What else are you going to claim today?
Why should we believe anything someone like you claims?
I accepted the color of her voice when she stated her name for the record. I don’t like it now. I can’t trust it, the way I can’t trust Rusty Chrome Orange’s color. I can’t rely on my first instincts where voices are concerned. I’m the culprit who can’t be trusted.
I rest my head on my hands. Dull light green and milky-coffee colors merge into one curdled mess with rusty chrome orange. It’s going to explode in my head like a deadly rocket, blasting through my gray matter and destroying all the cells in its path.
“My client has indicated he wishes to cooperate fully,” Milky Coffee says, “but this is a lot for him to cope with, as I’m sure you can both understand. I think it’s best if I speak on his behalf at this stage.”
Neither of the detectives says anything. I wonder if they’re moving their heads from left to right or up and down. Either way, I have to admire Leo’s skill, cutting straight through their grating colors. I wouldn’t be able to do it alone.
I’ve lost my concentration, my thread that can pull the whole story together.
“Jasper is prepared to give a full written statement about how he accidentally killed Bee Larkham with a knife during a fight in her kitchen on the evening of April eighth. He fled her house, with the knife and his parakeet paintings, and stayed in his den until his dad got back home from work.”
“A knife?” Rusty Chrome Orange says, like an echo.
“Yes, a knife,” Milky Coffee confirms. “As I understand it, Bee Larkham kept a long-bladed knife in her kitchen drawer. She used it to cut a pie that day.”
I sit up and look at Leo. He’s doing a good job of dealing with Rusty Chrome Orange, despite the fact he has to repeat words and sentences as if he’s dealing with a deaf person. He’s also missing out bits and skipping ahead and back again, but that’s my fault.
I’m not sure I’ve told him everything 100 percent correctly.
“Jasper says that Bee Larkham had baked the pie specially for him that evening,” Leo continues.
Rusty Chrome Orange’s and Dull Light Green’s mouths widen at the edges as they look at me.
“That was nice of Miss Larkham,” says Rusty Chrome Orange. “To bake you a pie.”
I scream and scream harshly chiseled aquamarine with icy, pointed spires at Rusty Chrome Orange because he’s the stupidest man I’ve ever met.
The pie wasn’t nice. It wasn’t nice at all.
It was a weapon, far more vicious and calculating than the knife I used to kill Bee Larkham.
46
Interview: Saturday, April 16, 10:43 A.M.
I don’t need a paintbrush. I’m painting the colors in my head while Leo talks to the detectives.
The day of Bee Larkham’s murder should have been a breathtaking indigo because it was a Friday, but all I could see was sky blue. The color of Bee Larkham’s voice.
• • •
I’d been avoiding her since Wednesday evening. I’d bolted out of the house and had my key ready after school so I could unlock the front door and hide inside. I kept my curtains closed, checking on the feeders through the gap in the fabric. My plan had worked. Bee Larkham continued to feed the parakeets because she hadn’t discovered my catastrophic mistake yet.
Lucas hadn’t told her. He didn’t want anything to do with her. I’d written his message in my notebook—warning her not to get in touch—but hadn’t passed it on. I couldn’t. I couldn’t sleep properly either, not since I’d delivered the note.
My timing was off from the moment I woke up on Friday, April 8. My alarm didn’t go off. Neither did Dad’s.
We both ran about like mad things.
“See you tonight,” Dad yelled.
“Tonight,” I confirmed, banging the door shut. A large rusty brown expanding rectangle. I ran down the path.
“Wait, Jasper. It’s me. It’s your friend, Bee Larkham.” There were frosted edges around her sky blue voice.
She’d been waiting for me to pull the gate shut. Her silver swallows flew in opposite directions and her eyes were scratchy red. I didn’t want to stop and talk to her, because she could make me tell her about the mistake I’d made.
“I have to go, Bee Larkham. I’m late. Like the White Rabbit in your favorite story.”
“I hate my story. I told you that before. That’s not my ending.”
