Three Steps Behind You (31 page)

Parry.

Circle.

Lunge backwards, backwards, backwards. Circle. Step, step, lunge. One arm back behind me, always.

Hit! But no blood, just a raised knife, closer and closer. Lunge backwards, backwards, and I’m at the edge of the kitchen work surface. The hand behind my back strikes the kettle, and the still hot water pours out over me.

He is so close, with the knife. Can I parry, can I block?

Oh, he’s going to score!

But not the torso – my wrist.

‘No points, no points! Out of zone!’

But hit, hit, hit, he goes, still at my wrist. I drop my sabre.

Now, disengage, Adam. Disengage!

‘Adam? Disengage?’

He pulls my other arm from behind my back.

‘Bad play, bad play!’ I tell him, but he does not listen.

He seizes my wrist.

Hit, hit, hit. Slice, slice, slice.

Blood, blood, blood.

Why doesn’t he disengage?

I slide to the floor, and his face over me is everything, everywhere. Both the light and blocking out the light.

Still, he doesn’t disengage. Still, the knife goes in. Still, the hot water dribbles down from the worktop.

And then I understand.

Or perhaps I’ve always known.

I
am the lobster.

Chapter 11

Adam so close now. Leaning over me. Blood pouring from my veins.

‘Do you know, Dan, what it will look like?’ he asks.

What is ‘it’?

Heaven? Hell? Gush, gush goes the blood.

‘It will look, Dan, like you killed Helen.’

Oh, that ‘it’. But wait, I don’t understand. I shake my head.

‘I’ve always remembered, Dan, that you were willing to take the rap for me. Now you must do it again.’

He speaks in tongues, in parallels. I don’t understand.

‘You’ve given them all the evidence, Dan. Your “love” for me, in that notebook. A sure-fire motive – jealousy.’

Adam needs me. He is wrong. He doesn’t have the facts.

‘I don’t drive,’ I manage, because it’s true.

He maybe smirks, I think. All blurs.

‘Sure, you don’t have a licence. But all those cars you hired out for me, you and Jimmy, in the name Jeremy Bond? With your motive, that suddenly looks a whole lot different. Who’s to say you weren’t driving them yourself? Establishing an innocent pattern, before one night – crash! That’s what the police will think, with my suggestion.’

‘But your parents …’ I wheeze.

‘Did you really think I was using that car to visit them? Well, of course you did – that’s what I told you. While I made you my little scapegoat, in case I needed one. Nobody saw me in that car, Dan, except you and Jimmy. And no one saw Jimmy in it, that night. That’s why he got the Maserati. But they can imagine you in it. Plus, do you want to know what I found, Dan, in one of your rucksacks? I found a map. A map of the street on which my Helen had her class. And on that map, with the same ink of the pen you have loved for years – your special red-ink pen – There is a line running a long the street, and then an ‘X’ just where Helen died.’

I don’t have a map. I had an aunt. I had other priorities, when she was dying. I had my Adam bliss just gone. He knows this. He has lost his grip of reality.

‘And of course,’ Adam continues, ‘we know now you’re a killer, because of the girl in the flat.’

His words whirl. He is the bestower of truth, the Word, but he doesn’t know the truth.

‘It was for you, the girl,’ I tell him. ‘Practice. For Nicole. Be where you have been. Closeness.’

‘Yes, Dan. It was for me. A big help,’ He says. You see, he understands. ‘And Nic, too – that was for me.’ Yes, yes, it was, to be close to him. ‘That’s why you killed her.’

No, you see he is wrong. I didn’t kill her. He did. Couldn’t, Luke and I, though we wanted to.

I try to tell him but my lips are dry. I wish he would moisten them, perhaps with a sponge, but I don’t think he wants me speaking now. This is his time.

‘Yes, Dan – you killed her. And then you killed yourself. Slit your wrists. Then, because you are a coward, and cannot stand the pain, you set the house on fire.’

Did I? Is that what I did? Don’t remember doing that.

‘And don’t get me wrong, Dan. I’ll be sad. I’m brilliant at grief, remember? When they find your two, charred bodies, when they tell me my best friend has murdered both my wives out of love for me, I’ll be devastated.’

