Kid Alone

by Simon Mason

  DI GARVIE SMITH: All right, Sajid. Take it easy.

  SAJID BALOCH [high-pitched, blurting]: Pete said he didn’t want anything to happen to me. Now he’s dead! [Sobbing] It’s my fault. He must have gone out there to try and stop me. You know what he was like; he wouldn’t listen, he wouldn’t give up, he kept saying he was going to … he was … he was the …

  DI GARVIE SMITH: All right, Sajid. Here.

  SAJID BALOCH [blows nose, recovers]: What now?

  DI GARVIE SMITH: Now we’re finally going to chat about the most important thing.

  SAJID BALOCH: What’s that?

  DI GARVIE SMITH: His violin, of course. Remember what you told me? He always had it with him.

  SAJID BALOCH: Yeah.

  DI GARVIE SMITH: That night, when you saw Pyotor for the last time, did he have it?

  SAJID BALOCH: Yeah.

  DI GARVIE SMITH: Did he take it with him when he left?

  SAJID BALOCH: Yeah. Course.

  DI GARVIE SMITH: You sure? What did he do before he left?

  SAJID BALOCH: He didn’t do anything. We were in the back room. Khalid had gone upstairs. Pete was crying. Then he just went.

  DI GARVIE SMITH: He said good-bye to Jamal? He fetched his coat from somewhere? He collected his bag?

  SAJID BALOCH: No. He just went to the toilet and left.

  DI GARVIE SMITH: Where’s the toilet?

  SAJID BALOCH: Out there at the end of the passage next to the junk room.

  DI GARVIE SMITH: What junk room?

  SAJID BALOCH: Where we put the out-of-date stuff we can’t sell.

  DI GARVIE SMITH: Who goes in there?

  SAJID BALOCH: Nobody. Khalid keeps it locked up.

  DI GARVIE SMITH: Where’s the key?

  SAJID BALOCH: By the back door. On a peg.

  DI GARVIE SMITH: Let’s get it. We need to hurry. I haven’t got much time.

  They went down the passage quietly. Jamal was in the shop serving. Khalid was still upstairs; they could hear him moving about occasionally, quietly creaking.

  “I don’t understand,” Sajid whispered.

  Garvie said, “Pyotor was a watcher, right? He saw things. He saw Khalid getting worked up about money. He saw that you were going to get into trouble. And he saw where the peg was with the junk-room key on it.”

  Sajid still didn’t understand.

  “When Pyotor left here that night carrying his violin case, his violin wasn’t inside it. He’d already hidden it.”

  “Where?”

  They came to the end of the passage and Garvie unlocked the door and they went into one of the untidiest rooms he’d ever seen. There was junk everywhere, stuffed into shelves, heaped in landslides, piled in towers, strewn in cascades, scattered in bag bursts. Pallets of videocassettes, boxes of disposable cameras, cartons of CDs, stacks of Pokémon cards. Out-of-date catalogs and directories. Forgotten-cartoon-character juice boxes, cans of unsellable Vanilla Coke and Crystal Pepsi, caterers’ packs of Tongue Splashers bubble gum, spangled ketchup.

  “I hope this isn’t going to take long,” Garvie said.

  It didn’t. Perhaps it had been hidden once. Not anymore. It lay in bits at the side of a pallet.

  “His violin,” Sajid said in a wondering voice. “What’s happened to it?”

  It had been destroyed, smashed to pieces in a frenzy. Garvie said nothing. He began to examine the remains, turning them over rapidly in his hands, like an archaeologist. A bonelike shaft of stock. Sharp fragments of the cracked-open body. Black shiny chin rest. Pegs still trailing strings. Scraps of label (“Gusta,” “Kle,” “00,” “ebo”) and a shell-like splinter of highly polished rib showing the small, dark brand of two letters. For several minutes he stood there staring at it all intently.

  “How clever,” he murmured at last. He began to laugh.

  “What’s going on?” Sajid said.

  “He hid it. The thing he loved most, that he never let out of his sight, he left it behind.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause he thought someone might come looking for it.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause he’d put something inside it.”

  “What?”

