Hey, Sherlock!

by Simon Mason

  After listening to the sleepy voice at the other end, he said, ‘Listen, big man. Only you can save the world. No, I know you can. No, you’re just being modest. All you have to do— Wait. Listen carefully. All you have to do, first thing tomorrow, right, is get yourself to the outhouse. Yeah you do, it’s that funny little brick building by the pagoda. OK? I want you to go in there and find something for me. All this time I’d forgotten about it, but it’s the really important thing. No, it’s definitely in there. Yeah, I know it is. Someone went in looking for it a little while ago, but they couldn’t find it ’cause it was too well-hidden, so it’s still there. But you, you’re definitely going to find it. Yes, you are. Because I trust you. Because you’re a genius. OK, so we agree. Now I’m going to tell you what it is, and after that you can go back to sleep. Yes you will. You’ll fall asleep straightaway. You’ll sleep the deep, sweet sleep of all true heroes. Yeah. Because you deserve it. That’s it, man. Simples. Oh, yeah, and give us a ding soon as you’ve got it. Now, this is what it is …’

  43

  Next day he was tired. The morning had gone, and half the afternoon, before he woke up. When his mother got home from her shift at seven thirty she found him still lying on his bed in T-shirt and shorts doing his old thing of staring at the ceiling. He turned his head towards her and they exchanged a brief look of unspoken difficulty before she went away.

  He called Smudge again, and this time he answered.

  ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘Yeah. Eventually. Got to say, it wasn’t easy. It was in this half empty tin of paint wrapped in a plastic bag. I wouldn’t’ve ever found it if I hadn’t been such a bloodhound. And my hands are all magnolia now.’

  ‘Smudge, mate, you’re a genius. I owe you big-time. I’ll swing by and get it.’

  ‘Yeah, all right. In the meantime …’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Just wanted to ask. Something going on with you and this Amy chick?’

  Garvie hesitated. ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been picking up this vibe. I’m a martyr to male intuition, mate. When we went out to see that bushman in the woods, for instance. And this afternoon she’s been just sitting out on that patio at the back staring at everyone. Like she’s got something on her mind or something.’

  ‘How does she look?’

  ‘Stunning, you know. I mean, talk about frontal—’

  ‘I mean, her mood.’

  ‘Oh.’ He could hear Smudge thinking. ‘Bit odd really.’

  ‘What do you mean, “odd”?’

  ‘It’s the staring, Garv, it’s weirding us all out. She’s got this bruise on her face, but it’s not that. It’s, she looks like … she looks like she’s got something on her mind, I can’t put it more than that. Just wondered if it was you. But then I thought to myself, that’d be odd, wouldn’t it, that’d be unprecedented, ’cause you never get the girl, do you, and you don’t really know how to behave with them, and—’

  ‘OK, thanks for that, Smudge. See you later.’

  ‘Cheers then. Oh, bring some paint cleaner, will you?’

  He called Amy.

  For several moments after she picked up he listened to her breathing on the other end. ‘Hi,’ she said at last. Her voice a strained murmur.

  ‘You all right?’

  No answer.

  ‘What did the hospital say?’

  Long pause. ‘They said … doesn’t matter what they said.’

  ‘Concussion is what I heard.’

  She made a noise. ‘Yeah, that’ll do.’

  ‘Listen, this is my fault. I should’ve taken those papers off you.’

  He heard her sigh. ‘I’m not your responsibility, Garvie.’

  They listened to each other breathe.

  ‘About what happened,’ he said, ‘I’ve had a thought. I don’t know if you’re up for it, but—’

  In the same fragile undertone she interrupted him. ‘Garvie, I can’t see you just now.’

  He thought about that. ‘OK.’

  ‘I’ve got some thinking to do.’ Her voice was thin with pain.

  He thought about that too. ‘Understood,’ he said at last. ‘One question, though.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Last night. Was it Damon?’

  There was a long silence, unbroken.

