She didn't know whose urgency she was expressing, his or her own. She was at his heels by the time he reached the threshold. She held onto the latch so as not to slam the door behind them in her haste. As Jack stood by the phone she dropped Janet's keys in her pocket and leaned against the door, though her wakefulness and the situation were reluctant to let her stay in one place. "Your father," she urged.
"He isn't dead. He faked it when he knew he was going to be found out, I figure. He must have thought one of my mother's residents would make a great witness to persuade everyone he was dead because he'd be taken in himself."
"But you've been in touch with your father."
"He called me, that's right. If you were going to say it could have been some joker pretending to be him, I wish—"
"I wasn't. I was wondering why he would contact you if he wanted everyone believing he was dead."
"Seems like he read I would be writing about him. Maybe he wanted to make sure I got it right. Only now he—"
"Tell me something. Did he get in touch with you while you were living here?"
"He called me a couple of times. That was the first I heard from him after he was meant to have drowned. It was before you knew who I was."
"Which was why you didn't bother telling anyone a killer was still alive, you mean."
"I know. I'm sorry, believe me. I've no excuse. I just didn't think he would be dangerous any longer, not when he was having to hide and he'd let me know he was." Jack dragged at his frown with his fingertips. "Why doesn't he call? He said I had to be here by now. He must have been meaning to contact me here, and he'd only do that by phone, wouldn't he? It doesn't make any other kind of sense."
"Look, let's say I believe he's alive. What sense can you see that I can't in him calling you at my house when he's supposed to be pretending he's dead?"
"Maybe this is the only place he could think of to phone me except at my mother's. That's where he sent me here from, but he said he was here. I'm certain that's what he told me," Jack insisted, and she saw him shake off the notion that she might have been forced to conceal his father. "Unless he doesn't know where he is any more. Christ, I hope that's not it, that his mind—"
"Slow down. There's another question to sort out. Why is he calling you at all?"
"He needs me to drive him somewhere. He mustn't feel safe wherever he's hiding. That's some of it, but..."
"Go on. Jack. Nothing but the truth, remember."
"It won't just be him I'm driving."
That was more than Leslie's nerves would let her stay still for.
She darted forward and made her hands drop for fear of how painfully she would have grabbed Jack. "What are you saying?"
"He's got a child with him. I'm sure he took her so I wouldn't be able to give him away, and that has to mean he won't harm her. Only..."
"Finish it. Don't do that, don't keep stopping."
"I guess it isn't so uncommon a name, is it, but he said she's called Charlotte."
"How long have you known that?" Leslie said once she was able to move her stiff lips.
"Since maybe ten minutes ago. Since I last spoke to him. It's been longer than that now, it's been too—" Jack's eyes widened, and then the gap between his lips did. "Hold it," he gasped.
"What, Jack? What?"
"He said he'd see me in ten minutes. I don't believe his mind's that far gone yet. When he said see he meant it. He's somewhere close by. Where?"
Leslie pulled out the keys as she spoke. "They're away on holiday next door, but I'm sure I heard someone in there just before. I thought it was Ian. He could have used these to get in."
"Suppose it was Ian as well?"
Leslie took a breath to retort, only to discover she wasn't sure what to say. "That's it," Jack declared. "I couldn't figure how my father knew where to call me, but if Ian found out and then—"
He sucked in whatever his next word might have been and twisted round to glare at the wall the houses had in common. Leslie clutched at the keys with her free hand, because otherwise they would have fallen from her shocked grasp. The next moment she and Jack were sprinting for the front door. They'd heard a man's shout through the wall—a shout of triumph. Though it had done without words, there was no mistaking its significance. It was the cry of the victor in a game of hide-and-seek.
