Kid Alone

by Simon Mason

  “I’ve talked to Stanislaw Singer, who runs it.”

  “Report done?”

  “Yes. But I’d like to re-interview him. There are some oddities. According to Stanislaw—”

  “What about the transcript of the Gimpels’ interview?”

  “Almost finished.”

  “Do that next.”

  Singh nodded.

  Dowell was chatting to Collier and Williams, and Singh followed Nolan out of the office and went alone back through the open-plan, downstairs to the squad room.

  Police Interview Transcript. Not for Briefing.

  Location: Interview Room 3, Cornwallis Police Center.

  Interviewers: Detective Inspector Dowell: pop-eyed, shiny-faced; Detective Inspector Singh: quiet, watchful; police translator Jan Nowicki: crop-haired, expressionless.

  Interviewees: Zbigniew Gimpel, Bogdana Gimpel: pale, hesitant.

  Note: All questions from Inspectors Dowell and Singh, and all responses from the Gimpels, are via the translator.

  DI SINGH: Thank you for coming in again. We realize how difficult this is for you both. We’ll try to make the process as bearable as possible.

  DI DOWELL: My colleague here, Detective Inspector Singh, is going to conduct this interview. I have to be somewhere else. I just want to ask if you’ve given any more thought to the question we asked you last time. Simply this: What was Pyotor doing on the estate that night?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: We don’t know. We’ve thought about it a lot.

  DI DOWELL: You said he went to bed as usual at nine thirty.

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: Yes.

  DI DOWELL: And when you went to bed yourselves at ten you were sure he was in his room, asleep.

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: Yes, yes. We told you already.

  DI DOWELL: But four hours later he was on the estate.

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: We can’t explain it.

  DI DOWELL: Well, he must have gone there for a purpose.

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: We keep saying, we don’t know what happened. Pyotor wouldn’t have had the idea to go there on his own. Perhaps this man tricked him in some way. Perhaps he was forced.

  DI DOWELL: You told us before there was no connection between the suspect and your grandson.

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: We don’t know of any.

  DI DOWELL: So how did he trick him?

  [Silence]

  DI DOWELL: Why did he trick him?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: [silence]

  BOGDANA GIMPEL: Because he was polski!

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: Hush, Dana.

  BOGDANA GIMPEL: You know it’s true! Racism, that’s what it is, and it’s got worse and worse. Especially with all these Pakistanis moving in. You know what they’re like!

  DI SINGH [coughs]: Well. I can assure you that all motives are being investigated, including racial ones.

  DI DOWELL: Wait a minute. Listen to me, listen. I don’t want you to think about the suspect’s motives. Do you understand? I want you to think about Pyotor. That’s your job here. We believe that for some reason he left your house in the middle of the night and went to the industrial estate. We need to understand why. And you need to help us because we know your grandson didn’t think or behave normally. Without your full cooperation, I can tell you that this inquiry cannot proceed quickly. Do you understand?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: We understand.

  DI DOWELL: Detective Inspector Singh will talk to you now. Let me remind you that this interview is being videoed and recorded in transcript, and that the avoidance of full disclosure is a criminal offense. [Noise of chair being scraped, footsteps, a door opening and closing]

  DI SINGH: Are you okay? Is there anything you want? Mrs. Gimpel?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: She will be okay. Dana, Dana, hush now.

  DI SINGH: I’d like to ask you about Pyotor. General questions. What sort of boy was he?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL [sighs]: You know he had difficulties.

  DI SINGH: Yes. We’ve received information from school services about his autism spectrum disorder.

  BOGDANA GIMPEL: Why do they always bring that up? Even now he’s dead! Why can’t they stop labeling him? Not normal? Of course he was normal. He was just different.

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: Dana, please. She does not believe these things. But you are right. He had difficulties. He was always very quiet, anxious. He did not understand people very well. People are too slippery. He was precise; he liked things to be definite, to have their proper names, like labels. It made him feel secure. He used to give people names too—he gave himself names—but of course it’s not the same with people.

