Sparks (27 page)

“Good,” said the intruder. “That means you don’t have to sit on me and pull my arms out of their sockets.”

“Where did you get Alison’s name?” said Kaye. “I ought to kill you.”

“I went out with her,” said the intruder.

Kaye pulled the intruder’s arm harder.

“I bloody did. For six years. Until last summer. ”

“He’s dead,” said Kaye. “You’re not dead.”

“I can explain that,” said the intruder. “Only I need my arm.”

“I need your arm. Because if I do this…”

“Ah!”

“Then you feel pain. If you feel pain you’re not dead. So you’re lying. Who are you?”

“You’re mad.”

“Don’t say that.”

“OK. But you are mad. Ah!”

“Tell me who sent you or I will kill you. I mean it. I have had enough.”

“Let me up and I’ll tell you.”

“Don’t be stupid. I have watched television.”

“That’s nice. What’s your favourite programme?”

“I mean that even on television, people who say ‘Let me up and I’ll tell you’ are going to attack the person not letting them up when they get a chance. Now tell me who you are.”

“Right. Good point. But I could tell you who I am and be lying. And – and! – I mean but...”

“And? But?”

“And, but my wallet with my ID is in my coat pocket which my nipple is lying on. There’s lots of ID. And a photo of me that I stole from my girlfriend, with my writing on the back which I suppose isn ID but…”

The intruder looked thoughtful, in a stupid way.

“Anyway, I have to get up,” he concluded.

Kaye thought about this.

“All right.”

He got off the intruder and stood back to let him get up.

Sparks got up. He reached into his coat pocket for his wallet. Then he leapt at the man, who was clearly crazy and probably meant it about the killing him thing.

The man must have guessed that Sparks would do this, because he hit him very hard on the chin. Sparks staggered back onto the wall and, to his great surprise, passed out.

Kaye dragged the intruder into the front room. The cat walked around the intruder’s unconscious body. Kaye took the wallet and threw its contents onto a table. There was about £400 in cash, a cashpoint card and three video club membership cards, all of which belonged to a man called Paul Sparks, and a picture of Alison. This last Kaye found more disturbing than he could explain. The money wasn’t too reassuring either. It looked perfectly fine, but it also looked wrong. It looked too perfect, Kaye thought. He took out a £10 note from his own wallet and put it alongside one of the other notes. They were identical, but the other note made his note look fake. This too Kaye found disturbing, but in a different way.

He took one of the video membership cards and the picture of Alison and stuffed Sparks’ wallet back into his coat. Then he sat down on the floor and shook for several minutes. After that, he went into the kitchen and opened as many drawers as he could, as loudly as possible. He was ostensibly seeing if Alison had any old packets of cigarettes at the back of a drawer, but really he found that slamming the drawers made him feel better.

Kaye found some cigarettes, lit one, discovered it was so elderly that it made him depressed just smoking it, extinguished it under the tap, and went back into the other room to find out who had sent Sparks.

Sparks was gone.

So was Kaye’s wallet.

Waking up, Sparks noticed he was alone, sneaked out of the room past the kitchen, where he heard some banging, decided not to see if the banging was drawers or guns being loaded, went into the hall, saw a wallet on a table, took it and left, full of fear, triumph and dramatic irony.

There was a noise behind him. Sparks froze, then turned.

“Go away,” he said to the cat. “Bugger off.”

The cat, still none the wiser, buggered off. Sparks went downstairs as slowly as possibly, which made the stairs creak like galleons, and fled into the street.

A window opened above him and the crazy man who had attacked him leaned out.

“I am going to get you!” shouted the crazy man.

Sparks ran away. He leapt onto the platform of a passing bus and took a seat.

Alison opened her door.

“I’m back,” she shouted into the flat. There was no reply, so she went into the front room. Kaye was sitting in it, holding something small.

“I’m back,” she said again, quietly. “Are you OK?”

“I don’t know,” said Kaye. ‘Who’s this?”

He handed her the small thing. It was a photograph. On the back someone had written MR HANDSOME! in biro.

“Oh God,” said Alison. “It’s Sparks.”

“You told me he was dead.”

“He is dead. Where did you find this?”

“Why did you tell me he was dead?”

Alison’s forehead tightened. Kaye sounded strange. Everything felt wrong.

