by Steve Mosby
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘They won’t help.’ I sipped my drink. ‘She left a note.’
We spent the next year of University doing exactly the same things: getting drunk, jumping up and down in time to loud music, grinning, fucking and hanging around, as though life was a bus we were waiting for that wasn’t due for a while yet. Certainly, looking back, I have a tendency to see it as a time in my life when nothing felt urgent or pressing, and when everything seemed fun and new. The week would see casual study. The weekend would find us in pubs and in clubs, or propped up in single beds: logged on to illegal internet movie channels, the monitor flashing harsh light around the dark bedroom as we tucked into takeaway pizza and drank bottles of cheap Cabbage Hill vodka mixed with superstore cola.
The third year of University – our second as a couple – we moved in together and started The Collection. Crockery and cutlery. Pans and dishes. Furniture. Posters and paintings. Mutually agreeable albums, videos and friends. All sorts of things that didn’t exactly belong to either of us, but to this weird new thing called both of us.
You start The Collection because you have to, of course, but it always struck me that there was more to it than that. It’s like your relationship is a very beautiful, delicate cloth that either of you could accidentally blow away and ruin at any time, and the more stuff you pile on top of it – to weigh it down – the less likely that is to happen. So that’s what we did. We put our new stereo on it. We put the signed Kimota hardback anthology down. And so on. We put a hundred things on top of it and then a hundred more, and with each came the knowledge that if we wanted to do anything so dumb as to blow that cloth away, we’d have to move our friends and our books and our casserole dishes first, and then we’d have to figure out where to put them.
We both graduated. Our parents’ houses have very similar pictures in them on the mantelpiece: Amy and I, side by side, dressed in our black gowns and holding our degree certificates. Apart from our smiles, we look like we’re in mourning. During the ceremony, along with a handful of others, we’d both worn A3 sheets of paper on our backs, denouncing the University’s investment in various overseas arms companies, but our parents had made us take them off for the photographs. I guess it wouldn’t have made for a nice picture. We did it to keep them happy – rebellion was okay so long as it was nice and controlled. The kind of rebellion that you can probably brand a pair of sneakers on, but not the sort that ever achieves much.
Jobs followed. Neither of us knew what we wanted to do, beyond paying the rent. Everybody has to eat, right? I got my job at SafeSide early on, starting off temporary in the mail room and ending up – lied to by all those capitalist fairytales – just one floor up, earning a couple of hundred more a year. Small town boy makes average. It’s difficult to make a movie on the strength of that one, isn’t it? Amy panned around a little longer, but still didn’t find any gold. She worked for the post office, for a while, helping to facilitate the downsizing, and then drifted through e-centre work before finally settling into virtual secretarial support. The idea was that companies on the other side of the world could send you work to do – accounting, typing, website work – at the end of their working day (which was the beginning of yours), and when they arrived back the next morning, you’d have done all the work during their night-time. By the time I asked her to marry me, Amy had built up quite a respectable client base of Australian companies, and was thinking of expanding her business by farming work out. I was doing okay by then, too, in my own way, and so it seemed like a good time to make the commitment.
Hardly anyone got married anymore, and we really hadn’t been planning it. I’m not Radically Opposed, the way that a lot of young people are; I knew it smacked of ownership of women, and outdated beliefs in gods we just didn’t need anymore, and yet I still found it symbolically appealing. But I wasn’t at the other end of the spectrum, either – the one where you get seriously married in the top-floor chapel of your chosen company. These days every major company has a licensed CEO, and all that changes from business to business is the logo in the corner of the certificate. I knew I could have got married as a SafeSide employee. But I didn’t want that either: I wasn’t a lifer. I just wanted to put a ring on Amy’s finger, so that she could look at it every so often and know what it meant.
It’s difficult, when you have principles, to know what the right thing to do is. We didn’t want to get properly married – formally, in a registry office – but we both had friends who were getting married as some kind of retro-fashion statement, and we didn’t want to be associated with that, either. So in the end we both agreed that it was no big deal. We’d wear a ring, and in our hearts we’d see ourselves as married. I got down on one knee, unclipped this pissy little green velvet box and asked her, literally, for her hand. She gave it to me. We smiled a lot, and made nervous phone calls to the people who cared. And that was that. We never said husband or wife. We were just us: Jason and Amy.
Two rings, not much more than fifty pounds apiece. Even together they weighed next to nothing, but when we put them down on top of The Collection, they felt like the heaviest items there, and when I looked at it afterwards – in my head – I thought it had never looked so steady and secure.
Of course, things hadn’t really started to go wrong by then.
‘The police figured that we’d had an argument, or something. I mean, we had, in a way, but not like they meant. I explained it all but they said there was nothing they could do. It’s not a crime to leave someone.’
