Running Girl

by Simon Mason

  Felix looked queasy. ‘Tell me you’re not thinking of nicking them. I couldn’t bear to see you in this sort of clobber at the Old Ditch Road playground.’

  Before Garvie could answer there was a noise downstairs. A voice.

  ‘Boys?’

  Garvie put back the last of the clothes and slid shut the wardrobe door.

  ‘We have a problem, Felix.’

  ‘The problem’s all yours, Garv.’

  ‘Everything matches.’

  Felix frowned. ‘Course it matches. This is Chloe. So what?’

  Garvie sighed. ‘So when she went running on Friday evening she was wearing someone else’s shoes.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know what heliotrope is?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Felix hesitated. ‘Sort of machine, innit?’

  ‘It’s a colour, Felix. Pinky-purple. Very chic. Chloe was wearing heliotrope shirt and shorts – and orange and lime-green shoes. Orange and lime green, Felix!’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Look at her wardrobe, man. Everything’s beautiful. Say what you like about her, she had taste. Lime-green and orange shoes? They’re ugly. And they don’t go with anything. Definitely not with pinky-purple.’

  Felix understood. ‘But if they weren’t hers,’ he said slowly, ‘why was she wearing them?’

  ‘That’s the question.’

  As they looked at each other in silence they heard Mrs Dow coming up the stairs.

  ‘Boys? Are you there?’

  Garvie patted Felix on the shoulder. Then, taking a calculator out of his pocket, he went out into the hall with the good news that he had found exactly what he’d been looking for.

  12

  STANDING ON THE tiny square of lawn in the Dows’ garden, Detective Inspector Singh was struck again by its neatness. The trimmed grass. The immaculate flowerbeds. The newly creosoted fence. The bird bath. Only the broken fencing spoiled the air of complete control. He allowed himself a slight frown. The area hadn’t been sealed off, as instructed. Before beginning his examination, he glanced back towards the house and saw Mrs Dow looking down at him from an upstairs window. She disliked him, he knew. But he nodded politely, and her face withdrew sharply.

  A thought of that boy Smith came into his mind, and his face tightened. He made a mental note to tell Lawrence Shan not to bother interviewing him at school. He would deal with Smith himself, if need be.

  He returned his attention to the garden. A quick initial survey showed only the obvious. A few messy footprints in the soil behind the shrubs. The broken fencing. Someone had crouched there hidden for a while, then had suddenly fled, risking being caught, clambering over the fence and bringing it crashing down in the process. Why?

  Inspector Singh did not deal in the obvious. He dealt in detail. Stepping carefully around the flowers and shrubs, he began to examine the area. He worked methodically from left to right, slowly turning over leaves, twigs and the top layer of soil using a palette knife adapted for the purpose. For some time he examined the footprints by the collapsed fence, too blurred to be used for identification but suggestive at least of someone fully-grown, solid even, and the fence itself, the cracked panel hanging crookedly like a bird’s broken wing, and posts splintered to the bare pale wood where someone – someone heavy and energetic but probably not so athletic – had scrambled over. He remembered the crash that night, and the toppling outline of a figure obscured by darkness and rain. But there was nothing here to help him now. After half an hour he had found nothing of interest and he walked back onto the grass, frustrated, and stood there thinking.

  According to Sikh religious texts the truth is eternal and present everywhere. He thought of this. He also thought of the Police Manual. If you can’t find what you’re looking for there are two likely reasons: you’re looking in the wrong way or you’re looking in the wrong place.

  He went across the lawn, through the shrubbery, climbed over the broken panel of fencing and out of the garden into the lane beyond. There he resumed his search. Slowly, patiently, he examined the verge of scrub on both sides of the path and the path itself. Slowly and patiently he moved crab-wise backwards and forwards, delving with his specially adapted palette knife.

  He found absolutely nothing.

