Kid Alone Read online

  Alex said, “What the hell, Garv? It doesn’t want to play.”

  “I know that.”

  “Get out if you can,” Alex said, and stepped forward.

  The dog coiled into itself like a spring and leaped at him, crashing through the air like a flying bullock, and Garvie put his hand into the split bag of cement at his feet and flung powder into its face, and it went through the powder like a plane through cloud and took Alex with it, chomping at his shoulders. Entwined, they rolled and twisted on the concrete, the dog making pneumatic gnashing noises with its jaws, its great body heaving, straining with muscle, rank with animal stink. It reared up whining and snarling, blindly shaking its head from side to side, trying to clear its eyes, and Alex punched it in the side of its head. It turned to Garvie, who froze, half brick in hand, mesmerized by its face so close to his, a mashed mask of fury as it lunged forward and took a bite out of his forearm, and he gritted his teeth and clubbed it twice, and the dog reeled sideways, spilling blood from its lips.

  “Here’s something for Pyotor,” he said. And as he lifted the brick again something slammed into the side of his head and he fell facedown onto the ground.

  Everything vibrated. His eyes felt loose. Vision blurred, he squirmed around and Blinkie kicked him in the knee and he felt a snap and a flash of pain as he rolled away. When he looked up the man was struggling dementedly with something in his tracksuit pocket, jerking about as if electrocuted, until finally he yanked out a gun, grinned at last, and was swept aside by Alex falling on him suddenly from behind.

  The gun skittered away across the concrete, and Blinkie and Alex struggled together among builders’ rubbish. Garvie yelled as Mother reappeared, crushing Alex to the ground, squatting over him, big shoulders high, gnashing, and Alex got both hands around the dog’s collar and butted it suddenly in the snout with a crunch, and it staggered sideways and fell on its face. “Alex!” Garvie shouted again, and the boy looked up, too late, as Blinkie swung down and blatted him flat with a roof tile.

  There was a moment of stillness, an exhausted tableau of panting and retching, dust swirling sluggishly in stirred-up patches of sunlight.

  Slowly Garvie began to drag himself toward the place where the gun lay on the floor, but Blinkie went ahead of him, staggering and swearing.

  Before he could reach it there was a rapid patter of footsteps on the metal staircase behind them, and Blinkie glanced back, magnified eyes swiveling in cartoonish astonishment, frozen to the spot. Then he turned and ran, and at the same time someone came past Garvie at high speed, running on light feet, vaulting rubbish, a blur of white, and reached Blinkie as Blinkie reached the gun. They clashed, struggling together, and when they came apart Blinkie had the gun.

  Singh stood very still in front of him.

  Blinkie pointed the gun at Singh.

  Singh moved. He danced closer as Blinkie fired, gliding past him, kicking as he turned, and the gun flew out wide across the floor. Blinkie slashed out with a knife and Singh rocked back on his heels, and Blinkie shoved forward, twisting, baggy maroon sleeves swinging around him, slashing wildly, the metal sweeping through empty glinting arcs on either side of Singh, who swayed left and right in front of him until, as if coming to the end of a practiced routine, he slipped suddenly behind him, lifting his arms in a swift almost delicate scissoring gesture, and the man crumpled at once and lay with his deflated tracksuit around him like a collapsed parachute.

  There was silence.

  The Sikh stood there motionless, head bowed as if praying, his mind elsewhere, a slight figure in white pajamas, calm and quiet in the still-surging shadows.

  Garvie yelled, “Singh!”

  And Blinkie’s dog crashed into the policeman from behind, lifting him off the ground, hurling him through the air, and thrashing him headfirst against a girder, where he fell and lay still.

  Now there was only Garvie and Mother.

  The dog swung its heavy head toward the boy. Slowly it began to move toward him.

  Garvie tried to lift himself off the ground but fell back, and lay there helplessly as the dog stalked across the floor toward him, head lowered, shoulders raised, moving stiffly on bunched muscles, its jutting face covered with blood and mouth-foam, open jaws spilling drool.

