Silent Children (8 page)

When Crystal stepped forward he felt as though his friends' admiration for his technique had given her a stealthy shove. The moment she was past the door the boys crowded after her, and Shaun shut it while Ian blocked the way upstairs. "Want a drink before you see her?"

"You made me thirsty walking so quick."

Her using an accusation as a demand lost her any sympathy he might have had to suppress. She followed him to the kitchen and sat where he pointed, on the bench at the far side of the table from the hall. The back door was locked, and the key wasn't in it. He watched the floor, where the shadows of her thin bare impatient legs made the concrete or something beneath it appear restless, until Shaun and the others filled the doorway. "What am I supposed to give her?" he asked Shaun.

"Something with water in."

The door of the refrigerator cast a shadow like a trapdoor creeping open in the concrete. "Want some red stuff?" Ian said.

"What is it?" Crystal said, so suspiciously that the boys in the doorway covered their mouths.

"See what it says on it," Ian told her, and laid the bottle on the floor.

He watched her grip the edge of the table to lean down. Her little finger touched the concrete as she took hold of the bottle by its neck and dragged it to her with a scraping of plastic that seemed to grow louder in his ears once it had stopped. She hauled herself into a sitting position and stood the bottle in front of her, but gave the label no more than a grimace for being unfamiliar. "Is it sweet?"

"Try it and see," Ian advised, and carried the raspberry juice to the sink, where he filled a glass almost to the brim with juice before adding a splash of water. There must still be some of the little girl under the floor close to the pipes, he thought, however much of her the police had cleared away. The notion sent a shiver of excitement through him as he stooped to place the glass on the floor.

"Stop putting it down there," Crystal protested, but leaned off the bench to reach for it, her bunches swaying on either side of her intent face. The shape of a little girl's hand swelled up out of the concrete beside the glass, then vanished as her closing hand met its shadow. Ian saw her fingers tremble as they gripped the table while she concentrated on raising the glass. He saw Baz and Stu itching to speed up the game, and Shaun scowling at them. Then Crystal had the glass and lifted it to her mouth, not spilling a drop. She continued to grasp the edge of the table as she tilted the drink into her mouth.

Ian saw an inch of unsweetened juice vanish at a gulp, and held his breath. He watched her suck her lips in and her eyes start to water. Her head jerked up, and she tried to stand the glass on the table fast enough to give her time to reach the sink, but she was only in the process of swinging her legs off the bench when the contents of her mouth proved uncontainable, hitting the floor with a loud flat splash.

There was a silence that emphasised how the stain was seeping into the concrete. Not until Crystal glanced up, looking ready for an argument, did Baz say "You've done it now."

"Better say you're sorry quick," Stu advised her.

"It wasn't sweet." When her complaint brought no response from Ian, not even a blink, she muttered "Sorry."

"Not to him," Shaun said.

She tugged at her hair. "Why not him? Who?"

"The little girl," said Ian. "You've woken her up."

Crystal tugged so hard her head began to cant as though the floor was drawing it sideways and down. "Where is she?"

"Under where you spat. You'd better talk to her before she comes to see who spat on her."

Crystal shoved herself in a single movement to the far end of the bench. Her heel caught an upright of the table, and her sandal flew off, slithering across the concrete toward the stain. "Don't want to," she wailed.

"You've got to. She knows you're here."

"If you don't talk to her she'll follow you home and get in your bed," Stu said.

"You've got to lie on the floor," Baz said, "so you can hear her."

"If you don't she'll come out," said Shaun, "and you won't like how she looks."

Crystal stared at him, her mouth pulling itself out of shape and releasing a trickle of red as though she had bitten her tongue. "This is where mum and dad were talking about and they stopped when I came in," she cried.

"Where the little girl was buried, that's right, under there, and now you're going to see her if she doesn't think you're sorry enough."

"She's got worms for eyes," Baz assured her.

"And her entrails are all hanging out with insects crawling on them," said Stu.

