Running Girl

by Simon Mason

  Now Singh’s eyes widened just a little. Enough.

  ‘I mean,’ Garvie went on, ‘all that black hair, that make-up, those proper grown-up clothes. You’re looking for a different woman now, right?’

  There was a pause then as the two men looked at him.

  Uncle Len spoke. ‘How do you know all this, Garvie? What have you been doing?’

  Garvie shrugged. ‘None of that’s as important as the Porsche. Eh, Inspector? Assuming, of course, you got that far.’

  This was too much for Uncle Len. ‘Garvie! Go downstairs. I’ll be down in two minutes and we’ll talk about this then.’

  Garvie said, ‘But—’

  ‘Go on, now.’

  At last he turned to go and Singh spoke for the first time. ‘Wait.’

  They all stopped where they were.

  ‘What makes you think the Porsche exists? No one else thinks there’s a Porsche involved. Any more than all the other luxury cars she fantasized about.’

  Garvie grinned. ‘It’s obvious. You’ve heard what she used to say. “It’s so comfy riding in a Porsche. It’s so quiet. Everything matches.” Everything matches. That’s not the sort of thing Chloe would make up. That’s the sort of thing she’d notice.’

  Singh looked at him thoughtfully.

  ‘She was a girl who liked everything to match,’ Garvie said. ‘Like her running shoes and running kit. Anyway,’ he added, ‘I assume you’ve found the car by now. I mean, you have the methodology, you have the men, what’s to stop you?’

  Singh said nothing.

  ‘Besides, it’s right under your nose. Big, big man. Big, big money.’

  Uncle Len frowned at him again. Singh’s face was a blank but a muscle twitched in his cheek.

  He said, ‘You’re referring to Mr Winder, the proprietor of the Imperium casino, where I saw you two nights ago.’

  Uncle Len let out a grunt of astonishment and Garvie avoided looking at him.

  ‘That line of investigation is closed,’ Singh said.

  ‘You really need to reopen it.’

  ‘I’m not in the habit of wasting police time. In a case like this there is no time to waste.’

  Garvie said passionately, ‘All you have to do is check the décor, man. It’s not hard. See if the upholstery matches the trim, the trim matches the dash. You can do that, can’t you?’

  Now Uncle Len, who had been listening to the conversation with increasing bewilderment, stepped forward and said angrily to Garvie, ‘That’s it now. This is getting out of hand.’

  ‘Isn’t it? And time’s short, as the inspector says.’

  Uncle Len had opened his mouth but Singh put his hand on his arm and the pathologist fell silent. Regarding Garvie with a long, cold look, Singh took a card out of his pocket and handed it to the boy.

  ‘There comes a point,’ he said at last, ‘when you have to cease to concern yourself with all this. That point is now. I think your uncle will agree with me.’ Uncle Len agreed with him.

  ‘You’re a minor,’ Singh went on. ‘I have a responsibility to ensure your safety and it’s clear to me that you’ve been putting yourself at risk.’ He indicated the card in Garvie’s hand. ‘Details of our helpline. From now on I don’t want to find you involving yourself ever again. Is that understood?’

  Garvie glanced at the card.

  He handed it back.

  Singh looked at him. ‘I gave it to you because you might need it.’

  ‘I’ve memorized it. Anyway, it’s not me who needs help. I’d give you my card, only I don’t have any.’

  His uncle said, ‘Go now, Garvie. Don’t make it worse. The inspector’s right.’

  He went – as far as the door. Then he turned.

  ‘One word before I go. Buttons!’

  Singh’s eyes narrowed. Garvie avoided his uncle’s furious look.

  ‘You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You clocked Alex. Fair enough. But, seriously, did you think a girl like Chloe had just one stalker? Famous Stars and Straps. You got the wrong end of the sandwich, man. It came from a different sleeve. There were two men in her garden that night!’

  Then he was gone.

  Tea time at Uncle Len’s and Aunt Maxie’s that evening was uncomfortable. They’d agreed not to talk about it any more but the unspoken issue of Garvie’s behaviour hung heavily over them all. After the meal was finished he sat alone at the dining table with his books, revising in silence, frowned at periodically by his mother.