I blinked. I didn’t see her lips move because I was looking at the pavement. I must have imagined it because I thought I remembered her saying this was her favorite story as a child. Before she outgrew it and stopped liking it.
I looked at her when she spoke this time, to make sure I didn’t make another dumb mistake.
“Did you deliver the note I gave you on Wednesday evening?” she asked.
“Yes. I delivered it to seventeen Glynbourne Road. You have to carry on feeding the parakeets. Like we agreed.”
“And you definitely gave it to Lucas?”
“I need to go now. I kept to the new agreement. Goodbye.”
“Hold on, Jasper. We have to talk about this. It’s important.”
“I delivered the note to his house. OK? He took it.”
That wasn’t a 100 percent lie, because a “he” had taken the note. It just wasn’t the right “he.”
“He never came to me on Wednesday night or last night. Did you see him open the envelope? Did he actually read it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t wait. I didn’t go inside the house.” I tried to walk around her, but she moved position.
“I should have told you to wait for an answer,” Bee said. “That was my mistake.”
“No,” I replied. “The big reddish orange triangular dog jumped. From the door. At me. That was the mistake.”
Bee ignored my bombshell revelation. “Something must have happened with his dad. That’s probably it, because he wouldn’t ignore me like this, not when I’ve told him my news.”
“Lucas doesn’t want you to save him. He said you drag people down with you.”
Bee stared at me. I couldn’t tell if she were angry or sad.
“Come see me after school. Please?”
“No. I hate dogs. I can’t go back to Lucas’s house. You can’t make me go back there. That wasn’t the agreement. I kept to the agreement.”
She pulled out a lock of hair from behind her ear and twirled it around her finger. Funny marks had sprung up on her wrists, like red stripes on a stick of rock.
“I feel terrible about how badly I’ve treated you, Jasper. I want to make it up to you. Please let me make it up to you? I’m thinking big treats, lots of time all next week, watching the parakeets. That should give you plenty to paint at home.”
Why didn’t I run before I found myself sucked back in?
“I’ve missed seeing your paintings,” she continued. “I’m guessing you’ve been hard at work because your bedroom curtains have stayed closed. You’ve been painting the parakeets, haven’t you? Will you bring your pictures round after school? We can look at them together after you’ve watched the parakeets from my window.”
A man approached us and muttered Hello, Beatrice. She didn’t say anything; she couldn’t have recognized him either. He spoke softly in whitish gray blurry lines. I counted ten steps as he passed by. On the eleventh, he glanced over his shoulder. Maybe he hoped Bee had finally recognized him, but she was looking at me. This time she held her black obsidian pendant instead of her hair.
“I want to see your paintings of the parakeets. They’re such a joy to look at. They help me forget the bad stuff.”
Bee had said that before, in her bedroom. I still hadn’t worked out what she meant. She turned around and looked down the road, but she couldn’t have spotted anything bad. It was empty apart from a man, probably the man who’d walked by and said hello. He turned right at the bottom of the street.
“That’s all you want to do?” I asked. “You want to talk
about my parakeet paintings? Not about Lucas Drury?”
“Well, not only that, Jasper.”
I stepped to one side. “I’m not going back to that house. To that big dog. With all the horrible-colored barking.”
Bee ran a hand through her hair. I stared at her wrist because I didn’t want to look at her smudged mascara and tearstained cheeks.
“Red crisscross lines.”
“Never mind your colors,” she said. “I’m worried about the parakeets.”
“You’re feeding them because I did exactly as I was told,” I pointed out. “I delivered the note to Lucas Drury’s house. We both kept our sides of the agreement.”
“I know, but David’s threatening me again. He’s already trying to get a noise abatement order against me. He’s going back to the council to complain about the parakeets unless I stop feeding them. I might have to stop feeding them, Jasper.”
“You can’t stop feeding them,” I protested.
“That’s what I told David,” she said. “He’s frightening me, Jasper. Really frightening me. He’s not like normal people. He enjoys killing. If he doesn’t shoot the birds himself, he’ll find someone else to do it. He says the council’s pest control officers can gain access to private land to destroy parakeets if they become a nuisance. They have those sorts of powers.”
