by Simon Mason
“Where are we going?” Zuzana asked at last.
“Tell me when you smell something.”
“Smell something?”
They walked on fifty meters and she stopped, sniffing. “Ugh.”
“Good,” Garvie said. He lifted his head and shouted once, loud and sudden in the silence. “Vinnie!”
At once there was a shuffle of shadow at the side of the road, a heavy, surprised-sounding crump, and the beginning of a hushed retreating noise across coarse grass.
Garvie shouted again. “Got something for you, Vinnie!”
They found him in the lee of the wall of a former fish wholesaler, ensconced in layers of clothing and cardboard like a modern-day hermit with wild eyes, phlegm-filled beard, and a voice of gravel and splinters.
“I didn’t do it,” he said as they approached. “I don’t care what the vicar says.”
He spat, partly on the ground but mostly into his beard. “Swine fubbers,” he grunted. “Come here all over tits and warts. Got nothing for them. Fubbers!”
Garvie nodded politely. “You know my friend Alex. Used to come down here doing deals.”
Vinnie embarked on a tangled, pop-eyed bout of swearing.
“Sends his best,” Garvie said. “Got another friend knows you too, though he’s a miserable git. You might remember him. Detective Inspector Dowell.”
At once Vinnie fell silent, chewing his bottom lip furiously, beard wagging wildly in the flashlight’s beam.
“He’s not really my friend,” Garvie said. “I mean, he’d like to be, but I’m not ready to move on to a relationship. Do you want a drink, by the way?”
Vinnie’s eyes swiveled onto the can of Special Brew and he instinctively stretched out a long-fingered gray hand, yellow in patches.
“You know it leaves a nasty aftertaste, right?”
Vinnie appeared not to mind. He drank the beer in long, quivering gulps, sharing it with his beard and coat.
“So, anyway, what we wanted,” Garvie said, “was a chat about the Polish kid you saw that night.”
Enlivened by the drink, Vinnie nodded, laughed out loud, his mouth a sudden dark and glistening wetness opening up in the beard. “Push off,” he said. “All right.” He made gestures for another beer, and Garvie passed over a can.
“You saw him, didn’t you, bundled along by the man, down the road here, to the storage facility that way.”
Vinnie nodded.
“But the cops didn’t believe you.”
“Fubbers.”
“Tell us what you saw.”
Vinnie nodded, not to Garvie but as if nudging himself back in time. He threw out an arm and pointed into the empty road. “Coming yonder out of dark. Got his arm round the bleater tight. Hold him up, see? Or throttle him, I don’t know, kill the squealer. Could be. Not making much noise, though. Panting. Huff, huff, huff, huff.” He coughed at length, cross-eyed, hawked with a mighty effort, and gobbed with enormous satisfaction onto the ground. He glanced bewildered up at Garvie, as if he’d suddenly forgotten what he was doing.
Garvie showed him the pictures from the newspaper.
“This is him, isn’t it, the man?”
Vinnie nodded, denouncing him vigorously.
“And this is the kid, right?”
Vinnie nodded again.
“You sure, Vinnie?”
“I see the bleater right between the eyes,” he said indignantly.
“What did the police say when you told them?”
“Fubbing, cod-sucking, fish-titted—”
“They didn’t believe you, did they, Vinnie? Why?”
Because they didn’t want to pay Vinnie the reward advertised for information leading to apprehension of the culprit. Vinnie righteously anatomized all members of the force in language fit for such a sewer of corruption.
“I see. But how could you be sure it was the Polish kid you saw?”
Vinnie looked astonished at the question. “I seen him.” He shook the newspaper as if to make it agree with him. “I heard him,” he added.
“You heard him speaking Polish?”
Vinnie looked triumphant.
“You know Polish, do you?”
“I know it when I hear it. All jabber, see.” He held out a claw for another can, and Garvie gave him one.
Garvie said, “This is Zuzana. She’s Polish, Vinnie. Is this the language you heard spoken?”
