by Steve Mosby
Breathing slowly, I tried to find a picture of Amy in my mind to steady myself. It came easily enough, but it seemed slightly faded. Lifeless, like a photograph. I supposed I hadn’t seen her in four months and shouldn’t be surprised, but I was –and disappointed, too. I wanted something vivid that I could run towards. I wanted to be with her, in some way, when I did what I was going to do. The last thoughts that got blasted out onto these walls should be of her.
I started to cry, frustrated with myself, and sat up.
The room looked better blurred, and so I cried for a while, and thought unhappy thoughts. I ran through the scenarios. I imagined her cursing me as she died. I saw her crying and screaming as they raped and tortured her to death, and then unfolded these thoughts backwards to see us sitting in our bed, side by side and miles apart. I thought of all the things I should have told her, and I said them to her now instead. Most of all, I imagined sitting with her, trying to explain how sorry I was. Still she wouldn’t come.
Get it together, I told myself.
Just get it together.
I opened the file and flicked through it, maybe for inspiration. But I stopped at the first page, which was the e-mail she’d sent. Except she hadn’t, of course: it must have been somebody else.
I looked at it again, and then rubbed my fingertip over the printed text of the header. If she hadn’t sent me the footage that would lead me to her body, then who had? How had they found it – and me – and why?
It occured to me for a second that she might not be dead at all, and I felt a flurry in my heart. Immediately, I shot it down.
She is dead.
So who wrote the e-mail, then? Who else had access to the account?
I couldn’t think of a single person, but maybe she’d told someone else the password. After all, she hadn’t known about Claire Warner. So maybe she’d had someone that I didn’t know about.
I felt relieved to be thinking this through, without really knowing why, and so I went with it. Either Amy had sent the message, or someone else had. That seemed clear enough. It was certainly Amy in the beginning sections of the video, and the continuation in it suggested that it was her remains that had been set on fire at the wasteground. That was the implication. So she couldn’t have sent it. But who would have been able to find those videos? Certainly not Graham, not in the time he had. Hughes was dead. And why would anyone have sent me them at all?
The conclusion? Nothing about that blank e-mail made sense.
I turned it over and looked at the next page, which was the beginning of Dennison’s insane manifesto that texts were alive. As I skimmed through the pages, I wondered what state the internet was in right now: how much of it was left and how long that would last. That led to another idea. Dennison believed that the description of Amy being killed had started the corruption in the database. The text-file that got lost on its way to my inbox.
So maybe the description of Amy was behind all this. Maybe it really was alive, in some weird way. Perhaps the text itself had sent me the e-mail message, lulled into doing so by memories that were haunting it. Memories of what it once was.
I turned the page, revealing the list of ‘Marley’s in Thiene.
A flash cut of Amy’s body being carried onto the wasteground.
I glanced down the page, remembering what I already knew. There were thirty names on it, with addresses and phone numbers. Thirty strangers was too many to sift through if you didn’t know what you were looking for.
Another flash cut: a zoom.
The blurred close-up of Marley’s face, with the bright tip of his cigarette burning a hole in the screen.
I lay back down on the bed, holding the piece of paper face down against my chest, and closed my eyes.
It occurs to me sometimes that everything we think we know about ourselves is only fiction. There’s no such thing as the past or the future: they don’t really exist – in the proper, physical sense that a cat exists, or a dog. We live in this ever-changing, single moment. If I want to claim that a particular object is red, then I can point to that object. The evidence is there in front of me. But if I want to claim that it was once red – when I saw it last – there’s no physical evidence at all beyond the way the memory of me seeing it is wired up in my brain. It’s just a story I remember about the way things were. That’s the only evidence there is.
The past is all fiction. It only exists in the form of hundreds of thousands of differing narratives wired into hundreds of thousands of different heads. The stories overlap, and sometimes they contradict each other, and when that happens we tend to pick the stories which appeal to us most.
My grandmother was a religious woman and she always used to say that we were put on this Earth to do the best that we could. To make it a better place. I don’t know about that; I’m more material than she was, and less confident that anything has any real value at all. I think that it’s all just words on a page that nobody’s actually reading. But what it seems to me is this: while we’re here, what we try to do is star in as many stories as possible. That’s what being important and influential really means. It’s nothing more than binding yourself into as many narratives as possible, in as many people’s minds. And when you die, all it means is that your stories are over: you’re finished with writing them, and now it’s just a matter of whether anybody reads them and remembers you.
When I woke up, the hotel room was dark and I felt disorientated. Something was wrong. It wasn’t the light: I remembered turning it out, half-asleep, when it became obvious I was dozing off. And it wasn’t the dream I was having either, which had been cut short. It was the door.
A creak of floorboards.
Fuck – the door was open.
I swung myself upright and pulled the gun up from the side of my leg. A figure, which had been creeping into the room from the bright hallway beyond, stopped moving immediately, and then moved its hands up slowly.
I clicked off the safety catch and said:
‘What the fuck are you doing?’
‘Easy.’ It was the guy from the counter downstairs. ‘Don’t shoot.’
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I said again.
The silhouette shrugged.
