Shadow Play (29 page)

The room was always a mess, less so when Rose ruled it, but discipline had slipped on Friday. Helen found herself resenting the way they were all cramped in here, while others, like Redwood, had rooms as big but all on their own. Rose went to where the computer sat, behind a screen on a kind of pedestal as befitted its status, pressed buttons and inserted disks with the ease of a pilot.

‘How do you know how to do that?' Helen asked, feeling inept.

‘I watched,' said Rose. ‘I'm a quick learner.'

‘Quicker than me. Give me something useful to do.'

‘You can sit and knit. You aren't well, you know.' She was mimicking Helen's solicitude. They both laughed.

‘I think we'll start,' said Rose thoughtfully, ‘with the finished cases from last month, beginning with his, Dinsdale's, I mean. If he was deliberately losing papers, there'd be files he was given either to look at or take to court first time, that's how he'd know which ones he wanted to lose. He'd often get bloody cross if he was sent to a different court at the last minute. I reckon the ones you and John got, you got by mistake. He was supposed to go out there and lose gracefully. Right, let's have his list.' Helen watched the screen in amazement. ‘It says the first twelve have gone to store,' said Rose, proud to act as interpreter. ‘That means they're in the basement somewhere. We just shove 'em down there, and then file them every now and then, we're supposed to keep them for five years …'

‘I wouldn't know where to start down there. Are there rats?'

‘Course not,' said Rose scornfully. ‘I wouldn't have slept down there otherwise, would I? All the rats are upstairs. I'll go down. You have a look in Redwood's room. He keeps the main diary in there, showing where everyone is. Make a list of the courts old D goes to most regularly. There might be a clue in that.' Rose was showing off a little; Helen, humbled by her lack of knowledge of the office machinery, demurred slightly, but it seemed best to let Rose control.

‘Why don't I come down to the basement with you? Aren't you a bit nervous going down there?'

‘I'm never nervous here. It's the only place I'm not. Save your breath.'

Her footsteps pattered away down the stairs with light speed. Oh, for youth, Helen thought, wandering out into the corridor, down a few doors and into Redwood's room. Hot in here, close, with an odd smell, like old air freshener. She noticed her anglepoise lamp on the desk, you're welcome Mr R, I'm sure, turned it on, fished in her bag for a cigarette, enjoying the sensation of doing what was normally forbidden in the throne room, went across to the huge window behind Redwood's desk and flung it open. She looked out briefly into the street where a single mean lamp reflected a fine drizzle now descending into an area which was never light. They had been chilled and coughing on the way here; now she wanted cold air to clear her head, so she approached the other window, guilty for being a trespasser, thinking, I can quite see why Redwood likes sneaking around, fun really. Then stopped. Coming from behind, reflected in the old and wavy glass, a creature tiptoeing like a child sent out to hide and seek. Even before she turned, she could smell him. His was the scent of the room, artificially sweet, menacing, not immediately recognisable, and there he was, creeping towards her with a silly smile on his face. Helen spun round before he reached her. He was still five paces away over the dun-coloured carpet when she spoke, the voice not reflecting her panic as she measured the length between herself and the telephone.

‘Hallo, Mr Logo,' she said neutrally. ‘Who let you in? Perhaps you better tell me before I call the doorman for the police.'

He giggled, followed her eyes to the phone, shook his head. Helen got the message.

‘I want my daughter,' he announced. ‘I want Eenie. You've got her here. All of you, you keep her locked up, away from me.'

‘Your daughter? There's no-one called Eenie here. What's her real name?'

‘That's what the man said, no-one here called that, what a stinking load of liars you are, and you gave me these, people like you. You like my handcuff burns? Her granny used to call her Rose. Never liked calling her Enid.'

He was dancing in front of her, little swaying movements from foot to foot, pushing back the sleeves of his powder-stained jacket, releasing more of the same sickly smell and showing her his thin wrists, ringed with brown marks she'd seen before.

‘See these?' he said. ‘Gives me strong wrists. You give me handcuff burns. People like you.'

He stopped thoughtfully, inches away, Helen pressed against the glass of the window which seemed to creak against her weight. Truth was emerging with alarming confusion. Logo, the father of Rose, of course, of course, and in that split second she could at last understand the reason for the child's terror.

‘Her mother used to call her Rosie Lee. After tea,' he added inconsequentially. Helen gazed at his wrists, hypnotised. Saw the knife hanging from his belt, thought, Oh, God no, I cannot be brave, I cannot bite back, not this time, not again, I have used it all up, whatever little courage I used to have.

