by Simon Mason
Amy looked again at Garvie, who sat expressionless, looking at Livia.
‘Interesting,’ he said at last.
‘Yeah. Weird too.’ She smiled. ‘You know what, we should go out some time, on a double date. My boyfriend’s big into crime, he’s always reading those books. He’d love it that you were, like, a real suspect.’
‘That would be great,’ Garvie said, getting up. Amy and Livia exchanged numbers, and they said goodbye and went out into the night.
It was nearly one o’clock, still warm. The sky was clear, stars visible through the finely shimmering city glare, and Amy and Garvie walked slowly back towards the station without speaking. There were fewer people about now. The night hush of cities had settled over the streets, a dull, low-level hum complicated by distant echoes of traffic.
‘It was Damon,’ Amy said at last.
‘Sounds like it.’
‘He had a fight with Joel, and Joel got the sack and blamed Damon for it.’
They walked a little further and she spoke again.
‘OK. This is what we know. Damon and Joel met on the youth offender programme. They were close, Damon looked up to Joel, trusted him. Then they fell out, don’t know why exactly, but Joel was mad at Damon. They had a fight at Imperium, Joel was sacked as a result and blamed Damon. So then Joel was really wild. And then …’
‘Then what?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe nothing.’
‘Then Damon showed up at your house with the murder weapon.’
They walked on in silence. They passed in front of the station, where a few people lingered, as if stuck at the end of their journey, sitting on the steps. They looked up at Amy as she went by. She was worth looking at. She’d taken off her heels and carried them, moving with gymnastic grace, smooth and compact in her outrageously tight dress.
She said, ‘I still don’t think he killed Joel. I mean, we don’t even know where he got the gun from.’
‘We know he had it.’
‘We don’t know he met Joel that night.’
‘We know he was in Market Square when Joel was killed.’
‘But we don’t know what happened.’
‘That’s why we’re thinking about it now. That’s why we’re keeping an open mind and not just defending him as usual.’
Their eyes met, and she nodded, and they walked on as far as the depot next to the shopping mall, where they paused. A truck was waiting to go in; there was a little sucking sound, then the gates shunted open with a metallic rattle like convict chains and closed again with a slow, sad sigh. It left behind the empty street, its shadow and a whiff of garbage.
Garvie took out his Benson & Hedges, tapped one out and tossed it absent-mindedly into the corner of his mouth. He held out the pack to Amy.
‘Are you stupid? They kill you.’
‘So does breathing, eventually.’
‘You really are weird, aren’t you?’
They moved on again, along the bland, shiny façade of the shopping mall.
‘OK,’ Amy said. ‘Help me out. What am I missing?’
‘Joel’s finances.’
‘What about them?’
‘He lost jobs but never missed rent.’
She thought about that. She said, ‘You were talking to Singh on the phone earlier. A hidden account. Something to do with vehicle theft.’
‘Remember what PJ told us? Joel drove a different car every week, all of them crap.’ He looked at her. ‘Something you don’t know is that Joel was on the Y.O. for car theft.’
‘So he was buying and selling stolen cars on the side.’
‘Singh’s checking. It’s a question of dates and dealers. But I think Singh’s going to find something interesting.’
‘What?’
Garvie said nothing. They went round the end of the shopping mall and turned into the alley that ran alongside the old railway track.
‘Damon’s van, of course,’ Amy said quietly. ‘Joel sold him his van.’ She began to speak quickly as they walked. ‘That’s why they fell out in the first place. Damon couldn’t get the money together, you told me that. So Joel went after him for it. Mr Angry. And Damon couldn’t believe it, his friend turning on him. He did what he always does. Said it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t pay. Dodged. Got frightened. Got out of Pirrip Street and left that note for the kid to give to Joel when he came round. But then,’ she said in sudden distress, ‘and this is typical of Damon, absolutely typical, he’s such an innocent, he must have gone round to Imperium thinking he could sweet-talk Joel, start over, buy himself more time or whatever. And Joel got aggy, and got himself sacked into the bargain. Which only made Joel madder. And Damon even more bewildered and frightened.’
