Running Girl E-Book

Simon Mason

• Herausgeber: David Fickling Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: The Garvie Smith Mysteries
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 458

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Meet Garvie Smith. Highest IQ ever recorded at Marsh Academy. Lowest ever grades. What's the point? Life sucks. Nothing surprising ever happens.Until Chloe Dow's body is pulled from a pond. His ex-girlfriend.DI Singh is already on the case. Ambitious, uptight, methodical - he's determined to solve the mystery - and get promoted. He doesn't need any 'assistance' from notorious slacker, Smith. Or does he?

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Simon Mason

Copyright

About the Book

Meet Garvie Smith. Highest IQ ever recorded at Marsh Academy. Lowest ever grades. What’s the point, anyway? Life sucks. Nothing ever happens.

Until Chloe Dow’s body is pulled from a pond.

DI Singh is already on the case. Ambitious, uptight, methodical – he’s determined to solve the mystery and get promoted. He doesn’t need any ‘assistance’ from notorious slacker, Smith.

Or does he?

For Gwilym and Eleri

1

DIRTY WEATHER BLEW into the city. It crashed against the towering glass office blocks in the west and pelted the spires, domes and grand facades of the historic centre. It spread north across hospitals and schools, and south across clubs and casinos. Darkening and accelerating, it raced east across the sewage works, the industrial park and the car plant. And at last it fell on the Five Mile estate, blackening cracked asphalt, flooding blocked drains and beating against the windows of Flat 12 Eastwick Gardens, where sixteen-year-old Garvie Smith lay on his bed, hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling.

He was a slender boy with a beautiful face, wearing slouch skinny jeans, plain hoodie and muddy high tops. He had been lying there, in exactly the same position, for two hours. Staring.

His mother appeared in the doorway. She was a solid lady from Barbados with a broad face and clipped black hair misting over with grey. In her hand was an official-looking letter, which she folded away in her coat pocket as she glared at her son. She opened her mouth. Sixteen years of being a single parent had not only thickened and toughened her, but given her voice startling power.

‘Garvie!’

He showed no sign of having heard.

‘Garvie!’

‘I’m busy,’ he said at last, to the ceiling.

‘Don’t mess with me, Garvie. Why aren’t you revising?’

‘I am revising.’

There was a pause while his mother turned her attention to his room and its contents; not just the tumult of dirty laundry, piles of equipment and overflow of general rubbish, but also – and in particular – the little table reserved for studying, unused for months and heaped with everything but books.

‘Revising what exactly?’

There was an even longer pause while Garvie thought about this. ‘Complex numbers,’ he said at last.

His mother began to take deep breaths. He could hear her.

Without taking his eyes off the ceiling, he said, ‘Say my revision book is unit a—’

‘Garvie!’ Her voice was a low growl.

‘And my revising is unit bi—’

‘Garvie, I’m warning you!’

‘Garvie!’

He was silent.

‘Are you smoking that stuff again?’

He didn’t reply and didn’t change his position, and his mother stared intently at his impassive face. He could hear her staring.

She was about to tell him he was a complete mystery to her.

‘You’re a complete mystery to me,’ she said.

She was going to say she didn’t know who he was any more.

‘Garvie Smith?’ she said. ‘I don’t know who you are.’

He heard her draw a deep breath. She was about to run through her usual list. It was a long list and needed a lot of breath.

With a minimum of elaboration and maximum force, she listed several relevant things. That Garvie’s room was a box filled with junk. That proper revision is done sitting at a table with books and a computer (switched on). That Garvie Smith was the laziest boy in Five Mile, the laziest boy she’d ever heard of anywhere, perhaps the laziest boy in all history – not to mention rude and inconsiderate and difficult. That he was getting himself into worse and worse trouble every which way – and don’t think she didn’t know all about it. And that his exams, less than two months away, were absolutely his last chance to redeem himself.

He didn’t respond.

