by Simon Mason
‘Only sometimes. Sometimes I can’t be arsed.’
Dr Roecastle looked exhausted suddenly. Her mouth fell open.
Garvie shifted slightly in the doorway. ‘Likeliest thing is, she’ll come back,’ he said at last.
‘Listen to me,’ she said in a quiet, strained voice. ‘This is the third day she’s been missing. Nothing’s happening. One policeman on his own, that’s it. I’ve been to see his chief, I’ve called all my friends in the media. No one’s helping. All this time she could be suffering. I’m scared. I will do anything. Do you understand what I’m saying? Anything.’ She paused and added quietly, ‘I’ll even ask a boy like you to help me.’
Garvie said nothing.
‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please. If you can. Please help me.’
She turned her glistening face to his, and he looked at her impassively and she felt again all his strangeness. His blue eyes were weirdly still. It was as if he wasn’t listening to her, didn’t even see her.
‘You think you’re the only rude and difficult human being, do you?’ she cried out. ‘I’m rude and difficult. And if my daughter was here she’d agree with me. But I’m her mother! And someone like you will never know what it means to make the mistakes I’ve made or to feel the pain I feel. But,’ she added bitterly, ‘your mother knows.’
She held his gaze as long as she could, and looked away, blinking, as if terrified by her sudden confession.
‘Forget it,’ she muttered.
When she looked back he was still there.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he said.
They sat on the sofa.
‘Why do you think this Damon’s got anything to do with it?’ he asked.
‘Why else would he have gone into hiding now that the police are on to him?’
‘’Cause he doesn’t have papers for his van. ’Cause he’s scared about getting done for re-offending. ’Cause he can’t cope with any of it. ’Cause he’s off on a bender. ’Cause something else has cropped up. ’Cause no one ever listens to him anyway. Etcetera.’
Dr Roecastle pursed her lips. ‘I know the sort of young man he is.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yes. Delinquent. No qualifications, no proper job, no long-term goals. Not enough money. All sorts of problems. Drinks too much, smokes too much, no proper interests, lives in some awful place like Five Mile or Limekilns. You forget that I’m a doctor. I see people from all over the city. I know more about these men than you think.’ She looked at him, at those expressionless blue eyes. Too late she said, ‘Where do you live, Garvie?’
‘Five Mile.’
‘I see.’ She looked away.
‘You think I can find him because I’m like him.’
‘I only want my daughter back. She’s vulnerable. She thinks she knows the world, but she knows nothing.’
‘Just to be clear,’ Garvie said. ‘I’m not doing it for you. I couldn’t care less about you.’
‘Do it for Amy then.’
‘I’m doing it for my mother. She has to work with you.’
Dr Roecastle compressed her lips. ‘I understand.’
He was silent for a moment. ‘Tell me exactly what happened the night she left,’ he said.
She told him. Her memory was precise, her manner harsh.
‘What was she wearing?’
She told him about the jacket.
‘Tell me about the hat.’
‘How do you know she was wearing a hat?’
‘I don’t. But you said her wet stuff was dripping everywhere. “Stuff”, not “jacket”. More than just a jacket.’
‘You’re right. She was wearing one of those woollen hats. I’d forgotten.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘I don’t know. Is it important?’
‘Everything’s important. I thought doctors knew that.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll take a look in her room now.’
‘It’s a crime scene,’ she said. ‘The police have sealed it.’
He didn’t stop, or turn, as he went out of the front door. ‘Yeah, which is why the window’ll still be open.’
Over the years Felix had given him a lot of practical advice about what he called ‘entering made easy’ – the builder’s ladder, the tap on the frame, the blade in the sash – he had even given Garvie a ‘bag of tricks’ for inconvenient locks, but Garvie didn’t need any of that now.
He eased himself up on Smudge’s shoulders.
‘One day,’ Smudge said in a strained voice, ‘you’re going to do the bracing and heaving in the flower bed, and I’m going to stand on your shoulders.’
