A Game for All the Family

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘This is madness, El,’ says Alex. ‘You’re out here crying because you’ve suddenly got a yen to see more of Granddad? No offence to Granddad but—’

  Ellen lunges at him and snatches Figgy’s lead from his hand. ‘And I can’t believe we’ve got a puppy! Just when some psychopath starts harassing and threatening us! What if she kills Figgy?’

  I flinch at the suggestion. It’s a paranoid fantasy, but I know where Ellen’s coming from. Psychopaths are supposed to escalate from animals to people, aren’t they? If we assume our anonymous caller has never killed a human being …

  I shudder, and tell myself not to be neurotic.

  ‘It’s not safe for him to be with us, Mum.’

  It breaks my heart to hear her express worry for Figgy while not saying anything about herself. She must be scared. I wish I hadn’t told her about the phone calls. I should have gone to any lengths to prevent her from finding out about them.

  ‘El, Figgy’s going to be fine,’ I say with a confidence I don’t feel. Should I ring Olwen and ask her to come and take him back? Would that be the right thing to do? ‘We’re all going to be fine. DC Luce has said he’ll trace the calls. I trust him to sort this out.’ I’d better get back to him, having left him in the lounge. Is he taking advantage of our absence to ransack the kitchen cabinets, hoping to find an old photograph of me with the name ‘Sandie’ scrawled across the back? That’s what would happen in a film.

  ‘Aren’t some calls untraceable?’ Ellen asks.

  ‘If you’re a tech-savvy criminal mastermind, perhaps,’ says Alex. ‘Not if you’re a crank with a lisp.’

  ‘We should go back to the house and finish up with DC Luce,’ I say. ‘What do you want to do, El?’

  ‘The same thing I wanted to do before: go to school.’ She glances at the river.

  ‘Were you crying because you saw George?’

  Her face hardens. ‘No.’

  Gently, I take Figgy’s lead from her hand, pass it to Alex and send him a silent signal with my eyes.

  ‘Come on, Figgs,’ he says. ‘You and I have got an appointment with Five-O in the drawing room, yo.’

  When they’ve gone, I say to Ellen, ‘You must miss George a lot. You’re used to seeing him every day. Well, every week day.’

  She nods. ‘He wasn’t on Lionel’s boat today.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  She gives me a withering look.

  ‘So that’s why you were so upset.’

  ‘“Were”? I am upset! I’ve lost him. I thought I could at least see him from a distance, but now I can’t even do that any more.’ She starts to cry again. ‘If George doesn’t come looking for me, I’ll never see him again – and how can he come with his parents watching him every second of every day?’

  ‘Hold on, El. Today’s only one day. Just because George wasn’t on—’

  ‘You don’t understand!’ she shouts over me. ‘Today’s a school day, and he wasn’t on the boat. Neither was his dad. They would have been if Fleur had gone to school this morning, so she obviously hasn’t. I knew they’d do it eventually but I didn’t think it would be so soon.’

  ‘You think Fleur’s been expelled?’

  ‘They’ve got rid of her, just like they got rid of George!’ Ellen turns and runs towards the house. Too slowly, I reach out a hand to stop her and find myself holding nothing but air.

  Chapter 7

  A Bumcracker Dies

  Lisette, Allisande and Perrine never went back to school. It took nearly six months for Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey to make Speedwell House completely safe for the protection of Perrine and all of them. They got rid of the rickety old wooden gate at the end of the long driveway, which hadn’t closed properly for years, and replaced it with a pair of enormous tall gates with a strong lock. These gates looked like wood but had metal inside them. A high wall was built all around the grounds, enclosing the land owned by the Ingreys. As if all this wasn’t enough, there was also electrified barbed wire and the best alarm system that modern technology could provide.

  Bars and grilles were fitted over all the windows so that light could get in but nothing else would stand a chance. The front and back doors already had locks on them, but several more were added, as well as chains, bolts and alarms.

  Bascom and Sorrel didn’t want to risk using local tradesmen, so they arranged for all the labourers and experts they needed to be brought in on a coach from Nottingham, which was far enough away for Sorrel to be certain that no one there would have heard of Perrine or what she had done. As well as sorting out the house, these workmen also doubled as guards. Until Speedwell House and its grounds were impossible to breach, there was a risk, and all those men knew that their job was to keep their eyes peeled for dangerous intruders, or even harmless-looking ones, because often they are the most dangerous of all.

