Steve Mosby - The Third Person

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.

Year 0: We meet.

Year 0.3: I tell her that I love her.

Year 3.0: I propose; she says yes.

Year 4.5: She disappears.

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.

‘So,’ Charlie said after a moment. ‘How are you doing?’

‘I’m doing okay.’ I nodded. ‘I’m not doing too badly.’

I looked at her, darkened by the window behind her. She looked different, I realised.

She’d cut her hair since the last time I saw her.

‘You haven’t been in recently,’ she said.

Or she had make-up on. Maybe that was it.

‘No.’

I was actually thinking that I’d just killed a man. An undertone of thought that rested below all the others. It was almost unreal.