Boy A (24 page)

If Jack had been nine months younger he would have been innocent, simple as that. How can you have definitions and scales about murder? Why was it all right for the CIA to kill Che in cold blood, a man who really might have changed the world? Or the innocent people in Chile, Argentina, East Timor, Congo, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala, Turkey, Brazil, the Philippines. Political mass murders, that are lucky to make the papers at all. Crimes committed by mercenaries, men who kill for money, not seen to be as bad as someone who acts from some nameless sickness, shameless sudden impulse?

Terry’s felt the power of that perverse desire. He believes that everyone has. He can still picture himself as a child, sat on a bus, biting his tongue to stop himself shouting out: ‘You’re all fucking spastics’, at a group of happy, helpless, handicapped. Even as an adult, he’s had to fight the need to take his wife, by force, when he found out about her affair. Yes, rape. Just to show her that he could, not from desire, just to wipe that bloody smirk away. Does that mean he’s evil? Or is it that without those urges he could not be good? If being good is a denial of the bad then those we deem evil are not worse, they are weaker. And if goodness means anything at all, surely it means the strong helping the weak. That’s what Terry thinks.

Zebedee’s strong. Jesus but he’s strong. He looks like he could pull a man in half with those arms. He’s dusting the computer when Terry walks in from the AA tow home. He’s told Zeb he’s not supposed to touch that computer. But he doesn’t scold him, because he can’t. Zeb looks so funny, dusting away with no shirt on, like Schwarzenegger doing a
spot of hoovering. And he’s trying so hard at the moment. It really seems like he wants to make good for everything that’s gone wrong in the past. Where does it all go though? Where does all that time disappear to?

Jack spends Saturday morning phoning Shell. There’s no reply on her home phone and her mobile’s turned off. After he’s heard the answerphone message five times the cheerful nonchalance of her voice is beginning to grate on him. The power is low on his own phone, though, so he keeps calling until it cuts out altogether. Chris has told him the emptier you can get it before you recharge, the better it is for the battery.

Out the window the blue of the heavens is untarnished, the colour of
Wish You Were Here
swimming pools. Kelly’s baking a friend’s birthday cake in the kitchen. Not having much better to do, Jack decides to walk to Shell’s place, and make sure she’s really not just ill in bed. Though he knows that wouldn’t be much reason for her not to be answering the phone. It’s colder outside than you’d think from the cloudless skies. The air makes his eyes water. He’s still thinking about Shell.

It’s out of character, that’s what worries him. She’s so organized, so dependable, so concrete. She isn’t the sort of person who just disappears. If she’s not at home, he wonders whether he should phone her mum’s. That’s most likely where she is; he might be able to find the number in the book. But then he remembers that her mum’s remarried;
she’s probably called something different to Shell. This is a world where names are erased after use.

The bell still trails empty echoes through the town house. The table is still blank where her bag should be. Jack’s disappointment shows him how much he must have been hoping, against all sense, that she was in. A look through the letterbox shows him the morning mail. Two envelopes have their back to him; the third says that if the missing number’s found inside, Shell could be entered in the
Reader’s Digest
million-pound draw. The letterbox snaps shut with a clack. Jack opens it and lets it go twice more. In case she just can’t hear doorbells and phones. The silence is even louder after the letterbox noise. Jack turns around from the house and walks away down the street. He kicks a Tango can from the pavement, and it ejects the remains of someone’s drink, as it rattles into the space where a Clio should be.

It’s the third time he’s done this walk from Shell’s back to his. The first two he stuck to the route she takes in the car. This time Jack allows himself to experiment, and finds he can save himself some distance. Even though he has to turn around from a couple of blockages. Not all roads lead to Rome, there are side-streets and switchbacks, circles and cul-de-sacs. But if you have a sense of the direction you want to head, and you’re not so bothered about the how and how-long of getting there, Jack finds most roads are right. In this view he differs from Chris, who believes there is only ever one most appropriate route.

Chris phones not long after Jack gets back. ‘Steve the mechanic and Jed have gone to the football,’ he says. ‘They wondered if we wanted to meet them after, for a couple of beers.’

