Sleep and His Brother (12 page)

“It's better than it used to be, that way. Did you tell him about losing your hat?”

“Yes. And there was a much more extraordinary thing which happened when I found Marilyn Goddard this morning. I'd have told you then, but there wasn't time.”

He sat and for the third time he related his adventure. Repetition made the phrases more precise, but the events somehow less real. If he said it often enough, he felt, it would become fiction. But Dr. Silver was virgin soil.

“Hallelujah!” he shouted, springing from his chair. “If we can repeat that under laboratory conditions!”

“I think we should be a bit careful,” said Pibble. “About Marilyn, I mean. I think that her stepfather, the one who did the murders, may have played the same game with her.”

Dr. Silver seemed not to have heard; he was banging drawers open and shut, taking out small objects and putting them on the top of his desk.

“It's hell working with these kids,” he said. “They can't tell you anything, almost. D'you reckon she'd know what that is?”

He held up a paper clip as he spoke into the intercom.

“Doll, bring me the little pencil out of your diary. A match, too. Then go and find Marilyn Goddard. Get the nurse to wake her if she's asleep.”

“Can you do that?” said Pibble.

“After they've had an hour they'll wake up for a bit, but try it often and all you do is hustle them into Rue's kingdom. We'll give this thing a trial run here, now, Mr. Pibble, and that'll clear my mind for setting up a series of demonstrations which I can get witnesses along to and write up into a paper. What we want is household names of known probity. Any chance we could get the Duke of Edinburgh to come? He's the type who'll try anything once. Or how about your chief commissioner? Do you know him well?”

“I'm not in a position to ask him favours just now,” said Pibble, smiling at the man's admirable nerve. No—he meant it. He was lost in his fantasy of honour and respect; the experimenter who was going to shake the medical world to its cracked foundations was the reality for him, the shabby con man only a stupid dream.

Doll came in with a little pencil and a box of matches.

“Thanks, thanks,” said Dr. Silver. “Got anything else little and easy, something the kids would recognize? Lipstick?”

“I'm not wearing it this winter.”

“Borrow your ring, honey?”

She took it off her ring finger and tossed it onto the glossy leather of the desk.

“Ivan's gone to look for Marilyn,” she said, as the telephone began to ring. She picked it up.

“Yes, he's here. I'll tell him. C-a-l-l-o-w. I've got it.”

She put the receiver down.

“A message for you, Mr. Pibble, from Posey. Will you ring Superintendent Callow at Scotland Yard as soon as you can?”

Pibble stood up. Ned. Bradshaw had talked to him. Was it conceivable that he kept on his shelves an unclosed file on a con man who preferred metallic aliases? But Ned Callow was not the type to get himself landed with a dingy little task like that. His hunting ground was the rich uplands where the headlines grow, cases like …

The door opened, and there was Marilyn pale and blinking. Ivan nudged her into the room, and behind her back made a grimace and a thumbs-down sign. With a conjuror's pass Dr. Silver scooped pencil, ring, paper clip, and the other knickknacks into a manila envelope.

“Hi, Marilyn, honey,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

“Frightened.”

“Nonsense. We'll take care of you.”

“Man.”

“This is James, honey. He's a great guy. You met him in the wood.”

“'nother man.”

“You dreamed him, honey. There's only James and me and Doll and Ivan. We want you to play a game, like you played with James this morning.”

“Game.”

“That's a girl. We'll play it again now, so that we can all see how clever you are.”

“Don' wanna.”

Pibble was fascinated to see that Silver was a little ill at ease with the child; skilled tracker though he might be through all the adult jungles, he was not at home with these hints of an earlier and other creation. So Pibble picked the envelope off the desk, felt in it, and took the paper clip, making sure that it was in the fold of his right fist before anybody in the room could see it. He swapped it into his other hand behind his back, then crouched in front of the girl with his fists level with her face.

“Which hand?” he said.

They icy finger rose and touched his left hand. “What is it?”

“Dunno.”

He opened his palm to show her the little racetrack of wire.