  Finally it was time to go. He had to talk to Mrs Dow on his way out, to check if the bedroom upstairs had been sealed, but first, to stretch his legs, he walked down the path along the house-backs and through the wicket gate onto the Marsh Fields, where he had run last Friday night. In daylight it looked smaller, the grass scruffier, the trees spindlier. The air tasted of cold water. He sucked in a lungful and turned to go. And stopped suddenly.

  Bending down, he picked up a small scrap of something nestling in the shaggy grass. It was a piece of wood – a clean splinter two inches long the orange colour of new creosote. Stuck to it by a thread was something else, brightly coloured in red and yellow. A button.

  He brought the button up to his eye. The words FAMOUS STARS were embossed around its edge. It was a button off a Famous Stars and Straps varsity jacket.

  He stood there on the spongy grass of the Marsh Fields, completely unmoving, staring at the button. He had seen someone in a red and yellow varsity jacket in the last few days. Who? Someone wearing a varsity jacket, scowling at him, he remembered that much. But who? Methodically he racked his brains.

  And he remembered. Taking out his notebook, he wrote down a name and closed it again and turned, all in the same quiet, efficient way, and went back to Fox Walk.

  13

  GARVIE AND FELIX split up when they got to Pollard Way, and Garvie went on alone up Bulwarks Lane. It was now three thirty and he had half an hour to kill before going home if he didn’t want his mother asking awkward questions. The out-of-town traffic was heavy, vans and trucks nudging slowly towards the ring road, and he fell in beside them, walking in a ripple through their fumes, frowning to himself.

  Chloe Dow was the most straightforward girl he’d ever known, a girl who hid nothing. Everything about her had been on display – not just her looks but the ambitions she never stopped talking about, the fantasies she’d spun, the gossip she’d peddled. She was stunning – and ordinary. Not the sort of girl to do something strange like go for a run in someone else’s ugly shoes.

  Not the sort of girl to have secrets. Until now.

  Frowning, he went past the betting shop, past Burger King, past the long flaking front of the old Whiteways offices, and had just reached the shops when a car came to a halt at the kerb next to him and a familiar voice said, ‘Get in.’

  He bent down and peered through the wound-down window.

  The policeman with the turban looked back at him. ‘Get in the car,’ he said.

  Garvie peered closer. ‘Is it tidy? My mother’s very particular about that sort of thing.’

  The inspector did not reply. He pushed open the door, and after a moment Garvie got in.

  It was very tidy.

  ‘I’ve just been speaking to Mrs Dow,’ Singh said, ‘and she told me you visited her house this afternoon.’

  His voice was dead-pan and his eyes were deadpan too; there was nothing in his expression to show he was angry. But Garvie could tell he was.

  ‘Yeah. I’m a personal friend.’

  ‘And that while you were there you went into Chloe Dow’s bedroom, despite the fact that the bedroom is a crime scene, off-limits to the public. As you must know from your very high-up uncle.’

  ‘But I thought crime scenes were immediately sealed by the very efficient police to prevent people going in them.’

  Singh’s mouth tightened. ‘It’s being sealed now.’

  ‘Oh well, better late than never. Thanks for letting me know.’

  He opened the door.

  ‘Get back in the car,’ Singh said.

  Garvie hesitated, then closed the door again.

  For a few moments Singh looked at him unblinkingly. ‘Do you own a varsity jacket?’ he asked.

&nbs
p; Despite himself, Garvie was taken by surprise. But he recovered. ‘Don’t you have to have a warrant to ask me that sort of question?’

  ‘Do you or don’t you?’ Singh said.

  ‘No. As it happens. Why? Do you think I should get one? Would it improve my image?’

  When Singh spoke again his voice was, if anything, even quieter than before. ‘Ever since this investigation began you’ve been interfering with official police business.’

  ‘No, I haven’t. I’m—’

  ‘I know what you are.’

  Garvie raised his eyebrows.

  ‘There’s a system for dealing with people like you. If you continue to interfere you’ll receive a statutory reprimand, copied to your mother and headmaster. If you don’t stop after that, a curfew order. After that, tagging. After that, a residency requirement in a correctional facility.’

