The Only Game Read online

  He walked away. She watched him go, then with a sick heart went back into the room.

  4

  The sign was brash and new: FAMILY FUN HEALTH CENTRE in big black letters on a white ground strewn with cameos of families having fun on exercise bikes, in a sauna, under sun lamps.

  Dog Cicero had been here before. He knew if you removed the sign above the entrance you would find chiselled in the granite lintel: SHELL STREET YOUTH CLUB, OPENED MAY 1921 BY ALDERMAN CALDER DSO JP.

  Last time he had stepped through these doors, he’d been fifteen, and memory programmed him to expect peeling olive green paint, worn linoleum, bare bulbs, a smell of damp wood, the stridency of punk guitars.

  Instead he found pastel shades, carpet tiling, strip lighting, an odour of embrocation oil and the bounce of James Last.

  Someone had turned Shell Street Youth Club into a place fit to get fit in.

  Not that the woman sitting at a small reception desk looked much of an advertisement for the service. If fat was still a feminist issue, here was a profound political statement.

  ‘I’m looking for Granger,’ said Dog.

  ‘He’s in the gym. Can I help? I’m Mrs Granger. Was it one of our courses you’re interested in?’

  ‘No.’ He produced his warrant card. ‘Just an enquiry.’

  She didn’t look surprised. Or worried.

  ‘Come with me,’ she said.

  She led him through a door into a corridor. A willowy blonde looking like the after to the older woman’s before came towards them. Mrs Granger said, ‘Suzie, watch the desk for a minute, will you?’

  There had been something euphemistically called a gym in the youth club. This too had changed; sprung floor, white pine, and enough gleaming implements to delight an Inquisitor’s heart. A couple of youths were pushing and pulling at steel levers, watched by a burly middle-aged man who came to the door in response to a gesture from Mrs Granger.

  ‘George, this is Inspector Cicero,’ she said. ‘My husband, Inspector.’

  ‘Cicero? There was a chippie called Cicero’s.’

  ‘My father’s. Mr Granger, if you can spare a moment, I’d like to ask about a member of your staff. A Mrs Maguire. Mrs Jane Maguire.’

  The Grangers exchanged glances.

  ‘So what’s she been saying?’ demanded the woman.

  ‘Is there somewhere we can talk? If you’re not too busy.’ He glanced into the quiet gym.

  ‘We fill up later on,’ said Granger defensively. Dog looked at his watch. Ten to five. He recalled what Maguire had said.

  Granger led the way to a small office. Three was very much a crowd in here, especially when two were built like the Grangers. He had clearly eaten at the same table as his wife even if he had been rather more successful in preserving the fat–muscle ratio.

  ‘Right, Mr Cicero, let’s hear it.’

  There was an edge of something there. Aggression? Anger? Defiance? Endo said, just keep dealing the cards, son, and sooner or later they’ll tell you what they’re at.

  He asked, ‘What time did Mrs Maguire get to work this morning?’

  Another exchange of glances, this time puzzled. Then the woman said with remembered indignation, ‘Ten to ten. I had to start her aerobics class.’

  Dog thought of Maguire’s lithe athletic figure and nodded gravely.

  ‘And did she leave at her usual time? That’s two-thirty, I believe.’

  ‘No!’ exploded Granger. ‘She did not!’

  ‘You mean she left early? Why was that?’

  ‘She left early because I fired her! That’s why she left. What’s she been saying, Inspector?’

  ‘You fired her?’ said Dog. ‘For being late?’

  Again he got the bewildered reaction.

  The woman said, ‘I think you’d better tell us why you’re asking these questions, Inspector.’

  ‘No,’ said Dog equably. ‘I think you’d better tell me why you’re giving these answers. Why did you dismiss Mrs Maguire, Mr Granger?’

  He looked at his wife. She nodded permission. He said, ‘I sacked her because there was a complaint. I’d asked her to give one of our regular clients a massage. It was about midday. Some little time later I heard her voice raised in the treatment room and then she came out. I went in to see what was the matter and the client made a very serious complaint which left me no alternative but to sack her.’