‘Yeah,’ Garvie said. ‘But today’s not that day.’
As he climbed up from the sill of a downstairs window to the sloping roof of the bay to a section of sturdy iron drainpipe, he wondered how often Amy had found it convenient to get back into her room that way. At the bedroom window he paused to look down. Smudge wiped his face and grinned, gave a little wave. Dr Roecastle stood behind him, looking up anxiously. Behind her, with expressions more disgusted than anxious, stood Smudge’s brother and the rest of the fencing crew, also watching.
The bedroom window was still ajar, as he had expected; and the next moment he was inside, crouching on a tall bed in his crusted boots.
He didn’t have long. Dr Roecastle was too antsy. He analysed the room, mentally sorted its contents into a few key categories – furnishings, decorations, clothes, stuff – and ignored all categories over which Dr Roecastle had some influence. He went over to Amy’s wardrobe and pulled open the doors.
It smelled of perfume, the source of which he found in a purple glass bottle: Alien by Mugler. The clothes fell into two sub-categories: 1) fancy: expensive-looking posh-girl trousers, tops, sweaters and skirts; and 2) alternative: tartan minis, ripped denim, bondage trousers, camouflage stockings, slogan T-shirts. Those in the first category looked hardly worn, those in the second, far more numerous, were messed up, creased, faded with hard use. Stuffed into a shelf was a tumbleweed of studded belts, mesh gloves, chains and steel bracelets.
No hats anywhere.
No shoe boxes either.
From outside in the garden, he heard Dr Roecastle calling already, but he tuned it out.
There was a cork board on the wall with four photographs attached to it: Amy in studded leather sitting on the grass somewhere; Amy slouching in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris; Amy with a blonde girl in a photo-booth; Amy on her own.
He stood there, staring. He could feel his breath going in and out.
He took down one of the photographs and held it between his fingertips. No make-up; she didn’t need it. In her ear was a black hoop. In her nose a black stud, on her third fingers matching rings, silver bands with unusual spiral patterns picked out in black. Her eyes were blue, her eyebrows heavy, her hair dyed black. Lips parted, she was smiling slightly at the camera.
Now he was holding his breath.
Her face.
He couldn’t stop looking at it. He’d never seen a face like it. She looked back at him fearlessly. A girl who didn’t do fear.
But she’d been frightened that night, frightened enough to go out into the storm, frightened enough to take the dog with her.
He peered closer. All those studs and hoops, all that rebel-leather designer wear. In-your-face clothes for show-offs. But the expression on her face was different, guarded. Was she playing a part? There was just a glint of something hidden in her eyes. She seemed to hold his gaze, and ask him what he was up to, and suggest it wasn’t much. A mischievous challenge. You can’t find me.
He thought about that, the wit of it: a flashy photograph giving nothing away. He put it in his pocket, and went on round the room pulling open drawers and cupboards, looking in boxes and files, sifting through piles of stuff scattered on the floor. He could almost hear her laughing at him as he worked. A smart girl with secrets.
He found nothing.
Dr Roecastle called out again, and he ignored her.
That was interesting.
He bent over the desk. There was a piece of artwork, looking like nothing very much to him. It was odd how arty people just couldn’t draw. Next to it was a school book open at a maths problem. It caught his eye. Sequences again. Two parts to the questions.
Part one. Suppose an = 1 + (1/8)n. Answer the following questions:
What is the fourth term in the sequence? Amy had answered
Is the sequence ‘convergent’ or ‘divergent’? Amy had answered ‘convergent’.
What is the limit? Amy had answered ‘1’.
Three questions in the first part answered correctly. She was smart, really smart.
But she’d left the second part unfinished.
He gave it his attention. It was something he’d literally never seen before, a question concerning the ‘definition of the limit of a sequence’, in which λ is the limit, ε is an arbitrary value, and N is the point at which the difference between the term and the limit is less than ε.
Find the missing number in a sequence.
