Child's Play

by Alison Taylor

  ‘I can’t say!’ Imogen sounded as if she were being throttled.

  ‘No?’

  Turning away from Vivienne’s penetrating gaze, Imogen muttered, ‘No.’

  ‘Shame about that,’ Vivienne observed. ‘If you and Sukie hadn’t been split asunder, so to speak, you’d probably be able to point the coppers in the right direction.’ She upended the leg to peer into the cup, then rotated the knee joint through its limited articulation. ‘Personally, I never was much sold on the suicide option and after Torrance’s cleverly engineered accident it’s lost whatever credibility it had. So,’ she went on, ‘it looks like we’ve got a killer hiding in the woodwork. Not a happy thought, even if you don’t know anything about Sukie’s death. Rather makes one feel like one of those ducks in a fairground shooting gallery that people take pot-shots at.’ Putting the leg on the bedcover and taking the cigarette from her mouth, she added, ‘There’s dried blood in the cup.’

  ‘What?’ Imogen started, taken aback by the abrupt change of subject.

  ‘I said there’s dried blood in the cup. Is there therefore wet blood on your dressings?’

  Slumping once more in her chair, Imogen nodded reluctantly. ‘Some,’ she admitted. ‘It chafes, like a badly fitting shoe. Dr Scott says my skin won’t toughen up for ages.’

  ‘D’you know, I never realised she was an expert on prosthetics and amputations as well,’ Vivienne remarked acidly. ‘Why on earth don’t you just take the damned thing back?’

  ‘It was made to measure.’

  ‘So? It won’t necessarily be a perfect fit first time round.’

  ‘I can’t just take it back, anyway. It’s not like a dress I might have bought. I don’t even know where it was made.’

  ‘But you do know where it was fitted,’ Vivienne said. ‘After the Easter hols, I thought you were getting your act together, but you’ve gone straight back to square one. What’s Matron had to say about it?’

  ‘She wants me to wait for my next home appointment.’

  ‘When’s that?’

  ‘August.’

  ‘So you’re happy to suffer for another couple of months, are you? Still, the drugs should keep you quiet.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Imogen cried. She squirmed around on the chair. ‘Torrance wouldn’t say things like that!’

  ‘I know she wouldn’t,’ Vivienne replied. ‘She’s too kind-hearted. She never hauls me over the coals, either. She just sorts me out, as best she can, the way she does with you. I’m not out of my head all the time,’ she added, watching Imogen with exasperated anger. ‘I’m well aware of what she does for you, but I don’t understand why. Why don’t you go to Bangor hospital for physiotherapy?’

  ‘Dr Scott said their physios wouldn’t be much good.’ Imogen’s eyes were beginning to glaze. ‘It’s National Health.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake! They’re all the same!’

  ‘And Dr. Scott said Sukie did kill herself,’ Imogen said in a rush. ‘She’s sure of it.’

  ‘The police obviously don’t agree with her.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean she isn’t right!’ Imogen paused, gnawing her lip. ‘I heard her telling Ainsley it must be Sukie’s fault the girth snapped on Torrance. She never looked after Purdey’s tack very well.’

  ‘That copper said the surcingle straps had been cut.’ She stubbed out the cigarette and immediately lit another. ‘And believe me, they wouldn’t be lashing out all this money investigating a suicide, whatever Scott thinks. She’s in denial.’

  ‘She’s what?’

  ‘She’s in denial,’ Vivienne repeated. ‘About your accident, about Sukie’s death and now about Torrance. When you first came back after the accident, she milked the drama for her own ends, but since you insisted on looking like you’ve got two legs she’s pretending nothing much happened. Don’t you see?’ she asked urgently. ‘While Scott can push it away she doesn’t have to admit she might be responsible for some of the mess, so she doesn’t need to bother sorting it out. She’s lazy and selfish, and she’s making your life hell on earth.’

  ‘What else can I do?’ Imogen wrung her hands.

  ‘Stop acting like a bloody moron. Call your parents, or at least, your doctor.’

  ‘He’ll be angry. He fixed up treatment at Bangor for me and he doesn’t know I’ve broken the appointments.’

  ‘Then you’ll have to lie about it. Say you thought you were getting on OK.’