  ‘That’s a lot of paperwork.’

  ‘You’re not listening to me.’

  ‘You’re not listening to me, man! I’m not interfering, I’m helping. I’m helping you work it out.’

  Singh stared at him with a different sort of expression, Garvie couldn’t tell if it was astonishment or disgust.

  ‘You’re trying to work out who killed Chloe Dow?’

  Garvie shook his head in exasperation. ‘No! I’m trying to work out who stole her running shoes.’

  For a moment there was a flash of something else in Singh’s face, quickly replaced by a new sort of coldness.

  ‘Get out,’ he said, and his voice was not as quiet as before. ‘Out!’

  Singh pulled away into the traffic, and Garvie stood on the pavement, thoughtfully watching him go.

  Before he could move on, a voice came up the street. A soft voice. ‘Been a bad boy, Garvie Smith?’

  It was Jessica Walker. Approaching with a slow wiggle, she draped herself round a nearby parking sign and gave him a look.

  She was a slender girl, very pretty, with a narrow white throat and big black eyes. Her hair was black too, and Garvie noticed that though she’d been in school earlier she’d already changed out of her school shoes into a pair of strappy wedge sandals, also black.

  ‘They going to put you away, Garv?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  She hung off the parking sign, looking after Singh’s car as it disappeared past the Driftway. ‘But he’s gone. And you’re still at large.’

  ‘Yeah. He couldn’t handle me by himself. He’s gone to get reinforcements.’

  Jessica looked at Garvie with her big eyes. ‘Not really, Garv?’

  ‘No, not really, Jess.’

  She laughed, and her nose crinkled. ‘You’re funny.’ She came off the parking sign and stood next to him. ‘Got any cigs?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Got one for me?’

  They sat side by side on a bench next to Jamal’s with a view of the bins outside the burger joint, and Jessica crossed her legs and blew smoke against the side of Garvie’s face. Her legs, he noticed, were very pale and smooth, with a waxy sheen on them, like fruit.

  ‘This is nice, Garv.’

  ‘Isn’t it? Listen, Jess, I want to ask you something.’

  ‘Something nice?’

  ‘Not really.’

  She stopped smiling.

  ‘What sort of stuff did you use to nick off Chloe?’

  She jerked her head back indignantly. ‘I didn’t nick anything off Chloe!’

  ‘No? No money?’

  ‘Never any money.’

  Garvie considered his cigarette for a moment. ‘Did she ever ask you for money?’

  ‘What? Like money for the shop?’

  Garvie said nothing. He smoked.

  ‘You mean proper money? No. Never. Why would she?’

  She scrutinized Garvie, and her features gradually softened. When she spoke again, her voice was sympathetic.

  ‘Garv? I know you’re upset. You can’t hide it from me. I know what she did to you, and I know it doesn’t make it any easier, and I know—’

  ‘You didn’t like her, did you?’ Garvie said.

  She jerked her head again. ‘What do you mean? She was my friend.’

  ‘What about all those things you used to say about her behind her back?’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘You know. How she was shagging MacAttack, how she drove Alex to drugs, all that sort of stuff.’

  ‘I never. It was other people saying them. I only might have repeated them. Anyway, some of them were true.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like about Alex,’ she said, and shut her mouth abruptly.

  There was a silence. Garvie nodded. He knew as well as anyone what Jessica thought about Alex: six months earlier he’d dumped her for Chloe, and Jessica hadn’t known who to hate more. Poor Jessica Walker, unlucky in love.

  ‘Jess?’ he said, more softly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When did you last see Chloe?’

  Something went across Jessica’s face, a little flurry of emotion, and she began to chew the inside of her cheek.

  ‘Can’t remember, actually.’

  ‘But she was your friend. Your best friend. You saw her all the time, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, well. Course.’ She folded her arms. ‘Must have been at school that day. Friday. Friday morning. At school.’

  ‘Right.’