Amy had begun the problem but abandoned her workings. Garvie stared. From outside came Dr Roecastle’s twitterings, but again he ignored them, gazing steadily at the problem, zoning out everything else. He went into the space of numbers and patterns, the beautiful labyrinths of mathematical logic.
After two minutes he took up Amy’s pen again and wrote 5.
With Dr Roecastle calling continuously now, he went round the room a last time collecting things – a lipstick, a necklace, a stocking, a bracelet, some other stuff, and a sheet of paper from Amy’s exercise book and a pencil – and exited via the window.
She was waiting for him on the lawn.
‘Well?’ she said. ‘Did you find it?’
‘Find what?’
‘I don’t know. What were you looking for?’
‘Just nosing around.’
‘Nosing around!’
‘Yeah.’ He looked at her critically. ‘Some of those clothes. Bondage and stuff. I’m surprised you let her wear them.’
She was going to say something else, but he didn’t wait for an answer, walking away across the lawn, watched again – with distaste – by Smudge’s brother and the other workers, to join Smudge at the top of the rise.
‘How’d you get on?’
‘Good, thanks. I’m going to need your help now, though.’
‘Thought you would. If it’s to do with girls, ask a man who knows.’
‘It’s not to do with girls. It’s to do with vans.’
‘Oh.’ Momentarily disappointed, he brightened. ‘Just as good, though, really, in a way.’
Garvie nodded. ‘And you’re going to need these.’ He gave Smudge the paper and pencil from Amy’s room. ‘I hope you’re better at drawing than she is.’
Smudge looked doubtful. ‘Is it like art?’
‘No, Smudge. It’s like a murder investigation.’
He looked relieved. ‘That’s good. ’Cause I dropped art way back.’
‘Afterwards,’ Garvie said, ‘we’ve got stuff to do in town. We better get going.’
Garvie glanced at his watch. Just after midday. ‘Sixty hours,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘That’s how long she’s been missing. Too long. Pretty soon we’re all going to be looking for a dead person.’
18
Saturday afternoon found them back in Five Mile, getting busy. First Garvie put out some calls. Smudge helped. He was pleased to help. He took credit, in fact, for Dr Roecastle asking for Garvie’s assistance. Good with people.
‘By the way, who we looking for? The girl?’
‘Not yet. Van driver, name of Damon.’
Smudge looked interested. ‘What sort of van?’
‘Don’t know yet. But if we find him, I’ll let you talk to him about intelligent all-wheel drive.’
Smudge called Tiger and Dani and some kids in Strawberry Hill. Garvie called Felix. Felix’s older brother had worked with a lad in south Brickfields who’d known Damon at school but hadn’t seen him for a while. Smudge went to visit Alex. It turned out Alex had run into one of Damon’s friends a couple of times while he was squatting; this friend told Smudge he’d shared time with Damon on the Youth Offender programme, and passed on the rumour that he was currently sleeping in a van somewhere in Limekilns. Smudge called a couple of other guys, both currently assisting police with enquiries, and they offered the information that Damon had been popping up in Five Mile too, here and there.
Smudge reported to Garvie. ‘Nervous sort, they said he was. All right, but – you know.’
‘All right but what?’
‘All right, but a bit psycho.’
Damon’s mate at O’Malley’s, Bazza, had told Smudge he was keen to find out where Damon was as well. ‘But then Bazza’s a bit psycho himself,’ Smudge said.
Garvie was impressed with all the information. ‘Good work, Smudge.’
‘People skills, innit. Question of trust. Sort of face I got.’
‘I thought you called them.’
‘They could sense it, I think.’
In a couple of hours they’d put together a map, a Damon Walsh zone of activity. Then they went visiting with the things Garvie had taken from Amy’s room. He gave one of the necklaces to the girl who served behind the bar at O’Malley’s, and a bracelet to Stanislaw Singer who ran the Strawberry Hill corner shop. Smudge left a lipstick with the girl in the place in Five Mile centre where you could cash cheques, and everywhere they said the same thing: ‘If you see Damon, give him this, and tell him Garvie wants a word about Amy.’
