by Simon Mason
Yazhov froze. He opened his mouth and gagged, fell to his knees and crouched there motionless, white-faced, as Singh kept up the pressure on his arm, both of them fighting for breath.
“All I want is an answer to my question,” Singh said at last. “You did a deal with Khalid Baloch.”
“I have already told the police! I told them everything!”
“No, you didn’t.”
“What didn’t I tell them?”
“You didn’t tell them how many guns you sold him.”
Garvie had not stopped running. He ran down Bulwarks Lane clutching his side as far as the taxi stand. Pausing only to ascertain that Abdul’s cab wasn’t there, he ran on erratically, occasionally looking at his watch, and down Pollard Way. He ran through the Strawberry Hill subway onto Cobham Road, past small shops selling Hoover parts and buttons and fishing tackle, past a long row of maisonettes, to the highway and through the underpass to the other side. He ran down the country lane, checking his watch every few minutes, going at a steady, grim pace between empty paddocks, all mud and stones and tire tracks, as far as the sewage plant propped up against the sky like a vast and simplistic piece of technology as outdated as a fax machine, and when he got there his phone rang and with relief he slowed to a walk to answer it.
“Garvie?”
“Yeah.”
Singh hesitated. “Where are you? It sounds as if you’re outside.”
“Could be.”
“You’re out of breath.”
“Just finished an exam. Went for a little run to celebrate. What do you want?”
“Something you ought to know. I’ve just talked to the dealer who sold Khalid the gun.”
“Yeah?”
“It was two guns he sold him, not one. Pyotor might have taken one of them, but Khalid still had the other.”
“Well, well. Everyone’s been misunderestimating Khalid, as Smudge would say.”
“What do you mean?”
Garvie looked at his watch. “Haven’t got long, but here’s a couple of things right back at you. Khalid got to Magee before we did yesterday.”
“He went to see Magee? Why?”
“It was their first chance to talk through what the hell went wrong on the fur-coat job.”
“Khalid was in on it?”
“And he roped in Sajid as well. Literally. Through the skylight.”
“So they were all there that night. With Pyotor. And Khalid probably armed.” He paused. “It all comes back to Khalid, doesn’t it? Khalid with the murder weapon at the storage facility. Khalid going out of control. He must have been the one smashed up Pyotor’s room looking for the violin. And then Magee. You’re right. We read him wrong.”
“Yeah, well. Turns out everyone’s been misunderestimating Pyotor too. He’s always been one step ahead.”
“What do you mean?”
“Two simple things make one complicated thing.”
“What?”
“Basic vector notation. If you can’t get from A to C, go from A to B first, then B to C’s easy.” Garvie looked again at his watch. “I’m running out of time, man. Did you have a chance to check out Pyotor’s photograph collection before you got busted?”
“Yes. I looked at the dates, as you suggested.”
“And there were some missing?”
“That’s right. He took pictures all the time, every day. He’d been doing it for years. But there were three days, quite recently, when he hadn’t taken any.”
“He’d taken them, don’t worry. He just hadn’t put them in his collection. He put them somewhere else, for safekeeping. They were different.”
“Pictures of what?”
“He thought Sajid was going to get hurt.”
“You mean he saw Khalid plotting with Magee. He knew the robbery was happening.”
Garvie said, “He knew why the robbery was happening.”
Singh paused. “What do you mean?”
“Why Khalid needed the money. Two simple things. He got the evidence together, put it in a safe place. That was the first thing. The second was to hold up Stanislaw’s shop with Khalid’s gun—”
“He did that? I knew there was something strange about that robbery.”
“Then he went to the industrial estate.”
“To stop the robbery?”
Garvie looked at his watch. Sighed. “I’m not sure he even knew the robbery was taking place that night.”
“What? You’ve lost me. What was he doing there, then?”
“Think of it this way. The gun wasn’t the most important thing Pyotor stole from Khalid. The phone was.”
“The phone?”
“Yeah. It was only then he could set up the meeting at East Field.”
