Running Girl (38 page)

Everything in
Leisure
was arranged in chronological order, and he flipped straight to the place for Friday the 13th, and there, neatly logged in a little plastic jacket, he found the thing that should never have been filed at all, that really ought to have been thrown away; the thing that proved neatness a fatal stupidity.

His hands were shaking so much he could hardly make the call.

‘Singh.'

‘Get here now. Honeymead, Fox Walk.'

‘Garvie? Is that you?'

‘Now. Immediately. Straight away.'

‘What are you talking about? Why are you whispering?'

‘Just get here, fast. I've found something new. It changes everything.'

‘Oh no. Not again. Don't do this, Garvie, I beg you.' Singh's voice was brisk, but there was no disguising his anger. ‘Listen to me, Garvie. If you have anything to say about any detail of the Dow case, you can ask your mother to arrange a meeting at your house, and I'll—'

‘It's the running shoes.'

There was a brief silence at Singh's end.

‘What about the running shoes?'

‘I know what happened. I can prove it. I've got the proof right here, in my hand.
Come on
, Singh. Trust me.'

Something in the tone of his voice must have been convincing. He could almost see Singh's face change at the other end of the phone. ‘I'm on my way,' the policeman said, and hung up.

Leaning against the desk, Garvie closed his eyes and allowed himself to relax for a moment. Then there was a click, very near, and he opened them to find Mrs Dow standing a couple of metres away in the doorway wearing a plump pink dressing gown and pink felt slippers, looking at him open-mouthed in astonishment.

‘Mrs Dow,' Garvie said politely.

She said nothing, staring at him blearily, her face crumpled with sleep. Confusion made her slow. She glanced behind her towards her bedroom and back at Garvie. ‘I'm not well,' she faltered. Then, anxiously: ‘I heard voices, Garvie.' She peered past him, as if to find someone else there.

He nodded. ‘I can explain.'

‘Explain ... why you're here?'

‘Explain ... about Chloe. But why don't we go downstairs and talk in the kitchen? If you're not feeling great I could make you a cup of tea.'

‘Explain what about Chloe?' she said, not moving, looking at him with the unpredictable blankness of a hysteric.

‘Well, it's a bit difficult.'

‘I want you to tell me about Chloe.'

‘OK.' He spoke soothingly, as he might to a child. ‘I know how hard this has been for you, Mrs Dow. I know how much you've suffered. Every time the police say they've got it sussed it turns out they've made a mistake. But now I know what really happened.'

Lulled, she nodded her head. ‘Good,' she murmured. ‘Tell me.'

He only hoped he wouldn't get to the end before Singh arrived. Speaking in the same soothing voice, he said, ‘Do you remember the note?'

‘Note?'

‘The note Chloe left on the living-room table, telling you she'd gone for a run? It said:
Gone for a run Back 7.30 p.m.
You remember that.'

She nodded.

‘Well, there was other stuff written on the paper too: jottings and doodles. A list of ingredients for making chocolate brownies. Some maths revision. A reminder to pick up her white jacket from the cleaner's.'

A sad smile appeared very briefly on Mrs Dow's face. ‘I bought that jacket for her. For her fifteenth birthday.'

He nodded sympathetically. Keeping his voice as low as possible, he went on.

‘Well, she picked the jacket up on the Wednesday of that week. Wednesday was the day she took those brownies in to school too, and it was Wednesday she had the maths test she was revising for. So, you see, all those doodlings and jottings on the piece of notepaper must have been written
before
Wednesday. Which is interesting.'

‘Why?' Mrs Dow was listening more closely now, her head cocked on one side, her eyes smaller and harder. Garvie began to wonder how long it would take for Singh to arrive.

‘Because,' he went on, ‘it made me think,
What if the bit about the run was written before Wednesday too?
Everything was written in the same black felt-tip pen; it could easily have been written all at the same time. And, in fact, it turns out that everything in the note was written on ... Monday.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘Chloe left the note when she went out for a run on Monday night. And when she got back she threw the note away, in the living-room waste-paper basket probably.'

She gazed at him for a long time, and he began to think she could see it all. But she couldn't.