I am still his best friend. That is good. God Adam is good.

‘But I’ll pity you, too. I can think of the press statement now: “I always thought of Dan as my one loyal friend who would do anything for me. It’s true, he did. I pity him for the misplaced love he felt for me. But that doesn’t make what he did right. In fact, here’s a special place for him, in hell. Now, I just want to try to get on with my life, the best I can.” That’s what I’ll say, Dan, and I’ll raise a glass to you when I’m on my sofa, comfortable at home.’

I see. I see. Clever Adam. Three steps ahead, always. First Helen. Then Nicole. And now me. He wants me to sacrifice my life’s meaning to him. To stay here, to bleed, to burn, in amber flames.

‘You always wanted to take the rap for me, Dan,’ he says, leaning over close, so close that I can almost count his eyelashes. ‘Now’s your chance. Because that’s what happens, when you betray me.’

Chapter 12

Vengeful, when there was no wrong. His wrath, upon me.

Love! I say. All just love, for you.

Going, he says.

Breathe
.

No! This is our together time, Nicole gone. Long game over, I say. Our time, Adam, our time! This I have waited for!

Going, he says again.

Breathe
.

Kiss goodbye, then, at least, my Adam? No. No love, from him.

So much blood. On floor, not in me. But job unfinished. Has not seen it the end. Why go now? Stay! Just moments longer, would be something.

Breathe
.

But listen, he speaks. It will be finished. He will give me peace. Because gas. Gas turned on now, by him. Gas and candle and boom! Will burn. Ha ha! says he, then goes, out the backdoor, away.

Eyelids close. Dark.

Eyelids open. Dark with pretence of light.

Breathe?

His knife he’s left by my side, his wife on the altar.

Candle, there, still burns. Soon, when there’s enough gas, it will be very suddenly warm.

Could rise, could blow it out.

Could slide, on belly, through the door.

Could escape through trail of blood.

But no. Adam knows. He knows I am His loyal servant, that I will do this for Him.

One last thing my Adam wants of me. I must serve him his love. Why defy Him? Why not make final sacrifice? He knows all.

Yes, breathe
.

Cannot be closer now.

Must quicken His desires.

Must breathe to die more soon.

Breathe, breathe, breathe. Gas inhale!

And will I not then know, in dying, what no other author knows? I will be the first chronicler of life’s greatest mystery. If I can write, in my mind, what no other man has known? Why tire Luke with love and lust when always it’s been true, life’s best secret is death? He who can write death can write all life, according to Luke. I will write on the paper of my brain. I will be authentic. And we will rise above, Luke and I, transcend genre, our work be read on high! It will be beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! Adam will find my mind after I am dead and He will know the artistic heights to which I’ve risen.

And also I will serve Him, my Adam God. Direct, obedient servant. Have my name, use me … Why tears, then, in my eyes?

Tears are the enemy of fire. Must not be weak, now, at this final moment. Must go beyond what He asks – must do more. Ignition, here above me. Can click with a crack and spark will boom! And He, Adam, will know, then, I have truly sacrificed myself for Him here. The truest disciple.

So now: the triumph of my method. The ultimate piece of research. The final effort. Behold as I with my last strength scribble the paper of my mind!

Chapter 13

He hoists himself to his knees
.

He cannot lift his arms. They are drained of power, now
.

Instead, he hovers his chin above the spark ignition
.

Imagines the bang, imagines the flames, imagines the heat. The crisp to which hair and skin will burn, the flesh inside will scream, skeleton made outer-most when they come to find him. And now, for what is here, they will find him truly. The books may burn in paper but they will live on, too, like him
.

Soon, he will know these things, and you will know them too, for here they will appear, on page of mind, mind of page, always to be. Judge, judge, my knowledge, and use it well
.

And all for Adam will have helped, all for you, all for me. He died to live, he lived to die, he died to write. So close, we are, will be. And so close will he now be to life everlasting, our own paradise garden, for to play again with Adam, our eternal Father, no knowledge of anything or anyone else
.