‘I’m warning you, Garvie,’ she said. ‘You shift yourself. Shift yourself right now. Get off your bed, get your revision books out of your bag and turn on your computer.’

She was on her way out to the hospital, where, as Deputy Nurse Manager in the surgery unit, she often worked irregular hours. The letter which she had come in to discuss was now forgotten. She glared fiercely at her son one last time before withdrawing. ‘When I get back,’ she said, ‘I want to see this room completely tidy and a neat pile of work all done. I mean it, Garvie. You don’t go out, understand? You’re grounded till that revision’s done.’

Snorting, she left him, and a moment later there was the bang of the flat door slamming shut behind her.

Her son the mystery carried on staring at the ceiling. There were a couple of things his mother had forgotten to say and he said them to himself now. That he was a boy whose alleged ‘genius’ level of IQ had never helped him achieve a single ‘A’ grade in any subject in five years of secondary schooling. (‘Not one, Garvie!’) That he was a boy from a good home who was getting into trouble – and not just for missing school work or an untidy bedroom or general laziness, but for truancy, drinking and (‘Don’t you deny it, Garvie!’) for smoking that stuff.

He carried on staring at the ceiling. The rain carried on beating against the window.

What was genius? Watching difficult numbers fall into place? Remembering what other people didn’t or seeing what they missed? Yeah, well. What did numbers do? What happened that was worth remembering? What did he see that made him doubt for a second that life in general wasn’t some slow-motion, meaningless, crappy, boring little ball of cheap carpet fluff?

Therefore he carried on staring at the ceiling, fully clothed, muddy high tops on, his face completely still. An unusual face with his jet-black hair, coppery complexion, bright blue eyes; a double-take sort of face, the result of his mixed-race ancestry. But a face completely blank with boredom.

An hour passed. Rain crackled against the window, cars hissed by on the ring road. Another hour passed.

Then something else hit the window.

With a yawn, Garvie pulled himself off the bed and went over to look out. Standing hunched on the patch of grass below, a sharp-faced boy with thin wrists raised a hand. Felix. Felix the Cat. He was one of Garvie’s friends that his mother classed as ‘trouble’.

‘Is your mum in?’

‘No.’

‘Coming out for a smoke?’

‘All right.’

Garvie put on his old flaky-leather jacket and went out of the flat and down the stairs. It was nearly dark outside. The rain had temporarily stopped and the wet front of Eastwick Gardens shone black and yellow under the lamplight. Behind the block of flats was the ring road, quieter now, and the looming black silhouette of the car plant, and behind that farm fields and scrubland. The other way was the estate – a maze of roads and streets, of pebble-dash semis and maisonettes, garages and corner shops, wire fences, grass verges and cracked kerbs, all ordinary, familiar and dull.

A cab came past and honked its horn, and Garvie lifted a hand to the driver, Abdul, a friend of his mother. Then he joined Felix and they set off down the road together, jackets zipped up against the damp evening chill, ambling along the line of parked vans, past the electrical suppliers and betting shop, towards Old Ditch Road, where the kiddies’ playground was.

Felix glanced about him continually as he walked, as if on the lookout for unexpected opportunities. He had a long white face flecked with pimples, and big black eyes. He was light on his feet, like a dancer. Garvie kept pace with him, head down, strolling along with his usual loose stride.

After a while he said, ‘Another Friday night in Paradise.’

Felix looked sideways at him, snuffed and wiped his sharp nose. Then they went on in silence until they reached the playground.

There were a few others there already, hunched on the too-small swings and tiny roundabout. Ordinary boys with hoodies and wet hair and a dislike of being bored. They slapped hands and looked about them and settled back down.

‘What’s the plan?’ Garvie said.

There was a general shrug.

Smudge suggested going down the pub. ‘Or what about that new place in town does those vodka jellies? Rat Cellar, innit?’ Felix knew the bouncer there, but not in a good way. Dani mentioned the casino, Imperium. But they’d have to collect a few fake members’ cards and get togged up, and the whole thing seemed like too much of an effort. Anyway, none of them had any money. In the end they sat there in silence.