  ‘What exactly was this complaint?’

  Granger said hesitantly, ‘Well, he, the client, accused Mrs Maguire of … making an indecent suggestion.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Dog.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, George,’ interrupted Mrs Granger impatiently. ‘She offered to jerk him off. For twenty-five pounds, Inspector!’

  She sounded more indignant at the price than the proposal.

  ‘And what did Mrs Maguire say when you put this to her?’ said Dog to the man.

  ‘She told me it was her business. She said she was only offering what these men really wanted. And when I told her she was fired, she became very abusive and said if it was the Centre’s good name I was worried about, I’d better forget it, because by the time she was finished with me, it would stink.’

  ‘And then she assaulted him,’ said Mrs Granger.

  ‘What?’

  Granger looked embarrassed.

  ‘It wasn’t anything.’

  ‘She punched you in the stomach,’ retorted his wife. ‘He was doubled up with pain. I wanted him to call the police. If it had been a man he would have done, and in my book a violent woman’s just as dangerous as a violent man.’

  ‘It would have made me look silly and not done the Centre’s reputation any good,’ said Granger. ‘The same about the other thing. Sacking her and letting the whole thing drop seemed the best course.’

  ‘And your client went along with this?’ said Dog.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said the woman. ‘He’d got a name to protect too. Mud sticks.’

  ‘And what is this name he’s protecting?’ asked Dog.

  The man said, ‘I daresay you’ll know it, Inspector. It’s Jacobs. Councillor Jacobs. So you see, Mrs Maguire picked the wrong man when she picked on him!’

  They were right. Councillor Jacobs was the amplifier through which the still small voice of God was heard plain in Romchurch. The scourge of corruption, the trimmer of budgets, the guardian of the public purse and, as chairman of the Police Liaison Committee, the answer to the Chief Constable’s prayers.

  He asked a few more questions then left. On his way past the desk, he paused and smiled at the skinny blonde. She looked about twenty and had a cheerful, open face. He said, ‘Do you know Mrs Maguire?’

  Her expression lost its openness.

  ‘Who’s asking?’ she said guardedly.

  He told her and she said, ‘Is it about her getting the boot?’

  ‘That’s right,’ he lied easily. ‘Were you around?’

  ‘No. I had to go out at lunchtime. I had a dentist’s appointment.’

  She opened her mouth as though inviting him to check. He looked in and she ran her moist pink tongue along her upper teeth and grinned as he looked away.

  ‘Is it right she belted old George in the gut?’ she asked.

  ‘Did you know her well?’

  ‘No. Hardly at all. She was a bit stuck up, know what I mean? But she’ll be OK, won’t she?’

  Dog said, ‘Any reason she shouldn’t be OK?’

  ‘No!’ she asserted strongly. ‘Not as if she hasn’t got someone to take care of her, is it?’

  A boy friend, you mean? I thought you said you didn’t know her socially.’

  ‘That’s right, but I know a dreamboat when I see one. I could have eaten him for supper, numb gums and all.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ demanded Dog.

  ‘Her boy friend, of course! He was looking to meet her after work this afternoon, only he wasn’t to know she’d got the heave, was he? So he came in when she didn’t come out at half tw
o like she usually does, and asked where she was.’

  ‘And what did you tell him?’

  ‘Nothing at first. I just played him along to see how well attached he was. We were getting on fine till I told him she’d left early, then he took off pretty smart so it must be serious, worse luck.’

  ‘Describe him.’

  ‘Well, like I say, he was gorgeous.’ Seeing from Dog’s face that more was required, she went on, ‘Like Tom Cruise, know what I mean? Only really blond. And he had this sexy accent, Scotch or maybe Irish, they all sound the same, don’t they? And his name was Billy.’

  That was it, but it was enough. In a lot of child abuse cases there was a boy friend on the scene, not the child’s father. Maguire had denied having a man in her life. Another question mark. Sometimes you couldn’t see the answers for the questions.

  Sometimes you didn’t want to see the answer.