Jack doesn’t feel like going. He’s stretched out on the sofa, tired from the walk and stressed from worrying about Shell.

‘I’m feeling a bit poorly. I think I might be going down with that thing Michelle’s got. Next time, heh?’

‘How is Michelle?’ Chris asks.

‘Not really sure. All right, I hope. I think she’s at her mum’s.’

‘Haven’t you rung her?’

‘Her phone’s switched off.’

‘Hang on, I’m pretty sure I’ve got her mum’s number. Michelle moved back there for a bit after she split up with that bloke.’ There is a sound of drawers opening, Chris rooting through the remains of his recent past. Eventually he comes up with a number, and reads it out.

They leave it there, with Jack having added another carefully folded pair of lies to Chris’ pile.

Shell’s mum answers in a thick Salford Manc, most of which Shell must have left behind in the short move to the city centre. The mum sounds kind, like Shell described her. The woman that gave her the security and the will to be someone. But as helpful as she tries to be, she can’t change the fact that her daughter isn’t there, and she hasn’t heard from her. Jack tries to make light, but the conversation ends with both of them more concerned than at its start.

Later he calls Terry. It sounds like Terry had a bad day yesterday. He’s smashed up his car. Jack feels a momentary sadness for the Ford, which is a tie to a shared past. He used to see it pull in and out the gates of the secure unit. Sometimes Terry would wave when he left, knowing he’d be watched through the wire-reinforced glass of a second-floor window.

Terry’s upbeat as ever, though. He reckons the prang could be the excuse he needs to finally get shot of the Sierra. Jack had secretly hoped that one day he’d be able to buy it off him. But not now; he hasn’t got anything much saved and can’t even drive.

He tells Terry about Michelle. Wanting to be cheered up and told it’s nothing. But he picks up an anxious edge when Terry gives him the words he needs to hear.

‘Look, let’s go out for Sunday lunch tomorrow,’ Terry
finally says. ‘I’ll meet you at the Firkin at one. But ring me if you hear from Michelle before then.’

The gravy’s the same Bisto-brown as Terry’s car. Jack’s not sure if that’s a good omen or a bad one. Michelle is missing, and he is missing her. Both facts hang over the roast dinner, souring the flavours.

Jack tells Terry about the man he thought was following them the other week, and how she had said it was her exboyfriend. Terry doesn’t disguise his worry when Jack adds the doorman’s criminal past.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about this at the time, Jack?’

‘She said it was nothing to bother about. She said he’d done it before.’

‘And what happens if he’s done something to her? You’re on licence. If they even suspect you’re involved they’re going to take you in, and boyfriends are always the first suspects. That means it’ll all be over, this life we’ve built. Your cover could be blown. We’d have to try and start you up again. All of our work gone down the pan.’

‘Terry, if he’s done something to her, like you’re suggesting, then I don’t care about all this. I love her.’

‘She’s the first girl you’ve ever been with, Jack. Of course you love her. Shit, she’s practically the first girl you’ve ever met. I knew it was too soon. We should have let you adjust slower.’

‘I love her, Terry, this is real. She’s disappeared off the face of the earth, and I want you to tell me she’s all right. Instead you’re saying she’s been murdered or something. You just assume it, like it’s fucking karma coming back, and it’s the most logical thing in the world. There are a million things that could have happened. Her ex is probably nothing to do with it. It’s only three days. Maybe she just needed a break. Maybe she just needed to think, to get away. You’re supposed to be the optimist.’ Jack realizes he’s shouting at Terry, the
man who’s never raised his voice in his life, except perhaps to yell: ‘Ban the Bomb.’ The man who has sacrificed so much for him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, quietly, with eyes flicked down at the unfinished meal.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ Terry says. ‘You’re right. It’s crazy to assume something bad’s happened. It could be anything; and I didn’t mean to doubt your feelings for her. Look, I’ll get in touch with the police when I get back to the flat, use some of my contacts, make sure the car hasn’t been in an accident or anything.’

