REGINALD HILL
THE ONLY GAME

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 1991 under the author’s psuedonym Patrick Ruell

Copyright © Patrick Ruell 1991

Reginald Hill asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is >available from the British Library

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HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN: 9780007334858

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2015 ISBN: 9780007391912

Version: 2015-09-17

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Part One

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

Part Two

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Part Three

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Part Four

1

2

3

4

5

6

Part Five

1

2

3

4

5

Keep Reading

About the Author

By Reginald Hill

About the Publisher

Part One

1

‘Life is either comedy, tragedy, or soap,’ said Oliver Beck.

‘All right. What are these two?’

A middle-aged couple strolled by them on the promenade deck.

‘He’s tragic, she’s comic, together they’re soap,’ said Beck promptly.

She laughed out loud and for the next half hour they lounged in their deck chairs, categorizing passers-by and giggling together behind a glossy magazine.

The all-seeing purser intercepted her as she went down to the gymnasium.

‘Miss Maguire,’ he said grimly. ‘I think you should remember you’re a recreation officer on this ship, not a first-class passenger.’

‘We could soon change that,’ said Beck casually when she told him.

‘For what?’

‘For good maybe.’

She’d come to his cabin for a night cap, but she knew then she was going to stay.

It was her first time and she modestly turned aside as she slipped off her pants. His hand flapped her buttocks, more a caress than a slap, but she spun round, modesty forgotten, and blazed, ‘Don’t do that!’

A small child being dragged unwillingly along a busy street, her mother pausing to lift the girl’s skirt and administer a sharp slap to the upper leg. ‘I’ll really give you something to cry about, my girl, if that’s what you want.’ People passing by, indifferent. ‘Sorry,’ he said. She saw a veil of wariness dim the bright desire in his eyes. I’m spoiling it, she thought desperately. A child again, but now a child wanting to please, she raised her right leg till it pointed straight in the air, then bent her knee and tucked her foot behind her head against the cascade of long red hair.

‘Can you do that?’ she challenged.

‘Oh my God,’ he said thickly. ‘That’s real crazy.’

If she amazed him with her double-jointed athleticism, she amazed herself even more with the depths of her sensuality. Afterwards they rolled apart, exhausted, and she examined his face. In the liner’s public rooms he looked smooth, sophisticated, a successful businessman in his thirties, clearly at least ten years her senior. Now, his hair tousled, his face muscles relaxed with satisfied desire, he looked barely twenty.

‘What are we?’ she asked softly. ‘Tragic, comic, or pure soap?’

He grinned and lost a couple more years.

‘None of those, my crazy Jane,’ he murmured. ‘There’s a special category for people like us. We’re the ones who decide what the rest are. We switch them on and off. We’re the Immortals, baby. We’re the Gods.’

And lying there, lulled by the great seas streaming under the ship’s bow and bathed in the afterglow of those ecstasies which had lifted her out of this time, this space, into a universe of their own creating, she almost believed him.

The sea again, that same sea, picked up in handfuls and hurled like gravel against the storm windows of their house on Cape Cod. A ringing at the door bell. Two men in sou ’westers.

‘Mrs Beck?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s bad, I’m afraid, Mrs Beck. Your husband’s boat. They’ve spotted some wreckage.’

‘But that could be anything. In weather like this …’

‘They found this too.’

An orange life preserver. Stencilled on it ‘The Crazy Jane’.

Still she protests. ‘But that doesn’t mean …’

The second man, impatient of hope, cuts in. ‘He was wearing it, Mrs Beck. We’ll need you for identification.’

She begins to sway, clutches the door frame for support.

Behind her, deep in the house, a child begins to cry.

‘So you’re back,’ said her mother. ‘You could have given me a bit more warning.’

‘It was a snap decision.’

‘Act in haste, repent at leisure, always your way. And he’s dead? Drowned, you said?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’m sorry for your sake. I can’t say more than that, never having had the pleasure of meeting him. And this is the boy.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Come over here, Oliver, and let’s be taking a look at you. What’s up with the child? I’m your gran, Oliver. Though it’s maybe not so odd he’s shy. Most kiddies know their gran before they get to four.’

‘He’s a bit tired. And we … I call him Noll.’

‘Noll? He’ll not thank you for that. What’s the point of baptizing a child if you’re going to start fiddling with his name?’

‘It’s what I want to call him. And he’s not baptized.’

‘Holy Mary, Mother of God. How can you take such a risk? We never know the moment when we’ll be called. You should know that better than most, you who’ve had both your da and your man snatched away from you in their prime. Never mind. We can soon put that to rights.’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘I don’t want him baptized, Mam. And it’s no use bringing in the Inquisition, I’ll not talk to any priests, especially not old Father Bleaney from St Mary’s. He’s half dotty and he doesn’t wash!’

‘You’re not wrong there, girl. He smells of more than sanctity, there’s no denying it. But he’s a holy man for all that. And you’d better understand this. I’m the one who says who’ll come into this house, and you’re the one who’ll be polite to them while you’re living here. God preserve us, if you’d come a half hour earlier you’d have met Father Blake. What would you have done then, my girl? Turned on your heel and flounced off like you used to do?’

‘No. Of course not. Who’s Father Blake anyway?’

‘A colleague of your Uncle Patrick’s, rest his soul. Do you not read my letters as well as not answer them? He comes across from time to time to inspect the Priory College where your uncle worked. He always calls to pay his respects and he brought me pictures of Patrick’s grave. You’ll meet him if you stay long enough. And you’d better be polite. How long are you staying, anyway?’

‘Till I get settled, if that’s all right.’

‘All right? This is your home, whatever you may treat it as. What do you mean, settled?’

‘Till I find a job.’

‘Did he not leave you provided for? Typical Yank. All show. Any man rich enough to drown in his own boat ought to be able to leave his wife looked after. What’ll you do? Try the teaching again?’

‘No!’

Mist on Ingleborough. Not yet thick but blowing in patches. A crocodile of teenagers descending, now visible along its length, now segmented.

Two girls crouching in the lee of a rock to light cigarettes.

‘What are you two playing at? Didn’t you hear Miss Marks tell you to keep close?’

We’ll be along in a minute, miss. We’ll soon catch up with them wallies.’

‘You’ll get along now. Come on. Put those fags out and move yourselves.’

The girls exchange glances, neither wanting to show weakness.

‘For heaven’s sake, don’t act so stupid. Don’t you know how dangerous it can be out here in the mist?’

‘We’re almost down, aren’t we? And who are you calling stupid?’

‘Don’t give me any of your cheek, Betty. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. Move it.’

One girl rises, the other lowers her head sullenly, draws deep on her cigarette, mutters, ‘Get stuffed, you smelly dyke.’

Mist on Ingleborough. An experienced teacher might play deaf, save it for later.

‘What did you say, Betty?’

A glance at her friend. Too far for retreat. The cigarette dangling from the side of her magenta mouth. ‘Everyone knows what old Ma Marks is like. Same with all PE teachers, I expect. Is that what the hurry is? Can’t wait to get us in the showers?’

‘You foul-mouthed slut! And put that cigarette out!’

A hand snakes out. Flesh cracks on flesh, the cigarette goes flying in a trail of sparks.

‘You rotten slag! I’ll get the law on you for this! My mum’ll have your eyes out when I tell her.’

‘Betty, come back. Not that way. Betty!’

‘No need to shout,’ said Mrs Maguire. ‘You always were too sensitive, even as a child. Stop dwelling on things. You’ll never get anywhere if you’re always lugging the past along with you. Oliver, that’s not to play with. Oliver, put that down … There, now look what you’ve done. Are you not going to chastise him then? It’s the only way he’ll learn.’

‘There’ll be none of that, not with my son, Mam.’

‘No? Well, it’s your business, I suppose. And it’ll be you who gets to suffer later. But I’ll tell you this, my girl. I kept that ornament on that shelf all the time you were growing up, and it never got broken. So make what you like of that!’

The streets of home, unchanged but measuring change, familiar sights that no longer include her, that make her a ghost.

Then suddenly a welcoming and welcome voice.

‘Jane? Jane Maguire! I’d know that hair anywhere. I didn’t know you were back in Northampton.’

‘Jimmy. How are you? It’s good to see you. Still running the club?’

‘Such as it is. Tell you what, Jane, we could do with a few young prospects like you. Remember the Junior AA? By God, you shifted that day! I thought, another two, three years, next Olympics maybe … Anyway, what are you doing now? You went to PE college, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right. But I didn’t take to teaching. I worked as a recreation officer with a cruise firm for a while, but now I’m back on the market. Any ideas?’

A shrewd examination. ‘Still in good shape? You look it. PE qualifications? Aerobics, physiotherapy, that kind of thing?’

‘I did a bit on the liners. And I specialized in sports injuries at college. Why?’

‘Chum of mine, George Granger, has started a health centre and I know he’s looking for qualified staff. Trouble is, it’s down in Romchurch, just outside London, so it won’t be cheap living and I doubt if he’ll be paying a fortune.’

‘Romchurch in Essex? I did my training in Essex, near Basildon, not too far away …’

The returning ghost clings to the familiar …

‘Jimmy, can you give me a number? Essex would suit me very well.’

‘Going?’ said Mrs Maguire. ‘But you’ve been here no time at all.’

‘Nearly a month. It’s long enough.’

‘This job. I thought you said you weren’t starting till the beginning of September?’

‘I’ve got things to do, arrangements to make.’

‘About Oliver, you mean?’

‘About Noll. Yes. And other things.’

‘I don’t see how you’re going to be able to work and look after him. He’ll be a tie. You’re not settled inside yourself yet, I can see that. Why don’t you leave him here till you see how things work out?’

‘Leave him with you, you mean?’

‘No need to sound so disbelieving. I’ve got used to him. He’s a bit on the spoilt side, maybe, but that’s the Yank way, and he’s young enough not to have suffered any lasting damage. His old gran will soon lick him into shape …’

‘No way!’

‘Well, it’s a fair offer and for the child’s sake, I’ll let it stand. Remember that when things start going wrong for you, as they surely will. It’s not your fault, you take after your da, God rest his soul, and like him, you’re proud and stubborn, never admitting you’re in the wrong, always looking for someone else to blame …’

‘How dare you! You of all people, after what you did to him and me …’

‘There you go. What was it I just said? Well, blame me all you like, my girl, but remember, there’ll be no excuse for blaming little Oliver, not when he’s got a good home waiting for him here.’

She left the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

Jane stood for half a minute, perfectly still. She forced herself to relax, but when she looked down she saw that her hands were still tightly balled into fists. Slowly, finger by finger, she opened them wide.

Her power over me is finished, she told herself. The power of family, the power of priests. It’s all in the past, everything is in the past, my mistakes, other people’s mistakes. The future is mine to make it what I will. Mine and Noll’s. Together.

Nothing will make me leave him here.

I’d rather …

Nothing!

2

It was still raining when Jane Maguire came out of the pub.

She’d had three gin-and-tonics and a packet of crisps which she’d only bought because the barman had said, ‘You OK, darling?’ as she ordered the third gin, as if buying something to eat changed her from a woman with a problem to a working girl on her lunch break.

Coatless, she ran across the car park, feeling as light and easy as when she’d been fourteen and one of the best sprint prospects in England. She hadn’t bothered to lock the car. Once inside, only a madman would steal it. There were spoors of rain down the windows where the sealing had perished, and the carpet was soggy through the rust holes in the floor.

But at least it started first time. There was always something to be grateful for, as her mother used to say. Including presumably slaps across the leg.

She didn’t want to think about that, not after this morning.

She drove steadily, blanking out past and future. Dead on three, she turned into Charnwood Grove. Perhaps once the narrow street had been lined with trees, but now only a few lamp posts rose between the twin terraces of big bayed Edwardian villas confronting each other so self-importantly, like wise guardians of the poor … where had that phrase popped up from? It was hardly apt, especially at this time of day. Until the arrival of her mobile rust bucket, there was little sign of poverty outside Number Twenty-nine which housed the Vestey Kindergarten. Mercs, BMWs and Audis gleamed and purred here, most of them newish and many, she guessed, second cars. Fathers sometimes figured in the morning drop, but the afternoon pick-up was entirely female.

