Running Girl (18 page)

Garvie gently removed his hand. ‘It's not straight, man. None of it. Specially that Friday night. And if it's not straight there's no point in looking at it straight. So we have to look at it crooked.'

Alex looked more confused than ever.

‘Listen. Take the simplest thing. She was out for a run, right?'

‘Right.'

‘Suppose she wasn't.'

Alex stared at him. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Suppose she was running for her life. There's a difference.'

Alex struggled to get his head round this. ‘But ...'

‘Suppose she was scared, Alex. Terrified. Had no one to turn to. No friends. No one she could trust.'

Alex muttered to himself: ‘No one to turn to.' Then he looked at Garvie. ‘Why scared?'

‘That's what we're trying to find out. So keep it together, man. And keep your voice down, yeah? Or we're only going to get into trouble.'

‘Trouble!' Alex turned from him. ‘I got trouble already.'

They split up, each working his way round the fence in the opposite direction, getting a feel for the place, trying to identify some of the stuff heaped up in the bungalow's garden.

For some reason it seemed foggier once Garvie was alone. He crept through nettles and cow parsley heavy with wet, between the fence and the edge of the wood, peering at the bungalow and occasionally pausing to look the other way into the whitened darkness of the trees. Twice he checked his watch. He'd told his mother he was spending all evening revising differential calculus at Smudge's and had promised to be back by ten. It was only five fifteen now. But he reflected for a moment that Alex wasn't the only one already in trouble. He shook off the thought and went on again.

Round the other side he met up with Alex again. The layout of the bungalow was easily guessable. Living room and kitchen at the front, two bedrooms and bathroom at the back. In the garden at the front of the house a path ran from the door to a gate, Alex said. Beyond that the school asphalt drive receded alongside the running track across the school playing fields to Bottom Gate and Marsh Lane.

‘There's another path,' Garvie said.

‘Where?'

‘At the back. Behind that piled-up brushwood there.'

In the fog a gap in the fence was just visible, and the beginning of a muddy path disappearing into the woods.

‘Well-trodden too,' he added. ‘What do you think he's been doing in the woods? Shall we take a look?'

But Alex suddenly grabbed his arm and pulled him down into a crouch. He pointed.

Round the side of the bungalow Naylor had appeared. He was wearing a red and yellow varsity jacket and carrying a blue motorcycle helmet. As the boys watched, he went over to a tarpaulin and threw it back from the moped underneath. He began to put on his helmet.

‘I need to know where that path goes,' Garvie whispered to Alex. ‘Can you do it for me?'

‘All right. But where are you going?'

He gestured towards Naylor. ‘Don't know yet.'

‘Careful, Garv. You said it. He's an oddball. Psycho, man.'

‘Yeah. But harmless. I hope. I just want to know where he's going.'

They touched knuckles, then Garvie was gone, slipping like a shadow along the fence and sprinting round the edge of the misty playing fields towards Bottom Gate.

The city was a vast pattern of light and shade. Once the neighbourhoods were left behind, it grew bigger and closed in. No parks or gardens here, just concrete, steel, glass and asphalt. Buildings grew taller, roads wider and busier. Even this early the lights were on in the windows of showrooms and shops and offices. Evening shadows deepened under flyovers and bridges, loomed overhead in the shapes of tower blocks. It was a maze, huge and complicated.

You can hide in a city. Hide a secret. But if you lose something in it, how can you hope to find it again?

Garvie sat in the back of the cab getting his breath back. He'd been lucky to find Abdul free at the rank. He'd only just climbed into his cab – to Abdul's mingled confusion and delight – when Naylor came whining past on his moped.

‘Garvie man, you go somewhere?'

‘Same place as that guy there,' he'd said. ‘Stick to him, Abdul, don't lose sight of him.'

Abdul had looked at him nervously in his rear-view mirror but said nothing as he pulled away after the moped.

They followed Naylor down Pollard Way to the dual carriageway and into the rush of commuter traffic. Twice Garvie thought they'd lost him, but each time the moped came weaving back into view.

