Running Girl (22 page)

‘What did she want?'

‘I would have thought that was obvious by now. Money.'

‘
Money?
'

Garvie shrugged and blew smoke.

Frowning, Singh said: ‘Money for what? She was in trouble? Is that why she was panicking? How much money did she need? A lot?' His pen hovered above his notebook.

‘She didn't say. Easy enough to work it out, though. Don't you think?'

Singh didn't look as if he was finding anything easy. The muscle in his cheek twitched, twice.

‘Forty-nine ninety-nine,' Garvie said.

Singh's face looked as if it was starting to come apart.

‘The price of a pair of new running shoes,' Garvie added.

A few days earlier a more self-confident Singh would have exploded. Now he looked as if he no longer knew how to explode. His eyes fled all around the room as if looking for an exit, and found themselves, panting slightly, back with Garvie.

‘New running shoes?' he repeated hesitantly as if testing the words to see if they would bear his weight. Garvie said nothing. He smoked.

‘New running shoes,' Singh murmured again. He was still looking at Garvie, but he wasn't talking to him any more. His face was turned inward, as if hunched over a problem, and Garvie watched him, letting him talk.

‘Why did she want to buy a pair of running shoes?' Singh asked himself. ‘Because,' he answered himself, ‘her old ones had been stolen. But why did she need to buy a new pair straight away? Because she was going up to Pike Pond. Yes, but why was she going up to Pike Pond?'

His knuckles clenched around the pen.

‘Because,' he said, ‘she had to. Because she'd
already arranged
to. Because she was going to meet someone up there and couldn't be late.'

He focused on Garvie. With a new sense of purpose he opened his notebook and leaned forward. ‘This is important,' he said. ‘Tell me everything she said to you. Everything. Try to remember.'

Garvie let out a long, slow breath of smoke and watched it drift above him, blue tissuey rags against the fluorescent glare of the panel lights in the ceiling.

‘Remember?' he murmured. ‘Oh, man. All I do is remember.'

Her eyes were washed-out, tiny lights wobbling in them as she looked down at him, and he knew she'd been crying. That was unusual. But it wasn't the strangest thing. The strangest thing was the faint beige shadow on her throat. It told him something far more interesting. It told him that she hadn't looked in a mirror since taking off her make-up the night before.

‘Hey,' she said. She dumped her bag and sat down next to him.

‘Hey.'

‘Though you might be up here. Self-medicating.'

‘Want a puff?'

‘Do I look stupid?'

She looked in need of a puff, but he didn't tell her that. He waited for the silence to slow her down before asking, casually, ‘What's up?'

She just shook her head.

‘Let me put it another way. What do you need?'

‘Money.' She gave a little laugh.

‘I wish I had some to give you. Anything else?'

‘Yeah. A bit of luck.'

She chewed her nails and looked around, peering down towards C Block, squinting into the hawthorns behind them. The blue polish on the nail of her left-hand index finger was scuffed.

‘Men, eh?' Garvie said.

She made a small, contemptuous coughing noise.

‘Welcome to your life,' Garvie said.

‘It's different this time.'

‘It's always different. I remember how different it was.'

She ignored him. She carried on looking about her, checking the school, checking the trees. He carried on smoking and she got to her feet.

‘Got to get going.'

‘If you find any of that money, let me know where it is.'

She looked down at him thoughtfully, eyes weirdly bright, and he looked up at her, waiting.

‘What?'

‘Garv, do you ever wonder if we—' She bit her lip.

‘If we what?'

She shook her head. Made a little snorting noise. ‘Nothing.'

He flicked the glowing scrap of spliff into the long grass. ‘Don't make it sound so pathetic, Chlo. Nothing's the only thing I'm any good at.'

She laughed then, once, a short, sharp bark. ‘Least you always made me smile.' And when she turned from him, her hair swung round in that perfect blonde curve, the way it always did, an arc of light against the dark shadow of the trees; a moment to lift the heart. Then she was gone.

Singh was impatiently tapping his notebook. ‘Come on. You must be able to remember something.'

Garvie looked at him with pity. ‘Here's one thing. Something she said as she left.'

‘What?'

‘
Cheer up, it might never happen
.'

