Kitabı oxu: «The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder»

TUESDAY (BOTTLE GREEN)
Still That Afternoon

BEFORE WE CAME TO the station, Dad had instructed me to avoid talking about Friday night; I had to stick to what we’d discussed. But when we got there, he was the first person to divert from the plan, not me. Even though they were on the other side of the waiting room, I could hear him firing question after question at the police officer.

‘Is this a formal interview?’ he asked. ‘About young boys visiting Bee’s house?’

Low murmurs rippled from the detective, grey-white noise in the background that floated away as if it didn’t want to draw attention to itself.

‘Oh, OK. Not formal, but a first account about Bee and her relationship with Lucas Drury in particular? That’s it? I’ve tried to explain to Jasper what you might want to ask him, but it’s difficult for someone like him.’

Grey-white lines turned into fluffy clouds and drifted off.

‘Have you tried to get hold of Bee yet?’ Dad went on.

More muted coloured murmurs as the detective’s head moved up and down – something about the police not being able to locate her yet for questioning.

What was a First Account? Why was I really here?

I looked from one man to the other but discovered no clues stamped on their faces. Did Dad and the detective want me to talk about my first impression of Bee Larkham’s voice?

Sky blue.

My memory of our first meeting?

I have a feeling we’re going to be great friends.

Or did they want to know about her first threat?

Do this for me tonight or I won’t let you watch the parakeets from my bedroom window ever again. I’ll stop feeding them unless you do exactly as I say.

I wanted Dad to explain what they were discussing, but he had to fetch the boxes from the car. While we waited, I watched the light dove-grey tapping of my foot and felt the detective’s eyes slice like a knife through my forehead and into my brain as if he knew every detail from beginning to end. The whole ghastly coloured story with no edits.

The waiting room walls closed in on me. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t hear anything or see any colours. I forgot the story I had to tell, the one Dad and me had rehearsed for hours at home. Instead, I walked over to the detective, took a deep breath, and began to confess while I had the chance. He remained silent as I told him all about the ring-necked parakeets nesting in Bee Larkham’s oak tree.

They’re incredibly intelligent and musically colourful like a vibrant orchestra. They’ve already got me into trouble with the police and our neighbours but are still my favourite birds in the world.

More importantly I said very loudly and clearly: ‘Ice blue crystals with glittery edges and jagged, silver icicles.’

I didn’t have time to explain these were the colours and shapes of Bee’s screams on Friday night because Dad returned, carrying the first two boxes.

‘Don’t talk without me here, Jasper,’ he said. ‘Sit back down over there.’

A deep line appeared between his eyes. He was annoyed or angry or anxious because I’d launched into the story without him. Dad needn’t have worried. I’d spent three minutes and twenty-three seconds describing the parakeets and their glorious colours, but hadn’t got to the part about hurting Bee Larkham with the sharp, glinty knife and all the blood yet.

Dad’s left eye twitched as he turned to the man in the suit. ‘Art’s his favourite subject at school. He’ll get carried away talking about colours and painting if you let him.’

His muddy ochre voice transmitted a secret warning to me:

Keep quiet or someone will carry you away to a different world.

I returned to the bright orange plastic chair while the detective punched silver coin-shaped numbers into the door panel and disappeared. Dad came back and forth with boxes. I unfolded my arms in case Light Copper thought I looked defensive and had something to hide.

Dad always says that first impressions are important:

Focus on a person’s face and make eye contact otherwise you’ll look shifty.

If this is too difficult, fake eye contact by staring above a person’s eyebrows.

Try to act normal.

Don’t flap your arms.

Don’t rock.

Don’t go on about your colours.

Don’t tell anyone what you did to Bee Larkham.

Remember, that’s not the reason they want to speak to us today.

I was sure I’d impressed the detective. I’d told him the absolute truth. Well, 66 per cent of it. I hadn’t told him everything. I didn’t want to think about the missing 34 per cent.

After three minutes and fifteen seconds, the desk sergeant buzzed us through the door. Dad heaved the boxes into a small room.

A man in a white shirt entered ten seconds later. He looked at me and then up at the camera.

