Silent Playgrounds (9 page)

‘Yes, I know.’ Jane went on looking at Suzanne, then she said, ‘You still look very tense. I don’t know – I haven’t heard anything directly.’

‘How do you mean, directly?’

Jane knelt back on her heels and sipped the milkless tea Suzanne had given her. ‘I’m sure this stuff is better for you than people say,’ she said, indicating her mug. ‘Of course, you just don’t know what’s in it.’

Suzanne wasn’t sure if Jane was being deliberately evasive, or if she was just thinking out loud while she sorted out an answer to Suzanne’s question. She couldn’t ask again, because Lucy came over and looked at the glass of apple juice. ‘Is that mine?’ Suzanne nodded, and Lucy picked it up carefully, holding it with both hands.

‘Sorry,’ Suzanne apologized. ‘It’s a bit full.’ Lucy nodded, concentrating as she lifted the glass to her
mouth. ‘What are you doing?’ Suzanne indicated Lucy’s game over at the other side of the yard.

‘Playing.’ Lucy drank some more juice and looked at the level in her glass. ‘I’m going to take some for the people,’ she said.

‘People?’ Suzanne looked across to where wooden toys were assembled on some twigs and leaves. The peacock feather was stuck in the ground like a flag above them.

‘They’re on a boat,’ Lucy explained. ‘Escaping from the monsters. Tamby’s guarding them.’ She carried her glass carefully back to where she’d been playing.

Jane pulled a face. ‘Still monsters,’ she said. ‘They spent a long time with Emma’s father,’ she went on, ‘but I don’t know why. Joel told me.’

Suzanne had to do a quick mental pivot to realize that Jane was now answering her earlier question. ‘Emma’s father? How does Joel know?’

Jane shrugged. ‘Joel made it his business to know. I don’t ask. Joel wanted to know if there was anything they weren’t telling us – that we should know. He was worried.’

‘Well, so he should be.’ Suzanne wasn’t giving any ground on Joel. ‘She is his child. His only child.’ This concern, uncharacteristic of Joel in her experience, made her feel slightly warmer towards him.

‘Oh, she isn’t. His only one, I mean.’ Jane sat back on her heels, detaching a snail from one of the plants. She looked at it. ‘I don’t want that.’ She threw it over the wall into the garden of the student house. ‘He had a child from his marriage.’

Suzanne was genuinely shocked. She hadn’t known. ‘He never said anything. I’m sure he never told Dave.’

‘No. There’s no contact.’ Jane had finished working on the tubs now, and was looking at them with calm pleasure.

‘What, never?’

Jane fixed her blue eyes on Suzanne. ‘Never.’ She gauged Suzanne’s reaction for a moment, then said, ‘I know how it looks. And I don’t have many illusions about Joel. I know what he’s like. But there’s Lucy, you see.’ She rested back on her heels, her hands clasped round her cup. ‘Joel was just a bit of fun – I knew he wasn’t someone to take seriously. I didn’t actually plan for Lucy to happen.’ Suzanne nodded. Jane rarely talked about this. She was a very self-contained and private person. ‘Lucy needs to know that her father loves her,’ Jane said, glancing back at where Lucy was still absorbed in her game. ‘And if that means I have to make allowances for him, well, what does it matter? If I pressure Joel into doing more, he’ll just vanish. And what good will that be for Lucy? She’ll find out what he’s like as she gets older, but, just now, she needs to know he loves her.’

‘Does he?’ Suzanne had never, until recently, seen much sign of this in Joel.

Jane sighed and shook her head. ‘I don’t know. As much as he’s capable, maybe. Though this thing has really given him a jolt. He was straight up as soon as I told him – he was pissed off that I didn’t call him straight away – and he’s sticking around. Oh, he’s off today because he’s working, but he’s coming back tonight.’

Suzanne felt depressed at the thought of Joel being around. She remembered her encounter with him that morning. ‘He seemed upset that the police had interviewed Lucy,’ she said doubtfully. She found Joel in his new incarnation as concerned father a bit hard to believe.

