Reginald Hill: Child's Play

For a second there was blankness, then the sly smile returned.

‘Interesting? No; more than interesting. Something strange and terrible and sad … oh Lexie …’

She trembled on the edge of tears, then went very still as if in the effort of containing them.

‘Come close, Lexie,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want her to hear …Come close …’

It was more than an hour before one of the silences which punctuated the sick woman’s ramblings stretched far enough for Lexie to relax her strained hearing and bring her mind to bear on what she had heard.

Downstairs the phone rang.

At the first note, Miss Keech sat upright.

Oh, damn ! thought Lexie.

She opened her mouth to offer reassurance, but before she could speak, the woman said briskly, ‘Of course, you and Jane may play down there as much as you like, Lexie. And of course you may have the key to the door. But remember what I told you, Lexie.’

She smiled; a curve of the lips as jolly as a sickle moon on a stormy night. Then her eyes focused at a point near the door with an intensity which made Lexie want to turn and look too. The old woman shook her head as though in denial, then her eyes closed and she sank back down into her pillow.

The phone was still ringing.

Swiftly Lexie descended into the hall and picked up the receiver.

‘Lexie, it’s Rod.’

‘Hello.’

‘Everything all right?’

She hesitated enough before replying to be noticeable by a man less absorbed in his own cares.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘And how are you? You still sound worried.’

‘I should be. Pascoe was here before the play tonight, rabbiting on about Pontelli. It didn’t do my performance much good, I tell you. Has he tried to see you at all?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Good. I just thought he might try something clever like saying I’d caved in, so I thought I’d better ring to say I’ve stuck to the story. Anyway, enough of selfish me. How’s Keechie?’

‘She’s been a bit incoherent, almost non-stop rambling. Mainly about Gwen and black devils. All kinds of odd stuff. She kept on getting to a certain point, then breaking off. I got the impression that …’

‘What?’

‘Nothing, I’ll tell you when I see you. Will you be long?’

At last her unease got through to Lomas.

He said, ‘Look, I’ve got to hang on for the curtain-calls. After my showing tonight, I daren’t get Chung’s back up! But I won’t wait for that bloody bus. I’ll grab a taxi again and blow the expense.’

‘It’ll cost a fortune.’

‘Worth it. Lexie, I think I love you.’

‘Yes,’ said Lexie quietly and put down the receiver.

She stood in the hall for a while. This was the first declaration of love any man had made to her, but it did not occupy her mind for long. There would be another time to contemplate that in. Meanwhile there were other kinds of love to ponder here and now.

Above, nothing stirred.

She went through into the kitchen. Its new brightness was a comfort and she told herself she had come through here to make herself a coffee and sit quietly and wait for Rod.

Something moved behind her and she spun round to see the door slowly opening. Before she could cry out, she saw what it was, and a muted sob of relief, like a soft cough in a concert hall, was all she released as Bob, the big black labrador, paddled into the room.

But the stimulus was enough. Fear had never frozen her but always spurred her to action. It was a version she guessed of her father’s bloody-minded stubbornness in the face of opposition. Now she went to the keyboard on the wall above the refrigerator. The key she wanted wasn’t there. With a sigh, she went back upstairs into Miss Keech’s room and gently removed the bunch of keys from the dressing-table top. The woman did not move or open her eyes, but Lexie had a sense of mocking observation.

Downstairs again, she checked the keys. They duplicated those on the keyboard in the kitchen with a single exception. Both copies of the key Lexie was looking for were on Miss Keech’s personal ring.

As she descended into the cellar, she recalled that Sunday afternoon more than ten years earlier when she had come with simulated boldness down these same steps, determined to disperse the aura of horror Miss Keech had wantonly conjured up in this place. She knew now of course what she had not known then, that truth is not always triumphant over dark imaginings, that an idea, however outrageous, can often be stronger than a fact, however firm. Jane had never played in the cellar again and even her own penetration of the empty inner chamber had not restored the old innocence to the outer room.

The dumped furniture looked much the same. She let her mind drift into the pleasant margins of nostalgia for a moment. That sofa had been an elfin ship; that tallboy had been a tyrant’s tower … But rapidly she steered herself back from such weakening distractions.

Against the door of the small wine cellar stood an old linen chest. Packed full of God knew what, it felt heavy and immovable to the thrust of her skinny arms. But when she looked more closely, she discovered some pieces of wood wedged underneath and once she removed these, the chest slid easily aside on silent castors.

And now the door.

The key slipped into the keyhole with no difficulty. Deftly she turned it in the oiled wards and pushed the door open with a quiet ease more sinister far than any Gothic screeching. The light from the main cellar seemed to trickle in like water, slowly filling the inner chamber so that there was no sudden shock, only a gradual awareness of horror, the more intense because her mind further delayed it with the assurance that what she saw must exist only in her fevered imaginings.

The wineracks had been pulled together to form a bier ( Lomas’s bitter bier, her mind punned desperately in another effort to distance the horror) and on it lay, head turned towards her so that absent eyes seemed to watch her entrance from empty sockets, a body.

Fear urged her backwards to escape it; fear of fear urged her forwards to examine it. For once in her short life she was uncertain which impulse would win. Then both died and in the same instant were reincarnated, as she heard behind her careful footsteps descending the cellar stairs.

The girl on the switchboard at the Challenger offices insisted on seeing Pascoe’s warrant card.

Satisfied, she said, ‘He’s popular with you lot tonight, isn’t he? Hang on, I’ll just jot down his address.’

‘Popular? Why do you say that?’

‘Well, there was the other chap, wasn’t there?’

‘Which other chap? What did he look like?’

The girl laughed.

‘He was no beauty, I can tell you that! I could hardly believe it when he said he was a copper. That’s why I asked to see his card and, fair do’s, I thought I’d better see yours too. A sergeant he was. Field or something like that.’

Postponing his contemplation of the implied proposition that beauty was a prerequisite of the police, Pascoe took the address and hurried away. What the hell was Wield doing here? he asked himself. The only answers he could give were not reassuring and he drove through the Friday night busy streets of Leeds at a speed which won him no friends. Twice he lost his way in a maze of suburban terraces before he pulled up outside the tall narrow house he was looking for.

There was a list of names by the door, most of them illegible. He didn’t waste time. The door was open and he went straight in, planning to knock and inquire at the first door he came to, but this proved unnecessary. From the floor above he heard a muffled cry and a thud. Up to the landing. A door stood ajar. He pushed it fully open and went in.