Three Steps Behind You

by Amy Bird

  If Ally is alive, creaking round inside her flat, it doesn’t matter that the lipstick is on the jacket. She won’t report it; people don’t. She’ll just put it down to naiveté – a bad sexual experience. The police will think she had a good sexual experience, and is ashamed.

  I don’t think of it as a sexual experience at all.

  And even if she is dead, if that creak was something else, then what does it matter? There is nothing to link that jacket with the flat. Not any more. That’s why I bought it back. I am safe.

  ‘Aye, aye, what’s this?’ asks the assistant as he processes the trousers. He puts his hand in the pocket and it comes out jingling. Keys. Ally’s keys. ‘You wouldn’t want to forget about these!’ says the assistant, dangling the keys over to me.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I wouldn’t.’

  I take the keys and place them in the pockets of my new trousers.

  As I walk to the Tube I feel the pressure of Ally in my pocket. Her keys dig into me. I should discard them, throw them under a train, or into the Thames. They are Evidence. But what if I need them again? What if I need to, I don’t know, plant or unplant something in the flat?

  Or what if a neighbour notices they are missing? Or the ex-boyfriend, the one she says she just broke up with, tells the police that always, without fail, she kept the keys under the mat. I should put them back.

  My feet guide me back round Soho Square, Dean Street and then Old Compton Street.

  When I get to the corner I see the incident tape. And DC Huhne.

  Chapter 6

  Huhne is talking to a uniformed officer at the door of the apartment block. She is frowning, he is nodding. I ought to turn round and walk back to the Tube. But I walk forward, slowly, watching Huhne. She has abandoned the skirt in favour of trousers. She is holding an evidence bag, I see, although I cannot make out what is in it.

  I stand facing her. She does not look up. I am merely one amongst the other gawpers.

  A car drives past, splashing me with water from a puddle. I jump, and the lady next to me squeals. Huhne looks up. She does not see me at first, or rather does not take me in, for she looks back toward the policeman.

  Then she looks up again, straight at me.

  ‘Hello, Debbie,’ I say.

  ‘Mr Millard,’ she says.

  ‘What’s happened here, then?’ I ask.

  ‘An incident,’ she says. ‘I can’t tell you any more than that.’

  I nod.

  ‘You’ll see it in the news,’ she says, ‘in due course.’ She nods over to the street corner. I see a television camera and a reporter. ‘I'm giving them a statement, in a bit.’

  Incident, news, statement – sounds like a death.

  ‘Pearce not giving a statement, then?’ I ask.

  ‘They’ve realised I don’t need a supervisor to explore cases,’ she says. ‘Old ones or new ones.’

  ‘Well done,’ I say, to show I am not afraid.

  ‘Like I say, I can’t tell you anything more right now. What are you doing here anyway, Mr Millard?’

  I shrug. ‘I’ve got some time on my hands now, after, you know.’ She nods. ‘And I was here last night with your informant. Whose identity you can’t possibly reveal.’

  ‘You’ve been here since last night?’ asks DC Huhne.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I went home.’

  ‘Then came back?’

  ‘Am I under caution?’ I ask.

  Huhne smiles and shakes her head. ‘No, sorry. New case. I see leads everywhere. I’d better get on. Excuse me.’

  Huhne turns back to the policeman. I start to walk away.

  ‘Oh, Mr Millard,’ calls Huhne. ‘My daughter wants your autograph, by the way. To put in her collection. For when you’re famous.’

  It is good to have readers before I am even published.

  ‘I’ll have to get on with the writing first,’ I say. ‘Lots of new material.’

  I don’t sign her bit of paper. I continue to walk along the street, rather than returning in the direction I came from. Wouldn’t want anyone to spot I’d come specifically onto the street to see this building. I pass the television cameras, a little way from Huhne. A woman not a lot older than Ally, with too much brown hair, is wearing a stripper mac while a camera man screws and unscrews a tripod. I wonder if they are news reporters or just shooting a porno.

  I smile at the reporter.

  She smiles back.