Jane nodded. ‘He said I shouldn’t have allowed it. He thought it had upset her. I think she needed to talk about it, and she needs to know that someone is doing something. It was good for her to see the police – she knows that there’s someone to chase the monsters away. And we all needed to find out what happened – to Lucy, as well as Emma. I think Joel knows that really. He just hates to admit he’s wrong.’

‘Do you know any more about what happened to Lucy?’ Suzanne looked across the garden to where Lucy was rearranging her toys, her face serious.

Jane shook her head. ‘Lucy still says she went to the playground on her own, then she hid in the woods because she didn’t want to go to the hospital, I think. But it all got mixed up with Tamby. Each time she tells it, it gets more and more like one of her stories. I agree with Joel about any more interviews. I’ve told the police I’m not asking her again. I want her to forget.’

Suzanne needed to talk. Jane listened quietly as Suzanne told her about the interview with DI McCarthy, and her worry that she’d unwittingly implicated Ashley. ‘I tried to explain,’ she said, ‘but he didn’t believe me.’

Jane looked at her with exasperation. ‘You worry too much. Leave it up to them. It’s not your problem
any more. You did the right thing. You told them what you saw. They’ll deal with it.’ She thought for a moment. ‘McCarthy. Was he the fair-haired one? Cold and distant? There’s something very sexy about men like that. He should have been wearing a uniform.’

‘Who? Who should have?’ Suzanne was thrown.

‘Your DI McCarthy. And you had him to yourself for a whole hour?’ Jane sighed. ‘All Lucy and I got was some female with a stuffed rabbit.’ She looked at Suzanne. ‘It’s not your problem,’ she emphasized.

Suzanne looked at Lucy who was engaged in carefully burying one of her toys in the narrow border at the bottom of the yard, her hands and face muddy, her hair tousled, her face intent.

Dennis Allan sat at the small coffee table in the front room. It was dark; the heavy curtains were drawn. He didn’t want people looking in, staring, whispering. He’d heard what they had been saying.
Him… his wife… now his daughter… the police… murder… murderer… Murderer.
He held his hands round the mug of coffee, sipping it occasionally, not noticing that it was cold. How had it happened? He looked at the photographs on the glass cabinet, safe in their frames, safe like he wasn’t any more, like his family wasn’t any more. Sandy in her wedding dress, white, he’d wanted that, though his mum had had a bit to say. Well, under the circumstances, Emma already on the way … Emma, in one of those oval frames the school photos came in, ten, smiling. Emma and Sandy on holiday, squinting in the sun, smiling. Emma in cut-off jeans, her blonde hair
dyed a funny yellow, that awful stud through her nose, not smiling any more. Emma last Christmas by the tree, caught unawares, playing with the cat. Smiling now.

How had it happened? He’d tried so hard.
I did try, Sandy.
Nothing.
I love you, Emma.
Nothing. The answer came, unwelcome and unasked for.
Like mother, like daughter.
His own mother’s sour disapproval that had blighted the early years of his marriage. He felt his eyes fill with tears. He was weak. People thought he was weak. He’d seen the veiled contempt in the eyes of the detective. Did they think he didn’t notice? They thought they were so clever. Well, let them work it out.

Eight o’clock that evening, Suzanne decided she was going to the pub. There was a comedy night, she could talk to some friends, have a drink and just get away from it for a while. She put on the black trousers she’d bought several weeks ago and hadn’t worn yet and a silk top that Jane had given her. She twisted her hair back and caught it in a clip, put on some lipstick.

She was just checking the contents of her purse when there was a knock at the door. Suzanne opened it. She was surprised to see Richard Kean, the psychologist and her mentor from the Alpha Centre, his head almost touching the top of the doorframe, his bulk filling the small entrance hall as he came in. Richard had never been in her house before. She invited him into the front room, wondering what it was he wanted. He looked at her, taking in her make-up, the new clothes. Suzanne always dressed conventionally, even severely, for work. Until recently, she’d dressed conventionally, severely,
for everything. ‘Sorry, I’ve interrupted you. You’re going out.’

