Blackout

by Chris Ryan

  That girl, wondered Josh. Was she mine?

  'The singer?' asked Josh. 'You recognise it?

  Kate laughed. 'You really have lost your memory, haven't you?'

  'Who is it?' asked Josh angrily.

  'The Rolling Stones,' said Kate. '"Little Red Rooster." From the Rolling Stones Now album, which came out in 1965, I think. Before either of us was born, anyway'

  Josh nodded. I'll buy it if I can find a copy, he decided. It's sparking memories. Maybe I used to be a Stones fan? There are worse things. Elton John sounded familiar, but not in a good way.

  He rang the doorbell, waited for a moment to see if there was a reply, then rang again. The next track -- 'Surprise, Surprise' -- had already started up, the strumming guitars blasting out of the speakers so loud, that the mortar between the bricks seemed to be shaking. Josh rang again then knocked. Nothing. No good, he told himself. You can't hear yourself thinking above this music. You certainly can't hear the doorbell.

  The door swung open as Josh pushed against it. The hallway was high and dark, with a sofa along one side and two bikes propped up against a wall. Kate followed as Josh stepped inside. Two rooms led off the hallway, and there was a staircase at the bacjc of the building. The music was coming from behind the door on the left-hand side. He pushed it open and stepped forwards.

  A woman was standing in the centre of the room. Approaching fifty, she had streaked blonde hair, a thin, wiry frame, and a face that had once been pretty but which had succumbed to the ravages of time and exhaustion. Too much drinking had left thick creases embedded in

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  the skin of her face. Light was streaming down from the two high windows, filling the room which was furnished with two old sofas, both with oriental drapes thrown across them. There was a huge tapestry on one wall, and a mural on another. At the back of the room there was an expensive-looking NAD hi-fi system, the only bit of kit in the room that looked as if it had cost more than a few dollars in a junk store.

  The woman turned slowly around, her hips still swaying to the music. Josh saw that she was holding a shotgun, pointed straight at his chest.'Get the fuck out of my goddam house,' she said.

  Josh raised his hands in the air. He sensed that he'd looked down plenty of gun barrels in his life.

  You developed an instinct for who was going to pull the trigger and who wasn't. This woman wasn't. There's a certain look in their eye that people get just before they are about to shoot you, and she didn't have it.

  'You must be Emily,' he said, trying to make his tone as relaxed and friendly as possible.

  She stayed silent.

  Did she hear me? wondered Josh. He walked slowly towards the back of the room, keeping his hands in the air. Then he flicked down the volume dial on the NAD until the music was just a murmur. Suddenly he could hear himself think again.

  'You must be Emily,' he repeated.

  Emily laughed. 'In this country, you can shoot a man for turning down your music'

  'Shoot him twice if it's the Stones?' said Josh with a grin. He walked slowly towards her until the gun barrel was only inches from his chest. 'My name's Josh. This is Kate.'

  The gun held steady. 'What do you want?'

  'Some dope,' said Josh. 'Heard from some friends of ours that this was the best place to get some.'

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  Emily Marsden lowered the gun, tossing it back on the sofa. Josh flinched. She didn't appear to have any idea how easy it was to fire a shotgun accidentally. 'What kind of accent is that? English?'

  'English.'

  'Long way to come for some weed.'

  'I heard that you grow the best.'

  Emily smiled. 'Ain't that the truth. You and your honey take the weight off your feet and I'll go get you some.'

  As she left the room, Josh sat down on one of the sofas. Now he noticed that there was a smell of bourbon, dope and perfume in the air: a pleasant enough mixture of scents, but one that made you feel drowsy. He looked towards Kate, noting the suspicion in her eyes. 'Let me do the talking,' he said. 'Just pretend to be my girlfriend.'

  Emily walked back into the room, carrying a pouch with a few leaves in it. She took out a pack of tobacco and some Rizla papers, and started rolling a joint. Her fingers worked quickly, Josh noted. She didn't even need to look down. 'Here,' she said, handing across a thick spliff after she'd lit it. 'Try before you buy, that's my policy'

  Josh took a hit of the smoke, letting it fill his lungs. He had a vague memory that it worked pretty well as a painkiller as well as whatever else it was supposed to do. I could use some of that.