“She might mean she didn't know what you had in your hand,” said Doll. “Or she might mean she couldn't describe it.”

“Sh,” said Dr. Silver.

Pibble took the ring this time and juggled it into his left hand again, but when he crouched and concentrated on the green stones and the almost bristly feel of their hardness in his palm, the finger rose and touched the wrong hand.

“Pretty,” she said.

He showed her. If those were real emeralds the ring must be worth the better part of a thousand quid. The child looked dully at it, and when Pibble tried again with a small plastic measuring spoon she did not raise her hand.

“Don' wanna,” she said.

He showed her the spoon but she turned slowly away, in a manner that made him see that under all the layers of fat every muscle and nerve was taut.

“It's all right,” he said. “He can't hurt you. He can't hurt anyone. We've shut him away. You'll never see him again.”

She swung back and looked at him as if he were lying.

“Bad moment,” sighed Dr. Silver. “All kinds of feed-back operating there. When, when, when will I learn not to rush into things? Nil result on the which-hand test, but you seem to have got through to her with the ring. That what-is-it test is going to be a sow to evaluate statistically. Thanks, Ivan; take her away and tuck her in.”

Pibble watched her waver out, not with the free-floating motion of the other cathypnics, but as though something heavy and dragging, some weighted object on a chain, constrained her to follow her erratic course.

“May I use the telephone?” he said.

“Go ahead.”

“This might be confidential, I suppose, though it's probably only to ask me where I left some file.”

“Use Doll's. The black one, not the gray one. Through that door. You'll have to ask Posey to give you a line.”

“Thanks.”

Not a sign of personality marked the room, no pictures, postcards from Zermatt, potted plants, scuffed shoes, or significant litter. It was just a cubic space where a girl worked on new furniture between fresh-painted white walls.

Typically, Ned Callow kept Pibble waiting until the hardness of the receiver seemed to have altered the shape of his ear; he heard voices, door bangs, other phones ringing, scufflings of paper, and wondered what point there could be in impressing an ex-colleague with these melodramatic background noises. Perhaps there really was some kind of a flap on.

“Callow!” snapped the machine.

“Jimmy Pibble here. I got a message to ring you.”

“Yeah. You were talking to Brad about Gorton this morning.”

“About who?”

“Oh, for Christ's sake! Samuel Gorton. Paperham.”

“Oh, yes, I was.”

“You shot Brad some line about a lecture, but he said it sounded as if you had something up your sleeve.”

“Not really. I asked Brad whether the man had some kind of living mascot.”

“Yeah, he did. Does. The writer johnnies decided it was a cat, but I never cottoned to that.”

“I think it might have been his stepdaughter, the one who was about five when you got him.”

“Why, Jimmy?”

“Something she said to me.”

“For Christ's sake! Where is she?”

“At the McNair Foundation in South London—it's a small hospital for cathypnic children, and she's one. Is he out, Ned?”

“He is. He was cleaning the bogs when the driver of a team of busybodies who were visiting the prison came in for a pee. Gorton croaked him and locked him in the cleaning cupboard; took the uniform and drove the busybodies back to London; stopped the car at the Hyde Park traffic lights and nipped into the underground. The busybodies hadn't even noticed they had a different man, so they drove themselves back to their offices and reported it there. He had half an hour's start, and probably a quid or two out of the driver's wallet. He's got a knife.”

“The woman he was living with—had she visited him?”

“Not for a couple of years. She's in Australia.”

“But he'd know the child was here?”

“I'll check. What's your evidence, Jimmy?”

“It wasn't evidence, it was a guess, but enough to make me ring Brad up, and find there was something in it. Grit your teeth, Ned. The children at the Foundation are mentally deficient, but most of the staff are sure that they are also telepathic …”

“Oh, for Christ's sake!”

“No, listen. If the staff believe that, Gorton might have, too. It doesn't have to be true for him to believe it, and it would fit in with his obsessions, wouldn't it? It'd take too long to explain what she said, but I guessed he used her as a sort of oracle, so I rang Brad up out of curiosity.”