  “Evidence. Pyotor saw what went on, he heard what was said, he knew what was going down. He had a plan. And he hoped it wouldn’t go wrong.” He stared at the violin mess. “But it did go wrong,” he said. “And someone did come looking for the violin, and they found it, and they smashed it up. Look at the way it’s been pulverized. It must have been done by someone who really, really hated violins. Don’t you think?”

  He turned to Sajid. “Your brother’s a pretty desperate guy, isn’t he? Shop like this ought to do okay, but he needed a grand, and he needed it badly. Why?”

  Sajid shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “You should. Pyotor knew.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Garvie looked at him thoughtfully. “What did he call you, Sajid?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pyotor liked to give people names. Didn’t he call you something?”

  Sajid bit his lip, nodded. When he spoke his voice wobbled. “It sounded odd, but sometimes he called me Pyotor’s friend.”

  Garvie nodded. “Good,” he said quietly. “Remember that. Because now you’re going to tell me something else.”

  “What? I’ve told you everything.”

  “But here’s the weird thing. You haven’t asked me who smashed the violin.”

  Sajid looked at the bits of violin and gave a quick half glance at the door.

  Garvie said thoughtfully, “Isn’t there something else you want to tell me about Khalid?”

  “No,” Sajid said quickly.

  “What about that night? You were up on the warehouse roof, you heard the shots, you came down; Pyotor was dead and Khalid was gone.”

  “He didn’t do it. I know he didn’t. He was waiting in the van and when he heard the shots he panicked and drove off. He told me. He didn’t go near the storage facility. He never even saw Pyotor. He didn’t know Pyotor was there.”

  “What about yesterday morning?”

  Sajid hesitated. “He was in the shop.”

  “He was out at Brickhouse meeting Magee.”

  “How do you know?”

  Garvie held up a sweet wrapper. “Though, to be fair, Magee wasn’t around to confirm it. He was already dead.”

  Sajid stood with his mouth open.

  “Khalid’s desperate, we’ve already established that. Desperate and angry. Desperate and angry … and frightened. Frightened for himself—and frightened for you. Frightened people do the worst things.”

  Sajid said nothing.

  Garvie said sharply, “Who smashed the violin, Sajid? Who’s Khalid frightened of?”

  For a second they faced each other, motionless. Then Sajid made a break for the door, but Garvie was too quick for him, and after a scuffle he got him in a headlock.

  “Who is it?” he said.

  Sajid panted and thrashed. “No one. I don’t know.”

  “I think you’ve got a good idea.”

  Sajid struggled silently.

  “Last chance, Sajid. Or I’ll haul you upstairs and get Khalid and we can all go see Plod together.”

  Sajid went limp and Garvie released him. “Think you’re so smart,” the boy said in a tear-blurty voice.

  “Just tell me who it is.”

  “Your mate!” Sajid shouted. “Alex Robinson!”

  Then he ran from the room into the passage, leaving Garvie grim-faced and alone in the junk room of lost things.

  He went down Bulwarks Lane in a daze. It was a warm afternoon, the air fuzzy with sunshine. Newspaper headlines outside the newsagent’s relayed the latest—MURDER SUSPECT FOUND DEAD: POLICE BAFFLED—but he didn’t pay them any attention. There were people strolling on the sidewalk, from time to time he sensed them around him, but he didn’t see them; to him they were no more than shadows. His gaze wa
s fixed elsewhere: in a junk room, in a basement hideaway, in a storage facility. After a while he found himself sitting on the bench outside the burger place smoking a Benson & Hedges. Sucking in smoke in long therapeutic drags, spooling it out into the air, he tried to get his thoughts in order. They did not want to be ordered. Like the plumes of his smoke, they loosened and came apart, showed him separate, disconnected things. An image of Alex standing in the access road, his face twisting through degrees of shock, like a man who begins to realize his shoes are on fire. Alex in the darkness outside Zuzana’s flat whispering sullenly with Blinkie. A green-and-yellow sweet wrapper on the floor next to a dead man. Pyotor’s smashed room, his smashed violin. A man with a temper. A man out of control.

  Alex? He’d trust Alex with his life.

