The Red Room (30 page)

43

I rang the Tyndale Center for Young People on
my mobile when I was just a few minutes down the
road. When the woman who answered the phone said
that Will wasn't there, I drove the rest of the way,
parked right outside and rang the doorbell.
"Is Sylvia here, by any chance?" I asked
the young woman on duty, who had cropped hair,
a spider-web tattoo on her cheek and who
didn't look much older than the residents.
"Nope." The spider-web moved and stretched
when she spoke.
"Are you expecting her?"
"Couldn't say."
"Do you have any idea where I might find her?"
"Couldn't say." She took a cigarette from
behind her ear and stuck it between her lips.
"Confidential," she said. She lit the
cigarette.
"Oh. Of course. If you do see her, could you
tell her that Kit Quinn wanted to ask her
something? I'll write down my phone numbers."
The young woman didn't answer, just looked at
me suspiciously. "She knows me," I added.
I pulled my notepad out of my bag, jotted
down the numbers on a page and handed it over.
She put it on the front desk without looking at
it. I had little hope she would do anything about it.
"Thanks anyway, and sorry to bother you."
But as I turned to leave, with no idea of where
to try next, a voice piped up, "You 523
could try the fair."
I turned to see a boy squatting by the front
door. He looked about ten, except he had a
cigarette in the corner of his mouth and was playing
with a flick-knife.
"The fair? The one on Bibury Common?"
I'd passed it on my way, feeling a tremor
of nostalgia for the days when I'd loved the swoop
and sickening fall of high rides, the tacky
fluffy toys and giant plastic hammers you won
when you shot all the targets down with a misaligned
air rifle.
"Yup." He hesitated. "Could you lend me
a couple of fags, miss?"
"Sorry, I don't smoke."
"Money, then." He put his hands together in a
self-mocking gesture of pleading. I slid a
glance at the girl on duty then passed over some
coins. "Cool! Thanks."

Evening was drawing in, and the fair was just getting
going. Men in leather jackets, with oiled-back
hair and manky teeth, were tightening things with
spanners. The big dipper was circling slowly
round through the dusk, though its chairs were all
unoccupied. There was a helter-skelter, a
merry-go-round of teacups, one of animals, the
dodgem cars watched over by lean young men in tight
jeans who were chewing gum, a haunted castle, a
rickety-looking hall of mirrors whose last
segment was being wheeled into place, stalls where you
had to toss hoops over bottles and win
dolphins, stalls where you could win bags of
licorice allsorts and nasty vases if you
threw a dart into the bull's-eye, vans selling
greasy burgers and fat orange sausages. And
there was mud, squelchy brown mud, liquid
streams of mud where the caravans had churned
ruts; mud everywhere.
I looked around for Sylvia. People were just beginning
to arrive. Tinny music was starting to play. A
helium balloon, let loose from the grasp of a
howling toddler, floated up into the sky. The
smell of frying and of cigarette smoke filled the
air. Perhaps she wasn't here. I picked my
way through the mud, staring at the knots of people, and was
thinking of giving up when I saw her. She was
climbing into a dodgem car with a boy of about
sixteen. As they sat down, he put his arm around
her shoulders but she pushed it away 525
contemptuously. Her hair was tied
into ridiculous bunches, and she looked much younger
than I'd remembered her, and happy, as if she
hadn't a care in the world. I watched her as she
bumped her way round the circuit, screeching in
pretend fear when she was smashed into, whooping when
she wrenched her car round to hit someone else.
When she climbed out, I went to meet her.
"Hello, Sylvia."
"Hi." She didn't seem in the least
surprised to see me there.
"I was looking for you."
"Yeah?"
"I wanted to ask you something. But I don't
want to interrupt your evening, so if you'd prefer,
we could meet after."
"It's OK. I haven't any money
anyway. I'll see you around, Robbie," she
said, dismissively, to the boy by her side, who
slouched off, his long flappy trousers dragging in
the mud.
"Do you want something to eat? Or drink?"
"I don't mind."
"What about ...?"
"OK. A burger with fried onions and
ketchup, some chips and a Coke."
We walked over to one of the vans, where I got
the food. "There's a bench over there, where we can
talk," I said.
"Sure," she said, amiably. She didn't
seem curious, but she was certainly hungry.
