Play Dead

by Peter Dickinson

  She changed her mind several times about food, but in the end ate supper by herself, early, and saw that there was enough for him, unprepared, if he wanted it.

  He smelt nothing. He kissed her briefly, not apparently noticing her unresponsiveness, looked at his watch and said, ‘Sorry. May we see the headlines?’

  She switched the TV on and just caught them. The pound was falling. There had been an enormous protest in Leipzig, and another in Prague. Cecil Parkinson had launched a sale of personalised number-­plates. Lord Aldington in the witness-box. As she was about to switch off he said ‘No. Please.’

  They watched the stuff about the pound in silence, and then the Eastern Bloc protests. The crowds seemed unimaginable, their joint life, their channelled excitement and purpose. The thrill of being alive in these days broke for the moment through Poppy’s misery and apprehension. But then Romania. Shots of a grey man ranting, rehearsed ovations. A six-hour speech it said, and a rule of iron still …

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Amazing. Amazing. People here have no idea what it means. He hasn’t a hope. The whole system is going to come apart. All of it.’

  The room throbbed with energies. He was part of those crowds on those roaring streets. It seemed to take him time to realise that she wasn’t as involved.

  ‘You don’t feel it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, of course … I’m afraid I’ve got something to tell you. I don’t know if you’ve heard about the death of one of the nannies. She’s called Laura.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It looks as if somebody tried to make it look like suicide, but it wasn’t. The same with the young man in the park. Laura knew him. It’s all connected. I’ve told the police everything I know.’

  He laid his hands on his thighs and stared for a while at their backs.

  ‘Everything?’

  ‘Yes. About you being followed, and not wanting the police to know, and then pretending it didn’t matter. And what you told me about what you were doing. And Constantin.’

  He continued to gaze at his hands.

  ‘I’m sorry. I had to,’ she said.

  ‘Is there anyone here?’

  ‘What do you mean? No. This is between us. Only …’

  She hadn’t intended to tell him about the anonymous calls, thinking he would misunderstand her reasons. Now she had to.

  ‘… So at first I thought that you must have been followed again, or perhaps the flat was bugged. Happening just after you’d been, you see.’

  ‘You’ve looked?’

  ‘I tried to, but I wouldn’t know where. Anyway I’m almost sure now it must have been Laura making a lucky guess. She didn’t know you’d been again. Only, if I’m wrong …’

  ‘We’ll assume you are right. In any case it’s too late to matter.’

  ‘Have you had any?’

  ‘Clara normally answers the telephone, and we are ex-directory.’

  ‘Peony would have told the nannies your number.’

  ‘This is all irrelevant. I came this evening to talk to you about what you could safely say about this woman’s death, but as I say I was too late. Tell me, do you believe I am a murderer?’

  ‘No. But I think Constantin might be, and you might protect him.’

  ‘Constantin has two younger sisters. His parents are dead and he has the full family responsibility for them. They are under close watch by the Securitate, and he knows what will happen to them if he doesn’t obey his orders to the letter. I was in the same position myself, until Natalie died.’

  ‘Would he kill someone if they told him?’

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Would you have?’

  ‘While Natalie was alive, you mean? No. I knew she would have chosen to suffer herself, rather than that.’

  ‘Were you really in Geneva two nights ago? When Laura died?’

  He looked her in the eye. His face had not changed, but she felt, as she had in the pizza restaurant at their last meeting, that he had for the moment removed his mask—not for her sake, of course, but for Natalie’s, the dead woman whom she so inadequately resembled.

  ‘I was not in England,’ he said.

  ‘Was Constantin with you?’

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Better answer it,’ he said, rising.

  With a hammering heart Poppy switched on the porch light, slid the chain into place and opened the door the few inches it allowed. The threat was not any of those she had imagined. Mrs Capstone stood on the doormat, holding her face to the light so that she could be recognised. Every glistening wave of her hair was in place.

  ‘May I come in?’ she said.

  What do you do? Slam the door? Go out and confront her on the doorstep? Have hysterics? Poppy fumbled the chain free and let her in.

  ‘Is my husband here?’ said Mrs Capstone, chilly but formal—the chair of some local committee calling on a disruptive member to persuade her to resign, for the good of the cause.

  ‘Yes. Come in.’

  Poppy opened the living-room door for her. John was standing by the mantelpiece with his hands in his jacket pockets. He was armoured again, formidable but not perturbed. Amused, if anything.

  ‘Hello, my dear,’ he said. ‘Mrs Tasker has just accused me of being a murderer.’

  Mrs Capstone swung to Poppy, her anger now in the open.

  ‘Then it is you who have been making these stupid calls,’ she said.

  ‘What calls? … Oh … You’ve been having them too? No. Really …’

  Her voice trailed off under the glare of disbelief. ‘And you and my husband are lovers.’

  ‘Are we … I mean … I don’t …’

  Poppy turned to John for help and realised that he seemed to be enjoying the confrontation. He had the look of a child who has done something unspeakable, deliberately, in order to become the centre of attention, and isn’t remotely embarrassed or ashamed but interested, pleased, stimulated. Derek was like that sometimes.