‘I still don't understand,' she said. ‘It was on the living-room table when Mick and I got back from the Centre on Friday.'

Garvie took a deep breath. By now he was listening out all the time for the sound of Singh's car.

‘I can explain that too. Unless you'd like a cup of tea first.'

‘No,' she said. ‘I want you to explain it.'

Very carefully, Garvie went on. ‘On Friday Chloe had a problem. There were two – no, three – men bothering her. You already know about the caretaker at school and Darren Winder at the casino. Friday afternoon Chloe was trying to sort things out. She was scared. She didn't know what to do. After lunch she left school and went to see Jess. You know Jess.'

‘Yes, she's a little cow.'

‘Well, it didn't do Chloe any good seeing her, so she left and went to see Alex.'

‘I know him too. He's no good.'

‘That didn't work, either, so ... she came to see me, at school.'

Mrs Dow smiled. ‘She always liked you, Garvie. I liked you too. Before all this.'

He said, very carefully, ‘But I didn't know what Chloe's trouble was, so seeing me didn't do her any good, either.' He paused. ‘I'm sorry about that.'

‘Don't worry,' Mrs Dow said automatically. ‘We can't know everything, can we?'

Garvie went on, slowly. ‘She came home then. About half past four. She'd decided what she was going to do. She was going to pick up her bank card, which she'd left here, and go out to the shops to buy some new running shoes. But while she was here, before she could go out, she met him.'

‘Who?'

‘The other man.' He paused and looked at her sadly. He swallowed. ‘The man who killed her. He should have been at work,' he said. ‘But he was here.'

She remained staring at him, her head cocked on one side, her eyes so small he could hardly see them, and before she could say anything else he went on, in the same quiet voice.

‘After he'd killed her he didn't know what to do. I mean, here he was, in the house, in the middle of a Friday afternoon, with a dead girl and no excuse. But he saw the note that Chloe had thrown away on Monday lying in the bin and he had an idea. He smoothed it out as best he could and left it on the living-room table, to make it look like Chloe was out for a run. Then he went upstairs and got Chloe's running kit and put it on her. But there was a problem.'

Mrs Dow was looking at him now as if he were a person in a dream. The street outside was completely quiet and he cursed Singh's slowness.

‘What problem?' she asked.

‘The running shoes. She didn't have any. He could have panicked then. But he didn't. He hid Chloe's body – in the garage is my guess – and went out to buy some new shoes from the sports shop in the centre. And later in the evening, when the coast was clear, he put the shoes on Chloe's feet and drove her body out to Pike Pond and dumped her in the water.'

She was so still, stood there staring at him, he couldn't tell if she was breathing or not. She said, very quietly, ‘What are you telling me?'

‘That when you got home on Friday and thought Chloe was out for a run, she wasn't. She was here, in the house. Already dead.'

‘Already dead?'

‘Yes.'

‘But ... who killed her?'

He swallowed. ‘The other man. The man who'd been ... bothering Chloe.'

‘Who's that?' Mrs Dow whispered.

Garvie couldn't delay any longer. He said, ‘Your husband. Mr Dow. I'm sorry.'

She was perfectly calm. He watched her put the thought in her mind and test it out.

‘But he
was
at work,' she said after a moment.

Garvie shook his head.

She continued to think, calmly, quietly, and there was a moment when he thought it was going to be OK. But only a moment. He'd never seen anyone have hysterics before. Her head began to shake from side to side. She made wild, dithering movements with her arms and moaned like a beast.

Garvie tried to calm her but she shook him off.

‘Liar!' she screamed. ‘Liar!'

She staggered backwards onto the landing, screaming, and Garvie followed at a distance, pleading with her to be quiet. As he went he glanced at his watch, and again cursed Singh for taking so long. Mrs Dow threw her arms from side to side and rolled her eyes. She kicked off her slippers, and her dressing gown came undone and showed her nightdress, large and rucked, swinging around her.

‘I'm sorry,' Garvie cried. ‘But it's true. I can prove it. Look, Mrs Dow! This is the receipt for the running shoes he bought at the Centre. He filed it away, just as you said he always did.'

