The Only Game

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Oh, good. I feared that you might be going to tell me that the little upset had turned into something communicable. It’s a constant nightmare as I’m sure you can imagine. So, what can I do for you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jane. ‘I’ll just pick up Noll and be on my way.’

  She pushed past the headmistress into the cloakroom and stood there a minute looking at the children.

  Then she turned and said quietly to Mrs Vestey, ‘Where’s Noll?’

  The woman gave her another long-toothed smile, this time not of welcome but incomprehension. At the same time her nostrils flared as though catching a worrying scent.

  And Jane knew that the moment was close, the moment when fear became fact. But there were still lines to speak.

  ‘Please, Mrs Vestey,’ she said, ‘has something happened? Has he been taken ill?’

  ‘Yes, yes … at least I understood so …’ said the woman uncertainly. ‘But you yourself …’

  She paused, took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, it was in the assertive tone of someone who needs to get basic facts established in a welter of uncertainty.

  ‘Noll is not here, Mrs Maguire,’ she said.

  ‘Not here? Where is he then? Has he been taken to hospital? Why wasn’t I …’

  ‘No! Mrs Maguire,’ interrupted Mrs Vestey, ‘I mean Noll has never been here today. You yourself rang to say he was ill …’

  ‘I rang? What do you mean? Why should I …’

  ‘Someone rang,’ said Mrs Vestey firmly. ‘But if it wasn’t you, then why didn’t you bring Noll to school as usual?’

  ‘I did!’ cried Jane, her voice rising now and attracting the attention of other parents. ‘I did!’

  ‘You brought him yourself? And brought him inside?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Jane. ‘Not inside. I was going to, but I was very late, so I left him on the steps with Miss Gosling …’

  ‘I’m sorry? With whom?’

  ‘Miss Gosling. For God’s sake, what kind of school is this where you don’t know your own staff?’

  ‘I know my staff very well,’ said Mrs Vestey. ‘And I assure you, I employ no one called Gosling.’

  ‘So I’ve got the name wrong!’ cried Jane in a voice of rising panic. ‘She’s the new one. She started last week. I want to see her, where is she? What’s she done with Noll?’

  And now a little compassion crept into Mrs Vestey’s voice as she produced her clinching argument.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better sit down, Mrs Maguire. I can assure you I have appointed no new member of staff for over a year now, so whoever you left your son with had no connection with this establishment. Mrs Maguire, are you all right? Mrs Maguire!’

  But Jane was swaying away from her. This was worse than her worst imaginings. Her body was no longer her own. She heard a voice say, ‘It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have hit him.’ The room turned and a carousel of anxious races undulated round her. But she could see beneath their surface concern to the grinning skulls, and the wintry light was flickering at the edges as though cast by flame.

  It was time to fall into that flame and let it consume her.

  3

  Dog Cicero dropped a few threads of cheap Italian tobacco into a paper, rolled it between finger and thumb, lit it, and puffed a jet of smoke at the NO SMOKING sign.

  A nurse came out of the door in front of him and said, ‘Can’t you read?’

  He said, ‘Best five card stud man my Uncle Endo ever played couldn’t read a word.’

  She looked at him blankly. He tossed the cigarette into a fire bucket. It had given him what he wanted, the tobacco smell to remind him of his father living and mask the hospital smell, which reminded him of his father dying.

  The nurse said, ‘You can go in now.’

  He went through the door and looked down at the woman in the bed.

  He saw a pair of dark green eyes, huge in an ashen face framed in a sunburst of red hair which almost concealed the pillow.

  The green eyes saw a face out of an old Italian painting, lean, sallow, with a long nose, a jagged fringe of black hair, and deep watchful eyes. It was a mobile and humorous face. At least the right side was. The left was stiff with a shiny scar running like a frozen river from the ear across the cheek to the point of the jaw. Her gaze slipped away from it. He was wearing a light blue denim jacket, damp around the shoulders.

  She said, ‘Is it still raining?’

  Her voice was soft, with a whisper of a brogue in it so distant he might have missed it if the hair and the eyes hadn’t sensitized his ears.