‘I don't think those are handcuff burns, Mr Logo,' she said contemptuously. ‘I think it's just dirt. Show me.'

He stopped, open mouthed, distracted, held his hands, palm upwards. ‘Come towards the light,' she ordered. He did as he was bid, never once taking his eyes off her face, shuffling to the desk, moving his hands to the light; he smiled suddenly, angled the lamp neatly, and began to twist his hands into shapes. Shadows sprang against the far wall, moving monsters, a pig with a snout and a tail, full of strange energy. Helen turned to look, her heart thundering in her ears, her eyes rounded, her left hand feeling for the telephone and her voice forming a scream.

‘It isn't you I want,' he said suddenly. ‘You're in the way. Where is she? I heard her.'

‘I sent her home,' said Helen. ‘There was nothing for her to do until Monday. She's gone. Come back and find her on Monday. She'll be here then. There's only me here now.'

The shadow play stopped abruptly. ‘I don't believe you,' he said. ‘And it isn't just dirt. There's no such thing as just dirt.' The anger was sudden and malevolent. The brown wrists were level with her eyes, his hands grabbing great chunkfuls of her tied back hair, shaking her head about like a rag doll, his spittle landing on her face to add spite to his words. Then he twisted her round, so one arm was across her throat, bending her neck back, the wrist of the other hand was in front of her eyes. ‘Dirt,' he said. ‘Dirt, is it? That's what she is, dirt, but you, you're the real filth.' The pressure grew stronger. Helen bent and jerked her elbows back into his abdomen, flung herself free and ran for the corridor. She ran blindly, glancing wildly into the darkened rooms as she passed, looking for salvation, somewhere with a lock on the door, a weapon, enough time to be with a telephone, open a window, scream, but her legs were leaden, her mind in the paralysis of futile fear, unable to stop running. There was a sense of
déjà vu
about personal attack; as she ran, she was in the throes of the last, remembering it, full of the images of her bedroom and Peter's brother, stinking with his own bitterness. She knew she would not bite this time and kept running. Too late, she realised, even as she sensed how his pounding footsteps behind her had faded, that she had run the full square of the floor and was back where she had begun, with him behind or in front, it made no odds, but the smell was with her, in her hair and her eyes. She paused, uncertain, by the goods lift where the scent was strongest. It was darker, someone had turned off the corridor light. Helen turned and shouted, ‘Rose, Rose! Get out, get out!' hoping against hope the sound would travel. Silence and dark; for a moment she breathed easier.

He leapt from the lift, a black sprite with his kitchen knife, lunging. ‘There!' he hissed. ‘There! You were lying, you were lying …' Oh not my face, she remembered thinking, please not my face, let me die pretty, please. Putting up her arms to shield her eyes she kicked wildly, connected with thin knees, heard him grunt in pain, shift his balance. There was a thud as the knife dropped, whether because of the impatience of his violence, or clumsiness, she did not know, but his hands were in her hair again; she was pinned against the frame of the lift, nerveless, his braced legs prising her own apart as he banged the back of her head repeatedly against the metal surround, until she slid down, leaving him holding her half upright by the hair alone. Logo let her slump, bent over and hissed, ‘Where is she? Where is she? I don't want you, no-one would want you.' There was no response.

He let go of her hair. She rolled over on to the floor. ‘Filth,' Logo muttered with a quick kick to her ribs. ‘I don't need you.'

As if he could not have guessed if he used his wits. Rose would be hiding where she could play with shadows. He stood and waited to see if Mizz West would move. She didn't. That was all right then. He hoped she was dead.

 