“Meeting with who?”
“With the person who could stop it all.”
There was a silence. Singh said, “I don’t understand.”
Garvie looked at his watch. “Well, that’s a shame because I haven’t got time to explain.” He sighed. “Time to start running again.”
“Wait, Garvie!”
“You want to do something useful, you could go to Jamal’s. You’ll find a smashed violin in Khalid’s junk room. Unfortunately there was nothing in it.”
“Garvie! Tell me where you are. Tell me where you’re going.”
“I’m going to meet someone.”
“Who?”
“Can’t be done, man.”
“Why?”
Garvie thought about that for a moment. “You know why,” he said sadly. “You can’t trust me. No one can, I know that now. Not even,” he said, “my best friend.”
And he set off, quickening his pace down the lane to East Field industrial estate.
It was as deserted by day as it was at night, the crossroads empty, the buildings shut; no traffic, no one about. It sat in stillness and silence under the perfect blue sky, almost picturesque, a ruin. Garvie trotted in through the main gate and down the road to the junction, and looked up and down. The smart operational fences surrounding the storage facility had been dismantled by the police and the building stood as before, beaten up, ugly, two stories of semi-wrecked blackened brickwork enlivened only by a banner, now old and faded, above the entrance advertising discount storage.
This is what Pyotor saw that night, Garvie thought. This was one of his last memories.
Before he could go on, his phone rang and he looked at it. It was Zuzana again. With it ringing in the palm of his hand, he hesitated. The phone rang on and on, and he stood there helpless until at last he couldn’t stand it anymore.
“Garvie?” he heard her say. “Garvie?”
“Don’t bother,” he said quietly after a moment. “I know it all now. I know what Khalid’s been doing. I know what Alex has been doing. And I know what you’ve been doing.”
“Garvie! Where are you? I need to talk. I can explain!”
But that was all he heard, because a goods train went by with a scrapyard din of squealing metal, a long grumbling hell-wail of wheels and chains, and he shook his head—it seemed somehow appropriate—and without saying any more hung up. Taking a breath, he walked down the access road to the storage facility. As he’d expected, the door was ajar. For a moment he hesitated, looking up and down the deserted row, then he pushed it open and went inside into dimness and silence.
He thought again to himself: This is what Pyotor saw. This lobby. These doors. Like Pyotor, he had come alone to his meeting, with no one to trust and no one to trust him. And he felt he knew what the boy felt that night, and that he was doing exactly what he did, walking across the lobby into the room behind, where Pyotor had ended up, and down the passage between the storage facility to the metal staircase at the end, and up the stairs to the desolate story above.
He stood at the top of the staircase, smelling the staleness, as musty and mineral as rabbit feed, listening to the silence, deeper and damper than the quietness below. It was darker than he’d expected. The windows were small and scre
ened with grime, the skylights crusted over with filth. Gradually his eyes adjusted; he scanned the wide space, the heaps of builders’ materials so old they’d fused in place, the cinder-block partitions between bays now collapsed, the rust-mangy girders, pools of black water, gray vegetation sprouting in the walls. When he walked across the floor his footsteps seemed to make no sound, as if he too were now a part of its deadness.
In the center, where he could be seen, he stopped and waited, looking around.
After a moment there was a noise at the far end. A scrabbling. A soft panting, clicking of claws on concrete.
He braced himself.
Out of the shadows a dog emerged, straining against its chain. It wasn’t Genghis. It was bigger than Genghis.
“Hello, Blinkie,” Garvie said, and the man followed the dog into the light. He was wearing a maroon tracksuit with a wet sheen to it and a Nike snapback, and he swaggered behind his dog on thick-lipped, gold-dipped Nike Dunks as if he were wading through molten bling, and stood grinning his gold grin and blinking, while his dog locked eyes with Garvie.
“Sur-prise!” Blinkie said after a while.
“Not actually,” Garvie said. “Alex never signs his texts.”