‘There he is, Abdul!'

‘I see! He go quick quick.'

‘That's right. Like he's late for something,' Garvie said.

Naylor exited at the Market Square turn-off with Abdul right behind, and they moved slowly together round the crowded one-way system. Garvie kept low in his seat. It was unlikely Naylor would spot him but the man was a watchful type. Watchful and calculating. All week Garvie had been keeping an eye on him and he was sure Naylor knew it; he had the furtive, sullen expression of a man who feels himself observed. A man with a secret.

Looking out of the cab window, Garvie thought again that the city was the perfect place to bury a secret in.

‘Garvie man?'

‘Yes, Abdul.'

‘I go police like you say.'

‘Good. Were they grateful?'

Abdul shook his head in puzzlement. ‘They people
très très
confuse,' he said at last.

‘You got that right.'

The moped turned sharply into Littlegate, and Abdul concentrated on keeping up with it. Garvie sat thinking in the back. Occasionally he leaned forward and peered out of the window to check his bearings. The dome on top of the theatre. The clock tower of St Leonard's cathedral. The neon sign of Maximilian's. They rattled past the last of the diners and wine bars of Market Square, turned into Well Street, back down Park, and headed towards the business district, Naylor just ahead of them. Here, suddenly, it was quieter. The streets darkened as they drove between the tower blocks. It was nearly six o'clock and most of the people who worked in the offices, institutes and civic buildings had already left for the day. At night the whole area was a dead zone: empty tower blocks, vacant car lots, construction sites of waste ground and the occasional old building, usually decrepit, left over from an earlier era. Traffic was light, the pavements almost deserted. A hush hung in the streets.

Abdul gestured through the window and looked puzzled. ‘Is all shutting,' he said. ‘Men go home. Is strange this man come.'

Garvie nodded. ‘He's a strange man.'

The moped turned into a side street and turned again into a small car park.

‘Here,' Garvie said. ‘Just after the corner.'

Abdul turned to him. ‘I wait?'

‘No, man, it's OK. I don't know how long I'm going to be.'

Abdul frowned. ‘You OK?'

‘It's cool. Catch you later.'

For a few moments after Abdul pulled away Garvie stood round the corner of a high-rise watching Naylor lock up his moped. He'd parked it in front of an old building, once perhaps a library or town hall, grand on a small scale, with a colonnade of columns at the front, a sweep of steps to the front door and big square windows. Now it looked shabby and functional, lost among the glass-and-steel tower blocks that dwarfed it. But unlike them it was still lit.

As he finished securing his moped, Naylor glanced up and Garvie ducked behind the wall. When he peered round again, the man was already hurrying up the steps of the building and a second later had disappeared through the door.

Garvie glanced at his watch. Just before six. He ran across the car park and up the steps of the building. A sign by the entrance said:
CENTRE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE PARTNERSHIPS
. Peering through the glass panel, Garvie watched Naylor talking to a receptionist behind a desk. The receptionist looked at her watch and said something sharp. She held up an appointments book, pointing to something in it, and Naylor looked away, scowling. Then a man in a navy-blue uniform appeared and escorted him through a security door at the far side of reception.

Garvie considered his options.

He could wait. He could go home. Or ...

He violently rubbed his hair and burst in through the door with a crash.

‘Sorry I'm late!' he said, panting. ‘Even later than Naylor! What room are we in this evening?'

Leaning against the receptionist's desk, he squinted down at the appointments book in front of her.

The receptionist narrowed her eyes. Garvie flashed her a smile and she shut the book.

‘Who are you?'

‘Friend of Naylor.'

‘Who's Naylor?'

Her voice was like ice.

A flicker of a frown passed across Garvie's face but he carried on: ‘Came in a second ago. I saw him. Just tell me what room and I'll catch him up.'

For a second the receptionist was silent. She was a grey-haired lady with a big old-fashioned jaw and a hard look.

‘I don't know who you are,' she said at last. ‘And I don't know what game you're playing. But you better leave. Now.'

