Creeping Ivy (14 page)

Beside the double portrait was a shot of the playground. There was a tall row of swings for older children hanging from a gibbet-like wooden structure and a smaller set of bucket-seated ones for toddlers. The big slide for which Charlotte had waited reared up in the background of the photograph like a surfacing sea monster. There were no children in the picture, which must have been taken at dawn before the park opened, but it was clear enough that the queue for the slide would have stretched along the fenced side of the playground at the opposite side from the entrance.

The height of the fence was about half that of the slide. Without any humans in the shot for scale it was difficult to estimate its exact height, but it did seem too high for someone to reach over and pluck a child from the other side. That must mean that whoever had taken Charlotte had persuaded her to leave the queue and walk the whole width of the playground to the gate.

‘The dog that didn’t bark in the night,’ Trish said, with a vague memory of a Sherlock Holmes story her mother had read aloud during one of their shared crazes. The Sherlock Holmes one had lasted for nearly three months when Trish was nine or ten, some time after her father had left.

Thinking about the people Charlotte might have trusted enough to let them take her out of the queue without protesting, Trish realised that her bare legs were covered with goose pimples and she was beginning to shiver. She abandoned the newspapers to shower in very hot water and dress.

That afternoon she drove across the river, up through the City and then west to Kensington, where she miraculously found an empty parking meter close to the park. Having collected her camera and locked the car, she went to see the playground for herself. On the way she noticed several yellow signs asking for information about a child abducted on Saturday and, later, she was stopped by a uniformed constable with a clipboard who wanted to ask a long series of questions. She answered them as fully as possible, giving her name and address and explaining her connection to the case; then she left him.

The newspaper’s picture had given a fairly accurate impression of the playground, she saw as she soon as she got there. Pacing the distance between the slide and the gate, she decided that it was at least thirty yards. She also discovered that the fence was far too high to allow any child to be lifted over without a ladder on both sides. But the slide was nowhere near as tall as she had expected. Surprised at herself, she realised that she had been remembering the big slides of her childhood and picturing it from the perspective of someone of three-feet-six.

‘Trish! What are you doing here?’

She turned from her contemplation of the fence to see Hal Marstall, Emma Gnatche’s boyfriend. Liking Emma so much, Trish had always tried to warm to Hal, but she had not succeeded so far. He was attractive enough and good company, but Trish didn’t feel at ease with men of such conspicuous charm and good looks. His job got in the way, too, and she had the feeling that he was never off-duty and would sacrifice any friend for a scoop.

To Trish, it had always seemed that journalists like Hal, working for newspapers like the
Daily Mercury
, used crimes against children to whip up and focus the frustrations of not very clever people who did not have enough to do or think about. When they were roused to outrage, the damage they could do was appalling. That the outrage was often wholly reasonable did not affect Trish’s disapproval; in her view, lynching was never right, whatever the provocation.

‘Much the same as you, I imagine, unless you’ve changed jobs, Hal.’

‘Me? No, I’m still with the
Mercury
.’

She saw that he was about to ask another question and hurried to get her own in first. ‘Why are you on this? I thought you were doing some local-government corruption story.’

Hal raised an elegant dark eyebrow. ‘Is that what Emma told you? Yes, I see she did. Odd. I’d have thought she’d know better by now. I don’t go round tattling about her work.’

‘She knows I’m trustworthy, Hal, and she didn’t give me any clues about which local authority,’ she said, noticing that his attitude to Emma seemed to have changed considerably since she had first seen them together, when he had treated Emma as a cross between a goddess and a particularly delicious meal. Even more wary of him than before, Trish asked what he believed had happened to Charlotte.

Hal looked back over his shoulder so that he could survey the whole playground. ‘It was someone she knew.’

‘Unless she just grew bored and wandered off and got lost – or run over. Perhaps her body was trapped under a lorry and dragged. It’s possible that no one would have noticed.’ She saw an expression of derision in Hal’s dark eyes, and added slowly enough to keep her dignity: ‘Unlikely, but possible.’

‘Hardly. No, I’m sure she was nabbed and by someone she trusted.’

‘That’s what it looks like,’ Trish agreed, ‘unless there was some kind of invisible pulley that whisked her up over the fence.’

