Silent Children (41 page)

"You said there was more than one babe."

"I did, right enough."

"So where—" Jack tried to find some moisture in his mouth to let him speak again. "What—"

"Just a doll. Girls have them, you know. Nothing for you to worry about at all."

Jack yearned to believe that but wasn't sure he could. He was searching his mind for a way to proceed when he heard footsteps in the hall. As he twisted in the chair, chafing his neck with the cord of the phone, the door swung wide. "For heaven's sake stop whispering, John," his mother protested. "You don't need to for my sake. You're only making it harder for them to hear you all that way away."

"Who's speaking?" Jack's father hissed with something like savage delight. "Is it who I think?"

"Yes," Jack admitted, and had to remind himself how to talk above a whisper. "All right, mother," he said too loud. "I'm nearly through here. You can go back to bed."

When she only folded her arms he was afraid she might be capable of stalking across the room to remonstrate with the caller. "Can she hear me?" his father muttered in his ear.

"Not yet."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Jack saw his mother shift her weight in his direction, and pressed the receiver against his face with both hands. "Maybe if you wait much longer."

"I won't be waiting long. I told you that."

"So, so give me the details while you can, for Christ's sake."

"You sure it's only you that's listening?"

"Yes," Jack pleaded, then reverted to a whisper in case that somehow helped convince his father. "Yes."

"Better be telling the truth for the sake of you know who. Except I forgot, you don't know who yet, do you? Shall I tell you her name?"

"No need now," Jack said, only to fear he'd antagonised his father. "Sure, if you want."

"It's Charlotte. That's a good name for a babe in the wood, don't you reckon? A good old-fashioned name."

"Sure." Jack's head was throbbing with his sense of who the girl might be, and with seeing his mother take a purposeful step into the room. He would have said almost anything to urge his father out of whatever perversity was making him delay. "So where—"

"You'll laugh. At your lady friend's house."

Jack's gasp might have sounded like a laugh for all he knew. "My—"

"The woman you moved in with in Wembley. Don't say you've forgotten her already. You're good at that, aren't you, leaving people and forgetting them."

Jack could hardly think for wondering where and how Leslie was, and watching his mother halt too close to him, and realising his father was so out of control he was either not aware of squandering time or indifferent whether he did. "No," Jack blurted.

"Glad you remember. Better get going, then. I'll see you in ten minutes or less. Have a guess what'll be happening if you're late. Hope your car starts," his father whispered, and was gone.

Jack's fingers were so stiff with tension he almost couldn't find the cradle with the receiver. He used the phone to shove himself to his feet and dodged around his mother. "I'm just going out," he said, which wasn't enough. "For a drive," he added, but that was too much. "To think."

"John."

She must have thought her tone would stop him; he was nearly in the hall before she caught his arm. "Not now," he managed to resist exclaiming, and said "I need to go."

She didn't say a word until he had to look and see her reproachfulness. "I thought there was one man in the family I could trust," she said.

"You can." Rather than wrench his arm out of her grasp he murmured "Sorry, okay?"

Her fingers moved, but they were only taking a firmer grip on him. "So where are you really going?"

"I can't say now. When I get back."

"It won't take long just to put your mother's mind at rest and let me know where you're going and who you're going to see, will it?"

"Too long. Too complicated. I'll give you the whole story soon as I can, promise."

"What sort of person can you be going to at this time of night, John? Call me out of date, but I don't believe it can be anyone decent, not when you won't even say who they are."

"Mother, let go. I don't have the time. If you knew what you were doing—"

"I've still got all my wits, and don't you dare suggest otherwise. It's my job to care for those who aren't so capable in case that had slipped your mind." She'd snatched her hand away from him, but as he retreated toward the hall she upturned her fingers and flattened them at him. "If you want me lying awake half out of my wits with worry because you've lied to me and made me feel I can't rely on you for anything, then off you go and good riddance."

"I'm sorry, honestly." He was in the hall at last. "As soon as I come home—"

"If you go out now after everything I've said this won't be your home any more, so don't bother coming back."

