Play With Fire

by William Shaw

  ‘You’re the one who says it’s pointless.’

  ‘Maybe it is. I just want to show I’m on your side.’

  And she nodded, face serious. ‘OK then.’

  But when they stepped out of the cafe and saw the first sliver of malevolent-looking violet in the sky between the new tower blocks, he regretted the impulse. He had been tired. She had looked so sad. All he had wanted to do was to show how much he loved her without having to say it.

  Helen Tozer slept, head leaning against his shoulder, as the car roared down the empty A3, through small commuter towns. So early on a Saturday morning, there was little in the way of traffic. The car was heavy but the engine was powerful; he watched the old dial on the walnut fascia top 70 m.p.h. on the longer straights. It was looking to be a warm, sunny day, so he drove with the windows down. It was exhilarating, speeding down these empty country roads, and he thought driving had taken his mind off his troubles, but when Helen opened her eyes at Haslemere she said, ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Wrong? Nothing?’

  ‘You look worried. You’ve looked miserable since yesterday. Is something worrying you? Is it the baby?’

  ‘It’s just the thing I’m working on, that’s all,’ he said evasively.

  She leaned into him and slept again. It was almost nine when he pulled the into the hospital car park.

  The hospital at the north of the city; a large, old Victorian edifice, its name, Royal West Sussex Hospital, carved into a massive pediment above the front doors.

  ‘You again,’ said the nurse sitting at the desk.

  ‘Any improvement?’

  ‘I shall call up,’ the nurse said.

  ‘We’d like to go ourselves,’ said Helen.

  ‘Told you yesterday. Only relations in visiting hours.’

  Breen pulled out his wallet and showed his warrant card.

  ‘I suppose it’s OK then.’ She glared at Helen, and Breen wondered what Helen had done yesterday to antagonise her so much. ‘Albert Ward. Second floor.’

  In the large, high-ceilinged ward, other visitors looked round. Fresh flowers sat in glass vases on the bedside cabinets. It took them a few minutes to find a nurse who could tell them where Kay Fitzpatrick was.

  Alone, in a side room, curtains half closed against the morning sun, she lay on her back, arms above the sheets and blankets. Her head was held in a metal frame. She was breathing slowly. The clean white bandage that covered nearly all of her face threw the blackness of the bruising into relief in the few parts you could see. There, dark marks faded to purple and yellow at the edge of her face.

  ‘Kay?’ said Helen. She reached out and took the woman’s hand.

  Nothing.

  ‘Can you hear me, Kay?’

  ‘Is this the first time you’ve seen her?’

  ‘They wouldn’t let me in yesterday.’

  ‘No copper on her ward?’ asked Breen.

  Helen shook her head. ‘Why would there be?’

  ‘Whoever did this… she must know who it was.’

  ‘Right. So you think he’s going to come back?’

  ‘Who knows. But. And no other visitors?’

  Again, Helen shook her head. ‘Not that I’ve seen. Apart from that bloke yesterday.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ said Breen.

  A nurse came into the room and, ignoring them, lifted Kay’s wrist and, with her other hand, turned the watch pinned to the front of her uniform up to her face and counted quietly to herself.

  Breen wished he had bought a newspaper at the station. ‘What do you know about her?’

  ‘The police said she worked for a taxi company. Private cars. That’s how she got in with the Stones’ lot. She was one of their drivers.’

  ‘Don’t pop stars know how to drive?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘You’ll have to leave now,’ said the nurse. ‘I need to wash her.’

  ‘Is she injured anywhere else apart from her face?’ asked Breen.

  ‘No. Just the face. Wasn’t that enough? She was beaten so badly she’ll never see again.’

  Helen raised her hand to her mouth, shocked.

  ‘She’s probably lost her hearing too, poor girl. The bastard must have really given her some beating.’

  ‘There’s no sign she was raped?’ said Helen.

  ‘Out, out, out!’ The nurse came at them, arms wide, like she was herding animals.

