Play Dead (10 page)

Instantly her mind was back in the repetitive, useless swirl of ideas and images that had kept her awake last night, more manageable now because less distorted by the delusions of the half-awake mind, but still troubling enough, because true. She could easily call up memories of groups of girls, sitting, particularly on the bench against the wall behind the painting area, and talking among themselves, chit-chat, telly-babble, pop-dross, but here and there more titillating kinds of small talk—their own lives, of course, and their boyfriends' vagaries, and sometimes too their employers'. No doubt they were more discreet in Poppy's company than they were among their closer cronies, but even in the last few weeks she'd learnt that Lucinda's teenage stepbrother had what sounded like a serious drug problem, and who Serena's father probably was, which the nominal father seemed not to know. If you were one of the cronies, or if you were clever at eavesdropping …

Poppy couldn't banish from her mind the image of one of them—but who? Who? Because all of them were already elsewhere in the dream picture, recognisable, innocently chatting away, while there was still this shadowy other, listening, remembering …

The police station was a baleful Victorian building in a quiet avenue south of the Uxbridge Road. A group of what must be journalists waited by the steps in macs and anoraks. Two of them photographed her as she heaved the push-chair up the steps, but none took the ice-breaking opportunity of giving her a hand. She knew the form, having had to report a stolen handbag last spring. Gone were the days when you walked right in and told your woes to a fatherly sergeant at a long mahogany counter and he fetched out a St Peter-sized ledger and wrote in it in slow copperplate. Most of the old Station Office had been sealed off. Only a short section of the counter remained, and that had to be reached through a double set of swing doors, the inner set being electrically locked so that only one caller at a time need be admitted through to the counter. Between the two sets of doors there were three metal chairs for people waiting their turn.

Poppy had hit a quiet moment and was let straight through, only to be told that Mr Firth had been delayed somewhere, and she would have to wait. Crossly she returned through the inner doors and settled down to read Toby
But Martin
. It was this week's favourite book, but with new surroundings to explore he was only slightly interested and the moment a newcomer pushed through the outer doors he was lost. It was the door mechanism that did it. When opened and then let go the two leaves hurtled towards their closed position, only to slow mysteriously and sigh shut over the last few inches. They performed this magic in both directions. The phenomenon cried out for investigation.

Poppy had hated swing doors since Hugo had crushed a finger in one at the age of three. If there'd been anywhere to go she'd have taken Toby away. She turned him round, but there was the other set of doors, with the counter beyond.
But
Martin
had no charms, nor any of the other books, nor the glove-puppet wombat. He flung the plastic post van across the lobby. In desperation she gave him her handbag, normally forbidden, and let him unzip the compartments, but of course all the best things in it were forbidden too—the lipstick with its amazing combination of removable cap, protrudable stick and smear potential, the purse with its change. In Toby's economy what you did with change was slot it through cracks in floorboards (Janet kept a pot of foreign coins for this purpose, to the confusion of future archaeologists), but this floor was solid.

The doors swung again as a woman buttocked her way in dragging a double push-chair. She had that grey, pulpy, used look you sometimes see on young mothers trapped in the prison of child-care, with their men out all day, no help, no contact with friends, each dragging hour a desert. Why didn't more of them come to the play centre? They and their children were the ones who really needed it, not the Tobys and Deborahs and Dennys. Some did, of course, but far too few.

The push-chair held a sleeping baby and a boy a little older than Toby. As soon as his straps were undone the boy rushed to the outer door, shouting with excitement, shoved it open and let it swing back. The mother was lighting a cigarette and made no move to warn or stop him. Poppy managed to catch Toby as he flung himself off her lap. He squirmed in her grasp like a fresh-caught fish.

‘No, darling, not you,' she said.

He threshed. He yearned with his arms for the door. It was his, a piece of apparatus he first of all mankind had discovered, and now this interloper … He yelled, full throat.

‘Ah, go on, love,' said the woman. ‘Let him have a go.'

‘My son smashed his hand in a swing door,' snapped Poppy. ‘That was thirty years ago and it's still not right.'

