The Third Person Read online

  My guess? Kareem thought he’d struck lucky. He’d found a beautiful, young girl who got off on the idea of being raped. Risk-free, trouble-free: his dream come true.

  That was what I was counting on, anyway.

  I sipped my beer and continued to type. On screen, Kareem was describing how he was raping Amy. Like a good little girl, I made sure I (SCREAM)ed in all the right places.

  Cybersex takes place in every Chat room on the internet. Due to the ephemeral nature of the web, most of these Chat rooms are open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. They never close. Members vary, of course, but a good Chat room could expect to have an average of at least one hundred people logged in and talking at any hour of the day, and some of those people will be having sex in private rooms. There are thousands of Chat rooms on the internet. What this means is that there might well be as many people fucking on-line at any given moment as there are people dying, or being born.

  You meet someone in a Chat room – usually by a random message inviting you to go private, and you chat for a while, sizing each other up. It works best if you’re both fast typists, and there’s no point at all unless there’s a chemistry there. In that sense, it’s the same as a physical meeting. Think it’s boring and clinical? You’re wrong: it’s not. It’s amazing how much personality shines through in the way you type. People fall in love on-line. It’s exactly as real as any other conversation, and often more telling: you can always scan back through what you’ve said to clarify meaning. It’s not like spoken words, which just drift away. Nothing on-line can ever be properly forgotten.

  The act itself, then.

  Some people cyber with strangers: others prefer to be in a relationship. And there are as many ways to do it as there are with physical sex. Some people talk through an actual, imagined sexual encounter, complete with (bracketed physical instructions) and hyperlinks to on-line pictures, while others just talk about what they’re physically doing at the time: undressing; masturbating; being masturbated. Maybe it’s real and maybe it isn’t. The cybersex ends when it ends – usually with both partners having reached orgasm, however many miles apart from each other. Sometimes, the whole procedure will progress to phone sex; more often, though, the two people involved will never encounter each other again. Such is life. At least on the internet it’s nice and clean, you can break it off at any time, and there’s no risk of disease. No shrieking, unwanted kids for the state to support afterwards.

  That’s how it usually is, anyway.

  But sometimes, on-line lovers will actually meet.

  Kareem had taken a break, presumably to clean up. He’d fucked Amy hard, before turning her over and – eventually – coming in her backside, with her neck locked in the crook of his elbow, half-choking her. His mother would no doubt have been proud.

  I took down the dregs of my beer and immediately wanted another one, but knew it would ruin me. I wanted ten three-minute rounds on the punchbag before turning in that night, and so a second beer would just have to wait. I played absently with the neck of the bottle, waiting for Kareem to return to the keyboard.

  After a couple of minutes:

  ‹~KaREEM~›: back

  Conversation was usually thin on the ground before we cybered, but he tended to be far more prolific afterwards. It was as though he’d released the tension and could relate to me as a human being again. I suppose that made sense. Talking to me beforehand would have killed his fantasy dead, whereas now he could light up a cigarette and kick back a little.

  ‹~KaREEM~›: u like that?

  Amy17: not so much tonight

  A little disappointment for him, there. I could almost smell the palpably wounded male pride in the next message, which arrived on-screen quickly.

  ‹~KaREEM~›: why?

  I guess no man likes to leave his woman unsatisfied. Kareem was probably worried that his dream girl was about to bale on him, and I figured he’d do just about anything to stop that from happening.

  A few quick messages, punctuated by the [RETURN] key.

  Amy17: not enough anymore

  Amy17: need more than that

  Amy17: need more than just words on a screen

  Amy17::-(x 1000

  I was surprised by how excited I felt. There was a fluttering in my guts: the thrill of the hunt. Anything could happen in the next few minutes, and it would all be played out in a handful of sentences dropped onto a screen: black on white in neat, meaningful little scars.

  Amy17::-(x 10000000000000000

  ‹~KaREEM~›: sorry.

  ‹~KaREEM~›: sorry not enough 4 u.

  Amy17: not ur fault

  ‹~KaREEM~›: (pauses) so what do u want?

  Amy17: (pauses) brb

  Be right back.

  Amy17 was going away to think about something. I leaned forwards in my chair again, bringing my face closer to the screen. Watched the blank space for a second or two, and then turned my attention towards the last frowning emoticon that Kareem had left me.

  ‹~KaREEM~›: Amy17?