I pulled my mobile out of my anorak pocket.
“No, no, I don’t think we can call 999 yet. I thought we could come up with a plan together, about how to fight him. I know you’ve got lots of notes. The police will have to listen to the two of us if we pool our evidence together. We could see exactly what we have on him, a pattern of incriminating actions.”
“Yes, Bee Larkham,” I said, without hesitating. “We must do that. I’ll come round after school with my notes.”
“And your paintings of the parakeets. Don’t forget those. I’d love to see them. I need cheering up and they always make me feel so happy.”
“Don’t worry, Bee Larkham. I won’t forget.”
“Good.” She clapped her hands together. “How about six P.M.? Why don’t you stay for tea? That way we won’t have to rush. Do you like pizza?”
“Tonight I eat chicken pie, not pizza. That’s what I always have on Friday night. Dad’s working late and he’s left the box in the fridge. I have to cook it in the oven at one hundred and eighty degrees Celsius for thirty minutes.”
“In that case, I’m going to bake you the best home-made chicken pie you’ve ever eaten,” Bee said. “I’ve already found a recipe in one of my mum’s old cookbooks. You’re going to love it.”
47
Interview: Saturday, April 16, 11:01 A.M.
“I want you to take this slowly,” Rusty Chrome Orange says. “From the time you entered Bee Larkham’s house on the evening of Friday, April 8. There’s no need to rush. We can take this at your own pace.”
Leo explains that I don’t want anyone to look at me while I talk. They agree. I can’t find the right words even when they move seats. Rusty Chrome Orange suggests I try another way.
He tells me to paint a picture in my head—a good idea, but it’s tough because I’m afraid of the colors. I know they want to harm me.
Remember, one brushstroke after another. That’s all I have to do: tell this section of the story one stroke, one splash of color at a time.
• • •
“You came, Jasper!” A blond woman stood in the doorway of 20 Vincent Gardens. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders, damp and curling at the edges. I smelt coconut, which was unfamiliar, but she had silver swallows in her ears and a long, black pendant hung from her neck.
Obsidian: the strongest protection stone in the world.
“I wasn’t sure you’d definitely turn up.”
Sky blue. Definitely Bee Larkham. Her voice was such a distinctive color I couldn’t get her confused with anyone else.
“You always keep your word,” she continued. “That’s what I love about you, Jasper. You never let me down. You always want to do the right thing.”
I clutched my portfolio tighter to my tummy. Over my shoulder was a bag of notebooks, containing a record of David Gilbert’s threats. I looked down at the mat, which had lumps of mud caked in the bristles.
A large, black suitcase stood next to it, ready to leave.
“Come in, come in.”
Coconut wafted into my nostrils again as the door closed. She took my anorak and hung it on the coat rack.
“What do you think?” She twirled around. Her long blue dress fanned out as she pirouetted.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said this morning. You need to install CCTV cameras outside your house because I can’t be on guard from my bedroom window all the time. I have to go to school and sleep. That way we could catch David Gilbert trespassing in your front garden.”
“No, I mean about my dress. I wore it especially for you because I know how you love the color. It’s cobalt blue. Your favorite.”
“It’s not cobalt blue.”
“I’m sure it is, Jasper. The lady in the shop told me.”
“She was wrong. It’s too dark to be cobalt blue.”
Bee laughed sky blue with dark gray peaks, higher and pointier than before. If I were painting the picture, I’d reflect that in the brushstrokes.
“If you say so, Jasper. I mean, you’re the expert in colors and paints, not me! Anyway, I wanted you to know I was thinking about you when I bought it yesterday. The shop lady claimed this was cobalt blue and I took her word for it. Silly me. That was your mum’s color, wasn’t it? Cobalt blue?”
“Mum was always cobalt blue.”
“And what color am I?”
“You’re sky blue. I’ve told you that before, Bee Larkham. You should put up a fence around the oak tree to protect the parakeets. We could also ring the RSPB instead of the police. I found the telephone number on the Internet.”
