you say?’
‘I’ll say we don’t get on.’
‘Why lie?’
‘How do you know I’m lying?’
‘Because you can’t fool me, you like me.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Yep. Also, you’ve already told a lie and I know about it and if I tell them about it, it won’t look good for you. I could make trouble for you, Emre Bartu. And I don’t want to do that.’
‘Is that a threat? Are you threatening me now?’
‘Yes, but it’s only ‘cos I like you. Pull over.’
‘What?’
‘Pull over!’
I grab the wheel and that forces Emre to slam on the brakes. We both fly forward but our belts do their jobs and we don’t even suffer a minor whiplash, so I don’t know what he’s so angry about.
‘Are you crazy!?’ he shouts
‘I’m not crazy,’ I mutter as I get out and approach the black car at the side of the road that had drifted into my vision.
Ever since I heard the words ‘missing girl’ I’ve been looking for a blacked out car. You don’t see many cars with blacked out windows and you certainly don’t see many halfway up the kerb without number plates front or back.
I stalk around it and Emre follows.
No broken windows. Tickets all over it. Possibly dumped. Hubcaps missing, which tells me it’s been there long enough for people to start stripping it for parts but not long enough for it to be towed.
‘Tom? Can we do this tomorrow? We can check it out then if you’re interested, but I wanna get home to my girlfriend.’
Most support officers don’t carry batons due to the ‘nonconfrontational’ nature of our work, but we are authorised to do so. I told Levine it would make me feel more comfortable.
‘You’ve got a girlfriend? Nice, good for you,’ I say, smashing into the passenger window with my baton.
‘Shit! Tom? Don’t do that. Let’s do this when we’re on the clock tomorrow, okay? We’ll do it together. We’ll stick together, I promise, but not now.’
It takes a few hits to get through. Then I clear off the loose shards and take a look inside.
It smells chartreuse. It would taste of ink and sound like an E flat. Owing to the blacked out windows it’s dark. But it’s the smell I’m interested in. He joins me, poking his head inside.
‘What would you say that smell is, Emre?’
‘Er, I don’t know. I can’t smell anything.’
Chartreuse, refined yellowing pear-like green, a colour named after a French liqueur.
‘I can’t see anything either,’ he says, interest growing. But I spy the outline of a patterned glove, that I’d say is part of a set. But the other glove, and the possible matching hat and scarf, are nowhere to be seen. Leaving the single glove there, alone, lying limply on the back seat.
Girl missing: Blacked out windows.
It’s like word association. It’s just how my brain works now. That’s not to say I’m right, but if a girl goes missing there are only so many options.
1. She’s gone of her own free will.
2. She’s walked into a trap.
3. She’s been picked up and taken somewhere against her will.
And if she’s been taken somewhere you’re going to have to do that with a degree of care. You’re going to have to pacify her, or make sure no one sees her struggle, hence the blacked out car.
Robbery: blood on broken window.
Arson: check the insurance.
GBH: check romantic history.
Missing girl: car with blacked out windows.
It’s just something I do. ‘Be open to the fact that the simplest answer is sometimes the best one.’ Even the training officer said that. In other words, clichés become clichés for a reason. They’re neither to be worshipped or ignored.
I should’ve been watching Bartu instead of wandering through these thoughts though, because when I turn to him he’s in the process of doing something uncharacteristically stupid.
‘My phone’s got a torch app, but it’s dead. Here,’ he says, flicking his Zippo alight and leaning it into the car just as something tells me that the chartreuse might be something to be concerned about.
‘No!’ I shout, grabbing him. He drops the thing and I throw both of us back as the car goes up in flames. We hit the ground, hard.
The next thing I notice is the white smell of our burnt hair.
I close my eyes, half expecting the whole thing to go up – boom! But it doesn’t. It’s not quite how you’d want it to be. But it’s still a spectacle the upholstery definitely isn’t going to survive.
‘Fuck!’ he shouts. He’d definitely be worse off if he’d leaned further in, and ended up half the man he used to be facially.
The car blazes beautifully against the night sky, as snow begins to fall. Embers rise, passing white flakes, kissing them hello and goodbye as they rise towards the abyss above.
‘Fire Alight’ starts playing on a loop in my head. It’s another lullaby I wrote in the ward; you won’t know it. My subconscious has a dark sense of humour.
Missing girl. Blacked out car that sets alight. If all this doesn’t pique Emre’s interest, then it damn well should do.
The chartreuse and blue are linked. I think the scents have shades of each other within them, now I picture them together.
‘Fuck,’ he repeats, more from anger than pain.
I face the flames. I’m resolved. It’s my time to shine.
I pick him up and dust us both down. Then I pull him back again, as something goes bang!
We fall down onto our arses. And watch the car shake. Muffled cracks and bangs rumble away in there.
Bang. Crack. Bang.
I picture the shadow of a jittery guy in a blacked out car on the day I was shot. This car, I’m guessing. I sniggered as he sped away. I’m not sniggering now.
Cars don’t explode if you shoot into the petrol tank like in the movies. It wouldn’t happen that way, trust me. Cars don’t tend to do anything that dramatic, unless they happen to be, for instance, filled with fireworks.
