Shadow Play

by Frances Fyfield

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  About the Author

  Also by Frances Fyfield

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  CHAPTER ONE

  It was half-past six in the evening and felt like midnight. Everyone else had abandoned the ten-year-old court building, which was decaying at the edges in the effort to house cars on the roof, prisoners in the cellars and justice in between. Helen West had been discussing handcuff burns all day. Did they constitute assault? Was it only an insult to dignity when the handcuffs bit round your wrists? What was it Logo had said about them being the only legal means for a policeman to make you scream? He had volunteered this remark with his usual, ambiguous smile, harnessing all their sympathies to the scars on his wrists, and that was long before he began to sing. I might be small but I’ve got big wrists, Logo had said: look, they always put the cuffs on too tight. It was then, with this artless admission so late in the afternoon, that his trial had been aborted. Helen reached her car, quivering with cold. It was wet and dark upstairs, unlike the fuggy yellow warmth below.

  The car stood on the only dry piece of concrete roof, next to the ugly spiral roadway which clutched the side of the building like a fat chimney. Children would love this, Helen thought, but children do not know it is here. Drivers began at the top of the spiral and drove down the curving funnel: skateboards would be better. Economy denied the provision of light. There had been no need for her to bring the car today, but since a space on the roof was a hard-won favour she tended not to abuse the privilege. She wanted to get out from under, out of the rain, into the cocoon of the car and not stop until she was home, for an evening with tomorrow’s work and, in all probability, a row with Bailey. No, she had to avoid any such thing: he was going away, and although the boat in which they rowed was rocky, she did not want it overturned before he left. The car door clunked shut: she was suddenly in a hurry. It was even colder inside and she fumbled for the ignition. The lack of light was as suffocating as a blanket.

  Oh Lord, would she ever be able to pretend she was not afraid of the dark?

  There was a man caught in the headlights like a giant moth. A small man, slightly stooped but spry, standing in the rain with his hair plastered against his head and waving her out of the parking space with imperious gestures of exaggerated politeness, as if announcing a royal command performance. Waving her out as if it was necessary in all the empty bleakness of the roof, obstructing her at the same time. Retreating in front of her car, beckoning to it, moving back inch by inch, bending from the waist as if to coax. Nice Mr Logo, with his talent to amuse, the erstwhile defendant of her long afternoon, recently acquitted on a sympathy vote spiced with a pinch of legal technicality, the bastard. Helen felt the desperate urge to accelerate, a mad and joyous anticipation of seeing the smile leave his puckish face as he melted beneath the bonnet but the sudden rage which had displaced her great leap of fear on sight of him turned back on itself and became fear again. He was a strange spectre, Logo: a trespasser up here, waving his arms in his too short sleeves from which those large wrists grew into enormous hands. Helen wound down the window, kept her foot on the clutch and the car in gear, ready to move, frightened.

  ‘Could you get out of the way, Mr Logo? You’ve no business up here. What do you think you’re doing?’ The voice was loud, the authority in it surprised her. Logo moved to the side of the car, stood a respectful distance, sedulous.

  ‘Oh, taking the air, Mrs West, taking the air. I saw a door and walked through it.’

  ‘Get out of the way, Mr Logo,’ she repeated.

  ‘I’m not in the way, now am I? It’s all your imagination. I wanted to ask you something.’ He moved closer. Suddenly his fingers were wrapped round the top of the half-open window, his smiling face close as he flattened his wrists against the glass. In the dark, Logo looked almost respectable, but the clothes were a parody of respectability which made her remember the frayed cuffs of his second-hand suit and the subtle odour of a body in dirty clothes.

  ‘Tell me something, oh so fair Mrs West, just tell me. Can I sue for these burns? Can I, can I, can I?’ The voice ascended to a singsong, mocking and pleading, the end of the interrogatory verse and the beginning of the chorus. ‘I thought you were so fair, Mrs West. Fair in mind, fair of face …’ The weals of his old handcuff marks were displayed to good advantage, his fingers relaxed.

