Читать книгу The Girls Beneath - Ross Armstrong - Страница 16

8

‘Can’t, Dah dah dah dee dah, out of, my head…’

The girl’s home smells of orange. Not of oranges. Not citrus. It smells of the colour orange. I’d learnt to associate smells with colours, a new trick, and not one of my willing. Another brain adaptation, an aroma-based synaesthesia. You can, in effect, see scents.

It’s got stronger every day since the bullet. A purple fog appearing in the school as I smelt the cleaning fluid, a waterfall of light green trickling from the ceiling of Dr Ryans’ office made by his herbaceous smoke remnants.

But orange grips me hard here as her mother lets us into the house. If it were a musical note it would be an ‘A’. I picture an orange letter ‘A’. It’s my mind’s automatic reflex.

Then a pink smell intrudes. I can’t hear it’s note yet, but I see it snakes through the orange mist.

As I watch the colours move, I decide to wow them with a deduction I’ve made.

‘It was good of you to get Tanya that cat she wanted so much, what with your allergy,’ I say.

‘I’m sorry, what?’ Ms Fraser says.

Our stilted conversation hadn’t turned to cats or allergies on the way here, so Bartu is left pondering how we move on from this non-sequitur.

‘It’s just that there are two single hairs from a Siberian on the settee, just enough to suggest that someone who’s usually here, probably Tanya, grooms her meticulously and that on the odd occasion the cat does make it into this room she’s quickly removed, leaving little behind her. People get Siberians because they’re supposed to be better for allergies, but I question the science on that. Your eyes aren’t reddened and you’re not wheezing, which tells me the air filter on the floor is doing its job. I’d also advise you to keep the window open but I imagine you did until it turned too cold for that. And then there’s the pink smell of Neem Oil, found in cat but not human shampoo. Smells like Tanya promised to wash her, twice a week I’d say, as another way of persuading you it’d help manage the dander that causes allergies.’

Bartu shakes his head and gives Ms Fraser an apologetic look. ‘I can’t smell anything.’

‘You wouldn’t. My sense of smell is… a little keener than most, and you can’t sense habitual smells in your own home, due to what’s called olfactory adaptation, giving you no chance at all, Ms Fraser. Also, your cat has diabetes.’

She stares at me. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have a diabetic cat.’

‘Well, the kitchen roll Tanya seems to have stashed in various places about the house, just in case of emergencies, suggests otherwise. I’m guessing her toilet habits have recently become more unpredictable, plus there’s a subtle scent of sweetness in the air, the odour of which would be consistent with diabetic cat urine. Not that your home smells of cat urine. You’ve hidden it well and you’re a kind mother. Again, I just have a keener sense than most.’

She gives me a look that suggests two things. Either this woman is dumbfounded by the diagnosis. Or she doesn’t have a cat. Either way, it’s probably best to move on from this.

‘Could you show us her room?’ I ask.

I also picture numbers as distinctly coloured.

The number one is purple.

Two yellow.

Three blue.

And I picture them circling my head whenever they come to mind.

1 is at a ten-degree angle to my forehead.

2 is at about twenty-five.

Then the rest disperse themselves in fifteen-degree intervals around me. This side effect doesn’t seem of much practical use but the brain isn’t always trying to help, sometimes it’s merely trying to exist the only way it can.

The walls appear to me vaguely orange, the carpet on the stairs is orange, the pictures in the hallway are all various shades of orange, the scent of cinnamon and pine, I imagine, subtle notes of a recent Christmas that only I can smell. The girl’s bedroom door is the same colour.

Bartu looks at me, barely disguising his discomfort at being here. Exactly where he didn’t want us to end up. But when Miss Nixon revealed that the missing girl’s mother was coming in to speak to her, I couldn’t resist asking if I could have a word, too. Nixon had agreed to do the introductions by the time Bartu caught up with us heading to her office.

When I suggested to Ms Fraser that we come over to check a couple of things, it was difficult for him to protest. He had to silently pretend this was all standard procedure, so as not to scold the semi-famous local hero with a bullet scar on his temple.

Ms Fraser said two officers had only just come to her house. I’d expected her to say this. But I hadn’t come up with an answer to it yet. I was still for a second before simply saying:

‘Nowadays we’re lucky enough to be able to double up…‘

It’s curious how far a uniform and the simplest jargon gets you.

‘… in case anything gets missed. Due diligence and that.’

This is nonsense of course. Stevens and Anderson are the officers with the day-to-day relationship with the school. They liaise with social services about everything from gang violence to sexual abuse, and when their enquiries unearth the necessary dirt, they hand it to CID. So where do we come in? Absolutely nowhere at all. But I’m a curious man.

Bartu’s body tightened as all this unfolded. He didn’t back me up but he didn’t stop me either. He let things play out, aware that I’d made my moves and there was little he could do to stop me now the wheels were in motion.

She gave us a lift back to her place. Emre didn’t look at me the whole way. But he’s going to need more tenacity if he’s going to stop me doing exactly what I want. I’m a hard act to follow. A hard book to match. A hard book of matches. One of those.

