The Games People Play Box Set

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  He'd had help, since he hardly expected himself to be a geek in an office, but now he had a way to trace the damned woman. She had kept an old tablet, one he’d actually given her several years ago, because of the old photographs and audible romance books she’d collected. Presumably, the police had told her to chuck it, and now she had a new one, but the old one remained traceable.

  There was never a mirror, so he remained unaware of the purple stains still on the side of his face from his last unsuccessful adventure. But the hood covered most of his face in shade.

  It was a shop he’d never entered in his life before, but he could see what it sold. “Someone’s stolen my little laptop thing,” Lionel had complained. “A tablet, and a good one. I bought it here six years ago when the damn things were new and expensive. It’s been nicked. So how do I trace it?”

  “You inform the police, sir. Their station’s just around the corner.”

  Lionel had sniffed. “Look, don’t report me or anything. But I can’t. Films and pictures, you know, the sort I shouldn’t have. I mean it’s not kids or anything disgusting, but I couldn’t risk the cops. They’d think I was a perv. I’d be so embarrassed. I swear it’s not anything too bad, but well, I admit, I couldn’t show the wife.”

  “Here.” Pushing over a small card with a name, an address and phone number, and a pattern of arrows following smaller arrows. “My brother Paul. He’s a fanatic on this sort of thing. He won’t be interested in the rubbish you’ve got on there, but he’ll trace anything, given time and clues.”

  Lionel had phoned the fanatical Paul, and now he was hidden, head down, in his small black Austin which was parked further down the road where Joyce Sullivan now lived. The car was not particularly comfortable, and after two days and two nights, Lionel was suffering from more aches and pains that he had in prison. But on the third morning, Joyce trotted out of the front door, slammed it firmly shut behind her, and began to walk up the street. By the time Lionel thought it safe to follow her, she had turned down a side street.

  He drove at first, keeping at a distance and taking two diversions. Eventually, as time slipped away and he realised that the blasted woman was intending a long walk off to some village somewhere, he parked the car and began to walk himself. Hands in gardening gloves, then stuffed in pockets, hooded coat enveloping the entire body in navy duffle, wellington boots thick in mud, Lionel appeared normal enough, like any other farm worker, on the larger end of the scale, trudging in the rain. It was a blustery sleet that closed off the horizon and made long walks illogical. Lionel wondered vaguely what his wife, now his ex-wife, was up to but he kept walking, head down. She’d never owned a car and couldn’t drive. Cursing, he reminded himself of the pleasure to come.

  Heading for open country, Joyce aimed for the short cut to Rochester Manor. It was still some distance away, but she was sick of being stuck inside and having put up with an abusive husband for many years, a little cold rain wasn’t going to spoil the visit. Nor was she concerned with a short cut across soaked countryside. Taking the long way was simple madness. She expected to be welcomed, given wine and probably cake, invited to stay for lunch and maybe even dinner because of the weather. Inevitably the plodding handyman would offer to drive her home after an interesting day of conversation and good company. Staying at home meant saying ‘Good morning’ to the police, and possibly ‘Thank you’ for a cup of undrinkable over-brewed tea. Then she’d sit in the badly heated living room for hours and hours and watch Escape to the Country. Well, she was already in the country and hoped to escape the endless monotony.

  Never having learned to drive, walking had become a lifetime habit. She was only a short distance across one soggy field when she heard the slosh of boots, looked around and saw him. The figure, even at a considerable distance, was a galloping black bear, and the threat was immediately obvious. Lionel was unmistakable.

  She had been untraceable and promised safety. It seemed impossible that the devil had discovered her. A threat without hope, and a nightmare without logic. Joyce almost choked with terror, but the adrenalin rush swirled into her head and she ran faster than she ever had in her life before. Her boots stuck in mud but she ripped them free as she swerved away from her original direction and raced towards the nearest hedge and burst through into the lower slope of the heavily treed horizon.