  Garvie went white. The saliva dried in his mouth; his pulse pounded in his head. He backed away crabwise as far as a pile of gravel, and threw a handful of it in the dog’s direction, and its snarl widened until its whole head seemed made of teeth, and it came on, creeping slowly, as if wading through heavy sand, its muscles straining and trembling under its sweat-glistening hide.

  Gradually it quickened its pace. Lifting its head, it pushed forward with long, regular strides. Its momentum built, carried it quicker. Garvie just had time to see its ears go back, tail curl under, eyes fix themselves on him, black and wet, before it charged. From five meters away it launched itself, low and huge, all jaws and thickened muscle, a blur suddenly exploding sideways with a scream, crashing past him into a girder, and Garvie lay there drenched and dazed.

  His face and front were wet with blood. He thought at first they were all dead now, lumps of rubbish in the rubbish-strewn warehouse. But there was a noise, and his eyes focused and shifted, and he saw Zuzana standing nearby with Blinkie’s gun still in her hand, her face white in shadow.

  She dropped the gun.

  They stared at each other for a long moment, and she stood there as if uncertain what to do, and he turned his face toward Alex, and after a moment’s hesitation she turned and ran to where the boy lay on the ground, just beginning to stir.

  The last thing Garvie heard was Alex’s voice. “Is Garvie okay?” After that, nothing.

  Some things don’t change. Other things change around them. A boy is murdered, an arrest is made, a big dog is put down. Headlines are written, policemen tell the media that justice has been done in the end. But the weather stays the same, all steady sunlight and soft air and summer breezes. Three boys loiter in a corridor as they’ve done many times before. One has an arm in a sling and walks with a crutch, one is fiddling inside the lock of the classroom door, one is keeping lookout, glancing down the corridor with an expression of utterly unnatural ordinariness on his face. The school music room is the same too, with its corner piano, stacks of orange plastic chairs, and astringent smell of wax, and the stockroom, where the old-fashioned musical instruments are kept, has been unchanged since the beginning of time.

  Smudge said from the doorway, “Still only seven, Garv. You got some sort of problem with counting?”

  “Get them out, will you, Smudge? Let’s have a look.”

  Grumbling, Smudge disappeared into the stockroom; they heard him mumbling to himself. “First it’s violins, then it’s furs, then it’s violins again … ”

  Felix said, “So it wasn’t Magee.”

  “He was up on the roof with Sajid.”

  “And it wasn’t Khalid.”

  “He was in the van outside the fence, waiting.” Garvie looked at the violin that Smudge brought him, and shook his head. “Next,” he said, and Smudge went back, grumbling some more, into the stockroom.

  “And it wasn’t Alex.”

  Garvie said, “No, Alex was too busy being stupid.”

  “I don’t get Alex.”

  “No,” Garvie said to Smudge. “Next.” He sighed. “You told me Alex owed Blinkie. You were right. Alex got into some serious trouble on someone else’s turf six months back and Blinkie gave him protection. But Blinkie never does anything for free. No,” he said to Smudge.

  “So he called in the favor?”

  “That’s it. After he shot Pyotor, Blinkie couldn’t be seen at Jamal’s. He got Alex to go around and lean on Khalid for his grand. I thought Alex was dealing again. No, Smudge,” he said. “Bring two next time, will you, speed things up; someone’ll come in a minute.”

  “What about Magee?”

  “Bad luck all along. His fur job got scuppered by the shooting. He go
t nabbed by Singh at the murder scene. Then Khalid led Blinkie to his hideaway.”

  “What? How?”

  “Soon as he could, Magee got in touch with Khalid, to find out what the hell had gone down at the lock-up. I mean, he still had no idea what Pyotor was doing there dying on the floor that night. Khalid must have gone out to Magee’s hideaway to talk it through with him. I found one of those sweet wrappers there. You know, Felix, those green-and-yellow ones. Apart from Pyotor, Khalid was the only person who bothered with them.”

  “And Khalid explained it to him?”

  “Khalid couldn’t explain lunchtime. No. But he could tell Magee what he knew. Which was that Pyotor had been on his back about Blinkie threatening Sajid if he didn’t pay up. Also that his gun had gone missing: Pyotor suspected. He must have mentioned Alex putting pressure on him too. Basically he gave Magee enough to start putting it together. Unfortunately for Magee, Blinkie was keeping an eye on Khalid, to see how much he knew.”

