Kid Alone

by Simon Mason

  “You have managed to sit an exam?”

  “I like to do it once in a while.”

  She nodded. “What is it you want to ask me?”

  He hesitated, stubbing out his cigarette.

  “I have your message about the warehouse,” she said. “So now we know the bad thing that Pyotor was going to confess. But still there are questions.”

  “There are always questions. But that’s not what I want to ask you about.”

  “No? What, then?”

  She sat on a fallen trunk looking at him, legs crossed, as if posing for a photo shoot, natural but extraordinary in black jeans and white T-shirt, with spangles of sunlight in her loosely tousled hair. When she shifted weight everything moved slightly inside her clothes from her hips to her shoulders. He looked away before he spoke.

  “I’ve been calling Alex.”

  She just looked at him.

  “I’ve called him like twenty times. No reply. Nothing. What’s going on?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Why do we talk about Alex?”

  “We need to, that’s why.”

  When he turned back to her, she was watching him carefully, her face tense, her eyes unnaturally bright.

  “Give me a cigarette,” she said at last.

  For a while she sat sipping it, puffing smoke into the shadows.

  “Alex is strange,” she said. “You must not tell him I told you so. He is jealous.”

  Garvie nodded.

  “Sometimes he is even following me, finding out where I go, who I see. Although,” she added, giving Garvie a look, “he would not find me here.”

  Garvie cleared his throat. “That’s not my point. I don’t want to know any of that. I want to know what’s going down between him and Blinkie.”

  She flinched so hard she nearly dropped her cigarette. “Blinkie? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I think you do.”

  “There is nothing anymore between Alex and Blinkie.”

  “It doesn’t do any good, protecting him,” Garvie said.

  “I do not protect him.”

  “Blinkie goes round to see him.”

  “He does not.”

  “I’ve seen it myself.”

  She was looking at him so intently, so fiercely, as if she saw inside his mind and knew what he was thinking, and he stood there hoping she wouldn’t say what he knew she was going to say. Then she said it.

  “He does not come to see Alex,” she said.

  “No?”

  “No. He comes to see me.”

  Garvie just stared. She sat trembling, looking back at him defiantly.

  “I don’t believe it,” he murmured halfheartedly.

  She said angrily, “Why should I not see him? I see who I like. If I want to talk to him, I talk to him. I am for myself, I told you before. Yes,” she said, “I have seen him at my flat. I have seen him”—she gave Garvie a long stare—“in O’Malley’s bar. Ach!” She threw her cigarette into the leaves. “Alex is too jealous. I know how that ends; it has happened to me before.” For a moment she seemed to struggle to speak. “Yes. You don’t care. Last year, where I lived, it happened. I am not someone’s possession; I will see who I want to see.” Her eyes shone in the shadows. “You think that is wrong?”

  “No.” He hesitated. “But, Blinkie … ”

  “What about him? I think he is funny. He is not always so serious, like Alex. It is other people make him into a fool; he is not like that himself. He is different. I do not say I like him a lot or a little. But if he wants to see me I will say yes when I want to. Alex will not stop me.”

  “All right, then. But you got to remember, Alex is my friend.”

  She stood up. “Is that why you told me to come here? To tell me these things, to say what I can and cannot do?”

  He took a breath. “Not just that.”

  “What else, then?”

  “I want you to talk to someone for me.”

  She hesitated. “Who?”

  “Stanislaw, the guy whose shop was raided.”

  She thought a moment. “All right.” She sat down again, calmer. “What do you want me to ask? Do you have another list of questions to give me?” She attempted a smile, which Garvie ignored.

  “No need. It’s very simple. Ask him if the burglar gave him any change.”

  “What?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Just ask him.”

  “Is that it?”

  “Not quite. Got a pen?”

  Frowning, she handed one over, and he wrote a number on a scrap of paper and gave it to her.

  “What is this?”

  “Just in case Blinkie turns out to be less funny than you think. Not sure the police are the brightest, but this guy’s not too bad. Bit uptight. You could call him if you needed to.”

  As she stood there holding the paper her whole body seemed to stiffen and when she spoke her voice was cold.

  “You think you can tell me what to do?”

  “Maybe someone needs to.”

  Her whole face tightened. She nodded. “Now I will tell you something,” she said. She was breathing hard.

  Garvie said nervously, “Yeah, well, it’ll have to be quick, I’ve got somebody to see before I get back.”

  “It is quick, do not worry. This. People said that Pyotor was difficult. That he did not understand people or care about them. That he was antisocial and selfish. It was not true about Pyotor. But,” she said, “it is true about you.”

  He said nothing to that. He watched her smash her way through purple shadows under the trees and vanish into the sunlight of the playing field beyond. For some time he didn’t move; he stood immobile with an unlit cigarette between his fingers and a look of disgust on his face.

  It was several minutes before he stirred. “I’m an idiot,” he murmured.

  Glancing at his watch, he hurried through the trees toward Top Pitch.