She had eaten most of her food by the time we sat
down. There was grease running down her chin and
ketchup on her lips. She dragged her sleeve
across her face and sighed.
"There was just something I thought you might be able
to help me with," I began.
"About Lianne?"
"Kind of. Well, about Daisy as well.
Lianne's friend."
"Sure. The one who topped herself."
"Yes. Did you know her well?"
"Saw her around. Hung around with her sometimes.
You know. Same crowd."
"Do you know if Will Pavic knew her?"
"Probably. I mean, he would, wouldn't
he?" Her gaze wandered off. "Could I get some
candyfloss too?"
"Definitely. In a minute. This is a
difficult question, Sylvia, but do you know 527
-comd you have any idea if Will Pavic ever,
well, got involved with any of the young people in his
care?"
"Involved?" she repeated, as if it was a
foreign word.
"Yes. If he had sexual relationships with
any of them."
"Oh, fucked them, you mean?" She giggled and
patted me kindly on the shoulder. ""Sexual
relationships,"" she said, mimicking my voice.
"Did he?"
"Got a fag?"
"No."
"Oh, well." She pulled her own
cigarettes out of her jeans pocket and lit one.
"Don't think so."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure? Course not. You can never be sure about
things like that, can you? Just, not that I know of." She
wrinkled her little nose and puffed away. "He's
not a toucher, though."
"A toucher?"
"Some of them put their hand on your shoulder, on
your knee, pat you when they're talking to you.
Ugh!" She shuddered. "Creeps, as if we
don't know what they're doing. Will doesn't do
that. He keeps his distance."
"OK. What about Gabriel Teale? Did
Daisy ever mention his name?"
"Gabriel? What kind of stupid name is that
for a man? Never heard of him."
"He runs the Sugarhouse."
"Oh, that. I know that, of course."
"Did Daisy ever go there?" I asked, trying
to keep the urgency out of my voice.
"Sure. Loads of us have been there. Not me.
Not my thing. Daisy did, definite. She had
to learn how to do cartwheels." She smiled. "She
was brilliant at them by the end. She could do it
completely straight, lots in a row. She used
to cartwheel into rooms."
Excitement prickled up and down my spine.
I pulled the theater program out of my bag and
turned to the back of it. "You know when we first
met, you said that someone was asking questions about
Lianne? Is that the man?" I put my finger
on the photograph of Gabe.
She glanced at it. "No way!" She
giggled. "The person who was after Lianne was a
woman." 529
I stopped dead in my tracks. "You never said
that," I managed.
"You never asked."
I pulled Bryony's picture from my bag.
"Was it her, then?"
Sylvia squinted in the half-light.
"Nope," she said.
"You're sure?"
"Sure. They're nothing like. The woman I
saw was blond for a start."
In a daze, I pulled out another
photograph. "Like this?"
"Yeah. Yeah, that's the one. I'm certain.
She was snooping around, asking things in her
hoity-toity accent. Who is she?"
I looked down at the face, touched it softly
with a finger. "A woman called Philippa
Burton."
"Philippa Burton." Sylvia looked
at the photograph and a shadow passed across her
face, a kind of hardness. "Did she kill
Lianne, then?"
"No," I said. Then: "I don't know."
"You look funny, are you ill?"
"No. I'm just confused, Sylvia. Do you
want your candyfloss now?"
"Are you having one too?"
"No."
"Why not? Let yourself go, why don't you?" She
turned her shrewd, delicate face to me and
looked at me assessingly. "You want
to relax."
A curious feeling of lightheadedness took
over. "OK. I'll have a giant pink
candyfloss."
"Cool. And then we'll go on that." She
pointed toward the Tilt-A-Whirl, which was spinning
round so fast that I could only just make out the
faces of the yelling passengers.
"I'll think about it."
"Don't think. Come on."
I ate the candyfloss. It fizzed against my
teeth, stuck in my hair and melted on my
cheek. Then Sylvia and I climbed into the
Tilt-A-Whirl.
"I don't want to do this."
Sylvia giggled. The car started to move,
slowly at first, but then faster, faster, and each car
was whirling round in its own dizzying 531
circle as well. I tried to say something, but my
cheek muscles seemed to have gone slack. The world
was a hurtling blur. The centrifugal force
pinned me back against the seat; my stomach was
somewhere else, my sticky hair whipped against my
face.
"Fuck," I managed to gasp.
