The Only Game

‘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 before 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.’

He walked away. She watched him go, then with a sick heart went back into the room.

4

The sign was brash and new: FAMILY FUN HEALTH CENTRE in big black letters on a white ground strewn with cameos of families having fun on exercise bikes, in a sauna, under sun lamps.

Dog Cicero had been here before. He knew if you removed the sign above the entrance you would find chiselled in the granite lintel: SHELL STREET YOUTH CLUB, OPENED MAY 1921 BY ALDERMAN CALDER DSO JP.

Last time he had stepped through these doors, he’d been fifteen, and memory programmed him to expect peeling olive green paint, worn linoleum, bare bulbs, a smell of damp wood, the stridency of punk guitars.

Instead he found pastel shades, carpet tiling, strip lighting, an odour of embrocation oil and the bounce of James Last.

Someone had turned Shell Street Youth Club into a place fit to get fit in.

Not that the woman sitting at a small reception desk looked much of an advertisement for the service. If fat was still a feminist issue, here was a profound political statement.

‘I’m looking for Granger,’ said Dog.

‘He’s in the gym. Can I help? I’m Mrs Granger. Was it one of our courses you’re interested in?’

‘No.’ He produced his warrant card. ‘Just an enquiry.’

She didn’t look surprised. Or worried.

‘Come with me,’ she said.

She led him through a door into a corridor. A willowy blonde looking like the after to the older woman’s before came towards them. Mrs Granger said, ‘Suzie, watch the desk for a minute, will you?’

There had been something euphemistically called a gym in the youth club. This too had changed; sprung floor, white pine, and enough gleaming implements to delight an Inquisitor’s heart. A couple of youths were pushing and pulling at steel levers, watched by a burly middle-aged man who came to the door in response to a gesture from Mrs Granger.

‘George, this is Inspector Cicero,’ she said. ‘My husband, Inspector.’

‘Cicero? There was a chippie called Cicero’s.’

‘My father’s. Mr Granger, if you can spare a moment, I’d like to ask about a member of your staff. A Mrs Maguire. Mrs Jane Maguire.’

The Grangers exchanged glances.

‘So what’s she been saying?’ demanded the woman.

‘Is there somewhere we can talk? If you’re not too busy.’ He glanced into the quiet gym.

‘We fill up later on,’ said Granger defensively. Dog looked at his watch. Ten to five. He recalled what Maguire had said.

Granger led the way to a small office. Three was very much a crowd in here, especially when two were built like the Grangers. He had clearly eaten at the same table as his wife even if he had been rather more successful in preserving the fat–muscle ratio.

‘Right, Mr Cicero, let’s hear it.’

There was an edge of something there. Aggression? Anger? Defiance? Endo said, just keep dealing the cards, son, and sooner or later they’ll tell you what they’re at.

He asked, ‘What time did Mrs Maguire get to work this morning?’

Another exchange of glances, this time puzzled. Then the woman said with remembered indignation, ‘Ten to ten. I had to start her aerobics class.’

Dog thought of Maguire’s lithe athletic figure and nodded gravely.

‘And did she leave at her usual time? That’s two-thirty, I believe.’

‘No!’ exploded Granger. ‘She did not!’

‘You mean she left early? Why was that?’

‘She left early because I fired her! That’s why she left. What’s she been saying, Inspector?’

‘You fired her?’ said Dog. ‘For being late?’

Again he got the bewildered reaction.

The woman said, ‘I think you’d better tell us why you’re asking these questions, Inspector.’

‘No,’ said Dog equably. ‘I think you’d better tell me why you’re giving these answers. Why did you dismiss Mrs Maguire, Mr Granger?’

He looked at his wife. She nodded permission. He said, ‘I sacked her because there was a complaint. I’d asked her to give one of our regular clients a massage. It was about midday. Some little time later I heard her voice raised in the treatment room and then she came out. I went in to see what was the matter and the client made a very serious complaint which left me no alternative but to sack her.’

‘What exactly was this complaint?’

Granger said hesitantly, ‘Well, he, the client, accused Mrs Maguire of … making an indecent suggestion.’

‘I’m sorry?’ said Dog.

‘For heaven’s sake, George,’ interrupted Mrs Granger impatiently. ‘She offered to jerk him off. For twenty-five pounds, Inspector!’

She sounded more indignant at the price than the proposal.

‘And what did Mrs Maguire say when you put this to her?’ said Dog to the man.

‘She told me it was her business. She said she was only offering what these men really wanted. And when I told her she was fired, she became very abusive and said if it was the Centre’s good name I was worried about, I’d better forget it, because by the time she was finished with me, it would stink.’

‘And then she assaulted him,’ said Mrs Granger.

‘What?’

Granger looked embarrassed.

‘It wasn’t anything.’

‘She punched you in the stomach,’ retorted his wife. ‘He was doubled up with pain. I wanted him to call the police. If it had been a man he would have done, and in my book a violent woman’s just as dangerous as a violent man.’

‘It would have made me look silly and not done the Centre’s reputation any good,’ said Granger. ‘The same about the other thing. Sacking her and letting the whole thing drop seemed the best course.’

‘And your client went along with this?’ said Dog.

‘Oh yes,’ said the woman. ‘He’d got a name to protect too. Mud sticks.’

‘And what is this name he’s protecting?’ asked Dog.

