Play Dead (27 page)

‘I keep seeing him in my mind's eye as a child Toby's age, or Nick's, or Pete's. It seems so unfair.'

‘The hardest thing for us to accept about the universe is its sheer bloody randomness. Our minds are programmed to look for reasons, for patterns, for purposes, for justice. They're simply not there. If we want them we have to create them. Justice is a man-made thing, like a toothbrush. If I do my job right Toby, and my own grandchildren if I've the luck to have them, will grow up in a marginally juster universe. But it will still be local, trivial, weightless compared to the massive randomness of the rest of things.'

‘You don't believe there's a God?'

‘I wouldn't know. But if there is, he's looking the other way.'

‘How can you live with such a depressing outlook? I know I couldn't.'

‘I don't find it depressing. Quite the opposite. The fact that I can make minuscule differences, that I can create my scrap of justice—you've got a lot of tapes, haven't you? You listen quite a bit?'

‘Yes. All the time. What they call standard classics, though I'm prepared to be a bit more adventurous when I feel up to it.'

‘Jupiter Symphony?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘Why does that matter to us? I'm not saying what is it, but why do we care? We care because it's an assertion that it is possible to create patterned, elaborate, multi-dimensional forms of order by extracting particular sounds from the random noise of the universe. It's not immortal. If it had only been played once and then forgotten it would still have mattered. There must have been a Mozart-equivalent in Nineveh. Despite the randomness of things, despite lives like the Ogham-Ferrarses', we aren't wholly the slaves of chance. We have some control.'

‘Oh, I hope that's true!'

‘You know it is. After all, you've done a number of things in the past few weeks, some of them pretty painful to you, because at bottom you felt there must be a difference between right and wrong. If we have no control, right and wrong are meaningless concepts. Do you want me to finish?'

‘I think I know quite a bit of it. I keep realising things. For instance Laura didn't just want to look after Toby on Saturdays so that she'd have extra money for Jonathan. She was hoping to find out things about Janet for him to impress the people at Sabina Road with. And he told her things too, I suppose, about the Simpsons smuggling drugs, for instance. Did he find out about that when he had that holiday with them before, and ran off?'

‘That's the sort of thing we'll never know, unless Simpson tells us.'

‘It seems a bit crazy of Mr Simpson to involve someone like Jonathan at all.'

‘He had his kids out there. He wanted it to look like a family holiday. My own hunch is that Jonathan realised what was up, nicked a parcel of heroin and left, and that's when he became an addict. As I say, Simpson can't have been at all pleased when he turned up in London, with the whole of his operation on a knife edge. I should think Jonathan made out he knew a bit more than he did, too. I don't think it's surprising he decided to get rid of him.'

‘Do you think it was just him? I had a mental image of him holding Jonathan down while Marigold put the heroin into his arm.'

‘Don't know. She was at Barnsley Square—we've got fingerprints. That's the part of the case we're concentrating on because we've got it pretty well sewn up. You were right about the oven, by the way; there were the kid's prints inside.'

‘Why did Laura let them in in the first place? There's a security chain. She'd already decided they were enemy. She'd have recognised her—I don't know about him.'

‘Parcel to deliver? Needed a signature? Something like that. But with Jonathan I should think Simpson acted friendly, said he needed his help, asked questions, found out about the Sabina Road van, said it would be useful, persuaded Jonathan to take a shot of heroin to nerve him up, and then simply gave him a massively stronger shot than he said it was. The next we actually know was a chap at Sabina Road hearing the engine running in the small hours—they kept the van in a shed at the end of the garden—and going out to see what was up. The last thing they wanted was police at the squat, so they took the body along to the play centre, shaved the beard and dressed him up fancy to distract attention. By the time we'd sorted that out, Laura had been ringing round all the people Jonathan had been interested in, accusing them of murder. You, the Capstones, the Simpsons. I don't know how the Simpsons realised it was Laura—maybe something Jonathan had said …'

‘I suppose Marigold might have recognised her after all, or realised later who it was. I mean, if Sue had just mentioned the name Laura … We were all round at Linen Walk the day after Jonathan's body was found …'

‘Yes, that nurse, Little Sue you call her, says Mrs Simpson started asking a lot of questions about the people in the play-group. She actually remembers telling her about Mary Pitalski spending a lot of time in Cardiff on this opera production …'

‘I'd love to see that when it comes to London.'

‘Oh?'

Poppy felt she had heard enough. She was tired of it now. It was all past, over. At odd moments, no doubt, further connections would strike her, but not now. Now she was more interested in him, in the two of them, his nature, their possibilities. She took the chance her unplanned interjection had given.

‘Do you know about opera?' she said.

‘Not much.'

‘Oh, well, it's something called
Euryanthe
, by Weber. I've got a tape. The plot seems to be almost total nonsense, but …'

‘Aren't they all?'

‘Well, some of them, rather. You've got to get used to the conventions.'

‘My wife was into ballet. I used to think it was the worst way of telling a story human ingenuity could conceivably devise.'

Poppy laughed, rose and filled his glass, then hers, going easy on the gin without any effort of will.

‘Opera's not that bad, mostly,' she said. ‘Of course there are some … but really the logic's in the music. You're not tone-deaf, are you?'

‘You are speaking to an ex-chorister of Ely Cathedral.'

‘Heavens! It didn't put you off music for life?'

‘Not music, only religion.'

‘That's rather a big only. What do you like listening to?'

‘Classics a bit. I used to like jazz. I don't really have time these days.'

‘I'm sure you don't. It's very good of you to spare me the time now.'