They turned out of the alley into the long street of small stores and petrol stations that would eventually lead them to Strawberry Hill. The ring road was not far away. Late-night trucks passing along it left a murmur in the air. They walked on in silence. Ten minutes passed.
‘So,’ Garvie said at last, ‘we’re back again with the most important question. What happened that night?’
She looked at him. ‘We still don’t know.’
‘What if Joel got ugly? Threatened to tip off the police about the van. What was Damon frightened of the most?’
They stopped walking and looked at each other. Amy thought, but only for a moment. ‘Prison.’
He looked at her, and her face was somehow fragile as if it might crack and break apart.
‘What would he do then?’ Garvie said quietly.
She stood on the dirty, cracked pavement, gorgeous and vulnerable, her bare shoulder trembling. ‘Almost anything,’ she whispered.
Her face shone with misery, beautiful and comfortless. They were in Cobham Road, ahead of them the shops, a few panels of dim light in the receding darkness, and the junction with Town Road. There was weak orangey lamplight on her bare shoulder and in her hair, and she lifted her face towards him, so beautiful and unruly and blurred around the edges by her distress.
‘I don’t know what to think any more,’ she murmured.
She stood there, helpless.
Her mouth fell open and without thinking he stepped forward and kissed it.
Everything disappeared except what they could feel. She kissed him back. Her hands were round the back of his head, his hands were in the small of her back, on the back of her neck, in her hair. Her lips burned his. Through the thinness of her dress he could feel her belly against his. He was kissing her throat. The air turned to perfume. Cobham Road had vanished, the shops, the whole city had gone, and there was nothing but touch and scent and the pounding of hearts.
Then a passing car honked, and it all came back. They parted and stood there, panting slightly.
She wiped her face and smiled, and stood looking at him with misty eyes. ‘You’re still weird,’ she said. ‘And a part of me hates you for what you make me think about Damon. But …’ She looked round. ‘I have to get home. I can’t walk all the way. I’ll get a cab in Town Road.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll call you,’ he said.
Their eyes met. ‘I’d like that,’ she said almost in a whisper.
She crossed the street and walked down Town Road, and he watched her until she disappeared. He shivered, though the night was still warm, and began to walk along Cobham Road towards Five Mile.
40
Fixing his eyes on the three tower blocks in the Plain beyond the shops, he walked down Strawberry Hill’s main drag. It wasn’t real walking. It was floating. To his right were small modern flats and maisonettes, to his left older brick terrace houses three storeys tall, sub-divided now into apartments. They were there, but he didn’t really see them. Somehow his sense of time had gone to hell. It was nearly two o’clock in the morning. Light dampness cooling the air. Peaceful. There was a hush cushioned on the soft buzz from the nearby ring road, and Garvie drifted past the shut-up shops, the steepling outline of the Polski church, the launderettes and nails-and-beauty salons, smoking thou
ghtfully. He was no longer thinking about Damon or Joel Watkins. He was thinking only about Amy Roecastle.
He felt wildly distracted and at the same time, impossibly, deeply at peace.
In a daze he walked half a mile without realizing it, and when his phone buzzed he was surprised to find himself in Five Mile already, at the corner of Pollard Way and Bulwarks Lane.
He looked at his phone. Amy. Perhaps, like him, she couldn’t stop thinking about what had just happened.
‘Hey,’ he said softly.
There was a silence, then he heard her scream his name at the top of her lungs. It nearly broke his eardrum. ‘He’s here!’ she screamed. ‘He’s after me!’
There was the brief harsh sound of ragged panting, then the phone went dead.
41
Electrified into horror, he ran. He dialled as he went.
A voice confused with sleep answered. ‘Yes, hello, what is it?’
Garvie panted loudly: ‘Town Road, where the taxis are!’
Singh said, ‘What? Garvie, is that you? What are you—’
‘Just get there! It’s Amy. Bring an ambulance!’