  'Good stuff,' he said.

  Emily smiled. 'It's good country for growing any kind of hot-weather plant up herg.Just so long as you water it enough. Never rains around here. Hasn't rained for five years now.'

  Josh took another drag on the joint, then passed it across to Kate. Not too much, he warned himself. You don't want to lose your concentration.

  'Here, you try it, honey,' he said.

  He looked back at Emily. 'Put whatever fifty dollars will buy me into a bag.'

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  On the next sofa, he could see Kate sitting back, taking three long hits on the joint in a row before passing it back to Emily. The room was suddenly filled with smoke. 'I heard about your boy Luke,' said Josh, still looking at Emily. 'I'm sorry.'

  She started rubbing an eye, and Josh could suddenly see how bloodshot it was. She held the joint between her left index finger and her thumb but her hand was starting to tremble and the tip of the ash tumbled onto the floor. She looked first at Kate, then at Josh. 'It's been nine days now since I heard from him, nine whole days,' she said, her voice fragile and shaky. 'Luke's not like that. He was wild sometimes, the way young boys are. Difficult. But hell, we're close, real close. He'd never go that long without contacting me. He'd know how much I was worrying about him.' She paused, sucking at the joint like it was an oxygen tankand she'd just emerged from being held underwater. 'Not unless something happened to him.'

  'We might be able to help,' said Josh.

  A look of fear suddenly passed across Emily's face. 'You're not the Feds, are you?' she said, her voice quivering with anxiety. 'I don't grow a lot of dope, you know. Just a bit for myself. And to give to my friends.'

  'We're not police,' said Kate.

  'Then who the hell are you?'

  Josh could see that she was eyeing the shotgun again. 'I saw something,' he said.

  There was a silence. Josh could spe Emily taking another drag on the joint, her lips trembling. 'You saw Luke?' she said. 'Tell me you saw Luke. Tell me he's okay'

  'I don't know what I saw, not exactly,' said Josh. 'I can't even tell you who I am. But I saw something.'

  'What the hell are you talking about?' said Emily angrily. 'Either you saw something or you didn't.'

  Kate leaned forward in her chair. 'Josh has lost his memory,

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  but he was there when Ben got shot. He got shot at the same time, that's why he's injured.'

  'I saw Ben, and I think I saw Luke running away. I don't know what I was doing there, but I think I was involved in some way'

  Emily waved her spliff in the air, spilling more ash onto the carpet. 'Christ, you've been smoking even more of this stuff than I have.'

  Kate reached out, trying to hold on to her hand, but Emily snatched it away suspiciously. Luke's in some kind of danger, that's obvious,' Kate said. 'The police are going to lose interest in a couple of days. Teenage boy runs away, there's nothing to interest them there. We're the only people who are going to help you.'

  'How do I know you didn't kill him?' said Emily. 'How do I know you didn't kill Ben as well?' She paused. 'You both look pretty fucking weird to me.'

  Maybe she's right, thought Josh. Christ, I don't even know myself. Maybe I did kill Ben.

  'Listen, I'll tell you what I know, then you can make up your own mind whether to help us or not,' said Josh. 'I'm British. Some kind of soldier or agent, I think.
I figure I was on a mission, and that led me to track Ben and Luke. Then Ben got shot, and so did I. Luke escaped, I'm sure of it. I saw him running.'

  'An agent,' said Emily, laughing bitterly. 'Like James damned Bond or something?' She waved her spliff at him. 'I'm not growing this any more.'

  'No, think, Emily' said Josh, his tone turning even more serious. 'Your son's life could be at stake here.'

  'I know that -- and I'm supposed to waste my time listening to some dope-head who walks into my house and starts talking this kind of shit?'

  'You got a better explanation, let's hear it,' said Josh. 'Listen, Ben and Luke disappeared nine days ago. Seven days

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  ago Ben got shot. They'd already gone two days by the time that happened and they were ninety miles away. What do you think happened?'

  Now a tear was rolling down Emily's face. 'You said you were there?'