She surely couldn't believe that would hold him. It must be her way of relinquishing power over him while making him feel as guilty as possible about the loss. As he jerked the chain of the apartment door out of its socket he glanced along the hall, halfway down which she was clutching her shoulders with her crossed hands, but she turned her back on him. "Nothing bad is going to happen," he called, at least as much for his own reassurance as hers.

He missed every second stair, and nearly a third one too, as he sprinted down without using the reluctant time-switch. Beyond the stone steps that led from the house to the sidewalk, his car looked iced by the white glare of a streetlamp. He thought he felt a premonition of chill in the air, though perhaps it was only in him. His argument with his mother couldn't have lasted more than a minute, two at the outside, and surely he could make up that time on the road. He unlocked the van and slammed the door and twisted the key in the ignition as he threw himself into the driver's seat. The engine gave no more than an irritable cough.

He'd begun to fear that his father's last words to him had been disastrously prophetic when he thought to tread on the accelerator while he turned the key again. This time the engine snarled, then roared, and he sent the car forward as fast as the street halved by parked vehicles would allow. Surely the police car that turned on its siren somewhere close had nothing to do with him.

"Hope your car starts. I should have said his coach, shouldn't I? Should have told him to crack the whip and get the horses going."

"Neigh."

"They say cars have horsepower, did you know that? I remember when I heard my dad say his did and I thought there'd be horses pulling it. We were innocent back then, us children. People let us be. Maybe John's wishing he had you to pull his car, do you reckon? If he had an extra horse he'd be quicker."

"Neigh. Nei-ei-eigh."

"Is that all you can say, son? It's not much of a laugh. It's not doing much for my nerves, to tell you the truth."

"What do you want me to say?"

"Not a lot, now you ask. Don't worry, you won't need to be quiet for very much longer. John's already had a minute. He'd better be on his way. Do you know how I can tell how long he's had?"

"Neigh."

"That means no, does it? Should have known. You're never happy unless you're disagreeing, are you, son? Disagreeing or being disagreeable or trying to make your playmate act like you."

"Neigh."

"Never mind arguing when we all know the truth. You'd try anything and hope I wouldn't notice, wouldn't you? You've made me forget what I was telling you. Hang on, I remember—how I know how long he's had. See through there, in the front room? The telly's got a clock on it, about all a telly's good for. So can you guess where we're going now?"

Ian didn't say a word, not that he had so far. Having Woollie answer for him and utter noises on his behalf was almost worse than being gagged. The tape was wound so tightly that the flesh beneath it felt like a single ache that encircled his head, starting at his squashed lips. The palms of his hands were trapped against a stair, his bound wrists were caught in the small of his back. His ankles pressed against a lower stair while one midway dug into his buttocks, but none of that prevented him from swaying every few seconds as if he was about to lose his balance. Apart from that, he hadn't moved since he'd shifted his feet apart halfway through the phone call, when Woollie had told him to stay right where he was—he'd hoped Jack might realise whom his father was addressing then, but he hadn't dared make a noise. Now he forced a grunt past the tape under his nostrils and shook his head from side to side twice.

"You can answer when you want to after all, can you, son? Had me thinking you were too scared for a moment there. Heave yourself up, then. Hang on, here comes some help."

It was too soon for that to be Jack, and whatever else Woollie might mean by it seemed more ominous than reassuring, especially when he lurched at Ian, his pink and yellow dress flapping, his face a featureless blur against the light from Jericho Close. As he rested one hand on the banister, metal rapped wood as a reminder that he was holding the knife. He closed a fist on the front of Ian's T-shirt to haul him to his feet and walk him down to the hall, his knuckles bruising Ian's chest at each step. "Can't have a horse trying to walk upstairs, can we? That'd be a laugh," Woollie muttered, sliding the knife along the banister as he released him. "We're staying down and going in the front. Less chance of your playmate being woken up that way, and we can watch the clock and keep a look out for your coachman."

