Three Steps Behind You (11 page)

As I take a sip of the bubbles, I allow my eyes to dart across the street. All is still, the curtains closed. I wonder how long my fresh start will last.

‘I found this place the other day, Dan, after we bumped into each other,’ says Nicole.

‘Oh, you bumped into each other in Soho?’ says Adam. ‘Should I be worried?’ he asks in a jovial tone that shows he knows he needn’t be. Or rather thinks he needn’t be.

‘I was window shopping.’

‘In Soho? Naughty!’

Adam kisses her. I avert my eyes. They naturally find themselves drawn to the window opposite. There’s no light coming through the curtains, no illuminated shadows.

‘I was looking at the beers next door. For you,’ Nicole adds. ‘Not for me, obviously.’ She pats her stomach.

‘Too fattening?’ I ask. Then I look at her wineglass and see it is filled with water.

‘Or have you given up?’

‘For the moment,’ she says, looking at Adam, smiling.

Oh. I have been here before, with Adam and his wives.

‘Congratulations?’ I ask.

‘We haven’t had the scan yet, mate, really early days – but yes. Nic and I are starting a family.’

‘Well done,’ I say, and raise a glass. I remember congratulating Helen, too. Shortly before she died.

Adam never talks about the little boy or girl that he lost, with that wife.

I suppose s/he wasn’t very big yet, inside her. Helen wasn’t showing, through her clothes. I wonder if Nicole will show. She isn’t yet, but what she’s wearing is baggy. I’d better get on quickly with my research or she’ll be too big for me to get close to. It’s no good, just cuddling. Luke needs to go where Adam has been.

‘So when’s it due?’ I ask. ‘Do I need to cash in my settlement cheque to add to your family silver, or have I got a while to save?’

‘I thought you were buying a suit, mate!’ says Adam.

Oh Christ. The suit.

Or more importantly, the jacket.

How could I have forgotten about the jacket?

Adam starts talking about lawyers and agreements. I nod along but there is nothing he can be saying of more interest to me than the question of my jacket. Of Luke’s jacket. Which is still in Ally’s flat. Where Ally may or may not have been murdered. By me. Or Luke. Us.

I think back. Is there anything about the jacket that can identify me? There’s obviously no name label: just the Moss Bros tag. And I don’t remember that being numbered, or anything that could link that specific jacket to a specific customer. But I guess there could be 1,001 pieces of me all over that jacket. Dandruff, hair follicles, blood from my wrists – anything. And the tissue, in the pocket, with the lipstick. I signed that Luke, didn’t I? I must have done. Yes, yes, I did, I signed it ‘Posh Luke’, I remember. That’s something at least. But that still leaves the jacket.

It will be okay. There’s no reason for them to connect the jacket with me. I was in Feltham too early to be included in the DNA database. Even if they make inquiries with the Moss Bros people, there must be hundreds of people borrowing jackets every week. Even special jackets. If I take the jacket back, it will be fine.

I look at my watch. Eight p.m. Will the shops be open now? Can I buy a new jacket and return it to the store this evening. Or should I wait? The suit’s not due back until next week. Will it look odd if I return it early?

‘Dan. Dan!’

Adam is calling my name, his hand on my shoulder.

‘You were miles away, mate. Your food’s here. Looks grand.’

I look down at my plate. There is some soup. It is red. I don’t want it.

Don’t alert suspicion. Try to be Luke. Maybe he likes soup?

Luke picks up the spoon and grips it firmly by the handle. He dips it deep into the soup and draw out a pool of red. He raises it to his mouth and sucks it in. Rich tomato flavours engulf his palate. One spoonful at a time will not be enough. He picks up the bowl and puts it to his lips. He pours the soup down his throat, not caring where it goes, down his neck, down his shirt—

‘Dan!’

This time it is Nicole.

I look down at my shirt. It is covered in red soup.

‘This is so embarrassing,’ says Nicole.

‘Mate, what are you doing?’ asks Adam. ‘You’re not in Feltham now!’

‘Feltham?’ asks Nicole.

I look at Adam and I see that Nicole doesn’t know.

‘Why Feltham?’ repeats Nicole.

‘I was born there,’ I say.

‘No you weren’t,’ she says. ‘You were born in Staines. Like Adam. You said so.’