  At the moment his thoughts were disorganized, arbitrary as an unbroken code. But just out of his mind’s reach there was a cipher that would show the hidden pattern and make sense of them all. He knew it.

  And after a while he realized what it was. Sajid had just given it to him.

  “Oh, Alex,” he murmured. “Alex, Alex, Alex.”

  He blew smoke, lifted his face to the sun, failed to feel soothed, and began to bite a fingernail. He took out his phone and wondered who to call. Alex? A tricky maneuver, possibly nuclear. Singh? Could he trust the policeman not to jump to conclusions? The person he most wanted to call was the person he couldn’t talk to at all without complicating things even further; just thinking about her confused him.

  As he sat there looking at his phone thinking these things, a text came through.

  We need to sort this east field 3 p.m. A.

  He sat looking at it for a long time, frowning. Shadow people walked past, their shadow voices insubstantial as the smoke drifting above him, shadow traffic shimmering in the road, as he gazed at the words on his phone’s screen. At first he thought it changed everything. Then he saw that it made no difference at all.

  He replied at last: ok. Sat back, braced himself for the trip out to East Field.

  Then he remembered his exam. Looking at his watch, he saw with horror that time had gotten away from him.

  He ran. He reflected, with some indignation, that he’d been doing a lot of running lately, and that, despite the claims of so-called experts, in his experience it didn’t get any easier or more likable. He ran grimly down Bulwarks Lane with stitch like a snake bite in the tender parts of his lungs. Without stopping or—to his surprise—vomiting, he ran past the end of Badger Lane, past the roadworks depot, and across the strip of waste ground by Town Road to Bottom Gate and up the drive past C Block.

  As he reached the gym he got a call, and he stopped to look at his phone. It was Zuzana. He stood there a moment, frowning, letting it ring. Then he cut it and went into the building.

  It was empty except for a single table and chair set out under a basketball hoop, and at first he thought it was deserted. He hoped it was. Then there was a movement by the door of the stockroom at the far end, and with a clicking of heels Miss Perkins emerged from darkness into the light. She seemed to gather intensity as she made her way across the sprung floor toward the entrance, where he hunched panting over his knees, trying to look casual and not that late.

  “Bit delayed, miss,” he said, when he could. “Sorry.”

  She remained silent until she had come to a complete standstill in front of him, fixing him with her strange eyes. He remembered seeing a wildlife program in which weasels did something similar to rabbits.

  She spoke. “Higher mathematics special paper began at one p.m. You will see from the clock above you that the time is now nearly a quarter to two. Is there a reason, Smith, why you are three-quarters of an hour late?”

  “I expect so,” Garvie said. “Though,” he added after a long pause, “to be honest it escapes me. I’ve just done a lot of running, miss; it must have affected my memory.”

  She said nothing to this.

  “Look,” he said, “if it’s easier, we can just forget the whole thing. Doesn’t look like it’s going to inconvenience anyone. And, as it happens, I really ought to be somewhere else very soon.”

  “You are the only candidate for this special examination at Marsh Academy,” Miss Perkins said, “and one of only a dozen candidates throughout the city. For that reason it will very much inconvenience me.”

  “Oh.”

  “I am satisfied that you have received no prior assistance, so you will be allotted the full hour and a half, finishing at three fifteen.”

  “Oh. Really?” He glanced at his watch.

  “I shall invigilate you myself.”

  “Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to put you out.”

  “You will begin immediately, Smith. Go to your desk.”

  For a moment he entertained the thought of bolting. But it was only a moment. After his run, he didn’t feel strong enough. Besides, Miss Perkins looked quick enough to catch him. In resignation, he walked before her to the desk at the far end of the hall and sat down. Miss Perkins positioned herself obtrusively about three meters away, her eyes fixed on him as if without her continuous attention he might disappear, and with a sigh he turned over the paper and began.

  Forty-five minutes passed.

  “Yes, Smith, what is it?”

  “Finished, miss.”

  She ignored him.

  “Miss?”

  “What is it now?”

  “Like I just said, I’ve finished.”

  “The exam takes an hour and a half, Smith. You have taken forty-five minutes. Therefore you have not finished.”

  “Yeah, but what I mean is, I’ve done all the questions.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “But I have.”