Bee clapped her hands together. “Of course! Sky blue. Silly me! That means your mum and me are practically the same color. That almost makes us sisters. Well, family anyway. Family’s important, Jasper. Don’t you think? It’s something I never had and always wanted.”
Mum never had any sisters. She was an only child. Plus, cobalt blue’s made using cobalt oxide and salts of alumina. It was first used as a color name in English in 1777.
“In 1818, John Varley the watercolorist suggested substituting cobalt blue for ultramarine when painting skies,” I said.
“Hmmm.” Misty clouds almost obscured her sky blue.
Bee flicked her hair over to one side. More coconut.
“Why don’t you come into the kitchen and sit down while I finish getting ready? I’ve been busy packing sparkly clothes for my friend’s hen weekend. I couldn’t decide what to take. In the end, I piled so much into the suitcase I had to sit on it to get the zip fastened. Anyway, time got away from me.”
“It’s six P.M.,” I said. “The time we agreed I should come over to talk about our plans for David Gilbert and to look at my parakeet paintings.”
“Yes, but you’re the only boy I know who turns up on time. Most boys I know are late. Lucas was always late. Don’t you remember how he was always late?”
I didn’t remember that fact. I didn’t know him well enough to say whether that was true or false. “He was at school today,” I volunteered. “I don’t know if he was late or not for lessons. He’s older than me and we’re not in the same classes.”
I followed her into the kitchen. It didn’t look or smell the same as usual. Plates and bowls and other utensils were stacked in the sink, unwashed. Dirty pots and pans were piled on every surface, including the table, where I’d planned to lay out my paintings. It had three brown apple cores and a spillage of sugar from a large white packet. Bee had also forgotten to throw out an empty milk carton.
“You saw him?”
“Who?” I wanted Bee to fly around the kitchen, tidying up, the way Snow White did with all those woodland animals: the squir
rels, rabbits, and mice.
“Lucas.”
We were back to Bee Larkham’s favorite subject other than parakeets, the parakeets we were supposed to be looking at if she’d wiped down her table. This was my fault. She’d invited me here to talk about David Gilbert and I’d brought up Lucas Drury’s name by accident. That was me, not her. Why had I done that?
“Mr. Paulson, the deputy head teacher, read out Lucas Drury’s name during assembly and a boy collected the award for his class,” I clarified. “They were recycling winners this week. The boy, Lucas Drury, wasn’t late, by the way. It only took him twenty-nine seconds to get up onstage. That was quick. Some kids can take one minute and seventeen seconds to pick up their prizes.”
Bee fiddled with her dress. I didn’t think it fitted her properly. It didn’t match her necklace either.
“Maybe Lucas likes to keep me waiting. Like on Wednesday night, when he didn’t turn up. I cooked him a late supper and waited for two hours, Jasper. Can you imagine? Who lets a lady wait for that long when she’s cooked a lovely dinner?”
“A person who doesn’t own a watch?” I suggested.
“Not someone like you, Jasper.” Bee crouched down and peered inside the oven. “I don’t have a timer. We’ll both need to keep an eye on my pie.” She pulled on large blue-and-white striped gloves and opened the door, breathing in deeply.
“Aaah.” She closed her eyes.
I received a waft of something delicious too. Chicken pie.
“You’d never keep me waiting like that, would you, Jasper? You’re a gentleman. A real gentleman.”
“I have a watch. That means I’m always on time.”
“That’s another thing I like about you, Jasper.” She banged the oven door shut. Yellow sparks. “Timekeeping is a rare quality in boys, and good manners. They’re both completely underrated nowadays, but women like gentlemen.”
She ignored the mess and opened the fridge instead. My palms itched. Why wasn’t she tidying up? She pulled out a bottle of wine and held it in both hands. “I need a drink. You have no idea how much I want a glass of wine, Jasper, but I can’t.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “You should drink if you’re thirsty.”
The Color of Bee Larkham's Murder Page 25