  ‘Doesn’t matter then,’ Garvie said at last. ‘But listen. Promise me one thing. If he contacts you, be very careful, all right?’

  ‘You really think he’s going to want to talk to me?’

  ‘Yeah, I think that’s exactly what he’ll want to do.’

  He could hear her thinking about that. She said, ‘You don’t need to worry.’

  ‘OK. Last thing.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m thinking of you.’

  She said nothing, and he hung up and lay on his bed unmoving for another half an hour. His mother came in again. She was dressed to go out in blue denim jeans, grey suede booties and flowing lilac top.

  ‘You conscious?’ she said.

  He just blinked.

  ‘You talking at all?’

  ‘I can talk. I’ve been talking since I was two.’

  She stepped into his room, looking around warily at the heaps of stuff everywhere.

  ‘But maybe not right now,’ he added.

  She was looking at him with a troubled expression, challenging about the eyes, firm about the mouth. He knew that expression. That expression was his old friend.

  ‘I been watching you, Garvie Smith,’ she said. ‘It’s important we talk.’

  He said, ‘If it’s about Amy, you’re right, no need to say it.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I messed up. She got hurt. I know you’ve heard about it.’ She said nothing, and he glanced at her. ‘Aren’t you going to bawl me out?’

  ‘What am I, your conscience?’ she said. ‘You’re going to have to get used to bawling yourself out. No. I wanted to talk to you about … well … about something else.’

  Again she hesitated. Her manner was strangely unsure; it made him nervous, and before she could speak again he said, ‘OK, but I’ve got to shift now. Maybe later?’ Getting off his bed, he started to get dressed.

  ‘What do you mean? Where are you going?’

  ‘Out. Like you,’ he added.

  ‘You’re not going to see Amy Roecastle, are you?’

  ‘What, are you my conscience? No, as it happens I’m going to see Smudge. He’s got something for me.’

  She was about to say something else, but her phone rang and she retreated into the living room, where he heard her talking in a murmur. She was still talking a few minutes later when he went past her on his way out. He said nothing, she said nothing either, though their eyes met; his last sight of her was a distracted gesture of goodbye as she stood by the kitchen window, lit up lilac and blue in the last of the sunlight, smiling into her phone.

  Up at ‘Four Winds’ Amy Roecastle huddled under a blanket in the black-and-white living room, watching the news on television. On the side of her head was a glazed lozenge of black medical gauze where the stitches had been put in. The colours of the bruise under her left eye ran in blue and yellow streaks as far as her temple.

  Ten o’clock. Her mother was out late at a committee meeting and she was alone in the house. Biting her lip, she fidgeted with her phone until she couldn’t stand it any more and, for the twentieth time that day, speed-dialled the familiar number and listened again, stony-faced, to the voicemail message.

  ‘Damon,’ she said. ‘Call me now. Please. We have to meet. Damon.’

  She sat there, biting her lip, phone in her hand.

  She tried to remember what had happened the night before. Her memory was confused and incomplete. As in a dream, she retained only a few disconnected images – the momentary impression of a man in a maroon hoodie glimpsed over her shoulder, a swirl of pavement under her feet as she ran. Apparently she’d called Garvie, though she
had no memory of that.

  She called Damon again, staring grimly at the phone as it went through to voicemail, and threw it onto the coffee table.

  Sitting there with her fingers pressed into her eyes, she tried not to think about Garvie Smith, not to remember what they’d told her at the hospital, fixing her mind instead on what she needed to know.

  Forty minutes later her phone buzzed, and she grabbed it and read the text.

  NEW PHONE BABE BE OUTSIDE SAME PLACE IN TEN.

  For a second she couldn’t move. When she called the number it went straight through to voicemail, and she dialled again and the same thing happened. The third time she spoke:

  ‘Damon, pick up. Damon! What’s going on? Why have you got a new phone? I’ve been trying to call you all afternoon. I need to talk to you about last night.’

  No answer.