  DI SINGH: Did he have friends?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: No. He kept to himself. He was different before Ania moved out, I think. His mother. After she went he seemed to … I don’t know how to say it. To shrink.

  DI SINGH: How old was he when she left?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: Five. Not long after we left Poland. His father had never been around. But then Ania remarried and began another family, and it wasn’t possible for Pyotor to move with them, and he became … different. More shut up.

  DI SINGH: Did he see his mother at all after that?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: Sometimes. They were in touch. She has a new baby, and we heard just a few days ago that the baby is ill—seriously ill, I’m afraid. Pyotor was concerned. It upset him, actually. He became preoccupied with it. He was like that; he developed obsessions about things.

  DI SINGH: Let me ask you about Pyotor’s likes and dislikes. You say he spent a lot of his time on his own. What did he do?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: He liked routines, to do the same thing every day. To eat the same food, to watch the same television program. And play the violin, of course. He didn’t like new things, unexpected things. It made him anxious, angry even.

  DI SINGH: Did he have any special interests? Any hobbies?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: He liked the computer.

  DI SINGH: Doing anything in particular?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: I don’t really know. Games, I think.

  DI SINGH: Anything else he liked to do?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: He liked to take photographs, with his phone.

  DI SINGH: Photographs of what?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: I don’t really know. I know he saved them on his computer.

  BOGDANA GIMPEL: He had started to go to gym class at school once a week, at lunchtimes.

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: It surprised us. He didn’t like it much, poor boy. But we were pleased. He was too sedentary. We’d been trying to persuade him to take more exercise. Suddenly he agreed. I don’t know why.

  BOGDANA GIMPEL: But his greatest love was music.

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: Yes, music was the thing he liked best of all. You could almost say he lived for his violin.

  BOGDANA GIMPEL: He had a special talent. He could have easily been a professional violinist.

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: He was good, it’s true.

  DI SINGH: He played for the county youth orchestra?

  BOGDANA GIMPEL: First violinist. Solo parts. There was no one like him. The best in all the county.

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: He was rehearsing a new piece with the orchestra. The concert is only next month. They were practicing all the time, lunchtimes, after school. What they’ll do now I don’t know.

  DI SINGH: You say he didn’t have friends. No one in the orchestra?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: No one we know of.

  DI SINGH: So, apart from school and orchestra, he didn’t see people, he didn’t go out?

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: That’s right. Let me think. Well, he went recently to the Juwenalia parade, you know, organized by the Polish youth club here.

  BOGDANA GIMPEL: And he had extra math tutoring once a week at school, after orchestra practice. He had his exams coming up. Pyotor was very good at math. Exceptional. I think he would have gone to university to study it. He was such a bright boy, such a …

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: Dana. It’s okay. Here, take this. Blow.

  DI SINGH [pause]: I have to a
sk you something else now, something difficult. I’m sorry. About the gun that was found at the scene. The only identifiable fingerprints on the gun are Pyotor’s. Its position suggests he’d just dropped it. Although we’re waiting for more forensics information, we are fairly certain it was inside Pyotor’s violin case at some point. Could it be possible he’d somehow acquired this gun and taken it to the industrial estate?

  BOGDANA GIMPEL: Are you as stupid as the other policeman? Where would Pyotor get a gun? Why would he have it? Obviously it belongs to this man, this Magee. He must have shot Pyotor with it and put it in Pyotor’s hand.

  DI SINGH: But it isn’t the murder weapon. It hadn’t been fired.

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: There’s another gun?

  DI SINGH: We believe so.

  BOGDANA GIMPEL: You don’t know? You haven’t found it? You see, I told you, they’re idiots, Zbigniew, we’ll never find out what happened to him, we’ll die not knowing—

  ZBIGNIEW GIMPEL: Please, Dana, enough now. Stop it.

  Singh read no more. For several seconds he sat perfectly still and upright in front of the screen, almost as if at prayer, oblivious to the hubbub of the squad room around him. Then, without glancing around at the others or showing any sign of nervousness, he attached the file to an email message and sent it to his home address, and immediately deleted the sent record.

