by James Goss
“Come in?” I asked, hesitantly.
Amber leaned against the doorframe and breathed out, a really long, angry breath.
“Sure,” she said.
WE WENT INTO the living room. She was shouting. I was trying to think straight. Truthfully, there was a lot of pain going on in my face. Like I’d stubbed my toe. But all over my face.
For a moment or two I wondered if the Killuminati had tipped her off. But from the amount of shouting she was doing, I guessed that no, that wasn’t it at all. She’d managed to work it out for herself. Which was, in its own way, chilling. Would she be able to work out what else I’d done if she put her mind to it? Or would I, by some lucky chance, be okay?
I MEAN, OVERALL, it had been quite a successful stunt. No one had been killed. Amber had her career again. I’d even managed to make a few points that people had taken seriously. It was a good thing, really. Just about.
Only, of course, you could argue that it was my most successful crime yet. You could argue that it was my least successful crime yet, as it was the one where I’d got caught.
I stood there, rubbing my eye and trying to make sense of my brain and hoping that Amber would just shut up for a minute as my face really really hurt and the cat was whining for food or something and I tried to explain and—
—ANYWAY, WE WERE kissing. Which was utterly weird. You know when you kiss someone for the first time and your arms go down and slide around them? Well, when one arm is glued to your eye by the pain, that doesn’t happen, so instead the other one over-compensates and it’s all stupid and weird because this is the moment that you’ve really hoped for for a really really long time and there it is with you looking like you’re miming ballroom dancing while watching a 3D movie and somewhere in-between all this nonsense is the reality that you’re kissing the girl of your dreams and—
Actually rather brilliant. Well—
“WHAT THE HELL?”
Guy was standing in my flat. I didn’t remember inviting him in. But then I didn’t remember closing the front door.
“I knew something was going on. I just knew it. You’re my oldest mate.” Like a lot of what Guy says, there always seems to be about two words missing, but you get the point. To kind of emphasise it, he punched me in the other eye.
SO THERE WE all were in my living room.
There was Amber, standing there sort of slapping Guy.
There was Guy, kind of kicking me.
There was me, rolling around on the floor, hands cupped over my eyes, wishing I wasn’t being kicked.
There was the cat, weaving around all of us in a ‘hey gurl, this is interesting, also, hungry’ way.
THIS WAS THE point that someone else walked into the living room.
“I hope you don’t mind,” they said, and I tried to identify the voice. It was familiar, but my hands really wouldn’t move from my eyes. “The door was open, so I came in.”
“You couldn’t shut the door?” I whined.
“Sorry, man,” said Guy. He sounded sincere, even though he was still, I noticed, kicking me.
“What the hell are you doing on the floor?” said the voice.
I opened my eyes and groaned.
It was Jackie Aspley.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LOVE AND WAR
JACKIE HAD CHANGED. Gone was the look of a scarecrow trying to run a charity bookshop. She was wearing a tight-fitting dress, an expensive coat, and hair that had a personal trainer. Her make-up was impressive, in the same way that you might say a pickled sculpture by Damien Hirst or spray-painted concrete by Banksy was impressive.
“Woah,” I said.
Jackie surveyed the scene. Which, let’s face it, was mostly me rolling around whimpering.
“Is that bit undamaged?” she asked. Guy shrugged, and Jackie landed a sharp kick somewhere around my ribs. As I lay there bleating, she took in the room, then picked up my cat and made a fuss of it.
“You precious little fuzz baby, your daddy took some finding,” she said. “But I managed it.”
“Who is this?” asked Guy
“Yeah,” said Amber. She didn’t sound impressed.
BUGGER.
We’ve all heard of the prisoner’s dilemma, even if it never makes any sense. But this is the coward’s nightmare. There were three people in the room, none of whom I could tell the entire truth to. Or even a safe partial truth.
I couldn’t tell Jackie and Guy I was in love with Amber, I couldn’t tell Guy I murdered his old girlfriend, I couldn’t tell Amber I’d once lived with Jackie under an assumed name. And I certainly couldn’t tell any of them that I’ve been killing off the most annoying people on the internet with the support of a sinister faceless syndicate.
One of the great lessons in life is that everyone wants to say something and no-one really wants to know what you think. The number of times when you actually have to say anything is quite small. Even when you’re being directly questioned, whatever you say will simply be taken as a confirmation of whatever it is the person talking at you has already decided.
Most of talk is noise. Angry noise. Hurt noise. And, very rarely, comforting noise. The actual words matter very little. Sorry, poets. It’s tone we listen to. It’s why you can always tell it’s an episode of EastEnders on in the next room—because of the furious buzzing sound.
The nice thing about lying on the floor was that my own personal soap opera was taking place five and a half feet above my head. A confederacy of giants. While they rumbled on, I had time and a half to think. The only thing in the room at my level was the cat, and it was giving me a look of ‘You are so on your own.’
I formed a strategy. The best thing was to explain and then isolate Jackie Aspley from the other two. As the most unusual thing in the room, she would divert attention. She must have come here wanting something, and whatever it was, whether sex or help or whatever, the simplest thing was to give it to her. With her out of the way (and hopefully me with her) then Amber and Guy could sort out their problems or make up their own lies or whatever allowed them to sleep at night. So long as they left my flat.