  ‘Why can’t I sue? Can I? Can’t I? None of it’s my fault. Why did the police never find my wife? I can’t help what I do,’ he intoned sweetly.

  ‘Listen you hymn-singing hypocrite, I’ll get you next time. Now sod off,’ said Helen.

  Her car shot forward so fast she was momentarily out of control, dangerously close to the exit wall before she stopped. She reversed, grinding the gears, plunged towards the dark tunnel, sensing him behind her, laughing. Down the spiral she went, too fast for safety, the car careering like a toboggan shying from the walls. At the end, when the portcullis to the outside world opened, she came to an uncertain halt. She stopped to breathe, subject to a terrible desire to scream, and grateful for the light which graced the bottom floor. From a shabby shed of a room where a television cast extra light, the security man blinked at her, rose without ceremony but considerable resentment, and ambled across.

  ‘What’s with you then? You come down off there like a boy racer.’

  ‘There’s a man on the roof,’ Helen said.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ The indifference was palpable. It was warm down here. ‘Thought they’d all be home, the lunatics. It won’t be someone escaped, I know that.’ They were all gone by three-thirty, all those who were being taken back to prison for the first or fifteenth time. They went in vans with bars on the windows. ‘Dare say he’ll come down, whoever he is. I’m not bothered. Is he dangerous?’

  Helen breathed out shakily.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘I just don’t know.’

  Logo? Dangerous? No. Only a poor lost soul probably, and it was unprofessional of her to swear at him. Solicitors acting for the Crown should not do that.

  This time she moved away without speed. Oh Lord, I must pretend not to be afraid of the dark. The indifference of the security man to the presence of the trespasser on the roof of the magistrates’ court was somehow soothing, an attitude which neutralised the sinister and made everything banal. Helen stared at the windscreen wipers, smearing across her vision with their worn rubbers, the rain spattering through the still open window on to her shoulder. She made herself slow down, think of something other than being made a fool of for the second time in a day. Geoffrey would not want to hear because his mind would be elsewhere, packing his mental and emotional equipment along with his clothes. Helen remembered where she was going, Geoffrey’s place not hers and she felt the old, familiar resentment which was all the worse for being unreasonable.

  Rose Darvey had waited a long time in the office to take the phone call from Helen West at the end of the case. She did this frequently. It was Rose’s job to note down the result of the day’s cases, to keep a running check in her notebooks of where all the papers were. They were City Branch North of the Crown Prosecution Service, big deal. Since she was not trusted or trained to operate the computer, the god of their existence, all she had to do thereafter was transfer the notes to someone else who logged the
m in and gave them back. Rose despised the computer, purely because she was not supposed to use it, although she could, it was easy, and because she knew it would be so much simpler if she took the phone calls, logged them on to the screen without an intermediary, and saved time all round. That was too simple for the captains of this ship. Rose was also supposed to know, and made it her business to know, where all the professional staff were at the end of the day and to ensure they collected or had delivered to them what they needed for the next. She did this with a surreptitious disdain for the lot of them. Case clerks of her own stable attracted her fierce loyalty; the lawyers were a joke. Dinsdale Cotton was worth a laugh, Redwood was a pillock, but he was the boss, John Riley was quite sweet, Amanda Lipton was a stuck-up prune … Helen West talked to her at least, but they were all congenital idiots. Rose had long since surmised they were all failures of a kind. When Helen West told Rose that she was wasting her brain being a case clerk, and why didn’t she try to qualify as a lawyer herself, Rose had shaken her head in disbelief. ‘Get stuffed,’ she’d said. ‘What, be like you and work here for ever? You must be joking.’ Helen was all right, condescending old trout, and Rose wasn’t being truthful. She loved working here in this great big castle of a building, didn’t want to do anything else, but she wouldn’t have said so at the point of a gun. Not to one of them anyway.