  The Academy had been named after a local marsh, a spongy bit of which remained in the yellowish rough pasture at the edge of nearby Marsh Woods. Haphazardly arranged in three blocks—A, B, and C—its buildings were brutally functional: three boxes of jaded gray glass cheaply brightened here and there by plastic panels in Day-Glo colors. There were two sports fields, called Top Pitch and Bottom Pitch, and two gates, also Top and Bottom. The less dutiful of the teachers referred to the school as Bog Towers. The students seldom dignified it with a name other than “school.”

  Morning bell had gone, the playgrounds were deserted; in the gym, under the coldly watchful eye of Miss Perkins, three dozen exam candidates were opening their history papers. Outside, by Bottom Gate, exam candidate Garvie Smith finished one Benson & Hedges and started another, glancing from time to time at his watch. The policemen stationed at the gate at arrival time had disappeared inside the school. He gazed coolly at the huge pile of commemorative flowers that had heaped up on the sidewalk strip, objects such as stuffed animals and miniature Polish flags, and messages under flaps of clear plastic written in felt-tip, left by pupils, the result of class projects organized by the teachers. He wondered how many of the commemorations were from people who had ever spoken to Gimpel. Sometimes he glanced at the nearby bench where the boy used to sit. He remembered him sitting there, violin on his lap, staring into space or taking random pictures with his phone. He also thought about him lying on his back in a concrete room, his pectoralis major ripped open, the three lobes of his right lung punctured, the thoracic section of his spine crushed.

  He’d just flicked away his cigarette butt and turned toward the school when a voice came from down Wyedale Road, and he turned back.

  A boy in a T-shirt and jeans ambled up to the gate. He was big, toned, and good-looking, with a clean jaw and grown-out twists and a habitual scowl: Alex Robinson, school athlete and reformed dropout. They touched knuckles.

  “Looking good, Alex.”

  “Feel good. What’s up?”

  “The usual. Nothing.”

  “That’s the thing with you, Garv. You need to get busy.” He cracked a smile and his whole face came out of shadow. Garvie nodded, relaxed. It was a good day for Alex Robinson. Garvie had known Alex all his life, a simple guy with a justified reputation for physical toughness and straightforward if sometimes misdirected feelings, a sweet nature clouded by occasional dark moods and an unpredictable temper. Of all Garvie’s friends he was the one with the skills and strength to be a real athlete, a professional. But things kept getting in the way. Girls, for instance. Alex was one of the galaxy’s great romantics: intense, deep, soulful, inexhaustible. He was never not in love, and it didn’t always go well. With Chloe Dow it had gone very wrong. After she dumped him he’d dropped out of school, mixed with crazies, squatting in a condemned house up in Limekilns, doing deals out at East Field and Pike Pond. When Chloe’s body had been found in the pond he’d lost control completely. That too was in his nature: periods of single-minded fury in which he listened to no one. But just two months later, with the suddenness typical of his character, he put it all behind him; there was sunshine after cloud, light out of darkness, all thanks to the appearance of a girl called Zuzana Schulz.

  It was good to see him smile again.

  “Got a question for you, Alex. East Field industrial estate.”

  “What about it?”

  “You used to deal there sometimes.”

  Alex’s scowl returned. “Those days are done. I don’t deal. I don’t smoke that stuff. I turned myself round, Garv. You know that. You know why.”

  “It’s cool. This isn’t anything to do with deals. Just a point of information. I want to know about a vagrant sleeping rough out there.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s talking to the police about Gimpel. Claims he saw stuff, but can’t get his story straight. His patch must be on that road in front of the storage facility. Ever come across him?”

  Alex thought for a moment. “Yeah, think so. Secretive type. Name of Vinnie. Old white guy with a gray beard. Real crackerjack. He used to hide along there.”

  “Thanks, man.” Garvie glanced at his watch and up the drive toward C Block. “She coming, then?”

  “She’ll be here. She’s got frees all morning.”

  Garvie lit up again. “Seeing as we’re waiting, got another question. About Khalid.”