  Having stood up without realizing it, she found herself looking out of the window down the darkened driveway, peering from one side to another. It was a mild night. Any sort of movement made her head throb, but she got her jacket and went out of the house, wincing, walked down the drive and through the silently sweeping gates.

  In the deserted turn outside she hesitated. It was still and very quiet. Dark. The tree-crowded side of the lane was solid darkness, the garden of her neighbour’s house a confusion of mottled shadow. Beyond was the bus shelter. Her mouth was dry.

  She was frightened, but also determined.

  ‘Damon!’ she called out. ‘Stop playing games!’

  There was no answer from the bus shelter.

  Slowly she walked towards it, along the side of her neighbour’s garden, past her neighbour’s driveway.

  ‘Damon!’ she called again, more hesitantly, and there was a movement in the shadows inside the shelter, and she stopped as he came out quickly, and walked towards her in that jerky way of his, head down, hood hung over his face, fists clenched, moving fast and twitchy, and she gave a small cry as he tacked up close without a word and at last pulled the hood off his face.

  She stared at him in horror.

  ‘What have you done?’ she whispered.

  ‘It’s not what I’ve done,’ Garvie said to her. ‘It’s what you’ve done.’

  She couldn’t speak. He was wearing a yellow beanie with a HEAT logo. She couldn’t take her eyes off it.

  ‘Sorry to text you like that,’ he said. ‘But I had to see you. Listen, you don’t have to tell me any of the emotional stuff. All that’s your business.’

  Something about the way he spoke told her that he knew everything at last, and she looked at him with sudden tenderness.

  ‘Just tell me the facts,’ he said. ‘You’ve been in touch with Damon all this time, haven’t you? That’s how he knew where we were last night.’

  She hesitated, frowned, finally nodded.

  ‘Tell me.’

  She began to explain. She’d been letting Damon know what had been going on, giving him the chance to stay a step ahead. First, at Red ’n’ Black. After they’d been to PJ’s, she’d called him to tell him what PJ had said about Joel. Later, when Garvie said he was going back to Pirrip Street, she’d called again to warn him in case he’d moved back there.

  ‘And when we went to Imperium?’

  Yes, she’d told him about their visit to Imperium too. Soon as she knew where they were going. ‘I didn’t know why we were going there.’ She paused. ‘But I think Damon did.’

  There was a silence. A breeze passed through the trees at the side of the road.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. Her eyes began to shine. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me why?’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘I can work it out for myself.’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it,’ she said, when she could, ‘who you fall in love with?’ She wiped her face. ‘I had to try to protect him. But also, and you’ve got to believe me, I thought he was innocent. At first.’

  ‘What do you think now?’

  She bit her lip, glanced away. ‘All the things you’ve found out. He couldn’t explain them to me. And he’s changed. These last few days he’s been smoking that strong stuff. He’s got paranoid, desperate.’

  ‘And violent.’

  ‘Yeah. And anyway’ – she glanced up at the beanie he was wearing – ‘now you’ve found that.’

  He took it off and she shrank away a little. He said, ‘He was wearing it that night, wasn’t he? When he showed up here.’

  She nodded. ‘When he gave the gun to me.’ She smiled. ‘Gave me his hat too so I wouldn’t get wet. He was sweet like that.’

  ‘Smudge found the beanie where you hid it in the outhouse. You must have known straightaway what it meant.’

  She bit her lip. ‘I saw it on my newsfeed soon as Damon left. This guy in Market Square saying he’d seen the victim sitting outside the Ballyhoo with a guy wearing a HEAT beanie.’

  ‘So it put Damon right there with Joel at the time he was shot. They were having it out, a crisis meeting. I guess it didn’t go too well.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Mr Angry and Mr Frightened. Then the riot. And it kicked off between them.’

  She made a noise. Garvie had never heard anything like it before. It sounded like crowd noise, a deep groan of indefinable emotion, and he caught her and held her while she wept.

  At last she stepped away from him.

  ‘It’s over,’ she said. ‘Everything. I can’t defend him any more. I don’t want to. Not after last night. Not after everything else. But listen to me now.’