‘All right,’ Garvie said. ‘What’ve you got?’

They pooled tobacco and papers. Tiger had a half-bottle of Glen’s vodka, two-thirds empty, Dani had a couple of cans of Red Stripe lager and Smudge had a bag of sherbet lemons. They passed everything around. Felix had been to see Alex earlier and he rolled a medium-sized spliff and sent that round too.

They had some jokes. Tiger and Dani played chicken with an old sheath knife Tiger had found at the back of Jamal’s, and Smudge fell off his swing and gave himself a nosebleed. Garvie sat apart, gazing in silence over the nearby rooftops towards the distant lights of the tower blocks downtown, blurry in the murky phosphorescence that lay above the city. He’d grown up here, had known it all his life, and knew beyond all reasonable doubt that it was an utter bore. Town was a bore, with its shops and stores, City Hall and pedestrian precincts. The old quarter of cafés and restaurants was a bore. The new business district was a bore. The malls and superstores that sprawled along the ring road were bores. And the Five Mile estate was the biggest bore of all. Sighing, he began to roll a spliff.

‘Hey, Sherlock,’ Smudge said. ‘Got a mystery for you. Off one of them puzzle sites.’

Garvie looked across to where Smudge sat grinning. Nature had not been kind to Smudge. He had the face of a middle-aged butcher and the expressions of a ten-year-old child. He sat squashed into a seat on the roundabout, his pale, round face glistening with rain-wet, his little mud-coloured eyes gazing at Garvie eagerly. Garvie shook his head. He took out cigarette papers, tobacco and a largish amount of hash wrapped in foil, and began to stick two papers together.

‘Busy,’ he said at last.

‘It’s a good one. Serious.’

‘What’s the point, Smudge? The motive’s always the same.’

‘Like what?’

‘Sex or money.’

‘Two things I don’t have a problem with, personally. Come on. Bet you a big one you can’t solve it.’

The boy rubbed the bristles of his big cropped head with sudden concentration, sighed with satisfaction, and resumed grinning. Garvie ignored him. He sprinkled tobacco onto the paper and crumbled in the hash and licked the edges of the papers.

Smudge began anyway.

‘On the first of June, Lola Soul Diva’s found face down on the floor of her luxury apartment. She’s been stabbed from behind.’ He paused and thought for a moment. ‘Right in the spleen,’ he said with satisfaction.

Garvie rolled, pinching at the sides.

Smudge went on. ‘There’s no sign of a struggle except the index finger of her left hand, busted where she fell forward. No bruising anywhere else, clothes not ripped, glasses still on her nose not smashed, watch still on her wrist – her right wrist – not smashed.’

He grinned slyly. ‘Good, innit?’

‘No,’ Garvie said with a sigh. ‘It’s crap. Like life itself, my friend.’ With his teeth he twisted loose tobacco off the ends of the monster spliff, examined it for a moment and casually tossed it up into the corner of his mouth.

Smudge went on: ‘In her right hand she’s holding a pen. Lying next to her is her private diary. On the page for that day she’d written Told Big Up I don’t love him no more. At the top of the page, next to the date, she’s written in this shaky writing 6ZB. Got it? 6ZB. Next to her diary is a ripped-up photograph of her husband.’

He grinned again. ‘Good, innit?’

‘No,’ Garvie said. ‘It’s a bore. Sex or money. Sex and money.’ He flicked a match alight with his thumbnail and ignited the spliff.

Smudge continued doggedly. ‘Three men admit to visiting her that day. Her husband, who’s this pro poker player with a coke habit and a bad limp, called Dandy Randy Wilder. Her manager, Jude Fitch Abercrombie, a coke head with his left arm in a sling. And her boyfriend, this half-blind coke addict called Big Up Mother. All of them give the police good explanations for their visits.’

He wiggled his eyebrows. ‘It’s brilliant, this, innit?’

