The Detective's Daughter

19

September 1985

‘Now it’s my turn,’ Justin breathed.

Simon’s eyes stared at something behind Justin’s head. His shirt was hanging out, his black cat hair slick with sweat and dust; in the watery light his face was a skull.

‘No one will find you.’ Justin might have been attempting to reassure him.

Simon lay, a collapsed doll on the flagstones.

Justin clasped him, cradling his head on his lap. He tugged on the cord digging it into the skin and pressed the heel of his palm on the cartilage in Simon’s throat, making him gurgle like a drainpipe. Justin was impressed so he did it again.

‘Don’t tease me.’ He was elated by the success of his hastily concocted plan. Simon’s head was heavy on his thighs. Fact: a human head weighs between eight and twelve pounds. He deliberated telling Simon he reckoned his head was nearer six.

‘You will get into trouble.’

Justin thought that was what Simon said.

‘I won’t. My mummy and daddy are taking me away. No one will suspect me.’

Simon’s right shoe had wrenched off and a big toe poked through his sock.

‘Your mummy is dead.’ Simon’s voice was thick as if his mouth was full of rice pudding.

Justin’s arms were aching from keeping the cord tight; he relaxed.

Simon jabbed his elbow into Justin’s ribs and wriggled like a snake out of the loop.

The side of Justin’s thumb was bleeding, the cord dangling from his fist.

‘I write to her.’ This closed the matter.

‘They keep the letters in your file, the man told me.’

‘What man?’

‘The man I spy for.’

Simon had a red line on his skin like a necklace and looked like a girl. Observing this, Justin was unprepared when Simon lunged at him and too late tried to swerve. The Chinese screen folded over him like a dragon’s wings.

Simon had the librarian’s scalpel.

Jonathan knew the drill: remove all weapons or instruments likely to be employed in combat in advance of the approach of the enemy.

Simon was victorious in battle. Justin scooted back on his bottom until his shoulder jarred against Sir Stephen Lockett. At first he could not trace the source of the water. It pumped in an arc from the gap in Simon’s trousers splashing on to his face. Too late he put up a hand to protect himself.

His legs apart and his shoulders back, as he shook off the last drops, Simon looked nothing like a girl.

Justin stumbled, slipping on puddling flagstones; in the passage he bashed against the tiled walls and lost his bearings.

She writes back! he yelled but heard no sound.

The glass in the back door was yellow from the lamp-post in the clearing beyond the wardrobe door; the hiding place where his mummy would find him once he tucked himself within the folds of her soft sable coat. He crunched on crisp snow, his cheeks stroked by the soft ferny branches of a fir tree; he was in Narnia.

I will get you.

Justin repeated the words to make them true.

I will get you.

Fumbling with the bolt, he could not block his ears and Simon’s voice echoed along the tunnel.

‘Your mummy was murdered and you ran away and let her die.’