by Simon Mason
‘Anxiety’s his old friend. Besides, he’s smoking the pipe of peace.’
Singh frowned. ‘I also give weight to what Amy says about Damon. It’s hard to think of him as a murderer.’
‘You think nervous people can’t be murderers?’
Singh pondered that. ‘It’s true he has a temper. I was told that, and the record confirms it.’ He got to his feet. ‘Anyway, I must go now. There’s much to do.’
‘By the way,’ Garvie said, ‘who’s running this investigation?’
Singh gave him a stiff look. ‘Detective Inspector Dowell. I am his deputy.’
‘Awks. He hates your guts.’
Singh ignored him. ‘One final thing,’ he said. ‘Amy Roecastle is a material witness in the investigation and may yet be charged. It’s essential you avoid making contact with her from this point on. Understood?’
‘Fine. No problem.’
‘OK then. Good. I’ll be in touch.’
He crossed the room and left the flat, and Garvie called Amy. ‘Listen, I need to talk to you about this whole thing. We mustn’t tell Singh, though. He’s got to work with Dowell now, and I don’t trust Dowell. Can we meet? Corner of Pollard Way and Town Road at eight. Yeah, see you there.’
He rang off and sat in his shorts and T-shirt, thinking. At first he thought about Damon Walsh, which was straightforward. Then he thought about Amy Roecastle, which wasn’t. His thinking about her didn’t happen in his mind, as normal thinking did, but somehow in his body. It had started the day before, outside Red ’n’ Black. Whenever he thought about her now he felt it in the pit of his stomach, the hairs along his arms. As if his fingertips were thinking about her, and the back of his neck, his internal organs, his heart, liver and kidneys, all of them thinking, everywhere together, about her smile, her eyes, the touch of her hands, the shape of her breasts, the tone of her voice.
Shifting in his seat, he pulled himself out of his daydream.
He could think about her endlessly. But he asked himself if he could trust her.
And he told himself that he trusted no one.
So he prepared to act accordingly.
33
She waited for him on the corner as arranged. Five Mile wasn’t a part of town she’d been to before. From where she stood she could see a laundromat, a barber’s and a shop selling second-hand electrical goods. Small gangs of people were standing eating on the pavement as the traffic went by noisily – vans, pick-ups and cabs. The odour of the warm air was part kebab, part petrol. Occasionally the people looked at her. She was dressed in the black trousers and tight top that her mother said made her look like a waitress from Bucharest, and her hair was done in a plait, which hung roughly against one side of her face, covering her ear. It made her other ear feel naked, and she kept touching it with her fingers as if she were trying to soothe it.
With her AirPods in, she was listening intently to the news, hoping to hear something about the Watkins murder investigation, but when she saw Garvie sauntering down Pollard Way, she quietly removed them and pushed them into her pocket, watching him nervously as he approached. It was surprising to see how many friends he had in the neighbourhood; they called out to him as he passed and he lifted a hand and strolled on, and came up to her at last, and, nodding, said affably,
‘I’m not going to look for him, by the way. Just in case you were about to ask me to.’
It had been the first thing she wanted to say to him. She said crossly, ‘So what are you getting involved for?’
‘Stop you getting hurt.’
She paused. ‘Why would I get hurt? I haven’t got the gun any more.’
‘It’s not what you’ve got, it’s what you know.’
‘What do I know?’
‘I don’t know, you haven’t told me yet.’
She watched him light up, cupping his hands, squinting against the smoke, flipping the match. He infuriated her, an unreadable boy who said the unexpected, who didn’t seem to want anything from her but the truth. Then why did she have this odd feeling, half-irritated, half-excited when she was with him?
‘You scared?’ he asked suddenly.
‘Yes,’ she replied.
‘That’s good.’
He stood smoking calmly, looking as if there was nothing else to say.
‘Listen to me now,’ she said. She talked to him about Damon, how nervous he was, how needy; she explained his unfortunate tendency to get mixed up in things he didn’t understand. Now he was a suspect in a murder enquiry, the subject of a nationwide manhunt. His picture was everywhere. He was alone, frightened of the police arresting him, disbelieving him, finding him guilty of something he hadn’t done, sending him back to prison, that place of private nightmares.
