Running Girl

by Simon Mason

  ‘Hannah!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Hannah!’

  A few inches to his left the door of number 137 opened a crack, and an elderly woman in a pink dressing gown peered out. She had a long loose face and grey hair in curlers, and she held the edges of her dressing gown together under her chin.

  ‘No point in banging,’ she said. ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘You mean Hannah?’

  She looked at Garvie with tired, bitter eyes and sucked in her face. ‘Went off. Four or five hours ago. Who are you?’

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘That’s what they all say, to start with.’

  ‘Do you know where she’s gone?’

  The old woman thought about this for a long time, chewing her loose lip. ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ she said in quiet disgust, and started to close the door.

  Garvie jammed the toe of his shoe in it and she recoiled. The door flapped, and he had a brief glimpse of a small room with a loud carpet of chocolate and caramel swirls.

  ‘I don’t want any trouble,’ she cried again. ‘Whatever she’s done.’

  ‘What do you mean, trouble?’ He looked at her fiercely. ‘What do you mean, done?’

  He jammed his foot further into the door, and the woman said in a nervous rush, ‘Anyway, she’d gone by the time they came for her.’

  ‘Came for her?’ He felt sick.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Three of them. And a dog. But she’d gone. Took herself off. And the baby.’

  ‘Baby?’

  ‘Scared something might happen to it, I should think.’

  It was too much. He removed himself from her door, stepped away and sat down suddenly against the railings. Confused, the woman peered at him curiously for several long seconds.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No.’

  Nodding sourly, she began to close the door again.

  ‘Wait,’ Garvie said. ‘You have to help me. Where did she go?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Please. It’s important.’ Even as he said it, he saw it wasn’t important to the woman. ‘She must have said something,’ he added.

  The woman shook her head. ‘If she’s done something you should call the police.’

  He leaped to his feet and she withdrew in alarm, shutting the door behind her with a snap, and though his momentum carried him across the walkway, he let his hand fall to his side. Banging on doors makes nothing happen. He looked at his watch. Ten thirty. Lighting a Benson and Hedges, he paced down the walkway to the corner of the building and stood at the railings looking out. The sky was the colour of wet ash. Almost half the city lay below him. Around the tower block, the low-rise apartments and maisonettes of the Strawberry Hill estate, haphazardly arranged in blocks and lines. To the east, the dense rows of Five Mile and the grey mass of Limekilns. Northwards was Tick Hill and City Central Hospital, pale against the dark hills beyond. In the south he could see the bright lights of clubs and casinos, and far away to the west, the blank skyscrapers of the business district, flat and blocky against the paler night sky. Everything was meshed together, like puzzle shapes of an enormous maze.

  He smoked quietly, thinking. Somewhere in that maze a girl was running for her life. A girl with a baby.

  Where would she run to?

  As he smoked he remembered her. He saw her in his mind, the way she’d looked in Imperium in her short white toga. He saw the shape her mouth made when she spoke and he listened again to what she’d said, about getting out of the casino, about travelling, about India, with its sun and its colours and its—

  He jerked out of his trance and stood there wide-eyed. Looking at his watch, he saw it was ten forty. Cursing, he flung his cigarette, still glowing, out into the night air, and, turning, ran as fast as he could back along the walkway.

  50

  THE BOYS ON their bikes jeered as he ran past them. He crossed the road and ran down the opposite pavement in the direction of the bypass. He ran across a bridge over railway tracks, down a darkened street of maisonettes and flats, onto Cobham Road, the main drag of the Strawberry Hill estate, and ran on, hard, past offices and shops that were shut up for the night behind metal grilles. Panting heavily, holding his side, he took out his phone as he ran and dialled.

  ‘Oui?’

  ‘Abdul? Garvie.’

  ‘Garvie man, what is? You hurt?’

  ‘No. I’m fine. Where are you?’

  ‘Soon it will be airport. Five, six minute.’

  He cursed.