“Because he is dead,” she said. “He was killed in an accident. Why – why are you looking through my things?”

“What do you mean?” said Kaye, sounding confused rather than strange, which was an improvement, she supposed. “I would never go through your things.”

Alison walked out of the room, her entire head feeling compressed and muddy. She took a box out of a cupboard and brought it back into the front room. Kaye was smoking now.

“You don’t smoke,” she said. Kaye didn’t say anything.

She opened the box.

“Oh,” she said. Kaye looked at her. Alison took a photo out of the box and handed it to Kaye. It was the same photo as the one he was holding. Kaye turned it over. On the back, someone had written, in Biro, MR HANDSOME!

“What’s going on?” said Kaye. He sounded cold.

“I don’t know,” Alison said. “I don’t understand.”

“He was here,” Kaye said. “You said he was dead, and he was here.”

“Who was here?” said Alison. “I don’t understand.”

“I have to leave now,” Kaye said. He got up and walked out of the room.

Alison sat on the sofa, holding the two photos.

“Sparks,” she said, as bleakly as possible.

Sparks sat in a cafe blowing on the world’s smallest espresso and going through the wallet he had taken. It contained a few pounds, a credit card and a security pass. The pass contained a photograph of a wild-eyed man who might as well have had the words I AM NUTS instead of a photo. The pass and the credit card confirmed the man’s identity as Joseph Kaye, which meant that he was the maniac that Jeff and Duncan wanted him to kill.

And I do want to kill him, thought Sparks.

Alison left the flat. She didn’t know why, but sometimes when you have a problem and no solution, movement can be a good substitute for a solution. So she put her coat back on and went out. She walked down the road, looking at people in case they were Kaye. None of them were, especially the women, but she didn’t expect them to be. She had an awful, twisting feeling that she might not see Kaye again.

She stopped outside a cafe. It was one that she had once been in with Kaye. Not that he’d be in there now, having a coffee so near to her flat when he’d just walked out on her, but it was somewhere to stop outside. She looked in through the cafe’s steamy window.

Her dead ex-boyfriend was sitting at a table, blowing on a small cup.

Sparks drained his espresso, which meant essentially sticking his nose so far into it that he got the end wet, and pondered his next move. Perhaps he should start following Kaye? He should certainly find a place to confront him quietly and sort him out. Sparks felt uneasy about the phrase ‘sort him out’, but then he felt uneasy about Kaye.
Still,
he thought,
I know what I have to do now
. Now Sparks had a plan. It was, even his tired brain conceded, a very strong and realistic plan.

Then the door to the cafe opened and Alison came in and Sparks struggled to his feet, possibly with an idea of crashing through the window, possibly to smile at Alison and say, “I can explain everything,” or something equally not true, but in the end he didn’t have to do anything, because Alison just stood in front of him and said, “Bloody hell, Sparks, what do you think you’re playing at?”

“What do you mean?” said Sparks, for the last time here displaying the lack of ready wit that had dogged him for months.

“You,” said Alison, “are dead. And…” she all but held her hand up for silence, “I don’t mean in trouble dead. I mean dead dead. I went…” now she really did hold her hand up, because Sparks was showing signs of wanting to explain things, “I went to your funeral, Sparks. I comforted your mum and dad, and they comforted me.”

“You went to my funeral?” said Sparks. He was touched, and encouraged. If someone went to your funeral, it might mean that later on they would want to live with you.

“I was devastated,” said Alison. “I mean, I was going to split up with you, but it would have been heart-breaking. As it is, you died, and that was more heart-breaking.”

“Why were you going to split up with me?” said Sparks.

“I’ll ask the questions,” said Alison.

“You haven’t asked me any yet,” Sparks said.

“I’m about to,” Alison said. “But since I’m still thinking of some, the reason I was going to dump you was because you were immature, Sparks. You wouldn’t change your life, and you hadn’t got much of a life to change in the first place.”

“I had an interesting job,” said Sparks. “I had a good social life.”

“You only liked your job because it was near your flat,” said Alison. “And your social life was me and some beer. And I think the beer was winning. You never wanted to do anything, Sparks.”

“Why should I have to want to do anything?” said Sparks. “Why should I have to want to go to museums on Sundays and parks and interesting new films?”