I remembered the conversation all too clearly. I’d felt like a child: desperate and panicked, and simply refusing to accept its mother’s final word on a subject. The officer had told me over and over, maybe six times, that there was nothing he could do, and in the end he’d just told me to get out of his way. Not angrily, because he was too professional for that, but with enough of a threat in his voice to make it clear that this was the last time he’d actually ask.
Charlie said, ‘That sucks.’
I nodded.
‘Can’t you go back to them? It’s been how long? Four months?’
‘Thereabouts. I suppose I could go back to them.’
Except I didn’t want to. The same shift that had seen me quit turning up to work as the default setting had also altered my perspective on other things. A policeman was now just a man with a uniform on, no smarter or more important than I was. Society supports the police force and condemns vigilantes and, although this is often hidden beneath a cloud of moral respectability, it has nothing to do with morality at all: it’s about logistics. As her boyfriend, I felt I had more right to search for Amy than they did. I didn’t have the manpower, but that was another issue entirely. The point was that I had the responsibility. If the situation was reversed, I knew she’d be looking for me. That was what our relationship was about.
‘But you haven’t talked to them again yet?’
I shook my head. ‘I’m making progress, though. I have a few leads.’
By her hair.
I looked at the table.
And then I started to shake. It felt like someone had kicked me in the heart.
‘Excuse me,’ I said, getting up so quickly I shunted the table and sent slops of beer rocking out of my glass. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
There was a note on the kitchen table and my house keys clattered down onto the wooden surface beside it. I’d already switched on the kettle. Behind me, on the work surface, it was beginning to rustle gently as the element set the water stirring. The house was quiet and bright. We’d never got around to putting a shade over the bare bulb in the kitchen, and the note was positioned almost exactly underneath, with light spilling down over it. The shadow of my hand reached it before I did.
Black biro on an A4 sheet: big letters, breaking through the faint blue lines and making the page their own.
Jason.
I love you very much.
I frowned, turning on my he
els and moving through to the living room. The light was duller in there, and the page looked more solid.
and I don’t want you to blame yourself for this.
I sat down gingerly on the arm of the chair. Starting to feel something lurching inside myself.
This isn’t some kind of ‘dear John’ letter. I’m coming back again.
It was like the whole room was getting just a little bit darker by the second. There’s nothing reassuring about the phrase I’m coming back if it needs to be said. It means it won’t seem like it.
There are some things I need to sort out. You know how it’s been between the two of us recently,
I closed my eyes.
Of course I knew. Sleeping back to back. Amy crying, and me not being able to comfort her anymore, or not willing to in some obscure, terrible way. Sitting in silence with some unspoken argument hanging in the air between us, ringing slightly. Not knowing what to do or say. Wandering past each other in the hallway without acknowledgement. Resentment. Discomfort.
It wasn’t always like that, but our days could sink like a stone.
I opened my eyes and kept reading.
and it’s not fair on you. I need to deal with the issues I have, just like you said.
It happened four years ago, Amy, I remembered thinking. You really need to sort yourself out.
I should have dealt with them already, but I really need to now.
Please wait for me. I promise I’ll come home as soon as I can.
I love you so much (to the sky and back!).
Your Amy.
The bar’s public telephone was padlocked to the wall in a dark annexe by the toilets. Two soft lights overhead reflected off the ruddy-brown wooden walls and gave the corridor a drawing-room effect. To complete the image, there was a spiralling, hand-crafted coat stand resting between the lavatory doors, supporting the kind of old green raincoat you might wear to place bets while propped by an ashtray in the bookies. I slotted a couple of coins into the phone, my hands trembling, and then leant back against the wall, somehow grateful for the protection the darkness gave me.
Helen answered after three rings.
‘Hey-o?’
Well, I didn’t feel like dealing with her right then.
‘Hi, Helen. Is Graham there?’
‘Oh, yes. Actually, he was hoping that you’d ring.’ She sounded a little bit disappointed by this. ‘Hang on.’
There was a pause and then a clatter, and I heard her shouting his name. A few seconds later, there was a buzz of white-noise and then the click of a phone lifting as she put me through.
‘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?’
The silence was all his this time, and I felt angry.
‘What does it fucking say, Graham?’
‘Fuck, man. It says: “pale blue blouse.”’
Another silence, then.
One in which my brain did nothing at all. Not one thing.
I nodded to myself, and then he repeated it, sounding sad and frightened.
‘It says: “pale blue blouse.”’
CHAPTER SEVEN
When people look back on their lives, they have a tendency to stick pins in at key points along the line: little coloured flags that point out the crucial moments. Every moment is crucial, of course – if you remove any single instant, your future falls away from your past – but I’m talking about the moments we choose to view as different. If you do see your life as a line, with points plotted along its course, then it’s far from a straight one, and the truly critical moments are those where the line bends sharply off to one side, continuing at some weird new angle. We mark these points down and remember them, and when we question our current trajectories, it’s these points that we use to explain them. Tapping the board and saying: I’m going this way because of this.