  ‘This isn’t a game!’ Poppy snapped.

  His eyebrows rose an Olympian, unforgivable fraction. Poppy controlled her fury and returned to Mrs Capstone.

  ‘Your husband and I have made love, once,’ she enunciated. ‘I don’t think it’s going to happen again. It wasn’t very important to either of us, and it isn’t important at all now, in fact it’s meaningless compared to what else has been happening.’

  ‘It is not meaningless to me.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I can’t help that. But there’ve been two murders …’

  ‘John. Is she quite mad?’

  ‘Far from it. There may well have been two murders. There are indications to make Mrs Tasker believe that I, or Constantin, or both of us in collaboration, may have been involved. Mrs Tasker has told everything she knows to the police. They have already asked to see me.’

  He was still enjoying himself, for God’s sake! Or was he winding Mrs Capstone up, for his own reasons? If so, she didn’t respond in the usual way.

  ‘I see,’ she said slowly. ‘This is that friend of Peony’s, in Barnsley Square? And the man in the play centre, I suppose. What are we going to do? Presumably this will be in the media almost at once. I must know where I stand.’

  Her egocentricity was almost heroic. Anger, outrage, betrayal could all be laid aside, at least for the moment, to counter the threat to her career. First things first. What should she say to the journalists?

  ‘Almost inevitably,’ said John. ‘The police will probably tell them, and to judge by your anonymous calls there are others who seem to know more than we’d like. What did she say to you?’

  ‘I thought she was mad. She said all sorts of things. That you were a murderer, that you and my brother had been importing drugs …’

  ‘Jeremy?’

  ‘She said your brother-in-law, but as far a
s I know Jeremy’s the only one you’ve got. She said you were using Deborah as cover for an affair for someone with grandchildren of her own, someone connected with the play centre, and who was really secretly working for the prospective Labour candidate. The calls were ridiculous rigmaroles, and naturally I paid little attention, though I already had a feeling that you’d started another affair. Then you called this evening to say you’d be late, and I was sure. I’d been paying your Access bill, and I’d noticed the cost of your concert tickets had doubled. I remembered that Mrs Tasker had expressed an interest in music. I thought I would come and see.’

  He actually laughed, that peasant laugh of his, seeing the whole thing as comic opera, the philanderer caught in the wardrobe. Mrs Capstone too seemed to be deriving real satisfaction from her position, not of course the weakness of the wronged wife, but the dominance of the unmasker of deceit. How could they, Poppy wondered, increasingly angry, as though Poppy herself, and dead Laura, and all that had happened was no more than a fresh load of corn into the mysterious mill of their relationship?

  ‘Apart from Jeremy she seems to have been remarkably well informed,’ said John.

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mrs Capstone. ‘She was … You are working for the Labour candidate, Mrs Tasker?’

  ‘No. Yes. No. I mean, she’s my daughter-in-law and I look after her son. She does pay me, but …’

  Mrs Capstone stared and drew breath for an outburst, but Poppy got in first.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to tell the police about your calls, if you haven’t already. Especially that bit about the drugs.’

  ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m sure it was Laura. She was the one who knew about me and Janet. I don’t know what she meant about the drugs, but she meant something. Inspector Firth specifically asked me if I’d come across anything …’

  ‘My brother is a Major-General.’

  ‘I shall have to tell the police if you won’t. I’ve already told them about my calls.’

  ‘You’ll admit to having an affair with my husband?’

  ‘I told him that too.’

  ‘Either you are behaving totally irresponsibly or this is all part of a deliberate campaign. I am beginning to think that you did indeed make these telephone calls, just as you are making these ridiculous accusations about murder and drugs. You insinuated yourself into my household …’

  ‘I didn’t. You told Peony …’

  ‘Mrs Tasker and I met by chance at a concert,’ said John.

  ‘How do you know it was by chance?’ said Mrs Capstone.

  ‘We were further drawn together by a shared dislike of pig farming.’

  Poppy rounded on him. She had been able to control her anger with Mrs Capstone by a partial understanding, almost a sympathy with her behaviour. Confronted with a failure in her private affairs she resorted to the weapons of the area in which she was confident of success. Her accusations against Poppy were like the point-scoring of the hustings, slung out to wound, without any expectation of belief by anyone who bothered to think about them. John was different. Facing the not quite smiling mask Poppy found her anger bursting out in a shriek.

  ‘For God’s sake! Can’t you be serious!’

  He shrugged, invulnerable even to that. No, not quite invulnerable, because the sheer volume of the shriek had produced a momentary flicker of calculation before the look of calm detachment settled back into place. He was winding her up, she suddenly realised, as well as Mrs Capstone, but not just for his own amusement. The confrontation suited him. He wanted her angry, too angry to think, too angry to remember … She remembered.

  ‘Where was Constantin the night before last?’ she said.

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ said Mrs Capstone. ‘I will not be distracted …’

  ‘Where was Constantin the night before last?’ shouted Poppy.

