The Red Room

by Nicci French

  I unplugged the tape-recorder then stood up, clutching it to my chest as if someone was going to try to steal it from me. “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  “So he had an accomplice,” Pam said.

  I shook my head. “I knew Michael Doll,” I said. “I don’t think he was on genuine speaking terms with a single woman.” Except me, I thought to myself. And with a pang I left her sitting at the kitchen table, with her hands folded as if she was praying.

  43

  I rang the Tyndale Center for Young People on my mobile when I was just a few minutes down the road. When the woman who answered the phone said that Will wasn’t there, I drove the rest of the way, parked right outside and rang the doorbell.

  “Is Sylvia here, by any chance?” I asked the young woman on duty, who had cropped hair, a spider-web tattoo on her cheek and who didn’t look much older than the residents.

  “Nope.” The spider-web moved and stretched when she spoke.

  “Are you expecting her?”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  “Do you have any idea where I might find her?”

  “Couldn’t say.” She took a cigarette from behind her ear and stuck it between her lips. “Confidential,” she said. She lit the cigarette.

  “Oh. Of course. If you do see her, could you tell her that Kit Quinn wanted to ask her something? I’ll write down my phone numbers.” The young woman didn’t answer, just looked at me suspiciously. “She knows me,” I added. I pulled my notepad out of my bag, jotted down the numbers on a page and handed it over. She put it on the front desk without looking at it. I had little hope she would do anything about it. “Thanks anyway, and sorry to bother you.”

  But as I turned to leave, with no idea of where to try next, a voice piped up, “You could try the fair.”

  I turned to see a boy squatting by the front door. He looked about ten, except he had a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and was playing with a flick-knife.

  “The fair? The one on Bibury Common?” I’d passed it on my way, feeling a tremor of nostalgia for the days when I’d loved the swoop and sickening fall of high rides, the tacky fluffy toys and giant plastic hammers you won when you shot all the targets down with a misaligned air rifle.

  “Yup.” He hesitated. “Could you lend me a couple of fags, miss?”

  “Sorry, I don’t smoke.”

  “Money, then.” He put his hands together in a self-mocking gesture of pleading. I slid a glance at the girl on duty then passed over some coins. “Cool! Thanks.”

  __________

  Evening was drawing in, and the fair was just getting going. Men in leather jackets, with oiled-back hair and manky teeth, were tightening things with spanners. The big dipper was circling slowly round through the dusk, though its chairs were all unoccupied. There was a helter-skelter, a merry-go-round of teacups, one of animals, the dodgem cars watched over by lean young men in tight jeans who were chewing gum, a haunted castle, a rickety-looking hall of mirrors whose last segment was being wheeled into place, stalls where you had to toss hoops over bottles and win dolphins, stalls where you could win bags of licorice allsorts and nasty vases if you threw a dart into the bull’s-eye, vans selling greasy burgers and fat orange sausages. And there was mud, squelchy brown mud, liquid streams of mud where the caravans had churned ruts; mud everywhere.

  I looked around for Sylvia. People were just beginning to arrive. Tinny music was starting to play. A helium balloon, let loose from the grasp of a howling toddler, floated up into the sky. The smell of frying and of cigarette smoke filled the air. Perhaps she wasn’t here. I picked my way through the mud, staring at the knots of people, and was thinking of giving up when I saw her. She was climbing into a dodgem car with a boy of about sixteen. As they sat down, he put his arm around her shoulders but she pushed it away contemptuously. Her hair was tied into ridiculous bunches, and she looked much younger than I’d remembered her, and happy, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. I watched her as she bumped her way round the circuit, screeching in pretend fear when she was smashed into, whooping when she wrenched her car round to hit someone else.

  When she climbed out, I went to meet her. “Hello, Sylvia.”

  “Hi.” She didn’t seem in the least surprised to see me there.

  “I was looking for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I wanted to ask you something. But I don’t want to interrupt your evening, so if you’d prefer, we could meet after.”

  “It’s OK. I haven’t any money anyway. I’ll see you around, Robbie,” she said, dismissively, to the boy by her side, who slouched off, his long flappy trousers dragging in the mud.

  “Do you want something to eat? Or drink?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “What about…?”

  “OK. A burger with fried onions and ketchup, some chips and a Coke.”

  We walked over to one of the vans, where I got the food. “There’s a bench over there, where we can talk,” I said.

  “Sure,” she said, amiably. She didn’t seem curious, but she was certainly hungry. She had eaten most of her food by the time we sat down. There was grease running down her chin and ketchup on her lips. She dragged her sleeve across her face and sighed.

  “There was just something I thought you might be able to help me with,” I began.

  “About Lianne?”

  “Kind of. Well, about Daisy as well. Lianne’s friend.”

  “Sure. The one who topped herself.”

  “Yes. Did you know her well?”

  “Saw her around. Hung around with her sometimes. You know. Same crowd.”

  “Do you know if Will Pavic knew her?”

