Running Girl (17 page)

When Garvie and his mother arrived, Uncle Len was up in his study with a work colleague. Downstairs in the living room Aunt Maxie got Garvie's mother an apricot fizz, and Garvie a Dr Pepper, and they all settled on the old, comfortable chairs in the living room.

‘Garvie's brought some studying to do after tea,' his mother said.

‘Good for you, Garvie,' Aunt Maxie said.

Garvie didn't say anything. He was staring at the coffee table.

‘Lost in thought,' Aunt Maxie said. ‘Garvie?'

They looked at him sitting there in a trance, and Aunt Maxie giggled. ‘What can he be thinking about so hard?'

‘Best not to know,' his mother said. She tsked. ‘One day that boy'll go too far.'

‘Something serious. Look at him. He can't even hear us talking about him. What can it be?'

‘Complex numbers,' Garvie said, without taking his eyes off the table.

‘Oh.'

With a suspicious glance at her son, Garvie's mother asked Aunt Maxie about the new local convenience store, and they settled into a conversation about the scandalous rising prices of food.

Garvie carried on thinking.

a + bi
, where
i
has the property
i
²
= −1. The product of a real number and an
imaginary
number. You don't compute complex numbers, you
rotate
them. You move them into an imaginary dimension and the answer is an unexpected jolt from the blue.

‘Garvie?
Garvie?
'

He looked up at his aunt. ‘Alex is lying,' he said.

His aunt fixed him with a bright, uncomprehending smile. ‘Excuse me?'

‘Where else would she go?'

His mother asked sharply, ‘Where else would
who
go?'

He glanced at her sideways, focused and looked shifty. ‘No one in particular,' he said, draining his Dr Pepper and getting to his feet.

‘Where are you going?'

‘To see Bojo. Is that OK?'

‘It's OK,' Aunt Maxie said. ‘But don't wake him if he's asleep.'

Garvie went up the stairs and along the landing, and was just going past the study, where his uncle was working late, when he heard a voice from inside.

It wasn't just any voice. It was the voice of Detective Inspector Raminder Singh.

It was also a surprise. Very naturally Garvie stopped. Briefly, he glanced back in the direction of his mother, and – momentarily – the thought of his recent promise not to interfere in ‘all that nonsense' came into his mind. But inside his uncle's study he heard Singh say the words ‘Chloe Dow', and the moment was quickly gone. Besides, if anyone was interfering here it was surely Singh. He was interfering with Garvie's uncle's tea time. Certainly it wasn't Garvie's fault if he happened to overhear what was being said in his own uncle's study. Although, in fact, he couldn't quite make it out. So, very naturally, he tiptoed forward and put his ear to the crack of the door.

‘No traces at all?' Singh was saying.

‘None,' his uncle replied.

‘Alcohol?'

‘No.'

Singh made an exasperated noise.

There was a pause. Garvie heard his uncle say, ‘Raminder, are you OK? You look ... tired. I know what it's like, you know. The stress. Don't let it destroy you.'

Singh said something in a low voice and Uncle Len sighed.

‘What about this here?' Singh asked, brisk again.

‘Ah, that.' His uncle began to explain something, and Garvie pressed his ear closer to the crack.

They were now talking in low voices about technical matters. Then there was another pause. His uncle said, ‘So what's all this about a breakthrough, Raminder?'

Garvie pushed his ear very hard against the door crack. That was his mistake. The door suddenly swung open and he staggered forward into the room.

HIS MOMENTUM CARRIED
him almost to the edge of the desk, where he fell and lay in a crumpled heap looking up at his uncle and Inspector Singh, their faces cartoonish with surprise.

‘Have you found her old running shoes then?' Garvie said from his position on the floor.

Uncle Len recovered sufficiently to frown at his nephew. ‘I apologize,' he said to Singh.

Singh said nothing.

Getting to his feet, Garvie said, ‘Maybe you haven't. Alex doesn't have them. You can close that line of enquiry.'

Still Singh said nothing. His face was expressionless.

‘Jess Walker doesn't have them, either.'

Singh just looked at him.

‘Shall I tell you who does? Or is it more fun if I let you work it out for yourself?'

Uncle Len stepped forward. ‘Garvie!' He apologized again to Singh, who stood there silent and unmoving.

‘I suppose,' Garvie went on thoughtfully, ‘that you're pursuing other lines of enquiry. Now you know what Chloe looked like on Thursday night you'll have been re-running all the CCTV footage from Market Square.'

Now Singh's eyes widened just a little. Enough.

‘I mean,' Garvie went on, ‘all that black hair, that make-up, those proper grown-up clothes. You're looking for a different woman now, right?'

There was a pause then as the two men looked at him.

Uncle Len spoke. ‘How do you know all this, Garvie? What have you been doing?'

Garvie shrugged. ‘None of that's as important as the Porsche. Eh, Inspector? Assuming, of course, you got that far.'

This was too much for Uncle Len. ‘Garvie! Go downstairs. I'll be down in two minutes and we'll talk about this then.'

Garvie said, ‘But—'

‘Go on,
now
.'

At last he turned to go and Singh spoke for the first time. ‘Wait.'

They all stopped where they were.

‘What makes you think the Porsche exists? No one else thinks there's a Porsche involved. Any more than all the other luxury cars she fantasized about.'

Garvie grinned. ‘It's obvious. You've heard what she used to say. “It's so comfy riding in a Porsche. It's so quiet. Everything matches.”
Everything matches
. That's not the sort of thing Chloe would make up. That's the sort of thing she'd
notice
.'

Singh looked at him thoughtfully.

‘She was a girl who liked everything to match,' Garvie said. ‘Like her running shoes and running kit. Anyway,' he added, ‘I assume you've found the car by now. I mean, you have the methodology, you have the men, what's to stop you?'

