The Girls Beneath. Ross Armstrong

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.