‘So that’s what you were staring at so beadily. I thought you must have seen something on the ground outside. My money’s on the nanny.’

‘I’ll bet it is.’ A lot of the pent-up anger sounded in Trish’s voice. It seemed to amuse Hal. ‘It would make a good story, wouldn’t it? “Nanny from Hell strikes in Kensington”.’

Hal grinned engagingly and pushed back his soft dark hair as though he had seen too many charming English actors being winsomely self-deprecating on the big screen.

‘Not half as a good as “Selfish Superwoman Abandons Child to Psychopath”.’

‘Don’t, Hal. Even as a joke. Antonia’s in agony. Don’t twist the knife just to get a few extra readers.’

‘She’s news, Trish, and she made herself into that deliberately. She uses us when she wants to stir up a profile-raising bout of controversy to boost her career; she can’t complain when we go after her over something like this.’

‘Oh, I expect she can,’ said Trish as she thought with satisfaction about how much and how powerfully Antonia would probably complain. ‘It’s a game to you, isn’t it, trying to catch celebrities out? You all want photographs of famous beauties looking like dogs and pieces about the ultra-successful getting their comeuppance. It’s a good way to feed the jealousy of people who are never going to be successful, isn’t it? Why can’t you leave them alone in their misery?’

‘I don’t make the rules about what sells newspapers, Trish. I just report crime.’

‘But only crime that affects the rich and famous or titillates your readers.’

Hal shrugged, looking rather less charming but more interested.

‘And there’s nothing so titillating to the British people as the abduction or seduction of a child, is there?’ said Trish, disliking him more than usual.

‘Is that a quote from your so-far invisible book?’ he asked with a sneer.

‘Part of what I’m writing covers the reasons why people get so excited when there are crimes against children, yes,’ she answered steadily, ‘and crimes committed
by
children, too. It’s a strange contradiction that reading about both should give people so much pleasure.’

‘Hal!’ A shout from the far side of the playground from a man with a selection of cameras slung across his chest made Hal wave and yell something about ‘being right with you’. He turned back to Trish.

‘I think you’re misinterpreting the excitement. It’s not sexual, but—’

‘I never said it was. I said it was titillating. It gives people a frisson. It may be a frisson of horror, but there’s enjoyment in it, too. Admit it.’

‘I still think you’re wrong. Look, Trish, if you hear anything, will you—’

‘No, Hal. I’m sorry, but I won’t tell you anything.’

‘The interest the press stirs up will probably be what gets her back – if she’s still alive.’

‘I doubt it. The press has never saved any other abducted child, has it?’

‘You’ve been getting cynical, Trish, these last few months. You want to watch that. It’s a right turn-off. Good to run into you.’

‘And you,’ she said automatically as she watched him lope off to the other side of the playground to collect his photographer. She wondered what exactly Emma saw in him, and then caught herself up as she recognised a familiar reaction. When not doing his job, Hal was probably as sensitive as he was undoubtedly intelligent, and with luck he valued Emma as she deserved to be valued. That was a great deal.

‘Aren’t they awful?’ said a voice from some way off.

Trish looked quickly to her left and saw a pleasant-looking young woman coming towards her with a scarlet ball in one hand and a tricycle in the other. Releasing the frown between her eyes, Trish smiled politely.

‘Awful,’ she agreed when the woman reached her side. ‘Had he been asking you questions, too?’

‘Yeah, about a friend of mine. What did he want from you?’

‘Anything I knew about the child who was abducted here on Saturday,’ said Trish, assuming Nicky was the friend in question. ‘I’ve met him before and he knows I’m close to the family, so I suppose he thought it was worth trying to pump me. Is your friend Nicky Bagshot?’

‘Yeah. Poor Nicky,’ said the young woman. ‘He told us she’s getting all the blame for what happened to Charlotte. That’s not right, you know. It wasn’t her fault.’

‘How d’you know? Were you here on Saturday?’

‘No,’ she said obstinately. ‘It’s my half day, but I know she couldn’t have anything to do with it. She’s a good nanny, responsible, and lovely with Charlotte. And she can be very difficult, you know.’

‘I know she can. And I know she’s fond of Nicky. She told me so. Look, my name’s Trish Maguire.’ She held out her hand.

