by Simon Mason
“What?”
“No. They were too stupid. I asked my own questions; they were better. I record it for you. Here.”
Garvie sighed.
“Now you say ‘thank you,’ like a good boy.”
“Thanks,” Garvie said, “sort of.” She gave him the papers, and he began to read.
“They are frightened people,” she said. “I feel their fear. Zbigniew and Bogdana, they have been frightened a long time. They think people are against them, they think—”
He interrupted her. “Orchestra practice was every afternoon?”
He showed her the paper, and she looked at it again.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“This is what Zbigniew said. Because of the concert so soon. Why?”
“Orchestra practice after school was once a week. His music teacher told me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
Zuzana stared at him, her lips apart.
“I don’t understand. Why would Zbigniew tell me every day?”
He looked at her a moment before answering. “Because that’s what Gimpel must have told him.”
They were both silent. Around them, people went in and out of the shops, absorbed in their tasks.
“Pyotor lied to him?” she said at last. “But he never lied, his grandparents told me.”
“Think of that, then,” Garvie said. “The boy who never told a lie lying about where he was four afternoons a week. Looks like he didn’t find the world that hard to understand after all.”
They were silent again, thinking.
“But if he wasn’t at practice, where was he?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?”
She was staring at him, her black eyes enormous, fixed on his, poised, as if she were about to say something, do something unexpected, and he felt her strangeness again, her mysteriousness, felt it so strongly he almost got to his feet, but she put her hand on his, and he stayed where he was, as if she’d pinned him to the bench. Her eyes were shining.
“Something is wrong,” she said. “We will find out what it is.”
“I am finding out,” he said. “Thanks, though.”
She ignored him. “I will go back and see Zbigniew and Bogdana again.”
“I can handle it from now on.”
“You? You don’t know Zbigniew and Bogdana. You don’t speak Polish. Besides,” she said, “you are rude and difficult. I will see them.”
“Better if I see them. You can arrange it for me if you like.”
“We will see them together. Together we will find out what has happened.” She gave him a sly, interested look. “I know there is something else you want to ask them.”
“How do you know?”
“It was one of the questions you wrote down. About his violin. At the end I asked.”
“And what did they say?”
“They don’t know. They think in Pyotor’s room.”
“It’s not.”
“How do you know? The police have sealed his room.”
He said nothing.
“Then,” she said, “it will be with his things from the storage facility. What are they called?”
“Personal effects. I don’t think so.”
“Perhaps the man who killed him took it.”
“Pyotor wouldn’t have let that happen. It was the most precious thing he had. He wouldn’t have risked taking it there.”
She was looking at him again with that unreadable expression. He couldn’t hold her eyes any longer and dropped his gaze to where her hand still rested on his, and at the same time, matter-of-fact and decisive, she removed it, looked at her watch, and stood up.
“We agree,” she said. “I will arrange for us to see Zbigniew and Bogdana. Yes?”
“All right, then. If you insist.”
“Any more questions?”
“Yeah.”
“What?”
“Ever heard of a guy called Blinkie?”
Her face creased in surprise. “A man called what? Blinkers?” She laughed. “No. Why?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You think I know him?”
“Forget it.”
She looked at him and shook her head. “You are strange. Now, it is two o’clock. There is the tea at the Polish Club.”
Garvie frowned and got to his feet. “Actually, I’ve got to be somewhere.”
“It will be kind for you to come. There will be very few people.”
He shrugged.
She shook her head again. “It is curious. You are interested in Pyotor but you do not care about him.”
“Yeah, well. If I don’t get going, there’s other people going to think I don’t care about them, either.”
She frowned, and slowly began to smile. “Ah, I understand now. You’re late for another exam.”
He had no answer to that. He turned and went through the crowds, sauntering as if he had all the time in the world, then, when he got around the corner out of sight, began to run.
Zuzana watched him go thoughtfully. When he had disappeared, she took out her phone.
“Alex,” she said. “Alex, kochanie. Call me, okay? I need to talk to you.”
The Marsh Academy gymnasium, like much of the rest of the school, was in the architectural style known as the Claustrophobic. Scaled down to save money, it was no more than two-thirds the size of a regular gym, too small for any sorts of team sports. It stood in need of repair as well as modernization: one rack of wall bars was unsafe, there was a patch of damp blooming in a corner of the ceiling, and the face of the wall clock, now showing five minutes to three, had long ago cracked, swung loose, and fallen off. The glass roof was black with rain crust, and even on a warm day the air was damp and itchy, as if the whole building had sweat rash.
Sitting at one of the temporary desks, Garvie Smith considered his surroundings as he held his hand in the air. After a few moments he clicked his fingers, and Miss Perkins, stationed in front of the metal rolltop door of the locker room, looked up. Her face changed when she saw who it was, and it continued to change as she walked down the aisle, eyes narrowing, her mouth disappearing, until she seemed only just in control of herself as she reached Garvie’s desk.
“Yes?”
