Silent Playgrounds (35 page)

Suzanne asked the question she had dreaded asking, could hardly bring herself to ask, because she knew what the answer would be. ‘The children? Michael, and Lucy?’ She tried to keep her voice calm, but it shook with the strain. She wanted to scream, beg,
anything,
if he would say that they were safe, they were well.

He frowned in irritation at being interrupted. ‘Luce knows. About Em and So. And Simon. Simon told her.’ He shook his head. He looked bewildered now, more the Ashley she remembered. ‘It was good,’ he said. ‘When we were all together.’

Her eyes were becoming accustomed to the dim light. All around the walls, from floor to ceiling, there were sheets of paper covered with drawings – people, faces; and paintings – wild patterns, sometimes sprayed over the top of the drawings, all flickering and moving in the light of the candles. Sophie and Emma, alive again in the candlelight. Lucy, over and over again, big-eyed, solemn. ‘Please, Ashley,’ she said. She could feel the strength draining out of her. She had to know. ‘Please,
Ashley, tell me what you’ve done with Lucy. With Michael.’ He looked at her, his silence almost an answer. ‘Please,’ she said.

He looked down, confused. Then he looked back at her again. ‘I liked you,’ he said. ‘I told you what was happening, before Sophie … when I didn’t know what to do about Sophie, but you didn’t listen. You could have stopped it, if you’d listened.’
Listen to me!
He was breathing hard again.

‘Please, Ashley. Please tell me. I’m sorry. I know. I did listen, but I thought it was too late.’ She tried to keep her voice gentle, tried to keep him calm.
Tell me!

He seemed to be thinking. ‘I don’t know,’ he said after a moment. ‘I left them.’ He wouldn’t look at her.

‘Where? Where did you leave them? Were they hurt? Ashley …’

His hand lashed out, hitting her across the mouth. She staggered. ‘Shut up!’ he said. ‘I never wanted to hurt anyone. They just … So found out. I had to … And Em was going to … Stop asking me questions. You always ask me questions.’ The dislocated voice of the tape was talking to her now. He grabbed hold of her hair and pulled her head back, holding the knife hard against her neck. ‘I get angry,’ he said.

There were tears in his eyes, glistening on his lashes in the candlelight. He let go of her hair and put his hand up to her face, running his fingers gently over the swelling that was starting on her lip. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry.’ Strangely, incongruously, he still made her think of Adam, Adam caught in a trap of his own making, that he could no longer escape. He’d said that
he’d left them, Lucy and Michael. Where? He had no reason to hurt them. Maybe it would be all right. Maybe Lucy and Michael would be found, safe and well, come home and … and … She couldn’t think beyond that point.

He was still holding the knife, but away from her now, as though he’d forgotten it was a weapon. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t run. She couldn’t go anywhere until she found out about the children. He ran his finger absently across the edge. ‘She didn’t want us, my mum. She kept Sophie, but she didn’t want us. We went to live with my uncle and aunt. I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I cried for my mum. She said she was coming back, but she never did. I didn’t know where she’d gone. I didn’t know where Simon had gone.’ His eyes looked blank. ‘I didn’t want to hurt him. I hit him and he fell on the bed. Then I …’ He shook his head as if he was trying to dislodge the images. His eyes came back into focus and he looked at her. ‘He was a cunt, my uncle.’

They were operating on McCarthy’s hunch, because they didn’t have anything else to go on. All they had were the cryptic contents of Ashley’s tape, the few bits of information from the case files, and their local knowledge.

The street lighting around the flats was largely gone, vandalized and not repaired by a cash-strapped council. This wasn’t an area that was worth canvassing for votes, and now most of the blocks were empty. Barraclough turned her headlights off as she followed McCarthy’s
car into the central courtyard. Two vans came in behind her.

Simon had made the drugs, Ecstasy and speed. The Alpha Centre had reported a problem with pills about three months ago. Ashley Reid had started at the Alpha Centre then, and his main contact there was Lee Bradley. Lee used to live in these flats, up until six months ago, and in the last months of his being here, most of the flats had been boarded up and abandoned. Ashley Reid, too, had had a flat here, one of the places where flats could be had for the asking. No one wanted to live here through choice. Barraclough knew that the minimal policing of the estate would be wound right down once the flats were empty. What better venue for dealing, and what reason would there be to change? Lee Bradley’s old flat was near the top of the block facing Barraclough, and the abandoned Astra in front of the garages, a car that had been reported stolen ten minutes after the fire at Shepherd Wheel, seemed to confirm that McCarthy had been right.