Singh said nothing.

‘Besides, it's right under your nose. Big, big man. Big, big money.'

Uncle Len frowned at him again. Singh's face was a blank but a muscle twitched in his cheek.

He said, ‘You're referring to Mr Winder, the proprietor of the Imperium casino, where I saw you two nights ago.'

Uncle Len let out a grunt of astonishment and Garvie avoided looking at him.

‘That line of investigation is closed,' Singh said.

‘You really need to reopen it.'

‘I'm not in the habit of wasting police time. In a case like this there is no time to waste.'

Garvie said passionately, ‘All you have to do is check the décor, man. It's not hard. See if the upholstery matches the trim, the trim matches the dash. You can do that, can't you?'

Now Uncle Len, who had been listening to the conversation with increasing bewilderment, stepped forward and said angrily to Garvie, ‘That's it now. This is getting out of hand.'

‘Isn't it? And time's short, as the inspector says.'

Uncle Len had opened his mouth but Singh put his hand on his arm and the pathologist fell silent. Regarding Garvie with a long, cold look, Singh took a card out of his pocket and handed it to the boy.

‘There comes a point,' he said at last, ‘when you have to cease to concern yourself with all this. That point is now. I think your uncle will agree with me.' Uncle Len agreed with him.

‘You're a minor,' Singh went on. ‘I have a responsibility to ensure your safety and it's clear to me that you've been putting yourself at risk.' He indicated the card in Garvie's hand. ‘Details of our helpline. From now on I don't want to find you involving yourself ever again. Is that understood?'

Garvie glanced at the card.

He handed it back.

Singh looked at him. ‘I gave it to you because you might need it.'

‘I've memorized it. Anyway, it's not me who needs help. I'd give you
my
card, only I don't have any.'

His uncle said, ‘Go now, Garvie. Don't make it worse. The inspector's right.'

He went – as far as the door. Then he turned.

‘One word before I go. Buttons!'

Singh's eyes narrowed. Garvie avoided his uncle's furious look.

‘You know what I'm talking about, don't you? You clocked Alex. Fair enough. But, seriously, did you think a girl like Chloe had just one stalker? Famous Stars and Straps. You got the wrong end of the sandwich, man. It came from a different sleeve. There were two men in her garden that night!'

Then he was gone.

Tea time at Uncle Len's and Aunt Maxie's that evening was uncomfortable. They'd agreed not to talk about it any more but the unspoken issue of Garvie's behaviour hung heavily over them all. After the meal was finished he sat alone at the dining table with his books, revising in silence, frowned at periodically by his mother.

It was also uncomfortable for Inspector Singh, driving across the city back to the station. He took barely any notice of his surroundings. He drove, tight-faced and unblinking, down Pollard Way, past the car showrooms and furniture outlets on the dual carriageway, on to The Wicker past Fiesta and the Imperium, round the one-way system at Market Square, past downtown civic buildings now closed and darkened, all the way to the underground car park below the police station in Cornwallis Way – twenty-five minutes in all – in a state of rigid, unproductive mental concentration, his notebook open on the seat beside him, with two words scrawled in large, untidy writing across the page:
Second stalker?!

IT WAS FOGGY
on the Marsh Fields that Friday afternoon. Rain clouds hung low over the trees. Putting their hoods up against the damp breeze, they went slowly across the tufted grass, keeping their voices down. It had been raining and the ground was wet.

‘It's as bad here as up at Pike Pond,' Garvie said.

Alex grunted. ‘I know it.'

They laboured on. After a while Garvie said, ‘Thought you hadn't been up there for weeks.'

Alex stopped and bit his lip. ‘Yeah, well. I know what it gets like.'

In the quietness they listened to the muffled noises in the fog-bound trees – the call of a bird, the wind in the leaves – then went on again.

‘By the way,' Garvie said, ‘do you know if Chloe was doing any modelling those last few weeks?'

Alex shrugged.

‘Come on, you were stalking her.'

‘Maybe she was. But I never saw it.' He shook his head. ‘What sort of modelling?'

‘Nothing in particular. Doesn't matter.'

They clambered across a ditch, pushed their way through a holly hedge and at last reached the edge of a garden, where they stood half hidden in the shadow of a clump of hawthorns, peering around.

‘Looks like a dump to me,' Alex said.

‘You should talk. You live in a squat.'

‘Not my squat, though.'

‘Not his house, either. It's the school's.'

‘Yeah. But it's his mess.'

The caretaker's bungalow stood in a fenced-off area of grass in a corner of the school grounds abutting the Marsh Fields. It was a square brown-brick building with matching brown roof and small, oblong windows with municipal-green frames, like the buildings in parks for changing rooms and toilets. On the grass all round lay piles of building materials, abandoned appliances and general garbage. There were things under tarpaulin and half-opened boxes of stuff and rusty equipment lying everywhere.

‘Not exactly house-proud, is he?' Garvie said.

As he spoke a shadow appeared behind a small pebble-glass window and slid away.

‘He's in there. Better keep our voices down.'

Alex grimaced. ‘All right. But you got to tell me what we're
doing
here. First I got the police coming down on me with their questions, now you got me doing all this stuff. It's confusing me. I'm getting busted up just thinking about it.'

It was true. He looked jittery. All afternoon he'd been asking the same questions over and over.

‘Just tell me,' he said again. ‘Is this the man?'

‘Let's not jump to conclusions. All we know for certain is he's an oddball.'

‘Oddball?'

‘He has a shoe fetish, for one thing.'

Alex didn't smile. He caught hold of Garvie's arm. ‘Can't you tell me something straight for once?' His grip was hard but trembling, his voice harsh.