Playing for the Ashes (86 page)

She went back down the stairs. Shar was in the kitchen. She was replacing the oilcloth with their Christmas tablecloth, one edged in holly with a wreath in the centre and Father Christmas ho-hoing in all four corners. Stan and Jim were still watching the telly where a beaky-nosed man with an unshaven face was going on about some film he’d just made, talking like he had a plum in his mouth.

“Bloody poof, he is, i’n’t he, Jim?” Stan giggled and punched his brother on the knee.

Jeannie said, “Watch your mouth. Help your sister with the table,” and went to turn the television off. She said to Jimmy, “Come with me,” and added in a gentler tone as he shrank into the sofa, “Come on, Jim luv. We’re just going out back.” They left Shar meticulously laying fish fingers out on a cooking sheet and Stan shaking frozen chips into a pan.

“Shall I do a green salad as well, Mummy?” Shar asked as Jeannie opened the door to the garden.

“C’n we have baked beans?” Stan added.

“You make what you want,” Jeannie told them. “You call us when things’re ready.”

Jimmy preceded her down the single concrete step to the garden. He ambled to the birdbath and Jeannie joined him, setting her cigarettes and a matchbook on the broken edge.

“Have a fag if you want,” she told her son.

He picked at a jagged section of the birdbath where a chunk of it had long ago fallen off. He made no move towards the cigarettes.

“Course, I wished you wouldn’t smoke,” Jeannie said, “but if you want, it’s okay for now. Me, I wished I never started smoking. P’rhaps I can give it up when all this’s over.”

She looked round the pitiful excuse for a garden: one broken birdbath, one concrete slab with beds of scraggly pansies running along its edges. She said, “It’d be nice to have a proper garden, don’t you think, Jim? P’rhaps we can make this dunghill into a real showplace. When all this’s over. If we take out this old concrete and put in a lawn, some pretty flowers, and a tree, we could sit out here when the weather’s fine. I’d like to do that. I’d want your help, though, with the work. I couldn’t cope with it on my own.”

Jimmy’s hands went into the pockets of his jeans. He brought out his own cigarettes and matches. He lit one and laid the packet and the matches next to her own.

Jeannie felt the hunger strike her when she smelled the smoke. It worked through her nerves like they were being pulled tight. But she didn’t reach for her own cigarettes. Instead, she said, “Oh ta, Jim. That’s nice of you. I will,” and took one of his. She lit it, coughed, and said, “Cor, we both got to get off the weed, huh? P’rhaps we can do it together. I help you. You help me. Afterwards. When this is over.”

Jimmy flicked ash into the empty birdbath.

“I can use the help,” she said. “You probably can use the help as well. ’Sides, we don’t want Shar and Stan to start smoking. We got to set an example. We could even make these here our last fags if we wanted. We got to take care of Shar and Stan.”

He let out breath and smoke. It sounded like a snort. He was scoffing at her words.

She answered the scoff. “Shar and Stan need you.”

His head was turned towards the wall that separated their garden from their neighbour’s, so she couldn’t see his expression although she heard him well enough when he muttered, “They got you.”

“Sure they got me,” Jeannie said. “I’m their mum and I’ll always be here. But they need their older brother as well. You see that, don’t you? They need you here, now more’n ever. They’re going to look to you now that…” She saw the pitfall. She made her voice strong and forced herself on. “They’re going to need you special now that your dad’s—”

“I said they got you.” Jimmy’s voice was terse. “They got their mum.”

“But they need a man as well.”

“Uncle Der.”

“Uncle Der’s not you. He loves them, yeah, but he doesn’t know them like you do, Jim. And they don’t look to him like they look to you. A brother’s different from an uncle. A brother’s more close. A brother’s right there all the time so he can look out for them. That’s important. Looking out for them. For Stan. For Shar.” She licked her lips and inhaled the acrid tobacco smoke. She was fast running out of harmless words.

She ventured round the side of the birdbath so that she was facing him. She took a final drag from the cigarette and crushed what was left of it beneath the sole of her shoe. She saw his eyes dart warily in her direction, and when their glances met, she finally asked gently, “Why’re you lying to the cops, luv?”

