One Single Thing

by Tina Clough

  Dao spots Noah walking along on the other side and jumps out. ‘Hey, Noah,’ she calls and he comes jogging towards us, thin and exhausted-looking. He seems to have an endless supply of black T-shirts and black jeans.

  ‘Did you read it? The stories on the USB stick? She had half a dozen USBs in the drawer, but this one had an X done with marker pen. It’s odd. She’s saved hundreds of those little stories on her computer for years and suddenly some of them are saved on a flash drive.’

  Dao says calmly, ‘Of course we did, Noah. We think something must have happened that made her think her laptop wasn’t safe – that’s our guess. Not just when she went through Customs in Pakistan, but here too.’

  He nods, looks slight less frantic. ‘OK, good. That’s what I thought too.’

  Willard is an athletic-looking guy with grey hair and glasses, about sixty. His house is a poster-pretty cottage built when Auckland was young. We sit down in a modernised interior where two rooms and a kitchen have been turned into one space. His taste is conservative, an earlier era than Samantha’s, but equally consistent throughout. Maybe everyone has furniture to match the age of the house they live in, I think. I’m bang on in that case: modern house, modern furniture.

  ‘I’m sorry I was so short with you on the phone, Noah,’ he says. ‘We were loading a turbine on a truck using a new cradle and we had to improvise a different way of arranging the straps to get the weight distribution right. A bit nerve-racking, so I couldn’t talk for long.’

  He notices our looks of incomprehension. ‘Wind turbines. We make them, and this new big model was a bit of a challenge.’

  Dao looks up, instantly interested. I can read her mind: she is just about to ask if she can come and see the factory but resists the impulse.

  Noah seems awkward and hesitant again. Just as I wonder if I should step in, he starts talking, abrupt and a bit too loud.

  ‘I told you that Hope is missing. I brought some of her journal stories to read. I think they might have a bearing on her disappearance.’

  He hands the papers over and we watch silently while Willard reads them. He hands them back to Noah and shakes his head. ‘I can’t believe it. What happened? You must tell me more.’

  ‘I know you saw Hope once or twice. When did you last see her?’

  There is a change in Noah’s voice. It is hard to decide if he is suspicious of Willard or just frustrated. Once again, I find it hard to understand him. His behaviour is erratic and sometimes his reactions are out of proportion to what others say. If he suspects Willard of something, he is doing his best to alienate him before we have got anything out of him. Dao casts one of her black looks at Noah; I nearly expect him to flinch in pain, but he is oblivious.

  ‘We went out for dinner about ten days ago,’ says Willard calmly. ‘I went to Tonga to negotiate a contract the day after and took a week off. I got back a couple of days ago. I knew nothing about this until you called. Has it been in the papers?’

  ‘No, not yet. Did you know about the explosions at the airport?’

  ‘Yes, she told me over dinner. She said she hadn’t told anyone yet, but now something had happened that worried her. She said she didn’t want to tell you, because if she did, you would come back early from your holiday. It was something she thought was connected to that terrorist saving her life. We came back here after dinner and watched the video from the terminal – I knew I had seen it on the BBC website. I have it on my laptop now. I suppose you’ve seen it?’

  I am sure my face looks just like Noah’s – completely blank.

  ‘I only just read her story about it this morning,’ says Noah. ‘Hadn’t even thought of video being available. Did she see anything new?’

  ‘No, not really. She wanted to know if she could have been identified from the video. And I don’t think she could have, at least not from the clip we watched, but there would be other video cameras at other angles in the terminal. If anyone wanted to check who it was, who got dragged to safety, they might have identified her.’ Willard gets up. ‘I’ll show you. Would you like a drink?’

  We say ‘No thanks’ and sit in silence while he gets his laptop from another room, connects it to the TV and finds the video clip.

  ‘Here it is. I saved it and fiddled around with it, so we could watch it in slow motion. I hope I can get it to work again.’

  We all lean forward, as if every inch closer to the screen will reveal more. The video is from a camera mounted at the end of the long terminal, filming along the row of check-in desks.

  Lines of people waiting, children running around, people trickling away towards the departure gates. The bomber is picked out in a white circle and then suddenly, an explosion. The image tilts and shakes, debris flies like missiles, people are thrown to the floor, objects crash down around them. A cloud of dust swirls up. In the distance, towards the far end of the terminal, a man runs very fast between bodies and chunks of concrete. He lifts a piece of debris off a woman, grabs her upper arms and drags her away, running backwards across the littered floor. He is looking back over his shoulder, but even so it seems like a miracle that he doesn’t trip. They disappear behind a pillar and within a few seconds another, bigger explosion rocks the camera. When the dust settles there is a deep crater in the floor, highlighted by a white circle.

  ‘He risked his life,’ said Noah. ‘He saved her, even though he knew he could be killed.’ He shakes his head in wonder at how lucky Hope was. ‘The second bomber must have been very close to where she was standing.’

  Willard starts the recording again, this time in slow motion.

  Now that I am familiar with the scene I know where to look for the four men lined up in the far distance. I know the line where Hope is waiting. I pick her out, continue to focus on her through the haze of dust after the first explosion. I watch intently through the whole sequence, but I see nothing new.