  Today, Rose had waited, not just painting her nails and chewing that thin plait of soft, dyed hair which did not rise in spikes above her head like the rest of it, but curled behind her neck where she could always reach and tease it. Simply waiting without fidgeting, tense, looking at her feet slung over the arms of an old and rocky chair, regarding herself with the sort of half-admiring disgust which was second nature. Admiration for her body because of what so many men wanted to do with it, disgust since she couldn’t herself understand the appeal. She was worried about the body, but other worries came first. Worry made many a woman move: it rendered Helen West twitchy, rude, uncommunicative, occasionally funny and finally apologetic, but never listless. It made Rose Darvey very still.

  ‘I’m late, Rose,’ Helen said on the phone. ‘Mr Logo got off. Why didn’t you come and watch? It’s good for you to see what it’s all about.’ She sounded hurt, Miss West, in a bad mood. Lot of those recently.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ said Rose with studied disrespect. ‘Think I’ve got sod all else to do? I mean, apart from watching you prancing round some sodding courtroom making a tit of yourself for the prosecution.’

  ‘Well, I certainly did that.’

  ‘How’d he manage to get off this time?’ They all knew about Logo. Helen West’s fury at the inglorious acquittals of him and others had rung round the office.

  ‘He said he wasn’t trespassing in the school yard. He’d gone in there by mistake. To sweep it, he said. Just to look, he said. Told us how he got so disorientated through being lonely. He’s only a poor creature and this was only a misdemeanour, all that. So I had to throw in the towel. Look, forget what I said about being a prosecutor. Forget what I ever said to you about being a lawyer at all. You’d be better cleaning lavatories. See you tomorrow.’

  ‘Right. Take care.’

  Rose put down the phone, but it slipped off the cradle because her hand was shaking and she did not bother to put it back immediately. Would they ever get that man locked up? It was the last call for the evening and the worst. Well God bless you, Helen fucking West, letting that bastard get away with it again. But at least working here, I know where he is. Rose straightened the phone, pushed her fingers through her hair and replaced the single six-inch plait down the back of the neck of her red blouse. The collar felt damp and the front was creased. Well, what else would tonight’s man expect after a day at work? The phone rang again. Rose was not particularly jubilant as she picked it up, the receiver still clammy from her previous touch.

  ‘I’m down at the front door, Rose. Fancy a drink?’

  ‘Oh yeah? And a hamburger? I’m hungry.’

  ‘Are you now? Fancy that. So am I, as it happens.’ There was a suggestive chuckle.

  ‘Be there in a minute.’

  She knew exactly how the rest of the evening would go. A couple of drinks, payment in kind for the company and a lift home and she didn’t care. The main thing was always to leave the building with a man. Any man.

  Passing through the office, hauling on her coat, teasing up her hair, pausing by a desk to straighten her tights, Rose thought again. Why the fuck should I? Why? Her tights were thick, to go with the weather and they had bagged at the knee. Distracted, she pulled up her short skirt and adjusted them thoroughly, beginning at the ankles and finally hauling them into place above her waist. Tucking in the crumpled blouse, she slung her bag over her shoulder, patted herself down and looked up at the door. Dinsdale Cotton, barrister-at-law, stood there, looking and laughing. Rose was furious.

  ‘Seen enough, have you? Want your eyes back, do you?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘So dreadfully sorry. Didn’t mean to be a voyeur … I really am sorry.’

  ‘Thought you’d gone home.’

  ‘I did. I left half my stuff, had to come back. Look, no offence. Can I buy you a drink? No, not for the view, but because I embarrassed you. And to stop me feeling such an idiot. I really didn’t expect to find someone dressing, I’m so sorry.’

  He stopped where he was, patently sincere, all his amusement dismissed by the look of fury on her face. Poor idiot, she thought, but not bad. No wonder he fancied Helen West and she him. Apart from his silly name and his wonderful floppy gold hair and the fact he was out of place in anything but a stately home, he was nice, inquisitive but nice, and the best looking man in the office, not that that was saying much. Rose relented.