Singh's pen hesitated above his open notebook.

‘Stuck in my mind,' Garvie said. ‘Thing is, I was cheerful already. You see, she wasn't talking to me. She was talking to herself.
It might never happen
. But I think she already knew it would.'

‘You think ... she knew she was going to die?'

Garvie didn't answer. Slowly he took out another Benson and Hedges, and Singh sat watching him, waiting, tense.

‘Who called her at four eleven?' Garvie asked abruptly.

Singh blinked with surprise. ‘What?'

‘I gather you've finally got the calls record. Alex called her at ten past. And someone else called exactly one minute later.'

Singh collected himself and stared at Garvie. His face seemed different, not so bottled up, not so coldly Singh-like. As if slowly coming to a decision, without taking his eyes off the boy, he reached out and pulled a dossier towards him across the desk and rested his hand on it. ‘Yes, we got the calls record. It arrived, finally, last night, just before I visited your uncle. No recordings of course, just the times and durations of the calls. But I know without looking which caller you're talking about.'

‘Traceable?'

‘No. It's a stolen phone.'

‘But it's him, isn't it?'

Singh said carefully, ‘Whoever it is, he called Chloe thirty-seven times between one fifteen Thursday night and eight on Friday evening. That's more even than Alex.' For the first time he was looking at Garvie as if, despite all that had happened, he no longer wanted to scare him into submission or pack him off to a correctional facility. ‘Tell me what you know, Garvie. You saw her take the call? What did she say?'

‘It wasn't what she said. She didn't say anything.'

‘What was it, then?'

Lighting up, Garvie blew out smoke and sighed. ‘Oh, man. It was the way her face changed.'

He sat very still, watching the smoke uncurl from the cigarette in his fingers, and Singh watched it too. At last Garvie said quietly, ‘Like watching someone realize their time's almost run out.'

SOMETHING HAD CHANGED
between them and they both knew it.

The clock on Singh's desk said 00:43. There was a part of Garvie that was bone tired; there was another part of him that was already asleep. Most of him ached. He looked at Singh, pale-faced and long-nosed, no longer so uptight – or upright – and thought he must be tired too. It was as if, in their tiredness together, they had found a sort of understanding.

‘You're a very unusual boy,' Singh said quietly.

‘You're pretty unusual yourself. Though you can be a bit snippy, to be honest.'

Singh didn't appear to hear him. He said, ‘Tell me now about the man on the moped.'

Garvie sat there thinking for a long time while Singh waited patiently.

‘What man?' he said at last.

Singh started. He shook his head. ‘Oh no,' he said. ‘Don't do this. Not now.'

‘What moped?'

‘Don't, Garvie. No more of that nonsense.'

‘All right, I tell you what, I'll do a deal with you.'

‘A deal? What deal?'

‘I'll tell you what was going on outside with Mr Muffin the Moped Man if you let me see something.'

‘What thing?'

‘Can't you guess?'

Singh did not at that moment look like a man who liked guessing. ‘Her shoes?' he said.

‘No, not her shoes. I know all about her shoes. The note.'

‘Note?'

‘The note she left when she went running.'

‘It's classified. I can't show you the note.'

‘You don't have to show it me for long: I've got this photographic memory.'

Singh collapsed back into his chair and a shiver went through his previously immobile face. For a moment it wasn't clear if he was going to ask Garvie to leave or break down and weep. Garvie thought probably the latter. Instead, he did something totally unexpected. He smiled. A crooked, bewildered, surrendering smile.

Garvie had never seen him smile before, and it was a shock. ‘Don't see what's so funny,' he said. ‘I keep saying, I'm only trying to help.'

Singh shook his head. ‘If you can't find what you're looking for it's because you're looking in the wrong way.'

‘Really?'

‘Police Manual.'

‘It would be.'

‘The truth is everywhere and eternal, even in the saying of a child.'

‘That's the Police Manual?'

‘No. The teaching of Guru Granth Sahib.'

‘Yeah, well. Less of the “child”, if you don't mind.'

Singh nodded briskly. He sat upright again. ‘All right. Perhaps I'm now insane, but, against all the rules, I'll show you the note. For one minute only. Then you tell me everything about the man on the moped. That's the deal.'