Garvie nodded. ‘None of which rules him out as a murderer.’
‘Aren’t you listening? We have to find him before the police do.’
‘They’re not going to find him. Neither are we.’
For a while they stood there in silence.
‘Course,’ he said, ‘he might find us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe he already did. At Red ’n’ Black.’
‘That wasn’t Damon chasing us.’
‘Are you sure? He knew you were there, of course.’
For a moment she just stared at him. ‘Jesus, don’t you miss anything?’
‘Not the obvious stuff. I worked it out, babe, I know what you got to do. That’s what he said to you at Sophie’s party in front of everyone. He might as well have taken out an ad. He needed the gun back and he told you to go back to Red ’n’ Black and get it.’
‘It’s like what you said before about dangerous things,’ she said sadly. ‘You can’t ever really get rid of them. It’s not his gun, though, I know it’s not. Someone’s taking advantage of him.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. So-called friends of his.’
‘Bazza?’
‘I don’t know.’
He considered that. He said, ‘Was Joel his friend?’
‘I don’t believe he knew Joel at all.’
Garvie smoked on for a minute or two. ‘Big guy,’ he said after a while. ‘Dead eyes. Shoulders like a gorilla. I don’t think people messed with Joel much.’ He blew out smoke. ‘But,’ he added, ‘someone did.’
‘The police said it was accidental.’
‘So far as I’m aware they haven’t eliminated the other possibility that someone took that gun to Market Square, and deliberately got up close and personal with Joel, and fired three bullets into him and walked away and left him on the ground to bleed out. Someone mean and tough. Or someone desperate. Or maybe someone with a temper problem frightened enough to lose it and lash out.’
She was silent. Garvie finished his cigarette.
‘What are we doing here, by the way?’ she said at last.
‘Waiting.’
‘Waiting for what?’
‘Transport.’
‘Why?’
‘We’re going somewhere.’
Perhaps he would have said more, but his phone rang, and he stepped away to answer it.
Lights had come on in the shops, illuminating red and yellow signs for Kebabs, Tyres and Exhausts, Mobile Accessories, shops she’d never visited, never thought of. His shops, not hers; his litter-strewn pavement, his fluorescent strip lighting. Standing there by We Fix and Trade, he seemed more of a stranger than ever. As he talked, he glanced across and met her eyes, and she felt again a buzz of alarm, as if just by looking at her he could read her mind.
When he came back, he said, ‘That was Singh. Turns out Damon knew Watkins on the youth offender programme.’
He said no more but left it hanging there between them.
She said at last, ‘How does he know?’
‘He’s in touch with a guy who used to help out on the programme. He remembers both of them, Damon and Joel. Joel was an arm-round-the-shoulder kind of guy; Damon used to look up to him.’
He went on, ‘Thing is, we’re not looking for Damon. But we are looking for his soul mate.’
‘You’re forgetting,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m Damon’s soul mate.’
He looked at her sadly. ‘Sorry.’ He seemed sorry too.
‘Are you always this rude?’
He went silent, as if scanning his memories. ‘No,’ he said at last. ‘I can be ruder. What you need to see is that rudeness isn’t the point. Listen. On Supertram, Damon was talking about someone he’d trusted, someone he looked up to, someone he thought was always looking out for him – until they let him down, blamed him for something, turned on him. Not you. You helped him out big-time.’
She thought about that. ‘OK. But it was years ago Damon and Joel were on the Y.O. They might not have even seen each other since then.’
He nodded. ‘That’s what we have to find out now.’ Looking along the road, he said, ‘And here comes our transport.’
The van drew up. It was a Ford Transit Custom with rear air suspension, adaptive cruise control, parking distance sensors and auto high beam. And of course sixteen-inch Michelin Agilis radials, Alpin model, front and rear.
The driver’s window shunted down slickly, and Smudge stuck out his face. ‘Lap it up, boys and girls,’ he said. ‘I’ve got it till ten, my brother said. Wild times. Let’s go.’