Ian thought the last two were going too far, at least for him, though they were causing Crystal's mouth to wrench itself into progressively more interesting shapes. For him it was sufficient that the new floor and all that it was meant to conceal had grown intensely present, its whiteness vibrating, the stain gleaming like the irrepressible mark of a death. "She made your shoe come off," he said. "She made it go to her. You'd better listen so you hear her. Listen hard and you will."

Crystal's eyes turned unwillingly toward the stain as though it, or something whose location it marked, had fastened on them. The rest of her appeared to be unable to move except for a slight quivering. Ian willed his friends not to give in to the temptation to make her jump, because he was sure that if they waited she would hear what she'd been told to hear. But he wasn't expecting to hear it—a muffled scraping like the sound of a buried finger trying to draw attention to itself.

The concrete appeared to flutter, having grown thin as a sheet that was about to be flung off. Then, as his friends swung round to stare along the hall, Ian realised that the sound wasn't in the kitchen. He'd heard car doors slamming near the house, but there was no reason why they should have anything to do with him. He was facing the front door, which was the only course of action his friends seemed able to think of, and there was no sound in the kitchen except for a tentative whimper from Crystal, when the door swung open and a stranger stepped into his house.

"You mustn't be doing too badly if you can afford to park off Piccadilly," Leslie said.

"I'm still trying to get my head around some things about England."

That might include driving on the unfamiliar side of the road, and so, as Jack Lamb turned the hired Nova along Park Lane, she confined herself to directing him. An ambulance racing to the children's hospital nearly made her send him into the wrong lane at Paddington, but once they'd escaped the hot clogged fuming streets under Westway, there wasn't much for her to do except tell him to carry on. The Grand Union Canal came to find the road and swung away again, taking with it a barge brighter than a florist's display, and the car was following an elongated lorry that wagged its drunken rear at them through Kensal Green when Jack said "Say, did I offend you somehow?"

"Not that I noticed. What makes you ask that?"

"Just that you've been quiet for a good while, but don't let me intrude if you've got things you need to think about."

"Nothing that won't keep. I just thought you might want to concentrate on driving."

"Am I that scary? I've been trying to take care."

"You're fine. I've never felt safer," Leslie said, and found she wasn't exaggerating out of politeness after all—he certainly never made her feel compelled to brake with her feet against the front of the cabin, as Roger used to whenever he saw the slightest opportunity to overtake. "So how long have you been over here? Is this your first time?"

"First time out of the US of A for Jack Lamb, and as I said to your friend at the shop, just me, not my books."

"Let's hope before long it's both. And by the way, I wouldn't want you to think I was laughing at you back there, just at that awful man not realising where you came from."

"No mistaking that once I open my mouth though, huh?"

"Not much," Leslie said, and waited while he braked as the lorry swayed left into Harlesden. "So how long has it been?"

"The cops would be after me in California," he said, and she had to deduce the offence was having flashed his headlamps to invite a woman in a Mazda to steer across his path. "Forgive me, you were asking how long ..."

"How long you've been in the old country."

"Got you. Just a few months. I'm staying with some friends in Hampstead that I met at a concert in the Bowl. That's as close as some of us Hollywood types get to your kind of music."

"I should think that must be pretty close."

"You wouldn't if you'd heard half the audience applaud whenever they thought the symphony was over. At least I knew better than that. It was apologising to Charles and Liz because I'd heard they were English that started us getting acquainted."

"So are you in films? That's to say, are your books?"

"I'm not a performer in either sense, I have to tell you. Wes Craven's office asked my agent about one waste of paper, but that's the only query I ever had a name for."

"It's researching your new one that's brought you to England, then."

"It's the people who are making me want to stay."

"Tell me if I'm asking too many questions."

"I don't see how. You'll want to know about me."

That struck her as somewhat presumptuous, yet disconcertingly true. She'd known him less than an hour, and she had no idea how he might react to the disclosures she had still to make, and so there was no point in liking him as much as she already did. At least now they'd crossed the North Circular Road, requiring her to direct him through the suburban streets. In two minutes they were in sight of Jericho Close, on the corner of which Mrs. Lancing, never a favourite neighbour of Leslie's, was in conversation with another woman. The Nova swung into Jericho Close and cruised to the end. "This is it," Leslie said.