There was the smell of beer and the sound of men laughing. The child tip-toed down the stairs and peered through the kitchen door. The smell of beer was stronger now, and there were people, lots of people, men, sitting round the table. They had glasses in front of them, and they were laughing. One of them looked round and saw him at the door. Uncle Bryan. ‘Hey up,’ he said, in that loud voice the men sometimes used. ‘Who’ve we got here then?’ Uncle Bryan was liking him. He sidled into the room, smiling round his thumb.

‘Give over, Bryan.’ Aunt Kath’s voice, irritable. ‘Ashley!
Thumb!’ Ashley took his thumb out of his mouth and stood by his uncle’s solid bulk.

‘You fuss too much.’ Uncle Bryan was drinking beer. He winked at Ashley. Ashley tried to wink back, but both his eyes closed together. ‘Come on, love,’ Uncle Bryan said. ‘Give us a kiss.’ The men laughed. He was confused. ‘Come on,’ Uncle Bryan said, holding out his arms. Aunt Kath always said, ‘Boys don’t kiss.’ He looked at her. Her back was towards him, stiff and angry. ‘Come on,’ Uncle Bryan said again, and, shyly, he reached up his arms and kissed his uncle’s face.

The blow was so unexpected he couldn’t feel it hurting. He was on the floor by the other side of the room, and all the men were laughing, and Uncle Bryan was laughing. ‘That’s for kissing men,’ he said. ‘Hey!’ He turned to the other men who were laughing and laughing. ‘Get it? That’s for kissing men!’

He’d cut his finger on the edge of the knife. It was bleeding. He looked at it for a moment, then wiped the blood off on his T-shirt. ‘I thought it would be all right after Sophie came.’ His eyes were sad. ‘But everything changes. Nothing stays the same. Sometimes there’s only one safe place to be.’

He reached out and took her hand. He did it gently, but his grip was firm. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said. He took her across the room to where the window was covered with a heavy blanket. He pulled the blanket away, and they were looking out together across the night sky. The window opened onto a balcony. ‘Come on,’ he said.

The city lay at their feet. Away in the distance, the lights of houses and roads sparkled on the far hills.
Nearer, the lights merged and blazed out in the colour and confusion of the city centre. The glow-worms of the trams wound around their tracks – not glow-worms, Suzanne thought, but dragons, monsters gliding in silent brilliance through the night. The cars made rivers of light; the traffic lights winked red, yellow, green; the street signs and the bars and the clubs flashed out their messages to the watchers in the sky above them. But to Suzanne it was all dead, silent chaos.
Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
The words from nowhere formed themselves in her mind.

Ashley let go of her hand, and now he put his arm round her, pulling her close against him, like a lover, and they stood together, watching. Then he directed her attention downwards. There, in front of the block, down at the end of the dizzying drop, a car was drawing up, dark and silent. Ashley pushed her behind him, still holding the knife, and stood in clear view, close to the edge with just a broken railing between him and the drop.
One safe place.
She tried to pull away, but his grip on her wrist was unbreakable. He was so close to the drop, so close … She could see figures moving around far below, some apparently milling aimlessly, others moving with intent towards the shadows, round the back of the building.

‘They’ll already be up here,’ Ashley said. ‘They’ve been here for a while.’

McCarthy positioned the team outside the door of the flat. It was quiet now, but a few minutes before, they had heard a voice, the sound of something falling. One
of the officers shook his head. No further sound. They’d just heard the one voice, and they knew, now, who that was.

Anne Hays had taken prints from the body removed from Suzanne’s house, a standard procedure in the absence of close friends or relatives to make an identification. The formality of linking them up to the prints they had on record for Ashley Reid had been slightly delayed by the urgency of the forensic work from Simon Walker’s flat. Only they hadn’t matched.

