Read Three Steps Behind You Online
Authors: Amy Bird
‘Okay,’ I say. Why not?
‘So we’re going to offer you a settlement of two months’ salary if you sign up to the terms of this agreement.’
‘I want to raise a grievance,’ I say, remembering Adam’s advice of this morning.
‘What about?’ asks Prakesh.
I shrug.
‘If you raise a grievance, I press charges,’ says Steve.
I consider. Two months’ money is not very much. Not enough for me to afford a Maserati. But then, I don’t drive. Not really. Not like Jimmy. Plus I could get a job in the City. I could go to work with Adam. I could buy Luke some proper grey suits and really inhabit him. Or I could just devote my time to researching book number four.
‘Okay,’ I say.
Prakesh hands me a settlement agreement and tells me to see a lawyer. Why is everyone so obsessed with lawyers? Only the guilty need them, right? The confessedly guilty.
‘Am I free to go, then?’ I ask. It reminds of all those police interviews over the years. The second set, after the accident, I was just ‘helping the police with their inquiries’, so I generally was free to leave. So I would go, leaving them to listen back to the hour after hour of me on tape, telling them nothing of importance. Luckily, Adam didn’t give them book two. Or they might have found their motive. But in the first set of interviews, in the years before that, it was a mistake to ask that question. Because I wasn’t free to leave at all.
Prakesh tells me I can go. Eight knees move away from each other under the table as we push our chairs back.
‘Do I need to clear out my locker?’ I ask, walking towards it.
Prakesh shakes his head.
‘You’ll have plenty of opportunity later,’ he says, ‘after you’ve signed the agreement.’
‘And am I supposed to be working until I’ve signed it?’ I ask.
Again, Prakesh shakes his head. ‘You’re still suspended, mate. Plenty of time to write your diary.’
Steve snickers. I consider punching him again. But they would probably reduce the settlement to one month’s money. Besides, I have done my research now, about what fist against jaw sounds like. Were I to attack again, it would need to be with a different implement. A knife, say.
So I just nod at them all, and head for the door.
Outside, I catch a flash of red.
Nicole and her beret! Watching me again?
No. Just sun on Skoda.
No Nicole, with her midnight frowns.
I run over to Hendon station. Crossing the bridge over the railway line, I see a train approaching. If I run faster, swipe my Oyster, I could just make it. I can go wherever it’s going. Luke could do with the exercise, so I start to sprint. I build up speed, pushing people out of the way so I can reach my goal. As I come level with the station hut, the slope running down to the car park, I might just make it. But then I see the cars. And Adam.
Not Adam himself. Just essence of Adam. His car, the rear end sticking out beyond the rest of the cars in the car park, calling to me. I speed up my run, racing Luke to the car.
Who would win the race? [Breathe] Would the last lunge across the line make the difference? [Breathe] Would his opponent recover himself? [Breathe] Or would this be the end for Luke’s ambitions?[Last breath?]
Book four could end on a cliff-hanger, like that. Although I’m not sure who Luke’s opponent would be. Or why the race to the finish would be so important. I haven’t got that far in the plotting.
I slam into the back of the car, reaching my goal. I double over, recovering myself. There’s still a way for Luke to go, or for me to go, on the fitness stakes, if I want to seduce a girl by way of research. Which I do. I need to – want doesn’t come into it.
Behind me, I hear the train gather up speed again. I’ve missed my moment. I run my hands over the boot of Adam’s smooth black vehicle. Even the licence plate gleams, its personalised personality shining through. ‘AN12 XXX’. A gift from Nicole on their wedding day. I wish the plate was dirtier, less well looked after. I could give him another personalised plate, with my settlement money – fasten my love to both ends of the car. But I’d probably get the message wrong, overdo it, like with book two, and he’d leave it languishing in the garage. Nicole would win, again.
I imagine him waxing and polishing, the strokes of his hand over its shining skin, working so furiously that his wrist aches. I trace my hand over it too, so I can share in his rhythm. Back and forth I imagine us going, back and forth together.
But I’m kidding myself. He will pay someone else to clean it. This car hasn’t been touched, loved, by Adam at all. His fun happens inside it, controlling it, commanding its journey along the road. Without him in it, it’s dead. Adam inside gives things their significance, their importance. Things such as Nicole.
I hear another train. This time, I will catch it.
