Head Case

by Ross Armstrong

  ‘How do you know what I’m doing?’

  Her lips are dry so she wets them and gulps. She’s tense.

  ‘You told me. Remember? I think you’re putting yourself in danger and I think you need to…’

  ‘No, there’s something else. You been reading up on me?’ I say.

  It’s an observation she doesn’t expect from me. It disturbs her.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘And… I… I got a call about you. I got a call.’

  ‘From who? Who called?’

  ‘Your doctor. Doctor… Ryans? He wanted me to check in on you. Just to help. To make sure you know what you’re…’

  I hold the phone away from me and scream into my hand.

  ‘He had no right to do that. I don’t even know how he–’

  ‘Tom, this isn’t good. Please, I just want you to be safe,’ she says, with emotion in her breath that I’ve never heard before.

  ‘Do you remember when we first met? Do you?’ I say.

  ‘Of course… at the party. And we –’

  ‘And we shared a cigarette. And the rain came down and we hid under that tree, and I thought this is the person I’ll be with forever.’

  ‘Was there a tree? Rain? I don’t… remember it like that.’

  ‘What? Yes, you do. I was choking on a cigarette in the rain, you came up to me, and we decided that since we both hated smoking–’

  ‘I don’t remember it like that. Were we… outside?’

  ‘Yes. We were! That’s… how I remember it. I’m sure… ’

  ‘Tom. You need more rest. You’re not ready for any of this.’

  17

  ‘I like to flirt,

  I’ll do it till I’m sick and hurt,

  I’ll hold your hand to my chest, to feel my breath

  I like to flirt, with death.’

  When we get to the station we find we’re close to full force. Faces litter the room, some with moustaches, some with greying hair. Constables, sergeants, inspectors, some CID.

  A face comes to address us all. The room turns. The face, far too blank and far away for me to even guess its owner, speaks. Bartu’s eyes scour the room like he’s searching for lost property.

  ‘I’m sure you’re all aware that a third girl has now been reported missing. Her parents described having had no contact with Nina Da Silva for twenty-four hours. She’s fifteen. Her phone, as with the others, is not responding.’

  The voice speaks evenly, more of a stating of the facts than the rallying cry I had expected. As the blurred edges of the speaker’s face come into view, jigsaw pieces fall into their allotted slots in my mind and the clues point to one man. I was expecting CID to have taken over by this point, I wanted some specialist with experience of this kind of case. But it seems they’re still not fully accepting what this is. The topography of his face is the embodiment of an anti-climax.

  Nervy Superintendent Matthews drones on. Like Levine, he’s new in the role. I watch the pinkish flesh around his cheeks move under the office lighting, and his right leg quiver with the lack of conviction I always note when in his underwhelming company. The possibility of such a big case, one that may garner national attention, falling into his tentative lap was the cause of the shadow moves, which he hid very well from everyone else but me. Don’t get me wrong, this city is full of good police, we’re up there with the best in the world, but he isn’t one of them.

  ‘I have absolute faith in all of you. The spotlight may be drifting our way but that’s nothing we can’t handle if we stay vigilant and do all we can. I’m confident the perpetrator… if indeed there is one… can be brought to justice, and these girls brought home safely from… wherever they may be. Thank you. I’d just like a word with our safer neighbourhood’s team. Yep. Thank you.’

  Matthews may be bent on following his rulebook until this guy falls into our lap, but that’s not how I see it. It’s like he’s already preparing his statements on how, despite his best efforts, bla bla na na. This possibility is not in my mind. There will be no excuses.

  i)There will be no lost bodies and empty coffin farewells.

  ii)I will continue to act fast and without hesitation.

  iii)I will keep walking forward, until I walk into him.

  iv)And when I do, only one of us will walk away.

  v)I will put him down or put him away.

  vi)And I will bring those girls home, alive or otherwise.

  This is my manifesto. I came up with it as I walked the roads early this morning as the sun rose. When I returned home, as the rest of the city began to wake, I said it out loud to Mark against the solace of my bedroom.