  “Khalid at Jamal’s? I don’t see him.”

  “I was in there the other day. He’s having some sort of psycho meltdown.”

  “He’s been in meltdown all his life, that boy.”

  Garvie nodded. “Yeah, the break-ins making it worse, maybe. Says he’s got money worries.”

  Alex shrugged.

  Garvie said, “I’m just wondering. What would someone desperate as that do to get some quick cash?”

  Alex looked at him suspiciously. “Where you going with this, Garv?”

  “Just there’s a rumor going round he’s putting up storage for someone.”

  “For who?”

  “For Blinkie.”

  Alex glared at him. “Okay, okay, enough. I told you I don’t want to talk about all that.”

  “You used to be tight with him.”

  “I don’t have anything to do with Blinkie no more, Garv. You know that.”

  “It’s okay, man. He’s still dealing, though, right?”

  Alex shrugged. “I heard he was out of it. But I don’t know.”

  “You think he’s into something else? What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Alex.”

  “Garv! Serious, don’t get me mad. I’m telling you. I don’t know what this interrogation is about, but I don’t do any of that shit no more. I don’t talk to Blinkie, right? I don’t see Blinkie. I don’t know what Blinkie’s up to. Got that?”

  “I got it.”

  “And by the way, don’t ever call him Blinkie—it flips him out big-time.”

  “It’s cool, man. Hated to see you with him anyway, worst-dressed man in Five Mile. Even his monster dog wears a goldy-looking chain.”

  “Whatever. What I’m telling you is, I don’t know anything about all those people. I turned myself round. I found someone, right? You don’t know what that means, I know. But I found the person I been looking for. My soul mate.”

  “Yeah, I know. Zuzana. With a Z. You told me. Once or twice.” He looked again at his watch. “She’s late. And I’m busy. I’ve got a violin to find.”

  “You getting musical?”

  “I’m getting impatient.”

  “She’ll be here. You just wait for this.�
��

  They waited.

  “She hasn’t been in the city that long, you said.”

  “Few months. Met her at a track event at Strawberry Hill Academy. She’s in the sixth form there.” He smiled. “It’s like she turned up just when I needed her.”

  “Yeah, you always were known for your speed. And she lives in Five Mile?”

  “Best of all. In that flat back of Jamal’s. On her own for the next few weeks too: Her parents are in Poland doing something, her sister’s on holiday somewhere. It’s sweet, Garv.” He smiled again.

  “And she’s definitely Polish?”

  “You got a lot of questions. Yeah, she’s from Poland. Why?”

  “Just asking. I mean, this whole thing, you and her, it’s been so quick. How well do you know her?”

  Alex stared for a moment. Then he put his big hand against his big chest. “I know her here, Garv.”

  “All right, then, Mr. Romeo. Just one more question.”

  “What now?”

  “Can you trust her?”

  Alex’s face went back to shadow. He stared at Garvie a long time, and Garvie looked back at him. “I don’t know what you mean, Garv,” he said calmly, “but it doesn’t even matter. The answer’s yes. Got that? Yes.”

  Before Garvie could reply, a call came from down the lane, and they both turned, and a girl walked toward them out of the sunlight.

  Walking lightly on black pumps, wearing black trousers and a gray sweater, she came all the way up to them and smiled. Her hair was black and glossy, her skin pale, almost white, and she looked at Garvie with a pert, lit-up expression as if she’d just thought of a funny comment and was about to tell him. Her lips parted and showed white teeth. Her nose, Garvie noticed, was strong and irregular, with a bump in the middle, and her eyes were large and dark and shining, as if somehow magnified. It gave them a mesmerizing and unnerving effect, which confused him as they exchanged greetings and started to talk. Dropping his gaze, Garvie was briefly aware of the tightness of her clothes.

  She wasn’t what he had expected—though he couldn’t now remember what he had expected.

  “I do not go to the polski church, to the Polish shops in Strawberry Hill,” she said. “But, yes, I speak Polish. English and Italian too. So?”