  ‘Garvie man. What happen? It sound like you swim the sea.’

  ‘Nothing happen. I’m just jogging. But I need information.’

  ‘Information? What is?’

  ‘Is Tick Hill. Do you know it?’

  ‘Mais oui.’ Abdul sounded pleased with himself. ‘I go Tick Hill many many time.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘But you have trouble. I hear it.’

  ‘No, man. That’s just my lungs bleeding. Otherwise I’m absolutely fine.’

  ‘You want me come?’

  ‘No. Listen. I don’t have long. I’ve just got a question about Tick Hill.’

  ‘For you, Garvie man, is plaisir. Ask it.’

  Tick Hill was six or seven miles away, on the northern edge of the city. That was a long way at night when the buses were infrequent. After ten minutes of running the pain in Garvie’s side had spread round his back to join another, different pain at the base of his spine. Without slowing down, he turned off Cobham Road into a street of small brick tenement houses and hobble-ran down the narrow pavement past wheelie bins and bikes, peering about him, until he found a bike chained up with a combination lock.

  Standing there, panting, he gave silent thanks to Felix. There was no noise from any of the houses and, after listening for a moment, he bent to his task.

  He set the four numbers of the combination lock to zero and gave the lock a short, sharp sideways tug. No give. He moved the first number to one, and tugged again, and kept going until he felt a slight gap open up momentarily between the keys. Then he moved on to the next number and began the process again.

  In less than a minute the bike was free. It wasn’t a great bike but it would do. On a strip torn off his cigarette packet he wrote: Bit of an emergency. Back soon, and wrapped it around the lock, which he left coiled on the doorstep. Inside the house a dog barked once, but by then he was already at the end of the street, cycling briskly into Cobham Road.

  It was midnight by the time he reached Tick Hill. There was space here, and air. Dishevelled, sweating freely, he pedalled doggedly along wide quiet roads past semi-detached houses behind grass verges half reverting to their natural state. He could feel a breeze off the reservoir somewhere ahead of him in the darkness. If Abdul was right, there was a country road nearby and, at the end of that, a trailer park.

  In his mind he saw Hannah in the Imperium and heard her talking to him: ‘Calls herself the Tick Hill Travel Bug ... When she writes her autobiography she’s going to call it From Trailer Park to Taj Mahal.’ Yes, the Tick Hill trailer park, a place where a travel bug might live, dreaming of the Taj Mahal. A friend’s place, empty now. A place where a frightened girl with her baby might run to if she had nowhere else to go.

  He looked at his watch and pedalled harder.

  His phone rang.

  Without slowing down he fished it out and looked at the caller’s number. ‘Yeah?’

  There was a pause at the other end. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Spot of exercise. Didn’t you know I’m a fitness fanatic?’

  Singh let this go. ‘I’m sorry to call so late. But there’s been another development. A big one. You need to be aware of it.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘A sighting of the Porsche, up at Pike Pond.’

  ‘For the Friday night?’

  ‘Yes. One of the Froggett Wood residents returned from Botswana today. Turns out he’s
a jogger. He ran past Pike Pond at five on the Friday afternoon and saw the car parked there. He ran right past it.’

  ‘Close enough to get a look at the upholstery, then.’

  ‘It’s very distinctive, as you said. There’s no doubt it’s Winder’s car.’

  ‘Pig Crazy.’

  Startled, Singh paused. ‘Well, I was only—’

  ‘Winder junior. I’m assuming he was in the car.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Sitting waiting.’

  ‘For Chloe?’

  ‘Not that he’s admitting.’

  ‘Have you arrested him?’

  ‘Yes. He’s just now been released on bail. That’s the reason I’m calling you. The Winders are really worked up now.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Garvie said. ‘I wouldn’t dream of getting involved.’ He pedalled out of a long well-lit street towards a narrow road marked GOOSE LANE, and clattered into the darkness of the countryside. As he went over a hidden pothole the bike’s front light fell off into the road, and he cursed.

