Running Girl (3 page)

‘Left!' Singh shouted at him. He wasn't sure if Jones knew his left from his right. ‘Towards the depot!' he added.

Jones vaulted over and disappeared, and Singh heard his footsteps thumping in the gravel path beyond. A few seconds later he scrambled over himself, losing his grip on the wet boards and falling heavily to the ground on the other side. Up again, he ran panting under the shelter of trees along the back fences of ‘Honeymead' and the other houses, scanning the undergrowth for signs of disturbance. But it was too dark; he couldn't even make out the broken fencing. Stopping to listen, he heard only his own ragged breathing. And then, very faintly, something else, up ahead. Footsteps. Someone running. He wiped the rain from his eyes and ran on again, faster now, on his toes, with maximum efficiency, down the path to where it bent towards Bulwarks Lane. He sprinted through a wicket gate onto the rough ground of the Marsh Fields, and came to a stop on the grassy humps of the empty common, looking around for a movement in the shadows. But there was nothing. Everything was suddenly still and quiet, except for vague rain noises in the leaves of the trees all around and his own panting. Out of the darkness rain fell on him whitely. He was too late. Whoever had been in the Dows' garden had disappeared.

Silently he turned and retraced his steps to the house.

Jones was there already, with nothing to report. He looked at him oddly and smirked. ‘Sorry, sir. It's slipped.'

Singh stared him down. ‘Get some light and check the garden,' he said. ‘Take a look at the broken fencing.' After Jones had gone, he adjusted his turban – ill-fitting bullet-proof police-issue – and wiped his face dry before returning to the conservatory, where the Dows were waiting, Mr Dow bitter, Mrs Dow terrified.

‘Why was there someone hiding in your back garden?' Singh asked. He didn't mean to sound accusing, it was just his manner.

‘How should I bloody know?' Mr Dow said.

Mrs Dow began to wail. ‘It's something to do with Chloe,' she said. ‘I know it is! Why is she doing this to me?' And she collapsed against her husband, weeping again.

Now it was half past midnight. Singh refused to be tired. Sitting stiffly upright at the table with Mr and Mrs Dow, he began once again to ask questions about Chloe. ‘What I need,' he said, ‘is a more detailed ID. A recent photograph, if you have one. A short description. What she was wearing. The teams will need it for first thing tomorrow.'

‘
Tomorrow
?' Mrs Dow's face crumpled. ‘Aren't you going to do something
now
?'

There was a moment when he thought he was going to lose his cool. But Inspector Raminder Singh never lost his cool. It was his trademark; one of the reasons why he was both so respected and disliked by his colleagues.

Mr Dow came back into the room with a photograph and handed it to Singh. As soon as he saw it he had the bad feeling again.

‘I see,' he said. He hesitated. ‘It would also help us,' he said carefully, ‘if you could tell me more about your daughter. What sort of girl is she?'

To his surprise, Mrs Dow did not burst into tears. She stared at him with loathing.

THE NEW DAY
dawned, still raining. All morning drizzle fell in a steady flicker from the heavy sky, hampering the police search as it fanned out through wet neighbourhoods into the waste ground and industrial parks at the eastern edge of the city. The car plant streamed, the ring road was a cloud of spray, and black puddles bulged in the gutters of the streets like oil from a spill. At Flat 12 Eastwick Gardens the windows steamed up in the kitchen, where Garvie Smith and his mother sat arguing about the night before. Mrs Smith had an inkling that her son had been out seeing his unsavoury friends, and Garvie was emphatically denying it.

‘I can't help it if you have a suspicious mind,' he said.

‘I have no such mind. I'm asking—'

‘What sort of mind do you think you have?'

‘Don't try to distract me. I want to know—'

‘Uncle Len thinks it's a suspicious mind.'

‘Uncle Len—' She stopped herself. ‘This has nothing to do with Uncle Len. Or my mind. I'm asking you. Did you go out last night? I know for a fact you didn't do any revision.'

She glared at him sitting at the table with his chin on his hands, looking difficult. It was not easy to argue with Garvie. He was unpredictable.

‘Well?' she said.

Before he could answer – if he was going to answer – the doorbell rang. Giving him a look that clearly suggested he should stay where he was, Mrs Smith left the kitchen, and at once Garvie got up and began to drift in that apparently idle way she hated towards his room. He hadn't quite reached it when he heard her return.

‘Garvie?'