  ‘So that’s how she hurt her arm,’ says Dao. ‘It’s interesting. If you watch that terrorist – right from the start, the one who saved her – you can see the way his head moves just before the first explosion. You know how you can look at something, like the big picture, not with any specific focus and then something catches your eye? It’s like your mind does a little jump.’

  Willard replays the recording again in slow motion. The moment Dao talks about is very clear. I missed it the first time; it’s a very small movement.

  ‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘He’s just keeping an eye on the whole scene, scanning back and forth. Then he does a double take when he spots her and realises who she is. And he saves her.’

  ‘He reacted very fast. He knew he might be blown up.’ Noah’s face reflects his ambivalence. Like me he is torn between admiration for the terrorist’s courage and sense of honour, and the bone-chilling horror he is prepared to inflict on innocent people, some of them his own.

  Willard turns the TV off and we sit in silence for a moment. What we have watched seems very immediate and personal. Noah asks Willard if he knows what had worried Hope, his tone of voice only marginally less unfriendly.

  ‘No, she never told me. She just said something strange had cropped up and she wondered if that guy saving her had triggered something here in New Zealand. I got the impression she didn’t want to tell me, and I knew she was going to discuss it with you. I didn’t feel I could push her – I haven’t known her very long.’

  I get a feeling he is being evasive. Noah’s slightly hostile approach is once again hampering progress.

  ‘But what did you think?’ he says abruptly.

  ‘I don’t know what alerted her, but something happened, and she wanted to know why and how it related to her. She said something like, “I hadn’t even checked in yet, nobody could know for sure that I was there when it happened.” But that’s all.’

  I think he has a theory but is not willing to be dragged into a discussion. Noah needs a crash course in how to communicate and build trust instead of alienati
ng people.

  We thank Willard and leave, briefly stand talking on the sidewalk. Dao looks cold and I suggest that Noah should follow us home instead of standing outside in the wind.

  ‘We could go to a café or bar near here, but if we go back to the house, we can look at some more of Hope’s stories from that USB stick. We only read the first three so far. But it’s a long way back for you. You might prefer to go home and read them there.’

  ‘We could buy pizza on the way,’ say Dao. ‘It’s nearly dinner time.’

  ‘I’ll come, thanks. If we read them together, we might work something out.’

  In the car Dao says, ‘God, he’s so odd! Did you notice how he nearly made Willard angry by being so bad-tempered? Not very clever. But I want him to share everything he finds with us. I’m trying to be patient.’

  Chapter ten

  ‘I have the original USB stick with me.’ Noah wipes his sticky fingers on a paper napkin and pats his pocket. ‘The one marked with X. As I said, I didn’t have time to check everything on it this morning. Let’s plug it into your laptop and see what else is on it. Maybe she wrote something about what worried her. It can’t have been that she spotted the camera in the flat. She would have done something about it, had it ripped out or simply gone to stay with a friend, not just waited for me to get back.’

  He is calm again after his tension at Willard’s place. Or did he take something before he drove here?

  Hope’s documents are named seemingly at random. Some names are descriptive, some just the name of a person or a place name. The first one of interest is about Willard. We crowd together in front of my laptop which has a very big screen and put Dao in the middle, in charge of scrolling down the pages.

  A WALK WITH WILLARD

  We had an early lunch in the museum cafeteria and walked around the Domain. My caution was justified. He is both interesting and interested, wants to take me out for dinner ‘soon’. I do want to see him again; there is something about him, not just that fabulous voice or how easy he is to get on with. But I never accept anything from a new man friend unless they are prepared to accept the conditions, my Rules.

  ‘Dinner would be nice,’ I said, tried to strike a balance between casually friendly and serious. ‘But I have to warn you. I’m not looking for romance or a relationship. Just being friends.’

  He took this calmly and with no change of expression. ‘That’s fine, but why? There must be a reason and maybe it would be a good idea to tell me what it is at the outset.

  ‘Friends only,’ I said. ‘No relationship, not even a casual one.’

  He gave me an appraising glance, hard to decipher. After a moment the silence nudged me to elaborate. ‘It’s nothing to do with you personally. It’s me – it’s what I have decided about my life.

  ‘Are you going to tell me why?’ In a voice of polite inquiry rather than curiosity.

  I have no idea what made me say it, but I gave him the unadorned truth with no explanation. ‘Because I killed my husband.’

  That stopped him in his tracks – literally. He stopped walking, but his face registered neither surprise nor shock. I like him, he’s very unusual.

  ‘I see. And this precludes relationships for the rest of your life?’

  This is exactly the situation I have tried to avoid for eight years. My entire existence has been built around my rules, the framework that makes me feel balanced and emotionally safe. I have never tried to explain them to anyone. I don’t think I could.

  ‘Yes, it does,’ I said bluntly and walked on, and he followed. He said nothing more about it. When he dropped me at my flat we said a pleasant goodbye and he said he would call about dinner. I really want to see him again, but I’ll have to be very careful. At least I have warned him right at the start. He can’t protest when I stick to my rules. But he won’t call me – I’m sure I have scared him off.