“I'll have someone go through the notes and see if it fits in. If it does …”

“He might come here.”

“Bloody long odds. I'll get some bods out from your local station. What's the address?”

“Ned?” said Pibble when he'd spelled it out.

“Yeah? Make it snappy.”

“See if you can manage to keep the telepathy business quiet. Once this gets on the Fleet Street files they'll send reporters down here every silly season to pester the staff to make the kids perform.”

“Make a change from the Loch Ness monster. I'll do what I can for you, Jimmy, but if he
does
come I can't keep anything quiet. Got any of his type there?”

“One.”

“Keep an eye on the bitch. Don't tell her why. See you.”

The brisk quarterdeck voice snapped off. It had always irritated Pibble, coming from a man so devious—when war series were showing on the telly it had been intolerable. Now he had sounded like a hardened veteran of desert campaigns giving orders, impatiently disguised as advice, to a puffy major in the Home Guard. Well, the major was going to disobey. Pibble sat in the insipid room, slowly becoming aware that the tinge of his dread had changed. Before, it had been an abstract emotion, momentary but intense twinges of horror at the knowledge that a species of monster had once existed, which was also a man. Now the thing had returned out of the realm of fiction, which is what the past becomes; any rustle in the rhododendron bushes might be it. Now he had definite duties to attend to.

He leaped a foot from his chair as the window sash banged up, then he whirled, muscles tense. A painter poked his head in.

“Just checking your sashes, sir.”

Despite the carefully desuaved accent Pibble recognized Alfred.

“Carry on,” he said. “What's it doing outside?”

“As 'orrible as it can manage, without your actual rain.”

Pibble walked to the window, as if to see. Alfred slammed the sashes noisily up and down.

“The Paperham murderer has escaped.”

“Saw the headline in the town,” muttered Alfred. “I've been talking to the Yard. He might come here.”

“Uh-huh.”

The news was evidently unimportant beside the affairs of Mr. Thanatos.

“He's, er, interested in one of the children. He might have the same idea as you.”

“I'll keep an eye open.”

“Have you finished?” said Doll, smiling round the door. “Hello! Trouble?”

“Just checking the sashes, miss,” said Alfred.

“But somebody did that yesterday.”

“Got to be done more'n once, miss. It's your wood swelling and shrinking under your new paint. Nowhere for the moisture to go, see?”

“But it's all red cedar,” said Doll. “My great-grandfather wouldn't have anything else. I told the man yesterday.”

“Well, he didn't tell
me
,” said Alfred with admirable painterly truculence, and ran back down the ladder.

“Rue wants to see you,” said-Doll.

“I'll go and look for him as soon as I've seen Mrs. Dixon-Jones. I've forgotten to tell her something. I'd very much like to meet your grandmother sometime, if it's possible.”

“Why on earth?”

“If it's a bore, forget it, but I'd like to meet someone who knew this area when it was all countryside.”

“Oh, she'd love that. She thinks the world has never been the same since Lloyd George's 1910 budget. But she'll make you pay your way by telling her about a lot of gruesome murders.”

Pibble chilled.

“Most of mine were merely quaint,” he said.

“I'm sure they'll do. I'll take you home for tea today.”

“I don't know about today. I'm half expecting somebody to come here, and—”

“I say, you
have
made yourself at home! I'll look for you it four-thirty and you can come if you're free.”

“That's fine.”

Mrs. Dixon-Jones was on the telephone again. Pibble wondered whether the plastic was worn thin, like the toe of Saint Peter, with the ceaseless brushing of her ear. A small cathypnic child was asleep on her lap.

“Really, Mrs. Abrahams,” she was saying, “you can be quite sure that Sandra will be very happy with us. They like to be together. No. I've got her with me at the moment. Well, we'd
rather
you came in visiting hours, but if that's awkward … But I gave you the list. I saw you put it in your handbag. Never mind, I'll tell you now if you'll get a pencil and paper. No, I'll hang on … This is going to take ages, Mr. Pibble.The woman can hardly read and write … Yes, I'm still here, Mrs. Abrahams. Ready?”