  “And he followed Khalid right to Magee.”

  “That’s it. And killed him. He didn’t want Magee working out what had happened. Magee had started to work it out, he told me.”

  Felix whistled under his breath. “And what about Zuzana?”

  Garvie said quietly, “Nothing to say about Zuzana.”

  He took the two violins and looked at them. “No, Smudge,” he said. “Not those, either. Typical. It’s always the last one. Go on, bring it out.”

  Smudge brought over the last violin. “End of a totally pointless exercise. Hope you’ve enjoyed it.”

  “Very much,” Garvie said. “I can see you working with old instruments in the future.”

  Felix said, “So it was all about Gimpel.”

  “Pyotor and Sajid.”

  Felix was frowning. “What I don’t understand,” he said, “is why he thought his plan would work. I mean, getting Blinkie to sign something? Can the man even write his own name?”

  “Even clever people can’t always see what’s right under their noses. Blinkie doesn’t operate by the laws of human nature. Everyone in Five Mile knew that, except Pyotor. Once he told Blinkie he had all the evidence of his extortion that he needed to make sure he went down, he thought Blinkie would go along with it.”

  “Evidence which he’d hidden somewhere for safekeeping.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Where?”

  The door to the music room opened and the temperature dropped a couple of degrees. On clicking heels Miss Perkins walked in and stopped and looked at them.

  Smudge said automatically, “We were just … ,” and fell silent.

  Glancing quickly at all points of exit, Felix made himself inconspicuous behind his more solidly built friend.

  Her gaze swiveled onto Garvie.

  “Smith,” she said.

  “Yes, miss.”

  “As you are aware, the music room is out of bounds.”

  “Yes, miss.” He leaned over and took the last violin off Smudge.

  “And the instruments, I need hardly remind you, are all county-music-service property,” Miss Perkins said.

  “You’d think, wouldn’t you?”

  She looked at him as she’d looked at him many times before, coldly, mistrustingly, and he felt a familiar resentment, the urge to go his own way.

  He dropped the violin on the floor and it failed to bounce. He lifted his foot and stomped on it and smashed it into bits.

  There was the sort of silence that accompanies all acts of appalling folly. Smudge battled hard to stop himself bursting into tears.

  “I will inform the authorities of what you have just done,” Miss Perkins said, her voice scarily normal. “There are three witnesses. I expect you to be prosecuted. I shall, of course, inform your mother.”

  Garvie lowered himself awkwardly to the floor and with his good hand delved among the remains of the violin.

  “Here,” he said.

  She stared at him for a moment. “What is it, Smith?” she said at last.

  “Pyotor Gimpel’s memory stick, miss. Got important stuff on it. Pictures. Phone recordings. Think I’m right in saying the police offered a reward. You can have it. Keep the money. Or give it to the school.”

  “So we can replace the violin you’ve just broken?”

  “Not yours actually. Belonged to Pyotor. You can check it out; it doesn’t have the school brand on it. Clever of him. He hid the memory stick in it, then switched his violin for one in the stockroom. Easy to do.”

  “Yeah,” Smudge said. “They all the look the bleeding same.” He put his hand over his mouth.

  Garvie said, “You’ll find the remains of the school violin in Jamal’s stockroom. If they haven’t tidied it up. And I bet they haven’t. I met the guy who smashed it. I don’t know his real name, but if you get to meet him I think you should call him Blinkie. He’s in prison on a murder charge.”

  Miss Perkins listened to this without comment, her rigid face pale.

  “So you see,” Garvie explained, “I haven’t really done anything wrong. For once.”

  Miss Perkins looked at him. “You have done something very wrong. You have tried my patience too far.” She put the memory stick into her jacket pocket, walked to the door, and turned back.

  “Half past two,” she said. “I note that you were meant to be in your chemistry exam thirty minutes ago, and I shall mark you down as a fail.”

  Then she went. None of the boys said anything. The temperature of the room remained chilly.