The man said, ‘I daresay you’ll know it, Inspector. It’s Jacobs. Councillor Jacobs. So you see, Mrs Maguire picked the wrong man when she picked on him!’

They were right. Councillor Jacobs was the amplifier through which the still small voice of God was heard plain in Romchurch. The scourge of corruption, the trimmer of budgets, the guardian of the public purse and, as chairman of the Police Liaison Committee, the answer to the Chief Constable’s prayers.

He asked a few more questions then left. On his way past the desk, he paused and smiled at the skinny blonde. She looked about twenty and had a cheerful, open face. He said, ‘Do you know Mrs Maguire?’

Her expression lost its openness.

‘Who’s asking?’ she said guardedly.

He told her and she said, ‘Is it about her getting the boot?’

‘That’s right,’ he lied easily. ‘Were you around?’

‘No. I had to go out at lunchtime. I had a dentist’s appointment.’

She opened her mouth as though inviting him to check. He looked in and she ran her moist pink tongue along her upper teeth and grinned as he looked away.

‘Is it right she belted old George in the gut?’ she asked.

‘Did you know her well?’

‘No. Hardly at all. She was a bit stuck up, know what I mean? But she’ll be OK, won’t she?’

Dog said, ‘Any reason she shouldn’t be OK?’

‘No!’ she asserted strongly. ‘Not as if she hasn’t got someone to take care of her, is it?’

A boy friend, you mean? I thought you said you didn’t know her socially.’

‘That’s right, but I know a dreamboat when I see one. I could have eaten him for supper, numb gums and all.’

‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Dog.

‘Her boy friend, of course! He was looking to meet her after work this afternoon, only he wasn’t to know she’d got the heave, was he? So he came in when she didn’t come out at half two like she usually does, and asked where she was.’

‘And what did you tell him?’

‘Nothing at first. I just played him along to see how well attached he was. We were getting on fine till I told him she’d left early, then he took off pretty smart so it must be serious, worse luck.’

‘Describe him.’

‘Well, like I say, he was gorgeous.’ Seeing from Dog’s face that more was required, she went on, ‘Like Tom Cruise, know what I mean? Only really blond. And he had this sexy accent, Scotch or maybe Irish, they all sound the same, don’t they? And his name was Billy.’

That was it, but it was enough. In a lot of child abuse cases there was a boy friend on the scene, not the child’s father. Maguire had denied having a man in her life. Another question mark. Sometimes you couldn’t see the answers for the questions.

Sometimes you didn’t want to see the answer.

He walked twice round his car, got in, set off back to the station. The evening traffic was building up, smearing light along the wet roads. He got stuck at the roundabout outside Holy Trinity. They’d got the Christmas lanterns up in the old yew tree by the porch. He leaned across to peer at them. This church and the Shell Street Youth Club had been the poles of his boyhood world and the next turn left would take him past its centre, the old shop.

He wouldn’t make the turn. Church, club, shop, they belonged to another country, another time. Another person.

The person he was now had only one concern. What had happened to young Oliver Maguire? What odds would he recommend to WPC Scott now?

His radio crackled into life with his call sign. He responded and the metallic voice said, ‘Message from WPC Scott at City General Hospital. Maguire has absconded. Repeat, Maguire has absconded.’

‘Shit,’ said Dog. The traffic started to move. A gap opened in the outside lane. Engine snarling in protest, he forced his way into it, got one wheel on the central reservation, crowded the van ahead of him over to the nearside and swept round the front of the line onto the roundabout with emergency lights flashing.

Behind him, pressed back against the oak door in the shadowy porch of Holy Trinity Church, Jane Maguire watched him drive away.

5

Fear heightens perception.

Jane Maguire had spotted Dog Cicero the instant she stepped through the church door. One car in a line of traffic, one silhouette in a gallery of portraits, but her eyes had fixed on it. Then it had turned full face towards her and she’d been certain the magnetism was two-way.

Next moment, however, he’d spoken into a mike and driven away like a madman. She knew beyond guesswork what he’d been told and she almost felt a pang of sympathy for the young policewoman. Not that it had been her fault any more than it had been Jane’s plan. As she’d been wheeled down to X-ray, she’d heard the girl ask, ‘How long?’

‘Thirty minutes at least,’ had been the answer. In the event she’d been through in five, back in her room in ten. And she was alone, except for the almost tangible after-image of Cicero’s distrust. She saw again those coldly assessing eyes in the half-frozen face and she knew she’d made a mistake, not in lying, but in lying about things he could check. He would be back and she couldn’t keep fainting her way out of confrontation for ever.

It was time to go. Her body had made the decision before her mind and she was already out of bed and pulling on her clothes.

No one challenged her as she walked along the corridor to Reception and out into the chill night air. It was still raining. She felt it would never stop. Momentarily she got entangled in a small queue of mainly old people climbing into an ambulance. Instead of passing through, she let herself be taken up with them. Soon afterwards when the first passenger was dropped near Holy Trinity roundabout, she got down too. Every day she passed the church on her way to the Health Centre. If she noticed it at all, it was with a sense of relief that she’d shed that particular delusion. Now she went inside, rationalizing that she needed somewhere quiet to sit and think. But as the door closed hollowly behind her, the smell, the light, the sense of echoing space sent her reeling back to her childhood and she felt her controlling will assailed by a fearful longing for the cleansing darkness of the confessional.