The woman shrugged. There was no hope of fixing Toby into his push-chair in this state so Poppy slung him up on her shoulder, shovelled her belongings one-handed into the changing bag and turned towards the inner door. The previous caller was still at the counter, but one of the policemen was coming round, presumably to restore order in the lobby.

‘We can't wait here,' said Poppy as he came through the door. ‘Tell Mr Firth I'll be back in ten minutes. He'd better be ready.'

‘You'd much better wait …' he began but Poppy had already turned away, dragging the push-chair with her free hand. The boy had the door conveniently open so she strode through, the mixture of angers in her expressing themselves in an extra forcefulness of movement. Unfortunately Toby responded to the insult of passing so close to his rival with a sudden heave and wallow and she almost dropped him, letting go of the push-chair and unbalancing herself at the top of the steps as she struggled to hold on. She had to take the steps at a run, and would have fallen at the bottom if a man hadn't caught her and held her steady. It was Mr Firth.

‘Morning, Mrs Tasker,' he said. ‘Sorry to keep you. What's up with the little lad?'

‘He wanted to play with the door. There was another child …'

They looked up the steps. The policeman was speaking to the boy, who pouted, let go of the door and went inside.

‘There's still a few do what a copper tells them,' said Mr Firth. ‘Couple of years older and it mightn't have worked. I'll get your pram.'

He nipped up and fetched the push-chair, then wheeled it empty along the pavement. Poppy followed with Toby still screaming and struggling in her grasp. The photographers had their cameras up but she spoilt their sport by leaving too large a gap for her and Mr Firth to appear in the same shot. He nodded cheerfully to them as he passed and turned down an alley beside the police station. Following, Poppy found him pressing numbered keys to open a side door, an activity in which Toby would normally have demanded to join but was now too engrossed in his tantrum even to notice. He didn't seem to notice the lift controls. Upstairs was a corridor with windows on to a central well on one side and labelled doors on the other. A few chairs stood against the inner wall. Mr Firth turned two corners and paused at a door.

Just got one call to make,' he said. ‘And I'll lay on a WPC to look after Toby.'

‘Oh, please not. She wouldn't have a hope with him in this state, and I certainly wouldn't be able to concentrate. He'll be asleep in half an hour.'

He went in, but emerged almost at once.

‘I'm sorry, Mrs Tasker. Something's come up. I'll have to ask you to wait a bit more, I'm afraid. At least it sounds like he might be quieting down.'

Indeed Toby's yells were modulating into sobs.

‘Oh, all right,' said Poppy.

‘Thanks a million.'

She put Toby down on one of the chairs and began to organise for another session with
But Martin
. She was re-stowing the changing bag when she heard the sigh of a door.

Toby was off his chair in an instant and charging down the corridor. A WPC with an armful of files had just come through a fire door half-way along the corridor. It did exactly the same trick as the ones below, hurtling towards closure and then slowing for the last few inches. The WPC stood out of Toby's way but lost control of her files as she was trying to do the same for Poppy, and they collided. Files slithered to the floor.

‘Sorry,' muttered Poppy and dashed on, but he had reached the door. Oh, all right, she thought, and softened her defeat by turning it into a lesson on the swing-door menace, crouching by the jamb, pretending to get her hand trapped, miming agony. Toby, his face still swollen and smeared with his tantrum, ignored her and sternly adhered to the course of his experiment. At least his approach was gratifyingly different from that of the child downstairs, who had simply exulted in the physical effort of shoving the door open and letting it swish shut. Toby did that a few times, but then became fascinated by the invisible barrier which stopped the door from slamming. He experimented with opening it only a few inches, and then with trying to hurry it past the deceleration point. He held it part open with one hand and felt at the space in front of it with the other, to see if the air was somehow thicker there. From time to time people came past. He held the door for them and then returned to his exploration.