She snatched the receipt from him and waved it in the air without looking at it. She screamed once, fell silent, and advanced on him, her face distorted with fury. And at that moment a car drew up on the driveway outside and they both stopped, listening.

With a sigh of relief Garvie said, ‘That's Inspector Singh, Mrs Dow. He can explain it to you.'

‘Inspector Singh?'

‘I phoned him. He can explain everything.' He smiled at her reassuringly, and called down, ‘Singh! Door's open! We're up here!'

There was the sound of the front door opening and closing and footsteps on the stairs.

She was quiet now, waiting.

‘It's going to be OK,' Garvie said to her softly. ‘You'll see. I'm so sorry about what happened. But the inspector will explain. Here he is.
At last
.'

And they turned together to look towards the top of the stairs. The sound of footsteps came closer, and after a moment, round the corner of the banisters came Mr Dow. He stood at the end of the landing in his paint-spattered overalls and tool-belt, looking back at them silently.

‘MICK!' MRS DOW
cried in ecstasy. ‘
Mick!
'

Without hurrying, he came along the landing and she collapsed into his arms, and he held her up, looking at Garvie evenly over the top of her head.

‘It's OK, love,' he said to his wife. ‘Hush now.'

‘But Mick, you don't understand, Mick.'

‘Don't try to talk. You're not well, you know you're not. I came back to see how you were. I'm just on my way to another job.'

She pushed her face against the bib of his overalls and made soft weeping noises.

‘She's not herself,' he said to Garvie.

‘Mick,' she said once more, and held him tightly.

‘Well,' Garvie said, ‘I'll leave you two love birds in peace. Thing is, I've got this maths exam, so I'll just—'

Mr Dow stepped across him and blocked his way. ‘I don't know why you're here,' he said in his slow, flat voice.

Before Garvie could speak Mrs Dow reared up out of her husband's arms and said, ‘Lies! He's been telling me lies.'

Mr Dow tried to calm her, keeping his eyes on Garvie. ‘Shush,' he said. ‘Don't be silly now.'

‘Lies about you,' she insisted.

He held her again, smoothing her disordered hair with one hand, and at last said, in the same flat, slow voice: ‘What lies?'

Confusedly she talked – about Chloe, about the jacket she'd taken to the dry cleaner's, and the note in the waste-paper basket, and the running shoes bought that evening at the centre. ‘He said there were three men,' she said, gulping hard. ‘
Three
, Mick!
Bothering
her – and I know what that means!'

He pressed her face down to his chest again and tried to quieten her. ‘Shush,' he said. ‘What are you talking about?'

‘Lies about the running shoes!' she shouted, rearing up again. She waved her hand holding a bit of paper in his face. ‘Lies about where you filed the receipt!'

‘Hush, love,' he said again. ‘Please. You'll only make yourself worse. It's all nonsense, you know it is.' He held her tightly, murmuring quietly to her, trying to calm her down, keeping his eyes all the time on Garvie – until, after a minute or more, in the middle of her confused talking, he made a sudden angry movement, as if he couldn't bear her hysteria any more, and Mrs Dow fell forward onto the carpet and lay at their feet.

He put the claw hammer neatly back in his tool-belt, and stood looking at Garvie.

Garvie looked down at Mrs Dow and saw blood on the carpet by the back of her head. ‘You shouldn't have done that,' he said quietly, carefully keeping the horror out of his voice. ‘That's going to be a really hard stain to get out,' he added. But the horror remained.

Mr Dow said nothing. He began to breathe heavily, the only sound in the hush of the house and the quietness of the deserted cul-de-sac around them. There was no way past him downstairs. In the silence there was a small intrusive noise, and Garvie took out his phone and just had time to see a text from Singh reading
Stuck in traffic
before Mr Dow stepped forward with unexpected speed and knocked it violently out of his hand.

‘Careful now,' Garvie said, taking a step backwards. ‘You wouldn't want to break it, would you?'

Mr Dow looked down at the phone on the carpet and stamped on it heavily in his workman's boots, and there was the smothered crunch of smashed plastic.