He stopped when he saw the look of concern on her face.

‘There's someone here who wants to ask you some questions.'

A policeman in a turban stepped forward. He looked small standing next to Mrs Smith, almost dainty. There was nothing you could call an expression on his quiet face. But he looked at Garvie steadily, sizing him up.

‘What about?' Garvie said.

‘About last night.' The policeman's voice was quiet too, and careful, giving nothing away.

‘Yeah? What about last night?'

Garvie's mother frowned at him. Still standing, the policeman took out a notebook and leafed through it. Looking up, he said, ‘At eleven o'clock you were with a group of boys in the Old Ditch Road play area.'

(‘That's interesting,' Garvie's mother said.)

‘Says who?' Garvie said (avoiding looking at his mother).

The policeman looked at him silently for about a minute. Something new registered on his quiet face: a dislike of Garvie. No stranger to this expression in the faces of officials he encountered, Garvie looked back until, finally, the man lowered his face to his notebook again and read out half a dozen names, including Ryan ‘Smudge' Howell, Ben ‘Tiger' McIntyre and Liam ‘Felix' Fricker.

‘So?' Garvie said. ‘It's not illegal.'

The inspector's eyes hardened. After a moment he said, in a voice of barely restrained contempt, ‘Do you want to have a conversation with me about what's illegal?'

Garvie's mother opened her mouth. ‘Well, Inspector, I hardly think—'

He said, ‘We can do one of two things, Mrs Smith. I can conduct this interview with your son here, in my own way. Or we can all go down to the station.'

Garvie's mother's eyes narrowed, but she gave a brief nod.

‘Sit down,' the inspector said to Garvie.

Garvie sat in a slouch at the table, hands thrust deep in his jeans pockets, while the inspector continued to stare at him. Garvie knew what the man was doing. He was trying to intimidate him. Some policemen shouted and threatened. Some just stared. Singh was a starer.

Garvie stared back, coolly.

‘Perhaps, Inspector, you could explain what this is about,' Garvie's mother said.

‘A girl has gone missing.'

‘Missing?'

‘She left her house yesterday evening and didn't return. There's been no sign of her since.'

‘What girl?'

‘Her name is Chloe Dow.'

Mrs Smith put her hand up to her mouth. ‘Chloe, Garvie!'

A flicker of something crossed Garvie's face, then it was gone. He turned to his mother and frowned at her.

‘You know her?' the inspector said in his quiet, cold voice. It was a question, but it sounded like a statement.

They were both looking at Garvie now, his mother's face worried and cross, the inspector's face hard and accusing.

‘I know
of
her,' Garvie said at last. ‘She goes to my school. She's in my year. I see her, I talk to her. I don't
know
her.'

There was a silence.

‘Define “know”,' Garvie said.

Singh said nothing, just stared. It was easy to see what sort of a man he was. Uptight. Ambitious. The smudge on his turban suggested long hours, dedication. An exam passer, Garvie thought. A disciplinarian. A man disliked by his colleagues.

His mother didn't like him, either; he could tell that. Garvie settled himself back in his chair and waited.

The inspector said, ‘You're
acquainted
with her, then. And what sort of girl is she, in your opinion?'

‘Not the sort who disappears.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘You must have seen a photograph of her.'

Raising an eyebrow slightly, Singh said nothing.

‘Anyway,' Garvie added, ‘what's all this got to do with me?'

After explaining that Chloe had gone jogging and that Old Ditch Road was on one of the routes she might have taken, the inspector embarked on a lengthy series of questions about the night before. What time exactly had Garvie gone to Old Ditch Road? What route had he taken? What had he seen? Where had he run to when the police arrived? Mostly Garvie answered ‘Can't remember,' or simply shrugged. Once or twice he ignored the question.

Gradually, as the interview went on, Inspector Singh's quiet, careful voice became less quiet and careful.

‘Perhaps you can explain what you were doing at Old Ditch Road last night,' he said.

‘Perhaps you can explain the link between what I was doing and what's happened to Chloe,' Garvie replied.

‘Garvie,' his mother said, but mildly, ‘try to answer the inspector's questions.'

‘What's the point? They're the wrong questions.' He sat up and leaned forward, and looked directly at Singh. ‘How do you know she went jogging at all?'

‘We know.'

‘How?'

‘She left a note.'

‘How do you know she didn't just leave it to throw people like you off the scent?'

Singh said nothing. But his face tightened.