  North of Five Mile, a short bus ride away, on a shallow rise above the eastern bypass, Dandelion Hill lay quietly under a film of dust in the early evening sun, a mazelike plot of semi-detached houses arranged in crescents, groves, and cul-de-sacs repeating themselves across ten acres like a series of identical false starts. Number 5 Cross Close was typical. With its flaking pebble dash and stained plastic window frames, it had the tired air of a house that had been trying for too long to keep up appearances. Garvie went up the path to the front door, rang the bell, and waited.

  It took several minutes for the door to open. When it did Garvie took a step backward. Singh stood there dressed in white pajamas, his head wrapped in a towel, his feet bare, looking like a stranger. He looked angrily beyond Garvie and up and down the street and back again before he spoke.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I was just passing, and I thought … What are you wearing, man?”

  “How did you know where I lived?”

  “My uncle leaves his address book lying around.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I can come back later if you like. I didn’t realize it was hair-wash night.”

  Singh glared at him.

  “I just wanted to see how you’re doing,” Garvie said. “Check you’re okay.”

  For a long moment Singh said nothing. For a moment he seemed on the point of having a fit, or at least of closing the door in Garvie’s face, but at last he controlled himself and stepped aside, and Garvie went past him into his house.

  The hallway was white and bare, the living room the same, plain and empty with noncommittal carpet and blank walls: There was no furniture in it but a wooden chair, a small table with a couple of manila envelopes on it, and a tiny white bookcase standing in a corner with a temporary look, like last things waiting for the moving men to come back.

  “Not that keen on clutter, are you?” Garvie said. He went over to the bookcase. Five shelves were empty; on the sixth there were four objects: a small framed picture of some writing in a foreign langu
age, a wooden comb, an ornamental steel dagger, and something wrapped in what looked like a yellow duster. He turned and found Singh watching him warily.

  “What is it?”

  “My gurdwara.”

  “Nice.”

  “A Sikh altar.”

  “What’s in the duster?”

  “A gutka. Scripture. It is not a duster.”

  “Do you read it?”

  “Of course I read it. It is my guide.”

  “And what about the thing in the frame?”

  “A shabad. A hymn. ‘From woman, man is born,’ it begins. ‘Through woman, the future generations come.’ ” He hesitated. “It was my mother’s favorite text. Garvie—why are you here?”

  Garvie glanced around at the room with its bare walls and one chair and no sign whatsoever of anything remotely related to any woman.

  “Got something to tell you.”

  Singh sighed. “Wait a moment. I will get another chair.”

  While he was out of the room, Garvie took a quick look at the envelopes on the little table. Neither was marked, but in the first was a report headed Martin Patrick Magee. He slipped it back in the envelope as Singh returned and they sat facing each other, saying nothing. In his Indian pajamas Singh seemed no less uptight than usual but more unpredictable. The huge towel piled on his head gave his face a naked look; his nose seemed bigger. The toes of his feet were long and dark and hairless.

  “My mother says hi, by the way,” Garvie said, trying not to look at the feet.

  Singh nodded minimally. “She has been kind.”

  They continued to look at each other.

  “So, how’s it going with your disciplinary thing?”

  “There have been no developments.”

  “My experience is they usually blow over.”

  Singh made no reply to that. “What is it you want to tell me?” he said.

  “Oh yeah, I was forgetting. About the break-in at the warehouse. Thought you might like to know.”

  “Not really.”

  “Magee and the kid were up on the roof that night. It wasn’t a false alarm you went out to. They set it off.”

  Singh said nothing.

  “The thing about Magee isn’t that he’s a racist. It’s that he’s a thief. And a maniac. It’s not about whether the shopkeepers he robbed were Polish or not. It’s not about Anton Schnopper or Pyotor being Polish. He used kids and didn’t care if they got killed. That’s what it’s about.”

  Singh stood up. “I’m not interested.”

  “Course you are. It’s key to the whole thing. Opens it all up. What you’d call a breakthrough.”

  Singh said, “You don’t understand. I no longer concern myself with Martin Magee or Pyotor Gimpel. I am no longer working on the case. No longer an active member of the squad.”

  “All right. Even better.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Go rogue, man.”

  Singh remained standing. When he spoke his voice was even and cold. “You should present whatever information you have direct to Detective Inspector Dowell. That’s all I can say to you.”

  “Has all that hair-washing softened your brain? Dowell wouldn’t recognize a breakthrough if he found it in his mouth.”

  “I am currently under investigation and legally prohibited from any involvement in police affairs.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know all that, you just told me. Don’t you get it? They’ve let you down. They’ve pissed in your pocket. You don’t owe them anything. This is your chance to do your own thing, get at the truth your own way, without any rules or regulations or stupid people telling you what to do. Did you hear what they were saying on the radio this morning? Dowell’s got hold of the fuzzy end of the Schnopper thing and decided there’s a racism angle after all. He’s about half a mile behind the facts and he’s not catching them up. You don’t want to work for that clot.”

  Singh said, “If the witnesses to Anton Schnopper’s death give their statements like you said, then there will be a case to answer and perhaps Magee will be brought to justice.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Why?”

  “I was lying. There were witnesses all right, but there’s no chance of them making statements. I just said it to get Magee going.”

