Running Girl

by Simon Mason

But before Garvie could answer, a familiar voice broke in from the other side of the school gate.

  ‘Smith. Howell.’

  The temperature seemed to drop a couple of degrees as they turned to face Miss Perkins. Prim and small, she hardly reached to the top of the gate, but her voice seemed to cut laser-like through it.

  ‘I see you’ve mislaid the school regulations about smoking.’

  Smudge mislaid his cigarette and did a shifty impression of innocence.

  Garvie snuffed his and put it carefully in his top pocket for later. ‘Technically, Miss Perkins,’ he said politely, ‘we’re off school property.’

  Perkins pinned him with one of her notorious stares. ‘Come with me, Smith. Or I’ll technically have you deported.’

  ‘Deported, miss?’

  ‘As of ten minutes ago, I have an understanding with your mother. I call her, you leave the country in four weeks’ time. Got it?’

  ‘Got it, miss.’

  Jess hovered near him, whispering, ‘Garv? You won’t forget? See you after.’

  ‘Walker,’ Miss Perkins said. ‘Return home and change out of your pole-dancer sandals into regulation footwear. Then report to my office for detention for late arrival.’

  Smudge raised his eyebrows and Garvie raised his eyebrows back and turned to follow Miss Perkins up the drive. As he went he heard Smudge say to Jess, ‘Don’t know if you need any help changing out of those sandals, Jess, but ...’

  ‘Keep up, Smith,’ Perkins said over her shoulder.

  They walked past Naylor’s bungalow. The area around it was as untidy as ever. The moped was back under its tarpaulin. There was no sign of the caretaker himself.

  Round the corner of the drive they passed the head teacher, Mr Winthrop, coming the other way, escorting Detective Inspector Singh towards Naylor’s bungalow.

  Singh and Garvie exchanged glances and went on in opposite directions.

  After a moment Garvie took out his phone.

  ‘Alex, mate. You home yet?’

  ‘Smith?’

  ‘Hang on, mate. Yes, Miss Perkins?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Phoning a friend, miss.’

  ‘Phoning a friend?’

  ‘About a path, miss.’

  ‘Well, stop it.’

  With a sigh, he pocketed his phone and followed the teacher into C Block.

  33

  SINGH WALKED WITH Mr Winthrop down the drive, the head teacher still complaining about the inconvenience caused by the long series of police interviews, only just completed, with pupils and staff.

  ‘So disruptive,’ he said. ‘And so time-consuming.’

  Singh made no reply. He wasn’t listening. Seeing Garvie again had reminded him unpleasantly of the middle-of-the-night conversation he’d had, after the boy left on Friday, with the chief constable. It hadn’t been much of a conversation in the formal sense; the chief wasn’t a talkative man. Like Singh himself, he was a starer, but quieter and colder. He made brief statements that were not to be contradicted or explained away or even answered, and let his silence amplify them. He had shown Singh a photograph of Alex Robinson pinned to the road by two burly policemen, which had already been obtained by a national newspaper proposing to print it under the headline INNOCENT VICTIM OF POLICE BRUTALITY: Who are the beasts now? He had reminded Singh how many days had passed without any charges being brought or indeed any real suspects being investigated. He had calculated the number of hours lost, and the cost of those hours, on looking for a Porsche that did not exist. He had reminded Singh that results matter and that a detective inspector without results is a reasonable definition of a constable on traffic duty in a small, dirty town far away. His comments made Singh suspicious that someone in his team was giving the chief his private opinions. With more time, there might have been ways to shift Bob Dowell or Darren Collier into other areas of the investigation. But he didn’t have any time. The chief had given him a week to sort it out or give it up. And giving it up, he had made clear, meant giving up not just the case but all his career prospects too.

  Mr Winthrop opened the gate to Naylor’s small garden and ushered Singh through, tutting.

  ‘Such a neat man around the school, and look at all this!’

  He knocked on the bungalow door and when Naylor answered he introduced Singh to the caretaker, then made his excuses and left them together.