  ‘But I can’t! Dr Scott will know if I call the hospital.’

  ‘Yes, she will,’ Vivienne agreed. ‘If you like, I’ll come with you while you tell her.’

  ‘Would you?’ Tears, of misery and gratitude, welled in her bloodshot eyes.

  ‘And until you can get to see the experts, I’ll help with your physic.’

  Imogen’s face was chalk-white. ‘You’d have to look at the stump,’ she croaked.

  ‘I’m not Charlotte. I won’t throw up. Anyway, I already know what stumps look like.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘When I had my appendix out, I met a kid who’d had her leg cut off because she had a tumour in her knee.’ Appraising the length of Imogen’s stump, she added, ‘She’d lost a lot more than you.’

  ‘How old was she?’

  ‘Ten.’

  ‘Poor little thing.’

  Vivienne shrugged. ‘She didn’t think so. She said being alive with one and a bit legs was much better than being dead with two.’

  12

  The moment McKenna gave his consent and without bothering to seek Freya’s permission, Martha dragged her stunned, ashen-faced daughter out of the school, bundled her into the hire car and drove to the pub from where McKenna had been so peremptorily summoned. ‘Torrance will be fine,’ she said, watching Alice push her food around the plate until the fat, golden-brown chips threatened to slide off the edge. ‘You heard what Superintendent McKenna said. Apart from a badly sprained ankle, she’ll just have a nasty headache for a few days. She was very lucky.’ She smiled encouragingly. ‘And there wasn’t a scratch on the horse, thank goodness.’

  ‘Somebody tried to kill her!’ Alice wailed.

  The nearby diners raised their eyes.

  ‘Keep your voice down. And stop playing with your food,’ Martha added, as Alice’s face adopted a mutinous scowl. ‘Someone tampered with Sukie’s saddle, not Torrance’s.’

  ‘But everyone knows Torrance rides Purdey. Everyone!’

  ‘But no one knows when the saddle was sabotaged,’ Martha pointed out, starting hungrily on her own lunch. ‘Are the stables and tack room kept locked?’ she asked, trying to divert Alice’s attention from the near miss of another tragedy.

  ‘Nope,’ Alice replied. ‘I mean,’ she went on, chewing a mouthful of chicken, ‘they can’t be locked when the horses are in during the cold months in case of fire and I guess nobody bothers once they’re out. There’s nothing to steal except the tack and a few odds and ends.’

  ‘How many people know they’re not locked?’

  ‘Everybody, I should think.’

  Relieved to see the food on Alice’s plate disappearing, Martha said, ‘It strikes me that whoever cut the saddle had to know what they were doing. I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘Well, I would,’ Alice asserted. ‘You don’t need to know much.’

  ‘You need to know enough,’ Martha asserted, then the implications of Alice’s remark struck her and she went cold. Careful to keep her voice level, she said, ‘Dr Scott told me Torrance asked you to help with evening stables yesterday. I hadn’t realised you and she were quite so pally.’

  Alice stared at her plate, her mouth clamped shut.

  ‘D’you think,’ Martha went on, ‘that Torrance might have sabotaged the saddle herself? If she knew she was likely to be thrown, she’d have been ready for it, so she’d have fallen carefully.’

  ‘That’s absolute bollocks!’ Alice snapped, her voice cutting.

  ‘Dr Scott also told me,’ Martha said, trying to stop he
rself from bursting into weary, angry tears, ‘that you’ve been punished for swearing at one of the sixth formers this morning.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘I told Nancy Holmes to “bog off”. That isn’t swearing.’

  ‘It’s extremely rude,’ Martha told her. ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘She asked for it.’ Hatred glinted in her eyes.

  Martha dropped her knife and fork and grabbed a glass of water. Ravenous as she was, the food was sticking in her throat. Her child was turning into a stranger and, worse still, a stranger from whom she would want to keep her distance. ‘You know, Alice,’ she said slowly, ‘you’ve always had a tendency to look at things rather negatively. You get that from your father, I suppose. None of his family was ever happy. They were always beset by some woe, even though they had no reason.’ She took another sip of water. ‘I always felt they were living inside a thicket of miserable obsessions. Occasionally they saw some light, but they never tried to break out. Maybe they were scared — I don’t know. Maybe they simply preferred the safety of being in a place they knew with boundaries they could see.’

