The Only Game

‘Father Blake, this is Inspector Cicero, he calls himself, come to see me, I don’t know why. Now there’s no need for you to go with your tea still hot.’

The priest had risen with an expression of alarm. He was a tallish man in early middle age, his beard beginning to be flecked with grey. He looked at Dog anxiously through heavy horn-rimmed glasses and said in a low, unaccented voice, ‘I hope there’s no bad news, officer.’

‘Just some help with an enquiry,’ said Dog vaguely, not wanting to encourage a disruptive third party to witness his interview with the woman.

‘Fine,’ said the priest. ‘In that case, I will be running along. Thanks for the tea, Mrs Maguire. I’ll call again soon. I’ll see myself out.’

He gabbled a blessing and made for the door.

Dog said, ‘Oh, Father, is that your car outside? I may have blocked you in. Better have a look.’

He followed the priest into the hallway and at the front door he said in a low voice, ‘Look, there is some news, potentially bad. I need to talk to her alone but if you could come back in twenty minutes, say?’

Father Blake said, ‘Could you give me some idea … I’m not her parish priest you see, more a friend of the family.’

‘You’ll know her daughter then?’

‘Jane? No. I’ve never met her but naturally we’ve talked about her. Why? Is there something wrong? There hasn’t been an accident?’

His voice had risen and Dog glanced warningly towards the sitting room door.

‘Nothing like that,’ said Dog. ‘I’m sure Mrs Maguire will tell you all about it. Twenty minutes?’

He didn’t give Blake time to reply but urged him out of the front door and closed it behind him. Then he returned to the sitting room where Mrs Maguire was sitting by the empty fireplace. She motioned him to the chair Father Blake had occupied, which proved as hard as Dog had suspected.

‘Sorry to chase the Father away,’ he said. ‘He’s not your parish priest?’

‘No. He’d not be coming to my house in a suit if he was at St Mary’s, I tell you,’ she said scornfully. ‘He’s from the Priory College, if it’s any business of yours. A friend of my brother Patrick’s, God rest his soul.’

She glanced at a photo on the mantelpiece of a man in a soutane standing in front of a gloomy Gothic pile. It was her pride in having had a priest in the family which had made her uncharacteristically forthcoming, Dog guessed. Now, as if in reaction, she snapped, ‘What have you done with your face?’

The question took him by surprise. He was used to the curious side-glance or the carefully averted gaze, but direct questioning was a rarity.

‘A car accident,’ he said dismissively.

‘Oh yes. The drink was it?’ she said.

‘Yes. The drink played a part,’ he said softly.

Sitting in the bar, wanting another, hardly able to rise and go for it. The barman setting a pint of Guinness and a chaser before him. ‘Compliments.’ Nodding across the room to where a man stands, face beneath his old tweed hat unmemorable enough to be a forgotten acquaintance. A faint smile, a glass half raised, then the unmemorable blocked out by the unforgettable, a woman, her face candle-pale with emotion, her hair a flame that never burnt on any mere candle. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Dog? After what happened you must be mad! Let’s get you home.’

‘Men,’ said Mrs Maguire contemptuously. ‘If it’s not the fancy women, it’s the booze.’

Coming out of the bar, his arm across her shoulders. Light and the sound of laughter behind them; ahead, darkness and a rising wind with a caress of soft Irish rain. Her face turned up to his as he staggered on the uneven surface of the car park. ‘Darling, are you all right for the driving?’ His own voice slurred and angry. ‘Why not? No one asks me if I’m all right for the killing, do they?’

‘You’re so right, Mrs Maguire,’ he said. ‘It’s usually one or the other.’

She looked at him sharply, suspicious of irony. Then, surprised at detecting none, she folded her arms and said, ‘All right, Mr Cicero, what’s your business with me?’

He brought himself back to the present and said, ‘It’s about your daughter.’

‘Has there been an accident?’ she asked in alarm. He examined the alarm, found it genuine. Why not? Love was not a prerogative of the attractive.

He said, ‘Not an accident. An incident. As far as we know your daughter is fine.’

It was an evasion, also an economy with the truth, but he wanted as many answers as possible before the direction of his questions hit her.

‘When did you last see Jane?’ he asked.

Use of the Christian name seemed to reassure her.

‘At the weekend. Saturday,’ she replied.

So she had come here when she fled the social worker’s knock.

‘Were you expecting her?’ he asked.

‘No, I wasn’t. They came right out of the blue,’ she said in an aggrieved tone. ‘I had nothing ready, I might have been out or anything.’

He noted they but didn’t comment. He guessed that the moment she got wind he was interested in the boy, there would be no progress till she learned what was going on.

He said, ‘How long did Jane stay?’

‘Not long.’ A barrier had come down.

He said, ‘Overnight?’

‘No. She could have done. The room was there like it always has been.’

‘But she decided to leave?’

‘Yes.’

‘You quarrelled,’ he said flatly.

She hesitated then said, ‘What goes on between my daughter and myself is our business. What’s this all about, mister? You said she was all right …’ Then her face went stiff as if she at last felt the chilly north in his questions. ‘It’s not the boy, is it? Nothing’s happened to Oliver?’

There was nothing for it but another fragment of truth.

He said, ‘I’m sorry to say that your grandson is missing.’

Her hands seized the hem of her apron and threw it up to cover the lower part of her face beneath her fear-rounded eyes. It was a gesture he’d only ever seen in films, but there was nothing theatrical about it here in this cold front parlour.

‘Believe me, there’s probably nothing to worry about,’ he urged, justifying his lie with his need to get coherent answers from this woman who might turn out to be one of the last to see the boy alive. ‘Children go missing all the time. Most of them turn up fit and well.’

Slowly the apron was lowered. She didn’t believe him but her wish to be reassured was still stronger than her disbelief.

He went on quickly, ‘Tell me about the visit on Saturday. It might help.’