  He half turned his head so the frozen side faced her and said, as if she’d asked several other questions, ‘You’re in hospital, Mrs Maguire. It’s three-fifty. When you fainted, you banged your head.’

  She sat up, felt pain spark through her skull, ignored it.

  She said, ‘Noll,’ and began to cry.

  He said, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Cicero of Romchurch CID. We’ve put out an alert but we need more details.’

  ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said urgently. ‘If there’s any contact …’

  ‘I’ve sent a man to your flat,’ he interrupted. ‘We borrowed your key. Look, the doctors want to X-ray your head, treat you for shock, give you sedatives, but I said you’d want to talk first.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The tears had stopped. It wasn’t control, just a break in the weather.

  He said, ‘We’ve got the photo from the kindergarten files. But we need to know what he was wearing.’

  She said, ‘Black shoes, grey trousers, blue sweater over a white short-sleeved shirt, blue quilted anorak with a hood.’

  He said, ‘Get that out, Scott.’ For the first time she realized there was a uniformed woman constable at the other side of the bed, taking notes. Their eyes met. The policewoman, a pretty girl of about nineteen, smiled uncertainly, decided smiles were inappropriate, flushed and hurried out.

  ‘Right, Mrs Maguire,’ said Dog Cicero. ‘We’re doing everything we can to get your son back, believe me. I just need to ask a few questions to make sure we’re not missing anything. OK?’

  She looked at him dully and he nodded as if acknowledging her agreement.

  ‘Your full name is Jane Maguire? And from the form you filled in for the kindergarten, I gather you’re a widow?’

  She nodded. Once.

  ‘Could I ask how long it is since Mr Maguire …’

  ‘Beck.’ She interrupted his search for a euphemism. ‘His name is … was Beck. I started using my own name again when I came back.’

  ‘From where?’

  ‘America. He was American. He died eight months ago. In a boating accident. He drowned.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Dog formally. ‘Now, we’ve got your address. Do you live alone, by the way?’

  He dropped it in casually. Johnson, the DC dispatched to Maguire’s flat, would have checked it out by now, but he wanted to see the woman’s reaction.

  She said, ‘I live with Noll. My son. No boy friend, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘No live-in boy friend, or no boy friend period?’

  ‘No boy friend, no lover, no one, period!’ she said harshly.

  It was a strong reaction. Worth pressing? Not yet, he decided. First get the facts. Or at least, get her story.

  He said, ‘OK. Now, in your own time, tell me what happened. Start when you left your flat this morning.’

  She closed her eyes as though in pain. The silence stretched till it became a barrier. The door opened and WPC Scott slipped back in.

  ‘Mrs Maguire,’ said Dog.

  She sighed deeply and began to speak.

  ‘It was raining,’ she said. ‘It had been raining all night. Perhaps that’s why the car wouldn’t start. But I was late already. Noll hadn’t been too well over the weekend and he was still a bit fractious when I got up. Usually he’s keen to get to the kindergarten, and I know he’d been particularly looking forward … it’s the last week bef
ore they break up, you see, and they were doing all kinds of Christmassy things …’

  Her voice faded then picked up again before he could frame a consolation.

  ‘Anyway, he announced this morning he didn’t want to go. I suppose he sensed I was in a hurry and just decided to be bloody minded. They can be like that, you know, kids. Don’t want to, don’t want to, over and over … and you try to be reasonable like you were taught, and time’s passing, you can hear it ticking away …’

  ‘Did it matter so much if Noll was late for school?’ wondered Dog.

  ‘No, of course not. But I’ve got an aerobics class at nine-thirty on Mondays …’

  ‘You take it, you mean? That’s your job?’

  A hesitation. A decision?

  ‘Yes. I work at the Family Fun Health Centre in Shell Street. It’s about thirty minutes’ drive through the morning traffic, so I’ve really got to be on my way by nine.’

  ‘But this morning the car wouldn’t start?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I kept on trying the starter, then I got worried about the battery. So I got out and looked under the bonnet.’

  ‘And you found the trouble?’