He moved his head. He took such a long drag from his cigarette that Jeannie thought he’d smoke it straight to the end in one long gasp.

“What’d you see that night?” she asked softly.

“He deserved to die.”

“Don’t say that.”

“I’ll say what I want. I got the right. I don’t care that he’s dead.”

“You care. You do. You loved your dad like nobody on earth, and no lie you tell’s going to change that, Jimmy.”

He spat a shred of tobacco onto the ground. He followed it with a heavy glob of grey-green sputum. Jeannie refused to let him derail her.

She said, “You wanted Dad home as bad ’s I did. Maybe worse’n I did because there wasn’t a pricey blonde slag that was standing between you and him like there was standing between him and me. So there was nothing that made you all bollixed up about how you felt and whether you really wanted him back in the first place. Maybe that’s why you’re lying now, Jim. To me. To Mr. Friskin. To the cops.” She saw a muscle suddenly tighten in his jaw. She felt them hovering on the edge of what needed to be said and she went on with “Maybe you’re lying cos it’s easier to lie. Did you ever think that? Maybe you’re lying cos it’s easier than having to go through the hurt of knowing Dad’s gone forever this time.”

Jimmy tossed his cigarette to the ground and let it smoulder there. He said, “That’s it. You got it dead right, Mum,” and he sounded too relieved for Jeannie’s liking.

He began to reach for his packet of JPS. Jeannie got to the cigarettes before he did and closed her hand round them as well as round her own. She said, “But maybe it
is
like Mr. Friskin said.”

“Mummy?” Shar called from the kitchen door.

Jim blocked Jeannie’s view of the house. She ignored her daughter, saying instead in a lower voice, “You listen to me, Jim.”

“Mummy?” Shar called again.

“You got to tell me why you’re lying. You got to tell me the truth right now.”

“I already told it.”

“You got to tell me exactly what you saw.” She reached for him across the birdbath, but he jerked back. “If you tell me that, if you tell me, Jim, then we can think what to do next, you and me.”

“I
tol
’ the truth. A hundred times. Nobody wants to know it.”

“Not the whole truth. That’s what you got to tell me now. So we can think what to do. Because we can’t think what to do so long as you—”

“Mummy!” Shar called.

Stan wailed, “Jimmy!”

Jim spun round in the direction of the door. Jeannie stepped past the birdbath and grasped his elbow.

Jim said, “Hell!”

Jeannie said, “No.”

And Inspector Lynley gently disengaged Shar and Stan from hanging on to his arms.

From the kitchen he said, “We have a few more questions.”

And Jimmy bolted.

Lynley wouldn’t have thought the boy could have moved so fast. In the time it took Lynley to finish his sentence, Jimmy wrenched himself from the grasp of his mother and dashed to the bottom of the garden. He didn’t bother with the gate. Instead he
flu
ng himself at the wall and, with a yelp, he leaped over it. His footsteps began pounding along the path between the houses.

His mother cried, “Jimmy!” and headed after him.

Lynley called over his shoulder, “He’s on the run towards Plevna Street. Try to cut him off,” to Sergeant Havers. He shoved his way past the other two children and set off in pursuit of the boy as Havers ran back through the sitting room and out the front door.

Jean Cooper had wrested the garden gate open by the time Lynley reached her. She clutched his arm, shouting, “Leave him be!” Lynley broke her hold and shot after the boy. She followed, crying out her son’s name.

Jimmy was racing along the narrow concrete path between the houses. He tossed one look back over his shoulder, then increased his speed. A bicycle leaned against a garden gate one house from the end of the walk, and as he flew by this, he flung it onto the path behind him and vaulted onto the cyclone fencing that edged the top of the brick wall which marked the path’s far boundary on Plevna Street. He scrambled over this and dropped out of sight.

Lynley cleared the bicycle with a jump and tore to a wooden gate in the wall that the boy had ignored. It was locked. He sprang for a handhold on the cyclone fence. Beyond the wall, he heard Havers shout. Then the sound of footsteps drummed against the pavement. Too many footsteps.