As she went up the steps a couple of women, expensively wrapped against the rain, looked at her strangely. Nearly three months of twice daily encounters hadn’t got her past the nodding stage with any of them. She didn’t blame them. People who drove cars like theirs steered clear of people who drove cars like hers – in every sense! She paused in the doorway to confirm their wisdom by shaking the raindrops out of her hair, then stepped inside.

Mrs Vestey did her best with beeswax polish and ozone-friendly aerosols, but on a wet day it was beyond even her powers to stop the school from smelling like a school. As usual she was standing by the entrance to the cloakroom, in which a melee of staff and mothers were preparing the youngsters for the perilous passage from front door to kerb. She was a tall, dark woman with a slightly hooked nose and long white teeth which she flashed in a welcoming smile as she said, ‘Hello, Mrs Maguire. No problems, I hope?’

‘No,’ said Jane harshly.

‘Oh, good. I feared that you might be going to tell me that the little upset had turned into something communicable. It’s a constant nightmare as I’m sure you can imagine. So, what can I do for you?’

‘Nothing,’ said Jane. ‘I’ll just pick up Noll and be on my way.’

She pushed past the headmistress into the cloakroom and stood there a minute looking at the children.

Then she turned and said quietly to Mrs Vestey, ‘Where’s Noll?’

The woman gave her another long-toothed smile, this time not of welcome but incomprehension. At the same time her nostrils flared as though catching a worrying scent.

And Jane knew that the moment was close, the moment when fear became fact. But there were still lines to speak.

‘Please, Mrs Vestey,’ she said, ‘has something happened? Has he been taken ill?’

‘Yes, yes … at least I understood so …’ said the woman uncertainly. ‘But you yourself …’

She paused, took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, it was in the assertive tone of someone who needs to get basic facts established in a welter of uncertainty.

‘Noll is not here, Mrs Maguire,’ she said.

‘Not here? Where is he then? Has he been taken to hospital? Why wasn’t I …’

‘No! Mrs Maguire,’ interrupted Mrs Vestey, ‘I mean Noll has never been here today. You yourself rang to say he was ill …’

‘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

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.’

She closed her eyes as though in pain. The silence stretched till it became a barrier. The door opened and WPC Scott slipped back in.

‘Mrs Maguire,’ said Dog.

She sighed deeply and began to speak.

‘It was raining,’ she said. ‘It had been raining all night. Perhaps that’s why the car wouldn’t start. But I was late already. Noll hadn’t been too well over the weekend and he was still a bit fractious when I got up. Usually he’s keen to get to the kindergarten, and I know he’d been particularly looking forward … it’s the last week before they break up, you see, and they were doing all kinds of Christmassy things …’

Her voice faded then picked up again before he could frame a consolation.

‘Anyway, he announced this morning he didn’t want to go. I suppose he sensed I was in a hurry and just decided to be bloody minded. They can be like that, you know, kids. Don’t want to, don’t want to, over and over … and you try to be reasonable like you were taught, and time’s passing, you can hear it ticking away …’

‘Did it matter so much if Noll was late for school?’ wondered Dog.

‘No, of course not. But I’ve got an aerobics class at nine-thirty on Mondays …’

‘You take it, you mean? That’s your job?’

A hesitation. A decision?

‘Yes. I work at the Family Fun Health Centre in Shell Street. It’s about thirty minutes’ drive through the morning traffic, so I’ve really got to be on my way by nine.’

‘But this morning the car wouldn’t start?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I kept on trying the starter, then I got worried about the battery. So I got out and looked under the bonnet.’

‘And you found the trouble?’

‘No. I’m not mechanically minded. I suppose I was just trying to advertise that there was a helpless little woman in trouble. It didn’t work at first. Seems those macho know-it-alls don’t function so well in the wet either.’

It sounded like a bitter joke, but he got the feeling it was also a delaying tactic. This was painful, but the greatest pain was yet to come.

‘So in the end you managed yourself?’ he asked.

‘No. There was this man, a boy really, you know, leather jacket and jeans, he stuck his head under the bonnet, fiddled around for a few seconds, said, “There you go,” and went on his way. I thought he was joking, or maybe just walking off fast rather than admit it was beyond him. Men do that, don’t they? Walk away rather than admit defeat? But when I tried it again, the engine started straightaway. So did Noll. I’d strapped him in his chair in the back and he’d sat there, happy as Larry, all the time I couldn’t get the thing going. But now he started up again. You wonder where they get the lung power from. All the way to Charnwood Grove he kept it up without a break. And the rain was still coming down, and the windows were all misted up, and all I could think of was that Mr Granger would be furious …’

‘Mr Granger?’

‘George Granger. He owns the Health Centre.’

‘Where you work from nine-thirty till …?’

‘Till two-thirty.’

‘Odd hours.’

‘They suit. Housewives in the morning fighting the flab. Businessmen pumping iron, over their lunch hours.’

She spoke with something close to contempt, noticed him noticing and went on in a neutral tone, ‘Then it’s fairly quiet till evening. I go in four nights a week, seven to ten.’

‘Leaving Noll with a baby sitter?’

‘Yes. Naturally. Do you think I’d leave him alone?’ she flashed.

‘Naturally, no. What do you do for lunch, Mrs Maguire?’

The question surprised her, quenched her anger. Made her wary.

‘Nothing really. There’s a coffee machine. I usually don’t bother till I get home. Then Noll and I have tea together …’

Tears brimmed again. He preferred anger to tears. He said brusquely, ‘Is there a bar at the Centre?’

‘No,’ she said. She watched him, saw his nose twitch, remembered Vestey’s nostrils flaring. He’d smelt the gin, or that cow had told him she’d smelt it. She waited for the question. If asked, she’d tell him. But he had to ask. She had no strength to tell what she wasn’t asked.

But he was set in his method. The diversion was over. He was back on the old rails.

‘So you finally arrived in Charnwood Grove. At what time?’

‘Nine-fifteen. Nine-twenty. I parked the car and got Noll out. He didn’t want to come and I almost had to drag him out. And then Miss Gosling came along …’

She halted. It was close now. The moment when she described seeing Noll for the last time. The last time …

She had to move. She thrust back the sheet and swung her legs over the side of the bed. There was a moment of dizziness but her body was so well tuned it carried her easily through it. Then she was on her feet. Cicero drew in his breath. All impression of frailty was dispelled. Not even the shapeless hospital gown could disguise her grace as, long-legged and full-bosomed, she moved around the room with the frustrated energy of a circus cat exploring the limits of its cage.

‘Who’s Miss Gosling?’

‘One of the teachers … at least I thought … She was walking along with her head down into the rain. Noll ran into her. She almost knocked him over.’

She seemed to have got past a sticking point and was now talking fast and fluently.

‘She stooped down and steadied him and she said, “Hello. It’s Noll, isn’t it? You must be in a hurry to get into school. Is it those Christmas decorations you’re so keen to finish off?” And Noll said, “Yes.” All that grizzling about not going to school and here he was saying yes to a stranger …’

‘Stranger?’ interrupted Dog. ‘I thought you said this Miss Gosling was a member of staff.’

‘She was!’ insisted the woman. ‘She knew all about Noll’s class making Christmas decorations. He’d told me about them on Friday. And she was wearing the uniform, well, not exactly uniform, but Mrs Vestey likes her staff to wear these brown skirts and cream blouses …’

‘And you could see this? You mean she wasn’t wearing a coat, even though it was raining cats and dogs?’ said Cicero, gently puzzled.

Jane thought, then said, ‘Yes, she was wearing an anorak, a blue anorak with the hood up.’

‘Like Noll’s. That was what you said Noll was wearing, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s right. They matched. It was the same blue, I remember. And she was walking along with the anorak unfastened but with her hands in her pockets to clasp it tight across her body as she walked. But when she bumped into Noll she took her hands out to steady him and the anorak fell open.’

She stood in front of him and looked down at him almost triumphantly. A problem posed, a problem solved. But was it a problem of memory or a problem of explanation?

‘And what happened then?’ he asked.

‘She said she’d take Noll into the kindergarten, and I got in the car and drove away,’ she said.

‘What? You left your child with this stranger? All right, so she said she was a teacher at the kindergarten, but you only had her word for it, didn’t you? And didn’t it occur to you to wonder, if you were so late, what was this so-called teacher doing wandering around outside at that time too?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think of that. Not then.’

She sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded him earnestly.

‘But I wouldn’t have left Noll if I hadn’t been certain, no matter how much of a hurry I was in. I knew she was a teacher because I’d met her in the school. On Friday afternoon when I picked Noll up. She was there. In the school. She talked to me about Noll. She said she’d just started and was trying to get to know all the mothers.’

‘But Mrs Vestey says …’

‘She’s a liar!’ cried Maguire, jumping up once more. ‘She’s the one you should be questioning. That bitch. She’s a liar, a liar, a liar!’

She was moving round the room again. But now the cat-like grace had gone, to be replaced by something much more spasmodic, angular, almost manic.

WPC Scott was looking at him anxiously. He nodded and she rose and slipped quietly out.

He said, ‘When you fainted, Mrs Maguire, the last words you said were, I quote: it’s all my fault; I shouldn’t have hit him. What do you think you meant by that?’

She came to a sudden halt, freezing to complete stillness like a child playing statues.

‘It was me who said that?’ she asked, though it was only marginally a question.

‘So I am informed.’

‘I must have meant … I suppose I meant … it was when I was getting him out of the car. That’s it. He was yelling his head off and flailing out with his hands and legs. He kicked me on the shin. It was an accident. When I looked down, I saw he’d torn my tights and I swore. I said, “Oh shit!” and he took it up. You know what little boys are like with naughty words. He just stood there shouting, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” and I hit him. I didn’t think about it. I just slapped his leg very hard like my mother used to do to me. He didn’t cry or anything. In fact he went completely silent. I’d never hit him before, you see. Then his face began to crumple up and he turned to run away, and that’s when he ran into Miss Gosling. Perhaps if I hadn’t hit him … And we never made up …’

Her body was racked with huge sobs, each one of which visibly drained her reserves of strength. She seemed to be collapsing in on herself and she had started rocking to and fro like a tower in an earthquake, when the door opened and a nurse and a doctor hurried in, with Scott close behind.

They caught her and lifted her towards the bed.

‘Do you mind?’ said the nurse angrily, as she found Cicero in her way. The doctor scowled at him with unconcealed distaste and even WPC Scott couldn’t hide her disapproval.

Dog Cicero didn’t seem to register any of this, but watched pensively as they laid Jane Maguire on the bed. The doctor said, ‘I think you’d better go now, Inspector. We can’t delay this X-ray any longer.’

‘Yes, of course. Excuse me.’

He leaned over the bed before they could draw the sheet up and looked at the woman’s shins. Then he went across to the tall locker against the wall, opened it, reached in, and emerged with a pair of tights. He held them up to the light, and stretched them out.

They were perfect.

‘Let us know as soon as she’s fit to talk to us again, won’t you?’ he said pleasantly.

He went out. The young constable followed. In the corridor he said to her, ‘You stay here, Scott. By the bedside. Whatever she says, waking or sleeping, you make a note. Get me?’

‘Sir, what do you think …? The child, will he be all right?’

‘Is he still alive, you mean?’ He regarded her steadily. ‘If you can get even money, take it, Scott.’

He walked away. She watched him go, then with a sick heart went back into the room.

4

The sign was brash and new: FAMILY FUN HEALTH CENTRE in big black letters on a white ground strewn with cameos of families having fun on exercise bikes, in a sauna, under sun lamps.

Dog Cicero had been here before. He knew if you removed the sign above the entrance you would find chiselled in the granite lintel: SHELL STREET YOUTH CLUB, OPENED MAY 1921 BY ALDERMAN CALDER DSO JP.

Last time he had stepped through these doors, he’d been fifteen, and memory programmed him to expect peeling olive green paint, worn linoleum, bare bulbs, a smell of damp wood, the stridency of punk guitars.

Instead he found pastel shades, carpet tiling, strip lighting, an odour of embrocation oil and the bounce of James Last.

Someone had turned Shell Street Youth Club into a place fit to get fit in.

Not that the woman sitting at a small reception desk looked much of an advertisement for the service. If fat was still a feminist issue, here was a profound political statement.

‘I’m looking for Granger,’ said Dog.

‘He’s in the gym. Can I help? I’m Mrs Granger. Was it one of our courses you’re interested in?’