  As we walk in hushed convoy over to the debrief room, and Emre glances around like it’s hunting season and he’s just realised he has a tail, I realise that I’ve called Levine and Matthews each other’s names on various occasions. I’m not regretful, far from it. The faces of these police Caucasians with their short back and sides give me nothing but plain A4. Levine, Matthews, even myself, we’re just a shirt with an interchangeable Swiss-army face. It was Matthews that started speaking before the door had even closed. I’m pretty sure it was him anyway.

  ‘Right… there are… a few things to discuss. I think some of you will have already realised what they are.’

  Bartu grips his knee hard.

  ‘There has been a breach of procedure, possibly more than one. And it’s something we need to clear up, particularly in and around a case like this.’

  The room is intrigued, and Bartu’s concern whispers to me across it. He wonders why we went so far, why he didn’t put a stop to it before it even began. But he only feels this because it’s all about to come out. Bartu shakes. I am unshakeable. Levine’s arms are folded tight. Matthews looks at me and takes no pleasure in what he says next.

  ‘We have reports that officers have been visiting the school, and roaming around, without our knowledge. They did, however, sign in at front desk, so we have a record of it. And I think it’ll be obvious at this point…’

  Bartu pictures disgrace. A suspension, then a series of discoveries, a slow unravelling of the stories he’s sold to his colleagues. Questions of what he had to gain. Salacious rumours abound. Then the real backlash begins.

  ‘… Anderson and Stevens have temporarily been removed from association with this investigation. They’re on unofficial probation.’

  It’s funny. Bartu is usually such a thorough man. But he didn’t even check the name badge I gave him. That’ll teach him to switch off and sulk. It was only a precaution; I didn’t foresee it coming to this. He looks at me. He pictures the moment he stood back, while I signed our names. I say our names.

  ‘I’ve questioned them myself and they’re sticking to their story. Anyway, taking them out of the firing line on this for a while should remove any complications for them. And cause any imposters some serious problems, should that by any chance be the case. The school, for one, has been informed…’

  My eyes flick to Bartu as I drift off during all this. My face is a picture of serenity. I fall into gentle reverie as Matthews goes on and on. I bathe in the glory of my tactical superiority. Stevens is an older gent with no ambition, I’m of far more use to this case and profession than he is. And Anderson is a woman well-beloved of the community, but she’s more comfortable handing out on-the-spot fines than anything like this. In a few months this’ll be a distant detail. I am resolved. I’d do the same again in a second.

  ‘So, Jarwar, I want you to focus every effort on this,’ Levine says, taking over. ‘While you hand over any other work, we’ll need Bartu and Mondrian to check in with the Da Silva parents. We need them to know we’re on this with everything we have. We need everyone to know that.’

  I nod sagely. Things seem to be falling into place for us. I am on this with everything I have. It’s not a pose. This day just keeps getting better. I wonder where Turan is for a second. He seems to keep his own timetable.

  ‘Tom. You might never have spoken to
people when they’re in this kind of state before but… you know… delicacy is the watchword. Listen to them. Be there for anything they need… and… that’s it. I’m sure you’ll be fine,’ Levine says, tossing out his coddling as casually as he can.

  I nod again as if buoyed by a thumbs up from the captain of the school football team.

  ‘Thanks. Thanks very much,’ I say, almost wiping away a tear of gratitude for the advice. We zip up our jackets as we get out of there, before we waste any more time, before my barely concealed joy riles Bartu any more than it already has.

  *

  On the journey over to the house I fend off any attempts to address what just happened. I’m pretty sure he’s planned a lecture in his head about how we should ‘dial things back’. If things had gotten really tasty, he might even have told me I’m ‘out of control’. But I’ve got no time for any of that.

  However, when I catch the familiar insignia on the kerb outside the house, a light blue circle with two diagonal lines through it, just insignificant enough to ignore, I make a mental note to make time to address the shivers it gives me.