Excellent. First job, to stand up.
This wasn’t as easy as you’d think. They say the human body can only feel pain in one place at a time. I really think they’re wrong about that one.
“Jackie,” I winced. “These are my friends Amber and Guy.”
They muttered greetings to each other.
“I met Jackie on holiday,” I temporised. Almost true enough, almost little enough detail. Don’t over-elaborate. “How... however did you find me?”
Jackie held up my cat again, which was even now beginning to pedal the air uneasily. “Through this little tyke. The vet had scanned her microchip, so I persuaded him to give me your address off it. Then I came.”
“Fancy dinner?” I asked.
Jackie looked around, her eyes flicking over the angriness of Guy, the confused hurt of Amber, and then back to me. Just for a moment I could see how bored she was by all of this, and then her smile snapped into place. “Of course,” she said. “I’ve already booked the table.”
“Now see—” began Guy. Or Amber. I really didn’t know which. I didn’t care.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jackie assured them both and we went out.
I glanced back, with a sheepish look that I hope conveyed ‘ah well’ and ‘we’ll talk later.’ Basically, they were still standing in my flat. Maybe they’d still be there when I got back. I bloody hoped not.
THE RESTAURANT WAS very Jackie Aspley. What amazed me was that it had somehow been hiding within a short walk of my flat. The rich decorations were almost hidden by the tapering candle-light. The tables were covered with more types of folded cloth than a linen closet. A waiter served as a semi-permanent murmuring attachment to the back of your chair.
“How homely!” cooed Jackie. It was clearly anything but.
She picked up one of the three menus and immediately started hunting for things that weren’t o
n it, and tutting with delighted disappointment. “No celeriac chips.”
A waiter brought me an ice pack for my face.
I ordered the soup. If I could have had my way I’d have followed it with more soup, but instead I plumped for something simple-enough looking from the mains.
Jackie ordered almost everything and ate almost none of it.
“So,” she said, “Apparently your name is Dave.”
“Yes,” I admitted miserably.
“Nice to meet you, Dave,” she said icily. “Did I walk in on your little personal life?”
I found it quite hard deflecting her. She was, after all, a trained journalist. And I spent so much time ducking her enquiries as to whether or not Amber was my girlfriend that I completely forgot to mount any defence against her real query.
“So, why did you leave me?”
I gave her an answer. It was full of ums and ahs and tortured phrases. I spent so much trouble on trying to come up with something convincing that it left me completely exposed to what Jackie said next.
“Well, that’s all right, then,” she nodded, closing the subject firmly. “As I’m also very much in love. Which is why I want your help.”
“YOUR HELP?” THE velvet walls of the restaurant had closed in a little.
Jackie nodded. I rubbed my hand through the breadcrumbs I’d scattered along the tablecloth. Little crumb, little crumb, big pebbly crumb, little crumb.
“Darling,” Jackie leaned forward. “I’m occasionally very good at my job. I didn’t just pester the vet. I also did a little bit of digging. You see, people are always sending me things. When I started writing about you, I got sent a lot of letters about you. I ignored all those, of course. But, after you left, I was sent a file. It was full of the most fascinating gossip. Like your real name.”
I felt a chill pricked at the back of my neck colder than the waiter’s breath. The only people who could have done that were the Killuminati. But why?
Jackie carried on smiling at me. She was suddenly all lipstick and teeth. “I did some digging. I used to be a really good journalist. Nowadays people just want my opinions, but I used to be really decent at research. Proper research. Going to a library. Looking at books. Ringing round. It seems you didn’t quite tell me the entire truth about yourself. Instead of the bumbling artistic technophobe you told me you were, in fact it turns out you’re quite the... is ‘hacker’ the word? Or should I go for ‘failed actor’?” She shrugged. “I honestly can’t think why you’d try and hurt me so much. I’m not sure it matters. I really do pick them. Anyway, discovering so much about you, well, it inspired me. I got online.”
She beamed at me. The soup sat heavier in my stomach. “Initially, well, I tried to find out even more about you. But then I got distracted. I Googled myself and found out what everyone was saying about me. People are so cruel.” Her lips thinned. I tried to work out if there was heartbreak there or not. “It’s so strange. That lonely midnight feeling when you’re staring at the internet. I read that pensioners say the thing gives them company, but I’ve never felt more alone than when reading the internet. What a lot of time people have. And how lonely and bitter they all are. After a while I despaired, I really did. And then I started, for the first time in my life, to feel properly good about myself. I’m quite a successful failure, really. And at least I don’t have to go to work and pretend to be coping. But they all have to. And it eats away at them.” Jackie beamed. “But I’ll tell you what I did next. I signed up to a dating site and I fell in love.”
As Jackie talked on I started to lift the cold vegetables from her plate. I wasn’t really hungry, I just wanted to keep my mouth full so that I didn’t have to say anything. I was starting to feel a creeping relief.