He pulled himself up and over and dropped to the pavement in time to see Havers fl ying up Plevna Street in the direction of Manchester Road, trailed by three men, one of whom bore two cameras. He said, “
Goddamn
,” and took up the chase, dodging a cane-wielding pensioner and a pinkhaired girl eating Indian take-away on the kerb.

It was a ten-second effort to pass the journalists. Another five seconds caught him up to Havers.

“Where?” he asked.

She pointed and kept running and Lynley saw him. He’d jumped another fence that bordered a park on the corner of Plevna Street. He was ripping along a curved brick path, set in the direction of Manchester Road.

“Fool to go that way,” Havers panted.

“Why?”

“Manchester substation. Quarter mile along. Towards the river.”

“Phone them.”

“Where?”

Lynley pointed ahead to the corner of Plevna Street and Manchester Road where a squat brick building bore two red crosses and the red word
surgery
along a white cornice. Havers ran towards it. Lynley raced round the park’s perimeter.

Jimmy emerged through the park gates onto Manchester Road and sprinted south. Lynley shouted his name and as he did so, Jean Cooper and the journalists rounded the curve of Plevna Street and joined him.

The journalists cried out, “Who’s—” and “Why’re you—” while the photographer lifted one of his cameras and began to shoot. Lynley again set off after the boy. Jean Cooper shrieked, “Jimmy! Stop!”

Jimmy bent into the run with more determination. The wind was blowing in from the east, and when Manchester Road veered slightly to the west, he was easily able to lengthen the distance between himself and his pursuers. He was running wildly with his feet flying outward and his head tucked low. He passed an abandoned warehouse and started to swerve towards the street as he approached a
flo
rist’s shop where a green-smocked elderly woman was in the process of moving containers of flowers from the pavement indoors. The woman gave a startled cry as Jimmy hurled himself past her. In response an Alsatian charged out of the shop. The dog howled in a fury, launched itself at the boy, and locked teeth round the sleeve of his T-shirt.

Lynley thought, Thank God, and slowed his pace. Some distance behind him, he heard the boy’s mother screaming Jimmy’s name. The flower seller dropped a bucket of narcissi onto the pavement, shouting, “Caesar! Down!”

and dragging at the Alsatian’s collar. The dog released Jimmy just as Lynley yelled, “No! Hold him there!” And when the woman turned round with her hand dug into the Alsatian’s fur and an expression of fear and perplexity on her face, Jimmy streaked away.

Lynley thudded through the narcissi as the boy broke to the right thirty yards ahead of him. He scaled yet another fence and disappeared into the grounds of the Cubitt Town junior school.

Not even winded, Lynley thought in amazement. The boy was either propelled by terror or a distance runner in his spare time.

Jimmy tore across the school-yard; Lynley followed him over the fence. Heavy construction was underway on a new addition to the dun brick school, and Jimmy bolted through this, weaving through piles of bricks, stacks of timber, and hills of sand. The school day was over by at least two hoúrs, so there was no one in the yard to impede his progress, but as he approached the farthest building beyond which lay the playing fields, a caretaker sauntered out of the weathered double doors, caught sight of him, and gave a yell. Jimmy was past him before the man had a chance to act. Then he saw Lynley, shouted, “What’s this?” and planted himself directly in the path that Jimmy had taken.

“Hold on here, Mister.” The night watchman barred the way, arms akimbo. He looked beyond Lynley to Manchester Road where Jean Cooper was dropping over the fence, with the journalists not far behind her. He shouted, “You! Stay where you are! These grounds is closed!”

Lynley said, “Police.”

The caretaker said, “Prove it.”

Jean staggered up to them. “You…” She grasped Lynley’s jacket. “You leave him…”

Lynley thrust the watchman to one side. Jimmy had gained another twenty yards in the time Lynley had lost. He was halfway across the playing fields, rushing in the direction of a housing estate. Lynley set off again.

The caretaker yelled, “Hey! I’m ringing the police!”

Lynley could only pray he would do so.

Jean Cooper stumbled along behind him. She was sobbing, but for breath and not with tears. She said, “He’s going…He’s home. Going home. Can’t you see?”