The Third Person

I wasn’t sure exactly where I was going, but like all good cities there were signposts to point the way. Most of them were artificial – just daubs on the walls or chalk marks on the streets: more like jottings for residents than a guide for outsiders. My plan was equally vague. I was going to wander around until I recognised a notice for something I’d seen in the video footage – Combo’s Deli or Fairway Street – or until somebody shot me. The odds were probably about even on each.

I’d reached a vague kind of crossroads when I first heard it. I’d actually stopped, because I was faced with three possible directions. But the two to left and right were named randomly, while the road straight ahead was called Fairway Avenue, so that seemed to be the way to go. If I was in the Fairways, chances are that I was in the right area and I’d find the Street eventually. I started to head off, and was halfway over the crossing when I heard it.

A tapping noise, far away to the right.

I turned to look; the sound immediately stopped. But I could see where it had been coming from: there were two figures standing side by side in the centre of the street, about two hundred metres away from where I’d stopped. Blue silhouettes, identities hidden by the pale, sickly backdrop of a streetlight behind them. They weren’t moving, but the left of the two was leaning on a cane.

Walter Hughes, I thought.

The figure on the right was standing straight, with what looked like an overcoat pulled tightly around him. Broad shoulders. Hands clasped in front.

But if Kareem was impossible, then this was impossible a hundred times over. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of physics and biology that I hadn’t quite killed Kareem, and that he’d staggered away from the scene after I’d gone. But Hughes was dead. His bodyguard was dead. If they weren’t dead, they would have got up, but the truth was that you just didn’t get up after what had happened to them. After what I’d done to them.

Although I couldn’t make out their faces, the two figures were very clearly watching me.

I watched them right back.

And after a few seconds, they turned and walked into a nearby doorway and were gone. Just like Kareem. The chit of their feet, and the tap of the cane echoed down the empty blue street, and then faded away to nothing.

It felt like my heart was singing in my chest.

In the distance, far over on the other side of Downtown, somebody laughed. It was an insane sound: high and long, dying away into a sad moan. There was a moment of silence, and then more voices came, like dogs answering the call. Jeers and laughs and giggles. Somebody barked -whoo whoo whoo – and the sounds seemed to fill the air, circling around me. I knew it was only the sound of people, but it made my hair stand on end.

Eventually, the calls died down. There were a few quiet noises from the buildings around me: murmurs of conversation; half-contained belly-laughs; the crunch of broken glass being stepped on.

I began moving down Fairway Avenue, keeping my eye out for any signs I might recognise. A few times, I heard the tapping coming from over to the right, but – try as I might – there was nothing to see. The buildings were implacable, and I didn’t see the two figures again.

Cut to-

It’s the entrance to some wasteground. It looks like nighttime, but it’s quite obvious where this scene was filmed: we’re in Downtown, and so for all I know it could be the middle of the day. It feels like night-time, though, and these are certainly night-time activities taking place within the four solid walls of the camera frame. The entrance to the wasteground – a gap in the grey chain-link fence – is situated halfway between two inefficient streetlamps. One is flickering, turning on and off and on and off, while the other has attracted a globe of fluttering insects, in themselves too small to see, but you can detect them in the slightly shifting, blurry fuzz of the brightness.

The frame looks like this: a bright, pale blue explosion in the bottom left-hand corner; the same in the middle at the top. In between, there’s a mixture of black and grey pixels and if you look at it right they give the rough impression of a street edge, a pavement and the entrance to a black hole of wasteground.

A moment passes.

Then, the camera zooms in, moving between the two stars of the streetlights and arriving at the gap in the chain-link fence in time with the van. All the colour has been drained from it – and most replaced by shadow – but you can tell it’s the same van from scene two. The one they took Amy away in.

Dark figures emerge from both sides, and something clambers out of the guts of the vehicle. The big man again. There’s some brief conversation; a few heads looking this way and that. A shake and a nod, and then something that might be a laugh. One of the men – the same one as before – is smoking; the tip of the cigarette burns a bright, dancing red pixel into the screen. Beyond that, it’s difficult to make out the details. You can only really tell that they’re men at all from the way the spaces between them interact as they move. When they stand still, they vanish.

They unload something from the side of the van.

You can’t tell what it is, but there are two men carrying it between them. One of them backs onto the wasteground, and then they disappear through the gap carrying something which might be a bucket of some kind.

The smoker waits by the van, sitting down in the open side, elbows resting on his knees. He’s smoking thoughtfully. The camera stays on him for a second, and then cuts to-

– a different view of Downtown.

It’s more comprehensive than the last, and the light is better. As a result, the road is clearly visible, and you can see that somebody has painted the words FAIRWAY STR down the middle of it in such enormous white letters that it’s like a signal for rescue helicopters. The buildings are clearly visible as well: we’re on a street corner, and the centre of attention is what looks like a cafe. There are chairs and tables outside, and even a few people sitting at them. The inside looks bright. The view is too fuzzy to make out any details, but it’s certainly a place of business – although whether that business has anything to do with coffee or doughnuts anymore is difficult to say. A green canopy hanging over the outside seating area tells us exactly what this place used to be, regardless of its current occupation.

Cut back to the original camera.

The van is gone, and the street is empty. It’s lighter than before, though, and a shadow of the chain-link fence is dancing on the ground.

Cut to-

Combo’s Deli.

Despite all my negative expectations, it actually looked like a genuine soup kitchen, or – at the worst – a down at heel cafe. It was brightly-lit, which made all the windows into pale, yellow squares. It also appeared to be full of various kinds of smoke, and you could smell each of them from across the road: tobacco mingling with cannabis, mingling with something else, mingling with burning grease and frying food. I could hear the sizzle and scrape of metal spatulas chiselling burnt matter from the base of metal woks, and the shake of pans as onions and peppers were sent spinning. It made me hungry. I’d spent about six hours of the day in transit with little to show for it, and my stomach was clearly beginning to wonder why exactly it had kept up with me. I promised so much and delivered so little. With my stomach as with everything else in my life.

There were a few people hanging around in the Deli and a few more outside. One guy in tight blue jeans was trying to show his tightly-packed balls to the world, sitting spread-legged and lounging, sucking on a bottled beer. At the same table, another man was smoking a joint and considering the empties. That pair formed the centrepiece. On other tables around them: a gaggle of whores, deep in enthusiastic conversation; an old man, trying to form a loop of warmth with his coffee cup; an even older lady wrapped up in a tartan shawl, staring into space; a chef on his break, playing games with his lighter – the flame going on and off, hanging in the air in front of him.

None of them seemed to give much of a shit about me.

I looked over my shoulder. Halfway up the building on the opposite corner to the Deli, there was a video camera. If I hadn’t known it was there, I’d never have seen it.

The chain-link fence ran along the edge of the pavement to my left.

Beyond it, the wasteground.

The broken-down section was a little further ahead, almost directly opposite the Deli. I walked up to it. When I