The Only Game

‘I rang? What do you mean? Why should I …’

‘Someone rang,’ said Mrs Vestey firmly. ‘But if it wasn’t you, then why didn’t you bring Noll to school as usual?’

‘I did!’ cried Jane, her voice rising now and attracting the attention of other parents. ‘I did!’

‘You brought him yourself? And brought him inside?’

‘No,’ admitted Jane. ‘Not inside. I was going to, but I was very late, so I left him on the steps with Miss Gosling …’

‘I’m sorry? With whom?’

‘Miss Gosling. For God’s sake, what kind of school is this where you don’t know your own staff?’

‘I know my staff very well,’ said Mrs Vestey. ‘And I assure you, I employ no one called Gosling.’

‘So I’ve got the name wrong!’ cried Jane in a voice of rising panic. ‘She’s the new one. She started last week. I want to see her, where is she? What’s she done with Noll?’

And now a little compassion crept into Mrs Vestey’s voice as she produced her clinching argument.

‘Perhaps you’d better sit down, Mrs Maguire. I can assure you I have appointed no new member of staff for over a year now, so whoever you left your son with had no connection with this establishment. Mrs Maguire, are you all right? Mrs Maguire!’

But Jane was swaying away from her. This was worse than her worst imaginings. Her body was no longer her own. She heard a voice say, ‘It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have hit him.’ The room turned and a carousel of anxious races undulated round her. But she could see beneath their surface concern to the grinning skulls, and the wintry light was flickering at the edges as though cast by flame.

It was time to fall into that flame and let it consume her.

3 (#ulink_272be9fc-ed8e-53c1-aeaa-9cff60dd4608)

Dog Cicero dropped a few threads of cheap Italian tobacco into a paper, rolled it between finger and thumb, lit it, and puffed a jet of smoke at the NO SMOKING sign.

A nurse came out of the door in front of him and said, ‘Can’t you read?’

He said, ‘Best five card stud man my Uncle Endo ever played couldn’t read a word.’

She looked at him blankly. He tossed the cigarette into a fire bucket. It had given him what he wanted, the tobacco smell to remind him of his father living and mask the hospital smell, which reminded him of his father dying.

The nurse said, ‘You can go in now.’

He went through the door and looked down at the woman in the bed.

He saw a pair of dark green eyes, huge in an ashen face framed in a sunburst of red hair which almost concealed the pillow.

The green eyes saw a face out of an old Italian painting, lean, sallow, with a long nose, a jagged fringe of black hair, and deep watchful eyes. It was a mobile and humorous face. At least the right side was. The left was stiff with a shiny scar running like a frozen river from the ear across the cheek to the point of the jaw. Her gaze slipped away from it. He was wearing a light blue denim jacket, damp around the shoulders.

She said, ‘Is it still raining?’

Her voice was soft, with a whisper of a brogue in it so distant he might have missed it if the hair and the eyes hadn’t sensitized his ears.

He half turned his head so the frozen side faced her and said, as if she’d asked several other questions, ‘You’re in hospital, Mrs Maguire. It’s three-fifty. When you fainted, you banged your head.’

She sat up, felt pain spark through her skull, ignored it.

She said, ‘Noll,’ and began to cry.

He said, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Cicero of Romchurch CID. We’ve put out an alert but we need more details.’

‘I can’t stay here,’ she said urgently. ‘If there’s any contact …’

‘I’ve sent a man to your flat,’ he interrupted. ‘We borrowed your key. Look, the doctors want to X-ray your head, treat you for shock, give you sedatives, but I said you’d want to talk first.’

‘Yes.’

The tears had stopped. It wasn’t control, just a break in the weather.

He said, ‘We’ve got the photo from the kindergarten files. But we need to know what he was wearing.’

She said, ‘Black shoes, grey trousers, blue sweater over a white short-sleeved shirt, blue quilted anorak with a hood.’

He said, ‘Get that out, Scott.’ For the first time she realized there was a uniformed woman constable at the other side of the bed, taking notes. Their eyes met. The policewoman, a pretty girl of about nineteen, smiled uncertainly, decided smiles were inappropriate, flushed and hurried out.

‘Right, Mrs Maguire,’ said Dog Cicero. ‘We’re doing everything we can to get your son back, believe me. I just need to ask a few questions to make sure we’re not missing anything. OK?’

She looked at him dully and he nodded as if acknowledging her agreement.

‘Your full name is Jane Maguire? And from the form you filled in for the kindergarten, I gather you’re a widow?’

She nodded. Once.

‘Could I ask how long it is since Mr Maguire …’

‘Beck.’ She interrupted his search for a euphemism. ‘His name is … was Beck. I started using my own name again when I came back.’

‘From where?’

‘America. He was American. He died eight months ago. In a boating accident. He drowned.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Dog formally. ‘Now, we’ve got your address. Do you live alone, by the way?’

He dropped it in casually. Johnson, the DC dispatched to Maguire’s flat, would have checked it out by now, but he wanted to see the woman’s reaction.

She said, ‘I live with Noll. My son. No boy friend, if that’s what you mean.’

‘No live-in boy friend, or no boy friend period?’

‘No boy friend, no lover, no one, period!’ she said harshly.

It was a strong reaction. Worth pressing? Not yet, he decided. First get the facts. Or at least, get her story.

He said, ‘OK. Now, in your own time, tell me what happened. Start when you left your flat this morning.’