Running Girl

by Simon Mason

  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.

  4

  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.

  Garvie knew all this. He had briefly gone out with Chloe a year earlier. But that was something he didn’t want to remember, with that famous memory of his; not something he found easy to remember, least of all now.

  He frowned. City Squad’s chief constable had come on the radio, appealing like Inspector Singh for anyone who might have seen Chloe on Friday evening to come forward, and despite himself Garvie thought of her again.

  Chloe Dow had gone jogging and hadn’t come back. It was shocking. But it wasn’t interesting. No. The interesting thing was that no one had seen her. The most noticeable girl in the whole of Five Mile had gone running, and no one had noticed.

  ‘Garvie?’

  He turned to his mother at last and said angrily, ‘How many times do I have to tell you? I was not her boyfriend. I went out with her, like, twice. There’s a difference.’

  His mother watched him go, not idly but quickly, into his room, and after a moment she turned again to the steamed-up kitchen window, peering through it at the rainy sky beyond.

  ‘Please God they find her,’ she said again to herself. ‘Please God they find her soon.’

  5

  BUT IT WAS another two days before the police found Chloe Dow. On Monday morning, as dawn was breaking, frogmen from the Search and Rescue Team pulled her from Pike Pond, a small patch of brown water in farmland out by Froggett Woods.

  By ten o’clock the mobile units were in place and the scene-of-crime staff had sealed the area and erected a temporary morgue. A little way off, calm as ever but perhaps paler than usual after three largely sleepless nights, Inspector Singh stood waiting for the forensics pathologist to come and approve the removal of the body. He had been there since before six, examining the area, breaking off only to perform his morning prayers as the sun came up. Even now, as he waited, he continued methodically to make notes on what he saw.

  Pike Pond lay at the edge of the trees in a dip of waste ground littered with rusty agricultural machinery and tufted with marsh grass, boggy in places after the rain. Beyond, half hidden behind a tumbledown wall, were the abandoned buildings of an old farm rotting quietly in a concrete courtyard of weeds and rubbish. From this courtyard a rutted track ran out, circled in front of the pond and headed away across the fields to skirt the southern edge of Froggett Woods towards the ring road. Singh followed it with his eyes to the point where it disappeared. His best guess was that at about 7.15 p.m. on Friday, Chloe Dow had come running down this track. According to her parents it was one of her favourite routes. Generally she would run as far as the pond, turn onto the footpath at the edge of a field of rapeseed and circle back towards the sports club playing fields, Bulwarks Lane and home. Only, that Friday she didn’t make it home.

  Singh went down to the pond and walked round it once more, staring at the ground. Three days of heavy rain had obliterated whatever clues there might have been. The turf was still wet, springy and clean.

  He looked up when he heard his name called and returned to the track to greet the pathologist.

  Len Johnson, uncle to Garvie Smith, was a burly man, liked as much for his genial nature as for the forensics expertise he had amassed over twenty years of service at the hospital. To young officers, even those as stiff and uncompromising as Raminder Singh, he was an avuncular figure, friendly and encouraging.

  ‘Raminder.’

  ‘Leonard.’

  They shook hands and walked together to the tent where the body was.

  ‘You leading on this?’ Len Johnson asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your first?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good for you. I’m glad. Nasty one to start with, though. Major news item. You must be about the youngest DI ever to take on something as big as this here.’

  Singh’s face went blank. The pathologist had touched him on a sensitive spot. ‘My age is irrelevant,’ he said.

  ‘It wasn’t a comment on your lack of experience, Raminder. I was just—’

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ Singh said, ‘we should get started. We mustn’t lose any more time.’

  They went into the tent and the pathologist made a quick initial survey, Singh watching impassively as the big man’s hands moved lightly over Chloe Dow’s body. He leaned forward to peer at her clouded eyes, the tips of her white fingers. He touched her neck, very lightly, where the skin was discoloured.

  ‘Strangled?’ Singh asked after a while.

  ‘Probably. But you know how it is. Always more complicated than you think. We’ll run the tests and get something more accurate back from the lab later. For now, all we can do is move her to the morgue.’ He looked at Singh. ‘And get formal identification. Was she living with her parents?’

  ‘Mother and stepfather.’

  ‘The hardest bit.’ He put his hand on Singh’s shoulder. ‘Good luck.’

  Singh gave a little nod. They went out of the tent and walked back round the edge of the pond.

  Singh took out his notebook. ‘How long do you think she’s been dead?’ he asked. ‘Best guess.’

  ‘Very hard to say before the tests. The water complicates everything.’

  ‘Naturally. But in your experience?’

  They stopped, and Len Johnson knitted his brows. ‘When did she go missing?’

