Sam Leith - The Coincidence Engine

But what he wanted to do, which was pick nodding boy up by his scrawny little neck and push his face through the glass shelves behind the bar (it was possible; oh, it was possible, given a bit of a run-up), he was not going to do.

Smooth and easy. The kid hadn’t seen him, or if he had he was giving a very good impression of not having done so. Or not caring – which would mean… Sherman, pulling back against the wall, scanned the room. There was nobody else in the place. Barman? Unlikely.

The kid really might be there alone. The Gents had been empty. Sherman walked back to where he had been sitting and angled the table so his back was to the room, but he could see the kid in the glass behind the bar. He pretended to keep drinking his final bottle of Molson.

The kid wasn’t looking anywhere – he looked drunk, was what he looked. Sherman watched him order another Maker’s Mark, pay in cash. Head lolling a bit. Mouthing along to the jukie.

‘You, my son,’ Sherman promised him, ‘are going to get a very nasty bump on the head indeed before this evening is out. You see if you don’t.’

The song ended with a squeal, and then a jerk. Then there was a click as the mechanism changed and a tangled chord rolled out, fuzzy with static. A drumbeat thumped and limped behind it. ‘Like a Hurricane’ was starting again. Sherman, remembering the song for some reason, frowned.

Alex left the bar, his eyeballs floating. The horizontal hold had gone on the room, and he could feel the fajitas moving in his stomach. He wanted fresh air. The jammed jukebox, playing that one song over and over again, had proved resistant to the barman thumping it, and after letting it play the same song for fifteen minutes the guy had finally gone and pulled the plug, with some violence, out of the wall.

Neil Young had stopped, and the circular riff of Alex’s own thoughts had continued: hate and fear, anger and grief, grief and hate, anger and fear, salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard…

Alex left the bar and turned away from the Strip and walked. Behind him, a shadow calved off from the shadow of the doorway and crept down the dark lee of the building, skipping occasionally through pools of light and back into darkness.

Alex wasn’t hard to follow. Sherman had had an hour to sober up. Alex had had an hour to get drunker. He was staggering like a cow that had been hit with a hammer, away from the bright light, into the darkened residential streets, dragging his tail behind him.

Alex stopped at the edge of a bare lot. They were building something there.

A rough fence of corrugated iron had been raised around it, the gaps covered over with panels of metal netting, through which you could see an uneven expanse of bare dirt, pocked and pitted. Blue-white lights on tall poles scored it with sharp shadows. Orange construction vehicles slept like dinosaurs in the cold lunar daylight.

Sherman stopped behind him. Alex put his hands on his knees, bent forward, rocked back and forth over the ground with his mouth open. It looked like he was going to be sick, but then whatever it was passed. Alex spat, instead, a long spool of saliva descending to the blue ground.

Then he resumed his progress, not once looking back, slipping through a wide gap in the fence and ignoring the signs that enjoined him to wear a hard hat. Sherman followed, stopping at the edge of the site in a pool of darkness cast by one of the tall panels. It was bright as day in that site, but dark outside. If the boy was bait, this would be a perfect killing zone. He didn’t want to move in until he was sure he was alone.

He watched Alex move with the aimless deliberateness of the seriously drunk. He seemed to be talking to himself. Then Sherman saw him double back towards him. He ducked his head behind the corrugated-iron sheet and stepped further into the dark. If the boy came out through the gap, Sherman would have the drop on him. He waited.

Then he heard a zip go, and the loud drum roll of someone pissing like a horse against the other side of the fence. A pool of hot urine leaked from under the fence and spread around Sherman’s shoes. The smell was pungent. If the boy was setting him up he was no sort of professional.

Step in and shoot? Let the kid die with his dick in his hand?

On second thoughts, if there was an accomplice, now might be exactly when he would anticipate Sherman making his move. Maybe professional was exactly what he was. So far the boy had done absolutely everything he could, seemingly, to invite Sherman to murder him. He had got drunk. He had shown no sign of even looking around to see if there was anyone following him. He had walked off to a deserted construction site, brightly illuminated, with clear sightlines in. And now he was taking a pee.

The gap in the fence spilled light. There was no way this sort of thing happened by accident. Hold back.

Sherman listened patiently. It ended, and Sherman could hear Alex walking away, further into the site. Sherman waited a long time, and then, finally, followed him.

Alex sat down on a short stack of wooden pallets. He had at last lost his self-consciousness. He snivelled, miserably.

‘What am I going to do?’ he asked the empty lot. ‘What am I going to do?’ He didn’t mind much if he died right there. His mouth was foul with whiskey. He felt sick, but it wouldn’t come up. He wanted to go home and sleep forever. He wanted Carey. He wanted to die. He wanted his mum. He didn’t know what he wanted.

He took his phone out, and looked at it, and put it away again. He wondered if he might be going mad.

Sherman moved out of the shadow of the fence and into the light. He moved quietly, on the balls of his feet. His gun was in his hand. Alex was half turned away from him, staring into the far corner of the lot, where one of the lights was out and the adjacent two-storey building left that side in darkness.

There was a sort of generalised sobbing and wailing going on. Sherman knew at that moment that this was more elaborate than he’d have needed for a set-up. There was no accomplice. This had been nothing to do with MIC at all.

Alex sobbed again. The lad was upset – anyone could see that. And Sherman felt sorry for him, whatever his problem was. But Sherman still intended to shoot him in the face.

He waited until he was close enough to be sure of making a chest shot in a hurry.

‘You,’ Sherman called. ‘Boy.’ Alex was still looking away. He made no acknowledgement.

‘Alex!’ he called. Slightly louder. The boy’s head turned in surprise.

Who? Alex saw a man with a gun. He stood up suddenly, feeling very sober. It looked like the man who had chased him at the supermarket. The gun was pointed at him.

‘Yeah, pal. You.’ Alex gave a sudden jolt of fright. Seconds ago, when in no prospect of doing so, he had thought he perhaps wanted to die. Now, presented with a golden opportunity, his body chemistry was telling him the opposite. He discovered that he did not want to die at all. The whiskey vanished from his system. He was sober, and terrified.

‘Alex Smart,’ said Sherman. ‘You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, lad. A lot.’

Alex struggled to say something. He had never had a gun pointed at him before. He said: ‘Whu-whu-whu-whu-’

Sherman stepped forward and Alex yelped. ‘Easy,’ said Sherman. ‘Hands where I can see them.’

Hands where I can see them? Sherman thought. Does anybody actually say that?

Hands where I can see them? Alex thought. They say that. They actually do say that.

Alex realised he had had no idea where his hands were. He discovered that they were straight out in front of him, as if his unconscious had decided it was possible to fend off bullets by the act of protesting politely against them, like someone refusing a canapé at a party. Please don’t. I couldn’t possibly take a bullet in the gut. I’m watching my weight.