  Singh said in a puzzled voice, ‘What are you doing, exactly?’

  ‘Just breathing. Go on. You’re about to tell me what you think happened.’

  Speaking slowly, Singh said, ‘I think you’re right that Chloe went to the casino on Thursday night. And when she was there, something happened to upset her. I don’t know what.’

  Garvie was silent for a moment, pedalling in the darkness. Then he said, ‘Are you familiar with a redhead in tassels who’s just won a fortune on the roulette wheel.’

  There was a pause. ‘A punter?’

  ‘Imperium’s pin-up girl. You’ve seen her, over the entrance at the casino. All you got to do to win is play.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Looks like last year’s model to me. I think Darren brought Chloe there to take pictures of her. I think she was going to be Imperium’s new poster girl. Or that’s what he told her. She wasn’t dressed up like that just to get in. She wanted to look as old as possible so when she was three metres high on that concrete wall, people wouldn’t rumble her as a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl.’

  ‘I see. And what do you think happened?’

  ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Actually it’s probably not, but you know what I mean. How well do you know Mr Pig Crazy?’

  ‘Darren? Not at all. But the psychological profile in his records makes interesting reading. He underwent a compulsory course of counselling after an incident when he was seventeen.’

  ‘What incident?’

  ‘Exposing himself in public. He’s a mass of compulsions. Who wouldn’t be with a father like that? There’s a history of suspected beatings at home. Social services were called in three times when he was at school. At the same time he had a record for bullying. It’s classic.’

  ‘Right. So you can imagine. Dad away abroad. Weirdo with uncontrollable urges and a camera. Girl in low-cut dress. Things got out of hand, I expect. I’m thinking of that private suite at the top of the staircase covered in black shag-pile.’

  ‘Whatever it was, it upset her.’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Then, on Friday, things got worse for her. My belief is that all the calls she received from that untraceable number were from Darren Winder.’

  ‘Yeah. He was sweating about whatever he’d done the night before.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Probably he’d found out she was only fifteen. His dad wouldn’t have liked that.’

  ‘He must have been terrified. I think he was trying to get her to meet him.’

  ‘Yeah. Put some pressure on her. Show her who’s boss. Make clear what his dad’ll do to her if she tells anyone what went on the night before.’

  Taking his bearings from the pale line of hedge at the roadside, Garvie sped into the darkness, looking around. Somewhere nearby there was the quietly gurgling noise of a stream. He glided on between tall hedgerows, past five-bar gates and, as he went round a corner, saw faint lights up ahead and pushed himself on, panting.

  Singh said uncertainly, ‘Are you jogging?’

  ‘No. Thinking. You still have to explain how she ended up at Pike Pond.’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps he told her to meet him there.’

  ‘Or she told him. Are you familiar with the term terra incognita?’

  ‘Of course, but—’

  ‘And you realize Chloe was a blonde?’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Blonde, attractive and utterly ruthless. It’s a type of terra incognita psychology, man. She might have been scared but she was tough too. She was at risk of getting entangled with the wrong sort of man so, naturally, she decided to dump him, blow him off. Pike Pond’s perfect from her point of view. She doesn’t want a scene outside her house. She doesn’t want anyone wondering what she’s up to. She can jog up there like she’s done loads of times before and no one will question why.’

  In the darkness ahead of Garvie the glow of lights slowly grew brighter and he pedalled harder.

  ‘There was a problem, though,’ he said reflectively.

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘The running shoes, of course. Naylor’d nicked them the night before. That’s why she went round to Jess’s on Friday afternoon, to borrow some. But Jess’s feet are really big. So she had to buy a new pair pronto. No time to be fussy. Any sort would do, even orange and lime green. Soon as she got them she set off. I’ve always thought it odd no one noticed her running up there at seven. I mean, she was really noticeable. If she ran up at five, that would explain why.’

  Up ahead in the shadows the hedge gave way to a high brick wall, and Garvie accelerated, panting as he went.