‘I wanted to see you.'

She waited but he sat in silence, watching the credits reel up over a long wide shot of Wenceslaus Square, packed with its enormous crowd, Dubcek (was it?) tiny on a balcony, Havel (perhaps) beside him.

‘Where are you?' he said.

She knew at once what he meant.

‘Down there, of course,' she said. ‘Tears streaming down my face. Aren't you?'

‘I'm behind one of those windows,' he said. ‘That's my office. I'm looking down. Policemen are different, you know. Even my daughters know I'm different. We stand between the rulers and the ruled. In an ideal democracy, where the rulers are the ruled, we'd still be there, at the window, looking down.'

‘What are you thinking about?'

‘Why did it take so long? Why didn't they do it before? They must have known, oh, for years now, they could if they wanted.'

‘Last time, Russia sent tanks in.'

‘That was twenty years ago. Half my life, almost.'

So he was in his forties, several years younger than she was, though they looked, she thought, roughly of an age. She felt easy with him, anyway, as he seemed to with her.

‘What were you doing then?' she said. ‘Can you remember?'

He told her, and then other things. He wanted to talk, clearly. Gradually, from fragments, the shape of a life emerged: parents divorced and remarried, a horde of step-siblings, himself not belonging in either brood, so a childhood unmagical and unregretted; nothing yet about adolescence, courtship, marriage; but then two adored small daughters; otherwise workaday years, subfusc, dutiful. But he wasn't a boring man. Some combination of genes, some fluke of nurture, had made him humorous, aware, flexible, decent. He stayed almost an hour and drank two-thirds of his bottle. She could have offered him food but decided not to. She was convinced, by tone and gesture, that he knew as well as she did what was going on between them and was prepared to enjoy these formal preliminaries. She had thought, before he came, that probably she was going to have to make all the running at first, but now was confident that this was not so.

When he'd left she put on the Mahler Fifth and, by way of giving Elias an equivalent treat, opened a can of mackerel fillets and gave him half. His purring joined the wash of sound. She carried her own meal—self-indulgently instant, curried lamb in a bag—back into the living-room and drank the rest of the wine with it. By the time she'd finished she was distinctly woozy, but for once unashamed. She-who-know-what-she-wants was in charge, and had chosen to get a bit high, and that was all right. She wasn't really listening to the music, just letting it happen. The television was still on, soundless, a cackling comedy series at odds with her mood. She flicked across the channels and found a news programme, the sobrieties of debate in a chamber of deputies or something. Russia it must be as they'd shoved a hammer and sickle in the corner—yes, there was Gorbachev …

She dozed, and for a moment—it couldn't have been more—she was part of what she'd been watching and talking about, moving in an immense crowd, joyful, through unfamiliar wide avenues, bullet-marks pocking the stucco of the buildings, towards some vaguely felt promise. To her left, with shouts of self-encouragement, citizens were ripping down a towering hoarding which showed the sinister-benevolent features of the toppled tyrant. The face was so well known that she didn't take it in. Only after she'd turned away did the realisation strike her and by the time she looked back to check the hoarding was down, and the people who'd demolished it had become a horde of small children who were scampering to and fro trailing long strips of the poster behind them, gaudy streamers of celebration.

Her head was already shaking in denial as she woke. No. In spite of what John had once said, Derek had not been her Stalin. The choices had all been hers. It was she who had put the posters up, she who had helped organise and then accepted the repression. Why hadn't she acted before? Why had it taken so long? She had known, oh, for years now.

Well, those years were over. What next? Not John Capstone, supposing that had become possible again. It was not in her personal culture to live for long at his level of self-impelled, self-justifying­ individual freedom, independent of any norm outside his own single will. But I
will
will some things, she thought. Tomorrow I'll tell Janet to start looking for a new minder. Then the hell with the visit to New Zealand. Anna doesn't want me. We'd both be play-acting. As soon as Toby's fixed I'll spend that money on a trip to Poland, by coach, and short-let the flat so that I can live dirt cheap and talk nothing but Polish and come back not just fluent but understanding something outside my own little cosy bubble. I'll go in the spring, and by then …

I think he'll suit me very well indeed. Not just that I need him and he needs me, that's not enough. I like the way he thinks. I like his sense of order, structure, the feel for the network of other lives you've got to respect and cherish if you're going to live well among them … Classics a bit, used to like jazz … Not Gilbert and Sullivan, anyway, though even that wouldn't have mattered. It's only one way of relating. He …

Good heavens! I don't know his first name. I bet it's Gerald. Well, if he can love a Poppy (which he's going to, or else …), I can love a Gerald. This is going to be an interesting year.

About the Author

P
eter Dickinson was born in Africa but raised and educated in England. From 1952 to 1969 he was on the editorial staff of
Punch
, and since then has earned his living writing fiction of various kinds for children and adults. His books have been published in several languages throughout the world.

The recipient of many awards, Dickinson has been shortlisted nine times for the prestigious Carnegie Medal for children's literature and was the first author to win it twice. The author of twenty-one crime and mystery novels for adults, Dickinson was also the first to win the Gold Dagger Award of the Crime Writers' Association for two books running:
Skin Deep
(1968) and
A Pride of Heroes
(1969).

A collection of Dickinson's poetry,
The Weir
, was published in 2007. His latest book,
In the Palace of the Khans
, was published in 2012 and was nominated for the Carnegie Medal.

Dickinson has served as chairman of the Society of Authors and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2009 for services to literature.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this book or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1991 by Peter Dickinson

Cover design by Mimi Bark

978-1-5040-0487-9

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com