Garvie shrugged. ‘OK. Deal.'

He put out his knuckles, and Singh raised his eyebrows and put out his own knuckles and they touched them together.

Garvie stood behind him while Singh brought up the PDF of the note on his screen.

‘What about the back of the sheet?' Garvie said. ‘Is that here too?'

Singh scrolled down to show him. ‘See? Nothing on the back actually. Completely blank. But I'll give you an extra minute to look at it when you've finished looking at the front.'

‘I've finished looking already,' Garvie said, walking away.

Singh stared after him. ‘Don't play games. I'm not giving you any more time.'

‘I don't need any more time.'

Singh snorted.

Garvie stood at the window, staring out. He said, ‘Single sheet of white medium-lined A4 notepaper torn from a student refill pad, hole-punched for ring-bound filing. Recto. In other words, from the right-hand side of an open pad. The holes are in the left-hand margin. Yeah?'

Singh glanced at the screen. ‘Yes. Though it's unimportant. What's important is the message.'

‘The message, then. In Chloe's handwriting in the centre of the page, in black felt-tip pen, circled. It says,
Gone for a run Back 7.30
p.m.'

‘Yes. That's it. Well remembered. It's not lengthy, however.'

‘Full stop missing after
run
.'

Singh frowned and leaned towards his screen. ‘Yes. As it happens.'

‘Various doodles and notes above and below the circled message,' Garvie went on, still looking out of the window.

‘Yes, yes,' Singh said. ‘But no need to fill up your photographic memory with irrelevant details. Sit down now. Let's talk about what was happening outside the station.'

‘Doodles,' Garvie repeated, remaining where he was, ‘which appear in the same black felt-tip, in the same handwriting. In the top left-hand quarter of the sheet, fifteen words in a list, in ten lines:
plain choc, milk, white, butter, pecans, plain flour, baking powder, eggs, vanilla essence, castor sugar
. In that order.
Caster
spelled wrong.'

Singh scrutinized the screen. ‘A list of ingredients, obviously.' He paused. ‘Impressive. But still unimportant.'

Garvie went on, ‘Bottom right-hand quarter, in the same handwriting, in the same black felt-tip, numbers in the form of an equation –
one over x plus two in brackets plus one over three equals minus one
.'

Singh examined the screen again. ‘Yes. A maths problem. Homework of some sort.'

‘Standard-grade probability question. X equals minus eleven over four, by the way. But Chloe wasn't to know that. Probability wasn't her thing. Though I hear her chocolate brownies were top notch.'

Singh said nothing.

‘Finally,' Garvie said, ‘in the bottom left-hand quarter of the sheet, in the same handwriting, same black felt-tip, a single word:
jacket
.'

‘Yes,' Singh said. ‘OK. I'm impressed. But the basic message is—'

‘Though I ought to mention as well,' Garvie went on, ‘that the sheet is a bit creased, from left to right. And that there's a vague doodly scribble underneath the probability equation. And a smear of something yellow across the words
eggs
and
vanilla
. And the left-hand edge of the sheet is jagged and slightly torn an inch from the top.'

At last he fell silent.

‘Did I miss anything out?' he asked.

‘On the contrary, you remembered too much. Obviously Chloe ripped the page out of her pad to write her message on. All these other things – homework, recipe and so on – are just what were already on the pad.'

‘Yeah, I know. Interesting.'

‘Why is it interesting?'

‘I don't know yet.'

Singh frowned. ‘OK, then,' he said.

There was a moment of contemplative silence. Singh raised his eyebrows. Garvie nodded briefly.

Singh said, ‘Good. Now it's time for your side of the bargain. Finally. What was going on outside the station?'

Finally Garvie told him.

‘So, in your opinion, Naylor is her second stalker?'

‘Obviously. On Thursday night he stole her running shoes out of her locker with his pass key. Which meant, of course, she didn't have them for Friday evening. Probably he nicked other stuff of hers too. He was always watching Chloe at school, she told Jess. He used to hide in her garden to spy on her. If you check his varsity jacket you'll find a button missing on the left sleeve. And it turns out he's a bit psycho.'