Garvie ran back down Pollard Way. He crossed the road, ran gasping down a long side street, and emerged at last on Town Road just beyond the medical centre. The road was empty and quiet, and he stood there panting, looking both ways. There was no one about, no cabs at the rank. He ran down the road, slowing at every side street, speeding up again when he saw it was deserted.
The sound of Amy’s voice was still in his ears, unnaturally loud, panicked almost out of recognition. He’s after me!
He’d been after her all the time. He must have followed them that evening. He must have seen them part on Cobham Road and followed her then, and found a place to attack her. Garvie cursed himself. As he ran, he looked up and down the street, at the shopfronts and forecourts.
Somewhere near but out of the way. Somewhere without lights, where noise would be quickly muffled. He scanned ahead as far as a driveway to an old furniture showroom, and speeded up again.
The showroom had been unoccupied for months. The driveway, full of weeds, doglegged round the side of the darkened building to a car park at the back, and Garvie ran down it, shouting Amy’s name, and came to a stop in the middle of the concrete lot, turning and looking, the sudden quietness reverberating round him in waves. There was a shallow-sided yellow skip in one corner, a pile of corrugated roofing panels in another, weeds everywhere. Apart from that, nothing.
‘Amy?’ he shouted again.
Silence.
He’d been mistaken.
Then, as he turned, he caught sight of a scrap of something cool and grey and out of place by the kerb. One of her shoes.
He ran towards the skip.
She was sprawled inside it, legs twisted underneath her, her blank, bleeding face lifted to the night sky.
He jumped into the skip and felt her pulse, checked her injuries. He took out his phone. ‘Where are you now?’
Singh’s voice said, ‘Coming into Town Road. Where are you?’
‘Back of the empty furniture place, in the car park. Where’s the ambulance?’
‘Coming.’ Singh paused. ‘Is it needed?’
‘Yeah, it’s needed.’
As Garvie switched off his phone he heard the sirens in the distance. He sat with Amy in the skip, holding her limp hand. He did not think of the pages from Joel’s personnel file that were no longer in her clutch bag. He did not think of a man desperate enough to risk killing her to get them. There would be time for that later. He thought of Amy, her expression as he kissed her, the feel of her lips on his, the sight now of her battered face.
42
They sat in Singh’s Skoda Fabia in the car park outside Accident and Emergency. Although it was the middle of the night there was still a little low-grade activity around the entrance, doctors in green scrubs sweeping in and out periodically, ambulance drivers mumbling together over cartons of coffee, the usual sleepless smokers in wheelchairs hooked up to their mobile drips. Above them, ten storeys of dimly lit windows. Below them, in darkness, the ring road murmuring in its insomnia.
They hadn’t spoken in ten minutes.
‘You don’t need to tell me,’ Garvie said at last.
‘I’m not telling you anything,’ Singh said. He continued patiently to read messages on his phone.
‘I know what it is to let someone down. I know what it feels like, to be let down. Someone explained it to me once.’
‘Who?’ Singh said.
‘Damon.’
Singh grunted.
Garvie went on: ‘You told me not to involve her. I put her in danger. You know that. She knows that. Her mother definitely knows it – I thought she was going to put me in hospital too when she showed up.’
Arriving half an hour earlier, Dr Roecastle had made her fury plain, and only her anxiety to be with her daughter, inside A and E, had prevented her from shouting at Garvie for longer.
‘I was distracted, blindsided. I forgot she still had the pages from Joel’s file. I should never have let her go off with them. I’m an idiot. She could have been …’ His voice trailed away as he looked out of the window, up at the tall, dim façade of the hospital building. ‘Let’s get it all out,’ he said angrily. ‘You trusted me, and I let you down. She trusted me, and I let her down – big-time. That’s the truth. I can’t be trusted.’