  For six months, the Ingrey family lived with locksmiths, wall-builders and barbed-wire specialists all around them. Sorrel had to teach her three daughters Art, Drama, Literature, Film Studies and Creative Writing with drilling and hammering going on all around her. She adapted by making the girls do sketches of carpenters and welders at work, and encouraging them to write stories in which families have to shut themselves away behind inscrutable gates for a variety of reasons. For film studies, she made them watch a movie called The Money Pit on video (this was the popular way of watching films in that era). The Money Pit is about a couple who are forced to cohabit with loads of workmen while they have their wreck of a house done up.

  The tradesmen who were sorting out Speedwell House did not sleep in the house with the Ingrey family. They slept under blankets and in sleeping bags on the two coaches that had brought them to Devon from Nottingham. This wasn’t because there was no room in the house, nor was it because there were no local hostelries that would take them. The workmen slept on the coaches because Bascom and Sorrel Ingrey had made another of their famous compromises! Sorrel didn’t want the men to stay in the pubs and hotels nearby, in case they heard tell of the murderous Perrine and decided to use their saws and soldering irons to attack her instead of to attend to the fabric of the building. Bascom didn’t want the workforce sleeping in his home in case some of them sneaked into his daughters’ rooms and molested them. True, all the labourers from Nottingham seemed absolutely lovely, but one could never tell, said Bascom.

  So, in order to keep both him and his wife happy, the men had to sleep on the coaches.

  All the lessons, it had been decided, would take place in Speedwell House’s library, but even the insulation provided by books as fat as War and Peace and Dombey and Son wasn’t enough to absorb all the clanging and banging from the workmen, so Lisette, Allisande and Perrine had to try to concentrate on their studies with a dreadful racket going on all around them. Perrine was her usual sullen self, so there was no change there. Lisette and Allisande were the ones who changed. They had always been sunny-natured before, but now their abject misery was etched upon their faces quite unmistakeably. They hated the noise, they missed their best friends from school, and they were distracted from their studies by the sweaty bottoms of the workmen, who didn’t seem to know how to make their trousers go up as far as their waists. Lisette and Allisande didn’t understand this at all. Surely someone who can cover a sash window with an elaborate metal structure should not find it too hard to conceal the whole of his bum-crack?

  (I apologise for the vulgarity, but it is necessary for what I’m about to tell you: within days of the coaches from Nottingham arriving, Lisette and Allisande Ingrey had given the workmen a collective nickname: the bumcrackers.)

  Lisette, a conscientious girl who was still hoping, somehow, to be able to do her A-levels and go to university, applied herself to her studies in spite of everything, and became even cleverer and more knowledgeable than she’d been before. Allisande, who was naturally more of a skiver and a coaster-along, did as little as possible. She was thrilled to find that, during Sorrel’s lessons, it was generally possi
ble to do nothing at all. The trend of watching videos, which had started quite legitimately with The Money Pit as part of film studies, soon spread to all of Sorrel’s lessons. Lisette complained bitterly when a double art lesson involved nothing more than watching the movie Vertigo, which features a painting and includes a scene in an art gallery. She complained again when drama lessons were taken up with watching An Officer and a Gentleman and American Gigolo (Sorrel loved the actor Richard Gere).

  Fortunately for Lisette, her father’s lessons contained no such indulgences. Bascom Ingrey taught the girls Maths, English Language, History, Geography, French, Spanish and Science. Or at least he tried to. Bascom found it much harder than Sorrel did to concentrate with the bumcrackers making a din all around him. Unlike his wife, he was not a go-with-the-flow sort of person who secretly wanted to watch videos all day. He was determined that the girls should learn more at home than they ever did at school. He wanted them to improve their minds and characters.

  One Tuesday, he lost his cool during a history lesson. He was trying to explain to the girls about Bismarck and the Dreikaiserbund, when one of the bumcrackers suddenly appeared in the library: a young man with fair hair and flaky patches of skin under his eyes, as if a load of croissant crumbs had fallen off his eyelashes and landed just underneath.