  Singh’s face looked more and more naked. He said, “You think I’m like you, don’t you, Garvie? I’m not. I believe in rules and regulations; I believe in order and discipline and cooperation. When I joined the police service I made a commitment. Commitments are not to be broken just because things go wrong. Without them there is only confusion, and people like you.”

  “They’re going to ruin you,” Garvie said.

  “It’s very likely. But I shall not be ruined here.” He curtly slapped his chest.

  Garvie got up too and they faced each other. A muscle in Singh’s cheek twitched. “All right, then,” Garvie said. “I’ll just have to plug away on my own.”

  “I do not recommend that.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s not much you can do about it.”

  “I can inform the police that you have information for them.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “It is my duty to do that.”

  “They’re not going to thank you, you know. They’ll treat you same as always. Junior Plod. Open your eyes. They don’t like you.”

  Singh said nothing. He looked incapable of any more speech, his lips clamped together, his face straining. Very slightly he began to tremble.

  “Come on, man,” Garvie said. “This is good stuff; it changes everything. Vinnie was telling the truth. Magee was lying, he wasn’t out for a night walk, he was on the estate to break into the warehouse.”

  Singh’s voice came out in a hiss, angry and sarcastic. “And now he’s free on bail, a dangerous man with things to hide, and you propose to ‘plug away’ at him in your usual interfering, infuriating way?”

  Garvie nodded. “Sounds good when you put it like that.”

  Singh shouted suddenly, “Why are you like this? Haven’t you caused enough trouble?” He was trembling so violently now that the towel on his head came loose and a long lock of black hair fell down his neck. “Don’t you ever think about anyone except yourself?”

  He lost control of himself. He began to make jerky movements with his arms.

  “Why?” he shouted. “Why are you so difficult? Why do you behave as if everything is a game? Why don’t you treat people the way they deserve to be treated?”

  He was panting now.

  “Don’t you see what you’re doing to your mother? Don’t you understand what you’ve done to … ” He bit his lip, groaning, and turned away to his gurdwara. He put his hand out and placed it on the yellow-covered gutka, and stood there, head bowed, shoulders shaking, making huge efforts to control himself. His towel finally unwrapped itself and slipped off his shoulders and his hair fell down in wet black clumps to his waist.

  Now that he had stopped shouting there was silence in the room; it fizzed in Garvie’s ears.

  “All right, all right,” Garvie said. “I was only trying to help. I know you’re under pressure.”

  Singh said nothing. He breathed deeply in the silence.

  “Your hair’s all out,” Garvie said after a while.

  Turning, Singh was calm again. “I know you were trying to help.” He moved back into the middle of the room. “It is only your way, because you have not learned any different yet. I have said too much. I regret it. It is time for you to go.”

  At the door Singh said, “Just one thing more. Look inside yourself, Garvie. Ask yourself what you see there.”

  They exchanged glances. Then Garvie went down the path with his usual slouching walk, not looking back, and Singh stood in the doorway, framed by his black hair, as solid and unruly as a thing apart.

  When the boy had disappeared from view he went slowly back into the living room and stood there a moment, frowning. Glancing at the manila envelopes lying on the table
, he began to walk in aimless fashion around the room, occasionally murmuring to himself. Nearly twenty minutes passed. At last he came to a standstill by the table. He hesitated for a moment longer, then picked up one of the envelopes and took out a sheaf of papers.

  The first page was headed AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY, and that made Singh hesitate again. It was one thing to fail to return police property, another to access confidential information—a deliberate violation of the police code. But Singh overcame his reluctance, turned the page, and began to read.

  He went quickly through the facts of Magee’s upbringing and education, more slowly through the accounts of his first offenses, and gave closest attention to the last few years. Magee had lived all his life in Heeley, a small city two hundred miles to the south, a restless, vaguely dissatisfied young man resentful of his lack of personal opportunities. By the age of twenty-five he had already served time for armed robbery and had been questioned about a number of other crimes, including the large-scale attempted robbery of a furrier’s in which the Polish boy Anton Schnopper had died. After that Magee had registered as a self-employed gardener and moved to a district of Heeley called Hofftown, where he lived alone in a studio above a betting shop. In eight months he attracted three police reports of antisocial behavior: an altercation with a Pakistani shopkeeper; an attempt to disrupt a march through Hofftown of a local gay-pride group; and a bottle fight in a club called Sam Chan’s. On June 24, 2010, at ten o’clock in the evening, he had entered a convenience store armed with a shotgun and, aided by an associate called Kim Li, had taken a little over four thousand cash from the safe at the back of the store. Easily identified by CCTV, he was apprehended the following day, brought to trial within the month, convicted on a charge of aggravated burglary, and transferred to Firetown Security Facility, where he served eighteen months of a three-year sentence. Released in the middle of January 2012, he returned to his studio only to collect basic belongings before making the journey north and settling in Limekilns.

  Singh sat upright on his chair, quietly reading.

  A man who has made a false start in one place might easily decide to move elsewhere, especially a restless man on the lookout for fresh opportunities, who is already known to local police. But why come to this city; why Limekilns?