Zuzana came closer, but not too close to Vinnie, who regarded her with an unstable expression, and spoke. “Non mi avvicino, Vinnie, se è lo stesso con te—c’è puzza.”
Vinnie’s eyes bulged and he sprayed Special Brew without meaning to. “The same!” he cried. “She got it just the same!”
“Sure?”
“Bang on.”
“That was Italian.”
Vinnie looked uncertain. “So?” he said defiantly. He drank deeply, his glaring eyes fixed on Garvie over the rim of the can.
“Let’s try another one,” Garvie said.
Zuzana said in her native tongue, “Poznajesz cokolwiek, Vinnie?”
Vinnie looked scornful. “Nothing like it! Fool me, eh?”
Garvie sighed.
“All right. Never mind about what you heard. What did you see? What was the kid wearing?”
“School uniform,” Vinnie said promptly, as if remembering something he’d heard.
“Okay. What sort?”
Vinnie looked at him suspiciously. “Normal sort. Nothing funny; I’d have marked it.”
“Jacket?”
“Could be.”
“What about trousers?”
“Course.”
“I mean, long or short?”
Vinnie pulled at his beard as if the pain might stimulate his memory.
“Blackish,” he said at last. “Seen his knees,” he added.
“What color shirt?”
Vinnie thought for a long time. “White,” he said at last, sullenly. “Could be different. I ain’t saying.”
Garvie sighed again. “All right. How many gunshots did you hear?”
“One,” Vinnie said promptly again. “Or two,” he added. “Could be more,” he went on cunningly, “they don’t always know.”
“Before or after you saw them?”
“Before.” His eyes searched Garvie’s to gauge the effect of his answer. “I mean after,” he added.
“Okay. Thanks, Vinnie.”
“You bring the money here,” the man demanded. “It’ll be done right.”
Garvie sighed again. “No money, Vinnie. But you can have another can.”
Vinnie laughed to himself as if unable to believe Garvie’s stupidity, and he drank at length with a bitter smile, watching curiously to see what would happen next.
Zuzana said, “He saw nothing. We should go.”
Garvie didn’t reply. For a moment he stood in thought, then showed Vinnie the newspaper again.
“That’s him,” Vinnie said automatically. “Heard him speak the Polish and everything.”
“Forget the kid,” Garvie said. “Did the police ask you about the man?”
Vinnie shrugged, drank watchfully.
Garvie said to Zuzana, “I bet they didn’t. Not after he failed to identify Pyotor. Not if that moron Dowell was questioning him.”
To Vinnie, he said, “You said you recognized the man. How?”
“Seen him,” Vinnie said promptly. “Got the bleater up here, dragging him along. Didn’t know whether to gut him or fly him home.”
“Yes, but how can you be sure it was that man?”
Vinnie laughed. “Oh, I know him,” he said. “Corner boy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Corner boy,” Vinnie repeated loudly, as if Garvie were deaf. “Up the corner by Bulwarks.”
“You’d seen him before? On Bulwarks Lane?”
“Corner there by the rag-rag shop.”
“By Jamal’s?”
“That’s the fubber.”
“You sure?”
>
Vinnie looked astonished to be doubted. “Corner boy. Hanging round the corner. Seen him with the ragman, old guy, shouting his tits off.”
“You saw him arguing with Jamal?”
“Stuck it to him bad.”
“That’s interesting.”
Zuzana said, “Did you see him with anyone else there? With Pyotor, Vinnie? With the boy?”
Vinnie turned to her as if he’d only just noticed she was there. His mouth fell open. There was a long pause. “That’s it,” he said in a voice of wonder, as if waking from years of sleep. “I seen him too. Up there. The two of them. I see him give the kid a slap. Bang. I knew I did. I forgot. The same kid. Bang it went. But I forgot.” He put the can to his mouth and held it there without drinking, and after a while they realized he was weeping.
