The Girls Beneath

Her name, Sarah, flashes into my head and I pat my brain on the basal ganglia for the remembrance. Without the ability to show me Sarah’s face, it merely reminds me that she was pretty, freckled and mysterious, and that I hung around to wear her down. And that sometimes people told stories of the strange things she did. But I can’t recall any of them.

Old sights, sounds and smells allow you to go down neural pathways you don’t frequently use. The resultant sudden rush of seemingly lost memories is what causes strong emotions in such places.

I observe this feeling and let it pass through me. None of my teachers will be here, the turnover is pretty fast. Things change swiftly in cities. They change double swift around here. This is a foreign land.

I won’t announce that I am alumni. I’m not sure they’d care anyway. Some bloke whose biggest claim to fame is getting shot in the skull. I’ll wait till I’ve done something more auspicious with my broken head before I bring it back here and try to hold it high around the corridors.

He brings out ‘the bag’. I’ve had to handle ‘the bag’ once before, in a training session, but today he has ‘the bag’.

‘I’m going to do the talking. You be a presence,’ he says.

‘I can do that.’

‘Good. Any questions? Anything you need?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go on.’

‘Right. The girl that went missing, did she go to this school?’

‘Forget about that,’ he says, scolding me just enough.

‘Okay. But did she?’

‘Err… yes. I think so,’ he says in a sigh.

‘You think so? Or know so?’

‘I know so,’ says Emre Bartu.

He wants us to go but I can’t walk and think smoothly yet. My stillness means he can’t move. It’d be rude.

He waits. I pause. I think. Then speak.

‘Okay. I’m going to ask about her.’

‘Who?’

‘The missing girl.’

‘No. Please don’t.’

‘Why is that?’

‘It’s being handled elsewhere. It’d seem… odd.’

‘I don’t mind that.’

‘Yes. But others would. Others are assigned to it.’

I shrug and nod at the same time, committal and non-committal all at once. We both stare at the school, he grips the bag, I blink hard.

‘It would be interesting. Quite interesting. I’m interested,’ I say.

‘Please, don’t. Just trust me, no one wants you to do that.’

‘Okay. I won’t,’ I say.

He touches me on the shoulder.

‘Good man.’

He turns as he bites his bottom lip, a tense mannerism that intrigues me already. It’s always the little things that intrigue me.

‘Ready?’

‘Yes,’ I say, my movements getting smoother all the time. I can feel myself growing already, spreading out to encompass the space the world outside my room has provided for me.

‘Good. Come on then,’ he says as he walks.

You just have to say you won’t do something. That’s what they want. Little compromises. Promises. Words.

It’s as easy as that.

We sign our names and put on those badges with the safety pins attached that ruin jumpers and would do unfathomable things to a face.

Then we’re in.

7

‘Dreams, keep rolling, through me

Dreams of you and I,

Dreams that drift far out to sea

Why does my baby lie?’

Being back here is sinister. The hallways hum with spectres. Dr Ryans said he didn’t think I’d suffer any amnesia or losses, as the bullet didn’t seem to rupture anything where my memories lie, but then the brain is unpredictable. I hear the song of distant thoughts as we walk under halogen strip-lights to the school hall. Traces of said things in half remembered classrooms pass by.

It’s like a dream and not the good kind. Forced into your old school hall, dressed as a policeman, with a bullet in your brain. I look down and expect to see my penis but only my trouser crotch stares back at me.

Bartu sees me staring at my own crotch and when I raise my head again our eyes meet and I smile. He does, too, trying not to let on how much I concern him.

He makes conversation with the head of year. She is called Miss Nixon. She is all brown and grey hair and clothes she’s had a while. I write down a brief description on my face cheat sheet.

She is Caucasian. Has church-going hair. Wears dangly earrings.

The last one is her most distinguishing feature, in fact. If she took them off, she’d disappear.

I start to hum a song I made up called ‘Dreams’. When my senses were kicking back in and my brain was repairing itself I found I had the overwhelming urge to make up little lullabies. Conjuring a tune and putting words to it was one of many exercises I set myself. I didn’t write them down but I won’t forget them, there must have been hundreds.

‘Dreams are rolling through me…’

The cleaning fluid smells the same. Even the cold crisp door handle’s touch against my skin sings deep-held memories back to me. Along with fears that I might stumble through the wrong door and end up in a classroom some miles away, where Gary Canning pushes my would-be fiancé up against the blackboard and her back slowly rubs off what was once written on it.

A group of kids pass us on our left, keeping their heads low, as if the sight of everything above shin level depresses the hell out of them. One of them has an unmistakeable birthmark, so distinctive that even I can’t forget it. He pretends he doesn’t see us, but he can’t fool me. Eli cold shoulders us like we’ve never met. That’s life in your home town. These instances that come and go. As fate blows us into each other’s paths like debris in the updraught.

That childhood kiss with Sarah drifts into my mind, then blows away, escaping through my ear.

When we get to the hall, its unmistakeable chafed parquet flooring under my feet, the kids are waiting and Emre Bartu wastes no time.

He claps his hands, a surprisingly effective attention drawing tactic that turns their chattering heads towards him.

‘Hello Year Eleven! My name is PCSO Emre Bartu and it’s a real pleasure to speak to you today. We’re usually out on the street, you may have seen us about, so at this time of year it’s just nice to come in and get warm.’