  ‘No. I’m not mechanically minded. I suppose I was just trying to advertise that there was a helpless little woman in trouble. It didn’t work at first. Seems those macho know-it-alls don’t function so well in the wet either.’

  It sounded like a bitter joke, but he got the feeling it was also a delaying tactic. This was painful, but the greatest pain was yet to come.

  ‘So in the end you managed yourself?’ he asked.

  ‘No. There was this man, a boy really, you know, leather jacket and jeans, he stuck his head under the bonnet, fiddled around for a few seconds, said, “There you go,” and went on his way. I thought he was joking, or maybe just walking off fast rather than admit it was beyond him. Men do that, don’t they? Walk away rather than admit defeat? But when I tried it again, the engine started straightaway. So did Noll. I’d strapped him in his chair in the back and he’d sat there, happy as Larry, all the time I couldn’t get the thing going. But now he started up again. You wonder where they get the lung power from. All the way to Charnwood Grove he kept it up without a break. And the rain was still coming down, and the windows were all misted up, and all I could think of was that Mr Granger would be furious …’

  ‘Mr Granger?’

  ‘George Granger. He owns the Health Centre.’

  ‘Where you work from nine-thirty till …?’

  ‘Till two-thirty.’

  ‘Odd hours.’

  ‘They suit. Housewives in the morning fighting the flab. Businessmen pumping iron, over their lunch hours.’

  She spoke with something close to contempt, noticed him noticing and went on in a neutral tone, ‘Then it’s fairly quiet till evening. I go in four nights a week, seven to ten.’

  ‘Leaving Noll with a baby sitter?’

  ‘Yes. Naturally. Do you think I’d leave him alone?’ she flashed.

  ‘Naturally, no. What do you do for lunch, Mrs Maguire?’

  The question surprised her, quenched her anger. Made her wary.

  ‘Nothing really. There’s a coffee machine. I usually don’t bother till I get home. Then Noll and I have tea together …’

  Tears brimmed again. He preferred anger to tears. He said brusquely, ‘Is there a bar at the Centre?’

  ‘No,’ she said. She watched him, saw his nose twitch, remembered Vestey’s nostrils flaring. He’d smelt the gin, or that cow had told him she’d smelt it. She waited for the question. If asked, she’d tell him. But he had to ask. She had no strength to tell what she wasn’t asked.

  But he was set in his method. The diversion was over. He was back on the old rails.

  ‘So you finally arrived in Charnwood Grove. At what time?’

  ‘Nine-fifteen. Nine-twenty. I parked the car and got Noll out. He didn’t want to come and I almost had to drag him out. And then Miss Gosling came along …’

  She halted. It was close now. The moment when she described seeing Noll for the last time. The last time …

  She had to move. She thrust back the sheet and swung her legs over the side of the bed. There was a moment of dizziness but her body was so well tuned it carried her easily through it. Then she was on her feet. Cicero drew in his breath. All impression of frailty was dispelled. Not even the shapeless hospital gown could disguise her grace as, long-legged and full-bosomed, she moved around the room with the frustrated energy of a circus cat exploring the limits of its cage.

  ‘Who’s Miss Gosling?’

  ‘One of the teachers … at least I thought … She was walking along with her head down into the rain. Noll ran into her. She almost knocked him over.’

  She seemed to have got past a sticking point and was now talking fast and fluently.

  ‘She stooped down and steadied him and she said, “Hello. It’s Noll, isn’t it? You must be in a hurry to get into school. Is it those Christmas decorations you’re so keen to finish off?” And Noll said, “Yes.” All that grizzling about not going to school and here he was saying yes to a stranger …’

  ‘Stranger?’ interrupted Dog. ‘I thought you said this Miss Gosling was a member of staff.’

  ‘She was!’ insisted the woman. ‘She knew all about Noll’s class making Christmas decorations. He’d told me about them on Friday. And she was wearing the uniform, well, not exactly uniform, but Mrs Vestey likes her staff to wear these brown skirts and cream blouses …’

  ‘And you could see this? You mean she wasn’t wearing a coat, even though it was raining cats and dogs?’ said Cicero, gently puzzled.

