The Third Person

Of course, he wasn’t going to help me out just for one word.

Graham said, ‘When can you find out?’

‘Monday. But it’s not as simple as that. He won’t just help me. I’m going to need some leverage.’

The picture of Amy flicked into the next frame: a random jumble of black at this magnification. Graham clicked a button and she came back to me.

If only.

‘What do you need?’ he asked.

I was thinking:

She was on the internet a lot… a whole load of guys.

That was what Wilkinson had told me.

‘I need some bargaining power.’ I was still staring at the image of Amy on the computer screen. I couldn’t look away.

The computer beeped. A window popped up informing Graham that the Will Robinson single had been successfully downloaded from Liberty.

I blinked.

‘I need you to do a search on Liberty for me,’ I said. ‘I need you to look for just one word for me.’

‘Shoot.’

If anything ever happens to me, I just want you to remember one word.

That’s what she’d said to me.

‘Schio,’ I said. ‘Just one word. Run a search for Schio.’

‘Are you all right?’ Graham asked. ‘I’m worried about you.’

‘I’m fine. Well-’ A little incline of the head; a raise of the eyebrows. I sipped Helen’s perfect coffee. ‘You know.’

He nodded.

‘But you don’t need to be worried about me,’ I said. I tried to make it sound as reassuring as possible – as though all this was some hobby I was vaguely committed to in my spare time, and not the only real purpose in life I had left. ‘Look. I’ve got to get going.’

He took the mug from me. I glanced down at the screen. Reports were coming flooding into the program window as the search ran its way through a thousand computers on Liberty, and then ten thousand more:

‘I’ll leave it running,’ he told me. ‘Should have something in an hour or so.’

I nodded.

He clicked the [Reporting] button off, and the messages disappeared.

‘I’ll call back. Is it okay if I call?’

‘Of course, Jay,’ he said. ‘Always. It’s always okay.’

But I didn’t believe him.

I thought about Helen’s list of tea and coffee, and about Graham’s perfect bookcases and computerised intercom voice. Their uptown address. They had so much money that they almost didn’t know what to do with it – except buy what they’d been told to. Maybe they’d even be starting a family soon: a frightening thought.

In a way, though, it was weird for me to think that their relationship was so fucked up. My love for Amy felt like something pure and wonderful in comparison, but the only evidence of our relationship at the moment was an image on the screen, and me – currently staining an unwanted shadow into their bright apartment. I could almost feel Helen washing up in the kitchen, wondering when – now that Amy was gone – their duty to me as friends would be finally discharged. When she could cross me off her coffee list. When they could trade me in for a better model and just have done.

The only times I ever saw them these days were times like this.

‘I’ve gotta go,’ I said. ‘Say goodbye to Helen for me.’

I wandered out and, like I was a blackmailer come to visit in the night, he watched me to the door without saying a word.

CHAPTER FIVE

Lacey Beck.

It was at one end of Swaine Woods – the Ludlow village end. Ludlow was pretty small: basically just a road of country houses backing onto the wood, all of them carefully reconstructed. They had bright white walls – many with black cartwheels nailed to the sides, for some reason – troughs filled with flowers, and they all sported tiny, random windows you couldn’t see shit out of. You could see into some of the kitchens, though, and they all looked the same: herb racks and wooden-handle knives; pans hanging from hooks above the work surfaces; an olde cookery booke. Outside, you could breathe in the smell of grass and trees, and listen to birdsong, assuming you might want to.

At one end of the road, a ginnel led to a footpath through the woods, which went all the way through to the ring road at the far side, skirting Morton. It was a lonely walk, but a nice one; Amy and I used to wander along it sometimes, and it would take about half an hour to get from one end to the other. The sun came streaking in through the tips of the trees, and the embankment sloped down to the left: a mess of dusty roots and dips. The beck was at the bottom, diverging away from the path. Half a mile into the wood you could barely even hear it anymore.

I wouldn’t have wanted to live there. It was where a lynch mob hanged Edmund Lacey, an eighteenth-century highwayman, and although I don’t believe in ghosts I’ve always thought that there was an atmosphere to the place. Most of the time, it felt peaceful and pleasant, but occasionally it was almost threateningly still. All you could hear was the stream, which – in its way – was all that was left of Lacey: his name, rushing endlessly past.

Sometimes, it made me think of screaming spirits blowing through abandoned buildings like the wind. Most of the time, it just made me think: oh – so there’s a stream here.

I’d carefully followed Charlie from her house, waiting at the far end of the road until she emerged and then watching her all the way to the ginnel. When she’d turned the corner onto the footpath, I’d started to make my way down the road. By the time I’d started to hear the stream, and then reached the corner myself, I was figuring that she’d be out of sight. And she was.

In spite of my days of careful planning, I wasn’t entirely sure how this was going to go, or even if it was going to go. It was more than possible that Kareem was many miles away right now – more than likely, in fact – and if that was the case then, although it meant another dead end, at least I didn’t have to worry about Charlie getting hurt. If he was here, though, I had at least two concerns.

Firstly, and most importantly, protecting Charlie.

Secondly, protecting myself.

Kareem really shouldn’t have written that, A lot of Amys hang around in here, because what it now came down to was this: I was here in these woods, expecting him. If he showed up, then the likelihood was that only one of us was leaving, which was a pretty big thing.

I set off along the path.

There would be a fair amount of luck to this, I realised. After all, I had no idea what Kareem looked like, in terms of his age, race, height, build, dress sense – anything, really – and although these woods were quiet, that didn’t mean I was about to leap on someone the moment I saw them. It could just be a guy out for a walk, and so I needed to be certain it was him before committing myself. That meant giving him enough rope to hang himself with, a la Edmund Lacey, which – in turn – meant exposing Charlie to more danger than felt entirely comfortable.

Ideal situation?

Aside from us all being at home, tucked up in bed, it was this:

Kareem was deep in the woods, watching for a woman of Amy17’s description to come walking along the footpath. I’d be far enough back for him not to see me. Then, he’d see her and move onto the path behind her, and