  They left the room and returned to the hospital lobby. ‘Jesus. I had no idea it was that bad.’

  Breen didn’t answer.

  ‘What if it’s that guy? The one I saw here yesterday?’

  ‘Could have just been anyone. A relative. You know.’

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Wait. Watch. You know. You’ve done this stuff.’

  The bench was like something out of a church: hard and unforgiving.

  ‘Visitors all have to let you know who they’re coming to see?’ asked Breen.

  ‘That’s right,’ said the nurse.

  ‘Did you notice a man here, yesterday, at the same time? Did anyone else ask to see Miss Fitzpatrick?’

  ‘No. Why should I? I’m not paid to be nosey,’ said the woman.

  ‘Got a shilling?’ asked Helen. Breen dug into his pocket and pulled out a coin. Helen stood and went to a public telephone in the reception area. ‘I’m going to find out how it’s going for Elfie.’

  She dialled and pushed the coin into the slot. She stood there waiting for someone to check the news from the maternity hospital. Breen handed over another shilling before a matron was found. ‘Poor cow,’ said Helen.

  ‘What?’ said Breen.

  ‘Still in labour,’ said Helen. She looked at her watch and chewed on her lip. ‘That’s, like, eight hours.’

  Breen said nothing. Childbirth was a woman’s world, one he had no understanding of.

  Leaning against each other, they sat on the bench and watched the visitors come and go, not speaking. When she stood to go to the toilet, he opened his eyes and realised he must have fallen asleep.

  ‘Poor Cathal,’ she said. ‘You’re tired. Lie down. It’s OK.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Why not?’

  So he stretched out on the long dark bench. He was tired; he had slept badly the night before, only a wink last night, and been up since the small hours this morning running around after Elfie. His head ached with fatigue. He could never sleep on benches, but maybe if he shut his eyes for a few minutes he would feel better. So he closed his eyes and listened to the gentle murmur of the activity of the hospital around him.

  And then, some time later, she was shaking him, roughly.

  ‘Cathal,’ she shouted. ‘He was here.’ She was excited, alive, eyes wide. ‘Just now. He took one look at me and then did a kind of double-take and bloody ran. Wake up, Cathal.’

  He blinked, fuzzy-headed and she was gone. By the time he had worked out where he was, Helen had run out of the hospital door into blinding daylight.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Breen ran out of the building, head still fogged with sleep.

  Looking around, he caught sight of Helen, already a hundred yards away at the main road, doubled over, as if in pain.

  He sprinted past parked cars, over municipal tarmac. By the time he reached her she had straightened.

  ‘Stitch,’ she gasped.

  ‘Thank Christ… I thought—’

  ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man.’

  She was panting, looking left and right.

  ‘Did he do something to you? Are you OK?’

  She pushed past him looking out of the gate.

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘He was there. He saw us. Then he scarpered.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘Your age. Ordinary. Like you.’

  ‘Ordinary?’ said Breen, looking around.

  ‘You know. Raincoat. Clean-shaven.
Shortish hair. Ordinary.’ She paused at the edge of the busy road, scanning the far side. ‘He’s gone,’ she said.

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘The man I told you about yesterday.’

  ‘The man who had been trying to get to that woman in the hospital?’

  She nodded, still panting. They looked around. ‘He could have gone that way –’ she pointed east – ‘or there.’ South. ‘I’ll go that way.’ And she set off across the traffic, an open-top sports car honking at her as she strode out in front of it.

  Not knowing who he was looking for, he headed south and found himself in an old shopping street, peering inside each shop as he passed. It was Saturday morning. The shops were busy.

  He spotted only two men wearing macs; both were elderly. Another man carried one over his right arm, but he was bearded and round-faced, not like him at all. This was pointless.

  He retraced his steps. It was a bare street; there were few places in which to conceal yourself and watch from but there was a short terrace of houses just beyond the main hospital and, assuming that Helen’s mystery man would be approaching from the north, he tucked in behind the corner on the far side of the road.