It’s not the kind of gag I would open with but he’s certainly come in with confidence. He reaches centre stage, the exact spot the headmaster stands to give out end of term awards, where Martin Humball gave his Fagin, and precisely where people were invited to stand and play clarinet or present some kind of talent if their ultimate wish was to be punched by their peers at lunch break. Bartu’s not a natural public speaker, his thumbs tucked tightly under his police vest tell me that. He needs something to hold on to for comfort. But I like Emre Bartu, and they are warming to him, too. Although I’m sure I hear someone mutter the word ‘Tosser’ as he pauses to collect his thoughts.

‘So why am I here? I hear you all ask. Well, myself and my friend and colleague PCSO Tom Mondrian at the back there…’ he says pointing to me.

They turn to look. ‘Friend and colleague.’ Very kind. We’ve only just met. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do at this point. So I put my index and middle fingers to my forehead and salute. I’m not sure why.

No one smiles. A morass of shaggy haircuts turn back to the stage. I see a grimace somewhere inside Emre Bartu. He falters.

‘We… me and Mondrian… PCSO Mondrian… (a cough)… wanted to talk to you about a few things you should be aware of as you lot start to taking your drivey theoring tests. Driving theory tests.’

He reaches for the bag. He picks up the bag. He unzips the bag and puts his hand inside. I whisper to Miss Nixon, ‘Have you heard this talk before?’

‘Six times,’ she says.

‘That’s a lot,’ I say.

‘Mmm,’ she says. Small talk over.

He pulls out some goggles from the bag.

‘Now, who would like to come and “road test”, these special goggles?’

No hands shoot up. No enthusiasm reaches fever pitch.

‘Come on. Anyone? Or I’ll pick on you.’

One hand at the front lifts with the energy of something pained and waiting to die.

‘There we go. Round of applause please!’

The sad sound of twelve people clapping in a room of over a hundred. The echoing acoustic is a cruel partner to their dwindling will to live.

‘These are my beer goggles,’ he says. Some merciful vocal response occurs. We are underway. Bartu gets the boy to put them on.

I think about the missing girl.

Bartu asks the boy to tell us what he can see.

I wonder whether she’s playing truant; most likely.

The boy says the words ‘wobbly bodies’ and the kids whisper and laugh.

I look to Miss Nixon and she looks away.

Bartu says, ‘The problem is… drink driving is actually no joke.’

I think about asking her about the girl. My body shifts towards her.

Bartu looks at me from the stage and doesn’t like what he sees.

I think about openers: ‘We wondered… I’m interested…’

‘Drink driving isn’t a petty offence, it’s life threatening…’

I settle on ‘Incidentally, is…’ and slot it into the firing chamber.

‘… both your lives and the lives of others are at stake…’

She turns to me. She stares at the scar on my head.

He speaks while still staring at me. He knows what I’m up to.

She recognises me from the paper, I think. Unwanted celebrity.

He speeds up, rushing through the script as we lock eyes.

‘This is my old school,’ I whisper to her. She softens.

‘… all for the sake of being too lazy to walk home…’

Her face makes an ‘Oh, right’ expression.

‘So next time you think about drinking and driving…’

‘Yes. That was a few years ago now, ha. Incidentally…’ I say.

‘Remember the beer goggles and think about if you…’

‘Incidentally, is the girl that went…’

‘…really want to put lives at stake for the price of a taxi home, thank you!’

Applause. The noise of which ruins our moment. I ask her the question again but the decibel level rises further.

‘The girl that went missing, was she…’ I say.

She can’t hear me. The suddenly exuberant boys and girls seem to be letting off some boredom steam through sarcastic cheering, rather than earnestly thanking Emre Bartu for his performance. But whatever the reason, they’re making too much noise for me to proceed. Advantage Bartu.

‘Great! Thank you for listening. Thank you for having myself and PCSO Mondrian.’

He looks to me to try and cue a simple thank you. This is his tactical error. I step forward and speak at full volume.

I knew something was going to happen. This is it.

‘Right, before we go we’d just like to ask if anyone has any information about the missing girl?’

Silence.

A shuffle of feet.

I sense Miss Nixon’s stony visage in my periphery.

More silence.

I scan their stunned faces. Maybe Bartu’s right, maybe I am pretty blunt these days. I make a judgement. I think they had no idea that one of their number was missing, until now. That’s what it looks like. I check just to make sure.

‘Anyone at all? Know anything?’

Emre Bartu’s open mouth comes into focus, making a small dark ‘o’. His eyes are like snooker balls, bare and marmoreal.

I wait a few seconds. One, two, three. Then someone speaks. But unfortunately it’s only Emre Bartu.

‘No? That’s fine. Thank you. Dismissed!’

They detonate into a flurry of chatter, standing and jostling each other as they start to flow out. Nixon comes towards me and speaks out of the corner of her mouth.

‘PC Stevens agreed we shouldn’t tell them about this yet,’ she says.

‘Sorry, miscommunication. It’s standard practice to… throw it out there early, you know.’

Emre is at the back. Trapped as he sees me talking to Miss Nixon.

‘I wish you would have told me you were going to do that.’

‘Apologies again. He shouldn’t have told you it was possible to keep it under wraps. I can only apologise… on his behalf.’

‘So what do we do now?’ She says.

Emre hears none of this. He can only see our mouths move as he swims through the crowd, smiling, trying to seem in control. He turns for a second and mouths a few words to a couple of them. This allows me to do what I do next.

‘Here you are,’ I say, palming her my number.

I decided to make a few cards and keep them in my right pocket. You have to be prepared.

If you want to dive in face first.

If you want to crawl against the current.

If you want to make your own tide.

‘Let’s see what happens. You might get a knock on your office door. If you do, let me know about it.’

I’m pleased 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 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.