There
is
a turquoise Clio by the side of a country road, but the police are not aware of it. There’s no reason why they should be. It’s parked neatly in a lay-by; it’s not abandoned. There’s no sign of damage on its womanly curves. Its driver is dishevelled, and certainly feels like she’s been in an accident, but the car is her comfort not the cause.

She drove in it straight from work, with the excuse of sickness hardly needed, because of the pain and confusion which was written over her features. She’s slept in the Clio for two nights now, each time driving until she found herself a place to pull in, that was concealed from all sides. Resting in secret gardens, nesting in forgotten forests, in alien parts of counties she’s never been to before. She only leaves the Clio’s security to buy fuel and food, and to toilet when she must. The car is a protective carapace, which clothes her and coats her in a hardness that she needs, because she’s suddenly scared the world will discover how soft and squashable she is.

She is living like this because she does indeed need to think, because she thinks best when she’s driving and because she doesn’t know what else she can do. She is used to problem-solving, to helping herself to what she wants from the world, managing the things around her that can be controlled, and disentangling them from the things that must be left. Her life was previously a mental test, to be
ordered and corrected. Her dream has always been to be able, one day, to sit back and admire the balance and perfection of the land that she has built for herself. In recent months, when she thought like this, Jack was beside her, they were stretched back together in her imaginings. A perfect partner to make an even number. Avoiding the loneliness that her mother was never quite able to conceal.

On Friday she cracked the last side of the Rubik’s Cube that had been puzzling her for sometime: the part of Jack that somehow didn’t quite fit in her scheme of how it all should be. The final few squares clicked into place in her mind, and the finishing face became clear on the cube. But the completed picture was horrible, more horrible than she could begin to think how to deal with. And in solving that one side, she discovered she had ruined the other five. The parts of her life which had been complete were fragmented and distorted, and none of it made sense at all.

She starts the Clio up, and sweeps the layer of litter from the dash. The detritus of a Sunday lunch of crisps and chocolate, crumpled like the creases of her worry, tumbles on to the passenger-side floor. Where, underneath three days’ failed attempts at comfort-eating, are the lumps of dirt from Jack’s boots that first soiled her car. His footprints have stained her world in the same way, but she doesn’t hate him. She can’t hate him. Because the place in her that Jack inhabits, the space she would need to hate, is already taken up by hate’s opposite. Therein lies the problem, this is what makes things harder. If she could work up the loathing and the anger, she would confront him. She’s not scared. Michelle’s not scared of anything. But she can’t confront him with indecision. She needs to know what she’s going to do before she can talk to Jack. She needs a plan, she needs order, so she has to keep driving.

The car in front of her is a learner, taking the road painfully slowly. But Michelle’s not in a hurry; she won’t
even know where she’s going till she gets there. Its L-plate is hanging off, attached only by one corner, reminding her of an ad-campaign by the Tories: ‘You Can’t Trust Labour,’ where the L was a swinging plate like that one. It was the ‘trust’ that did the job though, that’s what scared people: it’s all about trust.

She was crying out for it from Jack. That’s why she let him take those photos, why she gave him one. She was telling him she trusted him, asking why he couldn’t trust her back. Asking what it was that he couldn’t tell her. The invisible obstacle holding them apart, like the six-inch dancing rule she had always disobeyed at school.

But when he told her what it was, it still didn’t count. He didn’t trust her. He was asleep. The first night they’d been together when they hadn’t had sex. Normally he was insatiable, he couldn’t stop touching her. He was the only man she’d ever met who could consistently wear her out. But that night he wasn’t interested, said he was too tired and then didn’t fall asleep for hours. He kept her awake too, squirming like there was a snake in the bed. And when he did eventually fall asleep, he started talking, calling out a name: ‘Angela, Angela.’ Michelle was upset to begin with, thinking Angela was an ex-girlfriend, thinking maybe that was his big secret, why he didn’t like to talk about his past: that he was still hung up on her. Then she became angry; she thought that he must still be seeing this Angela, that he was leading her on. By morning Michelle was convinced that the mysterious ‘Uncle Terry’ was nothing more than a ruse to shag his other woman. She had been livid in the car on the way in to work, and he hadn’t even noticed; hadn’t even asked what was wrong.