  ‘Seven o’clock Friday evening.’

  ‘I’d be surprised if she wasn’t killed almost immediately. Within an hour or two, say. The
rigor has more or less disappeared. In water that temperature I think we’re looking at fifty-five, sixty hours minimum.’

  Singh looked at his watch and wrote in his notebook.

  ‘But don’t quote me yet,’ Len Johnson said. ‘Wait for the results from the lab.’

  Singh said, ‘The chief is keen to make progress.’

  ‘Of course he is. But there’s keen and there’s stupid. Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart. Especially with our chief constable. Don’t quote me on that, either.’

  They shook hands again, and Singh watched him go back to his car to pick up his kit, then he turned and went his own way up the track again, looking around.

  News travels fast on the ground. By the middle of the afternoon people had started to arrive at Pike Pond to see if the rumours were true. Some were locals, elderly residents of the big houses on the other side of Froggett Woods; others were ghouls who had been following the investigation on the local news or drifters with nothing better to do on an overcast afternoon. School kids were among them, including Garvie Smith and his friends. Slipping out just before last lesson, they cycled up Bulwarks Lane and across the playing fields, left their bikes at the edge of a field of rapeseed and walked through marsh grass towards the pond. Inspector Singh and Leonard Johnson (and the mortal remains of Chloe Dow) were long gone by then; a few white-boiler-suited scene-of-crime officers remained, conducting their searches in and around the pond, and a couple of ordinary constables manned the police tape. Garvie and his friends made their way to a hillocky spot in the waste ground where they had a good view.

  ‘Can’t believe it,’ Smudge said quietly, looking down at the scene in despair. ‘We missed the body.’ He looked devastated, and a little bewildered, as if he’d just discovered he’d lost his dinner money.

  Felix raised an eyebrow. ‘You think they’d’ve let us take a peek at it?’

  Garvie stood to one side, not saying anything, while Smudge and Felix looked around.

  Smudge had a thought and brightened. ‘What do you think? I reckon he was hiding in that ruin over there. And when he sees her coming down that path he sneaks out and grabs her.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The mad rapist, whoever he is. Hiding over there in the rubbish, waiting for her.’

  Felix considered this, stroking his sharp face with his thin fingers. ‘Unless it’s a spur-of-the-moment thing. Say he’s up to no good, doing a deal or something, and she appears, accidentally, and takes him by surprise, and all of a sudden he’s trying to stop her screaming and he’s ripping her clothes off and ...’ He trailed away.

  Smudge looked over to Garvie. ‘Hey, Puzzle Boy! What’s your angle?’

  Garvie ignored him.

  Smudge and Felix began to talk about Alex, a friend of theirs. Alex had gone out with Chloe for a long time, longer than anyone else they knew, and when she split up with him a few months earlier he’d fallen apart. He’d more or less left home, acquired various bad habits and now spent all his time hiding in a doss in Limekilns, where no one visited him except some drifting strangers, a few buyers and Garvie Smith. He was never seen in school, where everyone knew he was still obsessed with Chloe Dow.

  ‘What’s he going to do when he hears about this?’ Felix said, and Smudge shook his head sadly.

  Less than half an hour later they found out. A battered Ford Focus with no wing mirrors came lurching down the farm track. Before it reached the rise above the pond the passenger door jerked open, and a boy wearing a red and yellow varsity jacket fell out and scrambled to his feet. He was big and black and he was crying. It was Alex. He stood there for a second with his hands in his wet hair, and screamed. Still screaming, he ran down the slope towards the water. The two constables only just managed to reach him as he went through the tape. He flattened one of them and they began to fight.

  ‘He’s not happy,’ Smudge said.

  Felix said, ‘Not sane, either.’

  They ran across the waste ground towards the spot where their friend was struggling. He was shouting abuse – most of it at the policemen, but some of it apparently at the dead girl. For a boy usually so gentle and passive he was in a horrible state of rampage. They heard him shout, ‘You stupid bitch, what did you do it for?’ then he took a hit and was on the ground with his face squashed into the turf, not saying anything any more. Before Smudge and Felix could get to him, he’d been subdued, and one of the policemen came under the cordon and forced them back. There was nothing for them to do then but give the copper a bit of abuse and retreat up the rise to watch Alex being led to a squad car and driven away.

  ‘His head’s not right,’ Felix said. ‘What does he think, she did herself in?’

  ‘Going to get himself done in if he’s not careful,’ Smudge said.

  After the excitement was over people began to leave, drifting away in twos and threes. By six o’clock most had gone.

  Smudge said he was off. Felix too.

  ‘You coming, Garv?’

  They looked at him and at each other. For hours Garvie had said nothing, standing apart and looking around vacantly. Finally now he spoke:

  ‘What was she doing here?’