Blinkie’s dog began to tremble, its lips unfurling from its jaws, and Garvie tried to plant his feet more firmly on the concrete floor, and Blinkie looked at him thoughtfully. “Don’t like dogs, little boy, do you? Noted that.”
Garvie kept his eyes off the dog. He heard it, slavering and panting, as he made himself as nonchalant as possible. “What’s it called, by the way?”
“Mother.”
“Nice.”
“She was a nice mother. But she’s got some bad habits.”
Blinkie sneered, and Mother seemed to sneer with him, rising up against its chain, mouth dropping open like an oven door, and Garvie felt much less nonchalant. Blinkie reached around and fondled Mother’s chops, staring at Garvie with those idiotic eyes, his head bobbing on the stalk of his neck. “Know who I am?” he asked softly. “I’m the king of dogs.”
Garvie felt sick. He said, “You killed Pyotor. A sixteen-year-old kid with his hair brushed flat and his shirt tucked in and his tie done up properly, and you met him here and shot his spine out. Don’t worry, I know exactly who you are. Blinkie.”
Blinkie gazed at him; blinked twice, waggled his head.
“Pyotor knew too,” Garvie went on. “He saw you at Jamal’s putting the screws on Khalid when he wouldn’t pay you protection.”
Blinkie carried on fondling Mother.
“You told Khalid to pay up or you’d hurt Sajid, didn’t you, Blinkie? Pyotor didn’t like that.”
Blinkie cocked his head to one side as if he was listening, though it wasn’t clear if he was listening to Garvie or tuning in to noises from another planet.
Garvie went on. “Must have been a surprise for you when he turned up here instead of Khalid. He’d been checking Khalid’s phone when your text came through telling him to meet you here with the money that night. He told you all this himself, I bet, when he came here. Didn’t he, Blinkie? He always told the truth, when it suited him.”
Blinkie nodded thoughtfully. “He was a lucky boy. But he’s a bit dead.”
Garvie said, “A thorough boy. He’d got you your grand. He’d written a cease-and-desist contract for you to sign. And, in case you didn’t like that, he’d got evidence of what you’d been up to safely stowed away. It was easy enough, Blinkie. Which bit of it didn’t you understand?”
Blinkie frowned. “You want to stop calling me Blinkie?”
Garvie said, “How about I call you whatever Pyotor called you? I bet he had a name for you.”
Still frowning, Blinkie took a little plastic bag out of his tracksuit pocket and shook it about so it made a teasing, shushy noise, and Mother began to dance on the end of its chain.
Blinkie’s face twisted. In a few seconds it was a mass of tics and grimaces. He said in a whisper, “That kid. You know what he called me?” His mouth writhed silently as if he had forgotten how to work it. “Do you?” he said eventually. “Do you know what he called me?”
“If I wait long enough I suppose you’re going to tell me.”
Blinkie took a step toward Garvie, Mother rearing and straining in front of him, and Garvie couldn’t help taking a step backward.
“Kid like that. Kid like that comes here. Kid like that comes here and … ” Blinkie blinked so hard his eyes went out for several seconds, and when they reappeared they seemed bigger than his glasses. His voice went rusty; it crackled when he shouted.
“Do you know what he called me?!”
“Someone who can’t express himself?”
Blinkie drew breath. He whispered. “Stupid man! That’s what.”
“Stupid man.” Garvie nodded. “Yeah, sounds right to me.”
“A retard like that. That’s what he called me. Me! I’m saying. A retard like … I mean,” Blinkie said, “who the hell did he think he was?”
“Sajid’s friend,” Garvie said. “That’s who.”
Blinkie did a double take. He shook his head, astonished. He went loose.
He held up the bag. He took his wet fingers out of Mother’s mouth and put them in the bag, and took them out crusted and white, waggled them about, and looked at them for a moment.
“I don’t use,” he said softly. “But Mother does.” He grinned. “Fun time!” he said. “At last!”
