Deadly Games Read Free

nutter!” someone grunted.
    â€œWhat for?” demanded another voice, sharp with hostility.
    David’s hand shook, and the torch beam played over the derelict interior. In the half-light the murals on the wall, the ornate decoration of the ceiling and the long sweep of the stage made the old cinema look more like a medieval cathedral, sheltering its poor, giving sanctuary to outcasts.
    â€œHe left some stuff here,” said Jenny, remembering that the policeman, although kind, had refused to allow Sid’s overloaded supermarket trolley to be lifted into the ambulance.
    â€œYou the kids who took him away?” asked a woman’s voice.
    David swung the torch in her direction to see gentle and compassionate eyes under a dirty beret. She seemed to be almost entirely wrapped in newspapers.
    â€œAll right – you don’t have to blind me.”
    â€œSorry.”
    â€œYes, we helped to get Sid to the hospital,” said Jenny defensively. “He was ill.”
    â€œMentally ill,” said someone, and there were loud guffaws in the dark.
    â€œI’m not so sure about that,” said the woman. “Said he saw things and had the sight and he was on a mission. Well, what’s wrong with that? Maybe he was.”
    â€œHe won’t stay in that hospital,” said someone. “Soon be back here.”
    â€œHis trolley’s not been touched,” said the woman. “
We
don’t rob each other.”
    Sure enough, the trolley was in exactly the same position as they had left it, and the twins slowly picked their way across to where it stood.
    As they did so the screen started to flicker.
    David and Jenny stared up at the two children running down the tunnel. The images were clearer now, and they could see they were about nine and ten and the girl seemed to be the elder. She wore a dress that came down below the knees, short socks and sandals. The boy wore a short-sleeved shirt, long shorts and also had socks and sandals. What time are they from? wondered David. He had seen children dressed like this in the film of
Swallows and Amazons
, but surely that was before the war? These children seemed more modern than that, but still very far from the present.
    The images flickered as the two children hid in a recess in the tunnel while a tube train roared by, and then continued to run on beside the lines. “I’ve got to find ’em.” Sid’s words rang in Jenny’s ears. “She’ll always be after them, beyond her own grave.” Who was
she?
Sid hadn’t replied when David had asked him. Obviously the children were running away from “her”, so who could she be? Mother? Stepmother? Aunt? Teacher? And what had the two children done? The questions batteredat the twins’ minds as the images faded and the screen became blank.
    David and Jenny turned uncertainly to the huddled occupants of the Roxy, wondering if any of them would have a clue about Sid’s “mission”. Jenny plunged in first, knowing she would have to choose her words carefully.
    â€œDoes anyone know anything else about Mr Lennox’s background? Are there any relatives?”
    There was a long silence, broken by a bark of laughter. “He’s been a dosser all his natural.”
    â€œThat’s not true,” snapped the woman. “Not true at all. He told me he used to drive a tube train.”
    A chill swept over the twins amid the raucous laughter that followed and they hurried out of the auditorium, forgetting all about Sid’s trolley.
    That night Jenny tossed and turned, unable to sleep, her mind consumed with the mystery. The woman hunting the children down the tunnel, possibly “from beyond her own grave”; the boy and girl perpetually running; Sid as a tube-train driver. It all made a certain amount of sense but there was always a missing element. Had the woman chased the children into the path of Sid’s train? If so, why? Or