The Third Person

‘You killed Claire Warner, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she stole something from me.’ Hughes sounded bored. ‘It took us a while to find her, but we did in the end. And then she wouldn’t tell me where she’d put it. You might recall: she was very wilful.’

I didn’t say anything, but I remembered all right. I can have any man I want. That almost banal confidence had half-disguised the fact that she was a young girl, only just beginning to come to terms with the power she had over men.

‘In truth,’ he said, ‘it was an accident. I don’t think she actually believed we were going to hurt her until we did, and the surprise made her fight back.’

I glanced at the cut above the bodyguard’s eye, and pictured Claire’s slim, ringed hand punching him as she kicked loose and ran for her life.

Good for you.

He saw me looking and I smiled at him. If Claire could hit him then so could I. And I hit harder than Claire did. I hit hard enough to put people on their backs.

That was when he reached inside his neat black jacket and produced the pistol I’d seen last night.

He smiled back.

‘She almost got away,’ Hughes said, ‘and – regrettably – she had to be shot. It was most unfortunate. But it had taken us such a long time to find her again that there was no way we were going to let her leave so easily.’

‘I can imagine.’

Even to me, my voice sounded empty and beaten. What the fuck was I doing here? I’d had ideas about confronting Hughes, taking charge of the situation, but they’d been vague at best, and what had really driven me here – taxi aside – were thoughts of Amy, and the contents of the text that Hughes had been searching for. Pale blue blouse.

The same thoughts pushed the next thing out of my mouth before I’d had a chance to okay the words.

‘It was a snuff text, wasn’t it?’ I said. Two and two clicked together in my mind, and I glanced up at the pictures on the walls. ‘And it was by the man who wrote these things. It was a description of somebody dying.’

Suddenly, it made perfect sense. I remembered what Graham had told me:

It’s more when I just look at the whole printout and take it in all at once. Like the words form a bad shape on the page that I don’t want to see.

I felt myself growing blank.

Amy.

‘That’s how it was sold to me, yes.’ Hughes sounded as bored as ever. ‘However, I have no way of knowing whether it was genuine or not. In fact, I never even got the chance to read it before it was stolen from me by that whore.’

Pale. Blue. Blouse.

I looked back at the bodyguard – or through him. He was smiling but I didn’t even see it properly. He was holding the gun badly, I noticed: pointing it half at the floor.

Maybe two and a half metres between us.

‘And you’re telling me now that you have this text?’ Hughes said. ‘If so, just produce it, and then you can be on your way.’

‘I don’t have it here.’

It felt like the words were falling out of me.

‘Well, where do you have it? And what is it you imagine you want in exchange for it?’

Impatience, but also an air of concession – as though a trivial wish might be granted to save him the bother of redecorating the wall behind me. So this was the key moment. And what I should have said was: I want you to get me access to the cameras at the train station. I want you to tell me where I can find this artist. I want you to tell me where and how I can find the people who did whatever it was they did to Amy – if it even was Amy. This thing which may or may not have been genuine.

That’s what I should have said.

But I was thinking: she screamed se har(d thyt wf jjkpeopllr hurt h…r

I was thinking: Long Tall Jack, the pins and knives man.

Biting something.

‘Mr Klein?’ Hughes said. ‘What is it that you want for the safe return of my property?’

When you box, they teach you how to move. You don’t actually take steps so much as glide from place to place, the idea being to lift your feet off the canvas only as much as you need to in order to move. Once you get used to it, it’s quicker – and it’s also far more efficient. Many boxers use their opponent’s foot movements as guides to what’s about to be flung their way, the same way a dancer might. The less movement you make, and the quicker and smoother you do it, the more unpredictable the attack is when you send it out.

I’d practised this gliding step on the Scream every night for months, usually with a hard left jab to the head or abdomen. It had become instinctive; I didn’t have to think. Hughes’ bodyguard moved quicker than the Scream, and he managed to get the gun up to meet me, but my jab turned into a grab and I found myself with a two handed grip on the top of his wrist, pushing the gun away in a wheeling, straight-armed circle.

I head-butted him, but not well – a desperate thing, really – all the time moving my fingers around the gun. We began wrestling over it back and forth. Our arms swung, fighting for purchase, and I stumbled back a little, realising how strong the man was, and how I was going to die if I let go. I was terrified.

‘Gentlemen.’

Hughes sounded bored and disinterested, even as my adrenalin kicked in and sent my heart skyward.

The bodyguard gritted his teeth as we fought. I felt like I was about to – and just like that, the resistance gave somewhere and the gun went turning upwards and banged once, loudly, under his chin. Blood misted out of the top of his head, puffing up to the ceiling, and his entire body went slack, hitting the floor like a dead weight. The gun tumbled from both our grips as I half-fell to one side.

‘Jesus,’ I said.

Hughes cried out in genuine alarm.

‘Oh my god!’

His bodyguard was lying face-up on the floor, with blood flowing out of his nose in a dark-red stream. Literally pouring out, painting stripes down the sides of his blank face and pooling under his ears: it looked like all the blood in his body was leaving him. His eyes slowly closed.

And even more blood was simply falling out of his neck. A square metre of carpet was soaked dark crimson. And then more. And more. Creeping out.

‘Paul!’

Well, Hughes was out of his chair, moving over. After a blank second, I scrambled for the gun – and got it – but the old man wasn’t interested in me. We crossed paths awkwardly: me trying to point the gun at him defensively and failing, him falling to his knees beside the corpse.

‘Call an ambulance!’ he said. ‘Now!’

I was so shocked that I almost did – probably would have done if I’d been physically able. Instead, I just stood there, eyes wide, staring at the pair of them. Hughes had taken his bodyguard’s limp hand in his own, and was crying.

‘Paul.’ He turned to me without looking at me, as though I was bright like the sun. Told the chair to my left: ‘Call for an ambulance!’

‘He’s dead, Hughes,’ I said.

‘Call a fucking ambulance!’

‘Calm down.’ I took a step back and levelled the gun at him. ‘Just calm down.’

Just keep calm, and everything will be okay.

‘Call an ambulance.’

‘He’s dead. Look: it was an accident. The gun just fucking went off.’