  While she glowered, Garvie sat quietly smoking, until at last she glanced at him and managed to smile again, and when she finally spoke, it was in her usual sexy wheedle.

  ‘Garv? Why do we have to talk about other people all the time, Garv?’

  ‘You want to talk about something else?’

  She nodded and he sat back.

  ‘All right.’ For a moment he continued to smoke thoughtfully, then he said, ‘How about complex numbers?’

  She looked at him doubtfully. ‘Can’t we just talk about me?’

  Snuffing out his cigarette, he took a scrap of paper and a pencil out of his jacket pocket. ‘A complex number, Jess, is made up of a real number and a number in an imaginary dimension. Call it z. There’s a formula, right: z = a + bi.. i means b’s in an imaginary dimension. Right?’ He drew quickly.

  Jessica squinted at it. ‘Looks like maths,’ she said with distaste.

  ‘i2 is always −1. You’d think that was impossible, right?’

  ‘I would, yeah. Like, totally.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t. In an imaginary dimension the impossible’s possible. See? That’s where i is, up there, and −i, down there. On an imaginary axis. Now, you don’t compute i numbers, you rotate them, by ninety degrees, into that imaginary dimension. 1 × i moves you up there, where i is. Times i by itself to get its square, and you rotate another ninety degrees, and end up there, at −1. Same thing for −i, by a different route. Elementary. Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, course.’ Jessica attempted a smile and produced a slight twitch. ‘But what’s that got to do with me?’

  Garvie looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I don’t know yet.’

  He drew another diagram.

  ‘Here’s a complex number: z = a + bi. See? That point there. Point of a triangle. A cinch to work out. Let’s say a = 4 and b = 6. . z = 7.211.’

  She scowled.

  ‘All right. Here’s another complex number. Call it “What Jess did”.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘ ’Cause Jess is complex. a = something real, something solid – I don’t know, let’s say ... “Chloe’s running shoes”.’

  Scowling, Jessica turned away and began flicking ash all over her skirt.

  ‘bi is trickier,’ he said. Pausing, he looked at her. ‘Hmm. I’m going to call it “Bad feeling”.’

  ‘What d’you mean, “Bad feeling”?’

  ‘Bad feeling between Jess and Chloe. And all we have to do now is work out the result.’

  There was a silence. After a moment he said quietly, ‘See what I’m getting at?’

  Jessica finished her cigarette in one long
furious drag and obliterated the butt on the bench arm-rest. ‘There are times, Garvie Smith, when I’m not so keen on you.’

  He nodded sympathetically and patted her knee, and she said in a soft wail, ‘Garv, I don’t get it. Why do you have to keep bringing other people and strange numbers and stuff into it? Can’t we just talk about me?’

  She slid round on the bench and curled up her legs and put her feet in his lap and wriggled her toes.

  He sighed. ‘All right.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘Well, go on, then,’ she said.

  ‘What nice big feet you’ve got, Jess.’

  For a moment she looked at him, horrified, her eyes big with shock. Then she recovered herself and was properly cross. Kicking her legs free, she jumped off the bench and stood facing him, little fists clenched.

  ‘Temper,’ Garvie said mildly.

  She said, ‘You know what’s wrong with you, Garvie Smith? You just don’t care about anybody but yourself!’

  In a fury, she turned from him and wiggled away as fast as she could round the corner of Jamal’s.

  Garvie sat there a moment longer, thinking. He thought about Chloe’s feminine room and the horrible sunset up at Pike Pond and Jessica’s feet. Jessica’s feet, particularly. But most of all he thought about the way she’d looked at him, not in anger, but in horrified surprise.

  With a sigh he got up and walked back into the street. There was a news hoarding outside Jamal’s which said NO CLUES YET IN ‘BEAUTY’ MURDER, and he glanced at it without expression and headed for home.

  ‘You really don’t care about anyone but yourself, do you?’ his mother said from the doorway, where she had materialized with her usual sudden solidity.

  Interrupted in his thoughts, Garvie kept his eyes on the ceiling and sighed very gently through his nose.