Child's Play (41 page)
‘
You frightened those horses,’ Janet said, rather accusingly, as she and Daisy meandered through the woods towards the swimming pool.
‘
I didn’t! Tonto was just fooling around.’
‘
It didn’t look like that to me.’
Daisy
stopped. ‘But do you know much about horses? Have you ever kept your own?’
‘
Have you?’
Favouring
her with a scowl instead of replying, Daisy took off at a jog trot, her dark figure camouflaged by the dappled sunlight striking through the branches. Janet strode after her, imagining she was the cat stalking the mouse in this game they seemed to be playing and reminding herself that she could be caught unawares by a reversal of roles. Every so often, Daisy glanced over her shoulder, to make sure Janet was still with her.
Who
was leading whom? Janet wondered. Then, her attention caught by a snatch of music on the wind, she paused, and hearing voices lifted in praise somewhere not too far away, felt again that stab of nostalgia. But for what? she asked herself, as the rustle of leaves overwhelmed the hymn. For games of tennis so hard fought they blistered the hands; for Sunday morning service and the scent of incense; for dew-kissed grass to roam on a summer morning; for twilit rendezvous in hidden places; for secret passions and shared secrets; for the agonising extremes of youthful emotion; and for the first experience of love that simultaneously opened the gates of Hell.
‘
What’s wrong with you?’ Daisy blocked her way.
Janet
’s heart thumped in her throat. ‘Don’t
do
that!’
‘
Why? Did I scare you?’ Daisy’s eyes gleamed. ‘Did you think I was Sukie’s ghost?’
The
path McKenna next found himself following was gravelled, snaking through a plantation of massive ancient oaks. As the wind stirred their crowns, the trees groaned mournfully and low-hanging branches touched his face and body. Completely disorientated, he crunched onwards, hoping to find a clearing so that he could feel the wind and see the sun, but the further he walked the more lost he became. Like the crazy drive, the path led him towards each compass point in turn and when he stopped to peer skywards through a break in the great leaf canopy he saw only that the sun must be nearing its zenith. Then he heard a car door slam somewhere ahead. Almost at the run, he reached the top of a gentle slope, where below was what his bemused eye perceived as a fairy-tale cottage. He expected to see smoke curling from the chimney, peeping fawns, a woodcutter, Snow White, the Seven Dwarfs, but all he saw was the witch. She was stowing suitcases into the boot of a sleek red car.
He
pulled up short and, supporting himself against a tree, in full view should she glance in his direction, he watched her. She put away the last suitcase, hesitated briefly, then made for the open door of a square white house that was as stark as the memory of their Friday encounter, which continued to play in the theatre of his mind like a blatantly contrived bit of drama, where he was at once audience, actor and critic.
She
emerged carrying a large carton, which she placed on the ground beside the car. Twice more she went back and forth, adding to the stack of paraphernalia with each trip, working methodically and systematically, and despite the ignominy of her exit, looking as cool and collected as ever. At one point her head jerked up, as if, like the horses in the paddock, she sensed his presence, but the moment passed. Shutting the car boot, she went into the house and closed the door decisively.
Arms
loosely folded, Janet stood beside Daisy at the side of the swimming pool, gazing about admiringly. At one end the tiered diving platform hung against a backdrop of trees, its austere lines complementing nature’s inconclusive arrangements. The pool house at the opposite end balanced the other structure, pulling the eye back and forth across the great expanse of water. The wind disturbed the water’s surface, fragmenting reflections and making the drowned dolphin wriggle among the brilliant blue tiles. The scene reminded her of a David Hockney painting, where a quiet emptiness touched on a sense of something gone but something to come. The soft splashing noise as the water hit the sides of the pool and the whispering wind evoked the ghostly cries of girls at sport and, mesmerised by the shivering dolphin, she imagined Imogen upon its back, cleaving the water as if whole. The ghostly cries became the jeers of Nancy’s cruel games when Imogen hauled herself back into the solid world and was forced to beg for mercy and her crutches.