Poppy hovered by the jamb, waiting for the moment when he'd trap his fingers, but he justified her anxiety only once, at the point when he'd finished his investigations and needed a fresh audience to demonstrate to. Behind her in the corridor footsteps squeaked on lino. Toby turned to the newcomer and held out a summoning arm. As the door closed towards his other hand Poppy snatched it clear and held it till the danger was past. At that point she became aware that his stance had changed, to one of disappointment. The footsteps, two sets now, were no longer approaching but receding. She glanced over her shoulder and saw a man and a woman turning the far corner and moving out of sight. She caught only a glimpse of the woman—brown tweed coat, thick stockings—because she was largely screened by the man—blond hair, dark grey suit. For an instant she thought it had been Laura, but immediately became uncertain. She hadn't seen enough. But whoever it was had started to approach, stopped and turned back.

‘Sorry about that,' said Mr Firth's voice from beyond the door. ‘Where … ? Ah, there you are. Calmed down now, have we? Come in.'

His office was a functional, cramped mess, less decrepit than Poppy had expected. Stacked files, shelves of books and pamphlets, charts, organisation diagrams. Another door opened into a larger room, where several people seemed to be working. Mr Firth dug around in the drawers of his desk and found Toby a stapler, a fancy key-ring and a ruler with rollers in it. He settled Poppy into a chair opposite his desk and gave her a couple of sheets of paper.

‘Anything like, d'you think?' he said.

Dismally Poppy stared at the drawings. Likeness or not they were so infinitely other than the living flesh that comparison seemed impossible.

‘I don't think his beard was quite like that,' she said. ‘Longer, and not so thick. And it had a sort of silky look—you know, as if it had never been cut. I'm not sure. I only got one good look at him, across the street. Otherwise I think it's quite like.'

‘Thanks. We'll see what Jim Bowles says.'

‘What's going to happen now?'

‘We'll wait for Bob Caesar to come back. I like him here from the start, so he knows what line to follow while he's taking your statement. Then I'll ask you to tell me what happened and maybe question you about it, and then Bob will take you next door and get it down in detail.'

‘How long will it take?'

‘Two or three hours, if you're lucky.'

‘Oh, God. He'll sleep some of that, but then he'll be wanting his lunch.'

‘We'll be as quick as we can. He's a nice little lad. Two yet?'

‘Not till after Christmas.'

‘Talking much?'

‘He seems to get a new word every day.'

‘It's a great age.'

Mr Firth looked down at Toby, who was slithering the ruler across the carpet like a snowplough, pushing the stapler in front of it. He shook his head, inwardly rejecting a thought. The movement, with its speaking humanity, made Poppy look at him more closely. In the shock of events in the playground she had been aware of Firth mainly as a bearable presence, almost sympathetic, autumnal with his brown suit and tanned and time-marked face, appropriate to the presence of death. Sitting in his office, without his hat, he was still like that, superficially, but she was aware of an inward energy, a sense of purpose, or perhaps of dedication, not subject to the shift of seasons. If he'd been an actor there'd have been a tendency to typecast him as a priest. He was younger than she was, by several years she guessed, but was already bald right across the top, an effect enhanced by the dense, short, dark brown hair at the sides of his head.

‘How old are yours?' said Poppy.

‘In their teens. Two girls. I don't see much of them these days. I split up with my wife when they were nine and eight and she's taken them to live in Scotland.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Yes, I miss them. It was the job did it, really. It's a lot to ask of a woman … Here's Bob.'

A man's voice, macho-mocking, said something to a WPC in the inner room. When he came through he was the one Poppy had seen in the corridor, large, blond, grey-suited. So Laura, if it was Laura, had already been here when Mr Firth had arrived. He hadn't expected her, and had had to ask Poppy to wait. Sergeant Caesar had then taken her out through the further room and the other door and she'd then turned the wrong way, but almost at once turned back. Realised her mistake? Recognised not Poppy, crouched by the door and facing away, but Toby, manifest and commanding attention? If so, it had to be Laura. It wasn't any of the others

‘Right,' said Mr Firth. ‘I'd best explain that I'm not in charge of this case. That's Detective Superintendent Collins from the Area Major Investigation Team. I'm the local officer working with him. We'll start with the occasion when a man who may have been the deceased seemed to be following you. September the tenth, according to the report. About three o'clock in the afternoon something took place. Will you tell me in your own words about that?'