  The spikes on the pruned surface of the boundary hedge scratched at her, but she sped through its scrubby twigs and ran without slowing to the trees beyond. First down a slope, bringing greater energy, but then upwards, which she took on the diagonal to lessen the strain. The first trees sheltered her and Joyce disappeared into the shadows. Trying for greater silence, she turned, heading towards the forested copse which would eventually cut to the road. Yet she slipped, gulped as she fell back, and slid directly down and into the murk of the winter pond below. Then, both feet stuck in bog and the swirl of the muddied water around her knees, she held her breath and waited, staring back up at the ridge from which she had slipped. The marks of her shoes were horribly visible.

  Barely hurrying, Lionel appeared at the crest of the slope, looking down. He sniggered and stared. He was licking his lips.

  Now gasping for breath, Joyce could taste the fear. Acid bile rose up in her stomach and she was sure she’d be sick. But she did not dare stop and kept running. Splashing over the boggy pond and its trickle of stream, she climbed the bank and disappeared between the trees where they grew thicker and cast blacker, thicker shadows. The rain barely found a passage between the branches although few of the trees were evergreen, and only the occasional spruce fluttered its leaves. A bare-branched oak sprang from a trunk thick enough to hide her. Joyce wondered if she could climb it. She had never, even as a child, climbed a tree. But never before had she been chased by a killer who hated her.

  She wore trousers, a brand for women with more interest in comfort than style, so the waist was elasticated. She might, just might manage one leg up, then two, then hang on tight to whatever branch she could grasp. There wasn’t time to doubt herself.

  Peeping from the darkness into the grey sleet, Joyce tried to see where Lionel had reached, and if he knew where she was hiding. For some time there was no sound except the rush of the wind and rain. Yet there was another sound she heard, louder, and continuous, and that was the pounding of her heartbeat. It called for urgency. Still heaving for breath, she crouched, pulled off her boots, tied the laces and hung them around her neck, and very carefully started to climb. The oak tree, stubby and widely spreading, carried her upwards, holding the curl of her stockinged toes safe. Above her, black and bare against the white sky, the interwoven tracery of bare branches was tight knit and alien. Even the sleet made little entrance here. She slipped only once and clambered on upwards. One branch, high and solid, spread like an invitation amongst the others, and here she managed to straddle, clinging in fright to the main trunk, but almost invisible from below. Had it been spring, had the oak been a swirl of leaf, she could have crouched therefore long hours unseen, but being proud of her accomplishment did not think Lionel would look upwards. A middle-aged woman sitting in an oak tree. That clashed with her usual steady uninspired and orthodox obedience. He could not expect his plump and placid little wife, devoid of personality and lacking all agility, could ever climb a tree.

  She did not dare breathe deeply and did not move. He came through the copse, avoiding the road and pushing at the trees around him. His head bent downwards as he searched for footprints, his eyes shifting straight as he looked for a running shadow. He did not peer up. Joyce had hidden her footsteps with a scuffle of undergrowth and a clump of gorse. Lionel walked on. She could hear his grumble of madness.

  “Find her for me, bitch. You fly, black witch, so find her for me. If you sit on my shoulder with your rancid fur up my nose, I’ll kill myself and you with me.”

  Joyce shivered but did not fall.

  He was over the next slope and plodding a ditch when the branch cracked. She still
did not fall, but Lionel had heard. He turned like a hound at bay, thanked Olga with a chuckle for having found the old hag, and bounded to the oak tree. Joyce clung desperately and stayed where she was. Lionel kicked at the tree. His boots were massive, and the tree shook. With both arms, he clasped the trunk, pulling with every inch of his strength. Pulling, pulling, grunting, puffing and pulling again, and very gradually the tree began to slope over. Too solid to break, the trunk bent just a little, and finally Joyce fell.

  With a whoop of success, Lionel grabbed her. Joyce accepted death. “Get on with it,” she shouted at him. “But you’ll be caught. Enjoy me dying. I’ll shriek if you want. But the cops’ll shoot. We’ll die together, and then I’ll laugh.”

  It didn’t make a lot of sense, but he listened. Then his whole fist within the leather gardening glove slammed into her jaw. She slumped, not unconscious but unable to stand for one essential minute. In that minute Lionel shoved the point of a short knife into her shoulder.