‘Hello, Jasper. Thank you for coming here today. For the record, I’m DC Richard Chamberlain. Also present is Jasper’s father, Ed Wishart. It’s Tuesday the 12 of April and we’re here to discuss an allegation made against your neighbour Bee Larkham.’

His voice was a gross shade of rusty chrome orange.

‘What was your name again?’ I said, shuddering.

‘Richard Chamberlain – like the actor,’ he replied. ‘My one and only claim to fame. Shall we get started?’

We sat opposite each other on the sofas, me shuffling almost off the edge to avoid the vomit-looking stain and Dad yanking me backwards with a hard grip.

My heart had dropped like a huge, glass lift. This wasn’t the first detective I’d met in the waiting room who listened carefully and only spoke in reassuring white-grey murmurs.

This was Rusty Chrome Orange, possibly named after a mysterious actor from some American TV crime show.

I took an instant dislike to him due to:

1. His colour (obviously)

2. He talked about dumb actors and claimed to be famous

3. He stared directly at me

Without warning, he launched into a series of baffling questions about school, my friends and teachers, gifts for boys and condom wrappers that can be disguised as sparkly sweets. But his questions were all wrong from the start – and they haven’t improved.

Where’s the grey suited man from the waiting room?

‘I don’t want to be rude, but I hate your colour and I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘Jasper! We discussed this, Son – about being polite and respectful when you answer questions.’

‘Yes, but perhaps the police officer who had grey-white whispers can come back? He seemed to get me. I don’t want Richard Chamberlain like the actor. I want the first detective from the waiting room.’

Silence.

People say silence is golden. They’re wrong. It’s no colour at all.

Rusty Chrome Orange speaks again. ‘That was me, Jasper, in the waiting room. You talked to me about colours and parakeets.’

‘What?’

He picks up his notebook. ‘Ice blue crystals with glittery edges and jagged, silver icicles. You also said that parakeets are incredibly intelligent.’

I glance at Dad to verify Rusty Chrome Orange’s story.

His head moves up and down. ‘You were speaking to DC Chamberlain while I got the boxes from the car.’

I can scarcely believe it. I can’t look at Dad or the detective from the waiting room who has morphed into Richard Chamberlain aka Rusty Chrome Orange. I stare at the grey jacket lying next to the detective on the sofa. He’s taken it off. I didn’t notice him carry the jacket in here.

‘Oh.’ I can’t think of anything else to say. Oh is a small word, exactly how I feel.

Tiny. Insignificant.

Oh. A colour that people can’t see.

‘Sorry, I forgot.’ It’s a lie, of course, but a useful one. Like Sorry, I didn’t see you. I trot it out at least once a day when I don’t recognize someone I’m supposed to.

‘I did try to warn you,’ Dad’s muddy ochre voice says to Richard Chamberlain. ‘He doesn’t recognize me if I turn up at his school unexpectedly.’

He’s right.

I don’t remember Dad’s face.

Richard Chamberlain’s face.

Anyone’s face.

I see them, yet I don’t. Not as complete pictures.

I close my eyes. I hear the muddy ochre of Dad’s voice, but can’t draw together the image of his face in my mind. I couldn’t pick him out of a line-up of men wearing blue jeans and blue shirts – his usual uniform. Is that what Dad’s got on today? I can’t remember. I haven’t paid enough attention.

When he speaks, the rusty chrome orange of Richard Chamberlain’s voice pummels my eyeballs, but if he walked up to me in the street I wouldn’t be able to recognize him unless I’d memorized a distinctive detail: the make of his watch, a hat, socks featuring a character like Homer Simpson or the colour of his voice. Those are the kinds of things I look for first, rather than hair colour or styles that change whenever people run their hands over their heads.

I open my eyes again. None of the usual clues helped me today. Rusty Chrome Orange wasn’t wearing unusual clothes. He tricked me by taking off his grey jacket and whispered, which disguised the genuine colour of his voice with white and grey lines.

Whispers are always frustrating for me because they completely change the hues of people’s voices. Coughs and colds play the same mean trick, which is really sneaky too.

More colourless silence.