He reached forward, pulled back his dog’s lips, and rubbed the powder into its purple gums, and the dog reared up madly, its eyes sunken into its head, and began to chomp the air, spraying drool around, and Garvie fought hard to stop himself trembling.
Then there were footsteps on the metal staircase and they turned to look. Alex appeared. He stopped at the top of the stairs and looked at them as if unable to recognize them or work out what they were doing there; then he walked slowly over through the rubbish and puddles, past Garvie without looking at him, and took his place next to Blinkie.
“Your guy gave me the message,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“You can give him back his phone now,” Garvie said to Blinkie, and Blinkie took a phone from his tracksuit pocket and tossed it to Alex, who stared at it, puzzled.
“You idiot,” Garvie said to him. “You really messed up this time.”
Alex stared back at him sullenly.
“I suppose he told you all you had to do was lean on Khalid a bit, pass on the message ‘Blinkie wants his money.’ ”
Alex said nothing. He breathed, staring at Garvie, sunk in his fury.
“It was you told him I was looking for the violin, wasn’t it? Didn’t mean anything to you, but he was onto it straightaway.”
Still Alex said nothing.
Garvie shook his head. “I trusted you, man.”
“Trust!” Alex said in a furious voice. “Don’t talk to me about trust. How long was it going on between you and Zuza?”
“Wise up, Alex. She was only ever looking out for you. You thought she was interested in this idiot? She’s got eyes. She played him. All she was interested in was finding out how stupid you’d been. She was trying to protect you, man.”
Blinkie scowled; he smacked his lips and spat on the floor.
“Meeting him in O’Malley’s. That’s all it was about. It was from him she found out that Pyotor had got hold of Khalid’s phone.”
Alex didn’t seem to be listening. “What about you and her, Garv?”
He hesitated. “She played me too, if you want to know. Same thing. Trying to find out what I knew. All the time she had your back.”
“She lied to me. About not living here.”
“She wanted a fresh start. She’d walked away from a bad situation and she wanted it to be different with you. Don’t you get it? She was trying to make it work.”
Blinkie was trembling again, eye-rolling. He gave Mother another wet rub of powder and the dog went crazy on the end of its chain, while Blinkie strained
to keep it under control, laughing.
Garvie couldn’t help looking at it. He felt his legs begin to shake. He said, “Alex! Alex, mate. Snap out of it. He told you the truth when he said he was getting out of dealing. He forgot to tell you he was getting into extortion.” He got no response. They stared at each other like it was a competition.
Blinkie was struggling to restrain Mother. He said to Alex, “You’re not listening to this spank boy, right? I told you, be smart. He got into her big-time.” He said sideways to Alex, “I can trust you on this, right?”
For a moment Alex said nothing. Then he said, “Yeah.” He stared at Garvie for another three seconds and began to bite his lip.
“Let’s do it, then,” Blinkie said, and Alex swung sideways and chopped him in the throat.
Blinkie went down like a kite, crashing onto the floor, all arms and maroon sleeves flapping, and the dog leaped into the air, plunging and skidding. It sprang free from Blinkie’s grasp and turned to the boys. Flattening itself against the ground, massive and ugly, it stalked them as they backed together onto a shallow pile of rubbish in the middle of the wide, empty warehouse space, where they stopped and faced it.
“We didn’t do anything,” Garvie said sideways, eyes on Mother.
Alex’s eyes were on the dog too. “No?”
“I feel bad all the same.”
“It’s over with Zuza.”
“Of course it is, you idiot.”
“I’ve been stupid.”
“Me too. Let’s be smart now.”
They said no more. The dog came to a halt a few meters in front of them, rolling its lips back from its teeth until its wet jaws stood up, as interlocking and well-oiled as the parts of a machine. It gnashed them together twice, as if to show how well they worked.
Garvie said, “I don’t know if you remember this, but … ”
“You’re scared of dogs. I know. Since you were a little kid.”
Garvie felt the sweat break out on his forehead. He willed his legs to stop trembling. He made himself crouch down and slowly put his hand out.