‘Susan Jacks,’ said the young woman, putting down the trike to shake hands. ‘Nicky’s a good friend of mine, and I don’t like what they’re saying. It’s too easy to blame the nanny and we don’t have any protection, none of us. We had the police here first and now all those journalists. We thought you must be one of them till we saw you looking so cross at that man.’

‘No,’ said Trish, still smiling. ‘I’m not a journalist. I’m a lawyer. But I did come to see how it could have happened, so that I could understand.’

‘Do you think it was Nicky’s fault?’

‘No. From everything I’ve heard, I think she was just unlucky. It must’ve happened because she wasn’t watching, but I think that was a horrible chance. I don’t think she was responsible for it.’

‘Great,’ said Susan energetically. ‘That’s just great. D’you want to come and meet the others, then?’

‘Others?’ said Trish, looking in the direction of Susan’s pointing hand. She saw a group of young women sitting on benches arranged around a large sandpit in the corner of the playground furthest from the slide. ‘Yes, I’d like that.’

Susan introduced her to six or seven nannies, all of whom in the intervals of calling instructions to their charges, breaking up fights, and picking up the children when they fell, reiterated their belief in Nicky’s innocence of anything and everything.

‘Susan said Charlotte can be difficult,’ said Trish impartially to all of them when they had stopped telling her what a brilliant nanny Nicky was and how gentle with Charlotte. ‘D’you agree with that?’

‘Can’t they all?’ said a strapping New Zealander with a mop of black curls and a big pretty face. ‘But Lottie gets it from her mother. Have you ever met her?’

‘Once or twice,’ said Trish, smiling. The friendly atmosphere cooled distinctly.

‘Oh,’ said the New Zealander, having exchanged glances with some of the others. ‘You’ll know about the hereditary temper then.’

‘Yes,’ Trish admitted in the interests of regaining their confidence. She knew all about it, and hated it. ‘But what about Robert, Charlotte’s stepfather? Have any of you ever met him?’

It seemed they had all seen him quite often, because he made a habit of collecting Nicky and Charlotte from the playground whenever he could. That seemed odd to Trish, considering how busy he was supposed to be.

‘What’s he like?’ she asked.

‘He’s all right,’ said the New Zealander. ‘And much nicer to Nicky than Antonia ever was. Not that we saw much of her, except when she was checking up on Nicky. Honestly, that poor girl. Nothing was good enough for Antonia, not the way Nicky made Lottie’s bed nor the food she gave her for lunch nor the stories she told her or the toys she let her play with. They always had to come here in the afternoons although Lottie liked Holland Park better.’

‘I know,’ said Susan. ‘Antonia even used to check up on that – where Nicky’d brought her in the afternoons. I ask you!’

‘She was a right cow,’ said the New Zealander. ‘It must’ve been a hard job keeping her sweet, but Nicky did it as well as anyone could have. Rupie!’ she shouted suddenly. ‘Stop it. Give it back.’

Trish looked behind her to see a small boy with bright brown hair dragging a large, beautifully dressed doll round and round the edge of a puddle while a small girl pleaded tearfully for its return. As his nanny reached his side, he deliberately flung the doll into the middle of the water and then started to howl as though he was being tortured, although she had not even touched him by then.

As the little group around the sandpit watched Rupie and his victim being sorted out with a firm hand, Trish asked the other nannies whether they had ever noticed anyone odd hanging about the playground.

‘No one,’ said Susan, who seemed to be their unofficial leader. ‘Not that I noticed anyway. There are always people about, and sometimes tramps wander in and scare the children, but no one regular.’

Most of the others shook their well-washed heads, but one, much taller than the rest and with a shock of bright-pink hair that must have given her employer pause when she first saw it, said, ‘Except the guy with the dog.’

‘Yes,’ said another of them, who was replacing the red-leather boots of a cheerful girl of about two, whose face was liberally smeared with strawberry jam. ‘But he wasn’t odd. He was just a dog-walker like any other.’

‘Although he did use to hang about outside the fence and stare at the children. He didn’t look pervy, but he’d stand and watch for as long as the dog would put up with it. D’you think he could’ve had something to do with Charlotte?’ said Susan.