The Third Person

looking right. Jim doesn’t know anything about this.’

She pointed vaguely at the paper. ‘These things.’

‘So what can you tell me about them?’

‘They’ve been coming regularly for a year or more, now.’ She shrugged. ‘We don’t let him see them no more. Damn near breaks my heart on top of his to see the look on his face when he does. I sorted out the arrangement with that fella Hughes. Every week, I package these things up, the day they arrive. And every week, near as anything, I send them out. The money changes accounts – and it’s good money – and Jim never needs to know about it.’

‘But they come here addressed to him?’

She nodded.

‘They come to him here, sure. Regular as clockwork, give or take a few days. We rent an apartment for Jim a block away, and we give him all the booze he can drink. Feed him, too. Keeps the man happy.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘He seems real happy.’

Steph shrugged again. ‘He can be an empty shell out on the street. Or he can be an empty shell in here. Least here, we fill him with something, even if it ain’t much.’

I looked her over more carefully: took in the tan, the hard eyes, the heavily aerobicised body. The way she looked, she should almost have been some executive’s bone-thin, middle-aged housewife: too many free hours whiled away on the exercise bike or down the salon, or gossiping about abortions in the hairdressers; too long spent sunning herself in Costa del somewhere, sipping cocktails and being too loud with her brash husband. Almost. But she looked tougher than that: like a muscle that had been built in a series of grubby streetfights rather than the air-conditioned comfort of a ladies-only gym. The same kind of woman, just a class size down. Sucking on her cigarettes as though someone might try to steal the smoke.

It occurred to me that Hughes probably paid more than enough to keep Thornton waist-deep in liquor, even with his habit as tall as it was.

‘Doesn’t do you any harm, either, I bet.’ I looked around. ‘How long have you had this little extension?’

‘About a year now,’ she said. Glared at me. ‘And no. It doesn’t do us any harm. Your point being what?’

It occurred to me that that particular conversation would be a dead end.

‘My point being the man who sends these things to you,’ I said. ‘I need to find him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because something bad has happened to somebody I love.’ The truth slipped out, but it felt okay. ‘And I think this man might be able to help me find her.’

‘Well, that is sweet.’

‘It’s true.’

Steph studied me for a moment, supporting her cigarette elbow with her free hand while smoke listed leisurely into the misty air above us. Eventually, she moved it to her mouth and took a drag.

‘Okay,’ she said, leaning towards me. ‘Let me tell you what I know.’

CHAPTER TEN

The writing is always done by hand.

There are a couple of things you need to know, and that’s the first.

He’s gently flexing his wrist as they bring the girl in: warming himself up. It should take about half an hour from start to finish, and that’s a long time to write for, so you need to be prepared. Loose and relaxed. He gives his shoulders a roll and watches the girl. The bed, covered in straight sheets of glinting polythene, is on the other side of the studio. When she sees it, her step falters, but they push her from behind and she starts moving towards it.

The door is locked behind them.

‘Fucking behave,’ Marley tells her. He’s the one that pushed her. She glances at him, scared, but he’s not even looking at her: just grinding out the remains of his cigarette on the floor. The smell of the smoke drifts over, catching his attention just as the girl sees him.

He sees her right back.

For a moment, it’s as though she’s standing on her own, with all the other figures in the room fading into the background: Marley disappears; Long Tall Jack, swinging his limp cock like a length of rope, melts out of view; even the bed seems dim and far away. It’s like the girl is spot-lit: a fragile, scared thing illuminated to the exclusion of everything else.

He wants to smile at her and tell her that it will be okay, but it won’t. And he’s not here to make her feel comfortable, or help her.

So instead, he picks up his pen.

And without taking his eyes off her, he begins to write.

You are looking at a girl.

She is wearing a pale blue blouse and a white, cotton skirt: frail clothes that you can’t quite see through but which still manage to give you an idea of the slim but womanly figure beneath. Her skin is tanned and clear, and her hair is shoulder-length, brown and full of body. Not curly exactly, or frizzy, but a kind of pleasing combination of the two, streaked through with patches of blonde where the sun seems to have bleached it. Her face is pretty, but not exceptionally so – although you can tell that if she was smiling she’d be very attractive indeed: it’s just one of those faces that lights up when it smiles and makes everything else seem somehow less important.

But she’s not smiling.

In fact, she’s close to tears, but it’s as though she doesn’t quite dare cry: maybe she has done in the past and then been punished for it. She doesn’t need to anyway: it’s there in her stance and in the expression on her face. She’s hugging herself slightly, anticipating some kind of blow. And she’s looking at you as though you might be able to stop it from coming.

It breaks your heart that you can’t do anything to help her, but the fact is that you just can’t. That’s not why you’re here.

She mouths the word help at you, and you have to look away.

‘On the bed.’

Marley has her by the arm.

She actually says it to you this time. ‘Help me. Please.’

‘Sit down on the edge of the fucking bed.’

He drags her back and shoves her down, and she starts to cry. Sits there and holds her face in her hands, sobbing. Marley doesn’t care; he’s not even looking at her anymore. Long Tall Jack just laughs.

‘Are you ready?’ Marley calls over.

You nod.

Of course you are – this is what you’re here for.

His grandmother gave him the Ithaca pen. It was a present for his twelfth birthday, which was a little after he’d found out about his gift and talked it through with her. He always knew he could write well, but as he hit puberty his talent grew into something else altogether, and it scared him. Sometimes the things he’d write scared other people as well. When his grandmother was ill, towards the end, he went down to the beach and wrote a piece that she could barely even finish; she said it was just like being there, in the dunes where she’d played as a child. As real as a video or an audio recording. Maybe even as real as it actually happening. And while the scene he described for her was deliberately beautiful, he always knew the potential for harm was there, even before she warned him that he had to be careful.

So his grandmother gave him the pen and told him to practise. By the time she died – when he was fourteen – he had his gift on a leash. She’d moved into his parents’ home some time before that – when the doctors realised there was nothing more they could do – and one night she called him in, just like they’d always planned. He sat writing with her for the next four hours, and by the time she finally died, his hand had cramped. He never told anyone that he’d been with her at the end, and he still has that notebook, stored away somewhere that nobody will ever find it. He takes it out and reads it sometimes, although his words are generally lost on him. Regardless of