‘Utter twaddle,’ Garvie said, taking a long drag on the spliff and turning his eyes upwards.

‘All right then, Sherlock. Work it out. Who did it?’

Garvie exhaled and passed the spliff to Felix, who looked at it with something like awe. ‘No one did it,’ he said.

‘Come on, champ, you can do better than that.’

Garvie sat silently in a cloud of smoke gazing across the darkened field beyond the playground.

‘You got to think of what she wrote,’ Smudge said. ‘Especially’ – he paused dramatically – ‘6ZB.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘And while you’re at it,’ Smudge went on, ‘give some thought to that undamaged watch. On her right wrist.’

The spliff went round and came back to Garvie, and he took a long drag, and then another.

‘You know,’ Smudge said, ‘I’m actually gutted. Thought you were good at this sort of thing. You smoke too much of that stuff, probably. Softens the brain. Do you want me to tell you what happened?’

‘I know what happened.’

‘Tell us, then.’

‘No one did it.’

Smudge tutted. ‘All right. If you can’t guess I’ll have to tell you. Her manager did it.’

Garvie blew out smoke. ‘No, he didn’t.’

‘Did, actually, Sherlock. Shall I tell you how I know?’

Sitting there in his cloud of smoke, Garvie said in a bored voice, ‘She’s wearing a watch on her right wrist, so she’s probably left-handed. But she wrote 6ZB with her right hand because of her broken finger so her writing was shaky. So it’s not 6ZB at all. It’s 628. And if you match those numbers to the months of the year in her diary – June, February, August – and look at the initial letters, you get JFA: Jude Fitch Abercrombie. Her manager.’

‘Oh.’ Smudge looked puzzled. ‘There you are, then. The manager did it.’

‘The manager didn’t do it because the murderer stabbed her from behind through the spleen.’

‘So?’

‘The spleen’s on the left, Smudge. Only a left-handed person would do that. And the manager had his left arm in a sling.’

Smudge opened his mouth and shut it again, and his whole face sagged a little. ‘Shit,’ he said at last. ‘I must have told it wrong.’

Garvie leaned over and patted him on the arm. ‘Don’t worry about it, Smudgy. Life’s like that.’

They sat on the roundabout, knees tucked up to their chests, hoods pulled over the heads. The spliff went round three times more, shrinking to a speck of fire and vanishing at last after stinging everyone’s lips. The vodka had gone a long time earlier. They finished the Red Stripe, and Smudge ate the last of the sherbet lemons, and they even ran out of cigarettes. The rain came on again, gently at first, and at last the conversation died. In the wet of the darkness they sat there listening to the noises of rain and the occasional passing car.

‘Oh God,’ Garvie said. ‘If something doesn’t happen soon I think I’m going to lose control.’

Smudge looked interested. ‘What do you mean by “soon”?’

‘Now, or in the next few minutes.’

And at that moment a siren went off next to them, so brutal and sudden it threw them into the air like rag dolls. Mouths open, hearts pounding, they just had time to see two police cars scream to a halt at the park gates – lights buzzing, doors flying open, policemen leaping into the road – before scattering randomly across the muddy grass towards the darkness.

2

THE POLICE WERE also at ‘Honeymead’, one of the new houses on Fox Walk, down off Bulwarks Lane, a quarter of a mile away. At the end of the cul-de-sac a squad car was parked across the road, doors open, light still flashing, no one in it. Everything was quiet. There was a hush, as if all the neighbours watching from behind their curtains were holding their breath. From inside the house a woman suddenly cried out once, high and shrill. Then there was silence again.

In the little conservatory at the back of the house, Inspector Singh of the City Squad looked out of the window into the darkened garden as he waited for Mr Dow to calm his wife, who had collapsed onto the settee. It was a small garden, like those of all the houses in the cul-de-sac; tidy too, with a narrow strip of patio, a neat square of lawn and three sides of flowerbeds packed with shrubs. An ornamental bird bath gave it a touch of light fantasy. The house was the same, he’d noticed: very small, very neat, with unexpected fancy details here and there, like the elaborate door chimes and bamboo-cane furniture.

