The Girls Beneath. Ross Armstrong

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СКАЧАТЬ with the clarity of my sentiment.

      ‘Putting an idea in the water always tends to dig up something,’ I say, mixing metaphors like a real pro.

      I do all this while scratching my head as if talking about the weather, keeping it casual for the eyes of Bartu, the mirage of small talk when it scarcely gets much larger.

      But he suspects by now. He’s not smiling anymore, no matter how hard he tries.

      I beat him.

      I won.

      I got to ask my questions.

      He puts his hand up, drowning in a sea of boys and girls. He’s too far away.

      He’s paralysed to stop what comes next.

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 СКАЧАТЬ