Garvie went on. ‘How do you know
she
left it? How do you know she left when you think she did? How do you know she didn't leave the note then change her mind?'

Singh remained impassive, but a muscle jumped in his left cheek.

‘
They're
the right sort of questions,' Garvie said. ‘Seems to me.'

After a moment's cold silence the inspector began to talk – perhaps a little faster than before – about the nature of police work, which was no doubt obscure to members of the general public – but Garvie immediately interrupted him with a casual wave of his hand. ‘Listen, man. I know all this already. My uncle works with the police. Forensics.' He looked at Singh and, pointedly, at the insignia on his sleeves. ‘High up,' he added.

Singh suddenly stood, and Garvie allowed himself a little smile. His mother gave him a quick, fierce look and he knew what was coming to him later. But it had been worth it.

Mrs Smith got to her feet. ‘I'm sorry we can't be of more help, Inspector,' she said.

For a moment the man stood there, perfectly still; then, without changing his expression, he thanked Garvie's mother for the opportunity of asking her son his questions.

‘By the way,' he added (his voice now as calm and quiet as at the beginning), ‘two grammes of cannabis were taken off Liam Fricker at Old Ditch Road last night.' Turning back to Garvie, he fixed him with that deliberate stare. ‘You told me what you were doing wasn't illegal. It was. It's my job to ensure you don't break the law. It's your mother's to explain why smoking weed is bad for you and I'll leave her to do that now.'

Then he turned and walked away, and Mrs Smith went after him to the door.

Garvie stayed where he was, staring at the kitchen table. He didn't like the way the conversation had ended. He'd been outplayed by Inspector Smudgy-Turban Singh. Hearing the front door close and his mother's footsteps coming back slowly and heavily across the living room, he braced himself.

There was a long silence. When he finally lifted his eyes she wasn't even looking at him. She was fiddling with the radio, a distracted look on her face. Quietly he got to his feet and began to drift towards his room in that apparently idle way that she—

He was halted by the local news coming on suddenly. Police were looking for fifteen-year-old Chloe Dow, a popular student at the Marsh Academy and a promising athlete, who had disappeared the night before.

His mother stood there listening, her hand up to her mouth and, despite himself, Garvie listened too.

Search teams were combing the east of the city and outlying land, the radio reporter said, hindered by the persistent rain. There were, as yet, no leads. Chloe had left her house at about 7 p.m. to go jogging and hadn't returned. No one had seen her, no one knew where she had gone. She'd just disappeared. Detective Inspector Singh of City Squad said they urgently needed to hear from members of the public who might have any information.

‘Pompous little man,' his mother said. ‘But oh, Garvie.' She let out a sigh. ‘
Chloe
.'

Turning to him, she gave her son a long quiet look.

‘What?' he said at last.

Gently she said, ‘You didn't tell the inspector you used to be her boyfriend.'

Garvie looked away towards the window. There was an expression on his face his mother hadn't seen for a long time and it took her a moment to recognize it. It wasn't the usual expression of blank boredom that she knew so well, but a hard, puzzled look – as if, for the first time in years, something had actually got under his skin and made him think.

He said something under his breath. It sounded like ‘Sex or money', but that didn't make sense.

‘Garvie?' she said.

But he was lost in thought.

WHAT SORT OF
girl was Chloe Dow? Not the sort of girl who disappears without trace.

Five feet six in her stockinged feet. Shoulder-length blonde hair, very straight and fine. Violet eyes. Beauty spot on the side of her pert little nose. Famous frontal development. She was far and away the most noticeable girl at the Academy. People noticed what she wore. She took care they did; at school she only needed to hitch up her regulation knee-length pleated skirt half an inch to turn everyone's head, including the teachers'. Outside school everything she put on made the maximum impact, as if her body instinctively knew how to make it all match and hang and fit together. People noticed the way she stood too, like an artist's model striking a pose. They noticed how she moved, weighty and floating, supple and taut, as if she walked everywhere in a sort of hush – the tense hush of boys watching her; the hush of mesmerized imaginations as they saw her crossing her legs in the dining hall, or stretching in provocative silhouette against the classroom window, or appearing round the corner of C Block and walking in that way of hers across the yard to the hall. She was an athlete and kept herself trim and firm. At lunch times and after school boys found themselves loitering by the track, where they might notice her glide round the corner of the bend towards them, all silk and shifting weight and blonde hair flying.