  It was the first time Singh had met the caretaker face to face. He was oddly good-looking, he thought. Wiry, with dark cropped hair and strong features. What a girl might call a ‘bit of rough’. But his nervousness was immediately apparent. Standing awkwardly in front of Singh, he kept chewing his bottom lip, his eyes flicking from side to side.

  ‘I understand you own a moped,’ Singh said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  Scowling, the man led him across the litter-strewn grass to a small paved area, and lifted off the sheet of tarpaulin.

  Singh nodded. It might have been the one he saw in Cornwallis Way or it might not.

  ‘What’s in the pannier?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Naylor opened the box on the back of the moped. It was empty. Singh nodded again, and they went back into the bungalow.

  Inside the house it was as messy as the area outside. The walls were streaked with rusty water stains from an old leak and there was a smell of grease. Singh stepped onto a dirty strip of loose lino and walked down the narrow hall. Hanging on a coat peg was a red motorcycle helmet.

  ‘This your helmet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have any others?’

  ‘No.’

  They went on into the small living room and sat opposite each other on junk-shop chairs across a low table piled with unwashed crockery. Through a doorway Singh could see into a small kitchen, the sink filled with pots and pans and tools of some sort. There was no need to ask whether the man lived alone.

  ‘I been interviewed already,’ Naylor said. ‘I don’t know what this is about. It’s not right. I answered all the questions before.’ He glanced away, biting his lip.

  ‘Well, I want to ask you them again,’ Singh said calmly. He took a file out of his briefcase. ‘About the night of the thirteenth.’

  Naylor repeated his alibi. It had been a half-day for him, and from around four o’clock he’d been with a friend in a pub called the Jolly Boatman. His friend had already verified it. As he talked, Singh watched him. The man couldn’t stay still; he kept wiping his hand across the stubble of his face and chewing his thumbnails, and whenever Singh met his gaze he looked away, scowling.

  ‘Do you know Pike Pond?’

  ‘Never been there in my life.’

  ‘What about Fox Walk?’

  ‘Where?’

  He answered all questions with the same surly unhelpfulness. ‘I done all this already,’ he said again and again.

  Singh considered him. ‘Tell me more about Chloe Dow.’

  Naylor looked at him furiously. ‘I told you. I don’t know nothing about her. I never even spoken to her.’

  ‘Did you like the look of her?’

  Naylor shot him a furious glance. ‘I told you. I wouldn’t even remember her if her picture wasn’t in the papers every bloody day.’

  ‘People say you used to watch her.’

  ‘Well, people’s wrong ’cause I never.’

  ‘They say you used to watch her running at the track.’

  ‘Didn’t even know she went running.’

  Singh paused. Keeping his eyes fixed on Naylor, he said, ‘Chloe had several things stolen from her locker over the last few weeks of her life. Did you steal them?’

  Naylor trembled violently but didn’t look away. ‘No, I bloody didn’t.’ He stared at Singh. ‘Search the place if you want; you won’t find nothing.’

  In the silence that followed he kept his eyes on Singh’s the whole time, and at last Singh dropped his to make a note i
n his book.

  As he wrote he said, ‘By the way, where did you work before here?’

  ‘Didn’t have a job.’

  ‘You’re what? Twenty-nine? This is your first job?’

  ‘Did bits and pieces. Building sites mainly.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here and there.’ He sniffed. ‘I never signed on. Wouldn’t do it.’

  Singh nodded and fell silent for a moment. He said, ‘You were out last Friday in town. Is that right?’

  At once Naylor’s expression changed. He opened his mouth and shut it again.

  Singh said sharply, ‘Is that right?’

  Naylor nodded.

  ‘You went out on your moped?’

  ‘So? What’s this got to do with anything?’

  ‘Where did you go?’

  For almost a minute Naylor said nothing, just sat biting his lip and rubbing his face with his hands. Singh leaned forward.

  ‘Meeting,’ Naylor said at last.

  ‘What meeting?’

  ‘Private meeting.’

  ‘What private meeting?’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Mr Naylor,’ Singh said at last, ‘I want to avoid any misunderstandings. So I advise you to answer the question.’

  Naylor shook his head.

  ‘I put it to you that you went to a meeting at the Centre for Public Service Partnerships in Deal Street. What was the meeting?’