But here is the knowledge I will give to the people left behind. All will know how we end, for it will be written here. All is good. Love is good. What follows is honest Man. Emancipation of artistic talent, posthumously to be hailed amongst the greatest living works of anyone who died. A great and full and lengthy account, pages and pages of mind-writing, of the experience of death. Take note, all, of how we end
.

So now, in this momentous act, this mighty act, given to him by Him, for to serve the muse, he presses the ignition with a click
.

And –

Loved
Three Steps Behind You
? Then turn the page for an exclusive extract from Amy Bird’s first psychological thriller:

Yours is Mine

Chapter 1

The day the invitation appeared in her email inbox, Kate Dixon was ready to give up.

Cards congratulating her on the success of her dad’s funeral the previous week were still pouring through the letterbox of his Kielder cottage. ‘I thought it went well, all things considered,’ they said, or, ‘He would have been very pleased.’ Kate knew the blue silk inside the coffin had been fetching, but she still thought Dad would have preferred to be alive. They could be going for a jog, even now, in the Kielder National Park surrounding his cottage, like they used to.

At least Neil had been there to fulfil husbandly duties, the Navy having flown him home for the funeral. He’d even come to the pulpit with her when she’d read, gently caressing her fingers when she began to cry.

‘Don’t worry,’ he’d whispered, smiling that sweet Neil smile. ‘I’m here.’

Yes, she had thought, returning his smile, Neil was there. He would protect her, and soon they’d be laughing together again, reminiscing about happier times.

Then Neil had re-bereaved her after the funeral by telling her he had to return to the Gulf for a further three months.

Without Neil to soothe her, Kate sat on the sofa in the cottage, playing the last year back in her mind. She remembered the emptiness in her dad’s eyes when the prognosis had worsened. Cancer’s a bastard, he’d said. He’d been right. Dad had refused a nurse, or a hospice, so Kate had suffered with him.

Dad.

Kate sighed. Trying to push out of her mind his vomiting, his cries of pain, his final night when she’d held him into peace, she pulled herself off the sofa to get her iPhone from the desk. She caught sight of herself in the mirror and found tears forming in her eyes. It happened every time she saw her reflection. How was she supposed to propel that pale ghost of a self onwards? Or summon the energy to move their stuff back to Portsmouth? Or get the composure to don a suit and speak to a client there – or even her secretary? She couldn’t work remotely forever.

Waking the phone, she checked for mail. Come on, somebody must have something to share – Neil if he’d reached the ship, or a social networking update. Finally, the phone vibrated.

‘Want to stop the world and get off – into somebody else’s world?’

The title of the new email was so apposite that Kate couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. She opted for both. This must be junk mail, though, right? She should delete it without reading it. But she didn’t. She touched through into the email.

‘Dear Kate,’ it began. At least they’d bothered to personalise it.

‘Bored? Lonely? Frustrated?’

One out of three, thought Kate.

‘Or just want a change? Here is your chance to take a break from your life and step into someone else’s – while knowing that your own life is in safe hands. This is for serious research for me – but a break for you. If you fancy living somebody else’s life (and in a London flat) for a few months and have your own property that you can offer, look no further. Simply reply to this email with a short description of your property location, job (if you have one) and a contact telephone number, or call the number below. Interview and details to be arranged with suitable applicant(s).’

It then set out a London telephone number, and was signed off by someone called Anna.

Nowhere to enter her credit card number, so she wasn’t being phished, Kate thought. Perhaps it was some new market research tool to get information for a dating site or a property search engine? It was surely far too naïvely constructed to be genuine. Who would expect anyone to pick up the phone to do a property-exchange (or exchange lives, whatever that meant) for the purposes of some mysterious research? No, it must be a scam, she decided, as she pressed delete with relish. There may be some poor fools out there unworldly enough to dial a line on divert to some premium-rate number, but she would not be one of them.

Still, she thought, how perfect it would be to step away from all of this and leave it to somebody else for a while, without putting her own way of life at risk. It was as if the marketing person behind the ad had seen into her thoughts. She knew that at some point she would have to rouse herself and start the task of sifting through her dad’s belongings and documents and sort out the logistics of returning to Portsmouth. A sudden bolt to a flat in London would be a blessed escape.