The only solid address they turned up for Damon was in Pirrip Street, number 8b. Everyone said he’d left it suddenly a few weeks before.
‘I’ll take a look, anyway,’ Garvie said.
‘All right. Mind the dog. Heard it’s a big one.’
‘OK. Cheers.’
Pirrip Street was a lost street. It ran straight for a couple of hundred metres past the roadworks depot off the Town Road. Though it was so close to Marsh Academy – Garvie’s old school – Garvie had never been down it before, hadn’t even known it existed. There were only half a dozen habitable houses among the sooty brick tenements, the ones with a working door and at least two windows with most of the glass left in. 8b was one of these.
The door was opened a notch by a meaty woman in black leggings and blue T-shirt, who told the dog behind her to shut the fuck up and swivelled her gaze back to Garvie waiting politely on the street.
‘Damon Walsh,’ he said.
Her eyes narrowed as the dog continued to explode in the hall. ‘What’s he done now?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘What are you? A friend?’
Through the half-opened door Garvie glimpsed the pit bull distractedly performing a range of jaw exercises behind her.
‘No,’ he said prudently.
She sneered at him pleasantly. ‘Well, he don’t rent with us no more. Gone. Disappeared. No warning, just upped and left.’
‘Sorry to hear that.’
‘So if you find him,’ she added, ‘give him a slap from me.’
She banged shut the door, there was a violent crash from inside and the dog fell abruptly silent.
Garvie leaned against the house wall. He thought about Damon, and dogs, and people skills. He thought about the woods again, where Amy had fled, the thicket, the twisted body of the Dobermann.
He thought about Amy, the cool look of her in the photograph, the shape of her mouth, the half-smile that played about it.
He took out his Benson & Hedges, tapped one out and threw it up into the corner of his mouth. He sighed and lit up, and when he looked round there was a kid about eight years old with his thumb i
n his mouth standing next to him. He was a grimy sort of kid with saggy short trousers and the big round face of a very disappointed middle-aged man.
The kid took out his thumb, and said, ‘Shouldn’t smoke.’
Garvie exhaled and flicked ash onto the pavement. ‘What makes you think I smoke?’
The boy thought about that for a long time. He removed his thumb and said, ‘When I smoke I get a slap.’
‘You and me both,’ Garvie said. ‘Sometimes I get a slap when I’m not smoking.’
The kid nodded solemnly. ‘I’ll fight you,’ he said. ‘If you like.’
Garvie smoked on peaceably. ‘Go on. I’m not in a fighting mood just now.’
The kid spat inexpertly on the ground. ‘Pick pig’s bones out of that,’ he said.
Garvie nodded. ‘Very well done. Wipe your chin.’ He looked at the kid thoughtfully. ‘Don’t suppose you know someone called Damon Walsh?’ he asked.
‘Why? What’s he done now?’
‘Forget it,’ Garvie said. ‘I’m busy smoking.’
The kid nodded and backed away. ‘I like you,’ he said, put his thumb back into his mouth and disappeared down a passage.
For a while Garvie stayed where he was. At last he pulled himself off the wall, strolled to the end of the street and went down a litter-strewn footpath between wire security fences until he came to the end of Badger Lane. Round the corner was the Academy, where, until the previous month, he had spent a large part of his life, a place now consigned to his childhood. He had a peculiar feeling in his chest as he went across the end of the lane and, a moment later, found himself standing at bottom gate, looking at the familiar institutional buildings beyond.
In these last weeks of the summer holidays there was no one around. Besides, it was the weekend, Saturday afternoon. The staff car park was deserted but for one forgotten car; the school stood silent and empty, abandoned. It was empty of him. His memories were ghosts.
He was about to turn away when someone appeared in the driveway, a diminutive lady in a severe suit walking stiffly towards the car park with two overloaded bags and a sheaf of papers under one arm. It was Miss Perkins, the much-hated principal enforcer of the Academy, Garvie’s old maths teacher and particular adversary while he had been a pupil.