Garvie put down the last of the cans and a big bottle of juice. “You’ll find it’ll take away the aftertaste, Vinnie,” he said.
They left him there and walked back down the access road to the hole in the fence. The wind had picked up. The moon held on to a cloud, and let it go, and wrapped itself in another, lightly, like a streaming veil.
“Too late for Abdul,” Garvie said. “We’ll have to walk.”
“I can walk,” she said.
They found the track through the scrub and went along it as far as the country road, and walked in silence between fields tarnished silver in the moonlight, past the sewage plant, bland and silent, and on toward Limekilns, the only sound the occasional whine and drone of late cars on the highway up ahead. They went through the underpass into the streets of Strawberry Hill beyond. Occasionally Garvie glanced at her, but her face was always closed.
At last she spoke. “Do you remember … ?” she began.
Garvie nodded. “Zbigniew told you Pyotor came back one evening with a slap mark across his face.”
“He thought it was another boy did it. But it was Magee. Pyotor and Magee had met before. Outside Jamal’s.”
They walked down Cobham Road, Strawberry Hill’s main drag, across Town Road, into Five Mile, and along Pollard Way until they reached the corner of Franks Road, which doglegged down to the Bulwarks Lane shops. There was no one about, and they stood there in the silence.
“One thing before you go,” Garvie said. “What do you hear about Magee? What do Polish people say?”
“He is a racist. Zbigniew and Bogdana are sure he is the one broke into Stanislaw’s shop. They have talked to Polish friends in the city where he lived before who say he has done things.”
“What things?”
“Things that were not reported to the police.”
“Like what?”
“They say he broke into a shop called the Polskie Delikatesy. The man who owns it, Janusz, was in hospital for three weeks. And a shop called Magdalenka, they say he robbed that too.”
“He was a burglar. That’s the sort of stuff he did.”
“Always against Polish shops.”
“Anything else?”
“Something very bad too, I think. A big robbery. Not a corner shop. Someone died.”
“Killed? Someone got shot?”
“I think so. I don’t know exactly. Dana said people were scared to talk. He is a frightening person. It is not easy to speak.”
Garvie nodded. “Listen, Zuza, can you find out more? About the person who got killed.”
“I will talk to Dana again.”
“You’ll have to do it quick, though. Time’s running out on the whole Magee-in-prison thing.”
“They will release him?”
“Twelve noon tomorrow.”
“All right.”
“Give me a ding soon as.”
“I will do it.” She was looking at him curiously, smiling.
“What?”
“You called me Zuza.”
He hesitated, shrugged.
“Only Alex does that.”
“Yeah, well.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Just quicker. Told you before. Don’t like to waste time.”
Though her face was hidden in shadow he thought he saw her smile again. Turning from him, she crossed into Franks Road and disappeared around the corner. For a moment he stood there. Then, instead of going on toward the Driftway, he followed her down Franks Road as far as the corner and stood there fascinated, watching her recede, her figure brightening as she passed under a streetlamp, darkening again beyond, walking so lightly she seemed disconnected from the sidewalk, as if she existed alone in a sharper, more graceful dimension, diminishing gradually, and as he watched her go he couldn’t help thinking of the sound of her voice, still in his ears, that slow Polish sound full of air, and of the air inside her mouth, and of her mouth itself, wide and curving, her lips stretching as she smiled at him. By now she was almost at Bulwarks Lane, only a short distance from her flat behind Jamal’s, and he was just turning to go when he saw her reach the road and turn the wrong way.
He frowned. Hesitating a moment, he set off after her.
By the time he reached Bulwarks Lane she’d crossed the road and was walking past the betting shop, and after a moment she turned into John’s Street. He jogged down the deserted road after her, and reached the corner of John’s just in time to see her cross the road again and go into O’Malley’s.
He looked at his watch: half past one. He stood there for a moment, thinking. He went along the street until he was opposite the bar, but all the blinds were down, and he backed off as far as the bus stop and sat down to wait.