  ‘I saw you talking to the police,’ she says. ‘Did the inspector say anything useful?’

  I shake my head. ‘Just that there’s an incident, and they'll be giving a statement soon.’

  ‘Anything else?’ she says. She seems a little desperate. Like I have something she needs. Information, I guess.

  ‘I said it sounded like a fatality and she didn’t contradict me,’ I say.

  ‘Would you mind saying that to camera?’ asks the reporter. ‘We’ve missed the breakfast slot and if we don’t get something soon, I'll miss the lunch window too.’

  I make my excuses. It doesn’t seem smart, somehow, to identify myself to the nation right now. ‘But I hope they catch whoever did this to her,’ I say, as if this soundbite offering will assist. I see Huhne is looking up, like she’s heard me. She is staring right at me. First Nicole, then Adam, now Huhne, all staring at me, in that dumbstruck way. It makes sense. I am, after all, one to watch. All this new material will make me and Luke stars. It will be a while until Adam is home for our violin session. So I get the Tube to West Hampstead, find a café, and write.

  There are some people who think that writing by hand is archaic. All around me in Wet Fish Café are people on tablets and shiny computers. None of them are eating Fish. I thought there might be lobsters, but no. Anyway, the people on the shiny devices are typing away furiously. I imagine them all at the end of the day comparing their word counts with each other. One thousand or 3,000 or 20,000. Who knows? And who cares? Their words will not be from a soul, either theirs or their characters’. When I write, there is a direct line from my soul to my brain, to my hand, to my pen, to the paper. My veins might as well bleed the words up to the surface of my skin so that they ooze fully-formed from my pores: it is such a natural process. At Feltham, they wanted me to write it all up on a computer, said then I could get my computer skills NVQ. But I knew they would just want to see what I had written – they would log onto the computer to check my inner imaginings were safe. That I wasn’t profiting from crimes. They were talking financial profit. Like book one would ever be released, like Adam would ever agree to go public with our co-authorship.

  You can still do a word count on paper, though. It just takes longer. I am still counting book three. When I started, I just counted the average numbers of words on a line, then counted the pages.

  But now I realise that some words have double value or even triple. Like Scrabble, almost. And some have negative scores, unless they are used positively. So sometimes Helen is worth minus 20 and then other times – well, the other time, the jubilant time – she is worth 20. Adam is always worth 40. Sometimes I use his name a lot, all at once, so those are very good word-score days. Other good words to use are: love, dead, resting. And close. Close is always good.

  Book four words will be a bit difficult to count because it is not autobiographical, like book three. Luke is doing everything. Adam and Nicole won’t get a mention, by name. I think sex and death will need to have pretty high scores, though. Which means I’ll probably hit about 100k in due course.

  An important point I will need to consider is that if Luke should die, how I will deal with that. He knows killing now, maybe, but if he were to die himself, how do I do that? Better perhaps to live, I suppose.

  ‘Can I join you?’ I hear.

  I see someone above me, against the sunlight. Ally? I jolt up, and spill coffee all over my lovely words.

  It is Nicole. Not Ally. I should have known she would be here, spoiling things.

  ‘Oh no! Can I help?’ she asks,
staring at the spilling liquid.

  ‘Napkins! Napkins!’ I say. That’s my only hope. But even that is futile. The more I mop, the more the blue blurs and words disintegrate and join again, in ways they weren’t meant to, becoming zero words, minus words, useless. I tear out the pages nearest the spillage – sever them and spare the rest.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Nicole says. ‘Look, I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take them home, and I’ll blow dry them, and we can save them.’

  It is only because I am depending on her for the unwritten words of book four that I don’t just push the papers into her face and smear her with blue, tell her to take her destruction elsewhere.

  But because of how important she is, I agree. ‘Yes, good plan, do that.’ It will be futile, I know; the once blue words are too brown or too nothingy to be recaptured. I will have to rewrite them. But that is even better – for then she will feel she owes me something.

  Chapter 7

  On the walk home, Nicole is solicitous and inquisitive as we wend our way along West End Lane.

