the park. They were delineated with a few strokes of the pencil, lively and vivid, filling the paper with a sense of movement. She was impressed and told him so. He’d given her a quick, private smile.

It was Adam he reminded her of, that must have been what gave her that flash of recognition when she saw him. He had the same warm smile. Adam’s face used to light up like that when he saw her, and Adam had that same confiding way of talking.
I’ll tell you a secret, Suzanne,
he’d say when he was – what? – seven, eight? And he’d whisper in her ear about some misdemeanour that she was to keep secret from their father.
I won’t tell,
she would say. That was her role. She had
to protect her father from worry, and Adam from their father’s anger.
But you mustn’t do it again.

She was tidying the kitchen now, but she had lost the momentum and realized she was aimlessly moving things from one surface to another. She ran hot water into the sink, scooped up the dishes that were scattered across the worktops, and dumped them in the water. She’d wash them later. She thought about her study, the papers on her desk, her computer with the pages of data half typed up. Screw work. She was going out for a walk.

Late that afternoon, Barraclough was trawling through the records, trying to find Sandra Allan’s baby, the child born sometime towards the end of the 1970s, or possibly 1980. Sandra’s recent death saved a lot of work. Copies of her birth certificate were in the file. Barraclough checked. She’d been born in Castleford, West Yorkshire, in 1963, daughter of Thomas Ford, van driver, and Elizabeth Ford. Were the parents still living in the area? Where were they when Sandra’s baby was born?

Barraclough checked the file on Sandra Allan’s death. Next of kin was obviously Dennis Allan. She couldn’t find any reference in the notes to Sandra’s parents. She went back to the database and checked. Yes. A Thomas Ford, with a matching date of birth, had died five years ago in St James’s Hospital, Leeds. She could get the address off the death certificate, if this was the right Thomas Ford. That would give her an address for Elizabeth Ford, Sandra’s mother.

She looked at the time. There were a couple of people
coming in from the house-to-house that she was supposed to interview. She’d have to get back to it tomorrow.

The man from the museums department, John Draper, wore baggy jeans and Jesus sandals. He carried a folder of papers, some books and an air of energetic enthusiasm. McCarthy, who had arranged to meet Mr Draper at Shepherd Wheel, felt depressed. He was doubtful about the value of this contact, and didn’t relish the thought of listening to yet another academic demonstrate his boundless knowledge of an area of minuscule breadth, minuscule relevance to the present day and minuscule interest to anyone with a life to live. And all delivered in a tone of patronizing deprecation for the benefit of the stupid Plod who couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time.

In the event, McCarthy found himself getting interested as John Draper explained quickly and succinctly how the power of the river system had been harnessed, and how the chains of workshops and wheels had grown up along the five rivers that had carved out the valleys on which the city was built. ‘No problems with recycling and waste,’ Draper said. ‘Not from your power source, anyway.’

‘There must have been a price.’ McCarthy knew that someone always paid for the free lunch.

‘Oh, yes, there was an environmental cost,’ Draper agreed. ‘Wildlife patterns were disrupted. And the mills did pollute. Waterways were seen as natural sewers – chuck in all your waste and see it vanish. To become
someone else’s problem. Still, that’s not what you’re here for.’

McCarthy looked along the dam. All the activity had died down now, the search of the workshop moving on to the laboratory and the scientists. ‘I’m not sure exactly what we are here for,’ he admitted. ‘It just seems as though someone has been using this system, and what I need to know is: were they just exploiting what was here, or have they been manipulating it somehow?’

‘Manipulating it?’ Draper looked puzzled. ‘Oh, I see what you mean. Liz Delaney said that the wheel was turning when the body was found?’

McCarthy nodded. ‘I can’t see why. There’s no logic in that.’ McCarthy didn’t like the idea of illogical crimes. Any crime, particularly an unplanned one, may seem illogical to the outside observer, but McCarthy knew that all crimes had their own internal logic, and finding that logic, that pattern, was an important key to solving the problem. Sometimes, the very illogicality was the logic – the attempt to confuse by the random act, that could never be truly random.
You have left your mark, and I will find it.
‘Also, the wheel stopped again. The woman who found the body said the wheel stopped while she was in the yard.’

