The Third Person

‘Hijay. How are you doing?’

I wasn’t thinking straight, or I’d have noticed his voice wavering right then.

‘Not great,’ I admitted, leaning away from the wall and beginning to pace as much as the cord would allow me. ‘I’m in a bit of a state here, actually, Gray. I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

‘Where are you, and what’s happened?’

I just killed a man.

‘I’m in the Bridge pub. On the ring road.’

‘Want me to come and get you?’

‘No.’

Graham was worried: ‘What’s happening there? You sound fucked to high Hell.’

I closed my eyes.

‘I just found something out, that’s all,’ I said. ‘Forget the train station, because I know where she went. She went to Thiene to meet somebody, Gray. A fat white guy. I know that’s where she went.’

‘Thiene.’

‘Can you get the cameras at Thiene?’

‘Maybe.’

He sounded dubious. Far away.

‘Or outside,’ I said, speaking faster than I could think. ‘On the streets, maybe. Outside the station.’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’ve got a name, too,’ I said. ‘Can you search for information on “Marley” for me?’

‘M-a-r-l-e-y?’

‘Yeah. In Thiene. Anything you can find on people with that name.’

This time, he didn’t say anything at all.

I used a little of the silence to let my brain catch up with itself. But there was too much, and it started to get uncomfortable. Then, I had a bolt of memory:

‘Did you find the file on Liberty?’

Another pause.

‘Yeah.’ And that was when I noticed the shakiness in his voice, and I realised it had been there all along. ‘Yeah, I found it. Schio. That’s why I was trying to get in touch with you. I got the file. Downloaded it from a server based near Asiago. Seems to be some kind of databank – the amount they’ve got stored there is ludicrous.’

‘What’s in the file?’

Another pause.

‘What were you expecting to be in it?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just know somebody who wants to get their hands on it, and he might be able to help us with the camera thing. Beyond that, I haven’t a clue. Maybe it’s something incriminating.’ I thought about Claire. ‘Maybe something sexual. I don’t know.’

‘What it is,’ Graham told me carefully, ‘is mostly gibberish. It’s random characters, fucked up in weird places with breaking spaces and punctuation. Like someone riffle-shuffled a pack of cards, but did it with hundreds of sentences instead. It’s pretty fucking meaningless.’

‘Shit.’

He carried on, ignoring me.

‘But it’s more random than that. There are whole words in a few places; even a few incomplete sentences. It’s more like the file’s been corrupted somehow.’

He paused again.

‘Jay, who do you know that wants this so badly?’

‘It’s not really important.’

‘Well, I think it probably is.’

Suddenly I felt unsteady. ‘Why? What is it, Gray?’

‘Some of the sentences and words… they’re pretty fucked up.’ He was speaking quietly. He sounded like he was tracing a printout with his finger. ‘I got bl##d here in the middle – like blood, but with two hashes for os? And there’s a bit about a knife, too – or a blade of some kind.’

I heard the sound of paper being turned over.

‘And about a third of the way through, there’s this.’

He spelled it out to me.

she screams se har(d thyt wf jjkpeopllr hurt h…r

‘Jesus,’ I said.

‘Towards the end, there’s something about someone called Long Tall Jack biting something. Biting real hard. Further in, there’s something about him being the pins and knives man.’

‘Sounds like some kind of horror novel.’

‘It’s worse than that,’ Graham told me. I heard him move the paper away. ‘I got a really bad feeling about this, Jay. The text’s all corrupted and messed up, but it still makes a weird kind of sense to me. I can’t describe it; you’d have to see it for yourself. It’s fucking bizarre. Even though it’s mostly rubbish, I can kind of see stuff in it. Bad stuff.’

He sounded frightened.

‘What kind of bad stuff?’

‘Look, I said. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not when I read bits of it through, line for line – I mean, I do that, and it’s just random. It’s more when I just look at the whole page and take it in all at once. Like the words form a bad shape on the page that I don’t want to see. Except they don’t. I don’t know. I just think that… this is something bad.’

What I heard in his voice was quiet panic.

‘Calm down,’ I said.

He wasn’t interested.

‘I don’t want this on my fucking computer. I don’t want it on my desk. I don’t want it in my life. Listen to me, Jay. I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it was true. This is something bad.’

‘Can you find out who the server belongs to?’

‘Fucking hell, I don’t want to.’

I pressed the point.

‘Yeah, but can you?’

Silence again.

‘Please, Gray.’

‘I don’t owe you this much,’ he said. Suddenly, it was as though he’d been reading my mind. ‘You know that? I do not fucking owe you this anymore. If I can do it quietly, then I will. But the second the trace turns round on me, I’m cutting it dead. You’re asking too much, Jay. Just like you always do. And I’m not exposing Helen to your kind of freaks. I won’t do it.’

‘Okay, okay.’

‘I won’t do it.’

‘Okay.’

‘Fuck your okays. It’s not okay.’

‘Well… thanks for whatever you can do.’

A pause.

‘Yeah, whatever.’ He sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Fuck it.’

‘Yeah, but I am sorry. I’m sorry I lost my temper.’ But not for what I said. ‘There’s something else, though: something you need to hear but probably won’t want to.’

‘What? Just tell me.’

‘There’s a sentence near to the beginning. Well – it’s not a sentence; it’s just three words on their own, and I guess they don’t mean anything. But you need to know what it says regardless. Just in case.’

‘What does it say?’