A small woman, neatly dressed, she gave an impression of bottled savagery; there was a hint of it in her voice below her compressed, minimal phrases. “Queen Bitch” was the name given her by generations of students. Her teaching colleagues were not so kind.
“What is it, Smith?”
“Finished, miss.”
For some time she just looked at him. Then she turned to walk back to the front.
“All right to go, then?” he asked.
She turned back and considered him again. She lowered her head and spoke quietly with her eyes fixed on his. “You cannot go, no. You arrived half an hour late, and there is still half an hour to go. You will stay where you are. You will not speak again. You will come to see me in my office as soon as the examination has ended. You will spend the rest of the time available to you now thinking of reasons why I should not disqualify you from this exam, or bar you from all those you have yet to take.”
Her eyes were green, he noticed, with yellow flecks at the center, unusual in a human. He watched her as she went back along the aisle toward the locker room, and settled himself in his seat, sighing, wondering how to get through the next thirty minutes.
He thought of a girl beautiful and smart, whose eyes were mesmerizing, whose expression was hard to read, whose help he did not need, whose soul mate was his oldest friend, but these were not comfortable thoughts.
He thought instead of his oldest friend whispering in the shadows with a funny-looking gangster he said he never saw, but that wasn’t comfortable, either.
Idly, he glanced at his exam paper, more or less complete, and open now at Question 5 (d) (i): Red blood cells transport oxygen. Explain how oxygen is moved from the lungs to the
tissues. (3 points). He did not think of this; he thought instead of the three lobes of his own right lung penetrated by a high-velocity bullet. Describe what happens to your lung. Your lung collapses, your respiratory tract fills with blood. What happens to the blood in your lung? It rises burning through the bronchi and trachea, emerging suddenly, in sneezelike explosions shockingly brilliant in color, from your gasping mouth. What is the impact on your speech? The ability to speak is lost, though perhaps there is no one to talk to. What happens to your ability to play the violin? The ability to play the violin is also lost, though you have already hidden it. Why have you hidden it?
He thought briefly about that.
Because they will look for it.
As the school bell went off, Garvie looked up. Through a crowd of students getting to their feet, he was dimly aware of the tiny inhuman form of Miss Perkins at the front of the hall. She made a gesture at her watch and exited the gym in the direction of her office.
Why will they look for it?
Another interesting question. One that deserved his immediate attention.
He got his stuff together and drifted out of the hall. Hesitating only a moment at the foot of the stairs, he turned toward the main doors, away from the corridor to Miss Perkins’s office, and went out across the playground.
He was halfway to Jamal’s when he got the call.
“Singh here.”
“What’s up, dude?”
“I’ve just been at the grandparents’ house. There was a break-in.”
Garvie hesitated. “Oh yeah? Are you looking after all break-ins now, not just corner shops?”
Singh ignored him. “They got into Pyotor’s room.”
Garvie thought of Pyotor’s room. Had Felix forgotten to close the window when they left? Had they put the ladder back in the wrong place?
“How did they get in?” he asked carefully.
“Through the window. One of those old sashes.”
“But how did they get up to the window?”
“It seems they borrowed a ladder from a re-roofing job nearby.”
“But”—and here he was genuinely puzzled—“how could you tell the room had been broken into?”
Singh seemed puzzled in his turn. “Well, because of all the damage.”
“Damage?”
“The whole place has been turned upside down.”
Garvie began to relax. “Oh, okay. This break-in wasn’t last week, then.”
“Why would it have been last week? It was lunchtime today, while the funeral was going on. Neighbors heard the noise, but they were too late reporting it. The room’s been ransacked. Half the furniture’s trashed. They even ripped up some of the floorboards.”
“Damn,” Garvie said thoughtfully. “I didn’t think of the floorboards.”
“Garvie? Why is it I always get the impression you know more than you’re telling me?”
Garvie ignored him. “The old Gimps must be pissed off.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Gimpel are naturally very upset. They assume the break-in was racially motivated.”
“But you know better.”
“I have pointed out to them that only Pyotor’s room was targeted. It’s not vandalism, in my opinion; it’s something else.”
“Course it is. It’s a very bad sign is what it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re looking for it too.”
“Looking for what?”
“The violin.”
There was a pause. “Why are you so sure the violin’s important?”
“Think about it. He thought it was important. He never usually let it out of his sight.”
Singh considered this. “So you think he hid it? Why?”
“So they wouldn’t find it. Obviously.”
Singh made a noise of exasperation. He said, “Well, if they were looking for it, I’m not sure they found it. It’s not listed in our inventory of the room, which was done before the break-in. And if it was hidden, it must have been well hidden, or they wouldn’t have taken the room apart like they did. The strange thing is that they were so … chaotic. Angry, or desperate, or just out of control, whoever they were.”
“Whoever they were, it wasn’t Magee.”
“No. Though he’s a criminal, with convictions to prove it. And a racist, though it’s harder to get the evidence. What we really need is a specific link between him and Pyotor.”
“Have you checked out the CCTV of the Juwenalia parade in Strawberry Hill last month?”