  ‘I’ve got some questions about that story.’ Dao looks at Noah clearly expecting him to offer explanations. Instead of rebuffing her he just says, ‘Let’s read some more and then we’ll talk about it.’

  ‘And you should arrange these files in date order,’ she adds severely. ‘So we can figure out how they hang together. Having them alpha-sorted is not useful.’

  ‘OK, I’ll do that.’

  CALL FROM NOAH

  Noah called from Australia tonight, when I was in the bath. It was lovely to hear his voice.

  ‘What are you doing? You’re not in bed, are you?’

  ‘I’m in the bath, up to my neck in hot water with the phone and a glass of wine beside me and my Kindle, pure bliss. How is Melbourne, are you having a good time?’

  He told me about the old friends he had seen and the night spots they had been to. ‘I’m off to Sydney tomorrow to see Dave and Cath.’

  He sounded so cheerful and relaxed. I suddenly realised how much I wanted to tell him everything. But I don’t want him to come tearing home early. He deserves his holiday. I only told him about my stalker, nothing more.

  ‘I’ve got a guy following me around, just the last week or so. A young chap, very tidy, good-looking.’

  ‘What? Do you know who he is?

  ‘I have no idea. He’s not hovering outside my flat and he isn’t everywhere or at all times – he just kind of turns up, very randomly. I come out from some place at night and there he is, at a distance, watching. I don’t understand how he knows where I’m going to be. It’s three times now. No, four. The second time I saw him I thought it was just a coincidence.’

  He was thinking at the other end. There was a clicking sound, a ballpoint pen; he always does that when he’s on the phone – like a nervous tic. Dad calls it the ‘Bic tic’.

  ‘If he doesn’t follow you from the flat it must be that he knows in advance where you are going to be. He could have hacked your phone, I guess. Maybe he’s checking your voice messages and your texts, so he knows where you are going. Check that you have a PIN on your voicemail. Your computer should be safe. I set it up to be pretty much bullet-proof, but you never know these days. And go to the police and report him. Take a picture of him next time so you have something to show them. Are you going out again this coming week?’

  All this is very over the top, considering he knows nothing about my other worries, but typical of Noah, instant reaction. I promised him to only go out by taxi in the evenings and to always have someone with me and he calmed down. I texted him when I got out of the bath and told him not to mention it to Mum and Dad.

  Noah runs his hand over his face, shattered. ‘Jesus! Why didn’t she tell me what she was worried about? She only told me about the stalker, and she didn’t seem overly worried by him.’

  He looks off into the distance, frowning. ‘You know how she told Willard she wanted to figure out if she could have been identified from that video clip. That must be significant. God, I wish she had told me!’

  DINNER WITH WILLARD

  Willard is a man with many facets. We were in the Japanese restaurant he had picked (Industry Zen, amazing food and service) and out of nowhere he said, ‘I hope you will let me ask one or possibly two questions. Let’s say two, in case the first answer is evasive or cryptic. And then I’ll shut up and leave the subject alone.’

  This man is dangerous, far too appealing. I knew that this conversation would probably end badly. He was bound to try to take it one step further and then he would push a bit further still. I should never have told him. Nobody will ever understand, and it will end with sleepless nights of guilt and self-blame.

  ‘So tell me,’ he said, as casual and unconcerned as if he was asking how my day had been, ‘when did you kill your husband?’

  It actually made me want to laugh. The way he said it was disarming, not what I had expected. Why did he want to know when it had happened? I had been certain that he would ask ‘how’ or ‘why’. Somehow ‘when’ seemed a lot less threatening.

  I said, ‘Eight years ago.’ And for
some reason I added, ‘In June.’

  ‘In June? And by the way, that was not my second question, that was just an observation with a question mark after it. So here is the second one – did you do it on purpose?’

  Before I had time to control my reactions my eyes filled with tears. I blinked furiously, but a tear spilled over and ran down my cheek. I retrieved my composure with an effort of will that felt like swallowing a rock. ‘No, I did not do it on purpose. But a lot of people thought I had – including the police.’

  ‘Well, that’s OK then.’ He continued eating as if nothing had happened. I waited for the next question, but after taking a sip of wine he changed the subject.

  ‘I went to an interesting lecture last month, at the museum, a visiting professor from Canada talking about the ethics – or lack of ethics – of displaying human body parts in museums.’

  He kept throwing me off-balance. Was this a diversion to lull me into a sense of security before he reverted to the subject of Buster?

  ‘I heard someone talk about it on the radio a while ago. It’s an interesting subject. Thinking about where we draw the line. You know, we accept that it’s OK having brains and things in jars for people to look at, but other body parts seem to be off limits. We baulk at the thought of a head. But the Lindow man is OK, the whole man just lying there forever, preserved after spending a couple of thousand years in a peat bog, or whatever it was, displayed in a glass coffin like Snow White. It’s interesting.’

  Even as we spoke, I was trying to figure out what his next step would be. Perhaps I should just cut this friendship and be sensible. He keeps taking me by surprise. My carefully constructed no-go zones that have protected me from emotional involvement for years seem less secure than they used to be.