Inspector Singh was a man who noticed things. He had a silent face and still, watchful eyes. The reticence of his features – narrow mouth, refined nose, regular jaw – might have made him seem anonymous, but his machine-like alertness was conspicuous to everyone he met. Conspicuous too was his uniform – not a requirement for inspectors but something he personally insisted on.

He turned back to Mr and Mrs Dow, who sat together, quietly now, on the bamboo-cane settee. Mrs Dow gave him an angry look, her face wet and twisted. Singh had seen the expression before on the faces of other mothers. She was frightened, and under her fear was resentment and shame. He glanced across at the constable, Jones, who was staring at his boots.

‘Mrs Dow,’ he said carefully. ‘By far the likeliest scenario is that your daughter’s perfectly safe. For reasons of her own she may have decided to go somewhere and she’ll contact you when she wants to.’

Even as he said it he didn’t believe it. Mr Dow looked at him with disgust. ‘Until then,’ Singh went on in the same careful way, ‘we’ll do all we can to try and locate her. We’re checking the hospitals. An alert’s gone out to the community officers. In the meantime it would be helpful to know a little more about what happened.’

Mr and Mrs Dow each gave a small, reluctant nod.

He said, ‘Let’s start with the basic facts.’

There weren’t many. Chloe Dow, aged fifteen, had gone jogging and hadn’t come back.

‘What time did she leave the house?’

About seven o’clock, they thought. Neither Mr nor Mrs Dow had actually seen her go. She’d left a note on the living-room table, which they found when they came in from late-night shopping: Gone for a run. Back 7.30. Usually she ran for about half an hour.

Singh made careful notes in his book. ‘And where did she go? Do you know?’

Mrs Dow shook her head. It could have been any one of her usual routes. Down Pollard Way and back through East Field. Along the bypass to the roundabout and back. Up Old Ditch Road, out beyond the ring road on the track that goes through Froggett Woods to Battery Hill. Or somewhere else. She’d left no clue. Just: Gone for a run.

‘And when she didn’t return, what did you do?’ he asked.

The Dows looked at each other. Nothing, at first. They were angry with her. There had been arguments recently. They plated her tea and put it in the fridge and tried to watch television. Around nine o’clock they couldn’t stand it any more and began to phone round Chloe’s friends, asking if they’d seen her. After that, Mr Dow went out in his van and drove along Chloe’s usual jogging routes looking for her while Mrs Dow stood at the kitchen window staring at nothing. When he got home she phoned the police.

‘And here you are,’ she said bitterly.

Singh paused. He said, very carefully, ‘Is there any reason you know of why she might have decided not to come home this evening?’

Mrs Dow made an angry snorting noise. ‘Why do you keep saying that? She hasn’t run away!’ Her lip trembled and her face began to crumple. ‘Something’s happened to her,’ she shouted through her sobs.

Standing again at the conservatory window, Singh checked his phone. The station had forwarded a couple of texts from community officers. A late-night jogger had been stopped on Pollard Way. Some kids smoking weed in Old Ditch Road playground had been questioned. He deleted the messages and checked his watch: 11.30 p.m. Lost in thought, he stared out into the dark and rainy garden. At this time of night, as the weather worsened, there was little chance of a community officer spotting anything. Besides, he already had a bad feeling about Chloe Dow. As Mr and Mrs Dow knew, girls who go jogging don’t usually decide to run away from home at the same time.

As he stood there thinking, something in the garden distracted him, and he screwed up his eyes and peered out through the wet window. But it was nothing; only shadows of the shrubs stirring under the rain. Then a call came through from the duty officer asking for an update, and Singh turned and walked back through the conservatory, talking. He hadn’t got as far as the dining room when there was a loud crash behind him from outside.