“Yes. I’ve spent time on that myself. We can identify Pyotor, but not Magee.”
There was a little silence. Garvie said, “What about Pyotor’s computer? The one he had on that little table in his room.”
Singh hesitated. “How do you know there was a computer?” He paused again. “How do you know there was a table?”
“Course there was a computer. And if there was a computer there was a table to put it on. I’m just being logical. What I want to know is, have you checked out his photo collection yet?”
“There’s someone working on it now.”
“First thoughts?”
“Thousands of pictures of completely random subjects. The playground, the classroom, the street, his room. Literally thousands of them. What do they mean?”
“They mean he was a watcher.”
“But what was he watching?”
By now Garvie had reached Jamal’s and he came to a standstill across the street.
“That’s the question,” Garvie said. “What did he see? But don’t think about the detail yet. Think about the pattern. He logged all his pictures, right?”
“That’s the extraordinary thing. They’re all numbered and dated, in hundreds of separate lists.”
“Exactly. Check the numbers, find the pattern. Oh, by the way, did you find out if Jamal has a storage facility at East Field?”
“Yes, he does. And I’d like to know why you want to know.”
“I’ll tell you as I soon as I know myself. You know what?”
“What?”
“You need to move faster. You’ll have to release Magee soon, won’t you?”
“His lawyers have been pushing hard. Successfully. Last week the magistrate put a limit on ongoing custody, two consecutive sessions of ninety-six hours, plus twenty-four for allowance of process. I don’t know when that runs out exactly, but—”
“When did the magistrate set it up?”
“Last week. The day I talked to you. At noon.”
“Wednesday the twentieth. Okay. Then he’ll walk at twelve noon this Friday.”
“Well. It’s something like that.”
“It’s exactly that. You’ve got four days. Good luck.”
Singh made a noise of annoyance. “You really don’t care about other people, do you?” He was saying something else too, but Garvie cut him off.
He stood there for a moment, thinking, then crossed the road and looked in through Jamal’s window. Old man Jamal came stumping on his crutches into the shop through the back door, carrying a cardboard box, which he slid with difficulty onto the counter before stumping out again. Ignoring his father, Khalid was talking on his phone, his intense face moving in jerks, and Sajid was sitting at the end of the counter playing on his laptop. Dressed as usual in his Marsh Academy basketball gear, white short-sleeved shirt, and navy shorts, he was lost entirely in whatever game he was playing, eyes wide, face soft, like a little kid. A little kid at peace, a quiet little kid without a worry in the world. Garvie knew different, though. He’d had a word with Dani and he knew there’d been a time, quite recently, when Sajid had been getting into plenty of trouble. Fighting, truanting. He’d been accused of stealing from the school office. But lately, suddenly, he’d calmed down, started to take his basketball more seriously; his grades had picked up. Some said Khalid had taken him in hand, though what that meant was anybody’s guess. It wasn’t just that Sajid was quieter; he was more nervous too. He wasn’t out on the streets like
he used to be. Khalid went with him to school in the mornings and picked him up from basketball practice, and shouted at him in the evenings (and, for some reason, Garvie reflected, cried to himself upstairs at night). Garvie stood there a moment longer, watching and thinking. Checking the time, he saw that he was already late home, but he pushed open the battered door and went in, and Khalid looked up, scowling, to greet him.
“Yeah?”
“Hey, man.”
“You want to buy something today?”
“Think I’ll just browse awhile first. You’ve got such lovely stuff.”
Scowling more deeply still, Khalid moved down the aisle toward the door at the far end, talking into his phone. “Nah, man, not a customer. Just another kid likes to hang out in my shop. Yeah. Anyway, I told you before, three days tops. That’s all you’ve paid for. Three days and you got to shift it, man.”
The door slammed behind him and it was quiet again. The shop was untidier than ever. On the floor was a stack of newspapers still in their plastic wrapping, the headline showing: GIMPEL MURDER SUSPECT TO BE RELEASED. Another newspaper ran with POLISH PROTEST MARCH TO GO AHEAD. Garvie looked over at Sajid, still playing on his laptop.
“How’s it going, Sajid?”
Sajid glanced up, shrugged, went back to his game. The neckband of his shirt was loose around his neck.
“Going well, then?” Garvie said.
Sajid still said nothing, his eyes fixed on the screen, his fingers flickering. He sucked in his bottom lip and frowned.
Garvie looked at him thoughtfully for a while. “He looks all right to me,” he said out loud. “Bit silent. Of course, he could have lost his voice. On the other hand, the bruises on his neck are clearing up nicely.”
Sajid turned to him in alarm. He pulled at the neckband of his shirt. He opened his mouth and shut it again, and his eyes brimmed suddenly.
“Classic signs of anxiety,” Garvie went on. “Wants to say something but frightened to.”
“I’m not supposed to talk to you,” Sajid said in a whisper.
He said no more. A door banged and Khalid came jogging down the aisle, pointing his phone at Garvie.