She picked up the phone and held it threateningly in her fist, and Garvie wasn't quite sure if she was going to call security or smack him on the head with it.

‘All right, Conan,' he said. ‘Keep your hair on.'

He turned away. Behind him she let out an exasperated sigh, and Garvie heard her mutter, bitterly, under her breath, ‘Why can't they just leave them alone!'

It was cold outside. A wind was blowing in the steep channels between the high-rises. Garvie walked all round the Centre for Public Service Partnerships, thinking, before settling finally in a shadowy doorway in a side street with a clear view of the entrance. He looked at his watch again. Six thirty. A vague prickle of anxiety went through him: he didn't want to be late home. He really didn't want to be interrogated by his mother again. But there would be time to think about that later. Now he had other things to think about.

Like why the receptionist hadn't recognized Naylor's name.

Like why she'd echoed what Naylor had said before about leaving him alone.

Blowing on his hands, he stuffed them into his pockets and settled back to wait, an anxious look on his face.

AT SEVEN O'CLOCK
in the evening Detective Inspector Raminder Singh stood in his office, facing the corner of the wall. He was just about to perform the rehras. But the phone rang and he returned to his desk and sat down.

‘Singh.'

Most members of staff had already left the building and there was a hush throughout the fifth floor. In this empty silence Singh sat there listening to the voice on the other end of the phone.

‘Yes,' he said after a while. ‘Yes, I understand.' His voice was quiet, tense.

‘No,' he said. ‘I take responsibility. But it's my belief that the Porsche will prove to be—'

He was silent, and the silence of the building closed around him again.

‘Yes, sir,' he said, and a muscle jumped in his cheek.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘They arrived yesterday ... There have been some technical hitches. We're hoping this is the breakthrough we've— No, sir ... Yes, I do. Tonight. Tomorrow at the latest.'

He swallowed.

‘I understand my position. Yes ... No, I'm—'

He held the silent phone for a moment before replacing it, and glanced at his watch. Then he opened the dossier in front of him and flicked again through the transcripts of the interviews conducted at the Academy, which he'd finished re-reading a few minutes earlier.

He re-read the interview with MacArthur, then the interview with Alex Robinson, then sat there thinking.

After a while he picked up the phone and called Mal Nolan.

‘Mal?'

‘What's up?'

‘I have a question about the caretaker at the Academy. Naylor.'

‘Yes?'

‘Could he have been stalking Chloe?'

There was a silence while she thought. ‘It's possible. But I don't remember any of the kids saying Chloe talked about him.'

‘No. There's no reference to him in any of the school interviews. None. Chloe claimed lots of men were stalking her, but never Naylor. Perhaps that's what makes me think of him.' He paused. ‘Did you trace his past employment records?'

‘Still waiting for them to come through. It's odd. First they go missing from the school system, now Archives can't find them, either. But they did find a couple of things. I was just going to call you about them.'

‘What things?'

‘He's been pulled in as a material witness a couple of times recently. One was for breaking and entering. Never charged. Lack of evidence.'

‘Were the school informed?'

‘No. You know what the regulations are. But the second thing's more interesting. Last year Customs interviewed him in connection with a drugs bust. Again, not charged. Apparently he knew one of the guys who went down but that was about it.'

‘So?'

‘There was a note in the file about a previous incident. Seems Naylor has a temper. There's reference to a fight he got into. I followed it up, tracked down the guy.'

‘And?'

There was a pause.

‘He's still in a harness. Eighteen months later. Naylor nearly wrenched his head off.'

Singh was silent.

‘Did the man bring charges?'

‘No. Too terrified. Naylor's violent. Very.'

Singh thought.

‘Do we have anything linking Naylor to Pike Pond?'

‘No.'

‘Let's go back to those Froggett Woods residents who gave identifications before. Get a photo from the school. See if they remember ever seeing Naylor.'

‘Will do.'

After Singh had put down the phone he sat quietly gazing at the desk, gathering his thoughts. But almost immediately the phone rang again.