FIFTY-TWO
It was the boy's fault as usual, Hector thought, but all the same he sang to him. He used his hands that were locked behind the boy's knees to bend his captive's body almost double, and leaned his weight on the cushion that covered the boy's face. He resisted an urge to sing louder as if that might help him overcome the struggles the boy was straining to perform, because the point was to stifle any row that might waken the boy's playmate upstairs. Perhaps he was singing to give himself some peace, some patience that would help him wait for the boy to give up attempting to resist the inevitable. But the stubborn body was still sweating to unbend itself when a car appeared at the end of the road.
Hector craned to peer over the net curtain that obscured the lower half of the window. The headlamps died as the car halted outside the house next door, and John climbed out to gaze toward that house. Though he was late, Hector no longer resented that: it had given him time to deal with the boy, after all—but the trouble was that he hadn't finished. As he sat harder on the cushion over the boy's face he saw John open the neighbouring gate. Hector could catch his attention, he only had to find something within reach that he could throw at the window—and then the boy's mother appeared on her path.
So the boy had managed to ruin Hector's plan. Hector hauled the legs toward himself in a rage and pressed all his weight down on the boy's face while he sang the lullaby softer and sweeter than ever. He saw John and the woman walk around each other on the path, exchanging words he couldn't hear. The woman glanced towards Hector more than once, but he had to believe she couldn't see him for the net curtains and the dimness. Then John vanished in the direction of her house, followed by the woman, and the boy's legs jerked and went limp.
Hector wasn't to be fooled. He held onto the boy's legs while he raised himself very tentatively from the cushion. When the body under him didn't betray any movement, he crooked one arm behind the knees and snatched the cushion off the face. The eyes were closed, but there was no telling what the mouth might be up to behind the gag: suppose the tape was hiding a grin at Hector's credulousness? He found the end of the tape to unwrap the head—he almost fell for that temptation. Instead he pinched the lashes of the right eye between fingers and thumbs and leaned close.
He saw the lower lid twitch as his grip plucked out a hair. Surely the boy couldn't stand that without flinching unless he was at peace, but Hector continued tugging until the upper lid peeled back. The eye was blank white, more like a marble that had been inserted in the socket. He found the spectacle unexpectedly dismaying. "Close your eyes good night," he murmured, releasing the eyelid, which stayed ajar over a glistening crescent of white until he pulled it down. He tiptoed in a crouch across the room to retrieve the knife before heading swiftly for the hall. He wanted to hear what was being said next door—not, if John had any sense, about him.
He'd stepped into the hall and was lifting his smile toward the silence upstairs—at least there was one babe in the wood that knew she was meant to stay asleep—when the woman's voice beyond the wall grew clear as a radio that had just been tuned in. "He's supposed to be pretending he's dead."
For a moment Hector was so thrown he thought she was referring to her son, and peered at the body on the sofa to reassure himself it hadn't moved—and then he heard John say "Maybe this is the only place he could think of to phone me except at my mother's."
He'd betrayed Hector. He wasn't able to keep quiet about him, which showed he couldn't be trusted at all. The knife in Hector's fist swung to point toward his betrayer, but as he restrained himself from jabbing at the wall with it, John's next words reached him.
"That's where he sent me he
re from, but he said he was here. I'm certain that's what he told me."
Hector covered his mouth to suppress a laugh. The knife touched his lips and his delighted out-thrust tongue like a kiss that tasted metallic as blood. John was having to explain his presence to the woman, and he was at such a dead loss he could think of nothing to tell her except the truth. They didn't know where Hector was, and he wouldn't be there much longer. He only had to ensure that he wouldn't be leaving anyone capable of raising the alarm while he made himself scarce. He couldn't risk staying or even just stealing away when at any moment the girl might waken and find she was alone and start a fuss that might be heard next door. He felt as if the boy's body were urging him to be far away before it was found—as if the boy were having a last try at making it harder for him to think.