Spinning round, he looked back through the conservatory window and caught a glimpse of fencing buckling in the shadows of the shrubbery and the sudden outline of someone leaping.

‘What the ...!’

Mr Dow was on his feet, staring. Jones was already running towards the front door, like a dog suddenly let off the leash.

Singh put his hand on Mr Dow’s arm. ‘What’s behind the garden?’

The man pointed. ‘Roadworks depot that way. And the Marsh Fields over there.’

Singh called after Jones, already out of the door, ‘Take the depot!’ Then he was running too.

He ran into the rain and slithered across the illuminated grass at the side of the house, glimpsing the rainy outline of Jones, ahead of him, already climbing the fence.

‘Left!’ Singh shouted at him. He wasn’t sure if Jones knew his left from his right. ‘Towards the depot!’ he added.

Jones vaulted over and disappeared, and Singh heard his footsteps thumping in the gravel path beyond. A few seconds later he scrambled over himself, losing his grip on the wet boards and falling heavily to the ground on the other side. Up again, he ran panting under the shelter of trees along the back fences of ‘Honeymead’ and the other houses, scanning the undergrowth for signs of disturbance. But it was too dark; he couldn’t even make out the broken fencing. Stopping to listen, he heard only his own ragged breathing. And then, very faintly, something else, up ahead. Footsteps. Someone running. He wiped the rain from his eyes and ran on again, faster now, on his toes, with maximum efficiency, down the path to where it bent towards Bulwarks Lane. He sprinted through a wicket gate onto the rough ground of the Marsh Fields, and came to a stop on the grassy humps of the empty common, looking around for a movement in the shadows. But there was nothing. Everything was suddenly still and quiet, except for vague rain noises in the leaves of the trees all around and his own panting. Out of the darkness rain fell on him whitely. He was too late. Whoever had been in the Dows’ garden had disappeared.

Silently he turned and retraced his steps to the house.

Jones was there already, with nothing to report. He looked at him oddly and smirked. ‘Sorry, sir. It’s slipped.’

Singh stared him down. ‘Get some light and check the garden,’ he said. ‘Take a look at the broken fencing.’ After Jones had gone, he adjusted his turban – ill-fitting bullet-proof police-issue – and wiped his face dry before returning to the conservatory, where the Dows were waiting, Mr Dow bitter, Mrs Dow terrified.

‘Why was there someone hiding in your back garden?’ Singh asked. He didn’t mean to sound accusing, it was just his manner.

‘How should I bloody know?’ Mr Dow said.

Mrs Dow began to wail. ‘It’s something to do with Chloe,’ she said. ‘I know it is! Why is she doing this to me?’ And she collapsed against her husband, weeping again.

Now it was half past midnight. Singh refused to be tired. Sitting stiffly upright at the table with Mr and Mrs Dow, he began once again to ask questions about Chloe. ‘What I need,’ he said, ‘is a more detailed ID. A recent photograph, if you have one. A short description. What she was wearing. The teams will need it for first thing tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Mrs Dow’s face crumpled. ‘Aren’t you going to do something now?’

There was a moment when he thought he was going to lose his cool. But Inspector Raminder Singh never lost his cool. It was his trademark; one of the reasons why he was both so respected and disliked by his colleagues.

Mr Dow came back into the room with a photograph and handed it to Singh. As soon as he saw it he had the bad feeling again.

‘I see,’ he said. He hesitated. ‘It would also help us,’ he said carefully, ‘if you could tell me more about your daughter. What sort of girl is she?’

To his surprise, Mrs Dow did not burst into tears. She stared at him with loathing.

3

THE NEW DAY dawned, still raining. All morning drizzle fell in a steady flicker from the heavy sky, hampering the police search as it fanned out through wet neighbourhoods into the waste ground and industrial parks at the eastern edge of the city. The car plant streamed, the ring road was a cloud of spray, and black puddles bulged in the gutters of the streets like oil from a spill. At Flat 12 Eastwick Gardens the windows steamed up in the kitchen, where Garvie Smith and his mother sat arguing about the night before. Mrs Smith had an inkling that her son had been out seeing his unsavoury friends, and Garvie was emphatically denying it.

