Three Steps Behind You. Amy Bird

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СКАЧАТЬ brings you here?’ she asks.

      So. She is playing the innocent.

      ‘The police,’ I say, wanting to see her reaction.

      She handles it well.

      ‘The police?’ she asks, eyes wide. Not quite as wide as when she looked at me after the dodgems, but wide enough.

      ‘They threatened to handcuff me,’ I say.

      ‘But what for?’ she asks.

      ‘Do you like handcuffs, Nicole?’ I ask, since we are doing direct questioning.

      ‘What for?’ she repeats.

      ‘For the person not wearing the handcuffs to do all sort of exotic things to the person wearing them,’ I say, pretending I think we’re not talking about the police.

      ‘What were the police here for, Dan?’ she persists.

      DS Pearce is much better at this kind of thing than I am. Maybe that’s because he is actually attracted to the person he is sleazing at. I need the practice.

      ‘About Helen,’ I say.

      ‘Helen?’ Nicole repeats at me. I think I see the flicker of satisfaction around the edge of her lips. Well, I’m not going to let her have that satisfaction.

      ‘Someone gave them a tip-off about me. But they don’t believe it. Just going through the motions. Their words, not mine.’

      Nicole does a little frown, so quick you wouldn’t notice, unless you were looking for it. But she will not give up that easily in her little game.

      ‘You, involved in Helen’s death?’ she asks. ‘Why on earth would they think that?’

      ‘I told you,’ I say. ‘They don’t.’

      ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I mean, that’s good. I can’t imagine, you doing that to Adam. To Helen.’

      ‘Can’t you?’ I ask, trying to get her to hold my gaze.

      She manages it. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Still,’ she continues, ‘the police should take it seriously, any fresh information.’

      I shrug. ‘Not if it’s without foundation.’

      ‘But how do they know, unless they investigate?’

      I want to ask ‘So you think they’d find I killed Helen, then, if they investigate it, this little tip-off of yours?’ But if I do that, I might as well abandon book four. She’ll think I’m out for her blood. For that book, when it comes to it, I can gag and I can bind to my character’s content, stop her telling little tales. She will have handcuffs then, whether she likes it or not:

      The ties are fast around her mouth. Next door, the water boils, for their feast. The lobster, restrained, will soon be ready. There’ll just be time to finish devouring, before her husband arrives.

      Nicole keeps speaking, making the most of her current freedom.

      ‘You won’t mind me not asking you in for tea, will you?’ she says. ‘It’s just that I’m on my way out and …’

      She casts her eyes down to the pavement. If she really doesn’t want to look at me, I’d be happy to blindfold her. That’s part of the plot of book four too.

      ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘I understand. You can walk with me to the station.’

      She flicks her eyes up, panicked. ‘Actually, I just need to pick up one or two things from inside. I don’t want to keep you.’

      Very well, then. I’ll visit Adam in the City. Nicole will be a slow burn. The flames will keep flickering beneath her, I’ll be sure of that – she won’t keep me from visiting Adam, visiting her. It is through Adam I will win her. For Luke, always for Luke. And it is through her I will again be close to Adam.

      This time, as I walk back to the station, there is no comforting feeling of a benevolent eye. Pearce is watching me. Huhne is watching me. Nicole follows me all the way from Narcissus Road. She disguises it well. Every time I turn around, and see that flash of red, there is just a pillar box, or a holly bush, or a robin redbreast. She hides that split-second before I turn round, you see. She has chosen her urban camouflage wisely. She’ll follow me until she finds what she’s looking for. Good, in a way, if she likes to get close. That’s what I’m after. But what worries me is that she will stop me seeing Adam. I mean, not really, because no one can stop me seeing Adam – he’ll always be there, in my mind’s eye. But she might stop me being in Adam’s presence. Permanently. If she manages to get me arrested. So she will definitely need to be gagged, long term.

      As she sits behind me, watching me, on the train, she disguises herself when I turn around as the emergency stop handle. Infantile behaviour, but clever – she knows I will never close my hands around that, throttling it to stop the train moving along into Adam City. So she can just sit and wait and watch, gathering her ‘evidence’, wearing a mac, playing police, in league with Huhne, in league with them all. Possibly, even, in league with Adam.

       Chapter 17

      Reaching Adam does not take long. Rather, reaching his office. Reaching him is a different matter.

      It’s just a matter of a simple train journey from West Hampstead to Farringdon. We always used to get the train together, Adam and I, so it’s odd to be taking it alone. When I say together, I allow for the fact we were in separate carriages. We had a little ritual, after we were released. Adam’s parents sent both of us to college to get our A-levels. Different colleges, but the same train-line went to both, if you made a few changes. I made a few changes. First of all, I had to get the train to Staines. It wasn’t that far from Uxbridge, where Adam’s parents had rented me a flat. I could have used my inheritance then, to rent it, but they said they felt in loco parentis, that they’d let me down. Being in loco parentis didn’t mean they treated Adam and I as brothers. We were to be separated. Luckily, I fought back for the both of us. Every morning, I made sure we boarded the same train. Every evening, after Adam came out of his college full of maths and economics, I would walk to the station with him (well, behind him). My bag had business administration in it but my brain didn’t. My brain was full of Adam. On the last day of college, after exams, Adam dropped back to talk to me. It was nice to hear him talk about how well he’d done. He sounded so clever, so self-assured. We sat next to each other on the train and he told me more about it. I asked if he wanted to come back to my flat. He couldn’t. He had a date. He got off the train two stops early. I stayed on.

      From Farringdon, I take the Tube to Liverpool Street. People in dark suits zap around holding document cases. I do not exist to them; I have to stand aside in the street to let them past otherwise we would just collide, and I would have to apologise. I try to be how Luke must be – imagine the suited swagger, battering people out of the way with his broad chest. I make an attempt but I don’t have the armour, so I am knocked off the pavement into the gutter. Nicole is close behind me, I know without looking. The red ties and poppies that people are wearing remind me. Nicole and I are like the poppy really – I am that deep black circular centre, and she is the red, constantly surrounding me, but flimsy. I could tear her away in an instant. But Luke in all his greenery is our stem, uniting us. Pinned to Adam until he chooses to cast СКАЧАТЬ