  ‘So what are you working on, anyway?’

  ‘My novel,’ I say. I can’t think what else it would be.

  ‘Oh no, that was your novel?’ she cries. ‘The one with the lobsters?’

  I nod. I am pleased she has remembered the lobsters. They are obviously a good device. Plus, it means she must like them, and she will come to my house, when I invite her.

  I feel I should be upfront with her though.

  ‘There are no lobsters in that particular bit,’ I say.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that,’ she says. ‘I wouldn’t want to have killed off the lobsters.’

  Nicole is unduly sentimental. That explains her fuss over Helen. ‘You mustn’t mind about lobsters,’ I say. ‘They die, that is what they do. They are only there for that.’

  She wrinkles up her nose. I will have to blindfold her, I decide, while I kill them, or she might lose her appetite. And then she might not have the energy for what is to come. And so Luke and I will not get close to her closeness.

  ‘So if it’s not lobsters, what is it, the bit in here?’ she asks, waving the soggy papers at me.

  ‘That would be telling,’ I say. I don’t want to spoil the surprise for her, telling her what happens, part way through. Besides, that bit is actually more research notes, writing up my material.

  When we get in, Nicole suggests I settle down in front of the television while she blow-dries the pages. I suggest she brings the hairdryer downstairs, or I come up.

  ‘I want to spread out the pages in the bathroom,’ she says. ‘And we don’t want a repeat of last time, do we?’

  I guess I can’t argue with that. I must win her trust; let her know it is safe to be here with me. But can I trust her?

  ‘You mustn’t read the pages, if you get them dry, you know,’ I warn her. ‘You’ll only be spoiling the surprise for yourself.’

  ‘I don’t like surprises,’ she says.

  I reach out a hand to grab her wrist, then realise I am meant to be on good behaviour, so only clasp it gently. I look into her eyes while smiling softly, like Adam does to people. He’s not the only one who can turn on the charisma.

  ‘But I would so like to surprise you,’ I whisper. ‘With my words. When it’s all complete.’

  Nicole tries to pull her hand away, but I tighten my grip slightly.

  ‘Promise you won’t read them?’ I ask.

  She pauses. I allow my grip to tighten but smile beseechingly while I do it.

  ‘All right, I promise,’ she says.

  I release my grip on her hand. She won’t get away so easily next time. That will still be a surprise, even if she reads these particular notes.

  She takes her bag and the papers and heads upstairs. I hear a door shut.

  I turn on the TV. Chat shows, reality, unreality. I mute it and I flick to the news.

  I see Flasher Mac reporter in the foreground and DC Huhne in the background. Time to unmute.

  ‘DC Huhne, the officer investigating the case, is about to issue a statement about this incident,’ Flasher Mac is saying. ‘We’ve heard rumours of a fatality, and a passer-by who was speaking to the police earlier said, and I quote, he “hoped they catch whoever did this to her”. So what did happen in that apartment building, and to whom?’

  Oh. Oh dear. An error. When I spoke to the press of ‘her’ and a ‘this’ being done, there wasn’t a her yet. Or a this. Not officially. The police hadn’t said. Huhne hadn’t said.

  There is some flashing in the background, of bulbs, not of macs. The camera cuts out from Flasher Mac and cuts to DC Huhne. She is clutching a piece of paper, and reads from it. Maybe the journalist thought I knew what was on that bit of paper when I spoke to her. Maybe DC Huhne didn’t actually hear what I said, maybe that wasn’t why she looked up, why she stared. Maybe I’m safe, won’t be a suspect for whatever it is that was done. That we did. Luke and I.

  ‘A young woman, Ally Burrows, has been found dead in one of the apartments in the block behind me. Her death is currently being treated as suspicious. The clues we have so far suggest that this may have been the work of a lover or someone to whom Ms Burrows was close sexually.’ Huhne pauses, then continues. ‘We have provided the news networks with an artist’s impression of a man who we would like to help us with our inquiries. We would ask the public not to approach this individual, but to provide us with any information they may have.’