Leaving Adam’s car behind me, I run up the slope, into the station building, swipe my Oyster and run down the steps to the platform. I take a quick glance at the indicator. Perfect! An Adam train. I enter, pushing myself between the doors. Question is, shall I get off at Adam Central, aka West Hampstead, where he will not be now, or Adam City, aka Farringdon, and find him at work? Perhaps it’s too needy to follow him to work – although I could do with his advice on the lawyer. Besides, Nicole is as much use to me as he is, right now, given her significance, for my research. And with him out, she will be alone.
Have you ever experienced that sensation, when you arrive in the area where your best-loved lives, of being watched? Not in a sinister way, a Nicole way, but in an expectant way. As I step out on West Hampstead station, I feel the Adam bubble surround me. He may not be here right now, he may be at work, but I am here to serve his purpose – for my purpose is his purpose, really – and I can feel his spirit know that. ‘Behold,’ it says, ‘here is your servant come to wait upon your wife.’ It would be more accurate if it said, ‘Behold, here is your servant come to wait upon your wife, then seduce her for his research; think how close master and servant again will be.’ But it cannot know everything, and the fact of a beneficent eye watching me is enough.
Unfortunately, though, not all eyes are beneficent.
Some eyes drive brown cars.
In particular, some police eyes drive brown cars. A particular brown car. One I came to know quite well after the accident, because it kept appearing outside my home, and Adam’s home.
So when I see it parked at the top of Narcissus Road, I know police eyes are nearby.
And not just any police eyes. The piercing eyes of DC Pearce. The man to whom I owe my honed knowledge of lawyers, handcuffs and coffee machines. To add to all the ones I had, that first time, years ago, when it wasn’t him.
DC Pearce and his detective act. He was a very good actor. Method, probably. I can imagine him spending his childhood acting like a detective, wearing a mac, inspecting things with a magnifying glass, throwing flour over doorknobs, pretending he was dusting for finger prints. My parents bought me a kit like that, once. Adam and I tried to snort the flour, like normal kids. I hadn’t wanted to, but Adam had made me. It felt wrong – a present they’d given me, when they were alive. Snorting it, when they were dead. Adam said it was like what people used to do with snuff. That it would be fun. Adam said a lot of things.
And here is DC Pearce’s car, at the top of Narcissus Road.
The car is empty, so Pearce must be on the roam. Detecting. Further down the road. With Nicole, maybe? His fellow watcher.
I could just run.
I could run back to the train, catch it all the way to Adam City.
But actually, there’s no time for that. Because DC Pearce is walking right towards me.
Still the mac. Still the cigar. Still, too, presumably, his
Columbo
box set back at home, viewing guide covered with top tips for that one last question.
New, this time, though, is the woman by his side. A redhead. Not beret red, like Nicole. A real redhead. Pearce has lent her a mac, although he’s spared her the cigar. Fine. So they’re both the same school. More playing at being detectives. Which means I’ll need to play at being the innocent. Whatever it is I’m supposed to have done now. Adam wouldn’t have called them, would he? About my Jesus antics last night? Would Nicole?
DC Pearce smirks when he sees me. He mutters something to his colleague and points his cigar in my direction. She stares at me and nods to herself. She drops one step behind DC Pearce.
‘Danny boy!’ says DC Pearce. ‘Speak of the devil and he shall appear!’
I’ve missed his sense of humour.
So has he.
I extend my hand to shake his.
‘DC Pearce,’ I say.
‘DS,’ he corrects me.
Oh. A promotion. Surely not for anything involving me, or Helen. He hasn’t solved anything, yet, so far as I know.
‘Visiting our mutual friend, are you?’ D
S
Pearce booms. ‘Or that lovely wife of his, hey?’ I expect he would slap me on the back, if I would let him close enough. Burn a hole in my back with his cigar.
‘Sarge, should we really be mentioning …?’ says the redhead, in what she probably hopes is a whisper.
I look at DS Pearce and I think I detect a hint of an eye-roll.
‘Allow me to introduce my colleague,’ says Pearce. ‘Danny boy, this is DC Huhne, newly promoted.’ He winks at me. ‘We were all delighted when we heard she was going to shed her uniform.’
I see the woman’s jaw clench, but then a professional smile replaces it. Cold, courteous, functional. She extends her hand.
‘Mr Millard,’ she says.