  It was also uncomfortable for Inspector Singh, driving across the city back to the station. He took barely any notice of his surroundings. He drove, tight-faced and unblinking, down Pollard Way, past the car showrooms and furniture outlets on the dual carriageway, on to The Wicker past Fiesta and the Imperium, round the one-way system at Market Square, past downtown civic buildings now closed and darkened, all the way to the underground car park below the police station in Cornwallis Way – twenty-five minutes in all – in a state of rigid, unproductive mental concentration, his notebook open on the seat beside him, with two words scrawled in large, untidy writing across the page: Second stalker?!

  24

  IT WAS FOGGY on the Marsh Fields that Friday afternoon. Rain clouds hung low over the trees. Putting their hoods up against the damp breeze, they went slowly across the tufted grass, keeping their voices down. It had been raining and the ground was wet.

  ‘It’s as bad here as up at Pike Pond,’ Garvie said.

  Alex grunted. ‘I know it.’

  They laboured on. After a while Garvie said, ‘Thought you hadn’t been up there for weeks.’

  Alex stopped and bit his lip. ‘Yeah, well. I know what it gets like.’

  In the quietness they listened to the muffled noises in the fog-bound trees – the call of a bird, the wind in the leaves – then went on again.

  ‘By the way,’ Garvie said, ‘do you know if Chloe was doing any modelling those last few weeks?’

  Alex shrugged.

  ‘Come on, you were stalking her.’

  ‘Maybe she was. But I never saw it.’ He shook his head. ‘What sort of modelling?’

  ‘Nothing in particular. Doesn’t matter.’

  They clambered across a ditch, pushed their way through a holly hedge and at last reached the edge of a garden, where they stood half hidden in the shadow of a clump of hawthorns, peering around.

  ‘Looks like a dump to me,’ Alex said.

  ‘You should talk. You live in a squat.’

  ‘Not my squat, though.’

  ‘Not his house, either. It’s the school’s.’

  ‘Yeah. But it’s his mess.’

  The caretaker’s bungalow stood in a fenced-off area of grass in a corner of the school grounds abutting the Marsh Fields. It was a square brown-brick building with matching brown roof and small, oblong windows with municipal-green frames, like the buildings in parks for changing rooms and toilets. On the grass all round lay piles of building materials, abandoned appliances and general garbage. There were things under tarpaulin and half-opened boxes of stuff and rusty equipment lying everywhere.

  ‘Not exactly house-proud, is he?’ Garvie said.

  As he spoke a shadow appeared behind a small pebble-glass window and slid away.

  ‘He’s in there. Better keep our voices down.’

  Alex grimaced. ‘All right. But you got to tell me what we’re doing here. First I got the police coming down on me with their questions, now you got me doing all this stuff. It’s confusing me. I’m getting busted up just thinking about it.’

  It was true. He looked jittery. All afternoon he’d been asking the same questions over and over.

  ‘Just tell me,’ he said again. ‘Is this the man?’

  ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions. All we know for certain is he’s an oddball.’

  ‘Oddball?’

  ‘He has a shoe fetish, for one thing.’

  Alex didn’t smile. He caught hold of Garvie’s arm. ‘Can’t you tell me something
straight for once?’ His grip was hard but trembling, his voice harsh.

  Garvie gently removed his hand. ‘It’s not straight, man. None of it. Specially that Friday night. And if it’s not straight there’s no point in looking at it straight. So we have to look at it crooked.’

  Alex looked more confused than ever.

  ‘Listen. Take the simplest thing. She was out for a run, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Suppose she wasn’t.’

  Alex stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Suppose she was running for her life. There’s a difference.’

  Alex struggled to get his head round this. ‘But ...’

  ‘Suppose she was scared, Alex. Terrified. Had no one to turn to. No friends. No one she could trust.’

  Alex muttered to himself: ‘No one to turn to.’ Then he looked at Garvie. ‘Why scared?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. So keep it together, man. And keep your voice down, yeah? Or we’re only going to get into trouble.’

  ‘Trouble!’ Alex turned from him. ‘I got trouble already.’