‘I can’t help it if you have a suspicious mind,’ he said.

‘I have no such mind. I’m asking—’

‘What sort of mind do you think you have?’

‘Don’t try to distract me. I want to know—’

‘Uncle Len thinks it’s a suspicious mind.’

‘Uncle Len—’ She stopped herself. ‘This has nothing to do with Uncle Len. Or my mind. I’m asking you. Did you go out last night? I know for a fact you didn’t do any revision.’

She glared at him sitting at the table with his chin on his hands, looking difficult. It was not easy to argue with Garvie. He was unpredictable.

‘Well?’ she said.

Before he could answer – if he was going to answer – the doorbell rang. Giving him a look that clearly suggested he should stay where he was, Mrs Smith left the kitchen, and at once Garvie got up and began to drift in that apparently idle way she hated towards his room. He hadn’t quite reached it when he heard her return.

‘Garvie?’

He stopped when he saw the look of concern on her face.

‘There’s someone here who wants to ask you some questions.’

A policeman in a turban stepped forward. He looked small standing next to Mrs Smith, almost dainty. There was nothing you could call an expression on his quiet face. But he looked at Garvie steadily, sizing him up.

‘What about?’ Garvie said.

‘About last night.’ The policeman’s voice was quiet too, and careful, giving nothing away.

‘Yeah? What about last night?’

Garvie’s mother frowned at him. Still standing, the policeman took out a notebook and leafed through it. Looking up, he said, ‘At eleven o’clock you were with a group of boys in the Old Ditch Road play area.’

(‘That’s interesting,’ Garvie’s mother said.)

‘Says who?’ Garvie said (avoiding looking at his mother).

The policeman looked at him silently for about a minute. Something new registered on his quiet face: a dislike of Garvie. No stranger to this expression in the faces of officials he encountered, Garvie looked back until, finally, the man lowered his face to his notebook again and read out half a dozen names, including Ryan ‘Smudge’ Howell, Ben ‘Tiger’ McIntyre and Liam ‘Felix’ Fricker.

‘So?’ Garvie said. ‘It’s not illegal.’

The inspector’s eyes hardened. After a moment he said, in a voice of barely restrained contempt, ‘Do you want to have a conversation with me about what’s illegal?’

Garvie’s mother opened her mouth. ‘Well, Inspector, I hardly think—’

He said, ‘We can do one of two things, Mrs Smith. I can conduct this interview with your son here, in my own way. Or we can all go down to the station.’

Garvie’s mother’s eyes narrowed, but she gave a brief nod.

‘Sit down,’ the inspector said to Garvie.

Garvie sat in a slouch at the table, hands thrust deep in his jeans pockets, while the inspector continued to stare at him. Garvie knew what the man was doing. He was trying to intimidate him. Some policemen shouted and threatened. Some just stared. Singh was a starer.

Garvie stared back, coolly.

‘Perhaps, Inspector, you could explain what this is about,’ Garvie’s mother said.

‘A girl has gone missing.’

‘Missing?’

‘She left her house yesterday evening and didn’t return. There’s been no sign of her since.’

‘What girl?’

‘Her name is Chloe Dow.’

Mrs Smith put her hand up to her mouth. ‘Chloe, Garvie!’

A flicker of something crossed Garvie’s face, then it was gone. He turned to his mother and frowned at her.

‘You know her?’ the inspector said in his quiet, cold voice. It was a question, but it sounded like a statement.

They were both looking at Garvie now, his mother’s face worried and cross, the inspector’s face hard and accusing.

‘I know of her,’ Garvie said at last. ‘She goes to my school. She’s in my year. I see her, I talk to her. I don’t know her.’

There was a silence.

‘Define “know”,’ Garvie said.