O
h why had she not run downstairs, instead of in this hopeless circle? Helen wanted to be dead, wanted never to have to fight back against anything ever again. Her eyes were closed, but she knew she had rolled on to the knife, the wooden haft of it digging into her waistline, the scenery inside her eyes a mass of purple, exploding clouds. Stay still: let him do what he wants, it doesn't matter, just finish it. She heard him giggle, then footsteps going away, unhurried, purposeful. She could sleep then, simply sleep, wait for someone to come, Monday would do, nothing mattered, she wanted to let go of everything. Rose, though: somewhere down there without the rats, was Rose. It was only Rose Logo wanted and the doorman was useless, wouldn't hear a bomb. Move, Helen, you've got to move, there's nobody else, there never is, but it was difficult. So she rolled, tried to sit up, half successful, but hurting. The light was still on in Redwood's room, insinuating itself into the darkness. The red light button for the goods lift shone in reflection, the only way of issuing a warning, give Rose a weapon. As she picked up the knife with a shaking hand, Helen could feel herself fading. There was blood on the knife. Oh please, not my face; it doesn't matter about your face, you should be ashamed, come on. She struggled to her knees, let the knife drop into the open mouth of the lift, pressed the red button, listened to it whirr away, and then sank back. In a minute I'll move, in a minute: not now. Find a telephone. Slowly she crawled in the direction of the light from Redwood's domain, wanting to keep her face near the floor, then raising herself half upright, began a different and shuffling progress on her knees. She debated briefly in the middle of the crawl: go forwards to the light, or back to the clerks' room? She made the decision to go forward, called by the light, thinking, I don't think this makes sense. Oh Rose, please run, I know what you mean, just run, out the way he came in, any way, but run. And halfway there, still gathering speed, she heard the sound of a phone. From the direction she had abandoned, the clerks' room, the logical place to go, but dark in there. Rose, phoning from the basement before Logo reached her? The doorman at the end of the football game, sensing drama? She crawled back, her knees rubbed raw against the harshness of the worn carpet, reached the door on the twelfth ring, managed to get to her feet on the leverage of the first desk and then it stopped as she reached and fell, down into another kind of darkness, lay quiet and winded, praying it would ring again.

Oh let me not be afraid of the dark.

 

M
ichael put the phone down in his parents' house, vaguely angry. So she'd said she could not come and see him today because of working, but he didn't think that was the way Civil Servants ever worked, even her kind, and if she was at work, why not answer the phone? So she wasn't at work, she was somewhere else, with someone else, doing God knows what, he didn't want to know. A girl like that wasn't for changing, he could hear it said, chanted by a thousand voices sounding as loud as the Red Army chorus or a first-division football crowd. Easily bored, was what she was, playing with someone else, off and away as soon as the new boyfriend was immobilised, that was what it was, it had to be something like that. Couldn't-wait Rose, that's what she was, and he had been taken for a sucker, played it all wrong.

‘She doesn't answer, Mum,' he said savagely. A woman sat in the corner of a comfortable living room a few feet away from him, sewing. They had just turned off the football. She became a travesty of her normal, tranquil self when she watched her team, even though she still continued to sew, with big, stabbing movements.

‘And I suppose that means that you think the very worst. You don't think of an innocent explanation, do you? She's been let off early, something's happened, she's out, that kind of thing. Even after she came to see you in hospital how many times? You men. You policemen.'

Michael sat back, absurdly comforted but irritated as well.

‘I think about her all the time. I don't seem to be able to stop it.'

She put down her sewing, eyed the arm in a sling, sighed.

‘Well, think nicely then. If you've got to go up west, your dad'll give you a lift. And back, if need be.'

‘Thanks, Mum.'

She took up her sewing again. ‘We were robbed,' she was muttering under her breath, ‘robbed blind.'

It took him a while to realise she was talking about the football.

 

R
ose was looking at the files thrown out to lie on the floor, when the lift thudded down beside her, level with her waist. Ha, ha, ha, Helen upstairs joking, asking what the hell she was doing all this time. Rose smiled, pushed up the shutter and thrust her head inside, grinning and muttering, ‘Silly cow.' Her mouth, still creased open in a smile, was suddenly full of a familiar smell laced with an undertone of nausea. Someone's favourite powder, passed from body to body, sickening and cloying, mixed with dirt and sweat. That was her first impression, forming quickly, the second glance, from a distance, showed a kitchen knife, its blade swinging towards her like a wavering compass, faintly smeared, unmistakably a tool for cutting meat, suffering from use. Her whole body became rigid with shock; she put a hand towards the knife, withdrew quickly, extended again and forced her fingers to close round the handle which had the warmth of a reptile. Rose did not understand the message; it crossed her mind that Helen was playing with her. For a minute she thought the woman was mad, and stood winded by the cruelty of the joke, then some kind of logic prevailed. There was no sound but the ticking of the basement machinery as Rose stood gripping the knife, seeing its present purpose in a rush of images which came with the traces of scented powder and body-dirtied clothes, saw herself lying on a bed, and Daddy with his shadow play and his clothes not changed from work and herself stealing Gran's favourite powder as she would a talisman. Daddy in the kitchen as she sliced at him with another knife, warding him off, hurting by accident.