  ‘I was told it was confidential,’ Naylor said angrily.

  ‘This interview is confidential. Nothing you say to me will be repeated to anyone at the Academy, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

  Naylor looked as if he were about to burst into tears. After a moment’s agitated silence, he said in a rush, ‘I got issues, right? Anxiety is what. They said it was all confidential, and now look. They know how I get. Panic attacks, and now look.’ He groaned and briefly closed his eyes.

  Singh said calmly, ‘I see. Was the meeting with the health service?’

  ‘Mental health,’ Naylor said. ‘Group counselling for anxiety. They said it wouldn’t go on my records. Only bloody reason I went. I didn’t have to go.’ He bit his knuckles. ‘Why can’t people leave me alone?’

  Singh said, ‘There’s no shame in seeking help for a problem, Mr Naylor. We all have problems. And I agree, you should have the space to work things out for yourself. It’s just that I needed to know.’

  He made a note, closed his file and looked up. Between his hands Naylor was peering at him fiercely; there was a flash of something in his expression, then it was gone.

  Singh frowned and paused. He said, ‘That Friday night I saw a man on a moped chase down a boy in Cornwallis Way. Was that man you?’

  ‘No, it bloody wasn’t.’

  ‘A man in a varsity jacket wearing a blue helmet.’

  ‘My helmet’s red and I haven’t even got a varsity jacket.’

  ‘At about eleven o’clock.’

  ‘The meeting ended at nine and I came back here. At eleven o’clock I was probably bloody asleep.’

  Singh nodded. He got to his feet and turned away down the hall towards the front door. As he went he glanced again at the red motorcycle helmet hanging on its peg and noticed it was new.

  Behind him, Naylor had subsided into weeping and, without saying anything, Singh let himself out of the bungalow and slowly walked back towards the school.

  Up the drive Singh came almost immediately to the running track. It was no more than fifty metres from the house, in full view. Naylor had never even noticed Chloe running there? Walking slowly round the track’s perimeter, he reviewed the conversation he’d just had, thinking over the things Naylor had said.

  ‘Search the place if you want; you won’t find nothing.’ Singh believed him. But what if he had somewhere else where he could stash stuff? He glanced back at the house and across to the woods beyond.

  From his car he phoned the station for Mal, but she wasn’t there and neither was Lawrence Shan. At last he was put through to Darren Collier.

  ‘Darren. I’ve just been speaking to Naylor. The school caretaker.’

  ‘I remember. Yeah?’ Singh thought he detected a new coolness in his voice.

  ‘Has Mal anything to report from Froggett Woods? She was going to show his photo round.’

  ‘No idea.’

  There was a silence. Singh went on: ‘Another thing. I want his alibi checked again.’

  ‘Been done. Twice. He was drinking with a friend, right? The Jolly Boatman. Bob went back and talked to the landlord.’

  ‘Did he talk to the bar staff too? Does anyone else remember him being there that night? I want someone to go back to the pub and check.’

  There was silence.

  Singh continued, ‘And I want his previous employment records located. Mal told me they’d gone missing. Archives have been looking but there’s no trace of them there, either.’

  ‘If Archives haven’t got them, no one has.’

  Singh thought. ‘I want you to call up his criminal record. He was pulled in and interviewed a while back. Find out who talked to him. No, wait. Get hold of the people at the Centre for Public Service Partnerships. Start with them. Naylor was at a meeting there last Friday evening. Anxiety issues. Mental Health department. Got that?’

  ‘I got it all right.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  There was a vague noise of discontent at the other end of the phone, but before Singh could say anything else Collier had rung off, and Singh sat silently in the car, staring out of the window at the running track.

  Suddenly he was exhausted. His energy drained away and with it his self-belief. No wonder his colleagues had lost faith in him. The chief constable was openly critical. Singh’s hunches had been wrong. Dowell’s team was still searching in vain for a Porsche. He’d made a mistake in arresting Alex Robinson. Now Naylor was proving to be more difficult and perhaps more dangerous than they’d thought.