“Really, I was looking for love nearby. Perhaps in the next village. I did find a man in a village, but that village was in Kenya.” Oh, God. “He seemed to find me ever so attractive—exotic, I guess, and he poured out his soul and I poured mine out. He has a tiny little job and so many degrees and is such an honest and true man.” She pushed a print-out at me, a much folded inkjet photo of a smiling man in a polo shirt. “His name is Kenneth Kambata,” she said proudly. “And he’s ever so clever and he loves me. But the problem is that the real world just keeps getting in the way.”
Even though I had a mouth full of cold potato, I had to speak. “You do know what he is, don’t you?”
“Well, I do now,” Jackie nodded, as though accepting that all men would let her down. “But you know, it was all so thrilling. Like a motion picture. He wanted to come and see me almost at once. So I sent him the money for a ticket. He didn’t turn up at the airport and my heart broke at Arrivals and again in the cab home. Then his auntie (such a nice lady) Skyped me to break the bad news to me, through her tears, that his car had had a crash on the way to catch the flight. He was terribly smashed up and they didn’t have the money to pay for his treatment there much longer...”
I’d run out of breadcrumbs. There was a little vase of breadsticks on the table. I picked one up and snapped it until the table was scattered with bits, bits that I could roll my fingers across. The contrast between the tiny rocks of bread and the expensive softness of the tablecloth was once more reassuring.
“His aunty was terribly grateful for the money. The transfer went over so easily and she was sending me pictures of Kenneth in bed. Of course, sadly, they needed a little more money for medicine...”
I felt tired. My bruises were starting to throb. The restaurant was really dark and warm and the walls throbbed with crimson. It was less like being in the womb and more liked being rolled around in a giant mouth.
“And he was, well, naturally, he was dreadfully behind with his rent...”
I always wonder where they get the pictures for restaurant walls. Are there special galleries? Imagine the phone call—good news, we’ve sold all your art; bad news, it’s to McDonalds.
“But he was soon well enough to travel, only there was a problem with his passport, and his uncle explained that he was too embarrassed to ask me himself as he was ever so grateful...”
There was no water in my glass any more. My throat felt dry and I wondered if I could somehow order some. I hate trying to order tap water in posh restaurants; they always pause before they nod and say “but of course.”
“...so yes, anyway. I started to get really upset for him. The immigration difficulties he was experiencing sounded really appalling. Apparently, he was on a watch list after once protesting a Sodobus factory. But what’s the harm in that? He was only coming to see me on a holiday—I mean, I know I’ve written a lot about foreigners trying to move here, but none of it’s true.” She waved a hand around dismissively, and I wondered what Jackie Aspley really did believe in. “Yet he was having so much trouble getting clearance and getting his paperwork in order. So I did the sensible thing. I decided to help him. He said there was no need. His uncle agreed, although he did suggest I perhaps send a little more money. Balls to that, I thought. I’ve a good journalistic brain. That’s about my only skill. So I Googled ‘Kenyan holiday immigration visas’ and, you’ll never guess what the first link was...”
I groaned. “A site about fake dating profiles?”
“Yes,” Jackie nodded. “Apparently it’s called a catfish, which seems unfair to cats and fish.” The dopey smile had gone from her face. “Kenneth had me completely. I guess I’ve always trusted the wrong men.” She looked at me sharply. “And anyway... since I lost my regular writing gig, I’ve basically been relying on my savings—what savings, hah!—and sending most of those over to him. Only now I realise he doesn’t exist. Or, if he does, he’s still sitting on a vast pile of my money. My first thought was to Skype his Aunty Sarah, but then I realised that, of course, she’s in on it too, and then my world fell apart. Which is when I remembered you.”
“What?”
“You’re the computer whizz,” she said in the tone people used to say ‘information super-highway’ in. �
��You can get me my money back,” said Jackie. “I don’t care about... about Ken.” I wasn’t convinced. “I just want my money.”
“How?”
“I don’t care about that either. I’m sure you’ll think of something terribly clever,” said Jackie simply. “Just do it, or I’ll see if I can find an interesting way to use what I’ve found out about you. If my editor won’t take it, I’m sure the police will.”
Oh.
SO. MY LIFE was falling apart. I could list the ways, but let’s face it, the biggest problem I had was that I was being blackmailed. I had two days to get some money from someone I’d never met before in Kenya. Perhaps I could write to him and say that I’d just inherited a gold mine in Kidderminster?
LUCKILY JACKIE HAD brought her laptop with her and she was more than happy to leave the files with me. Or rather, just the laptop. Like a lot of people who claim to be ‘stone broke,’ she had an odd relationship with money. She’d helpfully bought a new MacBook just for her online dating escapades, and saw no reason for needing it.
This was actually very handy as she’d kept video copies of all of her Skype chats with Kenneth. Another curious thing about people—people who loudly claim to be “an utter luddite when it comes to technology” are amazingly skilled when it comes to porn. The Porn Principle drives the internet—if a technology can’t be used for porn, then it’s going to fail because no one will bother learning how to use it. It’s also why Groupon is doomed but Bitcoin isn’t. A few months ago, Jackie was very proudly assuring me she was “hopeless” about technology. Now she was screencapturing entire Skype chats simply because her handsome Kenyan was having quite an impressive fiddle with himself.