Play Dead by Peter Dickinson Page A

to park in the next Street? As I was walking round to my car somebody who had been standing in the shadow of that hedge opposite you started to follow me.’
    â€˜Are you sure?’
    â€˜I know about these things. I walked past my car and on for long enough to make sure. Then I shook him off, went back for the car and drove home. It is just conceivable that somebody had been watching me and that we were followed back to your place from the concert, but if so that part of it had been very skilfully done, whereas the latter part when I left you was not.’
    â€˜Did you see his face? Had he got a beard?’
    The phone bleeped for more money. She fed it in. ‘A beard? Why?’
    â€˜Somebody tried to follow us from the play centre the other day. He was, you know, interested in Toby. That sort. He’d got a beard. I’ve only got one more lot of money left.’
    â€˜You want to report this to the police?’
    â€˜I think I’ve got to. Sorry.’
    â€˜In that case … Can you see that corner from your window? No, that won’t do. Will you please report that I told you I saw somebody there who I thought was watching your flat, but not that he tried to follow me?’
    â€˜Oh, but …’
    â€˜I will tell them that I wasn’t bothered at the time, but decided later I ought to warn you. If, as seems likely, the man’s interest was in you or your grandson, then the police will have been made aware of it, and that is all you need.’
    â€˜I suppose so, but … You haven’t said if he had a beard. If you’re going to tell them you only saw him under the hedge, you wouldn’t have seen, would you?’
    â€˜I didn’t, in any case. You don’t let your man know you’re aware that he’s following you. But you can give the police my name and I’ll tell them as much as I can. You have our address?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜All right. I’ll send you a ticket for the Whitechapel concert. We’ll meet there.’
    â€˜All right.’
    She walked back to her flat feeling chilly and sick. The house opposite had a ramshackle garden shed and a shaggy privet hedge at right angles to it, composing that corner of the cul-de-sac. Right in the corner, under the arch of the outward-leaning privet, there were seven or eight scattered cigarette stubs. Sicker still now, beginning to believe, she telephoned the police station and asked for Sergeant Osborne, who had been visiting the play centre regularly since the man had tried to follow her home with Toby. She wasn’t on duty yet, so Poppy, flustered now, had to speak to the duty sergeant, who switched with electric suddenness from apathy to attention at Mr Capstone’s name. A detective sergeant and a uniformed WPC were round within twenty minutes. She showed them the cigarette butts, and explained rather too emphatically that she and Mr Capstone were no more than acquaintances who had met at a concert and come back for supper so that they could continue to talk about music.
    For several mornings after that Poppy inspected the corner for fresh cigarette butts. Before she went to bed at night she switched off the living-room lights, waited till her eyes were used to the dark and peered for any sign of an extra darkness in the shadow under the privet. Twice she took out her flour-dredger and powdered the area over in the dusk, but could see no signs of footprints there in the morning. Sergeant Osborne, visiting the play centre, told her that the cul-de-sac was now on the list for random night-time checks, but these, if they took place at all, must have happened while Poppy was asleep.
    McCall-Baines turned out to be an organist, female. She played some Poulenc in the first half, and then a piece which called itself ‘Variations on a Theme of Schoenberg’s’ but whose sections seemed to Poppy quite unrelated to the announced theme or to each other, though some were