  Aimed at her neck, her collapse sideways spoiled the strike. Even through the thick coat and clothes beneath, Joyce started to bleed. It first soaked from the cut outwards onto the woollen material and then poured. She felt no pain whatsoever, wrapped in warmth and drugged with adrenalin, Joyce twisted up with her other hand and shoved beneath the heavy coat up between Lionel’s legs. She punched first. She had neither the force nor the size of fist she’d suffered herself, but Lionel squeaked and staggered back. She clung and moved with him. Now her fingers grasped his testicles and squeezed with all the strength she could muster. The adrenalin doubled the power. Lionel howled.

  Joyce ran. The road wasn’t far, and she could hear engines. Not a busy road, but a car might find her. Like Olga, she flew.

  It was a stumble from mud to the grassy verge, and from verge to ditch, but Joyce staggered out into the middle of the narrow wet road. She saw the headlights blurred by sleet. The golden brilliance blinded her. In a confusion of horror and the sudden influx of violent pain, Joyce toppled and fainted.

  The driver thought he would hit her. She had been less than a small dark blur through the windblown rain, and he was on her before he saw her and swerved. The screech of his tyres on the wet and frozen road was the only sound Lionel heard. He sat in mud and began to cry. Only Olga listened to him and smiled.

  Her faint had nearly killed her, and her husband had nearly killed her, but Joyce twice escaped death. The car driver, with one dash from car to road, quickly phoned for both ambulance and police. Then he stayed with her, sitting and soaked, trying to balance his crazy heartbeat and his frantic breathing. The ambulance came first. Two sirens echoed amongst the trees.

  Joyce was taken to the same hospital, although not the same ward as Iris, Ruby and Candy, who had now also been separated. That early evening visiting hour, Harry and Sylvia went to see Ruby and intended a brief word with Iris. Instead, they ended up staying for some considerable time.

  53

  “Unexpected, if nothing else,” agreed Morrison as he apologised for bumping into Sylvia in the hospital corridor. Morrison had questioned Candy Libansky but as he was leaving a DC hurried in with the news concerning Joyce Sullivan. “No, it isn’t Lionel Sullivan I’ve been assigned as a case, but since the other business is somewhat of a stalemate, I was asked to follow up on the young woman who managed by her own courage and luck to escape imminent murder.”

  “I was here visiting my friend Ruby.” Sylvia pointed to the lift. “There’s a decent cafeteria downstairs. Do you want a coffee? I want to tell you about someone else. She’s Iris Little, and she needs help.”

  “The hospital,” said Harry in the background, “is overflowing with our friends and acquaintances.”

  “And you’ve caught Lionel?”

  “Not yet,” Morrison told her, agreeing to the coffee. “But there’s half the police force of Gloucestershire out looking for him with a fair knowledge of where he should be. I await the phone call.”

  “Iris,” said Sylvia, accepting the coffee which Harry had ordered, “is someone I really want to help. I met her in the casino. Yes, I know that sounds a bit odd, but I was there out of boredom, dragged along by – a friend. And Iris was there because she’s ill. I really mean ill. She’s a gambling addict, to extremes. She’s lost everything to the slot machines. It’s horrible and extremely sad. She was found unconscious and frozen and three quarter starved in the street.”

  “There’s quite a lot we need to discuss, it seems.” Morrison was looking unusually tired. “Peggy spends a good deal of her time overseeing and getting involved with Aged Care. No doubt she’s thinking of putting me in a home sometime soon. In the meantime, come over tomorrow evening if you’re free. You’d be welcome, and I might even be home too. Peggy and the two hundred kids will probably order in fish and chips.”

  “My favourite,” Harry hated fish and chips. “But I should go on a boring diet. So many people are running for their lives – I’d be lucky to outrun a hedgehog.”

  “Lavender is thinking of hiring guards,” Sylvia nodded, “for the manor. It might be a good idea, though I think Arthur would be as good a guard as anybody.”

  “We’ll come over at about seven,” Harry added, “if that sounds O.K.?”

  Morrison thought a moment. “I’ll ask Peggy to visit your old lady tomorrow afternoon while the kids are at school. One thirty? You could meet her there. But she’ll invite you for dinner anyway.”