It took half an hour. O’Malley’s door opened and she came out. Garvie stood behind the shelter but she didn’t even look in his direction; she was walking fast, head down, her face strangely expressionless, not guarded but as if she was lost in thought, and she went past him into Bulwarks Lane and turned toward Jamal’s.
When she’d gone, Garvie stepped out from behind the shelter and stood in the road, looking at O’Malley’s thoughtfully. And as he looked at it, the door opened again and Blinkie came out. He was on his own. He took two steps into the street and saw Garvie, and stopped. He was wearing a yellow tracksuit and bright blue Zanotti sneakers with gold zips up the sides, and a pink-and-green candy-striped baseball cap branded Nogzilla, and big black shades, and he stood there a moment looking at Garvie, making all his usual twitchy movements, tugging at the groin of his appalling tracksuit, shifting his weight from foot to foot, nodding to himself, his face flickering. He looked down the deserted street, and turned and looked the other way, and grinned. Then he slunk across the road, all the jewelry hanging off him clicking as he moved. Garvie stayed where he was. Blinkie came all the way up to him and stopped. Garvie kept his eyes on him.
Blinkie peered all around, grinning, and finally put his face into Garvie’s. “You again,” he said. “I like that. I like fun.”
“Yeah. You said that before. But you don’t have your playmates with you.”
Blinkie waggled his head from side to side. He said, “Know why I like fun?”
Garvie shook his head.
Blinkie’s teeth flashed gold. He pushed his face closer.
He said in a whisper, “’Cause they’re all scared of me.”
Garvie turned his head to face him.
“All of them?” he said quietly.
They stood close, looking at each other. For a moment Blinkie looked sad. Then he began to laugh. He reeled sideways, laughing. He bent double, and Garvie slowly turned and walked away, leaving him there.
He waited until he was in Old Ditch Road before he made the call.
“Alex,” he said. “Alex, mate. Give me a ding.”
He glanced back toward Bulwarks Lane. The street was empty, silent, hollow-sounding in the night. He walked on toward Eastwick Gardens.
“You seem tired this morning,” Garvie’s mother said.
She stood in his doorway watching him get dressed.
After a while Garvie said, “Yeah.”
“But you went to bed early, you said.”
Ga
rvie went wearily around his room until he found his other shoe.
“Yeah,” he said. Slowly he began to put the shoe on.
“Why so tired, then? I’m wondering.”
He finished putting on the shoe and rested.
“Must be all that studying I did,” he said at last.
His mother’s face showed the strain of trying to suppress her natural suspicions. “Okay, then. And what you got today?”
“Math tutorial class.”
“Sounds good.”
“Got some frees first, but I’m going in early, get some studying done in the library.”
She seemed to consider this. “Studying,” she said at last, with deliberate emphasis. “Library. Mmm-hmm.” She made a noise like she was tasting something unexpectedly good.
“What?”
“Just, these are words I’ve never heard you use before all your life.”
Garvie stood and hoisted his bag. He said, “Well, get used to them, baby. I’m going to prove to you I can pass an exam or two if I put my mind to it.”
He kissed her on the cheek as he drifted past. “Three,” she called after him. “Two is no good. You have to pass three.”
“Whatever,” she heard him say. Then the shutting of the door.
Singh stood to attention in the chief constable’s empty office, waiting. It was a spacious office on the second floor looking out across the open-plan Administration department through a large plate-glass window. A vast desk occupied one wall, a sleek, expensive slab of highly polished wood inlaid with green leather. On the opposite wall hung a portrait of the chief constable himself, his narrow face colorless against the rich black fabric of his uniform, the bright splendor of its gold paraphernalia. There was a gleam in his eye no one would mistake for humor. His almost lipless mouth was set to endure in the midst of terrible times.
Singh had received the summons to the chief’s office only a few minutes earlier. As the chief’s assistant had explained, the chief was on his way back from the offices of the city mayor and had telephoned from his car to say he wanted to see Singh immediately on arrival.