  Jane thought, then said, ‘Yes, she was wearing an anorak, a blue anorak with the hood up.’

  ‘Like Noll’s. That was what you said Noll was wearing, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. They matched. It was the same blue, I remember. And she was walking along with the anorak unfastened but with her hands in her pockets to clasp it tight across her body as she walked. But when she bumped into Noll she took her hands out to steady him and the anorak fell open.’

  She stood in front of him and looked down at him almost triumphantly. A problem posed, a problem solved. But was it a problem of memory or a problem of explanation?

  ‘And what happened then?’ he asked.

  ‘She said she’d take Noll into the kindergarten, and I got in the car and drove away,’ she said.

  ‘What? You left your child with this stranger? All right, so she said she was a teacher at the kindergarten, but you only had her word for it, didn’t you? And didn’t it occur to you to wonder, if you were so late, what was this so-called teacher doing wandering around outside at that time too?’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think of that. Not then.’

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and regarded him earnestly.

  ‘But I wouldn’t have left Noll if I hadn’t been certain, no matter how much of a hurry I was in. I knew she was a teacher because I’d met her in the school. On Friday afternoon when I picked Noll up. She was there. In the school. She talked to me about Noll. She said she’d just started and was trying to get to know all the mothers.’

  ‘But Mrs Vestey says …’

  ‘She’s a liar!’ cried Maguire, jumping up once more. ‘She’s the one you should be questioning. That bitch. She’s a liar, a liar, a liar!’

  She was moving round the room again. But now the cat-like grace had gone, to be replaced by something much more spasmodic, angular, almost manic.

  WPC Scott was looking at him anxiously. He nodded and she rose and slipped quietly out.

  He said, ‘When you fainted, Mrs Maguire, the last words you said were, I quote: it’s all my fault; I shouldn’t have hit him. What do you think you meant by that?’

  She came to a sudden halt, freezing to complete stillness like a child playing statues.

  ‘It was me who said that?’ she asked, though it was only marginally a question.
/>
  ‘So I am informed.’

  ‘I must have meant … I suppose I meant … it was when I was getting him out of the car. That’s it. He was yelling his head off and flailing out with his hands and legs. He kicked me on the shin. It was an accident. When I looked down, I saw he’d torn my tights and I swore. I said, “Oh shit!” and he took it up. You know what little boys are like with naughty words. He just stood there shouting, “Shit! Shit! Shit!” and I hit him. I didn’t think about it. I just slapped his leg very hard like my mother used to do to me. He didn’t cry or anything. In fact he went completely silent. I’d never hit him before, you see. Then his face began to crumple up and he turned to run away, and that’s when he ran into Miss Gosling. Perhaps if I hadn’t hit him … And we never made up …’

  Her body was racked with huge sobs, each one of which visibly drained her reserves of strength. She seemed to be collapsing in on herself and she had started rocking to and fro like a tower in an earthquake, when the door opened and a nurse and a doctor hurried in, with Scott close behind.

  They caught her and lifted her towards the bed.

  ‘Do you mind?’ said the nurse angrily, as she found Cicero in her way. The doctor scowled at him with unconcealed distaste and even WPC Scott couldn’t hide her disapproval.

  Dog Cicero didn’t seem to register any of this, but watched pensively as they laid Jane Maguire on the bed. The doctor said, ‘I think you’d better go now, Inspector. We can’t delay this X-ray any longer.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Excuse me.’

  He leaned over the bed before they could draw the sheet up and looked at the woman’s shins. Then he went across to the tall locker against the wall, opened it, reached in, and emerged with a pair of tights. He held them up to the light, and stretched them out.

  They were perfect.

  ‘Let us know as soon as she’s fit to talk to us again, won’t you?’ he said pleasantly.

  He went out. The young constable followed. In the corridor he said to her, ‘You stay here, Scott. By the bedside. Whatever she says, waking or sleeping, you make a note. Get me?’

  ‘Sir, what do you think …? The child, will he be all right?’

  ‘Is he still alive, you mean?’ He regarded her steadily. ‘If you can get even money, take it, Scott.’