‘No, that’s fine. I’m only going to the local. Do you want a coffee?’ Suzanne wondered if he might join her down at the pub.

‘I’d rather have a cold drink.’ He looked hot.

‘Beer? Or a soft drink?’

‘Coke? I’m driving.’ Suzanne went through to the kitchen to get the drinks. He wasn’t likely to want a trip to the pub if he was driving. When she came back into the room he was standing by the wall looking at her photographs. ‘Is this your son?’ He was in front of the picture of Adam, the one taken just after his eleventh birthday. ‘He’s about the same age as my Jeff.’

‘No.’ Suzanne swallowed a sudden bitter taste. ‘No, that’s my brother, Adam.’

‘Oh, right, he looks a bit like you. Is this recent?’

‘No.’

‘What does he do, then? Is he an academic too?’

Suzanne found it hard to say. ‘No. Adam – he died, when he was fourteen. Six years ago.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.’ He looked embarrassed. He didn’t ask any questions. He didn’t want to know. ‘Look, Sue, this is really a business visit. It couldn’t wait until Monday. I had a call from Keith Liskeard.’ Suzanne recognized the name of the Alpha director. ‘He says he’s had the CID round asking questions.’

Suzanne’s stomach lurched. She should have warned them. ‘About Ashley?’ she said.

Richard looked serious. ‘You do know about it.’

‘Well, yes …’

He went on before she could tell him what had happened. ‘Look, Sue, I realize you were in a difficult situation – if you saw Ashley you had to tell them, no one’s saying you shouldn’t have done. But you should have let us know. I would have hoped you’d have come to us
before
you went to the police. It’s part of the commitment you make—’

‘Wait a minute!’ Suzanne was caught completely off balance. ‘What exactly do you think happened? What do you think I said?’

‘I can understand when there’s been a crime like that, if you saw Ashley near the scene you’d naturally—’

‘I didn’t.’ Suzanne felt a cold push of anger.

‘What do you mean?’ He looked confused.

‘I didn’t see Ashley and I didn’t tell them I’d seen Ashley. I didn’t volunteer to talk to them, I had to …’

‘Yes, that’s what I’m saying …’ He tried to pick up the initiative again but she overrode him.

‘It’s all a stupid misunderstanding. I specifically told them, specifically told DI
fucking
McCarthy that I didn’t see Ashley.’

He looked at her in silence for a minute. He obviously didn’t believe her. ‘There are some issues with Ashley at the moment. This couldn’t come at a worse time for him.’

‘What do you mean?’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t say.’

Their endless confidentiality! Maybe if she’d been given the information that Richard was referring to … ‘Why don’t you ask Ashley? He’ll tell you where he was.’

Richard looked uneasy. ‘It’s almost certainly because of these other issues … He hasn’t been to the centre since Thursday evening. We need to find him, get him to tell his story to the police before this gets out of hand.’

Suzanne found that her anger was being taken over by a sense of insecurity – had she done something wrong, something stupid? ‘I think you’d better go,’ she said.

‘Yes. I’m … OK, right.’ He turned in the doorway. ‘Keith is very unhappy about it,’ he warned.

She went to the pub by herself in the end, but left early. She talked to a few people: some of Dave’s friends who’d been her friends as well when she and Dave were married; one or two people she knew from the university. It could have been a pleasant evening, but she found that she didn’t really want to talk to anyone. The comedy evening was a let-down as well, though the rest of the audience seemed to enjoy it well enough. To her, the comedian’s laddish jokes were pointless and unfunny. She left early. He heckled her as she was leaving. ‘There’s another one off for her pension!’ It seemed that being over twenty-five was funny in itself now.

She walked back past the park gates and paused, looking down the path towards the woods. It was dark. She could see a small group of people hanging around in the shelter near the entrance. Teenagers, she assumed, though it was too dark to tell. Further in, the shadows were black under the trees. She could see a light flickering in the darkness, but otherwise it was quiet and still. The group by the shelter watched her as she stood under
the street light. She could walk through the gate, follow the path to the third bridge, go out the gate there and be on Dave’s doorstep, be where Michael was. She couldn’t think of anything that would induce her to walk into that black silence.