He didn't want to use the knife. It might be quick, but he was afraid that its effect wouldn't be peaceful—wouldn't look that way to him, at any rate. He slipped it into his pocket and ran on tiptoe into the front room to snatch the cushion from beside the couch. It was wet with the boy's saliva, which seemed to promise that the babes would be going to sleep together as they should. He'd nothing against the girl, after all—he just wanted her to be peaceful, and if having a companion with her would help, that was her choice to make. "He needs me to drive him somewhere," John was saying through the wall, and Hector was able to grin at him. He didn't need John's help any longer, he was safest by himself, as he always had been. He hugged the cushion and stroked it as he ran upstairs on his toes, singing under his breath.
"Now I lay you down to sleep, Close your eyes good night. Angels come your soul to keep, Close your eyes good night..."
It had often occurred to him at these moments, but never so intensely as now: he was one of the angels himself—the angel that brought peace into the lives of children who were crying out for it. What he was about to do was inevitable, not to mention desirable, and he found himself wondering why it had taken him so long until he recalled how the boy had interrupted him. The interruption was done with, and even the boy turned out to have his uses. "Your playmate's waiting for you," he murmured at the door propped open with the stool. "Him and the other sleepy children."
He hugged the cushion harder as he left the stairs and felt he was hugging the peace he'd given to the boy. John's voice and the woman's had stayed downstairs, incomprehensible now. Closer to him, beyond the open door, was a silence that embodied a peace he only had to prolong to make it perfect. He held the cushion in front of him and sidled into the room, reserving a deep breath for a lullaby once the cushion was in place. Then he closed his eyes to do away with the trick the dimness was playing, and opened them at once, and grimaced so hard that a trickle of saliva ran down his chin. His eyes hadn't been mistaken. There was nobody on the bed.
His mind went out like a television whose power had been cut, and then it came back. He would have seen her through the doorway of the front room if she had sneaked downstairs while he was busy with her playmate. Even if she'd realised there were people next door all too ready to run to her aid, she hadn't called out—perhaps she didn't dare. He mustn't lose patience with her when that might give him away to John and the boy's mother. "Where are you, love?" he murmured. "You ought to be in bed. It's past your bedtime. Just tell me where you are and I'll put you where you ought to be."
There was no reply, but he sensed he wasn't alone in holding his breath. "Whisper to me where you are or you won't see your playmate. He's waiting for the coach to come and take you both away. You don't want to bother him, do you? He'd want you to know you needn't hide from me. Just think about it, love. He wouldn't have left you by yourself otherwise, would he?"
Surely that was a question she would feel bound to answer, even if to disagree, but she must be doing so in her wilful little head. She hadn't been like that until the boy came. Downstairs the muffled voices were carrying on at each other, and the threat of discovery they represented made the inside of Hector's skull feel scraped. "Come on, love, you've had your bit of a laugh with me," he coaxed. "Stop your game now or you'll miss the coach. We've got to get you ready for it like your playmate is."
She was either on the floor beyond the bed, he thought, or in the wardrobe. Without warning, but silently, he lurched around the bed. The carpet was bare apart from the black straw hat he'd discarded after his first efforts to amuse the girl. He dropped the cushion on the bed and slid the wardrobe door back, just slowly enough not to make a sound. "Who's in here?" he whispered, leaning into the cell that wasn't so dark his eyes couldn't deal with it, and saw a long black dress flinch in front of him. "Who's hiding in the house where the flat people live? All of them flat as pancakes except the one who's called Charlotte."
He didn't grab her. He only closed his hands around the flat breasts of the dress, just about where her neck ought to be. When his hands met on nothing except the slippery material he thought she'd contrived to slide out from under the dress. He clawed at it before realising she had never been there: only his whisper had stirred the dress. He stretched his arms wide and planted a hand on the clothes at either end of the rack, and heard a frightened squeak as he brought them together—the squeak of the hooks on the runner. The clothes were empty, and so was the rest of the wardrobe except for the shoes on its floor. He ducked out of the enclosure before he could give in to the rage that tasted hot and raw in his mouth, then retreated to the corner furthest from the door so as to survey the room. At once he saw what he'd overlooked. Under the window the quilt hung off the bed almost to the carpet, except for an indentation like a rumpled archway where someone had crawled underneath.