"Scream," said Sylvia, in my ear.
"Scream your heart out."
I tipped my head back and I opened my
mouth. I screamed, until I could hear my
scream ripping above everyone else's. I
screamed my heart out.

44

There was more fumbling with my tape-recorder, which
became worse under the skeptical, snorting,
frankly disapproving gaze of Detective
Inspector Guy Furth, and the disappointed and
embarrassed one of Detective Chief
Inspector Oban. They were two men with their
minds on other things, new cases, who were
confronted with an obsessed woman who wouldn't
let go. Worse than that, it was a woman who was
crouched under a table in Oban's office trying and
failing to fit a simple plug into a socket.
I cursed silently and then loudly. A plug was
a fucking plug, wasn't it?
I finally managed it and positioned the machine
on Oban's desk.
"You'll have to listen carefully," I said. "The
recording isn't brilliant quality. I did
it on an old tape I found at the back of a
drawer and I think it's a bit past its best."
The two detectives exchanged glances as I
pressed the "play" button. It was a little
embarrassing, because I hadn't rewound it properly
and the tape began with me saying one two, one two,
and then the alphabet. I looked at Oban.
He was biting his lip as if he was trying to stop
himself laughing. It didn't get much better. There
was the seemingly endless prattling between me and
Emily about her play-school and my injury.
Oban was shifting impatiently in his seat.
"Was it hailing when you did the interview?"
Furth asked, with a curl of his lip.
"There's a sort of crackle on the tape,
I know," I admitted. "Sorry about all this but
I wanted you to hear the whole thing so that you 533
got the context."
He muttered something under his breath.
"What was that?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said.
I switched off the tape and rewound it a bit.
"For God's sake," he cried, "we're not
going to listen to it again, are we?"
"I want to make sure you don't miss
anything."
He groaned. As the conversation moved on to the
events in the playground, he gave a frown of
concentration. Suddenly Emily was saying she was
bored, there was a click and a crackle and there we
were in the middle of "Hotel California"--it had
been a party tape in the mid-eighties. The two
men grinned.
"I like this bit," said Furth. "Better sound
quality as well."
"So what do you think?" I said impatiently.
"Play it again," said Oban. "Just the last
bit," he added hastily.
With a bit of trial and error I rewound the
tape and played Emily's responses about the
woman. Before the end, he leaned over and switched
it off himself. He sat back with a look of
discomfort.
"Well?" I said.
He was looking out of the window as if he had just
noticed something fascinating that required his full
attention. He glanced round as if he was
surprised I was still here.
"Sorry," he said. "I was just thinking of a few
weeks ago when we were playing you a tape.
Funny how things work out."
"Not really," I said.
"What do you want me to say?" he said.
I already had that queasy feeling that things weren't
going my way. "I'm not sure I wanted you
to say anything," I said. "I thought you might
jump up in the air and get excited."
"What should I get excited about?"
I looked at both of them. Furth's
expression was oddly kind, which made me feel
worse. "Are you not hearing what I'm hearing?
We should have thought of this ages ago. People don't
grab mothers while they're supervising their children with
lots of other people around. There was a woman
involved, a woman who spent a few minutes with
Emily while Philippa Burton was lured
away to the car where she was killed." 535
"I don't hear that," said Oban.
"What do you hear?"
He gave a dismissive sniff. "I hear
leading questions being put to a three-year-old girl
who's giving vague answers. I mean "the
nice woman," what's that? That could be any
woman in the past year who bought her a lolly."
"So you don't believe Emily."
"For a start, as you know, that tape would be totally
inadmissible as evidence. I also think it's
bullshit. I'm sorry, Kit, but I think
you've got carried away and you're starting to waste
my time."
"So you're not going to consider the possibility that
a woman was involved?"
"Do you have one in mind?"
"Yes."
"Who?"
"Bryony Teale."
"You what?"
"You can kick me out in five minutes but listen
to me."

"And did he listen?" said Julie, sipping
at her drink.
We were sitting in a new bar in Soho called
Bar Nothing. Apparently hard edges and straight
lines were out. This was all pastel sofas and large
cushions on the floor. We were sitting at the
bar. It wasn't actually soft. It couldn't be
soft. Your drinks would fall over. But even that
had a gently swirling curve.