  He said quickly, ‘You don’t have to explain what you did.’

  ‘I want you to know. You’re right: he was so frightened. Looking over his shoulder the whole time like he expected someone to come out of the shadows after him. He was saying stuff, gabbling. “It’s mental down there.” “I messed up, babe, messed up big-time.” He was shivering like a dog he was so frightened. And then he said, and this is what I’ll remember for the rest of my life, “I ain’t got anyone else, babe, no one but you.” And he looked at me, and I knew that it was true. Completely true. So I took the gun, and he told me he loved me, and he walked off down the lane.’

  The darkness of the road under the trees seemed to surge a little about them and settle slowly again to stillness.

  Garvie said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  She said, ‘So understand. It was a mistake to take the gun. But I took it because he needed me to. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not ashamed of it either.’ She looked at him. ‘Now do what you have to do, Garvie Smith. Tell Singh. But remember, please, remember how scared he’ll be. And stop him from doing something stupid to himself.’

  They parted at the gates. For a moment they stood there looking at each other.

  As the gates began to close he said, ‘You going to be all right?’

  But there was no time for her to reply before the sweeping gates shut between them.

  44

  He walked home. Along the picturesque tree-shadowed Froggett lanes, past elegant villas tucked up behind their comfortable brick walls, down the long swoop of road from Battery Hill, by hedgerows increasingly tatty as he descended to the ring road, past the darkened hulk of the car plant moored in the middle of the deserted car park, through the overlit underpass autographed in graffiti, and finally into Five Mile, inert and dreamless under a scrappy night sky. He went through the gap in the mesh fence at the end of Driftway, and into Eastwick Gardens. Midnight. Scents of tarmac and privet.

  He thought about the hat. His uncle would test it for signs that Damon had worn it, and possibly other things, nitrates maybe from the firing of the gun.

  He thought about Singh and what he would say.

  He thought about Damon, still at large, but now about to be the subject of a much bigger manhunt, increased news coverage, the whole circus.

  And he thought about Amy and what she’d done, and how much she was still in love with Damon.

  Hesitating at the lobby door, he wondered if h
e should call Singh straightaway, but it was past midnight, so he put away his phone and let himself into the building, and went quietly up the dark stairway to his flat.

  He set his alarm for early next morning so he could catch Singh at the beginning of the day and lay down on his bed in his clothes and listened to the night-time silence around him. He thought maybe he’d call Amy one last time but he didn’t know what he’d say; besides, he was tired. The last image in his mind was her face, that last glimpse of her as the gates closed, and then he was asleep.

  His phone woke him. He groped around and found it in the dark. Three o’clock. Unknown caller. For a second he was confused, then it fell into place, it was the most obvious thing that could happen, and he put the phone to his mouth and spoke.

  ‘Where are you, Damon?’ He heard a faint swirly noise, like a breeze, somewhere in the background. ‘Don’t think about it,’ Garvie said. ‘Just tell me where you are.’

  Damon said, ‘Can’t, man.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I only got a minute.’ There was crackle and interference, then Damon again, his voice harsh and slurry: ‘This is proper fucked-up. You know what?’

  ‘What?’

  There was silence.

  Garvie considered the silence.

  Damon said, ‘Got her text. It’s over. Thing is, I messed up.’

  ‘What did you do, Damon?’

  ‘That night in Market Square. It all got out of hand.’

  ‘What happened? We know you met Joel.’

  There was more crackling, then Damon’s voice came back. ‘I lost my head, man. You know what?’

  ‘What?’

  There was a long pause again. And again the same sound of a breeze somewhere.

  ‘Never trust no one,’ Damon said at last.

  ‘OK, Damon. Damon, listen to me. Before you go, just tell me this. Where are you?’

  ‘It’s my place. I’m going to miss it, man.’

  Garvie could hear him choking up.

  ‘Damon, stay calm.’

  ‘It’s no good any more. I can’t take it. What I rang for is …’