‘Let’s go and have a look,’ said Draper cheerfully. They’d met on the bridge where the road divided Bingham Park from the woods, and were standing on the bridge looking down at the weir above Shepherd Wheel Dam. They went into the park by the gap in the wall that led to the steps. Draper showed McCarthy the way the weir channelled the water along the goit and into
the dam. ‘The weir has deteriorated, of course,’ he said. ‘It’s a crime the way this system has been allowed to decline.’ He caught McCarthy’s glance. ‘It’s important to keep some of our history intact, wouldn’t you agree, Inspector? Learn from our yesterdays?’

‘Depends what you learn.’ McCarthy was only prepared to concede so far.

‘Oh, no doubt. Always. True of anything.’ McCarthy looked at the shaggy-headed scholar who was studying the top of the weir with minute interest, and couldn’t decide if the man was taking the piss or not. He waited to see if the perusal was to any purpose, or if Draper was just making the most of an opportunity to commune with his beloved remains. ‘This is …’ Draper put his hand on a small bar that protruded above the edge of the path. ‘I was wondering why the water was so low.’ He looked at McCarthy. ‘In the dam. The water is very low. I was assuming it was the silting problem we’ve got along the whole system, but …’ He indicated the bar. ‘This is the shuttle that regulates the flow of water into the dam. It’s been set to virtually stop the flow.’

‘Someone’s shut the water off?’ McCarthy wanted this clarified.

‘Exactly. I’ll have to tell them. Get the flow restored.’

McCarthy looked across the dam, where the sun was gleaming off the mud banks and turning the surface of the water into a dark mirror. Despite the disruption of the past week, he found the scene peaceful – but it was the peace of desertion, a place abandoned, where the water-birds swam undisturbed beside the overgrown
allotments and the shuttered silence of Shepherd Wheel.

The two men walked along the side of the dam. Draper looked down at the mud, marked with the prints of the water-birds, emerald green with new moss, littered with twigs fallen from the trees, soft-drink cans, sweet papers. They went down the steps at the far end of the dam and round the front of Shepherd Wheel to reach the entrance to the wheel yard. McCarthy didn’t break the silence. He had a feeling that the other man was mulling something over and he didn’t want to disrupt his train of thought. As they reached the wheel-yard gate, Draper paused with his hand on the padlock. ‘Of course, if you wanted to run water through without moving the wheel, you might think that lowering the level of water in the dam would do it. You’d be wrong, of course.’ He looked up at McCarthy, still fiddling with the key in the lock. ‘It solves your problem about the wheel stopping, though. With the water as low as this, there’d only be enough to turn the wheel for about twenty minutes. If that.’

It seemed so obvious, McCarthy couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it himself. ‘Could that, what did you say, shuttle have been moved accidentally?’ Or could Emma’s death have been carefully planned, rather than the sudden outburst of killing violence that it seemed?

‘It’s never happened before that I know of,’ Draper said doubtfully. ‘It doesn’t shift to a knock.’

Vandals? McCarthy wondered. No, vandals wouldn’t be content with the simple resetting of the level of the dam. They would have torn it apart, destroyed it. For
some reason, the river workings didn’t seem to attract their attention. Draper fiddled with the key and unlocked the padlock. ‘Half these bloody keys don’t work,’ he said. They were in the wheel yard now, and Draper wandered across to look down on the decaying wheel. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘there’s been a mill here since at least 1556.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘She was in there,’ he said, ‘your little girl?’

The phrase sounded strange to McCarthy. A little girl. A drug user. A sexually active woman. A little girl. ‘Yes,’ he said.

‘And the wheel was turning. She’d been pushed in from the inside?’ McCarthy nodded. ‘Pushed into the water, and … The wheel is damaged – I’m surprised it turned.’ McCarthy waited, not feeling the impatience he usually felt when experts waffled their way to the point. He felt as though Draper was putting his thoughts together out loud. ‘There’s a long tail goit here,’ Draper said. ‘The water channels back through a conduit – comes out about fifty metres from the wheel. Small and narrow. When the mill isn’t working, there isn’t enough current to move anything much through it. She’d probably have jammed in there anyway. Maybe he opened the pentrough to wash her into the conduit.’