"Whose burrow's this?" He only mouthed that as he dodged on tiptoe around the bed so that he was between it and the door, then he dived onto all fours. "Which little animal's made its nest under—"
His voice was rising when it failed. There wasn't space for anyone under the bed: hardly even room for him to shove his hand beneath. The shape of the quilt must have been meant as a trick. He reared up in a fury that turned his surroundings black as buried earth, and groped almost blindly for the cushion, but then gathered up the pillows instead. They were softer, and nobody could say he was cruel, no more so than he ever had to be. He padded onto the landing only just audibly and heard a drop of liquid strike the bath.
"That's where you are, is it, love? Can't control yourself? I keep telling you there's nothing to be scared of." His words of reassurance took his head around the door, but he thought they'd had the opposite effect to the one he'd intended when a gush of liquid spattered the bath. Then he saw that the solitary spout of the taps had released it into the dim trough. He could see nowhere else in the room for the girl to hide, and he was backing out past the ajar door when he glimpsed her shoes in the mirror.
They were behind the door—she was. "Now I lay you down," he mouthed, and sprang around the door, a pillow poised in each hand. They met with a soft thump where her head ought to have been. Only her shoes were hiding behind the door. Had they been meant to delay him? She'd tricked him twice: how far had that got her? His gums ground each other raw at the thought of her having slipped out of the house—and then, closer than the maddeningly incomprehensible bricked-up voices, he heard her sob. She was in the front room.
She must have found her playmate. He'd been some use after all. Hector tiptoed down so quickly and deftly he was scarcely aware of touching the stairs. She didn't notice him as he reached the hall and saw her kneeling by the sofa, trying to locate the end of the tape around the boy's head with the fingernails of one hand while she lifted his head with the other. "Wake up, Ian," she pleaded. "You can. Just wake up."
She either heard or glimpsed Hector scampering across the room and turned as though to offer him her face. In a moment it and the rest of her head were sandwiched between the pillows, and he had no idea how loud his cry of triumph might be. At once his voice was under control and he was. The nails clawing at his hand on the pillow over the girl's face, the small s
hoeless feet drumming on his shins, were no more than minor irritations of which he was hardly even conscious as he began to sing.
FIFTY-THREE
Jack felt as though his father's shout were directed at him—as though it were saying that he hadn't needed Jack or, far worse, that he'd done what he wanted despite him. Jack almost pushed past Leslie as she threw her front door open, and he groaned when he saw that the fence between the gardens was too high to vault. She had the keys to the next house, and so he could only sprint after her down the path, through the gate and U-turning through its neighbour, up the path that felt like retracing the steps he'd just taken while he sucked in altogether too many harsh, short, deskbound breaths. Now Leslie was at the door, surely only a few seconds after they'd heard the shout, and driving a key into the lock. She was twisting it when he saw movement in the room beside it and peered through the curtains that netted much of the light from the street. The material seemed to grow less substantial—everything around him did—as he saw what was happening in the room.
A figure had swung round to stare toward the hall. Though it had an old man's shrunken face, its grey hair straggled over its shoulders, and it wore a pink and yellow dress as though it were trying to be more than one parent or to portray some childhood nightmare. For a moment Jack thought, or perhaps only yearned to think, that it was playing with a blue doll the size of a child, holding it by the pale featureless head that was much too large for the body. But the caved-in lips were moving, pronouncing a message to the toy that had been lifted high off the floor, and Jack heard the song as though it were being murmured in his ear. If that hadn't sent him dashing after Leslie as she flung the door wide, the victim's struggles would have. "Let her go," he roared.
He was nearly in the room when Leslie halted in the doorway. "Oh," she said, so quietly that it sounded as though all emotion had been shocked out of her.
Silent Children Page 34