  Cars passed, but few pedestrians. None of them was a man who looked a bit like him.

  He waited, feeling that this was absurd. He was a professional policeman. He wasn’t even sure why he was doing this.

  After twenty minutes he returned to the hospital. Helen was there, back in the reception area, sitting on the bench, looking pale.

  ‘Anything?’

  She shook her head.

  When the petrol-pump attendant was topping off the tank, Helen asked, ‘Do you have a map?’

  The man in blue overalls wiped his hands and returned with a road atlas.

  She opened it on the car’s bonnet and peered close. Tongue sticking out slightly, she traced the roads until she found what she was looking for. ‘How long would it take to drive there?’ she asked.

  ‘Couple hours,’ said the man.

  ‘Where?’ asked Breen. Helen dug out her purse and pulled out two shillings for the map.

  It was a village called Hartfield. ‘Brian Jones’s house,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To look at it, obviously. Where he died.’

  Breen looked at the route. It was a longer journey, but it was on the way back to London, at least.

  ‘You want to look?’ He was interested now, in spite of himself. She had drawn him in, bringing him to see Kay Fitzpatrick; she knew what she was doing.

  ‘We don’t have to be at the hospital to see Elfie till three. It’s only midday.’

  Breen got back in the car. It wouldn’t take long. Besides, he was reluctant to go back to London and its problems. He didn’t get a chance to drive much; he wouldn’t mind going a little further in this car. It would be fun, wouldn’t it, him and Helen, side by side? It was summer and the English countryside was green and lush.

  But this time the road was slower.

  As the car climbed upwards again up the North Downs, she said, ‘Sometimes I feel like I’m slowly disappearing. This thing is taking me over.’ She put her hand onto the roundness of her belly.

  ‘Aren’t you excited, though? Just a bit.’

  ‘Of course I am,’ she said, looking away, out of the window, towards brown fields of wheat. ‘Talk to me about your case, Cathal. I want to hear about it. Anything.’

  So as he rounded corners, engine roaring, he raised his voice above the noise to tell her about Julie Teenager. About the suspects they’d eliminated, about the ‘Slavic’ man, about the woman who drove clients for the dead prostitute.

  ‘If I’d believed Florence Caulk was in danger…’ he said. ‘That was my fault.’

  Like Sergeant Hope, she didn’t offer sympathy. She had been a policewoman too. All she said, looking ahead, was: ‘Another reason for you to find him.’

  The only things he didn’t talk about, as they motored through the English countryside, was the florist and the yellow roses.

  Cows had escaped from a field near Ditchling, blocking the road. On the twisting road from the South Downs, the queue tailed back for half a mile. On a small lane in the Weald, he had to reverse for what felt like a quarter of a mile to let a lorry through. Tucking into a space next to a stone wall, he scraped a long line of black paint off Helen’s side of the car. ‘Serve Klaus right,’ she said, fanning herself with the map.

  Even with the windows down, it was hot in the car, sitting still with the summer sun beating down on it. Looking at the map, Helen tried to find a way round, but the heat was making her irritable and she got lost. They had to flag down a local copper to ask the way.

  When they finally reached the village, the house was harder to find than they had imagined.

  ‘Shall we give up and just go home?’

  ‘We’re here now, aren’t we?’ said Helen.

  They asked for directions in a pub but it still took them another twenty minutes to find the house. Eventually, they turned down a short lane that opened onto a large expanse of tarmac in front of a large, old red-tiled house.

  ‘I’m so bloody hot I’m going to die,’ said Helen.

  ‘You sure this is it?’ said Breen.

  There were no cars parked by the house. The curtains were closed. Butterflies hovered over dead rose heads in the garden.

  ‘I think so.’

  They got out of the car and walked into a courtyard filled with rose bushes. Somebody had left a bunch of wild flowers at the front door, stuffed into a jam jar; a wilting tribute for the dead.

  The dead pop star’s home was silent, deserted.