  It was a natural decision to visit to the hospital the next morning, but it was Ruby they went to see first, expecting her discharge at about ten. Joyce Sullivan, however, was clearly the patient attracting the most attention. The press had heard the rumours, from a bored nurse perhaps. And although not admitted to visit, they shoved and pushed around the main doorway and were most definitely in the way of anyone whose visit was more valid. An elderly man in a wheelchair being pushed by a young woman in uniform was at first hurried inside as the media squash parted for them, yet were discovered to be from the local paper.

  “I’m afraid not,” said the doctor, tapping one neat black leather foot. “She’s under police guard at present. Only family members are permitted.”

  “She hasn’t got any, except the man who attacked her,” said Sylvia.

  “Nevertheless,” said the doctor, “rules are rules, and I’m very busy. I’m afraid you cannot go in to see Mrs Sullivan.”

  So they went in to see Ruby, who was almost ready to leave. They had brought her the clothes she now wore, but looked fragile. “Beautiful Bluebell, we have a mountain of cakes waiting at home.”

  And Ruby collapsed back onto the bed in tears. Grabbing a tissue, she wiped her eyes and sniffed. “I’ve been such a fool.”

  “Depression,” said Harry, “is a horrible thing. I got that way once, after – well, that doesn’t matter. No children, you know. And I was a slow learner. Recuperation, that’s what we all need sometimes. Not just cake. Holidays. Fun. Comedy at the cinema. Parties”.

  “Now don’t you go feeling ashamed or embarrassed or anything like that – it would be a quick road back into depression.” Sylvia grabbed her hand. “Everyone at the Manor admires you. Fame and fortune, my love, along with beauty and brains.”

  Harry blinked. “How do you fancy an African safari?”

  “Not alone,” sniffed Ruby.

  “No. With us.”

  Her eyes glittered both with tears and with growing excitement. “I’d love to.” The glitter dulled. “But you have to go alone. It’s a sort of honeymoon.”

  “No it isn’t, and we want you. We’re thinking of booking for September when all the school parties have gone back to their maths, and the backpackers are heading home.”

  “We could take you to the circus, and you can eat your next cake while twirling on the Merry-go-Round. That’ll put you off cake for years.”

  Ruby giggled, and that helped.

  Iris wasn’t laughing and appeared to be fast asleep. Having taken Ruby home and tucked her in bed wi
th cake on the bedside table, Harry and Sylvia had returned to the hospital but had no intention of waking the woman, white-faced, who seemed to disappear beneath the bedclothes.

  “She’s badly dehydrated and seriously undernourished,” the nurse said, all of them standing outside in the corridor. “We’ll be keeping her here for at least another week. But in a day or two, I’m sure she’ll be delighted to have some company and see friendly smiling faces.”

  Peggy Morrison met them in the corridor and joined Sylvia and Harry for a coffee and somewhat unexciting lunch in the hospital cafeteria.

  Ruby’s welcome back at the manor was arranged for the day after her return, allowing her one more day to settle back and cheer up. She slept, ate, and slept through the night. The next day was her carefully arranged welcome home. The cheering up part didn’t take too much time. Two cakes, twenty two cuddles, and three glasses of wine finally did the trick.

  “It all seemed suddenly pointless,” she explained to Sylvia, her voice a little slurred. “You were so busy. I mean, you used to be my sister. I love Harry too, but you just love him. I wasn’t bluebell anymore. I was just in the way.”

  “My dearest and gorgeous Bluebell,” Sylvia said, “Although not my husband, you’re still very much my sister. Sometimes my daughter, since I probably had you when I was five.”

  “I’m not just blaming you,” insisted Ruby. “It was all this death and misery and that sad little Iris. Another flower. But very wilted. They call it the Black Death, don’t they?”

  “Winston Churchill had horrible depressions. He called them Black Dogs.”

  “Perhaps he was bipolar. I’m not. I just sometimes feel sorry for myself. That’s shocking, isn’t it? I miss Rod horribly, of course, even though I have to be honest with you Sylvikins and admit he wasn’t bothered about me at the end. But I still loved him. I know – pathetic. So I get all wound up and do stupid things. Maybe it was just a call for help and attention. I’m sorry. And I’ll never do it again.”