The inside of her car smelt yellow. Cheapish air freshener and hot change in her coin draw.

But the house definitely smelt orange.

Emre Bartu glares at me intermittently as we peer into Tanya Fraser’s bedroom.

• A mess of bed sheets, crinkled like storm clouds

• An abundance of small ornate mirrors scattered around.

• A childhood bear peeping out from her half-open wardrobe.

Both of us stand on the precipice, not wanting to break the barrier between us and this sacred space.

‘Was she part of any after school clubs?’ I say.

‘Tennis club. Badminton. Running club. I told the others this.’

Bartu lightly sniggers. But everything helps.

I don’t find anything about my day humorous anymore. Her room has altered me somehow, taking away any thrill of the puzzle, focusing me in on the dark import of all this.

‘Is she a messy girl? Or do you think she left in a hurry?’ I say.

‘No, she’s not messy. She’d have tidied up if she knew… she’d be mortified if she knew… she’d have guests… that there’d be people in here.’

Ms Fraser darts into the room on impulse, her voice cracking. She makes a grab for the duvet to cover up the shame of the unmade bed.

‘No. Don’t touch anything,’ I say. She stops and looks to me.

I follow her in smoothly.

‘Best not to touch anything. Just in case,’ Emre says, stepping inside tentatively, his hand brushing the clean white doorframe.

‘In case of what?’ she says.

‘In case there’s anything here that might give us a clue as to her whereabouts,’ Emre Bartu says, the word clue sticking in his throat like a bone, as if the necessary drama of his job occasionally embarrasses him.

‘The others weren’t like this. The others just asked a few basic questions,’ she says.

‘That’s why it’s best to double up,’ I say.

I scan the room. Her bed is pushed into the corner, under the window, which I imagine her opening in the summer to let the air flow in. She has a chest of drawers facing the end of the bed, up against the wall. The bottom drawer is not fully closed and instinctively I want to push it shut it to make it level with the others. To the right of her bed as we look is her wardrobe, one panel of it dusty white, the other a mirror.

I take a few steps towards it, its jaws ajar, the bear looking at me from inside.

‘When did you say she was turning seventeen?’ Emre says, behind me.

It occurs to me I hadn’t even asked her age. I hardly know a thing about her.

‘Not until September. She’s still a baby,’ she says. But she’s not. She’s old enough to go out on her own, old enough to get into trouble. Old enough to do a lot of things her mother doesn’t know about. It’s her prerogative. It’s a must. For boys and girls. Rites of passage.

‘She have a boyfriend at all?’ says Emre Bartu.

I put my hand out to open the wardrobe and feel their eyes on me.

‘No. Nothing like that.’

I stop. My hand goes back to my side.

‘Not one you know about anyway,’ I say over my shoulder.

‘No. I’d know. We tell each other everything. We’re mates.’

I draw breath, wondering how to put this, then I just say the first thing that comes into my head.

‘She may still be a little girl to you, you know, but –’

‘She lost it to a boy called Asif Akhtar in the form above about a year ago. He’s the only boyfriend she’s ever had. He cheated on her at the bowling alley. They don’t see each other anymore.’

She fires it all out with absolute conviction and a hint of triumph.

‘We’ll need to speak to him,’ I say.

Somewhere behind me Emre Bartu is rolling his eyes. He thought I just wanted to have a play around and then I’d leave it alone. He’s wondering how we ended up here and how he’ll tell Levine, if he’ll tell Levine. I open the wardrobe.

‘Hi, I’m Teddy, let’s play! Let’s play!’ The bear shouts as it hits the ground.

I stumble back, almost crashing into Emre behind me.

I walk back towards the wardrobe and see her childish things crammed hastily into the bottom below her carefully ironed dresses and tops. A soft yellow pony with long pink hair. An etch-a-sketch. Annuals and books about wizards and vampires.

The woman above. The girl just below the surface.

If you close the cupboard and tidy the bed, then only a woman remains. I place the bear back inside and close the cupboard.

Something smells blue. If it were a musical note it would be an ‘F’. If it were a texture it would be mahogany. It arrives all at once. A blue mahogany ‘F’.

‘We should go. We do try to leave everything as untouched as possible. Both to maintain evidence in the last place we know her to have been… and “cos we don’t like to intrude…” Emre says, breaking off as he sees me climbing onto her bed.

I lie face down. They say nothing. Emre is forced to nod and give the impression that all this is pretty normal stuff.

I breathe in. It’s a man’s smell but I don’t think he’s been in this bed. I admit this must look unorthodox.

I reach down into the gap between bed and wall and pluck out a piece of paper. I act like that’s all I needed. I pull it out. Cream A5, full of colour on one side. Purples, greens, blues, reds. The picture started as a useful subterfuge, but now I look at it, it could be more than that.

My eyes scan it and see patterns. Triangles here. A grid. I map it in an instant. I understand the components, the smallest minutiae of shades within shades, but my mind can’t quite make out what it’s supposed to be.

‘What is this?’ I say.

‘It’s a picture,’ she says.

‘It’s a house next to a playground,’ Emre says.