‘No.’ He produced his warrant card. ‘Just an enquiry.’

She didn’t look surprised. Or worried.

‘Come with me,’ she said.

She led him through a door into a corridor. A willowy blonde looking like the after to the older woman’s before came towards them. Mrs Granger said, ‘Suzie, watch the desk for a minute, will you?’

There had been something euphemistically called a gym in the youth club. This too had changed; sprung floor, white pine, and enough gleaming implements to delight an Inquisitor’s heart. A couple of youths were pushing and pulling at steel levers, watched by a burly middle-aged man who came to the door in response to a gesture from Mrs Granger.

‘George, this is Inspector Cicero,’ she said. ‘My husband, Inspector.’

‘Cicero? There was a chippie called Cicero’s.’

‘My father’s. Mr Granger, if you can spare a moment, I’d like to ask about a member of your staff. A Mrs Maguire. Mrs Jane Maguire.’

The Grangers exchanged glances.

‘So what’s she been saying?’ demanded the woman.

‘Is there somewhere we can talk? If you’re not too busy.’ He glanced into the quiet gym.

‘We fill up later on,’ said Granger defensively. Dog looked at his watch. Ten to five. He recalled what Maguire had said.

Granger led the way to a small office. Three was very much a crowd in here, especially when two were built like the Grangers. He had clearly eaten at the same table as his wife even if he had been rather more successful in preserving the fat–muscle ratio.

‘Right, Mr Cicero, let’s hear it.’

There was an edge of something there. Aggression? Anger? Defiance? Endo said, just keep dealing the cards, son, and sooner or later they’ll tell you what they’re at.

He asked, ‘What time did Mrs Maguire get to work this morning?’

Another exchange of glances, this time puzzled. Then the woman said with remembered indignation, ‘Ten to ten. I had to start her aerobics class.’

Dog thought of Maguire’s lithe athletic figure and nodded gravely.

‘And did she leave at her usual time? That’s two-thirty, I believe.’

‘No!’ exploded Granger. ‘She did not!’

‘You mean she left early? Why was that?’

‘She left early because I fired her! That’s why she left. What’s she been saying, Inspector?’

‘You fired her?’ said Dog. ‘For being late?’

Again he got the bewildered reaction.

The woman said, ‘I think you’d better tell us why you’re asking these questions, Inspector.’

‘No,’ said Dog equably. ‘I think you’d better tell me why you’re giving these answers. Why did you dismiss Mrs Maguire, Mr Granger?’

He looked at his wife. She nodded permission. He said, ‘I sacked her because there was a complaint. I’d asked her to give one of our regular clients a massage. It was about midday. Some little time later I heard her voice raised in the treatment room and then she came out. I went in to see what was the matter and the client made a very serious complaint which left me no alternative but to sack her.’

‘What exactly was this complaint?’

Granger said hesitantly, ‘Well, he, the client, accused Mrs Maguire of … making an indecent suggestion.’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Dog.

‘For heaven’s sake, George,’ interrupted Mrs Granger impatiently. ‘She offered to jerk him off. For twenty-five pounds, Inspector!’

She sounded more indignant at the price than the proposal.

‘And what did Mrs Maguire say when you put this to her?’ said Dog to the man.

‘She told me it was her business. She said she was only offering what these men really wanted. And when I told her she was fired, she became very abusive and said if it was the Centre’s good name I was worried about, I’d better forget it, because by the time she was finished with me, it would stink.’

‘And then she assaulted him,’ said Mrs Granger.

‘What?’

Granger looked embarrassed.

‘It wasn’t anything.’

‘She punched you in the stomach,’ retorted his wife. ‘He was doubled up with pain. I wanted him to call the police. If it had been a man he would have done, and in my book a violent woman’s just as dangerous as a violent man.’

‘It would have made me look silly and not done the Centre’s reputation any good,’ said Granger. ‘The same about the other thing. Sacking her and letting the whole thing drop seemed the best course.’

‘And your client went along with this?’ said Dog.

‘Oh yes,’ said the woman. ‘He’d got a name to protect too. Mud sticks.’

‘And what is this name he’s protecting?’ asked Dog.

The man said, ‘I daresay you’ll know it, Inspector. It’s Jacobs. Councillor Jacobs. So you see, Mrs Maguire picked the wrong man when she picked on him!’

They were right. Councillor Jacobs was the amplifier through which the still small voice of God was heard plain in Romchurch. The scourge of corruption, the trimmer of budgets, the guardian of the public purse and, as chairman of the Police Liaison Committee, the answer to the Chief Constable’s prayers.

He asked a few more questions then left. On his way past the desk, he paused and smiled at the skinny blonde. She looked about twenty and had a cheerful, open face. He said, ‘Do you know Mrs Maguire?’

Her expression lost its openness.

‘Who’s asking?’ she said guardedly.

He told her and she said, ‘Is it about her getting the boot?’

‘That’s right,’ he lied easily. ‘Were you around?’

‘No. I had to go out at lunchtime. I had a dentist’s appointment.’

She opened her mouth as though inviting him to check. He looked in and she ran her moist pink tongue along her upper teeth and grinned as he looked away.

‘Is it right she belted old George in the gut?’ she asked.

‘Did you know her well?’

‘No. Hardly at all. She was a bit stuck up, know what I mean? But she’ll be OK, won’t she?’

Dog said, ‘Any reason she shouldn’t be OK?’

‘No!’ she asserted strongly. ‘Not as if she hasn’t got someone to take care of her, is it?’

A boy friend, you mean? I thought you said you didn’t know her socially.’

‘That’s right, but I know a dreamboat when I see one. I could have eaten him for supper, numb gums and all.’

‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Dog.

‘Her boy friend, of course! He was looking to meet her after work this afternoon, only he wasn’t to know she’d got the heave, was he? So he came in when she didn’t come out at half two like she usually does, and asked where she was.’

‘And what did you tell him?’

‘Nothing at first. I just played him along to see how well attached he was. We were getting on fine till I told him she’d left early, then he took off pretty smart so it must be serious, worse luck.’

‘Describe him.’

‘Well, like I say, he was gorgeous.’ Seeing from Dog’s face that more was required, she went on, ‘Like Tom Cruise, know what I mean? Only really blond. And he had this sexy accent, Scotch or maybe Irish, they all sound the same, don’t they? And his name was Billy.’

That was it, but it was enough. In a lot of child abuse cases there was a boy friend on the scene, not the child’s father. Maguire had denied having a man in her life. Another question mark. Sometimes you couldn’t see the answers for the questions.

Sometimes you didn’t want to see the answer.

He walked twice round his car, got in, set off back to the station. The evening traffic was building up, smearing light along the wet roads. He got stuck at the roundabout outside Holy Trinity. They’d got the Christmas lanterns up in the old yew tree by the porch. He leaned across to peer at them. This church and the Shell Street Youth Club had been the poles of his boyhood world and the next turn left would take him past its centre, the old shop.

He wouldn’t make the turn. Church, club, shop, they belonged to another country, another time. Another person.

The person he was now had only one concern. What had happened to young Oliver Maguire? What odds would he recommend to WPC Scott now?

His radio crackled into life with his call sign. He responded and the metallic voice said, ‘Message from WPC Scott at City General Hospital. Maguire has absconded. Repeat, Maguire has absconded.’

‘Shit,’ said Dog. The traffic started to move. A gap opened in the outside lane. Engine snarling in protest, he forced his way into it, got one wheel on the central reservation, crowded the van ahead of him over to the nearside and swept round the front of the line onto the roundabout with emergency lights flashing.

Behind him, pressed back against the oak door in the shadowy porch of Holy Trinity Church, Jane Maguire watched him drive away.

5

Fear heightens perception.

Jane Maguire had spotted Dog Cicero the instant she stepped through the church door. One car in a line of traffic, one silhouette in a gallery of portraits, but her eyes had fixed on it. Then it had turned full face towards her and she’d been certain the magnetism was two-way.

Next moment, however, he’d spoken into a mike and driven away like a madman. She knew beyond guesswork what he’d been told and she almost felt a pang of sympathy for the young policewoman. Not that it had been her fault any more than it had been Jane’s plan. As she’d been wheeled down to X-ray, she’d heard the girl ask, ‘How long?’

‘Thirty minutes at least,’ had been the answer. In the event she’d been through in five, back in her room in ten. And she was alone, except for the almost tangible after-image of Cicero’s distrust. She saw again those coldly assessing eyes in the half-frozen face and she knew she’d made a mistake, not in lying, but in lying about things he could check. He would be back and she couldn’t keep fainting her way out of confrontation for ever.

It was time to go. Her body had made the decision before her mind and she was already out of bed and pulling on her clothes.

No one challenged her as she walked along the corridor to Reception and out into the chill night air. It was still raining. She felt it would never stop. Momentarily she got entangled in a small queue of mainly old people climbing into an ambulance. Instead of passing through, she let herself be taken up with them. Soon afterwards when the first passenger was dropped near Holy Trinity roundabout, she got down too. Every day she passed the church on her way to the Health Centre. If she noticed it at all, it was with a sense of relief that she’d shed that particular delusion. Now she went inside, rationalizing that she needed somewhere quiet to sit and think. But as the door closed hollowly behind her, the smell, the light, the sense of echoing space sent her reeling back to her childhood and she felt her controlling will assailed by a fearful longing for the cleansing darkness of the confessional.

A priest came down the aisle. Sensing her uncertainty, he asked courteously, ‘Can I be of any assistance?’ He was an old man with a kind face but his accent was straight out of O’Connell Street.

‘No, thank you,’ she said harshly, and turned on her heel and left.

Flight or victory? Would any other accent have had her on her knees?

Then she had seen Cicero and for one superstitious moment felt that perhaps God was laying her options unambiguously in view.

Now she watched his car out of sight before hurrying down the side of the church, following a gravel path that continued between mossy headstones till it reached a graffiti’d lych-gate which opened onto a quiet side street.

Here she paused, sheltering from the rain under the gate’s small roof, and summoning reason back to control. Where should she go? Not her flat. Cicero had told her he’d got someone waiting there. Run home to mother? That’s what she’d done last time, with mixed results. But she couldn’t do it this time, not with the news she would have to bear. Besides, Cicero of the unblinking brown eyes would soon ferret her mam out.

No, there was only one place to go, one person to turn to. No matter if angry words lay between them. There and only there lay her hope of welcoming arms, of a sympathetic hearing, of lasting refuge.

Putting her head down against the pelting rain, she began to walk swiftly towards the town centre.

6

Dog Cicero parked his car obliquely across two spaces and ran up the steps into the station. A small man wearing oily overalls and a ragged moustache blocked his way.

‘Call that parking?’ he said. ‘You’re not in bloody Napoli now, Dog.’

‘I hate a racist Yid,’ said Dog. ‘You done that car yet, Marty?’

‘Report’s on your desk.’

‘What’s it say?’

‘Given up the adult literacy course, have we? All right, car’s a rust bucket but not a death trap. Should scrape through its MOT.’

‘How’s the engine? Poor starter?’

‘No. Fine. In fact in very good nick, considering. It’s the upholstery, not the mechanics, should be interesting you, though.’

‘Why’s that, Marty?’

‘Some nice stains on the back seat round the kiddie’s chair. That black poof from the lab’s looking at them now. Hey, doesn’t anyone say thank you any more?’

‘I’ll give you a ring next time I feel grateful,’ Dog called over his shoulder.

As he ran up the stairs to his office a youngish man in a shantung shirt and dangerously tight jeans intercepted him.

‘You’ve got a visitor,’ he said.

‘No time for visitors, Charley. Can you raise me Johnson at Maguire’s flat?’

‘No-can-do,’ said Detective Sergeant Charley Lunn, with a built-in cheerfulness some found irritating. ‘There’s no phone there and it’s a radio dead area. Shall I send someone round?’

Dog thought, then said, ‘No, I’ll go myself. You get anything for me on Maguire, Charley?’

He’d instructed his sergeant to run the usual checks, not with much hope.

But Lunn said, ‘As a matter of fact, I did. Maguire’s her real name, by the way, not her married name …’

‘I know that,’ said Dog impatiently, leading the way into his office.

‘… and she’s twenty-seven years old, born Londonderry, Northern Ireland, but brought up since she was nine in Northampton where her widowed mother still lives …’

‘You got an address?’