“When I say ‘do anything’,” said Alison, “I mean anything. Like get up, or dress, or wash.”

“I was depressed.”

“What? With your interesting job, your good social life and me? Sparks, you weren’t depressed, you were just…”

“What?”

“One day,” said Alison, “we went to the pub, and you had your pyjamas on underneath your tracksuit.”

“It was my birthday!”

Alison looked at Sparks.

“It was
my
birthday,” she said.

“Oh,” said Sparks.

“You don’t remember, do you?” Alison said.

“Yes, I do,” said Sparks.

“I had two Cokes and you had…”

“Vanilla vodka,” said Sparks. “Vanilla vodka and ginger ale. And…”

“Gin and something disgusting,” said Alison. “And we had a massive row and I dumped you.”

“I dumped you,” said Sparks.

“In your so-called world, maybe. But I distinctly remember dumping you,” said Alison.

“Oh well, all that’s in the past,” said Sparks, as much like an idiot as he could. “But… but I’m different now.”

“Yes, you’re dead,” said Alison.

She sat down.

“Sorry, I know I should have done the finding out how you’re dead and not dead part before the telling you why I was going to dump you part, but I’ve been wanting to get this off my chest for a long time now.”

“Oh good,” said Sparks. “Listen, I have to…”

“Tell me later, I want to know about your death,” said Alison. “Shit! I’d better phone your mum and tell her. She’ll be furious. And pleased,” Alison added, hastily. “But initially furious.”

“You’re taking this well,” said Sparks. “I thought you’d be more freaked.”

“I am freaked,” said Alison, “but I just got all that off my chest – I mean, I couldn’t shout it all at your grave, well, I could, in fact, I did, but you weren’t listening, being dead. And I am pleased you’re not dead, even though I’d still dump you. And I’m in love.”

“That’s what I want to talk…”

“Tell me later.”

Alison’s face lost any relaxedness it had had. “What are you doing with Joseph, Sparks?”

Things did not go well after that. Sparks said something about, oh, it’s Joseph now, Alison mentioned Kaye’s wallet, Sparks remarked on Kaye’s insane-looking photo, Alison said that she was in love with him, and Sparks, perhaps unwisely, confided that Kaye was a psychopath who planned to destroy the universe.

“You’re just jealous,” said Alison.

“Why?” said Sparks. “I don’t want to destroy the universe.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I don’t.”

“No, why the other?”

Sparks explained. He waited for the deja vu to kick in, having already explained most of it to another Alison, but it didn’t.
Perhaps
, he thought,
deja vu only happens when you haven’t actually deja vu’ed something
.

“I don’t know,” said Alison.

“Why not?” said Sparks. “You believed me last time.”

“There was no last time,” Alison said. “I’m not that Alison, with the bears. And I’m not the Alison in your world or whatever either.”

“So,” said Sparks, more triumphal than a parade, “you believe me. Possibly,” he added, lowering some mighty flags of conquest.

“I don’t know, I said,” Alison said. “You’re not a liar, Sparks, it’s one of your good points.”

“What are my other good points?”

“Shut up, I’m not in the mood. You’re not a liar, and while you have pretended to be some stupid things before, like a dog, once, you’ve never pretended to be dead. At least not in earnest.”

“I could be mad.”

“No,” said Alison, carefully. “You’re not. I’ve been around people who’ve… been mad.”

“You mean him. Kaye face.”

“Kaye’s his name. Putting ‘face’ after it doesn’t make him bad. Or mad.”

“But you do mean him. He is mad.”

Alison picked up Sparks’ tiny cup and looked into it as if it was a tiny porcelain well and she was at the bottom.

“He wasn’t in his... he wasn’t well. Mentally. But he’s OK now. I know it.”

“He didn’t look OK this afternoon. He was virtually frothing.”

“You’re wrong,” said Alison, although she didn’t sound convinced. “Funny, I can swallow all this time and space rubbish, but not…”

She got up.

“I feel like I have to choose,” she said. “I don’t know what, but I do. And whatever it is, Sparks, it isn’t you.”

She got up and left.

Sparks sat in companionless silence with himself until the cafe’s owner came over.

“I don’t know if you’re dead or not. It’s not uncommon in here to be either,” he said. “But I want £3.50 for the espresso, and I want you out of here.”