  The family are more of a mess than any of the others. The patriarch tries to hold it together for his wife. News about disappearing girls had probably just reached them in time to start worrying. Then, just as their fears slowly started to fall away and they allowed themselves to entertain the possible reality that they were working themselves up over nothing, that statistics would say it was unlikely to hit them, of all people, it happened.

  ‘She was good girl. No drinking. No boys. No skiving off. She wouldn’t go nowhere without telling us.’

  His father’s slightly broken English shouldn’t be confused with a lack of intellect. He used to own a company that sold computer accessories in the late nineties, mouse mats, adapted keyboards, that kind of thing. He sold the business long ago to focus on his property portfolio. They are the picture of a modern kind of affluence. I’ll bet that London, particularly this borough, wasn’t always the easiest place to be. But from the look of their home, sitting proudly on the corner as the biggest in the neighbourhood, they’ve come through, and good on them.

  The mother leads us up to the bedroom. They always do. It’s a déjà vu. I run my hand along the polished tobacco-coloured oak handrail as we rise. Bartu takes a quick look to the door. We should get back down before Jarwar arrives.

  We don’t have to look far for the picture. She didn’t even try and conceal it. It sits on her bedside table. It’s the same scene. Bartu would later tell me it was from the same perspective as the first, precisely the same dimensions. Each picture almost a perfect replica of the last. Other than the colours. When Bartu clocks it, he nods to me and tactfully turns to lead us all out, giving the appearance of only needing a cursory look at the bedroom, allowing me to place the picture in my document holder behind their backs.

  In a smooth movement I also grab for something, that seems to have fallen behind the bed. I only had the briefest moment to take in the room, but it immediately caught my eye. It didn’t fit the pattern.

  It’s a compact black and red item, the sort I haven’t seen for a long while. The one enviable present I’d received in my long childhood was a crap camcorder when they first became cheapish. I greet its cool tape like an old friend and push it into my pocket.

  I search for that smell but no colours readily offer themselves. The generic scent of diffusers is all I take in as I head downstairs behind them.

  ‘Please forgive me if these questions seem simplistic. I’m sure you’ve been asked all these before…’ I say in the living room.

  I’m trying to get a gauge on how far along Jarwar is, which requires a level of tact that doesn’t come naturally. We don’t want to tread on her toes but we also don’t want to get left behind. So if there’s anything Jarwar knows then I want to know it, too. Conversely, if we’re ahead, I want to know exactly how far.

  ‘Fine,’ she says, giving nothing away. I have to keep my intentions close so she can’t sense I’m an outsider looking in, nose pressed up against the glass.

  ‘I know you said she wasn’t seeing any boys but… has she ever been dropped off by a friend, boy or girl, young or old?’

  ‘Never. I’ve told the woman. Many questions, very thorough!’ Her voice cracks, her breath leaves her and she buries her face in her husband’s chest. As I stand frozen under the terrible soundtrack of her panic tears, I see that hardly a wall stands in the house without her daughter’s eyes looking in at us from behind an ornate frame. She was their joy, their only child, another only child.

  ‘Forgive us. We don’t mean to pry. We’re just getting things straight,’ says Bartu, but in truth we do mean to pry. It’s good to know Jarwar seems to be doggedly pursuing the lines of investigation that suit the seriousness of all this, I had begun to have my doubts.

  The doorbell goes and we know what that means, so I reel back towards the kitchen. And as the front door opens, Bartu pops his head in to see me push the picture into a miscellaneous drawer. We have one of them already, which is maybe one too many. We don’t want to get caught tampering with evidence, nor do we want to muddy the issue for Jarwar. I’m not trying to put her off; if she solves the thing, so much the better. But as we emerge muttering to each other from the kitchen, no one the wiser, I keep the mini-DV tape safe in my jacket pocket, my digits fingering its dimensions and pushing into its tactile edges with nostalgia as I meet the whites of Jarwar’s eyes.

  ‘Emre. Tom. Thanks for everything,’ she says, a bit curtly for my taste, as she enters.