‘Surely. Here it is. To continue, our Maguire trained as a teacher at the South Essex College of Physical Education, qualified, and got a job at a Sheffield secondary school, but quit in her probationary year …’

‘Is any of this relevant?’ interrupted Dog. ‘And where the hell did you dig it up anyway?’

‘Obvious place,’ said Lunn modestly. ‘I punched her into the central computer and out it all came.’

‘Good God. What’s she doing in there? Has she got some kind of record?’

‘Indirectly. It’s a bit odd really. Seems that during this teaching year, she went with a school party on a walking tour up on Ingleborough in Yorkshire. There was some kind of row which ended with her hitting a girl who took off into the mist and fell down a pothole. The place is honeycombed with them, I gather. The girl was seriously injured and the family tried to bring a private prosecution against Maguire for assault but it never got off the ground.’

‘Then why the hell is it on the computer? And what did she do after she resigned from teaching?’

‘Don’t know. That was it. Any use?’

‘The address might be,’ said Dog. ‘Charley, get a general call out for Maguire, will you? Nothing heavy. Just to bring her in for her own good.’

‘It shall be done. You won’t forget your visitor, will you?’

‘I’ll do my best. Who the hell is it anyway?’

‘Not just any old visitor,’ grinned Lunn. ‘A real VIP. Very Indignant Person. It’s Councillor Jacobs. He’s making do with the super till you get back.’

‘They were made for each other,’ grunted Dog. ‘He can wait a bit longer.’

As Lunn left, he picked up the phone and dialled.

‘Dog, my man! Knew it was you. Recognize that ring anywhere, as the actor said to the bishop. It’s the stains in the car, right?’

‘Right. Got anything yet?’

‘Natch. Can’t hang around when it’s a job for Generalissimo Cicero, can we? It’s blood and it’s Group B. How does that grab you?’

He looked at the copy of Oliver Maguire’s record he had taken from the kindergarten. Blood Group B.

‘Where it hurts,’ he said and replaced the receiver. The phone rang instantly.

‘Dog, could you pop along to see me? I’ve got Councillor Jacobs here and he’s keen to meet you.’

Detective Superintendent Eddie Parslow had been a high flier till his late thirties when the heat of a peptic ulcer had melted his wings. Since his return to work, his sole aim had been to achieve maximum pension with minimum stress. A foxy face and lips permanently flecked with the white froth of antacid tablets gave him the look of a rabid dog, but none need fear his bite who did not disturb the even tenor of his ways.

Jacobs was a stout, florid man who needed no padding when he played Father Christmas at the council’s children-in-care party. He was clearly not in a ho-ho-ho-ing mood.

‘I gather this Maguire woman’s been stirring things up,’ he growled. ‘I thought I’d make sure you’d got the record straight.’

Dog glanced at Parslow and received a little shake of the head. He took this to mean that nothing had been said to the councillor about the real reason for their interest in Maguire.

‘That’s what we like,’ he said equably. ‘Straight records. So what happened, Councillor?’

‘She was massaging my back,’ said Jacobs. ‘When I turned over, she pulled my towel off and said, “Fancy a bit of relief? It’ll only cost a pony.”’

‘And what did you take this to mean?’

‘I took it to mean she was offering to masturbate me for twenty-five pounds,’ said Jacobs sharply. ‘What the hell else could it mean?’

‘Hard to say,’ said Dog. ‘Were you erect, by the way?’

‘What?’

‘Erect. Excited. It’d be natural. Pretty girl rubbing your body …’

‘No, I was not erect,’ snarled Jacobs. ‘What the hell is this? I have a massage at least once a week. I don’t care if it’s a pretty girl or Granger himself, as long as it helps my back. God, I knew I should have had her arrested straight off and not given her the chance to pour her poison out …’

‘Why didn’t you?’ asked Dog. ‘Call us straightaway, I mean. A man in your position with your reputation can’t be too careful.’

‘Don’t you think I know it? Mud sticks. I thought, better to forget it perhaps. Also George Granger’s by way of being a friend. I didn’t want to get his centre into the papers.’

‘Very commendable,’ said Dog. ‘So you decided very altruistically to keep stumm, till your mate Granger rang you up to say I’d been round?’

‘I don’t like your tone of voice,’ said Jacobs softly. ‘As it happens I didn’t keep stumm. As it happens I was chairing a meeting of the Liaison Committee this afternoon and Jim Tredmill, your Chief Constable, was there, and after the meeting I had a word with him, asked his advice. He said I’d probably done the right thing, no witnesses, hard to prove, but he’d see his men kept their eyes open for this tart. Clearly he hasn’t had time to ask you yet, Inspector. But never fear. I’ll make sure he knows just how ignorant his senior officers are!’

The door banged behind him with a force which set the coffee cups on Parslow’s desk vibrating.

‘Now I’d say you handled that really well, Dog,’ said the superintendent mildly.

Dog shrugged.

‘You’ve got to play ’em as you see ’em,’ he said.

‘One of your famous Uncle Endo’s gems, is it?’ enquired Parslow. ‘All right, fill me in.’

He listened, sucking reflectively on a tablet.

‘Sounds like it could turn out nasty,’ he said unhappily. ‘Maguire. Is she Irish?’

‘Born in Londonderry, brought up in Northampton.’

‘Is that a problem for you, Dog?’

‘No,’ he said emphatically. Too emphatically? But Parslow just wanted formal reassurance.

‘Good. It’s an odd tale she tells, certainly. Over-ingenious, you reckon? Or odd enough to be true?’

It dawned on Dog that Parslow did not yet know that Maguire had walked out of the hospital.

He said, ‘Hardly matters, does it? One way the kid’s dead, the other, he’s likely to be in danger of his life.’

He saw Parslow register glumly that hassle awaited them in all directions, then tossed in his poison pill.

‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘I’ve just heard from Scott at the General that Maguire’s had it away on her toes.’

A spasm of pain crossed Parslow’s face, mental now but with its physical echoes not far behind. He should go, thought Dog. To hell with hanging on till he topped twenty-five years, which was Parslow’s avowed aim. But who the hell was he to give advice? Another month would see his ten years up, and for the past eighteen months he’d been promising himself that the decade was enough, he’d have done whatever he set out to do by joining. Only, his motives were now so distant, he couldn’t recall whether he’d achieved them or not.

Parslow said, ‘Have the press got a sniff yet?’

‘No. And I’d prefer to keep it low key till we know which way we’re going,’ said Dog.

‘Fine,’ said Parslow. ‘I suppose I’d better have a word with Mr Tredmill.’

He didn’t sound as if he relished the prospect. Everyone knew that the Chief Constable was keen for him to go and didn’t much mind if it was in an ambulance.

‘I’m going round to Maguire’s flat,’ said Dog.

‘You think she might show up there?’ said Parslow hopefully.

‘Only if she’s mad,’ said Dog.

Parslow popped another tablet into his mouth.

‘What makes you think she isn’t?’ he asked, sucking furiously. ‘And if she is mad, and she’s killed one kid, you’d better find her pretty damn quick, Dog, before she gets the urge to kill another!’

7

Jane Maguire’s head was aching. She wondered what the result of the X-ray had been. Most shops were already staying open late as Christmas approached and she went into a chemist’s and bought some aspirin. The shop was packaged for the festivities with golden angels dangling from the ceiling and carols booming out of the P. A. Noll was to have been an angel in the school nativity play on the last day of term this coming Thursday …

She had to get out of this perfumed brightness. Clutching her aspirins, she started to push through the thronging shoppers towards the door. Behind her someone called, ‘Excuse me …’ A woman said, ‘I think they want …’ but she thrust her rudely aside and did not pause till she was outside on the glistening pavement dragging in litres of the cold damp air.

A hand grasped her arm. She pulled it free, turned, only fear preventing her from screaming abuse. A girl in a blue overall looked at her strangely and said, ‘You forgot your change.’

She took the money and managed to croak a thank you. Despite the chill rain she felt hot and weak. Across the road was a pub. Oblivious of traffic she made her way towards it. Only when she reached the bar did she realize it was the same pub she’d been in this lunchtime. It seemed light years ago. Would the barman remember her? What if he did? There was hardly time for her face to have appeared in the papers.

She ordered a brandy. She didn’t like it, but her mother had always insisted on its medicinal qualities. Her mother … She took a sip and pulled a face. The barman said, ‘All right, is it?’ She said, ‘Yes. Sorry. It’s just the taste … I mean, I’m starting a cold …’

It was a productive lie. He said, ‘What you really need is something hot. We do coffee.’ And as he poured her a cup in response to her nod, she was able to take a couple of aspirin without him calling the drug squad.

She sipped the coffee and felt a little better. It occurred to her that the last time she had eaten had been in this place several hours ago, and that hadn’t been much. There were some corpse-pale pies in a plastic display cabinet. She asked for one. The barman put it in a microwave and a few moments later handed it to her, piping hot but still pale as death. She bit into it. The meat was stringy, the gravy slimy, but it tasted delicious. So. Forget the soul, forget the intellect. Animal pleasure was still possible even after …

She pushed the thought away as she ate the pie. Then she ordered another. No pleasure now, but a simple refuelling, an anticipation that she would need all her resources.

Finished, she went to the cloakroom. The mirror showed her a face as pallid as the pies. Her long red hair, usually electric with life, hung straight and lank and darkened almost to blackness by its exposure to the rain. It was, she guessed, a good enough disguise, but it was not how she cared to see herself. She stooped to get her head under the hand drier and combed her hair dry in the hot blast. Then she washed her face, rubbed it vigorously with a paper towel and applied a little make-up to her skin, which was glowing with friction.

Once more she inspected herself. It was better, this shell she had to present to the world. Little sign there of the hollow darkness beneath, empty of everything but the echo of a child crying …

Her clothing was very damp. She took off her linen jacket and dried it as best she could under the hand drier. Then she thought, ‘What the hell am I doing?’ It was these damp clothes that the fearsome Cicero would have a description of. Out there was the High Street full of shops desperate to take her money, no matter how tainted it might be.

She left the pub without re-entering the bar and half an hour later she had solved both the problems of damp and disguise. In black trainer-type shoes, loose slacks, tee shirt, and a chunky sweater, topped by a thigh-length waxed jacket with her hair tucked beneath its wired hood, she felt herself anonymous and warm. Her headache had gone and though she felt her body to be far from the high muscle tone she had enjoyed since her early teens, she was walking with some of her old long-limbed athleticism as she approached the bus station.

Despite the weather and the hour there were still plenty of people about, seduced by the lights and the music and the glittering prizes on offer in the late-closing stores. A couple in front of her turned aside abruptly to peer into a toy-shop window and in the gap created she glimpsed, twenty yards ahead at the bus station entrance, the tall helmets of a pair of policemen.

Immediately, without thinking, she too halted and turned towards the display of toy space ships, ray guns, spacemen helmets, all the TV-age artefacts designed to delight the heart of a little boy. Her brain refused to register them. Instead her head kept turning till she was looking back down the street. It felt like slow motion, but it all happened quickly enough for her to catch a man’s eyes before he too paused and looked aside into a shop window. That was all it took. He was an ordinary-looking man from what she could see of him under a narrow-brimmed tweed hat and a buttoned-up riding mac. But that brief eye contact was enough, even if the shop window he was peering into with such interest hadn’t been a ladies’ heel repair bar.

She glanced the other way. The helmets were moving towards her.

She peered into the toy-shop window. The toys presented no problem now. She couldn’t see them, only the street behind her reflected in the glass. The tall helmets like ships’ prows came alongside. They didn’t pause, but sailed on by. She didn’t wait to see what would happen when they reached the man outside the heel bar but strode out along the pavement, leg muscles tensing and untensing, almost trembling in their anticipation of being called upon to explode into a sprint. But she mustn’t draw attention to herself. Then, as she reached the station entrance, she saw at the far side the bus she wanted, the last couple of passengers stepping aboard.

Now she had her excuse. The legs stretched and she floated across the intervening fifty yards with the balanced grace of a ballet dancer.

The engine was running, the automatic doors closing. The driver saw her, decided it was near enough to Christmas for charity, and pressed the button to reopen the doors. She scrambled aboard.

The bus pulled out of the station with that minimal acknowledgement of the presence of other traffic which distinguishes the bus driver the whole world over.