I look at Adam. He shakes his head slowly at me. I keep looking at him. This is his marriage. It is not my territory.

‘Mate, can I tell her?’ Adam asks me. ‘She won’t tell anyone.’

I shrug. I see where this is going.

‘Dan spent some time in Feltham Young Offenders Institute once,’ says Adam.

‘Oh, what, helping them with reading schemes and things? I know some writers do that?’ Nicole says. I detect a lack of sincerity in her tone. She says ‘writers’ in inverted commas.

‘Yes,’ says Adam, as I say, ‘No.’

Nicole looks at both of us.

Adam changes his answer to ‘No’. There is no sense in being wholly dishonest.

I listen while Adam tells her a story about a misunderstanding, and a girl having to explain herself to her parents.

By the end of the story, Nicole is scowling at me. Then she seems to remember something and her expression changes.

‘Poor Dan,’ she says, patting my hand on the table. It is the first time she has touched me.

Our main courses arrive. I see Nicole and I have ordered plaice. I tuck the napkin into my shirt as a bib and begin to tear the flesh away from the bones. Jacket, jacket, jacket. How do I get it back?

‘My victim support officer called today,’ says Adam.

At Adam’s words, I choke.

‘Is it a bone?’ asks Adam, all concern.

I shake my head, and wave for him to carry on.

‘They still want me to talk about it. Tell the police.’

‘You should do, honey,’ says Nicole.

I manage to splutter in a sip of water.

‘Went down the wrong way,’ I say.

Adam looks at me briefly, just long enough to check I’m okay. He shakes his head. ‘No. I don’t want to relive it,’ he says.

I take a fork from the table and begin to play with it, while I listen.

‘But it might help you, darling. To get over it,’ says Nicole.

‘I
am
over it,’ says Adam.

I draw the fork over my thighs under the table. It feels quite nice, distracting. I try to concentrate on the four prongs furrowing my leg. I wonder if Ally would have liked it. Like it? Or if Nicole would.

‘You know, I guess what with Helen’s accident –’ Adam is saying.

‘Hit and run, darling.’

‘– happening so soon after, I just kind of moved on.’

‘We’ll find out who did it, darling. Don’t worry.’

I tentatively run the fork along Nicole’s thigh. She brushes it away.

‘The accident?’ says Adam.

I try a bit harder.

‘Both,’ she says. It becomes two syllables as she is surprised by the fork under the table.

She looks at me.

I look back.

I apply more pressure to the fork.

Then I see her pick her fork off the table.

She puts it under the table and she runs it up and down my thigh. Hard.

I see. I am seducing her. She wants to play. Or else, it is a sign. A sign that she thinks she has got me, skewered, that she will not give up, even though the police have.

I press the prongs harder into her skin. This is what Luke would do.

Without her husband knowing it, he slid his hand beneath the table and ran the fork up and down her thigh. Harder, he pressed, harder and harder, until it became clear she was enjoying the thrill, holding back the pain. All the while, she is doing the same to him. Then he wonders – is she doing the same with her husband? What would it be like if he did, too? Could he? Would he dare, after all that had happened? Luke looks at the table. There is no other fork, just a knife. He takes it with his spare hand starts to run it up and down the husband’s thigh and—

‘Hey!’ says Adam.

Nicole’s fork falls away from my thigh.

My knife hits the ground.

I jump up. It is not safe for Luke to be here.

‘I have to go,’ I say. ‘There’s something I need to do.’

I will go and find the jacket, to keep me safe, to keep Luke safe.

When I am halfway to the door I turn back and look at Adam. He is staring at me. Like when Nicole stared at me on the dodgems. Like he knows.

Chapter 3

I wait for Nicole’s red beret to disappear from view as she and Adam leave the restaurant. They have taken their time, sitting there, all evening, while I’m out here, looking in. I walk back along Old Compton Street until I reach the door of the apartment building. I put out my finger to touch the buttons, then retreat again. There may be a crime within. I look in my pocket for a tissue, but there are none. I open my backpack and tear out a leaf from my notebook, dipping my head as someone walks by. Then I lay the paper over the keypad and touch in the numbers. There is a click as the door releases. My memory, on this point, has triumphed.