And now Reid was holed up in the flat – on his own, or with Joel Severini, or with Lee Bradley? They needed to know if there was anyone in there with him. McCarthy checked back on his radio. The first confirmation came through. Severini had been found coming out of a pub, apparently ignorant of the events of the night. He’d been arrested. That was for sorting later. Lee Bradley was, according to his mother, out with his mates. She didn’t know where, and she didn’t seem particularly interested. Someone, presumed to be Ashley Reid, was on the balcony of the flat. He’d seen the cars.

McCarthy cursed and considered the options. He didn’t really have any. He gave the signal to the team and spoke quietly into his radio. ‘We’re going in,’ he said.

Barraclough could see the figure clearly from her position by the car. A man standing on the balcony, outlined against the light. Corvin was swearing under his breath. Reid had seen them now. The figure moved
backwards, back inside, she thought, then came back to the edge. She heard Corvin on his radio, ‘Careful, Steve, hold it, he’s on the balcony …’ and a lot of static and crackling.

‘What’s he doing?’ Corvin was squinting up, his neck at a painful angle.

‘I don’t know …
Shit!
He’s going to …’ They moved back as Ashley Reid came right to the parapet.

‘No, he’s just standing …’ Corvin kept moving backwards, away from the danger zone. Barraclough heard the radio crackle, heard voices as an incoherent gabble, and then they were behind the van still looking up at the figure watching them from that precipitous drop.

Quite early in her career, Barraclough had had to help in the aftermath of a jumper. A teacher who had been suffering from depression had jumped from one of the city’s tower blocks. She could remember two things that had lodged themselves in her mind. One was the sheer mortality of the human body, its capacity to be smashed to pulp; the other was her conviction that between the leap and the end, there was more than enough time for regret.

Suzanne struggled to free herself from his grip. Relief froze her as he moved away from the drop. She tried to speak, but her voice was gone.

He looked at her. ‘It was so good, you see. We all knew it was. It was going to be perfect. It was all going to be new.’ He touched her face, gently. ‘Why are you crying? I can’t stand crying.’ Suzanne shook her head. She couldn’t explain. He looked into her eyes, running
his fingers across her mouth. ‘They’re outside the door.’

He moved before she could react. He was behind her, pulling her back against him, his arm across her chest. She could feel the cold edge of the knife hard against her neck. He seemed calm, matter of fact. She heard pounding on the door and saw the jamb start to bend and splinter. Then the door was open and they were in. She felt him pulling her back towards the balcony. The knife was digging in now. She closed her eyes. ‘Ashley …’ she said.

She could feel his mouth against her ear. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll keep you safe.’ His voice was barely a whisper. Then she looked. There seemed to be hundreds of them, in the room, in the doorway, spreading out, trying to flank Ashley. And in the doorway, Steve, looking at her, and just for a second his face seemed to shatter, then it became a calm, impassive mask. He looked beyond her. ‘Ashley! Listen! They’re all right. Lucy and Michael. They’re all right. Let Suzanne go.’

Ashley’s voice, speaking in her ear. Still gentle, quiet. ‘Fire and water,
Suzanne.
They’re safe now. They’re gone.’ For a moment, she felt the knowledge open up inside her, a pit she would fall down for ever, but Steve’s eyes held hers. He wouldn’t lie. Not about this. Not to her. They were at the doors now, and Ashley was inexorably drawing her out onto the balcony.

Then, suddenly, he let her go, and she staggered back against the railing, feeling it start to give. He had swung himself up onto the low parapet, his legs hanging over the drop. ‘Suzanne!’ Steve was shouting. ‘Get away from there! Now!
Now!’

It was like slow motion, like moving through heavy water. She turned her head, and his eyes, Ashley’s eyes, Adam’s eyes, looked at her.
No!
But she didn’t know if she’d said it out loud or if it just stayed in her head. She reached her hand out to him as he looked from her to the emptiness beside him.
Listen to me!
He smiled slightly, and suddenly he was the Ashley she knew, Ashley saying,
Don’t mind them.
Ashley saying,
I’d like to do art at college,
Ashley kissing her with a terrifying desperation. He looked into her eyes. He reached out his hand to her.
Listen to me, Suzanne, listen!
Her hand reached towards his, and he looked into her eyes and smiled. Steve’s voice, frantic now,
‘Suzanne!’
And she snatched her hand back as Ashley’s closed like steel round the empty air.