Jane Maguire flopped into a seat and looked out of the window.

For the second time her eyes met those of the man in the tweed hat.

Then he was falling away behind her. She relaxed, or rather felt her body go weak. She tried to set her thoughts in order but found her mind had lost its strength too. The bus moved on through the garishly lit streets, then out of the town into the sealing darkness of the countryside, and Jane sat still, feeling herself more part of the country’s dark than the bus’s light, with little sense of either presence or progress, and unable even to tell whether she was hiding or seeking, chasing or chased.

8

Dog Cicero stood outside Maguire’s apartment block and felt his unhappiness grow. It was a modern three-storey building, purpose built, in a good residential area less than ten minutes’ drive from the kindergarten. Renting or buying, these flats would cost. Add the kindergarten fees … he had forgotten to check out her salary at the Health Centre but doubted if it would be enough to cover flat, school and food, clothing etc.

Maguire’s apartment was Number Seventeen on the top floor. He rang the bell, felt himself observed through the peephole, then DC Johnson opened the door.

‘Any action?’ asked Dog.

‘Nothing. There’s no phone, and you’d need to be a pretty thick kidnapper to knock at the door with a ransom note, wouldn’t you? Thousand to one it’s a weirdo anyway.’

Always interested in odds, Dog said, ‘Reason?’

‘I’ve had a poke around. Jackie Onassis she ain’t.’

Dog glanced round the room. It was clean, tidy and comfortable, but hardly suggestive of wealth worth extorting.

He said, ‘It may be neither. Take a stroll around the neighbours. Keep it low key but find out what they know about Maguire, when they last saw her and the kid, especially if anyone noticed her having trouble with her car this morning.’

Johnson, a plump, comfortable-looking man whose sleepy exterior belied a sharp mind, looked shrewdly at Dog and said, ‘She’s in the frame herself, is she, guv?’

‘Could be. One thing – she’s on the loose. I doubt if she’ll come back here, but keep your eyes skinned.’

He closed the door behind the plump DC and began to search the flat.

Johnson hadn’t poked deep enough. The clothes in the wardrobe might not be designer originals but the pegs they came off weren’t cheap. They all had American labels. The same went for most of the kid’s toys, expensive and made in the USA. Her lingerie was of the same quality. He looked without success for anything that might be professionally kinky. Nor did he find anything in the way of contraceptive medication or stocks of condoms to suggest a commercial sex life. Not even a domestic one. He searched diligently for drugs, both prescribed and proscribed, anything which would suggest nerves stretched close to breaking point, but found nothing more than a bottle of paracetamol and a child’s cough mixture. There was flour in the flour jar, tea in the tea caddy, talc in the talc tin, and nothing at all on top of the wardrobe, in the lavatory cistern or under the kitchen sink. There was no alcohol in the flat nor any tobacco. She had a small portable television set and a radio tuned to Radio Two. Her small tape collection was mainly soul and folk. There were quite a lot of books, mostly paperbacks. Her taste in fiction was for chunky historical romances, though he did find a couple of Booker nominees which she was either still reading or, on the evidence of the hairpin bookmarks, had abandoned at page seventeen and page thirty-two respectively. There were two PE manuals, one on athletics coaching, the other on sports injuries, both inscribed Jane Maguire, South Essex College of Physical Education. There was also a beautifully bound edition of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. It was inscribed, To Jane, going out into the world, with love and best wishes, Maddy. He opened it at random and found himself looking at a poem called ‘The Little Boy Lost’.

‘Father, father! where are you going?

O do not walk so fast.

Speak, father, speak to your little boy,

Or else I shall be lost.’

The night was dark, no father was there

He closed the book abruptly and sat down in an old armchair which creaked comfortably, and tried to think like a copper. He had found nothing remarkable, nothing incriminatory. The only oddness was an absence, not a presence.

There was no mail except the usual junk addressed to the occupier which he’d found in the kitchen pedal bin. But there was nothing to suggest that anything either official or personal had ever come addressed to Mrs Jane Maguire.

And there was nothing either which referred to her dead husband, Oliver Beck.

He closed his eyes and played through what he had got, but it came out blurred and distorted with too much interference from other channels.

He’d told Parslow that Maguire’s Irish background was no problem, and he’d meant it. But then his eyes had been wide open and he’d been able to blot out the mental image of a tall, graceful woman with huge green eyes and hair aflame like a comet’s tail …

He opened his eyes abruptly and found to his surprise that he had rolled and lit one of his capillary cigarettes.

There were no ashtrays. Maguire didn’t smoke, probably didn’t like the smell of tobacco in her home. He experienced an absurd guilt, told himself she wasn’t going to be back here soon enough to notice, and felt guiltier still.

He went into the kitchen and flushed the butt down the sink. Then he put the kettle on and made a cup of very strong coffee.

As he drank it Johnson returned.

‘You’ve been quick,’ said Dog.

‘I’ve not been on house to house,’ said the constable defensively. ‘Just the other flats, and at half of them I got no answer, and as good as none at a lot of the rest. I only managed to raise three who admitted ever having noticed Maguire. First was an old lady called Ashley who is more or less confined to the flat beneath. Didn’t know Maguire by name but says that she’s heard a child crying in the flat above on several occasions and the mother shouting angrily, after which the crying died to a whimper. She says she got so concerned last week that she rang the council’s Social Service department and reported it.’

‘Any action?’ asked Dog.

‘She says someone came round on Saturday morning but couldn’t get any answer from Maguire’s flat. But later she claims she saw Maguire putting the child into her car and driving away.’

‘I thought she didn’t get out of her flat?’

‘Her window overlooks the front. She spends a lot of time there.’

‘What about this morning?’

‘She didn’t get up till half past nine.’

‘Pity. OK, what else?’

‘Number Fourteen, Nigel Bellingham, would-be yuppie, driving a Sierra until he can afford a Porsche …’

‘For Christ’s sake!’

‘Sorry, guv, but it’s relevant, sort of. He doesn’t notice people, this joker, but he notices cars. It’s all resident-permit street parking round here, and those with regular habits usually end up at about the same spot. Maguire was very regular, and her car hasn’t been in its usual spot since Saturday morning.’

‘Why should he notice her car in particular?’

‘Cars equal pecking order in his tiny mind. Maguire’s banger was right at the bottom of his league table.’

Dog considered this, nodded, and said, ‘OK. I’ll buy that. What about the third witness?’

‘That’s Mary Streeter, Number Six. She’s got a little girl, takes her to that park across the shopping precinct most Sundays to feed the ducks and usually sees Maguire there with her boy. They’re not friends. I got the impression Mrs Streeter wouldn’t have minded being closer but Maguire wasn’t having any. Anyway, she says Maguire definitely missed the park this Sunday, and it was a fine afternoon.’

‘So she was away for the weekend,’ said Dog.

‘So she went away after the social worker called and she didn’t answer the door,’ corrected Johnson unnecessarily.

‘So what?’ said Cicero. ‘Would you let a social worker into your house?’

The door bell rang.

The two men exchanged glances. It wasn’t likely to be either Maguire or the alleged kidnapper. On the other hand it was silly to take risks.

Dog moved quietly to the front door and squinted through the peephole.

Nothing.

Motioning Johnson to one side, he gently turned the handle of the Yale lock. Then he dragged the door open and leapt out into the corridor.

An arm like a steel bar caught him round the throat, his right wrist was seized and his hand forced high up between his shoulder blades, while his left shoulder was thrust with such force against the wall that he screamed out in pain and felt his left arm hang paralysed. He tried to lash back with his heel but his assailant was ready for that and he kicked feebly into air while the pressure on his neck redoubled.

Then a voice said, ‘Tommy, what are you playing at? Put him down at once. This is my old mate, Dog Cicero. Dog, how’ve you been, old son? Long time no see. We’ve got ever such a lot to talk about.’

9

‘Funny old thing, life,’ said Superintendent Toby Tench.

Dog Cicero said, ‘Can’t argue with that,’ leaving the sentence hanging uncertainly over Toby or sir.

Tench had never lost his stoutness. At nine it had given him the bulk to back up his claim to be pack leader in the school yard. A rival had started picking on the slight, sallow, silent Italian kid and Tench had taken him under his wing to affirm his primacy. Then puberty, the great equalizer, had got to work, turning Dog into a darkly attractive young man, academically able and athletically outstanding, while it marooned Tench in a podgy, spotty, undistinguished adolescence. Their ways seemed to have parted forever when Tench left to become a police cadet and Dog stayed on to qualify for entrance to Sandhurst.

He recalled their last encounter. He’d just come from saying goodbye to Father Power at Holy Trinity. Tench, looking like the stout constable of the comic books, was walking past the church yard gate.

‘Hello, Dog,’ he’d said with surface affability. ‘Off to officer training, I hear. You’ll need to watch it on that drill square.’

‘Will I?’ he’d asked foolishly. ‘Why’s that, Toby?’

‘Come on, Dog! Everyone knows when you Itis hear the order, Forward March! you automatically start running backwards!’

He’d almost hit him, but had had control enough to know that assaulting a policeman would probably stop his army career before it began.

Now it felt like a chance missed.

But perhaps it was going to be offered again.

The podginess had turned into a solid bulk, no less menacing for being gift-wrapped in a Pickwickian waistcoat and topped with a matching smile. The two men were sitting in the armchairs in the living room of Maguire’s flat. Tench’s companion was searching the bedroom. Introduced as Sergeant Stott, he had the features of a Narcissus, and if his Cartier watch and Jean-Paul Gaultier jacket stretched across pumping-iron shoulders reflected the inner man, there was no shortage of self-love here either.

From the sound of it, the body-beautiful muscles were being exercised just now in tearing the bedroom apart. Johnson’s face appeared in the doorway with an expression of shocked interrogation, but Dog motioned him back inside. He had no idea what the newcomers were after, but if they found it, he wanted a witness.

‘Heard you joined the local boys after your spot of bother with the mad Micks,’ said Tench. ‘Surprised me, that did. Thought you’d have had enough of uniforms, especially when it meant dropping down to plod level.’

‘Can’t recall what I felt,’ said Dog evenly. ‘It was ten years ago.’

‘Long as that? Well, I never. And this is the first time our paths have crossed.’

‘Us plods don’t have much to do with the Branch,’ said Dog.

He didn’t add that one thing he’d done before joining the Romchurch force was check out Tench’s whereabouts. He might have been confused, but not so confused as to take the risk of finding himself in the fat boy’s gang again. But now here Tench was, and clearly enjoying the ambiguities of the situation hugely.

Time to clear the official ground at least.

‘What’s the score, Toby?’ he said. ‘What’s the Branch’s interest in Maguire?’

‘No real interest, Dog,’ said Tench with mock solemnity. ‘Nothing that I’d call an interest. Just that she’s on a little list of ours. People with a fine thread tied to their tails. Touch ’em and there’s a little tinkle in the guardroom, know what I mean?’

‘The computer?’ said Dog. ‘I wondered why that entry was there. Anyone asking questions jerks the trip wire, right?’

‘Clever boy,’ said Tench. ‘So tell me all you know.’

Briefly, Dog outlined his investigation so far.

Tench produced a notebook, not to make notes in but to examine.

‘Well done,’ he said at the end of the outline. ‘Missed out nothing.’

‘You’ve spoken to Parslow? You knew all this! What the hell are you playing at? Checking up on me or what?’

‘Hold your horses, my son,’ said Tench earnestly. ‘Not you. Old Eddie Parslow, he’s the one we need to double check. He’s so demob happy, he’s stopped taking bribes.’

The muscular boy came out of the bedroom. In his hand was a foolscap-size buff envelope.

‘Found this in the mattress cover, guv,’ he said, handing it over.

‘Well done, my son,’ said Tench, smiling fondly.

‘You want I should organize a real search, guv?’ asked Stott.

Dog Cicero had no doubt what a real search meant. He’d supervised enough in scruffy Belfast terraces and lonely country farms, watching as floorboards were ripped up, tiles stripped, walls probed, while all around women wailed their woe or screamed abuse, and men stood still as stone, their faces set in silent hate.

Tench shook his head.

‘Early days, Tommy. Just carry on poking around.’

Tommy went into the kitchen. A second later what sounded like the contents of a cutlery drawer hit the tiled floor.

Tench was peering into the envelope.

‘What’s in it?’ asked Dog.