  Josh nodded.

  'Bullshit.'

  Josh closed his eyes, and rolled his head back.'Limp Bizkit,' he said. 'Does Luke like that band?'

  'Thrash-metal crap.'

  'His T-shirt,' said Josh. 'He was wearing a Limp Bizkit '02 tour T-shirt. And I reckon it was an extra-large because it was way too big for him.'

  'You saw that on TV,' said Emily.

  'It hasn't been on TV,' said Kate. 'They've been showing an old high-school picture of Luke.'

  'What was he wearing the day he left?' asked Josh.

  'The T-shirt,' said Emily.'The Limp Bizkit T-shirt. Christ, you really were there.' She looked hard at Josh. 'Is he okay? Tell me he's okay'

  'He ran, I know that much,' said Josh. 'I can't tell you where he is now, or whether he's still alive, because I just don't know.' He looked hard at Emily. 'But I don't think Luke was just some teenager who went on the run for a few days with his mate because he was a bit bored. I think he was mixed up with something. And I think I was mixed up in it as well.'

  'The trouble is, we don't know what the hell it was,' said Kate.

  'That's why we'd like you to help us,' said Josh. 'We need to know what Luke was involved with.'

  Emily remained silent.

  'What was it?' persisted Josh. 'What was Luke involved with?'

  Emily still remained silent, her stare fixed on the floor.

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  'We're the only people who are going to help you, Emily,' interrupted Kate. 'The only people.'

  Emily walked across to the window, looking out as if she was searching for something in the empty, scorched landscape that lay around the house. The sunlight streamed though her hair, making it look almost white. Her lips started to move, but no sound emerged.

  'Luke might still be in danger,' said Josh.

  Emily nodded. She turned around so that the sun was now behind her. Josh noticed how pale she looked, as if all the blood had suddenly been emptied from her veins. 'Hacking,' she said. 'Luke was into hacking.'

  She walked back across the room. 'He and Ben, they used to go up to his room and play around on their computers for hours and hours. I didn't know much about what they were doing. Myself, I can't even turn the damned things on. But they got into trouble for it at school, after they changed everyone's grades on the school computer. I told them to stop.' She shrugged. 'But how are you to stop a boy playing around on his computer? And anyway, it seems pretty harmless. Better than running wild, shooting guns and riding bikes. That's what all the other boys around here do.'

  'So you think the hacking might have been what got him into trouble?'

  Emily sat down on the sofa. She folded her arms on her lap. For the first time since Kate and Josh had come into the room, she seemed to Jbe unwinding: it was as if she had decided to trust them, and that was relaxing her.

  'About three months ago, Luke started talking about how we wouldn't have to live in this old shack any more,' she started. 'It's always been tough for us financially. I do some waitressing and I grow some dope. Neither of those professions pays very well, as you probably know. We get by, that's the best you can say. Luke started telling me that soon we

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  wouldn't have to worry about money any more, that everything was going to be okay. We could buy a big car, a house in California, maybe another one down in Jamaica. He was getting into reggae.'

  Emily reached across the sofa and rolled herself a cigarette, one with just tobacco in it this time. A thin stream of smoke blew out of her nostrils. 'I just humoured him. Yes, yes, Luke, I used to say. I'm looking forward to it. Buy me an SUV as well. One of those big Mercedes ones, or maybe a Lexus. Something fancy. Then he used to get cross, and start telling me that he really was going to make a lot of money, that he was doing something on his computer that was going to make him a fortune.'

  Emily jabbed the cigarette in the air, her tone turning darker. 'Then he disappeared. And I can't help thinking that maybe he was doing something on his computer. Something that got him into trouble.'

  'Have you told the police about this?' asked Josh.

  Emily shook her head. 'I don't want to get him into even worse trouble. I mean, if he was doing something on his computer, it probably wasn't legal. But they knew he was into hacking because of what happened at school. And they took his computer away for examination.'

  'And you have no idea what he might be doing?' asked Josh.

  'Like I said, I didn't take much notice of it at the time. Just boy's talk. Bravado. It was only after he disappeared that I started to think there might be something to it.'