Steve McCarthy had been home for an hour. He’d got home after eight-thirty and gone straight to his computer to log on to the network. His evenings would be like this now, until this case was over. There was always more information pouring in, more details often burying important details, and he intended staying on top of it all.

McCarthy was ambitious. He’d joined the police after leaving school, choosing to go straight in rather than going on to do a degree. He still wasn’t sure if that had been the wisest decision. He’d done well, promotions had come in good time, sometimes sooner than his best expectations, and he knew he was seen as a team player with a good future ahead of him. He was thirty-two, and the next hike up the promotions ladder was the important one.

He was working on their current database now, getting it to look for patterns in relation to other offences in the Sheffield area over recent months. He typed another command into the computer, getting it to sort the information in relation to drug offences. While he was waiting, he dug his fork into the takeaway he’d picked up
from the Chinese on the way back. Cold. He looked down at the polystyrene tray. His chicken chow mein had somehow transformed itself into a grey, glutinous mass. He pushed it away impatiently. He could get something out of the freezer later, stick it in the microwave. He picked up his mug of coffee with little optimism. Cold as well. He couldn’t work without coffee. He went through to the kitchen and pushed the switch on the coffee machine.

The flat was modern, two-bedroomed. McCarthy had bought it because it was fitted out, convenient and he could move straight in. He’d heard someone say once, or he’d read somewhere, that a house should be a machine for living. McCarthy understood that. He wanted the place he lived in to service him. He wanted to go in and find it warm when the weather was cold, cool when it was hot. He wanted to be able to cook at the push of a button, wash at the flick of a switch. He wanted to have any disorder that living created reordered before he returned.

‘Christ, McCarthy,’ Lynne, his last girlfriend, had said, ‘why don’t you just lock yourself away in a cupboard at the end of the day?’ Another time she’d said, ‘What you need, McCarthy, is a wife. An automatic, rechargeable, super-turbo, fuel-injection wife.’ He’d laughed and started massaging her back, running his hands over her neck and shoulders in the way he knew she liked, because he hadn’t wanted to have another of their vicious, cutting rows, and she’d pulled him into the chair and they’d had a quick wham bam thank you, ma’am – or thank you, sir, and then they’d gone into the
bedroom and spent longer, spent most of the evening, exploring each other and drinking wine. But he and Lynne only had that: they had sex and they had the job. They couldn’t spend all their time screwing and working – though to McCarthy it had sometimes seemed as though that was exactly what they did – and the relationship had ended when Lynne got the job that he had aimed at, got
his
promotion in fact, and the whole flimsy edifice had fallen apart in the volcanic aftermath. He still felt angry and bitter about that, and he determinedly shut it out of his mind.

He took the coffee back into his workroom and looked at the screen. There was very little there that he didn’t already know. He noted the fact that Ashley Reid had a drugs caution – hardly surprising he’d missed it, McCarthy thought, in the long list attached to that young thug’s name. And, now, this could be interesting: Paul Lynman, one of the tenants at 14, Carleton Road, the student house, had a conviction for possession. McCarthy pulled up the details. OK, it looked like a my-round deal – he’d been caught with almost enough speed to pull down a dealing charge – but not quite. He’d insisted, wisely, that it was for his own use, but he’d probably been buying for a friend as well as for himself. Worth chasing up, though. There was nothing conclusive, no real links. McCarthy rubbed the skin between his eyebrows in an effort to concentrate. He’d heard something about a problem at the Alpha Centre, something about Es and speed. And had there been some kind of action round the university? He needed to talk to someone from drugs.

He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty. He wondered what to do with the rest of the evening. Listen to music? Watch the telly? He felt a sense of things closing around him, as though his life was shrinking to the walls of this flat, the route to and from the office, the office itself. Maybe Lynne had been right. Maybe he should start looking for that cupboard.