‘He’s excitable around vans,’ Garvie said to Amy as they got in. ‘But what you have to keep in mind is: he’s a genius.’
34
They drove up to Froggett, past Amy’s house, towards Pike Pond. After a few miles the lanes narrowed and finally came to a stop at the edge of the woods. They went through an old wooden gate onto a dirt track. By now it was dark. The track – brilliantly and jaggedly lit by auto high beam – was a waterlogged sequence of holes and roots leading them, jouncing and thumping behind their crazy headlight beams, deeper among the black and dripping trees, to Smudge’s evident glee. He was the Van Meister, Lord of Custom.
Amy said, ‘I’ve never liked this place. Why are we here?’
Garvie did not answer. He seemed lost in thought. Smudge was too busy grinning to say anything.
At last they came to a small dirt clearing. In front of them were three concrete buildings and a melted pile of canvases. PJ’s old used-to-be-white Ford Transit sat lopsidedly next to it.
Smudge pulled his brother’s van alongside and turned off the engine.
‘Pile of junk,’ he said affably as he looked out of the window.
Garvie spoke to Amy at last. ‘Does he tell the truth?’
‘PJ? Why do you think he doesn’t?’
‘When Smudge went to distract him that night at Red ’n’ Black he wasn’t at the front desk where he should have been.’
‘So?’
‘So he could have been chasing us up on level three.’
‘You don’t know anything about PJ. When I needed him he was there for me, no questions asked. He didn’t even ask me what was in the box. He’s a friend. He loves peace.’
‘OK.’
‘OK what?’
‘Let’s go in and say hello.’
He helped her down out the van old-style, and she smiled at him.
He didn’t smile back. ‘It’s muddy. Watch your step.’
They went cautiously through the mud, and they were halfway to the door of the garage when they heard the scream. It came from just behind the building, electrifyingly harsh, erupting in the quiet of the wood, ending as abruptly as it began, leaving behind a prickle of horror and hairs up on the back of the neck.
After a moment Smudge said, ‘Maybe he’s busy and we should come back later.’
But they went together round the corner of the garage, and there found PJ stooped over a trap. He turned and looked at them, and dropped the twisted animal onto the ground. For a moment his face was distorted, then it settled again into peace-loving calm.
‘Foxes,’ he said casually. ‘Vermin really. Though they too,’ he added, ‘are part of the great cycle of life and death.’
He straightened slowly, wiping his hands on his army jacket. ‘Amy,’ he said. ‘And Amy’s friends.’ He showed his teeth. ‘Welcome.’
Inside, they could still feel the woods around them, blackness and silence pressing against the thin walls of the garage, as they sat on the rugs passing round the spliff that Garvie had thoughtfully supplied. There was the same smell as before, of kerosene and old smoke and the perfume Amy was wearing. She sat with her back against the tatty sofa, glancing at Garvie from time to time as they listened to PJ, who sat facing them, cross-legged and bare-footed like a philosopher of old. There was a new spirit of love among young people, he was saying. Meditating briefly on the glowing end of the spliff, he drew deeply on it, and squinted sideways at Garvie. Some young people, he corrected himself. Some, he said, were bastards.
He scraped something, perhaps fox blood, from his fingers.
‘Peace in the world,’ he said, ‘comes from within. All know. Few learn how not to forget.’ The dope made his voice soft and harsh. The eye-patch made him look cunning. His horse-toothed smile was grey and big. His hands were big too, raw-boned and knuckly, as he passed the spliff.
Garvie looked beyond him, down the garage, past the garden chairs and folding table, to the far end, where the orange curtain was drawn back to reveal the mattress on the concrete floor still piled with charred mess, exactly as Singh and he had found it before. They had been wrong to make the assumption that it was the scene of a violent struggle. This was just the way PJ lived: a free spirit. Free of hygiene, anyway.
‘How are you, PJ?’ Amy said. ‘How’s your eye?’
‘Healing itself.’ He gave a slow, grey smile, somehow saintly. ‘My karma will be slower to heal.’
