The Winds of Change (37 page)

‘
Pretend
,’ said Pansy. ‘He means to
pretend
, Rosie.’

‘That’s right. If you don’t look upset, Mrs. Murchison will wonder and we don’t want that. We need five minutes to get ready. What about the other girls, Pansy?’

‘We always have to stay in that room. There’s a telly but we mostly fight about what to watch. There’s games and stuff, but we don’t feel like playing. The only times we get to leave the room is when we eat and when we get to go out in back for fifteen minutes.’ Rosie was making a face over one of the illustrations. ‘I didn’t like breakfast. The eggs were all runny.’

‘We get to eat at a table in the kitchen, three of us at a time and Samantha sits with us, or Eddie. He’s horrible. They’re supposed to watch us so we don’t cause trouble. But Samantha does let us talk as long as we don’t get too loud. Only, there’s not much to talk about except–you know–bad stuff, and nobody wants to talk about that. It’s too scary.’

It was the deepest blush Jury had ever seen. Pansy looked down at the floor, ashamed.

Jury said, ‘It’s okay, Pansy. You’ve done nothing wrong. It’s they who’ve done it. How many girls are here now?’

‘There’s nine. I counted them,’ said Rosie. She was frowning at another page, probably at the ice baby.

‘There’s ten,’ said Pansy. ‘You left yourself out.’

‘I don’t like the food,’ she said again, in case they’d forgotten.

Jury asked, ‘Does Mrs. Murchison really start the girls this early?’ He was looking at Rosie.

‘Yes. But Rosie’s the youngest. Me, I was seven.’ Again, Pansy’s face went hot red, like the bars of the stingy electric heater.

‘You’ve been here two years?’ Jury tried to sound matter-of-fact; he didn’t want her feeling any more ashamed than she already did.

Still, she looked anywhere but at Jury. Then she said, ‘Samantha’s been here five. April’s been here three. Longer than me.’

‘All right, listen. Rosie, listen to me.’ Rosie popped her face out of the book and pretended to. ‘After we go downstairs, I want you both to go back to your room and tell the others to put on their coats–’

Pansy was astonished. ‘But they only let us have them when we go outside; she keeps the coats somewhere in a closet. We go out back in the garden for fifteen minutes. There’s no flowers, though. It’s got a high fence.’

‘Does Samantha watch you?’

‘Her and this man Eddie–’ She looked as if she wanted to spit. ‘Both watch us. They tell us to play, but we just sit. There’s nothing to play with and we’re too tired anyway. So we sit on the steps or stand by the fence. It’s all we do. It makes Eddie mad. I don’t know why.’

‘It’s all about control. Only now, we’re the ones controlling things. Do you have blankets on your beds?’

She nodded.

‘Then tell the girls to bring them to wrap themselves up when they get outside.’

Her eyes widened, this time with recognition, and although she worked her mouth, she could hardly speak. They were going out; they were leaving this place. ‘How can you.., how can we–?’

Jury took out his warrant card. ‘I’m a policeman.’ Wide eyed, Pansy slapped her hands on her face, staring at him. Even Rosie raised her eyes from the book to look. He went on, There s another policeman in a car outside. We’re getting you girls out.

All of you are going to leave, if you’re careful to do what I tell you.

Rosie went back to looking at the book. Into this brief and frozen silence she said, ‘I think I’ll be an ice baby. They only melt.’ She paused and looked at Jury almost beseechingly. ‘It’s better than getting stolen.’ She was looking at Jury for confirmation of this hard decision.

‘It’s better not being either.’ Jury took out the cell phone and punched in the number. ‘Wait ten minutes and come in.’ He snapped the phone shut.

Going down the stairs, Pansy and Rosie were putting on a show, Pansy looking desperate and holding her arms across her stomach, Rosie doing a good job of pretend weeping. He wanted to applaud them both.

It made Mrs. Murchison, standing at the bottom of the stairs, smile. She gave Rosie a little slap on her bottom, saying, ‘Now go on with you, girl. You’re all right.’

The two, without so much as another look at Jury, pulled the table out, slid the door back and went into their prison room.

Mrs. Murchison said, ‘That’s over the half hour, so I’ll have to charge you for the whole hour.’ She beamed as he drew out his wallet, brought out two fifty-pound notes. Then she added, in a whisper, ‘But I expect it was worth it.’