‘Not a lot. Hello. Must be saving for a rainy day. Well, the poor cow’s got her rain. Bet she’d like to get her hands on her savings!’

He tossed a smaller envelope across to Dog. He opened it. It was full of bank notes, large denomination dollar bills and sterling in equal quantities, at least a couple of thousand pounds’ worth.

‘Can see what you’re thinking, Dog. That’s a lot of relief massage. Maybe she upped her prices for more demanding punters. Any complaints about queues forming on the stairs?’

He looked at Dog with his head cocked to one side, like a jolly uncle encouraging a favourite nephew.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Nothing like that. Not so for.’

The last phrase was an attempt to compensate for what had come out as a rather over-emphatic denial.

Tench caught the nuance, said, ‘You don’t think she gives the full service then? Just the odd hand job for pocket money?’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t like running too far ahead of the evidence, that’s all.’

‘Oh yeah? Of course, she’s Irish, isn’t she?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Quite a lot, as it happens, my son. But in your case, it could mean you’re so desperate to put the slag away that you’re falling over backwards to be fair. You never were much good at thumping people just because you didn’t like them, Dog. Always had to find a reason! You’ll not admit it, but what you’d really like is solid evidence that she’s topped her little bastard, then you can go after her full pelt! Well, you can relax, my boy. Uncle Toby is here to tell you it’s going to be all right. It doesn’t matter if she’s cut his throat or she’s the loveliest mum since the Virgin Mary. You’re allowed to hate her guts either way!’

Dog was half out of his chair. One part of his mind was telling him to sit down and laugh at this provocation. The other was wondering how much damage he could inflict before Tommy, the gorgeous hulk, broke him in two.

Tench wasn’t smiling now.

‘Down, Dog. Down. If you don’t like a joke, you shouldn’t have joined. Man who’s not in charge of himself ain’t fit to be in charge of anything.’

Slowly Dog relaxed, sank back into the armchair.

‘That’s better. Godalmighty, just think, if you’d stayed in the Army, you’d have had your own company by now, maybe your own battalion. You’d have been sending men out where the flak was flying. Few more like you, and I reckon we’d have lost the Falklands. Still, not to worry, just think of the money we’d have saved!’

Dog said steadily, ‘Don’t you think it’s time you put me in the picture, sir. You called the boy a bastard. I presume you were being literal rather than figurative.’

‘I love it when you talk nice, Dog. Shows all that time in the officers’ mess wasn’t wasted. But yes, you’re dead right. Bastard he is, or was. One thing we know for sure, Maguire never got married. How do we know? Well, Oliver Beck was never divorced, was he? Let me fill you in, old son. After she jacked in the teaching, our Jane got herself a job with a shipping line, recreational officer they called it. On one Atlantic crossing she came in contact with an American passenger, Mr Oliver Beck. On the massage table, I shouldn’t wonder! Anyway, he was so impressed with her technique, he set her up in his house on Cape Cod. Oliver was living apart from his wife, natch.’

‘So it was more than just a bit on the side for him?’ interrupted Dog.

‘Why do you say that?’

‘He took her into his home. They had a child.’

‘Rather than setting her up in a flat and having an abortion? You could be right, Dog. Or maybe he just wanted a son and heir and didn’t much mind who the brood mare was. We don’t know just how close they really were, and it’s of the essence as you’ll see if you sit stumm for a few minutes. They certainly stuck together for the next five years. On the other hand he was away a lot and a live-in fanny probably comes as cheap as a live-in nanny. To cut a short story shorter, last April Oliver Beck snuffed it. He was a sailing freak, always shouting off he could’ve done the round-the-world-single-handed if he’d only had the time. This time he didn’t get out of Cape Cod Bay before a storm tipped him over, and put the Atlantic where his mouth was. Now came crunch time for our Janey. Who’d inherit?’

He paused dramatically. Dog said, ‘I thought this was the short version.’

‘Satire, is it?’ twinkled Tench. ‘All right. Well, it certainly wasn’t Maguire. There was no will and in less time than it takes to say conjugal rights, the real Mrs Beck came swanning in to claim everything. At least she wanted to, only at just about the same time, the Internal Revenue boys turned up too, and they were claiming everything times ten for unpaid taxes. Our Janey summed up the situation pretty well. There was nothing in it for her, so she upped sticks and headed for home, taking with her every cent she could lay her hands on plus everything portable in terms of jewellery, objets d’art et cetera. Only thing was, none of it belonged to her officially, and if she shows her face again back in Massachusetts she’ll find a warrant for her arrest waiting.’

He looked at Dog as though inviting a comment.

‘She was in a tough situation,’ he said. ‘She was entitled to something, surely.’

‘You reckon? Still falling backwards to be fair, are we, Dog? Even though this lady has an undeniable tendency to violence, an undeniable tendency to help herself to what ain’t hers, and an undeniable tendency to pull men’s plonkers for pocket money? Jesus, Dog, it’s the priesthood you should have turned to, not the police!’

‘You still haven’t said what your interest is, sir,’ said Dog.

‘Haven’t I? Neither I have! The thing is this, Dog. It wasn’t just the IRS who were keeping a friendly eye on Oliver Beck. It was the FBI. You see – this’ll slay you, Dog – it appears that one of the many shady ways that Beck earned his crust was by acting as a bagman for Noraid. I knew you’d like it! Now no one knows how much Janey was involved but one thing’s sure, she can’t have been ignorant. So now you can really let all that nasty bubbling hate go free, my son. You see, the money that kept that slag in silk knickers, maybe even those nice crisp folders you’ve got in your hand, all came from his commission moving the cash which bought the Semtex that cut your shaving bills in half for the rest of your natural life!’

10

Jane Maguire stood in a telephone kiosk in Basildon town centre. She could have been anywhere. One of the new towns built after the war to ease the pressure on London, its designers probably comforted themselves with the thought that a couple of hundred years would give it the feel of a real place. But in the decades that followed, up and down the country they had ripped the guts out of towns and implanted pedestrian precincts lined with exactly the same shops that she was looking at here. Why let the new grow old gracefully when you can make the old grow young grotesquely?

The thought wasn’t hers but standing here brought it back to mind, and the dry amused voice that spoke it. She longed to hear it now at the end of the phone, but the ringing went on and on. Abruptly she replaced the receiver.

It was time to move. The journey, though not long, had dulled the impression of the man in the tweed hat. Was he watching her or was it just her terror and guilt which needed some visible object to slacken the pressure within? No matter. Her mind had gone beyond rationality. Almost beyond pain. She needed a safe place to curl up in till she was able to plan the future – and feel the agony – once more.

She started walking away from the commercial lights. She could have got a taxi where the bus had dropped her but she had felt a need for movement without confinement. The rain had grown finer till at last its threads wove themselves together into a silky mist which clung just as dampeningly but at least did not lash the exposed skin. She found herself walking faster and faster till suddenly, without conscious decision, she was running. Her newly bought clothing constrained her, particularly the waxed coat, and she felt an urge to pull it off, to pull everything off, and run with no restraint, as sometimes secretly she had done in the past when her cross-country training had taken her on a safe, secluded route.

But here even a fully clothed woman running was going to attract notice. In fact in these conditions a woman walking, once she left the lights of the town behind, was likely to draw attention, both friendly and unfriendly. She slowed to a steady walk, pulled her hood up over her head, and tried to swing her shoulders with the aggressive rhythm of a man.

A car passed, slowed, picked up speed. A lorry thundered by, almost upending her with its blast. A van drew alongside, matching her pace. A window was wound down and a voice said, ‘Like a lift, mate?’

She shook her head, or rather her hood, vigorously and grunted a no in the lowest register she could manage.

‘Please yourself,’ said the voice, and the van drew away.

She reached a crossroads, turned left on a narrower minor road, and after a traffic-free half a mile, she climbed over a gate into a field. By daylight she was sure she could have walked this path with her eyes closed. But with the pressing damp darkness closing her eyes against her will, things were very different. Her feet were slipping and slithering in the muddy ground and eventually she felt one of them sink in so deeply that the cold mud oozed over her new footwear.

But her memory had not failed her. In mid-stride she hit the high wire fence, and clung on to it to stop herself falling as she bounced back.

Slowly she moved to the left till she reached a metal support post. She let her hand run down it to three feet from the bottom. Then she reached through the mesh.

For a moment she thought it was the wrong post. Then she found the loose staple and slipped it out. In a changing world some things didn’t change. She tried to think of another, failed, slid through the gap she was able to force in the fence, refixed it behind her, and set off now with perfect confidence at a forty-five-degree diagonal.

There was a light ahead, the dim glow of a curtained window. She made for it, feeling a great sense of relief. The unanswered phone had been a worry. Even though she had a key, she would have felt uneasy about using it uninvited after the bitter words she’d flung over her shoulder last time she’d departed from here.

Now there was concrete underfoot once more. She moved forward swiftly and as she passed the curtained window, she gave it the double rap with which she usually presaged her arrival.

Inside there was movement and as she approached the door, it opened.

There was no light on in the hallway and for a second she hesitated, unable clearly to make out the dimly silhouetted figure that awaited her there.

Then it moved forward, and the dark was light enough for her to recognize the stubbly blond hair, the bright blue eyes, the slightly crooked and very attractive smile as he reached out his arms and said, ‘Hello, Jane. I’ve been expecting you.’

11

It was a lousy night for driving. Traffic was heavy and the rain had thinned to a glutinous mist which speeding juggernauts layered across his windscreen. It felt like a pointless journey. Far simpler would have been to ask the local force to talk with Mrs Maguire and keep an eye on her house in case her daughter returned. Instead here he was letting himself be carried along at eighty in the outside lane on the doubtful grounds that if he got involved in a pile-up, he’d prefer it to be fatal.

So why was he doing it? Possibly to escape from Tench. Or, more accurately, to escape from what he feared Tench might provoke him to. To be fair to the man, he had laid it on the line.

‘The way I see it, Dog, it’s likely I’m wasting my time. Could be she’s just got so strung out taking care of the brat that she hit him too hard, and he snuffed it. Happens more and more, especially with a boy friend around. Could be she’s telling the truth, even though there’s no witnesses, and some weirdo’s snatched the kid. Could be that none of this has got the slightest to do with the late Ollie Beck and his Irish connections. In which case, I’ll be more than happy to say, over to you, Mr Plod, and get back to the bright lights. But until I do, you’d better understand this is my case, my son, and you don’t do nothing that hasn’t been agreed with me first. OK?’

Parslow, when consulted, had said, ‘Can’t argue with the Branch, Dog. National Security, and all that.’

‘More like National Socialism,’ Dog had retorted but the superintendent had preferred not to hear.

So, he had announced challengingly that he was going to drive up to Northampton and interview the mother.

Tench had considered, smiled, and said, ‘Good thinking, Dog. You do that. One thing though. Keep a low profile. Don’t give the local plods any details. Don’t want them muddying the waters, do we? Above all, I don’t want anyone getting a sniff that the Branch is interested, not till I’m good and ready. So, mum’s the word. And watch out for Indians north of Watford!’

Tench’s agreement as much as anything had convinced him he was probably wasting his time.

It was his first visit to Northampton, so when the traffic on the approach road slowed to a crawl he had no local knowledge to make a diversion. The problem turned out to be a roundabout next to which some planning genius had built a superstore whose car park spilled a steady stream of late shoppers into the carriageway. On the other side, bright and compelling as a wise man’s star, beamed a sign: CLAREVIEW MOTEL: Accommodation, Fuel, Cafeteria, Toilets. Feeling the need for a pee, a coffee and a map of the city, preferably in that order, Dog turned in.

Five minutes later, all his needs satisfied, he sat in the cafeteria smoking a roll-up and studied the map. The Maguire house was in a suburb quite close on the ring road, but it wouldn’t do to head straight there. Courtesy, and also common sense, required a visit to the local nick to reveal his presence and check out any local knowledge.

He got lost twice in a one-way system before he made it to Police HQ. There he was passed on to a grizzled chief inspector called Denver. Dog outlined the situation, following Tench’s instruction to keep things as low key as possible. Without actually lying, he gave the impression that Noll Maguire had probably just wandered off and his mother had gone looking for him and possibly one or both of them might fetch up at the grandmother’s house. He anticipated some probing questions. Instead Denver’s face lit up when he heard the name Maguire.