‘Got it in your karmas as well, did you?’ Smudge asked, wincing.
PJ ignored him, went on: ‘First there was the business with the men angry about your disappearance. Then there was my manager at the storage facility.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He has insisted we part company.’
‘You’ve been sacked? Why?’
‘He objected to my preferred means of relaxation during the long watches of the night.’ He held up the spliff to illustrate his meaning. He told her how, after he’d directed her to her locker that night, he’d gone into the back room to ‘relax’ for a moment.
‘Perhaps I lost track of time,’ he admitted. ‘Though,’ he added musingly, ‘what is time?’
He’d been surprised by the unexpected appearance of his manager a little while later.
He shook his head sadly. ‘Another man lost to his anger. I couldn’t help him. It was better we parted.’
Amy said, ‘Oh God, all this is my fault.’ She gave Garvie a bitter glance.
PJ waved away her guilt. ‘No such thing as fault,’ he said soothingly. ‘That’s what you don’t yet understand.’ He fixed her with his one good eye. ‘But,’ he added in a low voice, ‘you’ve had your own sorrow. I can tell just by looking at you. What is it? Someone has been breaking your heart. Am I right?’
Amy flushed.
Smudge said, ‘Yeah, well. Don’t look at me. Or Garv. It’s that other guy.’
PJ, who had not looked at Smudge, in fact seemed barely aware of his presence, kept his eye on Amy.
‘His name’s Damon Walsh,’ Amy said. ‘I don’t think you know him.’
‘But I know that sort of boy, Amy. He had your heart and he’s thrown it away.’
‘Well, actually—’
‘A boy with no understanding of himself. Lost to himself. I feel his pain, poor lad. He doesn’t know the way. But you must protect yourself, Amy. I’ve told you this, many times.’ He finished the spliff, looked regretful, and Garvie passed him a fresh one. PJ showed his teeth again. ‘Now,’ he said to Amy. ‘Tell me why you’ve come to see me.’
She flushed again. ‘You’d better ask him.’
The t
hree of them turned to look at Garvie, who all this time had been sitting watching in silence. For a few moments more he just looked at PJ. Then he said, ‘Tell us about Joel.’
Frowning, Amy said to PJ, ‘I’d better explain. There’s this guy Joel Watkins, who—’
Garvie said, ‘No need to explain. PJ knows all about Joel. Don’t you, PJ?’
He and PJ locked eyes.
At last the older man smiled. ‘Of course.’
Amy said, ‘Really? How?’
Garvie said, ‘They drove together at One Shot, the dispatch company.’
PJ blew smoke and nodded thoughtfully. ‘Joel Watkins. Van work, mainly. Sometimes bike. Yes. Another lost child. Very lost, that one. Drove a different car every week, if you know what I mean, all of them junk.’ He gave a wink.
‘Tell us more.’
It was a clear case of bad karma, as PJ explained. Like too many others, Joel Watkins was a child lost to himself, shut up in bad ways, locked away from true understanding, enlightenment ignored, disparaged even, though so badly needed.
‘Besides,’ PJ said, ‘he pilfered. That’s why he got sacked.’
Garvie leaned forward. ‘That’s interesting. His record doesn’t say anything about any sacking.’
‘Wouldn’t do. Manager hushed it up. Don’t want customers to know there’s pilfering going on.’
‘When did it happen?’
‘The sacking? The Friday before he was killed. Sad, very sad.’
PJ elaborated. He had tried all he could to help Joel connect with his inner spirituality, had given him advice, most of it unsought, not so much in the way of instruction as out of love, from someone who knew for himself the darkness of a world without it. An arm round the shoulder, a word in the ear. Joel had responded with insults and threats, and for a while had led a vendetta against the peace-loving ex-Marine.
‘But, yeah,’ PJ said with obvious satisfaction. ‘Bastard got caught skimming.’ For months Joel had been knocking off goods from the loads he delivered, taking the odd box here, the odd package there, keeping it nice and unobtrusive. Then one day the manager found a load of stuff in his locker, and he was caught, fair and square.