  ‘Please,’ said John, holding up his large hands, palms half-turned in, in a calming gesture. ‘Mrs Tasker is right, my dear. We are not being serious. I will try to explain my behaviour. Give me a few minutes, please.’

  ‘I don’t see …’ said Mrs Capstone.

  ‘Please,’ he said again, looking at her from under his heavy brows. She stared back, nodded and settled on to the arm of the sofa, falling as if by instinct into a pose which you could imagine seeing in the back pages of a Sunday supplement, this week’s article in the series about how stylish people deal with the straying spouse. Poppy, by contrast, felt all tatters and confusion. They watched in silence while John moved round the room, picking up and inspecting the bases of ornaments, removing several books at a time from shelves and feeling into the cavity behind, glancing behind picture frames. He paid special attention to the music centre, the TV and the light-fittings and finished by unplugging the telephone jack. In the end he faced them with a sigh. His whole demeanour had changed.

  ‘That’s the best I can do,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to assume that your caller was this Laura, and her choosing to ring when she did was a coincidence. Well, I’m going to have to tell you some of what I’ve been doing, though I’d very much rather not, for your sakes as well as mine. Neither of you will tell anyone else. I mean that. I know I can trust you not to, for a very simple reason. You’ve both, I believe, guessed that Constantin is a member of the Romanian secret police, the Securitate. He’s not simply there to keep an eye on me. He is a trained assassin, and he’s under orders that on receipt of a particular message he is to kill me and my family—you, Clara, Deborah and myself. I have been told this in so many words by my employers, but I’ve not been told the circumstances in which the message might be sent. You understand?’

  Poppy felt blank, useless. In a way it would have been easier to accept if the threat had included her, and even Toby. She was a passenger in a car on a motorway where there’s been a pile-up in the opposite direction, free only to stare or look away, and to shudder.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ said Mrs Capstone briskly. ‘We must have him deported.’

  She was still in the same pose, interested, aware, concentrating, but apparently not really troubled. It was as though she believed what John had told her but somehow still didn’t imagine it. It didn’t belong as a possible event in her world.

  ‘No,’ said John. ‘For several reasons. Doing that might cause the message I told you to be sent. There will in any case be a back-up. Then my business activities, and that means our income, depend on Constantin being available. This is even truer, though Constantin doesn’t know it, of what I hope is going to happen in a few weeks’ time. My employers, who are effectively the family and associates of President Ceausescu, whom Mrs Tasker and I have just been watching, have been systematically defrauding the Romanian economy for the past decade and more, and transferring the money to Swiss bank accounts. I am their main agent for this activity. For most of the period, until Natalie died, they had a satisfactory hold over me. Since then they have used Constantin. He is not only there to keep an eye on me and be a threat to me, but also because they have so organised their affairs that no serious transaction can take place without his presence. It’s done by means of a voice-lock, which responds to him, and no one else, speaking the passwords. They have me, they think, in an inescapable bind. But they are mistaken.

  ‘The situation is about to change. Very soon. By Christmas, I believe. The commentator in the news programme was saying that of all the countries in Eastern Europe only Albania and Romania will retain their authoritarian regime. I am convinced that in the case of Romania he is wrong. I have very good contacts, much better than those of the professional news analysts, better than those of the diplomats. There will be a revolution in Romania, different from the revolutions elsewhere, more sudden, more violent. Soon.

  ‘Wait. There’s something else, of equal importance to you, and me, Clara. Constantin is not a loyal servant o
f the regime. He would get out if he dared, but the regime has his sisters for hostages. His dream is to run a small hotel in Crete. But he has seen and believes he knows the apparent strength of the apparatus of control in Romania. He cannot believe in the possibility of revolution. I could try to persuade him. I could say “It’s going to happen, and we must be ready for it.” He would be tempted, but he wouldn’t believe he could risk it. He would choose the apparently safer course of denouncing me to his employers. So I’m forced to wait until the moment when there comes what the astronauts call a window of opportunity—I shall have three days at the most—when Romania is in turmoil and Constantin can be persuaded that the revolution has indeed come, but before my employers are able to make good their escape and take possession of the enormous sums of money they’ve been salting away.’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Capstone. ‘Not if it’s illegal. Not in any country. I’ve always said that. I can’t afford it.’

  ‘It won’t be illegal. It won’t even be dishonest. I’m a businessman, not a thief. I told you, the sums involved are enormous. A reasonable commission on removing them from the control of their employers and holding them safe until they can be returned to their rightful owners, the people of Romania, will be more than satisfactory. But even that is not my main motive. I have waited sixteen years for this chance, though for a long while I didn’t clearly see the shape it was going to take. Only I was sure the time would come. I was born stateless, parentless, homeless, but I can’t live without allegiances, so I’ve had to construct my own—to my family, and to this country of which I am now a citizen, but also to an almost imaginary country which I barely recognised was there when I lived in it, but which I know to exist by having met certain of its citizens—Natalie first and foremost, but also some monks who used to run an orphanage, a husband and wife who kept an illegal lodging-house in Bucharest, a priest or two, a captain of police in a small town, and others like them. Now, at last, I have my chance to help make this imaginary country real. Do you see how much it matters?’