‘Janey Maguire! She was at school with my girl. Lovely lass, and by God she could move! I mean move. National standard, international maybe. Sprints, hurdles, cross-country, they were all one to her. If you could run it or jump it, she was your girl. And when it came to throwing things, she was no slouch either. Modern pentathlon, that’s what she should have done. But you need encouragement at home to buckle down to that kind of training.’

‘Which she didn’t get?’

‘No, more’s the pity. From all accounts she didn’t get much encouragement to do anything. Mrs Maguire sounds like a real throwback. Type who thinks decent Catholic girls don’t need educating for anything but keeping house, getting married and having babies. As for athletics, that was carnal display! Their parish priest backed her up. He was out of the Middle Ages. You a Catholic, Inspector? Name like Cicero …’

‘Was,’ said Dog.

‘Then you’ll know what I mean. Fortunately, her uncle, old Mrs Maguire’s brother, was a priest too, taught at the Priory College, Catholic boarding school, just a few miles out of town. All boys, naturally. But at least he was able to put his vote in for education so Janey didn’t leave school after “O” levels like her mam wanted but went on into the sixth form. She still did her athletics, but never lived up to her promise. Some said she lost her edge because she filled up too much up top. Me, I don’t think so. There’s been plenty of world beaters with big knockers. I think she was just so worried about not making the grade that she spent more time on her books than she needed to. It was her escape route, see? Get away to college, then get a qualification that’d get her a job anywhere.’

‘You’re very well informed,’ commented Dog.

‘My daughter. She was a little bit younger and she thought the sun shone out of Janey’s bum! I used to get Janey Maguire night and day and, of course, she was always round at our house.’

Another line of enquiry? Dog said, ‘Is your daughter living locally?’

‘No.’ The man’s face saddened. ‘Melbourne. We’re going out to see them when I retire next year. But she’d not be able to help even if she still lived here. They kept in touch through college, but after that they lost touch. More Janey than my girl. She had a bit of bother in her first job. After that, she seemed to cut contact with all her old mates.’

‘She never came back here?’

‘Not that I know of,’ said Denver. ‘My girl heard she’d married some Yank and settled down over there. Then she got married herself and next thing, Australia. They say the world’s getting smaller. It doesn’t feel like it! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do. I hope you get things sorted out, Inspector. She was a nice kid and I’d hate to think of any harm coming to her. You’ll keep me posted? I like to know exactly what’s going on on my patch, preferably before it happens.’

There was a warning in his voice. He’s no fool, thought Dog. He’s wondering why the hell I’ve come up here personally when a phone call would have done. Sod Toby Tench! It’s my case and Denver ought to be told that there’s a possibility his daughter’s nice school friend’s on the run from a charge of child-killing.

He was on the point of saying something when the phone rang. Denver picked it up, listened, covered the mouthpiece and said, ‘Sorry, this’ll take a bit of time. Are we done?’

‘Yes,’ said Dog. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

And left, feeling both relieved and guilty.

He found Mrs Maguire’s house without any difficulty. It was a thirties semi, narrow and single fronted. There was an old Ford Popular parked in front of it. He drew up behind, locked his car and went through a wrought-iron gate and up a scrubbed concrete path alongside a tiny garden so compulsively neat, it seemed to owe more to needlework than horticulture. The doorstep was an unblemished red, the letter box glinted like a Guard’s cuirass, and Dog found himself touching the bell push gingerly for fear of leaving a print.

The small middle-aged woman who opened the door looked a fit custodian for such a temple of neatness. Her hair was tightly permed like a chain-mail skull cap, her lips were like a crack in the pavement, and her eyes regarded him with fierce suspicion through spectacles polished to a lensless clarity. She bore such little resemblance to her daughter that Dog’s ‘Mrs Maguire?’ was tentative to the point of apology.

‘And who wants to know?’

The brogue was there, strong and unmistakable as poteen.

He produced his warrant card, certain that proof was going to be needed before he got over this step.

She examined it and said, ‘Cicero. That’s not an English name.’

‘It is now. I mean, I’m English and it’s my name.’

She nodded sharply as if the logic satisfied her sense of tidiness, and motioned him to enter. He followed her into a chill and cheerless sitting room where a bearded man in a dark suit and clerical collar sat on the edge of an unyielding armchair, a cup of tea in his hand.

‘Father Blake, this is Inspector Cicero, he calls himself, come to see me, I don’t know why. Now there’s no need for you to go with your tea still hot.’

The priest had risen with an expression of alarm. He was a tallish man in early middle age, his beard beginning to be flecked with grey. He looked at Dog anxiously through heavy horn-rimmed glasses and said in a low, unaccented voice, ‘I hope there’s no bad news, officer.’

‘Just some help with an enquiry,’ said Dog vaguely, not wanting to encourage a disruptive third party to witness his interview with the woman.

‘Fine,’ said the priest. ‘In that case, I will be running along. Thanks for the tea, Mrs Maguire. I’ll call again soon. I’ll see myself out.’

He gabbled a blessing and made for the door.

Dog said, ‘Oh, Father, is that your car outside? I may have blocked you in. Better have a look.’

He followed the priest into the hallway and at the front door he said in a low voice, ‘Look, there is some news, potentially bad. I need to talk to her alone but if you could come back in twenty minutes, say?’

Father Blake said, ‘Could you give me some idea … I’m not her parish priest you see, more a friend of the family.’

‘You’ll know her daughter then?’

‘Jane? No. I’ve never met her but naturally we’ve talked about her. Why? Is there something wrong? There hasn’t been an accident?’

His voice had risen and Dog glanced warningly towards the sitting room door.

‘Nothing like that,’ said Dog. ‘I’m sure Mrs Maguire will tell you all about it. Twenty minutes?’

He didn’t give Blake time to reply but urged him out of the front door and closed it behind him. Then he returned to the sitting room where Mrs Maguire was sitting by the empty fireplace. She motioned him to the chair Father Blake had occupied, which proved as hard as Dog had suspected.

‘Sorry to chase the Father away,’ he said. ‘He’s not your parish priest?’

‘No. He’d not be coming to my house in a suit if he was at St Mary’s, I tell you,’ she said scornfully. ‘He’s from the Priory College, if it’s any business of yours. A friend of my brother Patrick’s, God rest his soul.’

She glanced at a photo on the mantelpiece of a man in a soutane standing in front of a gloomy Gothic pile. It was her pride in having had a priest in the family which had made her uncharacteristically forthcoming, Dog guessed. Now, as if in reaction, she snapped, ‘What have you done with your face?’

The question took him by surprise. He was used to the curious side-glance or the carefully averted gaze, but direct questioning was a rarity.

‘A car accident,’ he said dismissively.

‘Oh yes. The drink was it?’ she said.

‘Yes. The drink played a part,’ he said softly.

Sitting in the bar, wanting another, hardly able to rise and go for it. The barman setting a pint of Guinness and a chaser before him. ‘Compliments.’ Nodding across the room to where a man stands, face beneath his old tweed hat unmemorable enough to be a forgotten acquaintance. A faint smile, a glass half raised, then the unmemorable blocked out by the unforgettable, a woman, her face candle-pale with emotion, her hair a flame that never burnt on any mere candle. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Dog? After what happened you must be mad! Let’s get you home.’

‘Men,’ said Mrs Maguire contemptuously. ‘If it’s not the fancy women, it’s the booze.’

Coming out of the bar, his arm across her shoulders. Light and the sound of laughter behind them; ahead, darkness and a rising wind with a caress of soft Irish rain. Her face turned up to his as he staggered on the uneven surface of the car park. ‘Darling, are you all right for the driving?’ His own voice slurred and angry. ‘Why not? No one asks me if I’m all right for the killing, do they?’

‘You’re so right, Mrs Maguire,’ he said. ‘It’s usually one or the other.’

She looked at him sharply, suspicious of irony. Then, surprised at detecting none, she folded her arms and said, ‘All right, Mr Cicero, what’s your business with me?’

He brought himself back to the present and said, ‘It’s about your daughter.’

‘Has there been an accident?’ she asked in alarm. He examined the alarm, found it genuine. Why not? Love was not a prerogative of the attractive.

He said, ‘Not an accident. An incident. As far as we know your daughter is fine.’

It was an evasion, also an economy with the truth, but he wanted as many answers as possible before the direction of his questions hit her.

‘When did you last see Jane?’ he asked.

Use of the Christian name seemed to reassure her.

‘At the weekend. Saturday,’ she replied.

So she had come here when she fled the social worker’s knock.

‘Were you expecting her?’ he asked.

‘No, I wasn’t. They came right out of the blue,’ she said in an aggrieved tone. ‘I had nothing ready, I might have been out or anything.’

He noted they but didn’t comment. He guessed that the moment she got wind he was interested in the boy, there would be no progress till she learned what was going on.

He said, ‘How long did Jane stay?’

‘Not long.’ A barrier had come down.

He said, ‘Overnight?’

‘No. She could have done. The room was there like it always has been.’

‘But she decided to leave?’

‘Yes.’

‘You quarrelled,’ he said flatly.

She hesitated then said, ‘What goes on between my daughter and myself is our business. What’s this all about, mister? You said she was all right …’ Then her face went stiff as if she at last felt the chilly north in his questions. ‘It’s not the boy, is it? Nothing’s happened to Oliver?’

There was nothing for it but another fragment of truth.

He said, ‘I’m sorry to say that your grandson is missing.’

Her hands seized the hem of her apron and threw it up to cover the lower part of her face beneath her fear-rounded eyes. It was a gesture he’d only ever seen in films, but there was nothing theatrical about it here in this cold front parlour.

‘Believe me, there’s probably nothing to worry about,’ he urged, justifying his lie with his need to get coherent answers from this woman who might turn out to be one of the last to see the boy alive. ‘Children go missing all the time. Most of them turn up fit and well.’

Slowly the apron was lowered. She didn’t believe him but her wish to be reassured was still stronger than her disbelief.

He went on quickly, ‘Tell me about the visit on Saturday. It might help.’

‘Has he run away, is that it?’

He didn’t answer but smiled encouragingly and felt a pang of shame as she took this for agreement.

‘And you’re wondering if he’s come up here.’

‘Do you think he would come back here?’ he asked. His intention was simple evasion, but he provoked an indignant response.

‘And why wouldn’t he? We get on all right, me and Oliver. But he’s only a baby, how’d he find his way up here? And do you think I’d not let her know straight off though that’d not be easy? We might not see eye to eye, and, yes, I think the lad’d be better off here where there’s someone at home all day, but I’d not keep quiet about something like that. What do you take me for?’

Cicero again felt the distress beneath the indignation, but he was a policeman, not a counsellor, and there were points to get clear.

‘Why wouldn’t it have been easy to let her know if Oliver had turned up here?’

‘Because I don’t have her address!’ she burst out. ‘There, that surprises you, doesn’t it? Four months since she left, and I still don’t have an address.’

‘But how do you keep in touch?’

‘She rings me, usually on a Sunday. We never talk long. She rings from a call box and them pips are forever pipping. I tell her to reverse the charge but she’s not a one to be obligated, our Jane.’

‘Did she ring this Sunday?’

‘No. Something better to do, I expect. Hold on! He’s not been missing since Sunday, has he? Not since Sunday?’

The thought constricted her throat, turning her voice to a thin squeak.

‘No,’ said Cicero. ‘So you’ve no way of getting in touch with her direct?’

‘She told me in emergencies I can ring that friend of hers, that Maddy.’ Her lips crinkled in distaste as she spoke the name.

Maddy. The name in the copy of Songs of Innocence and Experience.

‘Who’s Maddy?’ he asked.

‘One of her college teachers she got friendly with. Too friendly.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Family comes first in my book, mister. Besides, she must be near on my age!’ said Mrs Maguire indignantly. ‘If you must have friends, stick to your own age, your own kind, that’s what I say. I knew this Maddy would be the cause of trouble, and wasn’t I proved in the right of it?’

She nodded with the assurance of one used to being located in the right.

‘Was it this Maddy you quarrelled about then?’

‘It was too! Maybe only indirectly,’ she qualified with reluctant honesty. ‘But she was behind it all the same. Why should her telephone number be such a secret? It’s public property, isn’t it? It’s in the book.’

‘It is if you’ve got a surname and address,’ said Cicero. ‘Do you?’