Sunday morning, Suzanne got up early, was showered, dressed and at her desk by eight o’clock. She planned to put in a solid day’s work, to forget everything that had happened since Friday. For an hour, she tried to read and make notes from a research paper that she’d had on her desk for a week. Her mind refused to focus. When she reached the end of the ten dense, closely printed pages, she realized she might as well not have read it at all. She tossed it irritably into her paper tray, not bothering to put it into its correct basket. She rubbed her forehead, and looked at the waiting tasks arrayed around her desk. She thought about Jane’s method for focusing – there was some kind of yoga trick. Something to do with emptying the mind. She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the nothingness that was behind her eyelids.

Focus…
What had Richard meant when he said that Keith Liskeard was very unhappy? Keith had always been less than enthusiastic about Suzanne’s research. She remembered him nodding in agreement when one of the social workers – Neil, she thought – had said that the Alpha lads weren’t rats in mazes for researchers to play games with. Suzanne had swallowed
the antagonistic response that had leapt to her tongue, and again patiently gone through the reassurances that at this stage all she wanted to do was observe, she would do nothing without the approval of the staff, would keep them informed at all times. It had been time-consuming and frustrating, and she had been angry at the way they put labels on her and stereotyped her in the way they were accusing her of doing to the young men who were sentenced to the Alpha programme. She was tired of the phrase
middle class,
tired of
academic
as a term of abuse … She realized that Keith would not be sorry of a chance to get rid of her.

This wasn’t working. She opened her eyes and looked at the array of papers on her desk. OK, reading was out. She needed something concrete to do. She decided to put some data into the computer to set up the first stage of her analysis. It needed doing, but it was a mechanical task that she’d been putting off. She didn’t need to concentrate for this, and it would keep her occupied.

But once again work seemed no escape. Suzanne keyed data into her computer, the mindlessness of the task leaving her vulnerable to thoughts that wandered beyond her control. She thought about Michael’s small figure climbing the steps up to Dave’s front door. She thought about Lucy’s contained self-possession; she thought about Joel leaning easily against the worktop, smiling. She thought about the sudden interest in DI McCarthy’s eyes. She thought about Richard’s look of disappointment. He was the only person at the Alpha Centre who’d given her any support.
How can you be so
unreliable!
Her father’s exasperation and reproach echoed in her mind.

The computer beeped at her.
Shit!
She’d hit the control key by mistake. Thank goodness the programme she was using was fairly idiot-proof. She leant back in her chair and stretched. Maybe a walk would do her good. It was all tangled up in her mind. Michael, Dave, her problems at the Alpha Centre, her research … Emma. She tried to picture Emma in her mind, but all she could see was the white face under the water, the face that wavered and became Lucy’s, then wavered again and became Adam’s. She pressed her hands over her eyes. No good.

She went down to the kitchen, put the kettle on, sorted through the dishes in the sink until she found a cup that wasn’t too bad, rinsed it and put a spoonful of coffee in. She remembered how Dave used to refuse to have anything to do with instant coffee. She ladled two spoons of sugar into the cup, and added the top of the milk. That reminded her of Michael. She’d bought the full-cream milk for his weekend.

Then she sank down on a stool, holding her cup, as the panic hit her. Familiar, so familiar, but never any easier. She was back in the hospital, feeling drunk with a kind of elation she had never known before.
It’s a boy, Suze!
She could remember Dave’s face close to hers.
Let me hold him.
Suzanne, reaching out, was tired, relieved, amazed. She remembered the tiny, perfect face, the small body wrapped in a hospital blanket. Her baby. She held him. His eyes opened and looked into hers for the first time, a clear and perfect blue like the first time
she’d held Adam, her mother in the hospital bed, the nurse carefully handing her the blue-wrapped bundle. And a stab of fear almost doubled her up, leaving her trembling, with a knot in her stomach, a feeling of panic and impending disaster. She felt as though a terrible danger was teetering over the child, catastrophe and chaos lurching towards him – from her. She mustn’t touch him. She was … somehow, she was going to hurt, to damage this child beyond repair. The baby stirred and uttered a protesting cry.

Remembering, Suzanne felt herself break out in a cold sweat.