Daisy
nudged her. ‘Had Sukie been chewed up by rats and crabs?’
Janet
’s flesh threatened to crawl off her bones. ‘What a
horrible
thing to say!’
‘
Why? It happens, doesn’t it?’ Daisy touched her again. ‘Well?
Had
she?’
Turning
on her heel, Janet moved away from the water. Her legs were suddenly stiff. ‘No,’ she replied curtly. ‘She had not.’
‘
That’s good, isn’t it? Otherwise, it would have been even
more
horrible for her parents when they identified her.’ Trotting to keep abreast, Daisy asked, ‘Have you seen lots of bodies? Did you see Sukie’s body? What did she really look like?’
Janet
stopped in the lee of the pool house. Refusing to meet Daisy’s eager eyes, she said, ‘Yes, I’ve seen lots of bodies. No, I didn’t see Sukie. However,’ she went on, teeth gritted, ‘my colleagues tell me she simply looked very dead and very sad.’
‘
They must mean before she was cut up. We dissect corpses in biology, you know. They look
awful
when they’re in bits.’
‘
What is it with you, eh?’ Janet rounded on her. ‘You’re like some damned ghoul!’
Daisy
stepped back as if she had been struck. Her face sagged, she mumbled something unintelligible, then took off in the direction of the playing fields. She moved fast and, once under the cloak of trees, became as one with the other shadows.
Janet
went in pursuit, the play of light and shade constantly deceiving her, as if the woods were a magic place where people could lose their bodily selves. She caught up with her at last by a set of tennis courts that were, like the pool, relics of another era. Daisy had her fingers hooked into the high, dark-green netting surrounding the complex and was staring at the puddles still lying on the dusty clay and the angular shadows cast by the umpire’s tall seats. Separated internally by the green netting, the four courts lay at the foot of a broad sweep of shallow steps leading to a wooden pavilion with an ornately canopied veranda, but courts and pavilion wore an air of abandonment and the veranda was heaped with drifts of dead leaves.
‘
I don’t suppose anyone’s played here for a long time,’ Janet commented, when the heavy silence began to weigh on her.
‘
Well, you suppose wrong,’ Daisy replied sharply. ‘The sixth form use it for exhibition matches on Sports Day while the parents and teachers have tea in the pavilion.’ Unhooking herself, she wandered towards the building, trailing her fingers along the netting. Twice she stopped to open the gates to the courts and the squealing bolts set Janet’s teeth on edge.
‘
Did Sukie play in the matches?’
Daisy
shook her head.
‘
I wish I knew why she went into the woods on Tuesday,’ Janet said. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t drag
me
in there after dark.’
‘
Maybe she thought Nancy was going to hack off one of Purdey’s legs.’
Janet
felt sick.
‘
Nancy reckoned it would be a properly biblical revenge for Imogen’s leg, you see,’ Daisy went on, coming to a stop by the pavilion. The white-painted brick walls on which the building rested were stained with moss and damp, while trumpet-flowered bindweed crept upwards and outwards from a tangle of roots on the ground.
Shocked
into immobility, Janet asked, ‘How did Nancy know about the accident?’
‘
Sukie told her.’ Daisy began beating a passage through the undergrowth.
Watching
her batter the plants, Janet imagined how Sukie had been persuaded to open her mouth. ‘And how did you find out?’ she asked.
Instead
of answering, Daisy disappeared round the corner and Janet was forced to follow. Her legs felt weak and she trod gingerly on the moss that carpeted the paving behind the building.
Daisy
was standing at the foot of a steep, narrow flight of concrete steps leading to a slatted door green with mould. With a triangular space underneath, the steps leaned against the building like a small replica of the fire escapes at the main school. The handrail looked very flimsy. ‘We can get in this way if you want,’ she suggested. ‘There might be some racquets and balls inside.’