  ‘No problem,’ she muttered. ‘Don’t worry about the drink though. Another time.’

  He bowed, he fucking bowed, he really did. Rose would tell that to Paul later, by way of distraction, as if distraction would work. To Rose’s own surprise, she found herself bowing back, both of them acting up, being silly. Dinsdale had this effect.

  ‘Mind your tights,’ he grinned. She smiled too this time, right from the eyes. If he hadn’t smiled and apologized, she’d have bitten his balls.

  They’d had a case like that in the office last week, a woman who bit off a bloke’s testicle during a row. Rose had been the only one who wasn’t surprised.

  She stamped down the corridor, shoved two finished files in the old goods lift for carriage to the basement, adjusted her bag again. There were fifteen ways to the front door. Turn right and you came to the end of a wide corridor, so wide it could take a bus. Then you turned left down narrow stairs, but fifty feet away there were broader stairs which threw themselves against a narrow and futile door, blocked in to lead only to the floor beneath instead of towards the continuance of the sweep which had once been grand. The same, wide stairs continued to the front door, two floors down, with similar interruptions. So did the back entrance and the clattering stairs she trod to the floor beneath through swing doors which creaked. Down, down, down, in a clatter of deliberate noise, because she liked making a noise, enjoying the emptiness without ever being afraid, it was so big you could hide yourself. The room numbers made no sense. It had been a hospital once, a Victorian lunatic asylum. Helen West had told Rose that, in the interests of her education: Miss West was stuffed full of useless information. The conversion to an office had been minimal, hence the wide corridors and the super-wide doors, built for trolleys and straitjackets with escorts. She had listened to Helen’s lecture, wide eyed, blinking, waiting her turn, which came finally. ‘Naa, I don’t believe you. This was never converted … It’s just what it always was, still a loony-bin otherwise, isn’t it?’ Rose trod past the video room for obscene publications, past the library, all law reports incomplete, full of last week’s newspapers, past the offices for fraud, tripped on the bulging carpet outside the passenger lift marked ‘Out of Order’. Helen West had also said they should all tr
avel up and down in the goods lift, it was more reliable, very funny, and could carry at least one pygmy at a time. Rose supposed this building was all they could afford. More fool the lunatics who worked here.

  Suddenly she was unsure she could cope with the evening ahead, and then on the second turn of stairs, she knew she would. Reckless Rose: that was her reputation. Nineteen-year-old Rose, never leaving the office without a man.

  Detective Sergeant Ryan and Detective Superintendent Bailey sat in the casualty department of Hackney hospital.

  ‘Fucking lunatic asylum, this,’ said Ryan. ‘Run by a load of lunatic medics, far as I can see.’

  ‘Don’t speak ill of the doctors. We need them.’

  ‘I wasn’t speaking ill. Only as I find.’

  ‘Will you watch your mouth then? How much longer, do you think?’

  ‘Oh, ten minutes. Then they’ll see you right in five and you can go home.’

  Bailey looked at his damaged watch and groaned. His left eye was half closed by a huge purple swelling. A haematoma, the report would call it. To Ryan it was just another black eye, an occupational hazard not usually incurred by officers of Bailey’s rank. Ryan was alarmed by the groan, the first yet. The rest had been a string of obscenities, not typical of Bailey either. Ryan wondered about sir’s love life; he hadn’t been too happy lately, but then he should have known better than to shack up with a solicitor.

  ‘What’s the matter, sir? Does it hurt?’

  ‘Of course it doesn’t bloody hurt,’ said Bailey with heavy irony. ‘But I’ve just remembered I was supposed to get some food in. And cook it, round about now. Damn. She’ll have to make do with soup.’

  Ryan was incredulous. He thought of his own marriage, far from unsatisfactory, despite its vicissitudes, a history of burned meals left in ovens, but at least they’d been put in the oven in the first place.

  ‘Helen? Make do with soup. Why isn’t she cooking the food? Doesn’t she cook?’ He might as well have said, does she wash?