Singh looked at him curiously. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘The first Sikh guru, Guru Nanak, said: “Let self-control be the furnace and patience the goldsmith.” You are yourself. You are your own responsibility, not mine. Perhaps I can’t trust you. Perhaps Amy can’t. But that’s not the main point. The main point is: you have to learn how to trust yourself.’
Garvie said nothing to that, and Singh went on.
‘Amy is OK. Concussion only. She’ll be monitored overnight and tomorrow, probably, she’ll be discharged. We’re fortunate. We should both be thankful.’
‘Believe me, I am.’
‘Good, that’s a start. Now, there has been a development.’
‘Car theft-wise?’
‘Yes. We mapped the dates of those one-off payments in Joel’s hidden account with the records in the car theft database, and pulled a couple of guys in.’
‘And you found Joel’d been moving on knock-offs.’
‘Correct. One of the guys will testify to save himself a custodial sentence. Joel was his fence. But that’s not the most interesting thing. There was one particular vehicle that caught our eye.’
‘Ford Courier, white with rust markings, technically categorizable as “a piece of shit”.’
‘OK. You guessed. Yes, it passed through Joel’s hands a couple of months ago. It looks like he sold it to Damon, who couldn’t pay, and Joel went after him. And in those circumstances, as we know, Damon was liable to become desperate, to lash out.’ He paused, pursed his lips. ‘Which brings us to this evening. It was Damon who attacked Amy, wasn’t it?’
‘Don’t know. Wasn’t there. You’ll have to ask her. But …’
‘But it’s likely. I know. You have your failures, I have mine.’ He hesitated. ‘I’m being formally reprimanded for assaulting a member of the public this evening, in fact. But, after my chase of him, Damon’ll feel the net closing in, he’ll be more desperate than ever. He would’ve been after Joel’s file. He’d be worried that he could be identified from the account of Joel’s fight with him at Imperium.’
‘But the account wasn’t in the file.’
‘I know, you said. But Damon wasn’t to know that.’
‘How did he even know we were there?’
‘I think he’s been watching you all this time. At Red ’n’ Black. At Imperium.’ He leaned round to look Garvie in the eye. ‘He’s still watching you. We need to take steps now to protect both you and Amy.’
Garvie said nothing to that.
‘Garvie? Are you listening to me?’
Garvie stirred. ‘Not really.
The real question is why there was nothing in Joel’s file.’
More silence. The Fabia began to steam up. Singh rolled down a window and night air came in, cool now, and diesel niff from the idling ambulances.
Garvie opened the door.
‘Where are you going now?’
‘Home.’
‘I’ll take you there.’
‘I’d rather walk.’
‘What did I just say about safety?’
‘Don’t know. I’d stopped listening.’
‘Garvie!’
‘I’m young and semi-fit and unlike Amy I didn’t get bashed on the head. Besides,’ he added, ‘and don’t take this the wrong way, ’cause I know I have to spruce up my people skills, but I just don’t want to talk to you any more. It’s late. I’m a bit tired.’
‘OK then.’ Singh leaned over to the back seat and produced a police-issue padded coat and black beanie with the City Squad logo on it. ‘At least take these. It’s turned chilly and all you’re wearing is that thin shirt from Imperium.’
Garvie ignored him.
‘Here,’ Singh said.
Garvie didn’t move. Just stared at the beanie.
‘Garvie?’
‘What time is it now?’
‘Nearly four. But—’
‘He’ll be asleep,’ Garvie said, as if to himself. ‘But that’s all right. He never lets me down.’ He turned to Singh. ‘Think of that.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Trust.’
He didn’t say goodbye. He just got out of the car and walked away down the hospital drive. Singh saw him light up at the turn of the drive before disappearing, hatless and coatless, into the dark.
Sighing and shaking his head, Singh took out his phone, and dialled.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘Yes, it’s me. There’s no need to worry. He’s coming home now. It’s OK, he’ll be fine.’
For a while he continued to sit there, looking down the driveway into the darkness where Garvie had gone.
He didn’t see Garvie take out his phone as he walked and make a call of his own.