  Beyond the running track he could see the edge of Marsh Woods. Beyond that was the ring road and the path out to Pike Pond. Even at this time in the morning the sky above it was gloomy. It was a gloomy place, isolated and bleak. A thought came to him. If Chloe had arranged to meet someone up there, in the ruin of Four Winds Farm, was that person Naylor?

  He didn’t know. Frustrated, he felt that if only he could look at the questions in a new light, turn them round somehow, he would find the answers. But he couldn’t turn them. Slapping the steering wheel to shake himself out of his lethargy, he turned the key in the ignition, and with a grim, pale face drove out through the school gates. He was a policeman and a Sikh. He wouldn’t give up. He had an iron will. He would never quit.

  34

  ‘THING IS,’ GARVIE said, ‘I’m thinking of quitting.’

  ‘Quitting, Smith?’

  ‘It’s a bad habit, miss.’

  ‘Quitting smoking, you mean?’

  ‘Smoking tobacco. Yeah.’

  Miss Perkins looked at him hard and Garvie looked back. She had ginger eyebrows; they made her eyes look colder. Glancing around her office, a model of functional, soulless efficiency, he sighed. Through the sound-proofed glass office door he could see other students going erratically but silently along the corridor to their lessons.

  ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I think I’m meant to be in citizenship. Or maybe physics. So, if that’s all, I’ll just—’

  ‘Stay where you are, Smith. I promised your mother I’d have a word with you. There are one or two things that need to be made clear to you.’

  ‘I wish,’ he said. He was thinking of things connected with Chloe Dow. But remembering what his mother had said to him the night before – and the estate agents’ brochures she’d shown him – he put the thought out of his mind. It really looked as if he’d have to get down to his school work. Some of it, at least.

  Miss Perkins opened a file on her desk and flipped through a few pages. ‘You’re not the stupidest boy at this school,’ she
said.

  ‘Thank you, Miss. Smudge’ll be relieved.’

  ‘Smudge?’

  ‘Ryan Howell, Miss. He prizes his position as stupidest boy.’

  She stared at him narrowly. ‘Don’t talk, Smith. Just listen.’ She looked down at her file. ‘It says here that you have the highest IQ of any Academy pupil in its entire history.’

  He nodded politely.

  ‘But you have the worst grades. Quite possibly the worst grades ever recorded.’

  He shook his head in what he hoped was a sad and defeated manner.

  Perkins frowned. She closed the file. ‘I’ve seen it before. Not quite so spectacularly. But similar enough. Lack of motivation. Disaffection. Bad habits.’

  Garvie nodded, even more sadly. He turned his face away, as if reluctant to face the full horror of what he’d become, and through the glass door saw Jessica Walker in the corridor making gestures at him. She was pointing at her watch and mouthing something. When he shook his head, she pouted and gestured towards the canteen with her thumb. He shook his head again. He put his index finger to his temple and pulled the trigger.

  ‘Smith?’

  ‘Yes, Miss?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She came round her desk towards the door and Jessica skittered away down the corridor. Turning to Garvie, Miss Perkins said, ‘Leave her alone, Smith.’

  ‘But I wasn’t—’

  ‘Certainly you weren’t. You wouldn’t know how to.’

  ‘Miss?’

  She stood small and straight and stern in front of her desk, looking at him. ‘You see, Smith, you have no idea. How could you? You have no understanding of female psychology. None. You might have heard rumours that it exists, but for you it remains terra incognita.’ She continued to look at him. ‘Terra incognita is a Latin phrase.’

  ‘Does it have something to do with terror?’

  ‘It means unknown lands.’

  ‘Very handy, Miss. I’ll remember to use it in my conversations with girls.’

  He glanced sideways at Jessica, who had reappeared in front of the glass door, making her weird gestures again. As soon as Miss Perkins followed his gaze, the girl continued on her way down the corridor.

  Perkins clicked her tongue. ‘At least leave her until after your exams. Listen to me now, Smith. Bad habits are your own business, but bad grades bring down a school. And no one is going to bring down this school.’ She stood in front of him. ‘Your mother asked me to ensure you sat all your exams, but I did better than that, I promised her that you would achieve grades commensurate with your intelligence. Do you think that was rash?’