  Entering the library was strictly not allowed; all of the bumcrackers had been instructed never to interrupt lessons. Without apologising for bursting in, this young man said to Bascom, ‘Need yah to hold a piece of wood in place for me, mate. Won’t take long.’

  Bascom turned purple with rage. Apart from anything else, he didn’t think being a manual labourer was any excuse for using incomplete sentences. He stormed out of the library, marched upstairs and locked himself in his bedroom until he’d calmed down. On his way up the stairs, the girls had heard him shout, ‘Sorrel! Can you take over? I’m too angry to teach!’

  ‘I’ll hold your piece of wood for you,’ Perrine volunteered, and she was soon following the flaky-eyed bumcracker out of the room. ‘Nice one, darling!’ Lisette and Allisande heard him say, and they realised that they had never before – not since Malachy Dodd’s death and not before it either – heard anyone say anything so nice and appreciative to Perrine. Then again, they had never heard her selflessly offer to do anyone a favour either.

  Strangely, it did not occur to them that Perrine might not have volunteered to help the bumcracker for kind or noble reasons. They were too shocked to think about it. Their father had not only abandoned a history lesson, but also suggested that their mother take over, when he knew perfectly well that Sorrel dismissed history as ‘a big bowl of yawns’. Lisette and Allisande were afraid that Bascom might be having a nervous breakdown.

  Perrine reappeared in the library after about five minutes. ‘Mum’s on her way,’ she said. A few seconds later, Sorrel swept into the room with a video in her hand. ‘Okay, girls,’ she said. ‘Since your father’s having a tantrum, let’s watch Gone With the Wind. Lots of history in that. Men! They can’t cope with anything. They’re big babies, the lot of them!’

  ‘Perrine just helped a bumcracker to do something to the house that he couldn’t do on his own,’ said Allisande.

  Sorrel put on Gone With the Wind, but stopped it almost immediately afterwards and said, ‘Can you hear that? I think that’s your father shouting for help. I’m going to ignore him. Oh, I can’t concentrate on a movie! What shall we do instead?’

  Before any of the girls could suggest anything, Sorrel’s eyes narrowed deviously and she said, ‘I know. Let’s talk about a different kind of history – the more interesting kind. Not your father’s interminable three-field systems and Kellogg-Brioche pacts—’

  ‘Briand,’ said Lisette defensively.

  ‘Let’s talk about the day someone tried to hang Perrine from a tree,’ said Sorrel.

  ‘I’d rather not,’ said Perrine. ‘I’ve put that behind me and moved on.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Sorrel. ‘You’re thirteen, and I’m your mother. You don’t get to move on until I say you can.’

  Perrine sighed, as if she had just been set an incredibly tedious essay topic for homework.

  ‘Here’s what I’d like us to discuss,’ said Sorrel. ‘We know that a rope was hanging from a tree, and that it dropped to the ground eventually, which saved Perrine’s life. We know that Perrine said she saw a figure in the tree, up in the high branches, holding the rope. She also said she heard footsteps running away, after this mysterious person had dropped the rope. But did anyone else see this attacker, either in the tree or running from the scene? Hmm?’

  Perrine cocked her eyebrow mischievously. She seemed to understand what her mother was talking about. Lisette and Allisande were baffled. What could Sorrel mean? they asked themselves.

  ‘I’m wondering, you see, if perhaps there was no aspiring murderer,’ Sorrel went on. ‘What if Perrine attached that rope to the tree, put her own head in the noose and made sure to grab onto it with her fingers so that she didn’t choke to death?’

  ‘I was dangling in mid-air!’ said Perrine indignantly.

  ‘All right, then,’ said Sorrel. ‘What if you climbed the tree, tied the rope to the branch, put the noose around your neck and jumped, clutching the noose with your fingers to avoid strangulation? Did anyone see you standing there when the noose fell around your neck as you claim it did? Did anyone witness you not climbing the tree and then tumbling out of it, attached to a rope?’

  ‘I don’t know who saw what,’ said Perrine. ‘You’ll have to ask them.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Sorrel, her eyes narrowing again.

