The Third Person (12 page)

I put on a last jolt of speed as I reached him, punching into him from the side and driving him over towards the beck. Kareem went down; I heard a splash as my leg smashed into the water. Then grunting as I got my arm to the side of his head and pushed him.

He wasn’t a serious contender. I punched him again – hard – as we were getting to our feet. His nose shattered, and suddenly he was flat on his ass again, with blood spattered onto his shirt. He brought up his hands to hold his face together.

‘Shit,’ he said simply.

I wandered back up the bank and checked out the woods. There was no sign of Charlie, so I figured that she’d stayed up on the footpath out of the way. Either that or she was wandering, unsure where we’d ended up. I backed down to the edge of the stream. Over on the other side, there were just green fields: empty and desolate. The grass was long overgrown and untended.

It was still possible to walk away. I really did know this.

Instead, feeling sick, I pulled the stanley knife out of my
jacket pocket, clicked the blade out three notches and turned back to where he was lying.

‘Hey Kareem,’ I said.

He stopped massaging his face and looked up at me. Confused.

And then with a little more understanding.

I’d well and truly boarded the train now.

I grabbed him by his hair and put the blade to his face. It was a weird thing. Like something out of a movie: not at all like I’d expected it to feel. It was too sunny, for a start.

‘We’ve got some talking to do,’ I said.

‘Please don’t hurt me.’

His voice was this stuttering, fragile thing. He couldn’t even think about fighting back; couldn’t think about anything right now apart from how he was suddenly all past, no future.

‘Amy Foster,’ I told him, tightening my grip on his hair. He winced a little. ‘You tell me about her, and you get away from here today alive.’

The words came out in a gush.

‘Who? I don’t know any Amy Foster. I swear I don’t—’

And so I cut his cheek. I’d never cut anyone before and I wasn’t really sure how to do it. It was meant to be a warning cut – a taster – but it didn’t turn out that way. The blade went through his cheek like paper, and with about the same sound. Blood spilled out of the side of his mouth.

He started crying.

My hand was shaking, but I told him:

‘You know who she is. You met her in the Melanie Room about four months ago. And then you met her in real life. She took a train to come see you.’

I didn’t know that any of this was true until he started crying harder, and then I knew that it was all true. Suddenly, it didn’t feel too sunny for this anymore; something went out inside me. Some light. I cut him again, digging the stanley
knife over his cheekbone, pressing down so hard that the muscles in my forearm bunched and my teeth gritted.

‘You fucking killed her.’

‘I didn’t! I didn’t! I swear to God! Jesus, ahhhh!’

The train leaving the station now: rolling out backwards. It was out of my hands.

‘You met her and you killed her.’

Easier to just sit back now, as I carved his face apart.

‘I didn’t kill her,’ he sobbed. ‘Please stop hurting me!’

I let go of his hair, throwing his head back in disgust, and stepped away from him. Then, I went to the top of the bank and checked the woods again. In the distance, I heard Charlie calling my name. She was a long way away by the sound of it. If she’d been closer, I might have left it there.

Who am I kidding?

Back with Kareem, by the side of the stream. In the sun. With the breeze making the grass in the field shiver, and the trees above us nodding thoughtfully.

‘What happened?’ I said.

‘I don’t know what happened.’ He was knuckling blood and spit off his chin. His cheek was bright red and looked utterly destroyed.

‘Jesus. Oh, Jesus.’ He looked up at me desperately. ‘Marley took her. I owed Marley some money, and he fucking took her. That’s all I know.’

I made to grab him again, and he flinched away.

‘You
sold
her?’

He shook his head.

‘Not like that. I didn’t have any say in it. We were just talking about things.’

‘About what?’

‘About rape. About why I wanted to do the things I did. Why I like that stuff. We were just talking, I swear. We weren’t doing anything!’

I pictured this man in a room with Amy. Just talking. Either side of a table, elbows resting there. Cups of coffee between them. Just shooting the breeze.

‘What happened?’

‘I owed this guyMarley. He’s like this big underworld guy in Thiene, and I owed him money. I’d been gambling, and taking shit from him on loan, and I didn’t want my wife to know. He was gonna tell her. Gonna beat me and tell her everything. Maybe beat her too.’

‘So you gave him my girlfriend?’

White rage: I took hold of his hair again, ready to put the knife through his face a
hundred thousand
times.

‘NO! He just took her, man. I didn’t have any say in it, I swear. He had a couple of other guys with him – real big guys – and they just took her out by the hair. I tried to stop them, but—’

I attempted to picture him trying to stop them, but the image wouldn’t come. I couldn’t see it somehow. All I saw was Amy being taken away by her hair, and I knew exactly what had happened. Kareem had paid his debt by giving Amy to this man, Marley. Before I even knew what I was doing, I’d punched Kareem in the stomach so hard that the knife flew out of my hand and landed on the bank. All the air went out of him in a whoosh, and then I was dragging him up by the hair, pulling him towards the beck, then kicking his legs out from under him, and down he went, face first, into the water. He couldn’t help sucking it in. Blood spilled away downstream in little tendrils.

And I held him there. Looking out over the field, and then glancing back at the bank behind me. Charlie was calling me: still quite a way away. Maybe if she was closer I would have stopped: I could keep thinking like that. My mind was calm now. The panic would come afterwards, I was sure, but for now there was only silence, as I carried out this unreal thing
that it had been telling me not to all along while at the same time knowing I was always going to.