Years in the job had taught Jury incredible self-mastery. Otherwise, he would have killed her where she stood. He handed over the hundred. It was the transaction; he wanted money to change hands. If this ever had a flaming chance of coming to court. Then his years of self-mastery melted away like the ice baby. He flipped his ID open, shoved it close to her face.

‘What? Police?’ She backed away. ‘You can’t walk into a person’s house like this. Where’s your warrant? You never showed me any warrant–’

He slammed her up against the wall. ‘This is my warrant!’ She flailed, arms going everywhere.

‘Wait till my solicitor–I’ll be screaming police brutality, you just wait!’

The little girls, each with her blanket, were filing out of the back room with looks that ranged from joy to utter disbelief. When they saw Jury with his forearm cutting across Murchison’s throat, they stopped dead.

Jury let her go.

‘Eddie!’ she yelled.

The girls were dithering, beginning to laugh.

Jury looked around to see a thin man snaking round the other side of the staircase, apparently come from the kitchen. He was pointing a .45 at him. ‘Okay, mate. Back off.’

Jury dropped his arm and stepped back. The girls on that side of the staircase backed off, too. Jury could understand why: Eddie was one of the meanest-looking men he had ever seen, with a long pocked face, testament to an old battle with acne, and a nose and mouth that looked thin and sharp as knives.

‘You okay, Murch?’

Murch was better than okay. With renewed fervor and a few tugs at dress and corset, she strided in in medias res: ‘Coming in here without a warrant, just you wait, when Mr. Baum–’ She stopped, realizing she had named him. ‘We’ll have your badge and your job and don’t be surprised when we drag you and the whole Metropolitan Police Force into court! Here you are, giving all them a bad name!’

Jury smiled. ‘Maybe, but it was worth it.’

Eddie let fly with a little invective of his own, happy in the knowledge that he had the only gun.

Only he hadn’t.

What Jury had taken for a shadow deep in the stairwell wasn’t a shadow. Cody? Had he had the prescience to go around-A gun fired and Eddie looked surprised and started to turn when another shot caught him in the turn and he slithered to the floor, a strand of blood snaking down his chin.

Mrs. Murchison yelled. The little girls moved forward in a wave.

Samantha stood there behind Eddie with the gun at her side looking at Jury not with her earlier cold detachment, but helplessly involved.

Mrs. Murchison made the mistake of opening her mouth.

‘You! Wait till he gets ahold of you! You’ll be sorry–’ The gun came up again but this time the shot was thwarted by ten little girls swarming between Mrs. Murchison and Samantha.

They yelled, sang her name jumping up and down like the wild things in the book. ‘Samantha, Samantha, Samantha!’ She had saved them all; she had saved the day. Some were weeping with joy.

Jury moved through them to take the gun from Samantha’s hand. Her face, skin the color of porcelain, looked crazed, as if it might come apart at any moment. He put his arm around her, her head on his shoulder. ‘It’s all right, Samantha. Everything will be all right now. Look, you’ve saved all of us.’

The ring of the bell had changed to a relentless pounding on the door. Pansy went to open it. She seemed near gleeful that a stranger stood there.

Cody walked in. ‘What the hell, guv? What the hell’s been going on?’

He was immediately surrounded by little girls, two of them swinging on his hands.

Jury didn’t answer the question; he saw that Mrs. Murchison was edging into the lounge, which she could very quickly lock.

The telephone was in there. ‘Cody!’ He nodded toward her.

Cody made a lunge that had them both on the parlor floor. The kids whooped and hollered as if it was the most fun they’d had in years. It probably was. Cody got up, yanked her up without a care for ripping the silk and shoved her against the wall in the same lock that Jury had had on her a few minutes ago.

The kids started in again, this time with ‘Cody, Cody, Cody, Cody.’ Another savior. How many saviors were there and all at once? There seemed to be no limit to freedom. They were swinging their blankets in the air like small matadors.

‘Hey, guv?’

‘What?’ said Jury, who was bundling Samantha into his coat.

She was clearly in shock.

‘Should I restrain her?’

‘Of course.’

‘No cuffs, no rope, okay.’ He shrugged and delivered a right to the Murchison chin that sent her down the wall like Eddie, only still alive. Worse luck. Cody beamed.

The girls shouted. Better and better. What other delights were in store? Rosie was jumping up and down like a cork.