‘I heard a gunshot. It sounded like it came from in here.’
I frowned to myself in the dark. From what I could remember I’d been dreaming about gunfire – I remembered loud shots and bright lights. I’d been in a front room, watching a television.
‘I knocked, but there was no answer.’ He shrugged again, sounding more confident now. Obviously deciding that I wasn’t going to shoot him, he turned away and moved back into the doorway.
‘Got to look out for myself.’
‘Right,’ I said, as he closed the door.
The darkness felt uncomfortable, so I switched on the light and rubbed the bad dream from my eyes. The memory of it was fading, and I couldn’t remember too much of what had happened in it. But I knew that, just before I’d jerked awake, I’d been a young boy, sitting in an armchair in a dark front room. I was watching a pale blue television, which was flashing and banging away in the corner, but I didn’t like what I was seeing at all: it was pictures and sounds of people being hurt by somebody. I knew that there were other people in the room who were watching me for my reaction, and so I wasn’t allowed to look away from the screen. These other people were just vague, dark shapes in the other chairs; I couldn’t make them out, or even tell which one was speaking to me. But I remember asking:
‘Why is he doing that?’
One of them said, ‘Because if he didn’t, there wouldn’t be a story.’
I found it too frustrating. ‘That’s a stupid answer.’
The same voice: ‘It’s the only reason anyone does anything.’
And then the guy from downstairs had disturbed me.
I didn’t want to go back to sleep, so I sat on the edge of the bed for a minute, feeling sick. Whenever Amy used to wake me up in the night with one of her
bad dreams, it felt like this: a kind of awful, sleepy nausea. It always passed, but never quickly. Now, as I waited to feel better, I saw that there was a screwed up ball of paper on the floor in front of me. I put down the gun and picked it up, unfolding it carefully.
Thirty names. Thirty addresses.
I put the paper down on top of the gun and held my head in my hands.
Five minutes later, I went down to the shared bathroom at the far end of the hall, with the gun tucked into my trousers. The whole room seemed strangely sterile: walls of white porcelain; garish lights overhead; and water everywhere – hanging in clean beads on the wall tiles and mixed into muddy footprints on the floor. I ran some into a sink the width and depth of a small well and splashed my face a few times, and then leaned on the edge, inspecting myself in the mirror.
I looked normal: a little tired and rough around the edges, but still me. My standard face. Neither good nor bad looking, neither smiling nor frowning – just weathered and slightly beaten, but not as much as I’d expected. I was my normal tune, played in a minor key. Water dripped down my cheeks and I saw my eyes watching it. Looked back up, only to catch them doing the same.
Thirty names.
The choice was made easier by the fact that I didn’t actually want to kill myself tonight. It felt too soon, somehow. I had a deep, aching pain inside me whenever I thought about Amy, but at the same time I felt like if I died tonight I would have missed something. There was also the small matter of cowardice; I’d be able to do it, I thought, but it would probably be easier if I surprised myself.
So, the choice was made: I wasn’t going to kill myself here in this shithole.
Three men dead in the last forty-eight hours, all by my hand. Suddenly, that didn’t seem so bad. I figured I could give myself another week, check out the names on the list, and maybe add one or two more to that tally.
CHAPTER FIFTEEEN
The first name on the list – number one – turned out to be an old man. I watched him for all of ten seconds, from a bus shelter on the other side of the street, and he could barely get down his front path. He was tapping a stick on the paving stones for support. As he opened his gate and turned down the street, I caught a glimpse of his body from the side: he was as bent as a letter ‘r’.
Five minutes later, when the bus came, he was still in sight. I got on it, and didn’t even look at him as we drove past.
Number two.
He was younger than number one – not by much, admittedly, but it was enough to keep him upright when he was walking, and he didn’t need a cane for support either. But there was still an awkwardness to him. I only saw him walk once – from his seat to the toilet – and he had the slow, skewed gait of an old builder: someone who’d hurt his back but still had enough muscle left to power himself around.
I caught his face as he passed: cheeks as bright as sunburn and an exploded nose the colour of fire. He was wearing old slacks, and a chequered shirt beneath a beige pullover, sleeves rolled up to knotty elbows, revealing the white hair on his arms. I turned back to the bar, downed what was left of my drink and then left.
Numbers three and four were related to number two: his sons. They were more the right age, but they were still dead ends. Both of them were blond. I saw the first one on a construction site, wearing a cement-spattered sweater and jeans, carrying a black bucket over uneven ground. It wasn’t him. The second was in his driveway, clanking tools beneath the shell of a Camaro. He pulled himself out after a second, blinking at the sun behind me.
‘Can I help you?’ he asked.
I said no, and walked away.
The next six names were all a dead loss, and I was beginning to despair. And then, number eleven was actually dead. I called it a day, determined to start fresh the morning after.
Let’s back up just a little.