Since leaving home, Emma Allan had stayed in the student house on Carleton Road. Sophie Dutton had lived there, and Emma had apparently shared Sophie’s room, and then lived there by herself once Sophie had left. ‘Strictly against our rules,’ the university housing officer said. He had the list of the recent tenants. Paul Lynman, who’d been studying modern German, gave a home address, presumably his parents’, in Derby. Gemma Hanson and Daniel Grier, also students of modern German, had gone to Germany as part of their post-graduate study. ‘They left in May,’ he said.

Barraclough had been given the task of making contact with Sophie Dutton, who was proving elusive. According to the university records office, she had left officially on May 14. Her tutor had put it down to exam panic, and tried to persuade her to stay. ‘She would have passed, probably done quite well. But a pass was all she needed. First-year exams don’t count
towards your degree.’ But Sophie had been adamant.

But whatever she’d told her friends, she hadn’t gone home, nor had she told her parents of her decision. ‘She’s in Sheffield,’ Sophie’s father had said. ‘She’s been there all year. Sophie left her course? Rubbish.’

His irritation was apparently aimed at Barraclough who clearly couldn’t detect her way out of a paper bag, but perhaps concealed the anxiety of a parent watching his child take those first steps in independence. ‘We’re the last people to know what she’s doing.’ His irritation switched to anxiety when he realized that his daughter was not in Sheffield, or at least not where they thought she was. He wasn’t able to give Barraclough any information about Sophie’s contacts that she didn’t already have. ‘Sophie hasn’t been in touch much,’ he said. ‘Not after the first few weeks. Her mother’s had a bit of a go at her about it, but Sophie just says, “Oh, don’t fuss.”’ Barraclough managed to establish that Sophie had been home for Christmas, but had only stayed for a few days. She’d made a couple of phone calls since then, and sent them a jokey postcard from Meadowhall.

The house had only recently been vacated. ‘It’s earlier than we usually end the let, but with two of them off to Germany, and the fourth tenant having left, it seemed fair enough to let the last one go.’ He was apologetic. The house had been cleared out. All their houses were used for summer rents and needed to be ready as soon as possible. ‘This one’s let from the beginning of July,’ he said. Anything personal left in a house was dumped and sent to the local tip.

The cleaners who had done the houses on Carleton
Road couldn’t remember anything particular about number fourteen. ‘Did that poor lass that got killed live there?’ the supervisor of the team asked Barraclough. ‘It’s shocking.’ She shook her head. Her words were conventional, but she seemed genuinely moved. ‘No, I can’t remember anything about number fourteen. There can’t have been anything, it was only about a week ago we did it. I’ll tell you what. They were all pigsties, the houses on that road. They may be bright, these kids, but they’ve got some filthy habits.’

The house was next door to Jane Fielding’s. Inside, it seemed too small to contain the four – sometimes five – adults who had lived there. Steep stairs ran up from a small entrance lobby. A door to the left led into a downstairs front room with a bay window. There was a bed, stripped, a carpet, a wardrobe and a small desk. The room was crowded with just that small amount of furniture.

To the right was a communal room and a kitchen. The kitchen was equipped with the basics: cupboards, worktops, cooker and fridge. The edging on the worktops was damaged, showing the MDF inside the marble-effect plastic.

Upstairs, there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. And on the next floor, in the attic, there was another small bedroom. Barraclough looked out of the dormer windows and wondered about fire. There was no fire escape. Did they have one of those fold-away ladders? It looked like a death trap to her.

Sophie Dutton, whose room Emma had shared, had had the attic room, but, like the others, it was stripped
to essentials now: a bed, a wardrobe, a desk. It must have been cramped with two of them in there, Barraclough thought, squeezing past the inconveniently placed wardrobe. The room was clean, but there was dust in the corners and bits on the carpet, as though the cleaners had run out of energy as they moved up the stairs. Looking at the evidence of less than thorough cleaning, Corvin arranged to have the rooms checked for prints. But unless that check came up with something, the search of Carleton Road was a bust. They found no traces of Emma, and nothing to tell them where Sophie Dutton had gone.