‘No. I never cared to ask what she might be called and I’ve no idea where she lives,’ admitted the woman.

‘And who was it you gave her number to?’

‘It was this friend of Jane’s, a really nice girl, well spoken, the kind of friend Jane ought to have if she must have them. She’d lost touch with Jane since college and she was so keen to see her again that I saw no harm in giving her this Maddy’s number. It was shaming enough to have to admit I didn’t have an address for my own daughter without pretending there was no way I could get in touch with her.’

‘What was her name, this girl? And when did she call?’

‘Week before last it was. And her name was Mary Harper.’

‘Did Jane remember her?’

‘No. But the girl was wearing a ring so it seems likely it was her married name. But whether she knew her or not, there was no reason to get in such a tantrum when I told her I’d given this Mary the telephone number. Well, I wasn’t about to be lectured in my own house by my own daughter, I tell you! So we had words and she stalked out.’

‘What time was that?’

‘Not long after they arrived. About half past four.’

‘How did she look, your daughter?’

‘Like she always does. A bit pale maybe. She doesn’t eat enough, never has done. All this athletics stuff, it’s not right for a girl. The men are built for it, well, some men, but it’s a strain on a female, bound to be.’

‘And Noll? Oliver?’

‘Now he looked peaky, I thought. I said to her, what’re you thinking of, putting that child through such a journey …’

And once more she stopped in mid-stride as the fear she was trying to control by words, by anger, by indignation, was edged aside by a darker, heavier terror.

‘All these questions, what have they got to do with anything? What’s really happened, mister? He’s not just wandered off, has he? Well, has he? What’s really happened, mister?’

He said, ‘We don’t know, Mrs Maguire, and that’s the truth. But we’ve got to face the possibility that your grandson may have been abducted.’

It was a choice of horrors. Little boy lost, wandering around in the cold midwinter weather, or a kidnapped child in the hands of a deranged stranger. She sat there rocking to and fro, in the delusive belief that she was facing the worst. This was no time to hint at the third and most terrible possibility.

The door bell rang. He looked at the woman. She showed no sign of having heard it.

He went out into the tiny hallway and opened the front door.

Father Blake was standing there, his face pale with anger. Before Dog could speak, the priest demanded, ‘What the hell are you playing at, Inspector? Coming here with your stupid lies! What sort of man are you?’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t understand …’

‘No, you don’t, do you? That’s clear enough. It’s people you’re dealing with … Why couldn’t you come right out and say it? Don’t we have a right to know what’s going on? Suppose that was how Mrs Maguire got to know, for God’s sake!’

His anger and anguish clearly went deep.

Dog said, ‘Please, Father. What’s happened? Tell me what’s happened and maybe I’ll be able to tell you what you want to know.’

The priest regarded him with deep mistrust, but he was back in control of himself.

‘All right, Cicero,’ he said. ‘I’ll play your game a little while. I’ve been sitting in my car listening to the radio, and I’ve just heard some policeman from Essex, Romchurch, isn’t it? That’s where you’re from?’

‘Yes,’ said Dog. ‘What was it you heard?’

‘I heard this man, Parslow, saying the reason you’re interested in Jane Maguire is because her son’s missing, that you believe he’s dead, and that you want to find his mother in order to charge her with murder!’

12

It wasn’t as bad as the priest made out, but almost. Close questioned, Blake calmed down enough to admit that Parslow hadn’t stated categorically that it was a murder hunt, only that the child was missing, the police were anxious to interview his mother, and the possibility of foul play could not be ruled out.

‘Look,’ said Dog. ‘Why don’t you go in and see what you can do for Mrs Maguire? She knows the boy’s missing and that’s been shock enough. I’ll get onto my office to see if anything else has come up.’

‘And you’ll let me know? The truth this time?’ said Father Blake harshly.

‘I’ll tell you everything I can,’ said Dog jesuitically.

Reluctantly, the priest went through into the sitting room leaving Dog to his thoughts.

The whole thing stank of Tench. He must have decided his devious purposes would best be served by going public. And he’d get no argument from Parslow. Steady Eddie would have made the statement dressed as Santa Claus, so long as his pension rights were safe.

Dog cooled down a little. Perhaps he was being unfair to both Tench and Parslow. Perhaps something new had come up.

He picked up the phone from the hall table and dialled.

‘Romchurch police, can I help you?’

‘CID, Sergeant Lunn.’

When he heard the sergeant’s voice, he said, ‘Charley, are you alone? What’s going on?’

‘Maguire, you mean? There was some kind of media leak, I gather, so they wheeled out the super to make a statement. But why he decided to throw petrol on the fire beats me, specially as I’d talked to the social worker who tried to see Maguire, and while he said a couple of odd things, there was nothing there to reinforce the murder theory.’

‘Tell me,’ said Dog.

‘This chap confirms he rang Maguire’s bell and got no reply. Then he had a word with Mrs Ashley, the old lady who’d made the complaint. He wasn’t all that worried, it seems, ’cos evidently it’s quite a hobby of Mrs Ashley’s ringing up with allegations about domestic mayhem. And in this case he reckoned she’d really slipped over into fantasy land because there was no record of a child living in the flat anyway.’

‘Maguire hadn’t been in the area all that long,’ said Dog.

‘All the same, kids usually figure in the records very quickly. Health, education, that sort of thing. I checked with the DHSS about Child Allowance and there’s no trace there either.’

Cicero said, ‘Would going to a private kindergarten make a difference to the records?’

‘Officially, no. I mean, children have to be accounted for and County Hall would have a record of all the Vestey Kindergarten kids. But until someone bothers to do a cross check, the fact that a pupil at the kindergarten doesn’t figure elsewhere wouldn’t come up.’

‘Whereas if the child had been registered at a local authority nursery school, it would automatically be fed into the whole system?’

‘Right. Why so interested in that aspect, Dog? It was the same when I told Parslow. That chap, Tench, from the funny buggers, was there and he didn’t seem much bothered that the child abuse thing was probably a fake alarm either.’

‘Oh, I’m bothered, Charley. Anything else?’

‘No. Oh yes. Five minutes ago they rang up from the desk to say there was this woman asking for you and did we know when you’d be back. A Miss Edmondson. Said she worked with Maguire.’

‘First name Suzie? Long blonde girl, not bad looking?’

‘Don’t know. Never saw her.’

‘You mean you just let her go?’

‘Of course not. I went down but by the time I got there, your Mr Tench had swallowed her up. Willy on the desk, though, did have a languid look on his face so maybe your description fitted. She’s probably still in the super’s room … hang about, I hear Mr Tench’s merry laugh now … I’ll just have a word …’

‘No!’ snapped Dog, though why the word came out he did not know. But it was too late anyway. There was nothing on the end of the line but background noise of footsteps and a door opening, voices, distant and tinny, silence, more steps, then in his ear Tench, merry and bright.

‘Dog! Just been talking about you. How goes it, my son?’

‘What’s going on?’ said Dog. ‘Why have we gone public?’

‘No choice, had we? Press got onto it, probably one of the mums at the kindergarten tipped them off. You’ve got to cooperate with the media, Dog, or they won’t play ball with yours.’

‘But why stress the possible murder angle?’

‘Because that’s what it looks like more and more. Don’t knock it, my son. Once we’re absolutely sure it’s some batty slag topping her toddler ’cos he got on her nerves, I’ll be on my way and you can get back to the five-hour siesta!’

‘What did Suzie Edmondson say?’ said Dog, refusing to let Tench irritate him off course.

‘What? Oh, the girl from the Health Centre, you mean. You didn’t mention her, did you? Saving her for yourself, were you? Don’t blame you, very tasty. But she just about wrapped it up, Dog. Thought you were just enquiring about the Jacobs business till she heard the news. Then she recalled a couple of odd things Maguire had said to her this morning. Like when she got bawled out for being late, she’d told Suzie she was sick of this and was thinking of looking for a real full-time job with better money. Suzie said, what about the kid? And our little charmer shrugged and said she had a life to live too. Now I know it’s hearsay and what Suzie says about Maguire’s tone of voice would not be admissible, but it all adds up, my son. How’ve you got on with the mother?’

‘Maguire came up at the weekend. Saturday. With the boy. They didn’t stay. There was a row and she left.’

As he spoke his hand toyed with a spring-loaded index by the phone, its right angles exactly matching those of the highly polished table. He touched M. There was only one entry: Maddy, with a number after it.

‘A row, you say? What about? Any idea where she went?’

‘Oh, just the usual mother and daughter thing,’ said Dog. ‘And Mrs Maguire assumed she’d drive home.’

‘But we know she didn’t. Could be that’s when it happened, Dog,’ said Tench. ‘And she spent all Sunday thinking up her fantasy. Well, it’ll all come out in the wash. What time will you be back?’

‘Oh, a couple of hours,’ said Dog vaguely.

‘See you then if I’m still around. Take care, old son.’

‘I will,’ said Dog, replacing the receiver. He’d no idea why he’d lied, except as a defensive response to a gut feeling that Tench was lying too. But about what? He picked up the phone again, dialled Directory Enquiries, identified himself, gave the number next to Maddy, and asked for a name and address. It took half a minute.

Madeleine Salter, The Warden’s Flat, South Essex College of Physical Education, Basildon.

He went back to the sitting room. Father Blake was kneeling beside Mrs Maguire, holding her hands and talking urgently to her in a low voice, but there didn’t seem to be any response. Dog motioned with his head and the priest followed him into the hall.

‘Look,’ said Dog. ‘I’ve been on the phone to my station and it’s not as bad as it sounds.’

‘Will you spell it out to me, Inspector,’ said the priest grimly. ‘If I’m to help this poor creature, I’ve got to know how much reassurance I can honestly give her.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Dog. He gave a rapid digest of the facts, missing out any reference to Special Branch.

‘So there’s nothing to show that Janey had hurt the boy?’ said Blake fiercely.

Dog hesitated. Then he said quietly, ‘Father, be as comforting as you can, but until we can see our way clearer, it would be wrong to promise certainties.’

The gazes locked. It was Dog who turned away first, unable to meet the pain and anger he saw in the priest’s eyes.

‘I’ll get the local force to send someone round,’ he said. ‘It won’t be long before the press get onto her, I imagine, and it’ll take a uniform to fight those boys off. Take care of her, Father.’

He made for the door. At the telephone table he paused, wondering whether to ring the local station. Better to call personally as he passed. There would be anger there if they’d heard Parslow’s statement especially as Denver already suspected he’d been holding out on him earlier. He shrugged. The anger of colleagues was nothing compared with the pain he was leaving here.

He noticed he’d moved the telephone index slightly off square. Carefully he realigned it before he left.

It was the least he could do for Mrs Maguire.

Worse, it was probably the most.

13

The trip south was no better than the trip north. It felt like the wee small hours when Dog hit home territory, but his dash clock told him it was only eleven.

He saw the Romchurch sign, but kept his foot hard on the accelerator. When you’re on a rush, you don’t eat, you don’t crap, you hardly breathe. Just play. Gospel according to Endo.

Basildon. He looked at a map as he drove, located the college. Five minutes later he was parked on the verge by the main gate.

The college occupied a flat windswept site south of the A127. There was still agricultural land here but it would have taken an unreconstructed East Ender, or an estate agent, to call the location rural. The lights of housing prickled in all directions and there was a constant drone of traffic from the arterial road.

But, set in a couple of acres of playing fields, and emptied now for the Christmas vacation, these inelegant boxes of concrete and glass still managed to chill Dog’s heart like a Gothic mansion.

There was a hoarding by the gate bearing a diagram of the complex. He studied it, located the warden’s flat, then slipped through the gate. There was a caretaker’s lodge just inside but he didn’t want either the bother or the disturbance of explaining his presence so he cut away from it across the grass to minimize sound. The rain had finally stopped and the skies were clearing. Tendrils of mist from the sodden ground curled around his ankles and from time to time he stumbled in the tussocky grass. He doubted if this was doing his expensive shoes much good. Or his career.

He reached the block where the flat was located. The main double glass door was locked, but presumably the warden would have her own personal entrance. Even a college lecturer was entitled to a private life.

He moved cautiously along the flagged walkway running alongside the building. He had to make a full circuit to the other side before he found what he was looking for. There was a car park here with a solitary car parked in it, right outside a conventional single door with a bell push.

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