As I ascend the stairs, I wonder if I want Ally to be alive. It would make things simpler for retrieving the jacket were she not. But then Luke would be a murderer. That would be my research, and I’d have to use it again. If she is alive, how will she respond to me being here? I reach the door of her apartment. If I were her, alive, inside that flat, I would want revenge.

I eye up the lock. I don’t really know what to do with it. I take out my keys and prod at it, being sure to hold the doorknob with my piece of paper. Nothing. I take out my notebook again, and unweave the spiral metal binding enough to have a few inches to insert into the lock. I stick it in and twist and turn but get no positive reaction.

There must be a way in. I think about Ally, about how easy it was to get her drunk, to get into her. She must have a way of getting into her flat when she’s left her bag in a bar, or forgotten her keys altogether. There is a mat. I lift it. Keys, on a little heart key-ring. Cute. I snatch them up.

I realise I am touching them with my bare hands. Never mind. I shall have to keep them.

I insert a key into the lock. The key turns and I push the door open, pocketing the keys.

I pause for a moment and listen.

Nothing.

I open the door further and peer into the flat. All is dark. No – not quite. There is a faint glow coming from the main room. Alive, then? I think of what weapons I have. Only my fists. I clench them and push inside.

There is a bundle on the bed. I cannot see whether it’s a body or a sleeping person or a duvet. I walk towards it. It does not move. Should I just move closer to see, to know? There is an arm there, hanging, I think. I could go further, grab the wrist, take the pulse. But what if the hand grabs me back?

I must focus on the jacket. The jacket. The jacket. Where would she put the jacket? It can’t be on the bed. Unless of course she has got up, since I left her there. It’s not on the sofa. I pick up the remaining lit candle and look about me. No jacket. Wardrobe? I see a hessian-covered stand in the corner of the room. Is that a wardrobe? I take the candle over to it and lift up the covering. A tumble of cloth falls out on me. She must have heard that! I blow out the candle and keep quiet. I don’t move. There is no sound from the bed. Is she playing dead, or is it real? Or perhaps she’s just a deep sleeper, drugged to forget, like other people I could name. I could take the risk, switch on the light, look at her, look for the jacket properly. But no – outside they would see. Why is the light on? they would ask. I move over to bed. I stand staring at her, moving closer and closer. I try to detect REM beneath the blindfold. Nothing. I wonder if I should try to frame her, make it look like she killed herself. Rig up a noose from the ceiling. Leave some paracetamol by the bed. Smooth down her insides. Take off the blindfold.

But I find I cannot touch her.

I have what I need for Luke. Her body is nothing to me.

I just need to get the jacket. Or it will be something to me. In the darkness, I can’t see any fresh avenue in the main room. Does she have a coat rack in the entrance hall? I head back there, hands outstretched in front of me. Then I lower them. Better to hit my face against something than leave a print.

In the dark I make out a coat stand. And the grey sheen of my jacket. I need not have gone in there at all.

I check the pockets for the lipstick note. Yes, there it is. I drop it on the floor. If I can’t frame Ally, I can frame Luke. Dan was never here. I can leave.

It is only when I have my bit of paper on the door handle that I hear the creak behind me.

Chapter 4

I let the paper drop. Then very slowly I turn. With the candle gone, there is only a dark avenue of shadows. Is there something there? A shape? I could move back into it. But I don’t know what I will find. And whether what I find will have a knife. I must leave, now.

I turn again, hurrying this time. Using the jacket, I open the door. I slip out of the flat, down the stairs and into the street. I check for red berets. There are none. Good. Nicole has gone home with Adam. Bad.

You would think I would know if a person is dead. I have spent enough time with dead bodies. Well, just two, but important ones. With Mum I knew she was dead because the hospital said. With Dad it was different, though. And to be fair to myself, now, with Ally, I didn’t know that Dad was dead. I mean, he wasn’t breathing. And he didn’t have a pulse. And he didn’t speak. Plus he was suspended from the ceiling. But, you know, I didn’t want him to be dead. And I’d just come back from confirmation classes, so I’d spent two hours being filled with the glory of living to serve God. I was only going to them because Dad said Mum would have wanted me to have them, even though he’d lately started saying he didn’t think a good and loving God would have taken her from us, and he’d stopped taking me to church. They seemed pretty keen on a good and loving God at the confirmation classes and living as a disciple of Christ. So it didn’t make sense for Dad to be dead. God wouldn’t have allowed two dead parents, would he?