Running Girl by Simon Mason Page A

across the lawn, through the shrubbery, climbed over the broken panel of fencing and out of the garden into the lane beyond. There he resumed his search. Slowly, patiently, he examined the verge of scrub on both sides of the path and the path itself. Slowly and patiently he moved crab-wise backwards and forwards, delving with his specially adapted palette knife.
    He found absolutely nothing.
    Finally it was time to go. He had to talk to Mrs Dow on his way out, to check if the bedroom upstairs had been sealed, but first, to stretch his legs, he walked down the path along the house-backs and through the wicket gate onto the Marsh Fields, where he had run last Friday night. In daylight it looked smaller, the grass scruffier, the trees spindlier. The air tasted of cold water. He sucked in a lungful and turned to go. And stopped suddenly.
    Bending down, he picked up a small scrap of something nestling in the shaggy grass. It was a piece of wood – a clean splinter two inches long the orange colour of new creosote. Stuck to it by a thread was something else, brightly coloured in red and yellow. A button.
    He brought the button up to his eye. The words FAMOUS STARS were embossed around its edge. It was a button off a Famous Stars and Straps varsity jacket.
    He stood there on the spongy grass of the Marsh Fields, completely unmoving, staring at the button. He had seen someone in a red and yellow varsity jacket in the last few days. Who? Someone wearing a varsity jacket, scowling at him, he remembered that much. But who? Methodically he racked his brains.
    And he remembered. Taking out his notebook, he wrote down a name and closed it again and turned, all in the same quiet, efficient way, and went back to Fox Walk.

13
    GARVIE AND FELIX split up when they got to Pollard Way, and Garvie went on alone up Bulwarks Lane. It was now three thirty and he had half an hour to kill before going home if he didn’t want his mother asking awkward questions. The out-of-town traffic was heavy, vans and trucks nudging slowly towards the ring road, and he fell in beside them, walking in a ripple through their fumes, frowning to himself.
    Chloe Dow was the most straightforward girl he’d ever known, a girl who hid nothing. Everything about her had been on display – not just her looks but the ambitions she never stopped talking about, the fantasies she’d spun, the gossip she’d peddled. She was stunning – and ordinary. Not the sort of girl to do something strange like go for a run in someone else’s ugly shoes.
    Not the sort of girl to have secrets. Until now.
    Frowning, he went past the betting shop, past Burger King, past the long flaking front of the old Whiteways offices, and had just reached the shops when a car came to a halt at the kerb next to him and a familiar voice said, ‘Get in.’
    He bent down and peered through the wound-down window.
    The policeman with the turban looked back at him. ‘Get in the car,’ he said.
    Garvie peered closer. ‘Is it tidy? My mother’s very particular about that sort of thing.’
    The inspector did not reply. He pushed open the door, and after a moment Garvie got in.
    It was very tidy.
    â€˜I’ve just been speaking to Mrs Dow,’ Singh said, ‘and she told me you visited her house this afternoon.’
    His voice was dead-pan and his eyes were deadpan too; there was nothing in his expression to show he was angry. But Garvie could tell he was.
    â€˜Yeah. I’m a personal friend.’
    â€˜And that while you were there you went into Chloe Dow’s bedroom, despite the fact that the bedroom is a crime scene, off-limits to the public. As you must know from your very high-up uncle.’
    â€˜But I thought crime scenes were immediately sealed by the very efficient police to prevent people going in them.’
    Singh’s mouth tightened. ‘It’s being sealed now.’
    â€˜Oh well, better late than never. Thanks for