  'He never mentioned any websites he was visiting, nothing like that?'

  Emily stubbed out her cigarette. Her expression was thoughtful, as if she was weighing different options. 'No,' she said finally. 'But he had two computers. The police took his desktop, the one up in his room. But Luke had a laptop, the one he used to take around to Ben's house. That's the

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  one he mainly worked on, I think. The desktop was just for playing games and stuff.'

  'And the police didn't take that one?'

  'I didn't tell them about it.'

  There was a silence. Some cigarette smoke was drifting through the air. Josh knew what question he wanted to ask next, but decided to pause before pressing it. Better to wait, he told himself. She knows the question. She just doesn't know the answer yet.

  'You said you were a soldier?' she asked. 'That you might have been looking for Luke?'

  Josh nodded. 'I'm not going to kid around - I don't know who I am. But I think I was involved with Luke. I think he's out there somewhere. And I'm going to try and find him.'

  'You want his laptop?' said Emily. 'You think that might help?'

  'If there's something on it, we'll find it,' said Josh.

  'Follow me,' said Emily.

  She stood up and walked out of the room. Josh followed closely behind, with Kate beside him. He could feel his heart thumping inside his chest. This was the first real breakthrough: if they could find out what Luke had been hacking into, they would have unlocked a door.

  Slowly, the jigsaw of who I am is about to be reassembled.

  The midday sun was frying the scrubland outside the house. At least forty, Josh judged as he stepped out of the building. Emily's house was on an open stretch of plain, at least twenty miles from any hills, in a dip in the land: the heat gathered up each last atom of moisture, sweating it out of every grain of dust.

  Boiling hot scrub. After the Gobi Desert this must be the cheapest real estate in the world.

  The barn was just a shack, with some farm equipment that looked as if it dated from the 1930s rusting inside. A trailer was slung onto the back of a tractor, with a tarpaulin sheet

  ik.

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  stretched across it. Emily pulled it aside, taking out a sleek black Dell Inspiron. 'Here,' she said. 'This is what he used.'

  Josh took the laptop under his arm. 'We'll bring it back,' he said.

  'I don't care if you bring it back or not,' Emily snapped. 'Bring Luke back -- that's what I w
ant.'

  'I'll try,' said Josh.

  Emily turned around and started to walk back towards the house. 'One other question,' said Josh. 'Who's Luke's dad?'

  Emily looked startled. 'His dad?'

  Josh nodded. Sometimes you asked a question without being quite sure why, or what the answer might be. When you are stuck in the middle of a mystery, you have to examine every angle. Otherwise, you'll never find the way out. 'If something has happened to Luke, maybe his father" was involved somewhere along the line,' said Josh.'Who was he?'

  Emily looked at him contemptuously. 'It doesn't matter,' she snapped. 'That's private.'

  Josh turned around. No point pressing, he realised. He was clearly stepping into dangerous territory. 'Well, if you ever think it might be relevant, get in touch.'

  'Just bring him back,' said Emily. 'I just want him back with me, that's all.'

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  ELEVEN

  Tuesday, June 9th. Midday.

  The coffee was steaming in a pot in the centre of the table. Josh took a long drink of the thick black liquid, refilling the cup as soon as he had drained it. The coffee washed down his throat, gradually sweeping away the tiredness that the dope he'd smoked at Emily's house had left in his system. He glanced out at the sweeping, empty scrubland. The sun was beating down, scorching the life out of everything beneath it, but a stronger wind was blowing today, sending vicious swirls of dust spinning up through the boulders, and clump of weeds rolling along the ground.

  'We are the pilgrims, master/We shall go always a little further.'

  Josh spun around. Marshall was standing in the doorway, a bottle of beer in his hand.

  'Recognise it?' he asked, stepping forward into the room.

  Josh shook his head. 'No,' he replied.

  That wasn't quite true, he told himself. As he'd heard the words recited something had stirred within his mind. A shadowy memory of a long, concrete room. A barracks. Some men standing around. Another man shouting. A rainstorm.

  They were just fleeting, disjointed images. You couldn't piece them together. They didn't make any sense.

  'What is it?' Josh asked.