  Singh said thoughtfully, ‘Yes. Yes. It could have happened like that. But we need proof. We need a sighting of Chloe at the casino on Thursday.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Garvie said, crouching forward over the handlebars. As he shot towards the trailer park entrance, he could see, over the top of the wall, the steady glow of an arc light, and he was just daring to think he’d made it in time when the quiet of the rural night was shattered by the explosive noise of a car engine starting up somewhere nearby. A second later headlights came out of the trailer park entrance a hundred metres ahead and swung away in the opposite direction. The engine roared and the tail-lights disappeared down the lane at speed.

  ‘Oh no!’ he said savagely under his breath. ‘Not that.’ He pedalled furiously.

  Singh said, ‘Garvie?’

  ‘I’m out of time, man. Listen. As you say, we need that sighting of Chloe at the casino Thursday night. Is there no one talking?’

  ‘No. The staff are too frightened of the Winders to say anything.’

  ‘Course. But what about the ex-staff?’

  ‘You said that before. We’ve talked to several, nearly all of them.’

  ‘Just one to go?’

  There was a pause. When Singh spoke there was a new note of suspicion in his voice.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Girl called Hannah Clark?’

  ‘Garvie? We haven’t found her yet.’

  ‘You’re not the only ones looking for her,’ Garvie said through gritted teeth. ‘Thing is, she’s the one who saw something.’

  ‘Garvie?’ There was alarm in Singh’s voice. ‘What are you up to? Where are you?’

  Garvie said nothing. With every last ounce of his strength he pedalled. Glancing up, he saw there was a new light at the top of the wall, a flickering soft light glowing pale orange, and he frowned.

  ‘Nearly there,’ he panted into the phone.

  ‘Nearly where?’

  ‘Nearly at the place where Hannah Clark’s hiding out with her baby. Here we go now. Pray that I’m not too late.’

  He swept round the end of the brick wall into the trailer park, and his face was suddenly lit up by a red glow.

  ‘Oh God!’ he yelled.

  Ten miles away, in his office, Singh shouted too. ‘What are you doing? Where are you?’

&
nbsp; He heard Garvie begin to say something; then there was a wild engulfing noise like an explosion in a bucket, and the phone went dead.

  51

  THE TRAILER PARK was exactly as Abdul had described it. Near derelict. A construction company’s billboard at the entrance gave out information that the site was being redeveloped. Many of the mobile homes had already been removed: regular dark patches of earth indicated where they had stood. The ones that remained, in three short rows at the back of the lot, showed all the usual signs of abandonment – smashed windows, graffiti, litter – except for the one at the end of the nearest row. And that was on fire.

  Garvie took in all this in an instant before crashing the bike into a pile of builder’s sand, and scrabbled up again, spitting grit, to run towards the flaming caravan, yelling.

  ‘Hannah! Hannah!’

  There was no reply from inside. It stood slightly separate from the others in the row, once white, now mildewed, with an aluminium door and three black windows set flush with the walls. Flames rose from the back of it, writhing into the air, dirty red against the blackness of a copse of trees behind.

  ‘Hannah!’ Garvie yelled again, and cursed himself for wasting breath.

  The door was locked.

  He ran round the back, shielding his face from the heat, and saw fire coming out of a gash high up in the metal of the caravan wall. He ran back round to the front and thumped the windowpanes again.

  Still no reply.

  As he stood there, panting, there was a second small explosion at the back – another gas canister perhaps, or an electrical appliance. He tried the door again, a thin metal panel warm to the touch and locked fast. He tugged violently at the handle, and let it go, and stood there, panting uselessly.

  ‘Think!’ he said out loud.

  And then: ‘Don’t just think!’

  He ran back to where the bike lay at the edge of the pile of sand, and took a deep breath and charged forward. He ran hard over fifteen metres, accelerating all the time, and at the last second took off into the air, leaping feet first into the door, which buckled and burst with a hideous noise of metal on metal, and flung him backwards onto the ground.