  He walked twice round his car, got in, set off back to the station. The evening traffic was building up, smearing light along the wet roads. He got stuck at the roundabout outside Holy Trinity. They’d got the Christmas lanterns up in the old yew tree by the porch. He leaned across to peer at them. This church and the Shell Street Youth Club had been the poles of his boyhood world and the next turn left would take him past its centre, the old shop.

  He wouldn’t make the turn. Church, club, shop, they belonged to another country, another time. Another person.

  The person he was now had only one concern. What had happened to young Oliver Maguire? What odds would he recommend to WPC Scott now?

  His radio crackled into life with his call sign. He responded and the metallic voice said, ‘Message from WPC Scott at City General Hospital. Maguire has absconded. Repeat, Maguire has absconded.’

  ‘Shit,’ said Dog. The traffic started to move. A gap opened in the outside lane. Engine snarling in protest, he forced his way into it, got one wheel on the central reservation, crowded the van ahead of him over to the nearside and swept round the front of the line onto the roundabout with emergency lights flashing.

  Behind him, pressed back against the oak door in the shadowy porch of Holy Trinity Church, Jane Maguire watched him drive away.

  5

  Fear heightens perception.

  Jane Maguire had spotted Dog Cicero the instant she stepped through the church door. One car in a line of traffic, one silhouette in a gallery of portraits, but her eyes had fixed on it. Then it had turned full face towards her and she’d been certain the magnetism was two-way.

  Next moment, however, he’d spoken into a mike and driven away like a madman. She knew beyond guesswork what he’d been told and she almost felt a pang of sympathy for the young policewoman. Not that it had been her fault any more than it had been Jane’s plan. As she’d been wheeled down to X-ray, she’d heard the girl ask, ‘How long?’

  ‘Thirty minutes at least,’ had been the answer. In the event she’d been through in five, back in her room in ten. And she was alone, except for the almost tangible after-image of Cicero’s distrust. She saw again those coldly assessing eyes in the half-frozen face and she knew she’d made a mistake, not in lying, but in lying about things he could check. He would be back and she couldn’t keep fainting her way out of confrontation for ever.

  It was time to go. Her body had made the decision before her mind and she was already out of bed and pulling on her clothes.

  No one challenged her as she walked along the corridor to Reception and out into the chill night air. It was still raining. She felt it would never stop. Momentarily she got entangled in a small queue of mainly old people climbing into an ambulance. Instead of passing through, she let herself be taken up with them. Soon afterwards when the first passenger was dropped near Holy Trinity roundabout, she got down too. Every day she passed the church on her way to the Health Centre. If she noticed it at all, it was with a sense of relief that she’d shed that particular delusion. Now she went inside, rationalizing that she needed somewhere quiet to sit and think. But as the door closed hollowly behind her, the smell, the light, the sense of echoing space sent her reeling back to her childhood and she felt her controlling will assailed by a fearful longing for the cleansing darkness of the confessional.

  A priest came down the aisle. Sensing her uncertainty, he asked courteously, ‘Can I be of any assistance?’ He was an old man with a kind face but his accent was straight out of O’Connell Street.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said harshly, and turned on her heel and left.

  Flight or victory? Would any other accent have had her on her knees?

  Then she had seen Cicero and for one superstitious moment felt that perhaps God was laying her options unambiguously in view.

  Now she watched his car out of sight before hurrying down the side of the church, following a gravel path that continued between mossy headstones till it reached a graffiti’d lych-gate which opened onto a quiet side street.

  Here she paused, sheltering from the rain under the gate’s small roof, and summoning reason back to control. Where should she go? Not her flat. Cicero had told her he’d got someone waiting there. Run home to mother? That’s what she’d done last time, with mixed results. But she couldn’t do it this time, not with the news she would have to bear. Besides, Cicero of the unblinking brown eyes would soon ferret her mam out.

  No, there was only one place to go, one person to turn to. No matter if angry words lay between them. There and only there lay her hope of welcoming arms, of a sympathetic hearing, of lasting refuge.

  Putting her head down against the pelting rain, she began to walk swiftly towards the town centre.

  6

  Dog Cicero parked his car obliquely across two spaces and ran up the steps into the station. A small man wearing oily overalls and a ragged moustache blocked his way.