  Felix and Smudge exchanged glances.

  ‘She was jogging, Garv. Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Why here?’

  ‘Because it’s one of her jogging routes. They explained it on the news.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You think they explain things on the news?’

  Felix and Smudge were silent.

  After a moment Garvie said, ‘Did you like her?’

  ‘Chloe?’

  They shook their heads.

  ‘I’d have given her one,’ Smudge added helpfully. ‘But I didn’t like her. No one liked her, Garv. You know that. I mean, no disrespect, but you know that better than most.’ He hitched up his trousers, scratched and tried to look sympathetic.

  They stood there without further comment, gazing at the pond.

  Felix said, ‘Are you coming, then?’

  Garvie shook his head. ‘Think I’ll wait a bit longer.’

  ‘What do you mean, “a bit longer”?’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘Another thirty-eight and a half minutes.’

  They gave him another look, and Felix shrugged his thin shoulders. Then they got on their bikes, and Garvie watched them as they cycled off down the track where the Ford Focus and the police car had gone, where Chloe used to run.

  Beautiful but dislikeable Chloe. Smudge was right: no one had liked her. And she hadn’t liked anyone else. She was hard, pushy. It was the second most noticeable thing about her. Garvie had never known anyone so ambitious. She was going to be famous; nothing was going to stop her. She was staking everything on a chance at the big time. It was the risk-taking, gambling streak in her. Modelling was the obvious route. Her looks would get her so far, and for the rest she’d use her contacts and trust to luck. She was always trying to meet people who mattered. Networking. Even in Year Nine she was writing to the men and women whose names she found in magazines devoted to fashion and movies. The rich, the glamorous, the powerful. Recently she’d started trying to crash the parties these people went to. She’d turn up at hotels, clubs, casinos, looking extraordinary, smiling sweetly at the doorman. Sometimes – so she said – he let her in. As a result, according to her, she’d done a few shoots already. A couple of months short of her sixteenth birthday she had just been beginning the great adventure of her fame.

  As Garvie considered these things he walked to and fro across the soft, wet ground. Once he stopped and crouched down to examine something: a narrow flattened indent in the grass where something heavy had been lying. A piece of old machinery perhaps. A metal bar of some sort. He wondered why it had been moved, what it had been used for. Then he resumed walking, until finally, looking again at his watch, he saw that it was the time he’d been waiting for: 6.45 p.m.

  He looked up at the sky.

&nbs
p; At just this time three days earlier, as she changed into her kit, Chloe had looked out of her bedroom window, deciding where to run. He was seeing now what she’d seen then. He squinted, then frowned. The still-light late-afternoon sky was tinged with the faint shadow of pre-sunset twilight. In the next quarter of an hour or so, daylight would start to fade.

  And now he made himself remember something he didn’t want to: his final date with Chloe a year earlier. It came back to him, the way his memories always did, with the clarity of the immediate present. He saw in his mind the café in Five Mile Centre with its shiny pine tables and matching chairs; he smelled the scent of pastries and coffee, heard the echoey noise of Saturday morning shoppers. He saw Chloe sitting opposite him, wearing a blue halter-neck top and grey jeggings, typically simple but classy, and a pair of silver earrings he’d never seen her wear before, shaped like crescent moons. She was talking, as usual. He could hear her. She was telling him about a deal she’d got online for some new running kit. Her voice sounded funny; she was talking too fast. He could see her face, her violet eyes glancing here and there, her lips parting and closing as she spoke. She was telling him she was going to wear the kit at lunch time when she went for a run, up through Froggett Woods to Battery Hill and out to Pike Pond. She was telling him something about Pike Pond. Then she was getting out a tissue and dabbing at her eyes. And then there was that moment, never to be forgotten but hardly to be remembered, when she looked at him straight for the first time all morning with her wet eyes shining, and said, ‘That it, then? Goodbye?’ And, when he didn’t say anything to that: ‘Goodbye, then, Garvie Smith. You can never say I didn’t want it to work.’

  He frowned. He’d remembered enough. More than enough.

  He looked at the waste ground, the pond, the ruined farm. There was no one else around now except for a constable down by the water staring at his boots. Picking his way through weeds and garbage, Garvie went across to the farm. He’d never been here before, didn’t even know its name until he found a rusted sign lying in the grass: FOUR WINDS FARM. A farm no more. He stepped through the broken wall into the courtyard and looked around, fixing everything in his memory: the old mattresses piled up in the porch, the smashed windows, the elder bushes rising in spikes out of the half-collapsed roof. In the courtyard the concrete was blackened here and there where people had lit fires, and under a corrugated shelter at the side was a burned-out car, skeletal and orange with rust.