‘
I don’t want to play tennis.’ Janet snapped. ‘I want you to answer my question.’
‘
I overheard. OK?’
‘
And when did Nancy dream up that diabolical idea about Purdey?’
Daisy
shrugged. ‘Dunno.’
‘
Well, then, when did she intend to
do
it?’
Daisy
sat on the bottom step. ‘She was probably just tormenting.’ Picking dirt from under her fingernails, she added, ‘Like Therese
said
she’d wrecked Charlotte’s clothes to upset Dr Scott.’
Absently,
Janet brushed away a dandelion puff sticking to her sweater and watched it drift in Daisy’s direction. ‘But like Dr Scott,’ she said, half to herself, ‘Sukie couldn’t know it was an empty threat.’
Pursing
her lips, Daisy blew back the puff.
As
the delicate little seeds touched Janet’s face, she focused on Daisy. ‘Who else has found out?’ she asked.
‘
What about?’
‘
The accident.’
‘
Charlotte.’ Daisy paused, then said, ‘Imogen didn’t need telling, did she?’
‘
Do you really expect me to believe you haven’t spread it around? It was dynamite.’
Daisy
’s eyes flickered. ‘Nancy doesn’t know I was listening. She’d kill me if she found out.’
‘
Would she? Perhaps
she
killed Sukie.’
‘
No way!’
‘
What about Charlotte, then?’
‘
Oh, get real! She can’t stand the sight of blood. She was sick all over the school the first time she saw Imogen legless.’
‘
So that leaves you, doesn’t it?’
Daisy
flexed her fingers. ‘What does?’
‘
As the only other person who knew how to lure Sukie into the woods.’
Daisy
escaped up the steps. Near the top, she stumbled when her foot slipped on a clump of lichen.
Recovering
her balance, she unhooked the hasp on the door, pushed it open and vanished.
Again
forced to follow her, Janet wondered if she were not, like Sukie before her, being led straight into a death trap.
When
Nona arrived home, she found a note from her husband stuck under the tomato-shaped magnet on the refrigerator door. ‘Gone to Mam’s,’ it read. ‘Back for lunch. Love, Gwynfor.’
A
mug of coffee at her elbow, she leafed through the Sunday papers, before going for a long, leisurely soak, taking a colour supplement with her. The hot water and a generous dollop of foaming bath lotion were balm to her aching body, and as her eyes began to close of their own accord she dropped the magazine over the side of the tub.
She
had no recollection of dreaming. Instantly awake, heart once again pounding thunderously in her ears, words hung in front of her eyes as if on a banner. Scrambling willy-nilly out of the tub, she grabbed a towel and ran to the bedroom, leaving a trail of sodden footprints on the carpet and bubbles floating everywhere.
As
she punched out numbers on the telephone, her fingers felt as stiff as twigs. Janet’s mobile rang and rang, but no one responded. She tried to call McKenna, but heard an echoing void. Frantically she called the operations room. ‘Get hold of Superintendent McKenna!’ she cried, when the duty operator answered. ‘Tell him Janet’s in terrible danger! Daisy Podmore killed that girl.’ As the operator started to ask for details, Nona shouted her down: ‘Just
tell
him! Now!’ She cut the connection and again rang Janet’s mobile, but there was still no response. Weeping, she slumped on the side of the bed, the telephone clutched in her wet hands. When she next called McKenna’s mobile, a disembodied voice told her to leave a message.
‘
Last night,’ she began, choking back the tears, ‘Daisy kept saying the killer could be waiting outside the flat and she wouldn’t have a bath, because, she said, the killer “could break in and hold me down in the water until I drowned like Sukie”.’ Sobbing uncontrollably, she went on, ‘I’ve only just realised what she said. She could only know about that if she killed her.’ Then, in a whisper: ‘I’m sorry. I’m so dreadfully
sorry
!’