Hey, Sherlock! by Simon Mason

Author:Simon Mason [Simon Mason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788450676
Publisher: David Fickling Books Ltd
Published: 2019-03-15T16:00:00+00:00

28

It took a moment for her mouth to work again.

‘What the fuck?’ she managed brokenly.

‘Yeah, I know. Do you mind putting it back in the box? Or at least pointing it away from my nose?’

She stared at him for a few seconds longer, as if still not quite sure he was real. Then at the gun in her hands, where it shook slightly, big and heavy, its snout dark and ugly. All at once she dropped it to her side.

‘Thanks. That sort of thing’s bad for my nerves. And I don’t like that wild look people get in their eyes when they hold a gun.’

She stooped and mechanically put it back in the box, and rose again to face him, breathing hard. At last she recovered her power of joined-up talking. ‘OK, I’m lost. What just happened? How did you get in? How did you get up here?’ She shook her head in bewilderment. ‘How did you even know where I was?’

‘Keeping an eye on you, of course.’

‘Why?’

‘Only a matter of time before you tried to get it back.’

‘You knew about the gun? How?’

He shrugged. ‘It was one hypothesis. Once I knew you hadn’t just stormed off over the shoes—’

‘How did you know that?’

‘You dropped your ring at PJ’s.’

‘I was wearing my ring when I got home. Ask my mother.’

‘One of them, yeah. But it’s part of a matching pair. You’re wearing both of them in a photograph in your room. I guess your mother hadn’t been paying attention.’

‘All my life,’ she said bitterly.

‘Besides,’ he said, ‘I knew you’d met him in the woods that night.’

‘How?’

‘Van-wise, Smudge proved it to me. The boy’s a genius. I thought at first you’d just happened to run into PJ. Then I realized it was him you were trying to get to.’

‘But how did you know about the gun?’

‘I asked myself why you ran off. From your behaviour that night I reckoned it was fear. Something had shocked you. What? Could be a number of things. So I asked myself why you’d gone to meet PJ. I knew he did nights at a self-storage place. So I thought perhaps you’d got hold of something you needed to hide, something that scared you. Needn’t have been a gun. Could have been stolen property, dope. But something you really, really couldn’t keep at home. You had no time to think it through. You had to grab the nearest box to put it in before your mother saw it, and head for the woods.’

‘Why didn’t I just dump it in the woods then?’

‘Most people would have done. You’re smarter than that. Dangerous stuff that gets dumped has a habit of being found. Dangerous stuff needs to be carefully hidden. I knew you’d understand that.’

‘And how did you know I was going to come back for it?’

‘Because you can never really hide dangerous stuff. ’Cause you worry about it. ’Cause you need it back. ’Cause someone else tells you to get it back. I just had to wait till you made your move.

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