  “Probably. I mean, he would, wouldn’t he?” Her gaze wandered off. “Could I get some candyfloss too?”

  “Definitely. In a minute. This is a difficult question, Sylvia, but do you know—do you have any idea if Will Pavic ever, well, got involved with any of the young people in his care?”

  “Involved?” she repeated, as if it was a foreign word.

  “Yes. If he had sexual relationships with any of them.”

  “Oh, fucked them, you mean?” She giggled and patted me kindly on the shoulder. “‘Sexual relationships,’” she said, mimicking my voice.

  “Did he?”

  “Got a fag?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, well.” She pulled her own cigarettes out of her jeans pocket and lit one. “Don’t think so.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure? Course not. You can never be sure about things like that, can you? Just, not that I know of.” She wrinkled her little nose and puffed away. “He’s not a toucher, though.”

  “A toucher?”

  “Some of them put their hand on your shoulder, on your knee, pat you when they’re talking to you. Ugh!” She shuddered. “Creeps, as if we don’t know what they’re doing. Will doesn’t do that. He keeps his distance.”

  “OK. What about Gabriel Teale? Did Daisy ever mention his name?”

  “Gabriel? What kind of stupid name is that for a man? Never heard of him.”

  “He runs the Sugarhouse.”

  “Oh, that. I know that, of course.”

  “Did Daisy ever go there?” I asked, trying to keep the urgency out of my voice.

  “Sure. Loads of us have been there. Not me. Not my thing. Daisy did, definite. She had to learn how to do cartwheels.” She smiled. “She was brilliant at them by the end. She could do it completely straight, lots in a row. She used to cartwheel into rooms.”

  Excitement prickled up and down my spine. I pulled the theater program out of my bag and turned to the back of it. “You know when we first met, you said that someone was asking questions about Lianne? Is that the man?” I put my finger on the photograph of Gabe.

  She glanced at it. “No way!” She giggled. “The person who was after Lianne was a woman.”

  I stopped dead in my tracks. “You never said that,” I managed.

  “You never as
ked.”

  I pulled Bryony’s picture from my bag. “Was it her, then?”

  Sylvia squinted in the half-light. “Nope,” she said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Sure. They’re nothing like. The woman I saw was blond for a start.”

  In a daze, I pulled out another photograph. “Like this?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, that’s the one. I’m certain. She was snooping around, asking things in her hoity-toity accent. Who is she?”

  I looked down at the face, touched it softly with a finger. “A woman called Philippa Burton.”

  “Philippa Burton.” Sylvia looked at the photograph and a shadow passed across her face, a kind of hardness. “Did she kill Lianne, then?”

  “No,” I said. Then: “I don’t know.”

  “You look funny, are you ill?”

  “No. I’m just confused, Sylvia. Do you want your candyfloss now?”

  “Are you having one too?”

  “No.”

  “Why not? Let yourself go, why don’t you?” She turned her shrewd, delicate face to me and looked at me assessingly. “You want to relax.”

  A curious feeling of lightheadedness took over. “OK. I’ll have a giant pink candyfloss.”

  “Cool. And then we’ll go on that.” She pointed toward the Tilt-A-Whirl, which was spinning round so fast that I could only just make out the faces of the yelling passengers.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Don’t think. Come on.”

  __________

  I ate the candyfloss. It fizzed against my teeth, stuck in my hair and melted on my cheek. Then Sylvia and I climbed into the Tilt-A-Whirl.

  “I don’t want to do this.”

  Sylvia giggled. The car started to move, slowly at first, but then faster, faster, and each car was whirling round in its own dizzying circle as well. I tried to say something, but my cheek muscles seemed to have gone slack. The world was a hurtling blur. The centrifugal force pinned me back against the seat; my stomach was somewhere else, my sticky hair whipped against my face.

  “Fuck,” I managed to gasp.

  “Scream,” said Sylvia, in my ear. “Scream your heart out.”

  I tipped my head back and I opened my mouth. I screamed, until I could hear my scream ripping above everyone else’s. I screamed my heart out.

  44

  There was more fumbling with my tape-recorder, which became worse under the skeptical, snorting, frankly disapproving gaze of Detective Inspector Guy Furth, and the disappointed and embarrassed one of Detective Chief Inspector Oban. They were two men with their minds on other things, new cases, who were confronted with an obsessed woman who wouldn’t let go. Worse than that, it was a woman who was crouched under a table in Oban’s office trying and failing to fit a simple plug into a socket. I cursed silently and then loudly. A plug was a fucking plug, wasn’t it?

  I finally managed it and positioned the machine on Oban’s desk.

  “You’ll have to listen carefully,” I said. “The recording isn’t brilliant quality. I did it on an old tape I found at the back of a drawer and I think it’s a bit past its best.”

  The two detectives exchanged glances as I pressed the “play” button. It was a little embarrassing, because I hadn’t rewound it properly and the tape began with me saying one two, one two, and then the alphabet. I looked at Oban. He was biting his lip as if he was trying to stop himself laughing. It didn’t get much better. There was the seemingly endless prattling between me and Emily about her play-school and my injury. Oban was shifting impatiently in his seat.