So it was, and she didn't feel ready. Was she going to take him through the house before she told him what he had to be told? Apparently so, because now she had climbed out of the Nova and was preceding him along the path. She reached for her keys and heard someone calling her name—rather more than calling. Mrs. Lancing's partner in conversation was approaching with a purposefulness that drove all expression out of her face, which looked tightened by the ponytail that rendered her head too small for the large frilly blouse blossoming from her terse skirt. In a moment Leslie recognised her from having exchanged not much more than guarded greetings with her once at the school: Shaun Nolan's mother.

What had Ian been up to now? Nothing, Leslie suspected, that she wanted Jack Lamb to hear as his introduction to her household. She unlocked the front door and gave it a push. "Go right in," she said, and faced Mrs. Nolan, only to find her staring into the house. Before Leslie could turn she heard a little girl's cry along the hall.

She felt as though her keeping the secret of the house had caused it to manifest itself. As she swung round she had to grab the doorframe for fear of losing her balance. At first she couldn't see the child whose cry she'd heard, because Jack had stepped over the threshold and was blocking her view. "Hey, guys, what's been happening here?" he said.

The response was a rush of small feet. As if his appearance had proved too much for her, a little girl in a white dress and wearing a solitary sandal bolted out of the kitchen. He held up his hands to show they were harmless and dodged aside, and she shoved past Leslie onto the path. When her unsandalled foot caught on an edge of the jagged paving she fled one-legged, each hop jarring a whimper out of her. "Come here, Crys," Mrs. Nolan said in a voice too loud to be addressed solely to her, and flung Leslie's gate open so hard it rebounded from the wall. "Come here, love. What have they been doing to you? What's he been doing?"

It was clear from the look she aimed at Leslie that she wasn't referring to her own son. The mute accusation only aggravated the rage Leslie turned on Ian. "Just what have you been up to?"

He hadn't quite managed to produce the expression of bored innocence his friends had achieved. "Showing her where it happened. She wanted to come."

"Sweetbreads to that, Ian, gonads. I can see how much she wanted to be here, so you explain—"

Mrs. Nolan was louder. "What did he do to you, Crys?"

"Excuse me, Mrs. Nolan, but I see four boys in there. I don't think there's any reason to assume it was all Ian's doing. If you'd like to come inside we can sort this out, I hope."

Crystal flinched against her mother and clung to her. "Not in there," she pleaded.

Leslie saw Jack not knowing what to do except stay in the hall and look neutral. The prospect of his tenancy was receding fast, and she felt angrier than ever, not least with herself for regretting that so much in the midst of everything else. "We'll go in the front room," she made herself suggest.

"We'll be going nowhere in there, Crys. One little girl may have come to harm, but you won't be another. Get out of it, Shaun, and bring the other two while you're at it. I don't want you near this house again."

Ian's friends obeyed readily enough by their standards, Shaun carrying a sandal like a trophy. They were passing the stairs when Jack stretched out a hand. "Listen, maybe you should stick around till this is sorted out."

"It's all right, Mr. Lamb, let them go. I'll get the truth out of my son."

"I wouldn't like to think what you'd get out of him or anybody who wants to live in that place."

Though Mrs. Nolan meant that for Ian and his mother, it was Jack who responded, levelling his fingers at himself. "Could be I'm one."

"Might do some good to have a man about the house," Mrs. Nolan said to nobody in particular, and to Jack "Have you got any idea what kind of place this is?"

"I believe I've figured that out, yes."

"God forgive you, then, if you have. You're as bad as her, and look how it's affecting her boy. Come away, Crys, and you, Shaun, and the two of you as well. You can be a bit less friendly with him in the future, Shaun. We don't want you ending up like him."

Leslie's anger nearly forced her mouth open, but a row in the street would only leave her feeling worse. She watched Mrs. Nolan herd her children along Jericho Close, the other boys trailing behind. When she saw Mrs. Lancing hurry down her garden to accost Shaun's mother, Leslie closed the front door with a gentleness that felt like a slow-motion slam.