  Breen said, ‘Perhaps we should knock, all the same?’ But Helen was already rounding the corner to the left of the courtyard.

  ‘Come on,’ she called.

  Breen followed her. The pool was behind the house, concealed from view by the house. It was ornately shaped, two rounded ends cut out of the rectangle.

  ‘Coming in?’ she said.

  ‘You can’t…’ He looked at the blue pool. It hadn’t been cleaned. Dead leaves lay on the bottom. A dying beetle swam slowly in the water.

  ‘Watch me.’ And in a single movement, she pulled the light cotton dress she was wearing over her head.

  For a second she stood in her mismatched bra and pants, belly shining in the sunlight, grinning, half naked and magnificent.

  ‘Helen. What if somebody…?’

  But she raised a leg, stepped forward and fell into the pool. Breen watched her sink to the bottom, sending the dark debris that had fallen into the water swirling upwards around her.

  She seemed to be down there an age before her head broke the surface, short hair matted down around her head. ‘Fuck. It’s cold,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘Come out.’

  ‘I thought it would be warm. Aren’t you coming in?’

  He watched her as she lay back on the surface of the water, bulge upwards, arms extended. The darkness of her pubic hair was visible through her wet knickers. She closed her eyes and floated, and he watched, envying her ease in the water, and her freedom.

  Nobody came. The house was empty. Bees buzzed around a small, lichen-covered statue at the far end of the pool.

  ‘It would be so easy,’ she said, eyes still closed. ‘Wouldn’t it? To kill someone in water and make it look like an accident.’

  They left the old farmhouse too late. Another traffic jam at Sidcup delayed them again. By the time they got there, the maternity ward was quiet, and the lights low. The matron at the front desk crossed her arms. ‘Visiting time is over.’

  ‘She’s on her own in there. We just want to say hello.’

  ‘She’ll have had quite enough to do. The mothers need their rest. You’ll be in here soon enough, by the look of things.’

  ‘How was it? The birth.’

  The matron opened a book that lay in front of her on the desk. ‘Boy. Seven pounds, one ounce. Perfectly normal. Come back
tomorrow. Three p.m.’ She slapped the ledger shut.

  On the short drive home neither spoke. They both felt dirty and tired; they had been in the same clothes since yesterday. Helen’s dress was still damp in patches from her swim.

  ‘“Perfectly normal”. What does that mean?’ asked Helen.

  Breen put his hand out and touched her belly.

  Leaving her at home in the bath with a packet of cigarettes and an ashtray, he walked to Kingsland Road, where he found a Turkish shop that was still open and sold paprika. On the way back he looked round. A man in a suit, clutching a newspaper, looking out of place in this part of town, was walking about twenty paces behind him, but when he turned towards the cul-de-sac, the man seemed to walk on without hesitating. From behind the corner, Breen watched him, half expecting him to double back, but he didn’t.

  In the flat, he began browning beef in a frying pan.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Cooking you something special,’ he said.

  ‘What did you say?’ The sound of gunfire came from the living room. She was watching a Saturday evening Western on the television.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  When he’d put the dish into the oven he went to join her in the living room; she was asleep, curled up in the armchair. He turned the volume knob down on the TV, and when he went to remove the dish from the oven she was still asleep, lying in the chair.

  He woke her at eight. The table was set and he’d lit candles.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me earlier?’ she complained, blinking, then saw the table. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Saturday night. I just wanted to do something to make you feel special.’

  She looked at him suspiciously; at the candles. ‘Just a meal?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, standing stiffly, stretching lanky arms. She leaned over the table and sniffed the casserole. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Goulash.’

  ‘Sounds foreign,’ she said.

  ‘It is.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘Go on then,’ she said. ‘I’ll try some.’

  He ladled a dish for her and she dipped a spoon into the thick sauce and tasted it. ‘Nice,’ she said and smiled at him.

  But just as he ladled a dishful for himself the telephone rang. Breen considered leaving it, but instead, picked up the receiver.