  She took two steps toward him and lowered her head. “I don’t care,” she said quietly. “You will stay precisely where you are for another three-quarters of an hour.”

  Garvie looked at his watch.

  “Thing is, it’s half past two, miss.”

  She looked at him, surprised. “This is relevant in what way?”

  “It’s when the exam’s scheduled to end. Officially, it’s over now. Those other eleven kids have finished. I can leave and there’s no risk of me helping them.”

  She continued to look at him. “I hope you’re not going to do something very stupid,” she said.

  “It’s just that there’s somewhere I’ve really got to be now. Sorry.”

  He stood up, making the standard universal facial gestures of apology, knowing that these were unlikely to register in whatever domain Miss Perkins existed.

  “If you leave now I will be entitled to cancel your paper,” Miss Perkins said at last.

  “Yeah. But wouldn’t that inconvenience you?”

  “If you fail this paper, Smith, I believe I’m right in saying that you will fail to attain the minimum standard required to stay on at school.”

  He thought about that; nodded. “Maybe I’ve passed, though,” he said.

  “You’re free to let yourself down,” she replied. “Are you free to also let down your mother? Are you going to be free all your life to let down those who try to help you?”

  He had nothing to say to that, so he turned and walked slowly away.

  At the entrance he looked back and Miss Perkins hadn’t moved; she was still standing next to the desk, as if fixed, terrifyingly, in a continuing moment of fury and judgment, and his self-control broke, and he ran out of the gym and up the drive to Top Gate, the stitch in his side kicking in almost immediately.

  In another part of the city Singh ran too, bleeding from the head, out of the apartment to the top of the stairs, where he paused only a moment to listen to the crash of the footsteps below, before vaulting over the banister into darkness. Landing on cardboard boxes piled at the side of the stairwell, he rolled sideways and was on his feet to see the man called Yazhov vanish through the doorway into the alley beyond. For a moment he stood perfectly still, expressionless, removing a splinter of glass fro
m a wound above his left eye. Then he leaped lightly through the door and continued the chase, back straight, elbows pumping, eyes fixed on the man ahead who clattered down the alley, skidding on the greasy cobbles, and disappeared into a side street.

  The streets in this part of Brickhouse were dark and narrow. At one end of the district was The Wicker with its long line of bars, bowling alleys, and casinos; at the other end was the crematorium. In between, below the crowded ribbons of tiny terraced houses up the hill where Magee had been killed, were sunless old lanes between tenements and boarded-up workshops, damp brick alleys used only as rat runs by drivers beating the daily jams between town and the highway.

  Singh put on speed. He rounded the corner and accelerated after Yazhov along an alley buckled with cracked flagstones and crowded with overflowing industrial bins. He cursed himself. It was bad enough to have been taken by surprise when Yazhov smashed the glass tumbler in his face, but worse not to have secured the exit as soon as he entered the apartment. He’d arrived at the place less than an hour after getting the gun dealer’s address out of Dowell’s folder, stopping en route only to change out of his brown suit into his white kurta and topknot, and was fortunate enough to find Yazhov at home after he had been released on bail. But something had made the Russian nervous, and after answering the first few questions distractedly he’d panicked, flinging the glass into Singh’s face and bolting out the door.

  Singh rounded a second corner into an even narrower alley overshadowed by dirty brick walls. He could hear traffic from The Wicker nearby. Yazhov was only fifty meters ahead now, running raggedly, looking back over his shoulder, dragging over bins as he passed, and Singh put on speed, hurdling the garbage, keeping his head up, arms pumping. Too late he caught a glimpse of a low-slung van as it pulled abruptly across him out of an entrance. In a screech of brakes it caught him as he leaped and tipped him into the air, and he rolled over the hood and onto the tarmac, and sprang to his feet, running faster, ignoring the shouts behind him, emptying his mind of everything but the need to catch Yazhov. He went at speed through a gateway and found the man waiting for him with a half brick. The brick missed; they fell together. Up on his feet, Yazhov caught him a couple of punches in the face, but he rolled with the third and as Yazhov staggered forward Singh stepped around and took hold of him, pushed down on his shoulder, and pulled back his arm.