  ‘So?’ Alice demanded once again, when Martha’s voice tailed away.

  ‘I hoped you’d be different. I want you to understand happiness.’

  ‘Whenever I’ve done something you don’t happen to like, you blame it on Daddy! All my bad points have to come from him, don’t they? That’s the only way you can justify divorcing him!’

  Finding that her hands were trembling, Martha put the glass on the table. ‘I’ve told you countless times that we were simply unsuited. I didn’t suit him, he didn’t suit me. It was nobody’s fault.’

  ‘You should’ve realised all that before you got married. You were old enough,’ Alice said nastily. ‘You put him through all that for nothing!’

  ‘Is that what he told you?’ When Alice remained silent, she asked again, ‘Is it?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him for years, have I?’ Alice retorted.

  ‘That wasn’t my doing.’

  ‘How do I know it wasn’t? You could have told him not to see me.’

  ‘But I didn’t,’ Martha insisted. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you. Anyway, I’ve no quarrel with him and I shouldn’t imagine he has one with me.’

  ‘I guess Daisy’s right, then, isn’t she? She usually is.’

  ‘Daisy?’ Martha frowned, wondering what that monstrous brat had to do with her family concerns. ‘Why? What has she said?’

  ‘She said Daddy didn’t love me enough to stick around.’

  Alice’s sorrowful bewilderment enraged her. ‘Don’t you think that was very cruel of her?’ she asked, working hard to keep her fury under control.

  ‘Not if she’s right.’

  For some time Martha sat in silence, before saying, ‘When parents separate, children usually stay with the mother, because they need a mother more than a father.’ Wondering how deep was the hole she could be digging for herself, she went on slowly, ‘But that doesn’t mean the father doesn’t love his children. It’s just the way things work out.’

  ‘Did Daddy love me?’

  ‘Yes.’ Martha put all the conviction she could muster into her voice. ‘He did. He does.’

  ‘Then why doesn’t he ever come to see me?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s just not sure you want him around.’ She paused. ‘Why don’t you ask him? You’ve got his address, so there’s nothing to stop you writing, or even telephoning. If you like, I’ll get in touch with him for you, although I think you’re quite old enough not to need an intermediary.’

  ‘But what if he says he’ll see me when it’s the last thing on earth he really wants to do?’

  Realising that she had made things worse rather than better, Martha said, ‘Alice, all human transactions involve what you might call the oil of dishonesty. We dissemble because there’s always a two-way traffic of cause and effect and no one can ever be sure what someone else thinks or feels. At best, we make assumptions; at worst, we delude ourselves with wishful thinking. In the end, we have to rely on instinct and of experience of a particular person. My instinct about your father,’ she concluded, ‘tells me that he’s an honest, decent man who’d never intentionally hurt you.’

  ‘But you don’t know,’ Alice said dully. ‘You don’t know if he’d be lying or telling the truth if he said he wanted to see me.’ Then her voice began to rise. ‘Nobody knows when someone’s lying or telling the truth.’ Her food came rushing back to her throat. She clamped a hand over her mouth and made a dive for the toilet door.

  13

  By lunchtime Torrance had been moved from the hospital’s accident department to a small private room on the second floor. Perched on the window ledge, Dewi watched over her while he waited for the first of the round-the-clock guards to arrive. Every so often, he checked the monitors on a trolley beside the bed.

  She lay on her back, snoring gently, her chest rising and falling reassuringly. The cage over her injured ankle made a hump at the foot of the bed and an ugly welt was developing on her forehead. Although her face had been cleaned, revealing grazes on cheek and chin, her arms were still streaked with dirt, with more dirt embedded under her short, square fingernails, and her tangled hair was riddled with grains of glinting sand. The bruises, grazes and dirt took nothing from her; if anything, he thought, they suited her, for she was an earthy young creature, as bold and sweaty and natural as the horses she rode with such panache and which she so clearly loved. As the ambulance was hurtling towards the hospital, she had suddenly roused herself to ask about Purdey, before sinking once more into a stupor as soon as he reassured her.