After deciding I wasn’t going to kill myself, I figured the best thing to do was get some sleep, so I jammed the chair beneath the door handle, placed the gun within easy reach and dropped off with surprising ease. I had more bad dreams, but I didn’t remember what they were. In the morning, I handed my keys back and made my way out of Downtown: back into the real world, or what passes for it. It was strange to see the sky again – blue-white and cloudless – and to hear the sound of cars and people going about their business without a threatening echo announcing it to the world. Monday morning. The air smelled fresh, clean and cold, and for a while it felt as though the heat and damp of Downtown were oozing out of my skin, like some kind of sweaty disease.
The first thing I did was phone home and check my answer-machine for messages. A mechanical voice told me there were two. I glanced at my watch, wondering how long it took to trace a call, and whether anybody would actually be bothered enough about me to do it. After a second, Williams’ voice cut in, distracting me.
‘Hello Jason. It’s Nigel here.’ He was speaking low and quick, picking out a spoken rhythm which expressed his irritation to almost poetic perfection. ‘I’m just calling to let you know that this month’s pay has been credited to you, but we do need to see you urgently, so would you please give us a call as soon as you get this message. Thank you. Goodbye.’
I felt like giving a big cheer for the corporations: despite being heroically absent for the whole month, I had been paid. Not even a naïve child’s version of God is that forgiving. Eight hundred odd pounds, ready to withdraw whenever I wanted – assuming, of course, that my account hadn’t been frozen by the police, what with me being on the run and all. Somehow, I doubted that had happened.
Beep.
‘Hi Jason, it’s Charlie.’
I closed my eyes, remembering how I’d run out on her in the pub. It felt like a hundred years ago. I wouldn’t have blamed her in the slightest for being incredibly angry with me, but instead she only sounded a little bit hurt, and actually mostly worried.
‘It’s Sunday night. I’m just calling because I hope you’re okay. I don’t know what happened yesterday – or what I did wrong – but I’m sorry, whatever it was. And I understand; it’s okay.’
No, you don’t understand, I thought. You mean well, and that’s lovely, but you can’t help me, and I’m not worth the effort.
‘I wanted to let you know that the police called round.’ Her tone shifted slightly; I opened my eyes to the sight of cars rushing past and the implacable face of Downtown across the street. ‘They said they found someone dead in the woods, and wanted to know if we’d seen anything. I said we hadn’t, but they’ll want to speak to you anyway. I guess I’ll want to speak to you, too.’
Yeah, I thought. I guess you will.
Okay: they’d found Kareem’s body, but as of this minute they had nothing to tie me to the murder, beyond the fact that I was nearby when it took place. For now, as far as they knew, Charlie and I were a couple of friends who just happened to have been walking through the woods that day, and if they figured out who the guy was then they probably wouldn’t suspect us anyway. She’d lied for me and – as a result – it might be okay.
‘I hope you’re all right.’ She sounded concerned. ‘Please get in touch with me. You don’t have to see me if you don’twant. I mean: just tell me if you want to be left alone. But I want to know you’re all right. Okay? Give me a ring when you get this.’
Click
There was no way I was going to call her back, as bad as it made me feel. That part of my life was over and finished with, and I figured the sooner I started acknowledging it, the better. So I hung up instead, and went to find a cash machine.
By eleven o’clock on day two, I’d found number twelve, who was in hospital with a gunshot wound. I passed myself off as a relative and made my way through to his room, telling myself not to get my hopes up but failing all the same. I was expecting it to be him, but it wasn’t.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and closed the door on the way out.
Number thirteen owned a liquor store. I went in and to
ok a bottle of generic cola from the freezer to the counter, but there was a woman behind it and not the owner. His wife, probably.
‘Anything else?’ she asked, moving the bottle past a blipping barcode reader.
Counting coins, I looked up and saw the plaque on the wall beneath the spirits. It gave the licence information, and there was a picture of the owner: a fat man with white hair in a grey shirt. He looked impeccably neat, and also vaguely pleased with himself, as though obtaining a liquor licence was something all aspired to and few reached.
I told the woman that was all, paid her and left.
Number fourteen was bed-ridden. He had a home nurse who visited him just after I arrived. She was middle-aged and dowdy, arriving in a small car, armed with a brown bag full of pills. I didn’t even bother to check that guy out.
Number fifteen was involved in a heated business lunch with another male colleague. Suited from head to toe, they were both trying to impress a young lady who was with them. Every so often, fifteen would roar with laughter and then dab at his mouth with a napkin, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. He had curly black hair and shiny skin, and chubby hands. He held his wine glass like it was a flower he was smelling. I left after a couple of minutes.
There is no limit to what you can achieve given time. Even the most complicated and seemingly impossible task is only a matter of doing one thing after another. This wasn’t even that complicated; just time consuming.
I checked the list. I figured maybe three more and then call it a day.
There was no rush.
The hotel room in Thiene was a million miles from the standard of the one in Downtown, which made it middle of the road in general terms. I had an en-suite bathroom, roughly the size of two standing people, a wardrobe, a double bed, and a desk and chair. Most of my notes and papers were spread out on the desk. In the corner of the room, there was a television unit – also housing a handy little mini-bar underneath. Not the grandest of rooms, admittedly, but the four walls surrounding it would define the last few days of my life, with only a slight slope and one dark Monet print to differentiate them, so I figured I’d have to learn to live with it.