It lasts longer than before. I count ten teeth with my tongue before Richard Chamberlain clears his throat, creating an offensive ochre shade.

‘You’ve gone to town on this,’ he says, pointing at my boxes as I perch with one buttock hovering in mid-air over the fried egg-shaped splodge on the sofa.

I sigh. ‘We didn’t go to town. We came straight here otherwise we’d have been even later.’

‘Okaaaaaaaay.’ The rusty chrome orange stretches into an equally unpleasant brownish mud colour.

Richard Chamberlain – call me Richard – clarifies that he’s surprised by how many notebooks I keep and stresses there was no need to bring so many today. He only wants to know if anything I’ve seen might help the investigation.

Before Dad can stop me, I pull out the crucial notebook from box number six and turn to 22 January. This isn’t the true beginning, but it’s an incredibly important day in the sequence of events that followed:

7.02 a.m.

Parakeets land in the oak tree at 20 Vincent Gardens.

Happy, bright pink and sapphire showers with golden droplets.

7.06 a.m.

Man wearing cabbage green pyjamas opens upstairs window of house next to Bee Larkham’s. Shouts prickly tomato red words at parakeets. Clue: Number 22 belongs to David Gilbert.

‘Can we skip forwards?’ Rusty Chrome Orange interrupts, setting my teeth on edge. ‘I’m not sure this is getting us anywhere.’

I sigh. We’re back to where we started, with Rusty Chrome Orange asking the wrong questions again.

If he were a proper detective, he’d have asked me to rewind and start even earlier, from the day it all began: 17 January.

The day Bee Larkham moved into our street.

I guess I understand Rusty Chrome Orange’s impatience. It’s been four days since her murder and he still doesn’t seem to realize she’s dead, but he needs to follow the correct order. I try again with my entry from 22 January, since this part is clear in my head. It’s not confused at all:

8.29 a.m.

Cherry Cords with a dog barking yellow French fries talks to Dad on street. Smoking Black Duffle Coat Man arrives but I don’t hear him speak.

Cherry Cords threatens to kill parakeets using a shotgun. The colour of his trousers, the dull red, grainy voice and the dog give me clues – this must be David Gilbert from number 22.

I don’t know the colour of Black Duffle Coat Man’s voice. I double-check his identity later and Dad says it was Ollie Watkins. I haven’t spoken to him before. He moved back to the street a couple of weeks ago to look after his mum, Lily Watkins, who is dying of cancer at number 18.

I pause and wait for Rusty Chrome Orange to catch up because this is the first sign a murder’s going to happen on our street. But he’s hitting his knee with a pen and has missed the vital clue.

Tap, tap, tap.

A light brown sound with flaky blue-black edges.

I ignore the irritating colour and jump ahead by nine minutes.

8.38 a.m.

Set off for school with Dad, worrying about David Gilbert. He’s lived on our street as long as Mrs Watkins. I ask Dad why he mentioned the shotgun. Dad says he’s a retired gamekeeper and still goes pheasant and partridge shooting every year.

Why oh why isn’t someone trying to stop the potential murderer, David Gilbert?

9.02 a.m.

Arrive at school. Late. Dad tells me not to worry. He’s sorry. Shouldn’t have mentioned David Gilbert’s hobby and former occupation. Forget about it.

9.06 a.m.

Must save parakeets. Concentrate on potential future murderer, David Gilbert from number 22. Dial 999 on my mobile phone in toilet and report death threat.

9.08 a.m.

Operator says—

‘Let’s take a break there, Jasper,’ Rusty Chrome Orange interrupts. ‘I think we should cover this. I can see from our log, this was one of a number of 999 calls you’ve made to the police recently.’ He stops talking and starts again. ‘These calls weren’t emergencies. Unnecessary 999 calls take up police resources, which could be used for proper emergencies. They waste police time.’

Who is this idiot? He’s wasting my time right now, when I could be watching over my parakeets. Maybe the actor Richard Chamberlain is brighter.

‘Of course it was necessary. It was an emergency that day. Don’t you see? I was reporting an imminent threat to life. One you should have taken more seriously if you’d wanted to stop a murder.’