Interesting. She already knows my surname. DS Pearce notices me notice. He has not been promoted for nothing. He leans forward.
‘We’ve been talking about you,’ he whispers conspiratorially.
‘Why?’ I ask, as if I want to know. Much better just to say ‘Good for you’, and walk off down the road.
Instead of answering, DS Pearce holds his palm out flat and looks at the sky.
‘Raining, Danny boy,’ he says.
‘No it isn’t,’ I say. I know his routine, what’s coming.
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it, Debbie?’ he says to the woman. She doesn’t answer, but pulls her mac tighter round herself. Good dog, well-trained. She’ll be rewarded with a biscuit later. Maybe a congratulatory cigar fed into that other sphincter.
‘Danny boy, why don’t you shelter in our car, until the worst of it’s eased off, hey?’ Pearce asks rhetorically, unlocking the car, and holding open the passenger door.
‘Are you going to handcuff me?’ I ask.
‘Are you going to resist our questions?’ Huhne counters.
I think about the cold hard steel on my wrists. I think about it on Nicole’s wrists. It would be better suited there. Different setting, same idea.
‘No,’ I say.
‘Right. Come on then,’ says Pearce. ‘Maybe Debbie will show you her cuffs, later, if you’re nice to her. Hey, Debbie?’
Debbie inclines her head, in what may be amusement, or agreement, or ‘I’ll sue you for harassment, you lecherous bastard’. As she walks to the rear doors of the car to get in, I notice that the heel of her shoe clacks and grinds along the pavement, a nail exposed. Too much street-walking. A sign of diligence, in a detective. Perhaps that’s what got her promoted, not her attractiveness as a side-kick.
DS Pearce’s shoes squeak. Still. Even so, they are effective to stamp out the light in his half-finished cigar.
I expect us to drive to the police station. Instead, Pearce offers me a doughnut – Krispy Kreme, sugar glaze – and puts on Classic FM.
‘Mozart’s good for the brain,’ he says. ‘Scientifically proven to help you think.’
‘What are you thinking about?’ I ask.
‘Not a lot,’ he says.
What would be a silence is filled first by violins, then by DC Huhne.
‘We’ve had fresh information,’ says Huhne. ‘From an informant.’
‘Who?’ I ask. Then, ‘About what?’
‘How many things are you entangled with the police about, Danny?’ asks Huhne, half-joking, half-inspecting his doughnut. ‘The same old thing: your friend’s dead wife.’
For a moment I think he means Nicole is dead. My stomach does an excited jump. Then I realise he means Helen. My stomach settles again. At least this means Adam hasn’t phoned in about last night. I should never have thought that of him – too treacherous.
‘We’re duty bound to investigate it,’ continues Huhne.
Pearce takes a bite of his doughnut.
‘What my enthusiastic colleague means is that we’re duty bound to be
seen
to investigate it.’ He cocks his head at Huhne. ‘She’ll learn.’
‘So what are we doing now?’ I ask.
‘Going through the motions,’ says Pearce.
I nod, as though this means something.
‘Nicole?’ I ask.
‘We couldn’t possibly say,’ says Huhne.
Pearce licks at some glaze and smacks his lips.
‘Is getting hit by someone on the dodgems fresh evidence?’ I ask.
‘Certain suspicions have been raised,’ says Huhne. ‘We have to take them seriously.’ She is just showing off now, trying to tell me and/or Pearce that she knows what she’s doing, isn’t just a piece of skirt. Pearce flicks a look at her in the rear-view mirror. Then he turns round to regard her properly. Huhne pulls her skirt over her knees.
‘What the lovely Debbie means is that, because the dear deceased lady’s father still insists on paying most of our salaries through his taxes, we have to show willing,’ adds Pearce.
Oh. The money thing again. Right.
‘So we can say we took you in for questioning, and we didn’t have cause to arrest you,’ Pearce elaborates.
‘Or even caution me.’
‘And everyone’s happy,’ says Pearce, mouth downturned.
‘I wasn’t on the original investigation,’ says Huhne. ‘So humour me.’
I wonder if this is good cop bad cop. Or lazy cop keen cop. If they’ve planned all of this.
‘What were you doing on the night in question?’ asks Huhne.
‘February nineteenth?’ I ask.
‘What other night would I be talking about?’ she asks.
I shrug.
‘Is there another night you want to talk to us about?’ she questions, not letting it drop. I was right – diligent.