Running Girl by Simon Mason Page A

Smudge?’
    â€˜You know what she was like. “It’s so comfy riding in a Porsche, Smudge. It’s so quiet, Smudgy. Everything matches, Smudgster.” Just Chloe-speak, Garv. Like a fantasy.’
    Garvie thought for a moment. ‘What about Thursday night? Anyone know where she was?’
    Smudge shook his head. ‘The one question of theirs I couldn’t answer, to be fair. Word is she was down Market Square, at some bar. The Black Cat. I don’t know.’
    â€˜Felix?’
    â€˜Apparently she said she was going to Jess’s, but she never.’
    â€˜And Friday afternoon?’
    Smudge shrugged. ‘Taking it easy, probably. Friday afternoons I like to go home for a nap. You know, before going out. I need my beauty sleep.’
    Felix said, ‘You need more than a nap, my friend. You need to sleep for a thousand years.’
    â€˜What’s your theory, Garv? Know what I reckon?’
    â€˜What do you reckon, Smudge?’
    â€˜I reckon a vagrant done it. One of them drifters sleeping rough at Four Winds.’
    â€˜Very likely.’
    â€˜Yeah, but this is the best bit. Not any old vagrant. Her dad. Her real dad.’
    â€˜Her real dad’s been dead ten years, Smudge.’
    â€˜Yeah, but come back. From the dead.’
    Felix chipped in. ‘Yeah. ’Cause he’s been in hiding.’
    â€˜That’s it. In Bolivia, or Kathmandu, or maybe down the Town Road, you know, above a shop.’
    â€˜â€™Cause he’s a drugs baron.’
    â€˜And a zombie. And he’s come back to ... claim his daughter.’
    â€˜And he shows her the tattoo on his wrist, to prove it to her.’
    â€˜Yeah, yeah. Tattoo of a llama, like they have in ... wherever he’s been.’
    â€˜Yeah. But she fights back.’
    â€˜So he kills her.’
    â€˜Kills her dead.’
    â€˜I reckon that’s how it happened.’ Smudge coughed modestly. ‘What do you think, Garv?’
    Garvie took his time finishing his Benson and Hedges, and flicked the butt into the long grass, and said, ‘MacAttack is a teacher.’
    There was a long pause while Smudge and Felix looked at each other.
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜So he doesn’t drive a Porsche.’
    â€˜Yeah, but all that about a Porsche is—’
    â€˜Let’s pretend for a second it’s just as likely as the llama-tattooed zombie real-dad theory.’
    â€˜I think you’re pushing it, but all right.’
    â€˜MacAttack doesn’t drive a Porsche, so where would Chloe go to find one? Where would she go to meet some rich young tosser with a Porsche?’
    â€˜Actually, that’s pretty simple,’ Smudge said. ‘That’s easy, that one. Imperium, innit? Down the casino. Plenty of rich tossers in their shiny Porsches down there.’
    Garvie smiled. ‘Smudge, my friend. You’re a genius. In disguise.’
    Smudge went pink and spent a long time examining his feet, and when he lifted his head, saying, ‘Yeah, but what do you think about the—’ Garvie was already halfway down the slope towards C Block.

15
    AT FIRST ABDUL didn’t recognize him. He was out of his cab, opening the back door and letting him in with all his usual little clicks and murmurings of politeness when he suddenly stopped.
    â€˜My Garvie! Is you?’
    â€˜The same.’
    â€˜My Garvie man, what have they do to you?’
    They had put him in a single-cuff Jil Sander shirt, vaguely purple, a black dandy jacket by Acne, some Ralph Lauren stretch chinos, also black, and a pair of black brogues. They had hung fake-gold bling from his wrists and neck, and had gelled his hair into shapes undreamed of even by Mr Whippy. And they had wrapped around his face a pair of nearly genuine Ray Bans, acquired – no one knew how – by Felix.
    â€˜It’s what they call dress code,’ Garvie said.
    Abdul made high-pitched clucking noises of disapproval.