Silent Playgrounds. Danuta Reah

      In answer, he dialled the number and held the phone out to her. She heard the static before connection, then a recorded voice: ‘This number is currently unavailable. Please try later.’ Suzanne looked at him and shook her head. ‘No. It just rang last time.’

      ‘And that was … ?’

      ‘Half an hour ago? Just before I phoned you.’ He didn’t say anything, so Suzanne pushed. ‘What does that mean?’

      ‘It’s nothing. It’s not likely to be important.’

      She wasn’t going to be fobbed off. ‘But it might be. So what does it mean?’

      He shrugged. ‘It probably means that the battery’s run down. Or that someone switched the phone off since you last rang the number.’

      Lucy had been in the park. They found traces of her, far away from where her mother said she had been going. About a mile through the woods, there was a playground close to Forge Dam, the last dam. In the café by the playground at the end of the woods, the owner came out into the sunshine for a cigarette, and said, ‘Yes, little girl, fair-haired, yes, she was here earlier this morning, around tenish. She bought an ice cream.’ He thought for a bit. ‘And a piece of cake. I asked her if it was for the ducks. I’ve seen her up here before and her mum buys cake for the ducks.’

      ‘Is this her?’ The officer showed him a picture and he nodded.

      ‘That’s the one. Has anything … ?’

      ‘Was anyone with her?’ The radio on the man’s jacket crackled and said something the café owner couldn’t catch. The policeman spoke briefly and quietly into the radio, then returned to his question.

      ‘Yes … Well, I think so.’

      ‘Who was it? Could you describe the person who was with her?’

      Feeling more uneasy now, the café owner thought back. He hadn’t really seen, now he came to think of it. She’d come to the side window of the café twice, once for ice cream and once for cake and a drink. He hadn’t actually seen anyone. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, slowly. ‘I just assumed … I didn’t see anyone.’

      It had been a quiet morning, a quiet day. Some walkers had passed through earlier, shortly after nine, and had stopped for a cup of tea. He’d seen people go past on their way up to the dam or beyond. The path formed part of the Sheffield Round Walk, and also offered a walkers’ route into the Derbyshire Peak District. It was a busy path. Some of the passers-by might have stopped at the dam, spent the day fishing, he didn’t know. He’d kept an eye on the café – quiet as he’d said – done his books, had the telly on for some of the time. The officer, making notes, realized gloomily that if this became a real inquiry, someone would have the job of tracking these people down, asking them what they had seen, trying to find out if there was anyone who’d been through that way who hadn’t come forward, and if that person hadn’t come forward was it because he knew all too well what had happened to the missing child.

      Suzanne knew that something had made the police more concerned now. The arrival of a man in civilian clothes, a detective, made the knot in her stomach tighten. She felt uneasy around the police. She had too many memories of Adam, the voice on the phone. I’m afraid we’ve got Adam here again. He’s been … And her father. You deal with it, Suzanne. This is your responsibility. She’d trusted them then, listened to them, done what they’d said. She could still hear the woman’s voice. Just tell us where Adam is. We want to help the lad, Suzanne.

      The man introduced himself as Detective Inspector Steve McCarthy. He checked quickly through the same things Hazel had done, asking one or two more questions as he went. Suzanne was impressed by his efficiency, but found him brusque and cold. Then he began asking about Emma – how well Jane knew her, what she did, where she lived. Jane’s face went whiter as he told her that Emma wasn’t a student, and had never been an official tenant at number fourteen.

      Suzanne hadn’t realized before how much they had taken Emma on trust, because they knew her – or thought they did. This was why the police were so concerned. There was something wrong with Emma. She moved to sit on the arm of Jane’s chair. She put her arm round Jane and said, ‘We know Emma well. We both do. She’s Sophie’s friend.’ He raised an eyebrow at her in query, and she realized what a thin recommendation it sounded.

      She told him about Sophie, about her parents, her tutor, the course she had been doing. ‘That’s how we got to know Emma,’ she explained. When he said nothing, she asked, ‘What’s wrong? There’s something about Emma, isn’t there?’

      ‘We just need some background,’ he said. He’d evaded her question. His face was expressionless as he made some notes, then he moved on to ask about Lucy’s father. ‘Where does he live? Does he see Lucy often? Would Lucy go round there?’

      Jane shook her head. Suzanne couldn’t stay quiet. ‘Lucy always saw Joel here.’ Suzanne wouldn’t refer to Joel as Lucy’s dad. He didn’t deserve the title. He was hardly ever there. He devoted his time, as far as she could tell, to his undefined business interests around clubs and warehouse parties. When he did see Lucy, he took all the icing for a while – bringing presents sometimes, playing with her sometimes, but never consistent, never there when she needed him. When he let Lucy down – which he always did, in the end, forgetting her birthday: It’s only a date on the calendar. Loosen up, Jane; promising to come to her party and not turning up: I can’t stand an afternoon of screeching kids; saying, ‘Of course I’ll come and see you in the play, sweetheart,’ and never arriving, so Lucy cried and refused to perform and said, ‘We can’t start yet, my daddy’s not here’: Look, something cropped up. Stop nagging, Jane – when he let Lucy down, Jane always made excuses for him, always made him look good in Lucy’s eyes. But how to explain it? She tried to sum it up briefly and thought she saw a glimmer of amusement in the man’s eyes. ‘Joel wouldn’t kidnap Lucy.’ she added. ‘He’d pay a ransom for someone to take her off his hands.’

      Jane put her face in her hands, then looked up. ‘Joel doesn’t live in Sheffield.’ she said wearily. ‘Lucy won’t be there.’ Suzanne intercepted a quick look between DI McCarthy and Hazel Austen. She flushed. She could have told them that straight away. Jane forestalled the next question. ‘Leeds,’ she said. ‘He lives in Leeds. And he’s in London at the moment, working.’ Her face, normally pale, was white, and she looked exhausted. The words were beginning to spill out as though this was her last defence, and when the words were gone there would be nothing left. ‘She’ll be hungry. She hasn’t had any lunch. She’s small – it’s the asthma. She’s very brave, Lucy, but she does get frightened in the dark. She’s got to be back before it gets dark. She’ll be frightened on her own.’ She looked at the man who was listening impassively to her words. ‘I need to go and find her.’

      McCarthy looked at Jane for a moment and seemed to relent. His voice was gentler. ‘There are people out now looking for her.’ Suzanne caught his eye for a second, and read there his belief that Lucy was one of the few. She felt a terrible sense of helplessness.

      Lucy crept round the bushes and listened. The sounds were changing. There had been footsteps before, soft on the old leaves, backwards and forwards in the bushes. She’d stayed quiet as anything. She’d heard the whoosh of a bike on the muddy path, but she hadn’t looked. She’d run away from the Ash Man, but there were monsters in the woods.

      She’d found places between the stones, places where she could hide and no one would find her. She’d heard someone calling once: ‘Lucy! Lucy!’ But it wasn’t a voice she knew, so she’d kept quiet, like a mouse, she’d whispered to Tamby in her head. But now she could hear children calling in the playground. Maybe it was safe now. She scrambled through the bushes and found her way down to the path again. She didn’t go to the playground. She wanted to go home. She wasn’t supposed to walk through the woods by herself, and most of all she wasn’t supposed to cross the roads. She wished that Sophie was there. Sophie knew what to do.

      She hopped down the shallow steps