With Murchison ‘restrained,’ Cody said hello to the girls and held out his arms. They fairly flew at him, but he was strong and they couldn’t get past.

Jury smiled. Cody Platt, snooker player, copper, catcher in the rye.

40

Chief Superintendent Racer was all over it: his nemesis, Richard Jury, like Richard the Second and Richard Nixon before him had been, so to speak, relieved of their command, that is, suspended, so was Jury to be just about any day now, pending further investigation.

Jury was in Racer’s outer office with Fiona. He was studying the cat Cyril–definitely not a quick study–and said, ‘He likens it to a deposition or a dethronement, doesn’t he?’

‘Hasn’t been in this good a humor since he made chief,’ said Fiona. ‘‘Flagrant abuse of police protocol,’ indeed!’ That was from some memo or other that had crossed her desk. She had said it so many times, she had memorized it. ‘Shocking, that is. Absolutely shocking! Makes me sick, it does.’ To indicate the scope of her shock and sickness, Fiona zipped up her sponge bag without even applying powder and blush. All she had done was to skim on a little lipstick, merely tipping her hat to beauty. The bag she shoved into a lower drawer. ‘And you can tell how upset Cyril is.’ Actually, Jury couldn’t. Cyril was at the moment engaged in his morning toilette, second only to Fiona’s in time consumed.

It was as if he were licking each ginger hair into cat-dander resplendence. Dander, he had once told Fiona, was in the saliva, not the fur. He had no idea how he knew this, never having owned a cat or a dog. He felt suddenly bereft, as if they had all up and died on him.

‘I think I’ll get a dog–I mean, if I’m going to be home a lot.’ Cyril stopped in his labors and looked up sharply.

Fiona whispered, ‘Why’d you have to go and say that in front of Cyril? You know how he is.’

No one knew how Cyril was. Cyril was too smart by half, smarter than Racer, but then that only took half. The decision to park Jury by the side of an unmapped road had been taken with amazing swiftness. Well, there wasn’t much doubt he’d done what he’d done. In any event, he played his own role up in this grievous ‘flagrant abuse of police power’ and played Cody Platt’s role down.

Jury had said he didn’t see why there had to be an investigation at all, as he was willing to admit to his part in bringing the Murchison woman and her cohort Eddie Noon to their knees. Literally.

But someone had to put his imprimatur upon the affair. Someone had to set the seal.

Jury worried about Cody, for he was of course part of it, though not as big a part. But as far as Jury was concerned it had been worth it. He knew Cody felt so too, perhaps even more than Jury did. The most worrisome thing was whether they could drag Baumann into court. Whether Murchison would give him up. Or indeed what would be admissible in Irene Murchison’s case, considering the ‘premises’ had been unlawfully ‘breached.’ That stuff had been going on for years; a little girl had been shot who had run from the house. There was probable cause for the police to enter the house, Jury thought, not, however, unwarranted.

As of now Jury sat unsuspended, here with Fiona, enjoying the click of computer keys, the snap of a compact (she having second thoughts about her shock and sickness) and Cyril washing.

He was about to submerge himself into Yeats’s ‘cold companionable streams’ when Racer came through the door.

‘For someone who’s about to be suspended, you’re spending a lot of time on your backside around here looking happy.’

‘I can’t seem to tear myself away.’

‘Ha! Well, enjoy it while you can, Jury–’this realm, this plot, this blah blah blah.’’

‘‘This England.’ You’re certainly up on your Shakespeare.’ Racer continued to treat Jury’s possible suspension like a dethronement, as if Jury were handing over his crown to Bolingbroke. He gestured with his arm like a theater usher, hurrying Jury into his aisle seat. Jury hesitated for two seconds, giving the cat Cyril his chance to get in and get on with it. What really kept Cyril going was not Jury’s smile or Fiona’s sponge bag or tins of sardines, but Chief Superintendent Racer’s ongoing attempts to trap him with elaborate, Rube Goldberg cartoon inventions. It would be for a human something like watching the Pyramids being built, stone by stone, just for you. Yes, Cyril’s was a bracing life, a life lived on the edge—quite literally, as one of his favorite perches was the molding around the tiny recessed lights Racer had had installed when his office was remodeled as Harry’s Bar and Grill. Jury saw the tip of a ginger tail twitching up there (no one knew how he managed to get up there in the first place) while Cyril plotted and looked down to see what Racer had planned for him.