  “Was it hailing when you did the interview?” Furth asked, with a curl of his lip.

  “There’s a sort of crackle on the tape, I know,” I admitted. “Sorry about all this but I wanted you to hear the whole thing so that you got the context.”

  He muttered something under his breath.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  I switched off the tape and rewound it a bit.

  “For God’s sake,” he cried, “we’re not going to listen to it again, are we?”

  “I want to make sure you don’t miss anything.”

  He groaned. As the conversation moved on to the events in the playground, he gave a frown of concentration. Suddenly Emily was saying she was bored, there was a click and a crackle and there we were in the middle of “Hotel California”—it had been a party tape in the mid-eighties. The two men grinned.

  “I like this bit,” said Furth. “Better sound quality as well.”

  “So what do you think?” I said impatiently.

  “Play it again,” said Oban. “Just the last bit,” he added hastily.

  With a bit of trial and error I rewound the tape and played Emily’s responses about the woman. Before the end, he leaned over and switched it off himself. He sat back with a look of discomfort.

  “Well?” I said.

  He was looking out of the window as if he had just noticed something fascinating that required his full attention. He glanced round as if he was surprised I was still here.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I was just thinking of a few weeks ago when we were playing you a tape. Funny how things work out.”

  “Not really,” I said.

  “What do you want me to say?” he said.

  I already had that queasy feeling that things weren’t going my way. “I’m not sure I wanted you to say anything,” I said. “I thought you might jump up in the air and get excited.”

  “What should I get excited about?”

  I looked at both of them. Furth’s expression was oddly kind, which made me feel worse. “Are you not hearing what I’m hearing? We should have thought of this ages ago. People don’t grab mothers while they’re supervising their children with lots of other people around. There was a woman involved, a woman who spent a few minutes with Emily while Philippa Burton was lured away to the car where she was killed.”

  “I don’t hear that,” said Oban.

  “What do you hear?”

  He gave a dismissive sniff. “I hear leading questions being put to a three-year-old girl who’s giving vague answers. I mean ‘the nice woman,’ what’s that? That could be any woman in the past year who bought her a lolly.”

  “So you don’t believe Emily.”

  “For a start, as you know, that tape would be totally inadmissible as evidence. I also think it’s bullshit. I’m sorry, Kit, but I think you’ve got carried away and you’re starting to waste my time.”

  “So you’re not going to consider the possibility that a woman was involved?”

  “Do you have one in mind?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Bryony Teale.”

  “You what?”

  “You can kick me out in five minutes but listen to me.”

  __________

  “And did he listen?” said Julie, sipping at her drink.

  We were sitting in a new bar in Soho called Bar Nothing. Apparently hard edges and straight lines were out. This was all pastel sofas and large cushions on the floor. We were sitting at the bar. It wasn’t actually soft. It couldn’t be soft. Your drinks would fall over. But even that had a gently swirling curve.

  I had met Julie in the early evening and I had shouted and raged and metaphorically headbutted the wall, so she insisted that the only solution was for us to dress up and go out on the town together. She’d put on and looked wonderful in yet another of my dresses, a black one with chiffon sleeves. I was wearing my special figure-hugging pink dress that was part of a fantasy of being the subject of one of those blues songs in which the singer complains about having been lured away from home by a devil woman. I sort of hoped someone would come up to the two of us and tell us we were violating city ordinances.

  I think I immediately embarrassed Julie by ordering two margaritas, which is probably a bit nineties, if not eighties, but I needed something quick.

  “You know, pink is your color,” said
Julie, as we took our first sips. “It goes with your gray eyes, somehow.”

  “Goes with my scar.”

  “Don’t say that,” she said.

  “I think I’m getting better,” I said. “I used to talk about the Phantom of the Opera, didn’t I? I don’t worry about people feeling that anymore. Now I think they probably just assume I had some cosmetic surgery that went wrong.”

  Julie didn’t reply. Instead she touched my face, tipping it so she could see the side fully in the light. She scrutinized it as if she were assessing an ornament in my flat. I thought of little Emily running her finger down the scar. Her inspection finished, Julie smiled. “It looks like something that tells a story.”

  “The only story that scar tells is how little time he had.”

  Julie flinched and I apologized. We ordered another drink each and I steered the conversation on to her. She talked about travels, about terrible men and a couple of nice men, and about her plans and suddenly she asked me if I wanted to go along and I horrified myself by thinking, Well, why not? Why not just drop everything and go? Toward the end of my second drink I thought, Why not drop everything and go that very evening?

  We found a table and ordered a couple of salads and a bottle of wine, but suddenly this didn’t seem enough. I felt a craving for red meat. I thought I even saw Julie blanch when it arrived, thin slices of raw beef with shavings of Parmesan, drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice. “I know I’m a carnivore,” she said. “But I think I prefer it when the meat goes a nice brown color.”