He fought for a minute or so, but I was stronger than he was. And that’s what life’s about, isn’t it? You fuck up, you fight with all your might, and then you die anyway.

I met Charlie halfway back through the woods. We saw each other from quite a way off and she waited for me as I walked towards her, head bowed. I scratched my nose, looked up at her and shrugged as I reached the place she was standing.

‘He got away.’

‘Too bad.’ She noticed my clothes. ‘Jesus – you’re soaking.’

I looked down at my leg and my arms.

‘Yeah. I took a tumble into the beck. My hand’s pretty sore.’ I looked at it, pretending that it hurt or appeared injured in some way. ‘He took off over the field, and I figured I was done in.’

‘Thanks for trying.’

She smiled at me, but looked a little shaken.

‘You really beat the shit out of him,’ I said, trying to make light of the situation. But my face just wouldn’t smile. Every time I tried, it just slipped away.

She said, ‘I think he had it coming.’

And then she shivered. ‘The adrenalin’s kicking in, though. I’m a wreck. Think I hurt my hand on him, too.’

‘Let me have a look.’

Suddenly, I was this world expert on injured hands. I took up her small fist and examined it. Already, between her first two knuckles, the skin was darkening. It happened to me a lot when I went bare-fist on the Scream, and I figured she’d be okay.

‘You’ll live,’ I said, letting go of her hand.

She rubbed it.

‘Well – bit of excitement, anyway. Think we should report it?’

‘I doubt it.’ I looked behind me. ‘He’s long gone.’

‘Probably think twice before he does that again, anyway.’

‘I would think so.’ I smiled at her, but it faded again. ‘Where did you learn to do that stuff?’

She struck a stance.

‘Second-dan gojo-ryu,’ she said. ‘I’ve been training since I was eight.’

‘Jesus.’

She relaxed. ‘You still want to go for that drink?’

‘I think I really need it.’

‘Okay, then. Let’s go.’

So we walked back up to the path and together followed it all the way to the ring road. In better circumstances, it might have reminded me of walking with Amy. I don’t know how I would have felt then, but it hardly even registered now. I was like a zombie, grunting in the right places to everything Charlie said. I’d left the thinking part of me back down by Lacey Beck, and it was still kneeling there now, squatting beside Kareem’s corpse and keening like a frightened, abandoned child as the water washed over him.

When forensic experts want to recreate a murder victim’s face from the skull, they stick little plasticine pegs at key points on the bone structure – at the right height for the ethnic origin and gender of the skull, which is determined by size, shape, and so on – and then they join those points up with strips and fill in the spaces in-between. My relationship with Amy was as complicated and intricate as a human face, but you could begin to see the shape of it in the same way: by picking out key points and then filling in the missing details later.

Those might well have been four of the most important moments of my life, so they’ll do as starting points.

We met by having sex, which is as good a way as any despite what your mother might have told you. The Fusee-Lounge was late licence by then: a student bar constructed out of the remains of an old aeroplane. I forget the exact model but it was one of those big ones. They’d taken out most of the original fittings, widened it, fitted a bar down one side and covered the rest of the area with seats, games machines and pool tables. It was a popular place. The DJ played loud punk and industrial, the lighting was dim, and you could drink and
jump around until one or two in the morning, each and every night. For Graham and me, it was like a new playground, but with a better selection of booze.

It was Friday night when I danced into Amy: probably about half-past one. I’d sunk enough alcohol to kill a small village, and the dancefloor probably would have cleared around me if there’d been any room for people to move away. Luckily, Amy was as drunk as I was. Our bodies found each other, and it seemed easier to kiss each other than do anything else, so we did. It was late enough by then for us to make it last, and then we went home together and had sex that, given the circumstances, was pretty spectacular. Neither of us was sick until afterwards, anyway. Even better sex the next morning told of what might have been, and we just . . . sort of carried on. Saw each other the day after, and then the next. Went on a few dates; ate a few dinners. By the end of week two, we were in a Relationship
^TM
, and neither of us had a problem with it.

I bought a bog-standard pint of beer for me, and a bubblegum flavoured bottled drink for Charlie. Mine was brown, whereas hers was an awful kind of murky green. As we made our way over to a table in the corner, it felt as though everybody was watching me and memorising what I looked like for the investigation to come.

Ugly fella. Tall. Kinda solid
.

There was a camera above the main entrance, but by the time I’d seen it it had been too late. I did my best to look away to the left as we came in, but I don’t think I really pulled it off.

Clothes looked damp – and kinda muddy, too
.

We slid in around the table and ended up sitting beside each other on the corner. I was already wondering how long I had
to stay, and whether there was a back entrance to this place I could escape through.

‘Thanks for this,’ Charlie said, touching the neck of her bottle with delicate fingers. ‘My father would never approve. He’s a real-ale man.’

‘Is that right?’ I was looking around.

‘Uh-huh.’ She took a swig, and the liquid chinked. ‘He brews his own. Does wines and things, too. There’re demijohns in our attic that have been around longer than me.’

I smiled. Took a sip of my own beer.

Awkward silence.

It was dark and subdued inside the Bridge: everything and everybody was silhouetted by the bright white light of the day outside. Even the slot machines seemed muted, as though wary of making too much noise this early on. Blue smoke was spiralling up from ashtrays. You could actually see the air in here: like mist the colour of gun-metal. A television in the corner was showing horse-racing, but the sound had been turned down until the commentary was nothing but a low murmur. Everybody was watching brown animals pounding soundlessly over green grass.