LITMIR.BIZ

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confronting each other so self-importantly, like wise guardians of the poor … where had that phrase popped up from? It was hardly apt, especially at this time of day. Until the arrival of her mobile rust bucket, there was little sign of poverty outside Number Twenty-nine which housed the Vestey Kindergarten. Mercs, BMWs and Audis gleamed and purred here, most of them newish and many, she guessed, second cars. Fathers sometimes figured in the morning drop, but the afternoon pick-up was entirely female.

      As she went up the steps a couple of women, expensively wrapped against the rain, looked at her strangely. Nearly three months of twice daily encounters hadn’t got her past the nodding stage with any of them. She didn’t blame them. People who drove cars like theirs steered clear of people who drove cars like hers – in every sense! She paused in the doorway to confirm their wisdom by shaking the raindrops out of her hair, then stepped inside.

      Mrs Vestey did her best with beeswax polish and ozone-friendly aerosols, but on a wet day it was beyond even her powers to stop the school from smelling like a school. As usual she was standing by the entrance to the cloakroom, in which a melee of staff and mothers were preparing the youngsters for the perilous passage from front door to kerb. She was a tall, dark woman with a slightly hooked nose and long white teeth which she flashed in a welcoming smile as she said, ‘Hello, Mrs Maguire. No problems, I hope?’

      ‘No,’ said Jane harshly.

      ‘Oh, good. I feared that you might be going to tell me that the little upset had turned into something communicable. It’s a constant nightmare as I’m sure you can imagine. So, what can I do for you?’

      ‘Nothing,’ said Jane. ‘I’ll just pick up Noll and be on my way.’

      She pushed past the headmistress into the cloakroom and stood there a minute looking at the children.

      Then she turned and said quietly to Mrs Vestey, ‘Where’s Noll?’

      The woman gave her another long-toothed smile, this time not of welcome but incomprehension. At the same time her nostrils flared as though catching a worrying scent.

      And Jane knew that the moment was close, the moment when fear became fact. But there were still lines to speak.

      ‘Please, Mrs Vestey,’ she said, ‘has something happened? Has he been taken ill?’

      ‘Yes, yes … at least I understood so …’ said the woman uncertainly. ‘But you yourself …’

      She paused, took a deep breath, and when she spoke again, it was in the assertive tone of someone who needs to get basic facts established in a welter of uncertainty.

      ‘Noll is not here, Mrs Maguire,’ she said.

      ‘Not here? Where is he then? Has he been taken to hospital? Why wasn’t I …’

      ‘No! Mrs Maguire,’ interrupted Mrs Vestey, ‘I mean Noll has never been here today. You yourself rang to say he was ill …’

      ‘I rang? What do you mean? Why should I …’

      ‘Someone rang,’ said Mrs Vestey firmly. ‘But if it wasn’t you, then why didn’t you bring Noll to school as usual?’

      ‘I did!’ cried Jane, her voice rising now and attracting the attention of other parents. ‘I did!’

      ‘You brought him yourself? And brought him inside?’

      ‘No,’ admitted Jane. ‘Not inside. I was going to, but I was very late, so I left him on the steps with Miss Gosling …’

      ‘I’m sorry? With whom?’

      ‘Miss Gosling. For God’s sake, what kind of school is this where you don’t know your own staff?’

      ‘I know my staff very well,’ said Mrs Vestey. ‘And I assure you, I employ no one called Gosling.’

      ‘So I’ve got the name wrong!’ cried Jane in a voice of rising panic. ‘She’s the new one. She started last week. I want to see her, where is she? What’s she done with Noll?’

      And now a little compassion crept into Mrs Vestey’s voice as she produced her clinching argument.

      ‘Perhaps you’d better sit down, Mrs Maguire. I can assure you I have appointed no new member of staff for over a year now, so whoever you left your son with had no connection with this establishment. Mrs Maguire, are you all right? Mrs Maguire!’

      But Jane was swaying away from her. This was worse than her worst imaginings. Her body was no longer her own. She heard a voice say, ‘It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have hit him.’ The room turned and a carousel of anxious races undulated round her. But she could see beneath their surface concern to the grinning skulls, and the wintry light was flickering at the edges as though cast by flame.

      It was time to fall into that flame and let it consume her.

       3

      Dog Cicero dropped a few threads of cheap Italian tobacco into a paper, rolled it between finger and thumb, lit it, and puffed a jet of smoke at the NO SMOKING sign.

      A nurse came out of the door in front of him and said, ‘Can’t you read?’

      He said, ‘Best five card stud man my Uncle Endo ever played couldn’t read a word.’

      She looked at him blankly. He tossed the cigarette into a fire bucket. It had given him what he wanted, the tobacco smell to remind him of his father living and mask the hospital smell, which reminded him of his father dying.

      The nurse said, ‘You can go in now.’

      He went through the door and looked down at the woman in the bed.

      He saw a pair of dark green eyes, huge in an ashen face framed in a sunburst of red hair which almost concealed the pillow.

      The green eyes saw a face out of an old Italian painting, lean, sallow, with a long nose, a jagged fringe of black hair, and deep watchful eyes. It was a mobile and humorous face. At least the right side was. The left was stiff with a shiny scar running like a frozen river from the ear across the cheek to the point of the jaw. Her gaze slipped away from it. He was wearing a light blue denim jacket, damp around the shoulders.

      She said, ‘Is it still raining?’

      Her voice was soft, with a whisper of a brogue in it so distant he might have missed it if the hair and the eyes hadn’t sensitized his ears.

      He half turned his head so the frozen side faced her and said, as if she’d asked several other questions, ‘You’re in hospital, Mrs Maguire. It’s three-fifty. When you fainted, you banged your head.’

      She sat up, felt pain spark through her skull, ignored it.

      She said, ‘Noll,’ and began to cry.

      He said, ‘I’m Detective Inspector Cicero of Romchurch CID. We’ve put out an alert but we need more details.’

      ‘I can’t stay here,’ she said urgently. ‘If there’s any contact …’

      ‘I’ve sent a man to your flat,’ he interrupted. ‘We borrowed your key. Look, the doctors want to X-ray your head, treat you for shock, give you sedatives, but I said you’d want to talk first.’

      ‘Yes.’

      The tears had stopped. It wasn’t control, just a break in the weather.

      He said, ‘We’ve got the photo from the kindergarten files. But we need to know what he was wearing.’

      She said, ‘Black shoes, grey trousers, blue sweater over a white short-sleeved shirt, blue quilted anorak with a hood.’

      He said, ‘Get that out, Scott.’ For the first time she realized there was a uniformed woman constable at the other side of the bed, taking notes. Their eyes met. The policewoman,

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