  The camera goes back to Flasher Mac again. ‘And I believe we can now go back to the studio for those pictures.’

  So Ally is dead.

  And there is a picture. Of me?

  We go back to the studio. A woman in power red looks serious and then, finally, we have some pictures.

  First, the public see ‘young, talented Ally Burrows, who was on the brink of an exciting media career’. She looks very alive in the picture they show. I should have known, really, when I went to the flat, that she was dead.

  Then they show an etch-a-sketch picture of the man they are looking for. I brace myself.

  It does not look like me.

  It is male, my age, and with my hair shape, but the features are all wrong. I feel smug. I know how difficult it is to describe people’s physical features. I rarely bother in my books, except when I really can’t help myself. I’m pleased the general public are not much better at it, even the observant ones. Still, it shows I was right, not to go on camera.

  ‘Police say they think this man is called Luke,’ says the red-suit woman.

  Ah, so DC Huhne found the note. Good work.

  Chapter 8

  It is not surprising that Huhne, Debbie, the DC, found the note if you consider her background. I do consider it, of course. That is one of the other important things about research. My own research, for me, not for Luke. Know your enemies. This does not mean taking them out for coffee. Nor does it mean entering into sexual relations with them, whatever my plans for Nicole. No, it means find out all about them. Their strengths, their weaknesses, their likes, dislikes. Likes are pretty easy these days if you have Facebook. You can see what anyone gives the thumbs up.

  I load up Firefox on Adam and Nicole’s big Mac. Or rather, Adam’s. It was another Helen inheritance gift. I have a quick look at my news feed to see if my select group of friends are doing anything. No. The two Nigerian guys who befriended me have been pretty quiet after I turned down their request for money. And Adam never says much any more. Helen says even less.

  I see that Debbie Huhne ‘Likes’ the Metropolitan Police, ‘The Bill’, The London Transport Police, ‘The Thin Blue Line’, ‘Cagney and Lacey’ and ‘K9’. She also likes both Arsenal and Tottenham. And also Chelsea. There is a contact number: 101. The Met’s non-emergency number. A friendly person to call to report a crime, who caters for all.

  A general Google search should give me more of a sense of the real woman. But it doesn’t. She is apparently more of a machine. Local press articles say she was promot
ed earlier than her colleagues, fast-tracked, loved by her community, valued by her friends. A kind of living obituary. A careerist who cares. I wonder, though, why there is so much coverage of her. Successful she may be, but until quite recently she was just an ordinary policeman. I search again, this time for Debbie Huhne PC and daughter.

  I find more of a measure of her this time. At first, though, it’s not clear whether it’s a strength or a weakness. Ultimately, I fear it may be a strength. The reason there is so much press adoration for her is this: policewoman’s husband and daughter murdered. Death of local man and girl leaves behind double grief for PC Debbie Huhne.

  It wasn’t an ordinary sort of murder, though. It was a hit and run.

  Which makes it very unlikely that DC Huhne will give up the first case, the Helen case. And if she listens to Nicole, it’s very unlikely she’ll give up on me.

  That’s enough about Huhne. I Google Ally, to see if there are already any conspiracy theories on the Internet. Anything linking Luke or me to her. There are 10,000 results. But I don’t have time to check them, because I hear the front door open. Adam. I shut down Firefox and turn off the TV. He doesn’t need to know my interests, the way I suffer, for my method. For him, for Luke, for me. He just needs to know the results. My art. I must continue. Despite Huhne, despite Ally, I must persevere.

  Chapter 9

  Adam tries to prepare me for disappointment when I mention the violin, which is sweet of him.

  ‘I really don’t think it’s up there, mate,’ he says, taking off his hat and scarf. ‘It’s probably not even worth looking.’ He looks tired.

  I reassure him that I won’t blame him if it’s not up there, and that I can help with some of the chores he said needed doing, while he searches. He needs to mow the lawn this evening, apparently, even though it’s autumn, which might otherwise take preference over going up to the attic. He really has a lot to do, he says, and tells me unless I want to be bored to tears waiting around, I should head off home. But I persist, so he relents.