  In his bed in the men’s ward on the twelfth floor of City Central Hospital, former Detective Inspector Singh lay thinking. Sunlight fell in thin woolen folds across the bed, gleamed on a bedside plastic glass, a plastic vase filled with freesias. Warm air swarmed in the bright window. Singh paid no attention to any of this, head resting on the pillow, his gaze directed at the ceiling, a plastic tube up his nose, a drip feed in his forearm, and a brace around his jaw.

  He paid no attention, either, to the headline of the newspaper lying on his bed: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED BY SUSPENDED SQUADDIE. He was daydreaming of Lahore, its orange dust, its flawless blue sky, of the guru who taught him viraha yudhan, a burly man with a bushy beard and tiptoeing step, whose eyes never left Singh’s as he showed the boy his moves, swaying around him, catching sunbeams out of the air with his rapid, thick fingers. Singh heard again his guru’s dark brown voice. “How strange to think that all this violence comes from God.”

  There was the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside and the door opened. Garvie came in. He was wearing a rucksack and he limped across the room with a noise of clinking bottle glass and sat in the chair next to Singh’s bed. Neither greeted the other, and Singh continued to stare at the ceiling.

  After a while he said, “I’m not allowed visitors. The nurses are very strict about it.”

  “Yeah. Told them I was related. On your mother’s side. Your great-great-grandfather was my—”

  Singh waved a hand and Garvie fell silent.

  “Whatever you’ve brought with you I’m not allowed, either. Nothing to eat or drink from outside, they said.”

  “It’s not for you. I’m on my way to Old Ditch Road, see the boys. Picked up some refreshment.”

  “I can imagine,” Singh said drily.

  For a while they were silent.

  Garvie said, conversationally, “They’ve admitted Alex in downstairs. I’ve just been to see him. Skull fracture and hemorrhage, open wounds to shoulder and neck, something called cellulitis. Yeah. He’s a bit down in the dumps. Still, he’s getting lots of care and attention.”

  Alex was in between operations, confined to bed, encased in a sort of protective frame, like an exhibit. Smudge and Felix had been earlier and had left the remains of a bunch of grapes and a couple of packs of Benson & Hedges, which had been removed by the nurse, and a half bottle of Glen’s, which she hadn’t yet noticed, under his pillow. Garvie had sat with him for an hour or so, not saying much, occasionally giving him
sips of water from a beaker with a straw.

  “By the way,” he said to Singh, “I meant to ask, How’d you know to turn up at East Field when you did? Was it Zuzana?”

  “Zuzana Schulz, the Polish girl, yes. She called me on the number you’d given her.”

  “I suppose she must have guessed where I was ’cause she heard the goods train going by when she called me.”

  “That’s what she said. She was concerned for you.” With some effort Singh moved his head and looked at Garvie. “Haven’t you talked to her about it?”

  Garvie shrugged; shook his head. He’d seen Zuza only once since the palaver at East Field, in the hospital lobby downstairs. She’d just been to say good-bye to Alex. It had been one of those moments that happen at the wrong time in the wrong place in probably the wrong universe. She was going to catch a train to the airport, on her way to Kraków, to where her parents were relocating. There was nowhere in the lobby to sit, even for a minute; they stood there in the double doorway surrounded by the smoking decrepit in their wheelchairs, old men and women in flimsy bedgowns, hooked up to portable drips and oxygen tanks, gazing at them with fish eyes through drifting currents of smoke.

  Neither of them had spoken. Looked.

  At last Zuzana had stepped forward and smiled, and it was like the first, original smile, pert and amused, as if she’d just thought of something funny to say, and her eyes were the same too, large and dark and shining. But she said nothing. There was nothing to say. She put her hand to her lips and softly touched his cheek with her fingertips; then she was gone, outside, walking in that rapid, fluent way toward the taxi stand.

  Singh had turned his head sideways and was looking at Garvie curiously, and Garvie said, “Are they strict about smoking in here?” He glanced at the window. “I could let in some fresh air, get rid of the smell.”

  “It doesn’t open,” Singh said. “Perhaps they’re worried I might jump out.”

  “Feel like jumping?”

  “Not all the time.”