  He felt a little strange; light-headed and slightly sick from shock. Never before had he seen anyone thrown by a horse, and he could still barely believe she had survived, let alone with only minor injuries. Whoever had cut the surcingle straps must feel intensely disappointed, he thought, and was probably already planning their next attack, for whether she was aware of it or not, Torrance knew something about Sukie’s death. Why else should someone try to kill her? he asked himself. So why had McKenna, when he called him from the hospital, continued to counsel caution about assuming that Sukie had been murdered?

  A shadow fell across the glass panel in the door, then Janet walked in. ‘I’ve brought her pyjamas and things,’ she said, placing a soft leather travel bag on the floor. She peered at the sleeping form. ‘She looks OK, considering.’

  ‘She’s tough. The medics said she’s got muscles all over.’

  ‘Horses do that for you,’ Janet replied. ‘When they’re not trying to kill you, that is.’

  ‘You like horses.’

  ‘They’re still dangerous at both ends and uncomfortable in the middle.’ She walked around the bed to join Dewi by the window. ‘What actually happened? All I’ve heard are wild stories about sabotaged saddles, horses turning turtle in mid-air and Wonder Woman here being impaled on broken jumps.’

  ‘Don’t be catty. It doesn’t suit you.’

  ‘I swear it’s getting hotter.’ Unfastening another shirt button, flapping the garment against her skin, she added, ‘I wasn’t being catty. I was commenting on the fact that Torrance’s importance seems quite disproportionate to her status.’

  ‘She’s obviously popular. She was elected house captain, remember?’

  ‘Yes, but why is she so significant? Nobody’s got a clue what to do with the horses now. The school’s in utter turmoil.’

  ‘Don’t exaggerate,’ Dewi chided. ‘They’ve got Miss Attwill. She must know what to do.’

  ‘You think? If you ask me, she’ll be hard put to work out which end needs feeding.’ Janet grinned. ‘And no way is she going to exercise Tonto or Purdey. Tonto’s a lunatic and Purdey, she told me, “has all the typical and worst qualities of a horse of that colour”. In other words she’s a stroppy redhead.’

  ‘Then the horses will have to go to a livery stable.’

  ‘I shouldn�
��t think that’s even occurred to them. They can’t see further than the boundary walls.’

  ‘It’s far more likely that Scott’s destroyed their capacity for joined-up thinking. People are so worried about upsetting her they forget what they’re supposed to be doing.’

  ‘In what way?’ she asked, almost hypnotised by the blips proceeding without interruption across the monitor screens.

  ‘By doing the rounds with the security guards, I was hoping to loosen a few tongues,’ Dewi told her, ‘and perhaps dig up something on the ones on duty Tuesday night. I thought they might only alibi each other because they’ve got a vested interest, but the only vested interest they’ve got is appeasing Scott. If they don’t pass her house at exactly the right intervals, she reports them to their boss. Bath and Knight do the same, too.’

  ‘Spending the nights on watch can’t do much for their relationship,’ Janet remarked spitefully.

  ‘Don’t make two and two add up to five simply because they live together.’

  ‘Come on! I admit Knight just looks as though she feeds on wasps, but Bebb’s the archetypal dyke type.’

  ‘They’re sisters,’ Dewi told her. ‘Miss Knight and Mrs Bebb. She’s a widow.’

  ‘That is a surprise,’ she said slowly. ‘How d’you find out?’

  ‘From the guards. It’s a pity Scott didn’t think fit to tell us, but I’m sure she’d much prefer us to jump to the wrong conclusion, like you did. Keeps us off balance, doesn’t it?’

  Janet nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yet another example of something being completely different from the way it appears.’

  Suddenly Torrance groaned and began to thresh about under the light blanket. Janet started towards her, scanning the monitors, but there was nothing to indicate impending crisis. She hovered over the bed. ‘Has she said anything?’ she asked, straightening the blanket about Torrance’s shoulders.

  ‘Only about Purdey, but she wasn’t properly conscious.’

  Janet pushed Torrance’s tangled hair away from her face. ‘Mr McKenna isn’t sure Torrance’s fall is connected to Sukie’s death, because there’s probably any amount of skulduggery going on at the Hermitage.’