‘Does she like drawing?’ I say, taking a slow step toward her.

‘Probably. I don’t –’

‘Know everything about her, do you?’ I say.

‘She’s a girl. She takes art. I’d say she likes drawing,’ she says. I’ve riled her a little.

‘Why draw this?’ I say. I have to focus to see what they see so easily. The house and playground coming into shape like a constellation.

‘Why draw anything?’ she says.

‘Exactly!’ I say.

Emre Bartu shuffles from side to side.

‘I don’t know, I don’t recognise it, it’s just a picture,’ she says.

‘It’s quite childish,’ I say.

‘She’s a child,’ she says.

‘Not really,’ I say.

‘She’s sixteen…’ says Bartu, taking no side.

‘Would you say she’s childish? Young for her age?’

‘Not really. She’s mature. We have adult conversations.’

‘Then why does she draw like this?’

‘It’s just a picture,’ she says.

‘Have you seen it before?’ I say.

‘No…’ she says.

‘No “definitely not”, or no “maybe”?’ I say.

‘It’s just a picture,’ Bartu says, as much of a reproach as he can muster without it seeming like a professional dressing down.

I toss the paper away and head for the chest at the foot of the bed. I open the uneven bottom drawer. I run my hand along the materials inside.

I smell blue again.

Winter garments. My hand rummages further, I feel something underneath a patterned scarf, I lift it up and underneath I feel cool, smooth, synthetic material. Then I take a look and step back again, vocalising my surprise with a level of drama I didn’t intend.

‘What is it?’ she says, as she goes over to look.

Emre looks at me. I was rooting around too much. I don’t want to intrude or offend, I only want to help, but my new brain makes delicacy difficult. And it’s too late for regrets, I’ve found something.

She pulls them out from under the scarf. She looks at me tersely, then back at them.

Did you know that photo paper is mostly made from gelatine? Our images are preserved forever, burned onto crushed animal matter. You need the thickening agent of the gelatine from cow’s bones to hold the glossy silver halide crystals together.

She holds them for Emre Bartu to see and then quickly draws them away. I don’t like surprises. I didn’t want to see a young girl’s naked body. There are twenty or thirty pictures.

‘Do you think she took these herself, Ms Fraser?’ Emre Bartu says.

‘I don’t know. I don’t think she has a Polaroid.’

‘Maybe a friend has one,’ Bartu says.

‘I wouldn’t know, I’m sorry.’

I could say, ‘I think there’s an awful lot you don’t know’ at this point, but I manage not to. She’s looking at me differently now. Grudgingly pleased we’ve shown a bit more fervour than the last two did. I don’t want to spoil this emerging good will.

‘Should I be worried about this?’ she says.

‘Depends what sort of friend took them,’ Emre says. Careful, Bartu.

‘Yeah, it does,’ she says, staring at them. She offers them back to me, unsure what the protocol dictates. Her hand shakes a little as she pushes them it towards me.

‘No! No. Put them back where we found them, I think,’ I say, glancing at Emre.

We can’t bring evidence back with us. We’ll have to do this without analysing anything, officially anyway. We need to leave everything as we found it, like night thieves covering their tracks. That way it will be longer until we’re found out.

‘Thanks for your time. We should go,’ he says again.

‘Please, take my number, in case you need anything,’ I say, handing her one of my pre-prepared cards. Emre tenses up again as I do so.

‘Thank you,’ she says. She’s grateful. A profound sensation of joy comes over me. We head downstairs, I think about the blue smell as we reach her door, the smell that would feel like mahogany, and sound like an ‘F’ note.

‘Who wears the aftershave?’ I say.

‘No one, we haven’t had a man in this house for five years.’

My olfactory sense is good but not that good.

‘Tanya’s dad?’

‘Is in Canada. They’ve never met. And they don’t need to.’

‘And five years ago?’ Emre says.

‘A boyfriend I was seeing, but I’m through with all that.’

We nod and I work through the possibilities. A man has been there and not so long ago. That’s what it smells like to me.

‘It’s probably my perfume you can smell. Is it important?’

I take in the oddness of the structure of this sentence. They both take in the oddness of me.

‘No, not important. Yes, it’s probably the perfume,’ I lie.

Then I notice a Siberian cat with canary-coloured eyes creep up to the front door and pry in. It looks up at me, I return the favour and we understand each other somehow.

‘Monkey,’ she says. ‘Come on in.’ She picks him up and gives me a look. Bartu is as amazed as he should be by this partial confirmation of my previous deduction. But I don’t even smile, I just revel in it. Then ponder…

Monkey? What sort of name is that for a cat? You can call it any stupid name you want, but don’t call it the name of another existing animal. Language is tough enough without that kind of nonsense. That really annoys me for a second. I resolve to remember to name my cat, but be a lot more careful than she’s been about it.

I nod to her and turn to leave abruptly. Emre follows, saying ‘Bye then’. By the time she says it in return I’m ten feet away and walking back to the station.

I notice it’s getting dark as Emre appears alongside me. I think about what sort of man would’ve worn that aftershave. I think about the colour blue. I think about why she’s lying to me.