  ‘Call that parking?’ he said. ‘You’re not in bloody Napoli now, Dog.’

  ‘I hate a racist Yid,’ said Dog. ‘You done that car yet, Marty?’

  ‘Report’s on your desk.’

  ‘What’s it say?’

  ‘Given up the adult literacy course, have we? All right, car’s a rust bucket but not a death trap. Should scrape through its MOT.’

  ‘How’s the engine? Poor starter?’

  ‘No. Fine. In fact in very good nick, considering. It’s the upholstery, not the mechanics, should be interesting you, though.’

  ‘Why’s that, Marty?’

  ‘Some nice stains on the back seat round the kiddie’s chair. That black poof from the lab’s looking at them now. Hey, doesn’t anyone say thank you any more?’

  ‘I’ll give you a ring next time I feel grateful,’ Dog called over his shoulder.

  As he ran up the stairs to his office a youngish man in a shantung shirt and dangerously tight jeans intercepted him.

  ‘You’ve got a visitor,’ he said.

  ‘No time for visitors, Charley. Can you raise me Johnson at Maguire’s flat?’

  ‘No-can-do,’ said Detective Sergeant Charley Lunn, with a built-in cheerfulness some found irritating. ‘There’s no phone there and it’s a radio dead area. Shall I send someone round?’

  Dog thought, then said, ‘No, I’ll go myself. You get anything for me on Maguire, Charley?’

  He’d instructed his sergeant to run the usual checks, not with much hope.

  But Lunn said, ‘As a matter of fact, I did. Maguire’s her real name, by the way, not her married name …’

  ‘I know that,’ said Dog impatiently, leading the way into his office.

  ‘… and she’s twenty-seven years old, born Londonderry, Northern Ireland, but brought up since she was nine in Northampton where her widowed mother still lives …’

  ‘You got an address?’

  ‘Surely. Here it is. To continue, our Maguire trained as a teacher at the South Essex College of Physical Education, qualified, and got a job at a Sheffield secondary school, but quit in her probationary year …’

  ‘Is any of this relevant?’ interru
pted Dog. ‘And where the hell did you dig it up anyway?’

  ‘Obvious place,’ said Lunn modestly. ‘I punched her into the central computer and out it all came.’

  ‘Good God. What’s she doing in there? Has she got some kind of record?’

  ‘Indirectly. It’s a bit odd really. Seems that during this teaching year, she went with a school party on a walking tour up on Ingleborough in Yorkshire. There was some kind of row which ended with her hitting a girl who took off into the mist and fell down a pothole. The place is honeycombed with them, I gather. The girl was seriously injured and the family tried to bring a private prosecution against Maguire for assault but it never got off the ground.’

  ‘Then why the hell is it on the computer? And what did she do after she resigned from teaching?’

  ‘Don’t know. That was it. Any use?’

  ‘The address might be,’ said Dog. ‘Charley, get a general call out for Maguire, will you? Nothing heavy. Just to bring her in for her own good.’

  ‘It shall be done. You won’t forget your visitor, will you?’

  ‘I’ll do my best. Who the hell is it anyway?’

  ‘Not just any old visitor,’ grinned Lunn. ‘A real VIP. Very Indignant Person. It’s Councillor Jacobs. He’s making do with the super till you get back.’

  ‘They were made for each other,’ grunted Dog. ‘He can wait a bit longer.’

  As Lunn left, he picked up the phone and dialled.

  ‘Dog, my man! Knew it was you. Recognize that ring anywhere, as the actor said to the bishop. It’s the stains in the car, right?’

  ‘Right. Got anything yet?’

  ‘Natch. Can’t hang around when it’s a job for Generalissimo Cicero, can we? It’s blood and it’s Group B. How does that grab you?’

  He looked at the copy of Oliver Maguire’s record he had taken from the kindergarten. Blood Group B.

  ‘Where it hurts,’ he said and replaced the receiver. The phone rang instantly.

  ‘Dog, could you pop along to see me? I’ve got Councillor Jacobs here and he’s keen to meet you.’