Slipping out of bed, I go to the cupboard and find a can of baked beans. The can opener is blunt and it takes me twenty minutes to peel back the lid. While it’s heating up, I take a spool of masking tape and use my fingernail to lift the sticky end. I carefully wrap a length of tape around the skewer, leaving the sharpened end protruding.
The tape is a handle. I hold it in my fist and make a stabbing motion. I don’t feel very confident. I try again. Then I picture Tash lying on a bunk, curled up in pain. This time I stab easily at the air. I think of Mum and Dad and Phoebe and Ben and the baby sister they had to replace me—all the time stabbing at the air.
I play the scene over and over in my head, imagining how I plant the skewer in his back. How I push him down through the hatch and call him a sadistic prick and he looks up at me, surprised, hurt, scared.
I’ve never done any serious violence to anyone, but I’m going to make an exception for George. I’m going to hurt him. I’m going to pay him back for what he’s done.
34
Explain something to me,” says Grievous, beating out a rhythm on the steering wheel. “Why do people always talk about how fast a car can get from naught to sixty? I mean, what’s the big deal about sixty miles an hour? It’s like people think aliens are going to land and only be able to do fifty-nine. They’ll suck out our brains unless we can do naught to sixty in less than ten seconds.”
He pauses, expecting a response.
“I’ve never thought of it that way,” I say.
“Revheads don’t have brains,” he adds. “The aliens wouldn’t be interested.”
The holiday traffic has slowed to a crawl, edging between lights and roundabouts.
“Did you always want to be a detective?” I ask.
“Oh, no, sir, I came to it late,” he says, pleased with the question. He pulls a creased photograph from his inner pocket.
“That’s me there,” he says. “Second from the left.”
Still warm from his body, the image shows a group of teenagers in combat gear, resting on their haunches, weapons propped between their knees.
“You were an army cadet?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Why didn’t you join the army?”
“Failed the medical.” He points to the scar above his left ear. “I had a tumor. Benign. But it was pressing on part of my inner ear. I was deaf in that ear until I was twenty-one. People thought I was slow. Stupid, you know.”
“That’s why you turn your head to one side.”
“Pardon?”
“I noticed it when I first met you. You cock your head a little when you’re listening to people.”
“Force of habit.” He laughs, putting the photograph away. “When I couldn’t join the army, I worked as a nurse and then became a court security officer. That’s where I saw police officers giving evidence at criminal trials and I thought, Yeah, I could do that. I guess I wanted a challenge… to make a difference. Does that sound like a cliché?”
I shake my head.
Phillip Martinez’s car is parked out front of the house, but nobody is answering the doorbell. The curtains are drawn. Lights off. I’m about to give up when I hear a tooting sound coming from the garage. I knock on the large double doors. A latch lifts and the right door opens a few inches.
Mr. Martinez takes a moment to recognize me.
He apologizes. “Were you knocking? I’m very sorry. I get so caught up.” A bell jangles behind him. He opens the door wider. “My hobby,” he explains. “It’s rather embarrassing… a grown man playing with trains.”
A model railway fills the entire floor space of the garage, twisting back and forth on different levels. There are mountains, rivers, roads, underpasses, tunnels, stations, hoardings, signposts, rolling stock, engines and carriages. The attention to detail is astonishing, right down to the tiny figures of people and animals; animate yet immobile, inhabiting a recreated world.
He has fashioned entire towns with factories, warehouses, railway yards, shops, post offices, restaurants and cinemas. Pedestrians are caught in mid-stride on crossings. Cars wait for the lights to change. Town hall clocks are poised, ready to strike the hour.
Along one wall I see his workbench. It is lined with off-cuts and panels of balsa wood, along with electric fittings, wires and racks of steel train tracks. Tiny pots of paint are arranged according to colors. A magnifying glass on a retractable arm bends above the bench, with a bright light behind it.
The detective constable has followed me inside and is studying the workmanship.
Even the cast-offs in the dustbin look perfect, yet some small defect or flaw must have consigned them to the scrapheap.