J. Ballard - Running Wild

"And this is the son's room?" I asked as we entered the bedroom of the seventeen-year-old Jeremy. "You know, Sergeant, other people's homes always seem a bit strange, but these are rather odd houses."

"No more than some I've seen." Payne ignored my obvious ploy, well aware that I wanted to get him rolling, but he glanced at me with mild curiosity. "In what way, Doctor?"

"I mean that they're so very alike. Not the furniture and fittings, though even they aren't that dissimilar. It's the atmosphere, the sense of very ordered lives being lived here… almost too ordered."

I strolled around Jeremy's bedroom, noting the desktop computer, the surfboard and swimming trophies, a line of cups that packed the mantelpiece.

"He must have swum miles in that pool downstairs. Jeremy was the bed wetter, if I remember- perhaps the parents didn't appreciate all the effort?"

"Oh, they appreciated it… never stopped, in fact." Payne pressed the computer keyboard, tapping out a simple code. The screen lit up with a message dated May 17, 1988:

_47 lengths today!_

There was a pause, and then:

_Well done, Jeremy!_

I stared at this message from the parents as it glimmered on the screen, a brief show of electronic affection, all that remained of parents and child in this deserted house.

"My God… you mean the parents were wired up to the children's bedrooms? There's something unnerving about that, Sergeant."

"Isn't there, Doctor? You're sitting here after finishing your homework, and suddenly the computer blips, 'Well done, Jeremy!'

"Talk about surveillance of the heart. It's not just those cameras out there. Still, he must have been happy."

A pair of water skis protruded from a closet. I drew back the door and glanced through the drawers, which were filled with music cassettes, paperbacks and sportswear.

Then, under a pile of diving caps in the bottom drawer, I found a stack of glossy magazines, well-thumbed copies of _Playboy_ and _Penthouse_. I showed the top copy to Payne.

"_Playboy_, Sergeant-the first crack in the façade?"

Payne barely glanced at the magazine. "I wouldn't say so, sir."

"Of course not. What could be more normal for a seventeen-year-old still prone to bed-wetting? The Maxteds were enlightened people."

Payne nodded sagely. "I'm sure Jeremy knew that too, Doctor. The copies of _Playboy_ made good camouflage. If you want to find the real porn have a look underneath."

I pushed back the diving caps and lifted out the top three magazines. Below them were a dozen copies of various gun and rifle publications, _Guns and Ammo_, _Commando Small Arms_, _The Rifleman_, and _Combat Weapons of the Waffen SS_. I flipped through them, noticing that the pages were carefully marked, appreciative comments written in the margins. Mailorder coupons were missing from many of the pages.

"The real porn? I agree." I pushed the magazines back into the drawer, covering them with the diving caps as if to preserve Jeremy Maxted's secret. "He probably belonged to a local rifle club. But I don't suppose his parents would have approved."

"You can bet your pension they wouldn't." Sergeant Payne was smirking to himself. "Handling a firearm? To the people in Pangbourne Village that would be worse than molesting a child."

"A bit extreme, Sergeant. In a way they could be right. Hold on a second…"

I switched on the cupboard light. Around the skirting board and the interior panels of the door were a series of curious notches, apparently left by a gnawing mammal with powerful incisors.

"Have you seen these marks, Sergeant? It looks as if a small creature was trying to get out. Did the Maxteds keep some kind of exotic pet?"

"Only in a manner of speaking." Payne ambled to the door and held it open for me as we left the son's room. "Those marks are quite common on the estate."

"What are they caused by? The forensic people must have some idea."

"Well… they haven't been able to agree." We had entered Dr. Edwina's bedroom. Payne pointed to the wooden frame of the headboard, where I saw a similar pattern of fretwork. "You'll find them all over the place, a kind of dry… rot."

He emphasized the words with cryptic pleasure, then sat on the bare mattress and switched on the bedside TV set.

I said, sharply: "Sergeant, I must be getting on- you'll have to miss the local race meeting."

"This is their own private program, Doctor. There's no gambling on the Pangbourne channel." Payne pointed to the screen, which revealed the road outside the window. The camera tracked to and fro, as if searching for a fallen leaf, tirelessly hunting a panorama as silent as a stage set.

I shrugged at the screen. "Security was important here, they were obviously obsessed by it. So the house has an input from the monitors at the gate?"

"Every house in Pangbourne Village." Payne spoke in a droll but meaningful way. "Upstairs and downstairs. At least we know why there were no infidelities here. But think of the children, Doctor- they were being watched every hour of the day and night. This was a warm, friendly, junior Alcatraz. Swimming at eight, breakfast eight-thirty, archery classes, origami, do this, do that, watch the _Horizon_ repeat on the video together, well done, Jeremy…" Payne blew his coarse cigarette smoke at Dr. Edwina's dressing-table mirror. "The only surprise about these people is that they found time to get themselves murdered!"

"Well, they were murdered. Let's not forget that." I let Payne's outburst subside. He was still holding something back, and I waited to draw him out. "But they certainly led very busy and well-organized lives. In fact, it's remarkable that the killers found them all in."

"Perhaps they made an appointment."

"By staging some pretext? It's hard to visualize what, exactly. Remember, this was a Saturday morning in June. It's quite a coincidence that no one was on holiday. Between them these people owned about fifteen properties, in the South of France…"

"… Cortina, Corsica and Tuscany."

"All those places you hate, Sergeant. Yet everyone was here, every adult and every child. One of the children-Roger Sterling, the fifteen-year-old-was due to have his wisdom teeth out and was brought home for the weekend from the London Clinic."

"Brought home?" Payne beckoned me into the ground-floor study as we spoke, still leading me on in all senses. "Or did he volunteer, Doctor?"

"Volunteer? Maybe. But for what? The diaries and appointment books show nothing-there were the usual Saturday activities-gymnasium work, the next round in the bridge contest, swimming…"

"… Forty-seven lengths today! Well done, Jeremy!"

Ignoring Payne, I pressed on, reciting from memory. "There was a visit by a TV producer planning a film about Pangbourne Village, a repeat of the _Panorama_ program on the Eritrean famine, which a lot of the parents were watching with their children, and the disco in the evening. Nothing out of the ordinary…"

"But the boy, Roger Sterling, made a real effort to be here. The London Clinic wasn't keen to let him go."

"Right-he made up some story about a visiting friend from Canada who didn't exist. But why? Could the children have been planning a surprise?"

I was standing with my back to Payne, glancing at the books on the Maxteds' shelves, and waited for the sergeant to reply. When I turned, a volume of Piaget in my hand, he was smiling primly, like a prudish man forced to enjoy the point of a vulgar joke.

"Yes, there's no doubt in my mind, Doctor. The children were planning a surprise."

"It's possible… and whatever their motive, the killers got wind of this. Correct?"

"I would say so."

"Which suggests that they could plan the murders down to the last detail, confident where everyone would be. One thing is plain to me, Sergeant. The killers knew their way around."