I had met Julie in the early evening and I
had shouted and raged and metaphorically headbutted
the wall, so she insisted that the only solution was for
us to dress up and go out on the town together. She'd
put on and looked wonderful in yet another of
my dresses, a black one with chiffon
sleeves. I was wearing my special
figure-hugging pink dress that was part of a
fantasy of being the subject of one of those blues
songs in which the singer complains about having been lured
away from home by a devil woman. I sort of
hoped someone would come up to the two of us and tell us
we were violating city ordinances.
I think I immediately embarrassed Julie
by ordering two margaritas, which is probably a
bit nineties, if not eighties, but I needed
something quick.
"You know, pink is your color," said 537
Julie, as we took our first sips. "It goes
with your gray eyes, somehow."
"Goes with my scar."
"Don't say that," she said.
"I think I'm getting better," I said.
"I used to talk about the Phantom of the Opera,
didn't I? I don't worry about people feeling that
anymore. Now I think they probably just
assume I had some cosmetic surgery that went
wrong."
Julie didn't reply. Instead she touched
my face, tipping it so she could see the side
fully in the light. She scrutinized it as if
she were assessing an ornament in my flat. I
thought of little Emily running her finger down the
scar. Her inspection finished, Julie smiled.
"It looks like something that tells a story."
"The only story that scar tells is how little
time he had."
Julie flinched and I apologized. We
ordered another drink each and I steered the
conversation on to her. She talked about travels,
about terrible men and a couple of nice men, and about
her plans and suddenly she asked me if I
wanted to go along and I horrified myself by thinking,
Well, why not? Why not just drop everything and go?
Toward the end of my second drink I thought,
Why not drop everything and go that very evening?
We found a table and ordered a couple of
salads and a bottle of wine, but suddenly this
didn't seem enough. I felt a craving for red
meat. I thought I even saw Julie blanch when
it arrived, thin slices of raw beef with shavings
of Parmesan, drizzled with olive oil and
lemon juice. "I know I'm a carnivore,"
she said. "But I think I prefer it when the meat
goes a nice brown color."
I tried to keep the conversation to Julie and her
life and times, I really did, but it was no good.
I was like an unstable smoking volcano and while
we were still picking at our salads the volcano
erupted and started giving her an animated account
of the last couple of days.
"Yes. Oban did listen," I said, our
glasses full once more, "I mean, he heard
what I was saying. That's the expression, isn't
it? He heard me out. Then it was just, the case is
closed, don't waste our time, don't make us
think that life is more complicated than we thought,
don't make us do our job properly." 539
I stopped and laughed. I had caught myself
actually jabbing my finger fiercely at Julie.
She had moved away slightly to avoid being
stabbed by it.
"It's not me," she said, laughing as well.
"You don't have to convince me. Well, you do. I
must admit I don't understand what you're on about.
Are you saying that nice photographer woman was
helping that weirdo Doll murder people?"
"No, no, Doll had nothing to do with it. She
was helping her husband, Gabriel."
Julie took another sip of red wine. "I
dunno," she said. "I should have been asking you about
this three drinks ago at least. I mean, these are
nice people. He works for a theater. Why would they
kill those women?"
"And Doll as well."
"What do you mean? That was done by those
vigilantes, wasn't it?"
"No, it wasn't."
"But you told me that they even left a
message."
"Yeah, I know. "Murderous Bastard" with
those ridiculous misspellings. That was so
pathetic, but I was shocked by the scene and I
didn't think about it. Is someone who can't even
spell "bastard" going to use a word like
"murderous"? Remember what I thought about the
bodies of Lianne and Philippa? The wounds
were like someone pretending to be a psychopath but without
the real conviction. You should see what a real
sexual psychopath does to a woman's body."
"I don't think so," Julie said. "So these
are nice murderers, right?"
"They weren't doing it for fun. It was because they
felt they had to."
"What the fuck for?"
"I haven't a clue. But it doesn't
matter. That's the good bit. Before, none of it
fitted together. Now it all does. This poor
girl, Daisy, it turns out that she had a
connection to Gabe Teale. I saw a friend of hers
yesterday who told me she'd been working at the
Sugarhouse. Lianne was concerned about Daisy,
and she gets killed. I've discovered that
Philippa Burton was after Lianne."
"Why?"
"No idea. The note I found in her room
showed that she had made the connection between Lianne and
Bryony. Anyway, she gets 541
killed. I've now shown that Byrony was involved
in abducting Philippa."