  We are automatically belittled by her presence. Before she arrived we were the authority figures, as soon as she entered the room, we became just two guys. Local well-wishers but without the warm soup and good tidings. It’s the same way your relationship to whatever girl you were talking to changed whenever Paul Lawrence entered the Roller Disco. Before he walked in you were at least there, now they only have eyes for him. That reference might be pretty niche, but it’s the one that springs to mind.

  Jarwar stares at us as if we’ve missed our cue. The Da Silvas glance to her. We haven’t moved a muscle. It’s like a scene from the theatre of the absurd. A strange inertia has come over us. We’re trying to go with a little dignity, without seeming like the spare bolts left once you’ve assembled your flat-pack wardrobe.

  ‘Great. I’ll take it from here,’ she says again. Bartu even gets a hand on the shoulder, which you can tell he wants to wriggle away from, but he manages to behave like an adult as we’re pushed discreetly towards the door.

  ‘Anything else you nudge?’ I say, near the door, in a last gasp attempt to gain back some masculinity, slightly undercut by my aphasia offering me the word ‘nudge’ instead of ‘need’. I wince and stand by it anyway.

  Any odd jobs you need doing? Any plugs you need rewiring? Any flat-pack furniture you need assembling? I may as well have said.

  ‘No. Thanks though, Tom,’ she says, giving me the shoulder-hand, with the matching stare.

  Emre is halfway out the door but I have something to say, my brain just won’t tell me what it is yet. I work it through: She didn’t even ask if anything important had been said while we were here, just on the off chance, or if we had any read on the situation, even out of politeness. It dawns on me; we were only here to babysit. Nothing more. Warm bodies in the room.

  I stand open mouthed, grasping for the words.

  ‘Er… yes, Tom?’ Jarwar says.

  Bartu is used to this and Jarwar knows about my problem but the Da Silvas are suitably disturbed.

  They wait.

  I have the urge to ask if anyone knows exactly what those blue symbols on the kerb mean.

  The impulse to probe why exactly Nina had an old cam-corder. The father dealt in nineties electronics, I suppose, but it’s another element that stuck out as not belonging in these girls’ worlds.

  And I want to talk photographs. Maybe there’s a way of tactfully mentioning them, not just
to find out if Jarwar found the set at the first house, but also to show our initiative. I’m a child who wants to show his big sister he can ride his bike one-handed.

  Jarwar? Have You Found Any Photos? At All?

  Say it. Maybe she has. Maybe she hasn’t. Or I might be able to tell she’s concealing knowledge of them and then we’ll know she doesn’t trust us. Alternatively, it could just give her more than I really want to give. She looks at me patiently. I know I shouldn’t. But I want to say it anyway. Just so I’ve said it.

  ‘Thanks then,’ I say.

  The word photo wasn’t even presenting itself, my aphasia making something of a comeback, exacerbated by the heightened nature of the situation.

  I leave with Emre not far behind. The room shrugs, acknowledging with relief that the strange man is gone.

  18

  ‘Can’t. Get that dah dee dah, out of, my head…’

  ‘I’ve been thinking we should make a copy of the picture,’ Emre says.

  He’s trying to lift me as we walk, low and utterly undermined, to get my mind back on paramount things, and I appreciate it. At least I didn’t reveal what hand I was holding to Jarwar. Sometimes it’s worth everyone thinking you’re nothing if what you’ve got will really blow them away in the end.

  ‘Yes, good, make a copy. Why’s that again?’ I say.

  ‘Cos we have to get the original back to the Bridges’ house soon. If they figure out we’ve removed evidence from a victim’s house, then we’re screwed.’

  I squeeze the mini-DV tight in my hand, as his thought hits. We could put that back, too, if needs be, but I’d like to think it might be small enough for no one to know it even exists. Either way, I decide to delay the good news of its discovery until a more apt time.

  ‘Jarwar doesn’t seem to be our biggest fan. And Turan may be many things, but nothing we can count on,’ Bartu says. ‘Hey, and later, if you’re a good boy, I’ll show you something I figured out,’ Bartu says.