  They split up, each working his way round the fence in the opposite direction, getting a feel for the place, trying to identify some of the stuff heaped up in the bungalow’s garden.

  For some reason it seemed foggier once Garvie was alone. He crept through nettles and cow parsley heavy with wet, between the fence and the edge of the wood, peering at the bungalow and occasionally pausing to look the other way into the whitened darkness of the trees. Twice he checked his watch. He’d told his mother he was spending all evening revising differential calculus at Smudge’s and had promised to be back by ten. It was only five fifteen now. But he reflected for a moment that Alex wasn’t the only one already in trouble. He shook off the thought and went on again.

  Round the other side he met up with Alex again. The layout of the bungalow was easily guessable. Living room and kitchen at the front, two bedrooms and bathroom at the back. In the garden at the front of the house a path ran from the door to a gate, Alex said. Beyond that the school asphalt drive receded alongside the running track across the school playing fields to Bottom Gate and Marsh Lane.

  ‘There’s another path,’ Garvie said.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘At the back. Behind that piled-up brushwood there.’

  In the fog a gap in the fence was just visible, and the beginning of a muddy path disappearing into the woods.

  ‘Well-trodden too,’ he added. ‘What do you think he’s been doing in the woods? Shall we take a look?’

  But Alex suddenly grabbed his arm and pulled him down into a crouch. He pointed.

  Round the side of the bungalow Naylor had appeared. He was wearing a red and yellow varsity jacket and carrying a blue motorcycle helmet. As the boys watched, he went over to a tarpaulin and threw it back from the moped underneath. He began to put on his helmet.

  ‘I need to know where that path goes,’ Garvie whispered to Alex. ‘Can you do it for me?’

  ‘All right. But where are you going?’

  He gestured towards Naylor. ‘Don’t know yet.’

  ‘Careful, Garv. You said it. He’s an oddball. Psycho, man.’

  ‘Yeah. But harmless. I hope. I just want to know where he’s going.’

  They touched knuckles, then Garvie was gone, slipping like a shadow along the fence and sprinting round the edge of the misty playing fields towards Bottom Gate.

  The city was a vast pattern of light and shade. Once the neighbourhoods were left behind, it grew bigger and closed in. No parks or gardens here, just concrete, steel, glass and asphalt. Buildings grew taller, roads wider and busier. Even this early the lights were on in the windows of showrooms and shops and offices. Evening shadows deepened under flyovers and bridges, loomed overhead in the shapes of tower blocks. It was a maze, huge and complicated.

  You can hide in a city. Hide a secret. But if you lose something in it, how can you hope to find it again?

  Garvie sat in the back of the cab getting his breath back. He’d been lucky to find Abdul free at the rank. He’d only just climbed into his cab – to Abdul’s mingled confusion and delight – when Naylor came whining past on his moped.

  ‘Garvie man, you go somewhere?’

  ‘Same place as that guy there,’ he’d said. ‘Stick to him, Abdul, don’t lose sight of him.’

  Abdul had looked at him nervously in his rear-view mirror but said nothing as he pulled away after the moped.

  They followed Naylor down Pollard Way to the dual carriageway and into the rush of commuter traffic. Twice Garvie thought they’d lost him, but each time the moped came weaving back into view.

  ‘There he is, Abdul!’

  ‘I see! He go quick quick.’

  ‘That’s right. Like he’s late for something,’ Garvie said.

  Naylor exited at the Market Square turn-off with Abdul right behind, and they moved slowly together round the crowded one-way system. Garvie kept low in his seat. It was unlikely Naylor would spot him but the man was a watchful type. Watchful and calculating. All week Garvie had been keeping an eye on him and he was sure Naylor knew it; he had the furtive, sullen expression of a man who feels himself observed. A man with a secret.

  Looking out of the cab window, Garvie thought again that the city was the perfect place to bury a secret in.

  ‘Garvie man?’

  ‘Yes, Abdul.’

  ‘I go police like you say.’

  ‘Good. Were they grateful?’

  Abdul shook his head in puzzlement. ‘They people très très confuse,’ he said at last.

  ‘You got that right.’