"Have you?" said Julie doubtfully.
"Absolutely. So, now where was I?"
"Not sure."
"Michael Doll. That so-called attack on
Bryony never made any sense. All that
coverage of Michael Doll made almost
everybody think he had murdered Lianne. But for
Gabriel and Bryony, it placed Doll at the
scene. Maybe he had seen something. Maybe he
even got in touch with them and threatened Gabriel.
They made a half-arsed attempt to attack
him, knock him on the head, dump him in the
canal, whatever, make it look like
vigilantes, but then that Terence Mack man
pops up, Bryony is grabbed, Gabe legs
it, Doll hasn't got a fucking clue what's
going on, and it looks to everybody like an attack
on Bryony. No wonder she was in such a
traumatized state."
"Well ..."
"And so they--or probably just Gabe, since
by now Bryony is assumed to be in danger and is
under police protection--go to Michael Doll's
flat to do the job properly. Bryony had got
Emily's cup from when they tricked Philippa
into going off with Gabe for a chat in their car. Gabe
murders Doll, leaves the cup. Doll is
dead, well and truly framed, the case is
closed."
Julie tipped the last drops of wine into our
two glasses. "More?" she said.
"No," I said. "I'm sobering up."
"Doesn't sound like it. Now, wait a
minute," she said, "it wasn't just the drinking
cup, was it? There was also that leather pouch. Do you
really think he would leave that deliberately? That
was a bit of a risk."
"I thought about that," I said. "I don't think
it was deliberate. You should have been there. The room
was just blood. Gabe must have been covered."
"If he was there," Julie added.
"He was there. He's covered in blood,
strips down to wash in the bathroom, leaves the
pouch. It's found, but it turns out not to matter because
it's seen as another of Doll's trophies."
Julie didn't speak for a moment. She
looked as if she was doing long division in her
head. "You said all that to Oban in five 543
minutes?" she said finally.
"I gave him the shortened version."
"No wonder he kicked you out."
"You're not convinced?"
"I don't know. I'll have to let it settle
in my brain for a bit. I don't care what you
say, I'm going to have another drink."
She ordered two brandies, took a gulp of
hers and winced. "So what're you going to do? Are you
going to have another go at Oban?"
I flicked my finger against my glass, making
it ring.
"No," I said reflectively. "I think
I've used up my store of goodwill with him. I
don't know. I've been going over and over it in
my mind. You know when Paul McCartney thought
of "Yesterday," he spent days trying to work out
where he had heard it before. He couldn't believe
he'd really thought it up. I've been wondering
whether I'm imagining patterns that aren't really
there." I picked up the glass and drank a
burning gulp. "Maybe I should go and talk
to them," I said.
"Who?"
"Bryony and Gabe."
"You mean, tell them you think they're mass
murderers?"
"Give them a little prod, make them worried.
Maybe they'll do something."
Julie drained her glass. "Like nothing, if
they're innocent," she said. "And kill you, if
they're guilty."
"I can't think of what else to do."
Now it was Julie's turn to point her finger
at me. It was a little unsteady. "How much have you
had to drink?" she said.
"Two margaritas. About a bottle of wine.
And this brandy." I finished it off.
"Exactly," said Julie. "What I hope
is that it's the drink talking. It's probably
all been the drink talking. But the last bit.
I'm absolutely sure that tomorrow morning neither of
us is going to remember anything about this evening.
Especially me. But I want you to promise me
that you won't do anything really, really stupid. Do
you promise that?"
"Of course I promise," I said, with a
smile.
"I don't know if I believe you." She
put a hand on my shoulder and shook me, 545
as if she wanted to wake me up. "Look,
Kit, don't you see that what you're doing here is
completely crazy? And I mean .completely."
"No, I--was
"It's one thing to put yourself at risk for a
reason--I still wouldn't advise it." She paused
to hiccup violently, then continued, "But you're
talking about putting yourself at risk for no reason
at all. As if the lives of two dead women were
somehow more important than your own living life,
if you see what I mean."
"Yes. But that's not the way I'm looking at
it."
"Sure, you're looking at it from
back-to-front and inside out. You're trying
to save dead people. You can't."
"I know that."
She brought her face closer to mine and
repeated, louder, "You can't save dead people,
Kit. You can't bring anyone dead back to life.
Let it go."