Singh said nothing, just stared. It was easy to see what sort of a man he was. Uptight. Ambitious. The smudge on his turban suggested long hours, dedication. An exam passer, Garvie thought. A disciplinarian. A man disliked by his colleagues.

His mother didn’t like him, either; he could tell that. Garvie settled himself back in his chair and waited.

The inspector said, ‘You’re acquainted with her, then. And what sort of girl is she, in your opinion?’

‘Not the sort who disappears.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You must have seen a photograph of her.’

Raising an eyebrow slightly, Singh said nothing.

‘Anyway,’ Garvie added, ‘what’s all this got to do with me?’

After explaining that Chloe had gone jogging and that Old Ditch Road was on one of the routes she might have taken, the inspector embarked on a lengthy series of questions about the night before. What time exactly had Garvie gone to Old Ditch Road? What route had he taken? What had he seen? Where had he run to when the police arrived? Mostly Garvie answered ‘Can’t remember,’ or simply shrugged. Once or twice he ignored the question.

Gradually, as the interview went on, Inspector Singh’s quiet, careful voice became less quiet and careful.

‘Perhaps you can explain what you were doing at Old Ditch Road last night,’ he said.

‘Perhaps you can explain the link between what I was doing and what’s happened to Chloe,’ Garvie replied.

‘Garvie,’ his mother said, but mildly, ‘try to answer the inspector’s questions.’

‘What’s the point? They’re the wrong questions.’ He sat up and leaned forward, and looked directly at Singh. ‘How do you know she went jogging at all?’

‘We know.’

‘How?’

‘She left a note.’

‘How do you know she didn’t just leave it to throw people like you off the scent?’

Singh said nothing. But his face tightened.

Garvie went on. ‘How do you know she left it? How do you know she left when you think she did? How do you know she didn’t leave the note then change her mind?’

Singh remained impassive, but a muscle jumped in his left cheek.

‘They’re the right sort of questions,’ Garvie said. ‘Seems to me.’

After a moment’s cold silence the inspector began to talk – perhaps a little faster than before – about the nature of police work, which was no doubt obscure to members of the general public – but Garvie immediately interrupted him with a casual wave of his hand. ‘Listen, man. I know all this already. My uncle works with the police. Forensics.’ He looked at Singh and, pointedly, at the insignia on his sleeves. ‘High up,’ he added.

Singh suddenly stood, and Garvie allowed himself a little smile. His mother gave him a quick, fierce look and he knew what was coming to him later. But it had been worth it.

Mrs Smith got to her feet. ‘I’m sorry we can’t be of more help, Inspector,’ she said.

For a moment the man stood there, perfectly still; then, without changing his expression, he thanked Garvie’s mother for the opportunity of asking her son his questions.

‘By the way,’ he added (his voice now as calm and quiet as at the beginning), ‘two grammes of cannabis were taken off Liam Fricker at Old Ditch Road last night.’ Turning back to Garvie, he fixed him with that deliberate stare. ‘You told me what you were doing wasn’t illegal. It was. It’s my job to ensure you don’t break the law. It’s your mother’s to explain why smoking weed is bad for you and I’ll leave her to do that now.’

Then he turned and walked away, and Mrs Smith went after him to the door.

Garvie stayed where he was, staring at the kitchen table. He didn’t like the way the conversation had ended. He’d been outplayed by Inspector Smudgy-Turban Singh. Hearing the front door close and his mother’s footsteps coming back slowly and heavily across the living room, he braced himself.

There was a long silence. When he finally lifted his eyes she wasn’t even looking at him. She was fiddling with the radio, a distracted look on her face. Quietly he got to his feet and began to drift towards his room in that apparently idle way that she—

He was halted by the local news coming on suddenly. Police were looking for fifteen-year-old Chloe Dow, a popular student at the Marsh Academy and a promising athlete, who had disappeared the night before.

His mother stood there listening, her hand up to her mouth and, despite himself, Garvie listened too.

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.

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.