  The moped turned sharply into Littlegate, and Abdul concentrated on keeping up with it. Garvie sat thinking in the back. Occasionally he leaned forward and peered out of the window to check his bearings. The dome on top of the theatre. The clock tower of St Leonard’s cathedral. The neon sign of Maximilian’s. They rattled past the last of the diners and wine bars of Market Square, turned into Well Street, back down Park, and headed towards the business district, Naylor just ahead of them. Here, suddenly, it was quieter. The streets darkened as they drove between the tower blocks. It was nearly six o’clock and most of the people who worked in the offices, institutes and civic buildings had already left for the day. At night the whole area was a dead zone: empty tower blocks, vacant car lots, construction sites of waste ground and the occasional old building, usually decrepit, left over from an earlier era. Traffic was light, the pavements almost deserted. A hush hung in the streets.

  Abdul gestured through the window and looked puzzled. ‘Is all shutting,’ he said. ‘Men go home. Is strange this man come.’

  Garvie nodded. ‘He’s a strange man.’

  The moped turned into a side street and turned again into a small car park.

  ‘Here,’ Garvie said. ‘Just after the corner.’

  Abdul turned to him. ‘I wait?’

  ‘No, man, it’s OK. I don’t know how long I’m going to be.’

  Abdul frowned. ‘You OK?’

  ‘It’s cool. Catch you later.’

  For a few moments after Abdul pulled away Garvie stood round the corner of a high-rise watching Naylor lock up his moped. He’d parked it in front of an old building, once perhaps a library or town hall, grand on a small scale, with a colonnade of columns at the front, a sweep of steps to the front door and big square windows. Now it looked shabby and functional, lost among the glass-and-steel tower blocks that dwarfed it. But unlike them it was still lit.

  As he finished securing his moped, Naylor glanced up and Garvie ducked behind the wall. When he peered round again, the man was already hurrying up the steps of the building and a second later had disappeared through the door.

  Garvie glanced at his watch. Just before six. He ran across the car park and up the steps of the building. A sign by the entrance said: CENTRE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE PARTNERSHIPS. Peering through the glass panel, Garvie watched Naylor talking t
o a receptionist behind a desk. The receptionist looked at her watch and said something sharp. She held up an appointments book, pointing to something in it, and Naylor looked away, scowling. Then a man in a navy-blue uniform appeared and escorted him through a security door at the far side of reception.

  Garvie considered his options.

  He could wait. He could go home. Or ...

  He violently rubbed his hair and burst in through the door with a crash.

  ‘Sorry I’m late!’ he said, panting. ‘Even later than Naylor! What room are we in this evening?’

  Leaning against the receptionist’s desk, he squinted down at the appointments book in front of her.

  The receptionist narrowed her eyes. Garvie flashed her a smile and she shut the book.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Friend of Naylor.’

  ‘Who’s Naylor?’

  Her voice was like ice.

  A flicker of a frown passed across Garvie’s face but he carried on: ‘Came in a second ago. I saw him. Just tell me what room and I’ll catch him up.’

  For a second the receptionist was silent. She was a grey-haired lady with a big old-fashioned jaw and a hard look.

  ‘I don’t know who you are,’ she said at last. ‘And I don’t know what game you’re playing. But you better leave. Now.’

  She picked up the phone and held it threateningly in her fist, and Garvie wasn’t quite sure if she was going to call security or smack him on the head with it.

  ‘All right, Conan,’ he said. ‘Keep your hair on.’

  He turned away. Behind him she let out an exasperated sigh, and Garvie heard her mutter, bitterly, under her breath, ‘Why can’t they just leave them alone!’

  It was cold outside. A wind was blowing in the steep channels between the high-rises. Garvie walked all round the Centre for Public Service Partnerships, thinking, before settling finally in a shadowy doorway in a side street with a clear view of the entrance. He looked at his watch again. Six thirty. A vague prickle of anxiety went through him: he didn’t want to be late home. He really didn’t want to be interrogated by his mother again. But there would be time to think about that later. Now he had other things to think about.

  Like why the receptionist hadn’t recognized Naylor’s name.