At least that would place Charlotte out of immediate danger, and perhaps his not having to worry quite so much about her might let some plan lift the slab from Ian's mind. He walked into the front room as fast as his awkwardness allowed: he didn't want to antagonise Woollie if he didn't have to, not when the man was clearly on the brink of losing control. Though the room wasn't even half as bright as the street outside, which in any case was deserted, Woollie flew after him and clamped his fingers on Ian's scalp to force him into a painful crouch. "Sit down quick, out of sight. Sit where you can see the time."

Ian landed on the sofa that faced the television and the street. Most of his weight was thrown on his left elbow, discovering extra pain in his bound wrists. Worse than feeling crippled was the possibility that Woollie might sit next to him, and so he dragged his legs onto the sofa and pressed his left shoulder against its back. "Hard to get comfortable, is it?" Woollie enquired, leaving his grin open as if that might elicit a response. "Shouldn't be for long. He's already had more than two minutes."

In a moment he seemed to forget he was supposed to be grinning. There wasn't much sign of him in his eyes or the shape of his mouth as he swung, bent almost double, toward the window. When he planted his clawed fingers on the sill and sank to his knees so that only his head was visible from outside through the lower left-hand corner of the pane—he must resemble an ornament if he resembled anything at all—Ian risked turning his back to the sofa and planting his feet wide apart on the floor. "Sit still now, son," Woollie muttered at his breath on the glass. "You don't want to get me more on edge. John's doing that without you joining in."

Ian's lips fought to wrench themselves apart behind the tape. The powerful adhesive clung to his skin, stretching it raw, but he succeeded in thrusting his tongue just far enough for its tip to recoil from a taste that nobody was ever intended to have in their mouth. It made all the trapped heat of the room rush at him and swim up through him to the top of his head as he tried to scrape his tongue clean against his teeth. If he'd been able to speak he would have said almost anything to persuade Woollie to calm down, but he could only listen while the man started mumbling as if wholly unaware of being overheard.

"Can't do much he's meant to, can he? Couldn't even keep Adele away while he was talking to me. I'd like to know what he said to her after I got off. Better have told her he was talking to the feller who was going to do his book for him. Hang on though, did it sound like he was?" His voice sank lower as if he were talking in his sleep while he dreamed of being American, to judge by the accent he more or less adopted. "Maybe if you wait much longer...

Give me the details while you can, for Christ's sake..." Then his voice was his own once more, a whisper as sharp as the knife beneath his fingertips on the windowsill. "You don't talk like that to a publisher, I don't care who you are, and I reckon even Adele would have to notice. How long has he got left, son?"

It took Ian more than a moment to grasp that Woollie couldn't see the luminous red digits in the rectangle under the screen. They'd shown twenty-eight past midnight when Woollie had declared that Jack had had a minute, and now the zero of the thirty shrank into a one. The red flare swelled into Ian's eyes, stinging them, and he was trying desperately to think how he could answer—how he could persuade Woollie that less time had passed than he saw—when the man released a laugh so fierce the window blanched.

"That's a joke, isn't it? I forgot horses can't talk. Must have been dreaming I was in that fairy tale with the babes in the wood. The things you imagine when you're her age upstairs, eh? The things you can take for granted." His voice was drifting inward, but it roused itself. "Wait, though, I remember something. When I was her age my dad was going to take me to see a horse that could count. You asked it a sum and it stamped its hoof to tell you the answer. Want to try, son? Want to be the horse that knows all the answers?"

How could Ian respond if the man wasn't looking at him? When Woollie turned it was with such impatience that he almost lost his grip on the sill. As Ian nodded fast and hard, the knife fell to the carpet with a muffled thud. Woollie groped in search of it, keeping his eyes on Ian. "Go on then, horsey," he muttered. "Let's see your trick."

Ian lifted his right foot an inch or so—far enough for his leg to reveal how shivery it was—and let it drop. When his captor only stared Ian repeated the action and tramped on the carpet a third time before pressing his heels against it. Woollie kept up his unblinking stare, his eyes glinting like lumps of coal, as he found the knife and raised it, and Ian's legs began to tremble with resisting the temptation to count the fourth minute. Then Woollie murmured "Not so loud next time I ask you" and faced the street again.