  Lisette and Allisande were growing increasingly frightened. They would have preferred to hear all about Dreyfus’s exile to Devil’s Island and how it was really Esterhazy that committed the crime. They had taken for granted that someone had tried to kill Perrine, and now their mother was suggesting that perhaps it wasn’t true.

  ‘But Mum,’ said Lisette, ‘if no one is trying to kill Perrine …’

  ‘… then we don’t need the bumcrackers! We can go back to school!’ Allisande completed her sister’s sentence.

  ‘I’m sorry, but someone did try to kill me,’ Perrine insisted. ‘Ask yourself this, Mother: why would I go to great lengths to fake an attempt on my life?’

  ‘Sympathy?’ Sorrel suggested. ‘Except you didn’t get any, did you? All your classmates and your teacher were quite happy to see you choking to death. Still, you got to be seen as the victim instead of the murderer, which must have been a nice change.’

  ‘I’m sorry, is this lesson called History or Falsifying History?’ Perrine sniggered at her own joke.

  Lisette felt sick. Did Sorrel really believe what she was saying, or was she testing Perrine? Was she about to say, ‘I’m sorry, darling, of course I know you wouldn’t fake an attack on your life.’

  Surely Perrine wouldn’t. Staging the attempted murder of yourself was as bad as committing murder. Worse, perhaps, because it was more devious.

  No one ever found out what Sorrel was about to say, because at that moment something dramatic happened. The three sisters and their mother heard the word ‘Help!’ being wailed from somewhere high up. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ snapped Sorrel. ‘Just listen to him! This is how your father reacts when someone walks into a room unexpectedly.’

  ‘Mum, that’s not Dad’s voice,’ said Allisande.

  ‘HELP!’ wailed the male voice again.

  ‘She’s right,’ said Lisette. ‘It’s not Dad.’

  Sorrel stood up. She was about to go and investigate when she saw, through the window, a man falling to his death, just as Malachy Dodd had done before. His arms flailed as he fell.

  There was a loud crash. Sorrel and her three daughters ran to the window. The man’s head had smashed open and there was blood spreading across the gravel where he’d fallen. ‘Oh, my God!’ said Allisande. ‘It’s the bumcracker who came in here, who Perrine helped!’

  Pe
rrine emitted a throaty chuckle. Sorrel, Lisette and Allisande looked at one another. They were all thinking the same thing: what if Perrine had somehow pushed the bumcracker off the scaffolding that was still attached to one side of Speedwell House? What if he’d grabbed onto a metal pole, hung on for as long as his arms and fingers could bear, crying for help and being ignored, and then fallen to his doom?

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ said Perrine, even though no one was because no one could bear to. ‘I didn’t kill him. He’s only a bumcracker, anyway. It’s not as if his life matters to anyone.’

  8

  Finally I’m alone in the house. DC Luce has taken his reams of notes and gone; Alex is dropping Ellen at school and then heading into town. I’m on my own with Figgy, who, thankfully, doesn’t detract at all from my satisfying feeling of isolation. He’s not going to stop me from doing what I’m about to do, or demand that I justify myself.

  ‘I’ll tell you, Figgs, because you’re tactful enough not to ask.’ I sit down at the kitchen table with a mug of tea and my laptop. ‘I’m going to Google the fuck out of Professor Anne Donbavand. Why? Because …’

  I stop to type her name into the search box, then press return. First impression: no shortage of results, all relating to the right person. Most of this stuff looks deadly boring, possibly because I don’t have a shred of interest in Assyriology.

  I’m about to plunge into the first web link on the list when I realise I abandoned my explanation after ‘Because’. That’s a bit shoddy, even if one is only explaining to a dog.

  ‘Several reasons, Figgy. All of them persuasive, in my opinion. Ellen’s obsessed with George. She might have given him our phone number – my mobile too. She doesn’t have a phone of her own, so anyone wanting to contact her would need to ring me or the house.’

  Ellen has always been adamant that she’ll never have a mobile. In London, mine ruined everything we tried to do as a family. Every trip, dinner and birthday treat was interrupted by between five and ten texts, emails or calls, most of which required immediate responses. Ellen once called my BlackBerry ‘the family destroyer’.