  I zoomed in on that simple, unhappy face until it seemed to fill my head from one side to the other. So simple and straightforward: just a couple of lines, really. But the human expression is universal. We see the frowning, unhappy face, and we feel sad for it. Or at least, we’re meant to.

  Something that Kareem had said to me on the first night we met.

  Lots of Amys hang out in here

  That had been the wrong thing to say. I would learn, from subtle enquiry, that Kareem and I lived quite near to each other, and that was one coincidence too many. From that point, it would always have come to this. It had just taken a little bit of time to soften him up along the way.

  ‹~KaREEM~›: Amy17???

  I started typing, before I lost my nerve. I didn’t look up the whole time.

  Amy17: back now. listen.

  Amy17: tomorrow is Saturday

  Amy17: there r woods nr my house

  Amy17: Swaine Woods. between morton and ludlow

  Amy17: lonely woods nobody ever around

  Amy17: i walk from lacey’s beck entrance to ring road

  Amy17: i start at 4pm. i’ll be there by 4.30pm

  And then I paused, just for a second, and glanced up at what I’d written. That pause seemed like it had the potential to last a while. But there was no time for doubting. I’d made up my mind about what I was going to do days ago. Without this, it had all been worthless.

  So I finished up quickly.

  Amy17: im easy tofind there

  Amy17: so find me

  As soon as I’d pressed [RETURN] on the last message, I closed the private window and disconnected from the internet. My desktop appeared; the conversation vanished. Of course, the words would still appear on Kareem’s monitor, wherever he was, but now there would be a footnote running underneath them in red:

  (Amy17 has logged off system)

  ‘Jason, it’s me. Charlie. I was just calling to find out how you are. I mean, I know that you’re not great, but… you know. Williams is going spare about you not turning in this week.’

  I picked up the phone and checked that Charlie had been the last caller; she had. I hit redial and waited, turning gently on the spot to wring some of the stiffness from my lower back. As it rang at her end, I wandered through to the kitchen, selected a pint glass from the cabinet and took it over to the sink.

  Click

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘it’s me. Jason.’

  ‘Oh hiya.’ She sounded pleased that I’d called. Maybe a little surprised, too. ‘I’m glad you rang back. We’ve been worried about you.’

  I held the receiver between my head and shoulder and poured water into the pint glass.

  ‘I’m okay. Just finding things… hard-going. You know?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, you know – not really. But I guess I can imagine what you must be going through. I wish I could help, or do something.’ She paused. ‘I mean, you’re in trouble her
e.’

  ‘I figured.’

  ‘Not that it matters.’

  ‘Not much,’ I said. ‘No.’

  ‘I guess you’ve got other things on your mind at the moment.’

  Hearing her voice, it was like Charlie was in the room with me; I recognised her slight accent. I mean, it was her. But at the same time, it wasn’t – couldn’t be – because it wasn’t as though she was shouting down a tube and I was hearing her. The sound wasn’t her at all. It was Charlie mediated. A load of electrical signals transformed into pitch and tone and volume.

  It was an artificial voice. Made-up. Created.

  But then we never really do hear people do we? We experience the vibration of air molecules in a certain way, and come to associate that with the individual people around us. It struck me that – in a weird way – I’d never actually heard Charlie at all, just the effect that she’d had on the world.

  Other things on your mind.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, closing my eyes. ‘A thousand things.’

  ‘Is there anything I can do? Anything at all? I’d like to help.’

  I sighed. Opened my eyes.

  Don’t do this.

  But I’d thought it through before this, and I was pretty sure that it would be okay. No – strike that. I was just plain sure.

  ‘You want to go for a drink tomorrow?’ I asked. It came out a bit too quickly, as well, but I figured she’d take that as my reluctance to ask her for help. Male pride. Whatever. ‘I mean, I’d like that. It’d be nice. We could talk.’

  ‘Sure.’ She sounded pleased. ‘Where would you like to go?’

  ‘Um.’ I pretended to think about it. ‘What about the Bridge? You know – the one on the ring road?’

  Charlie lived on the other side of Swaine Woods. A patch of houses just across from Lacey Beck, in fact.

  I closed my eyes; forced myself to carry on with the conversation.

  Really sure.

  It will be okay.

  ‘Sounds good,’ she said. ‘It’s nice in there.’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  ‘So, what time?’

  ‘About half-past four?’ I suggested. ‘How about that?’

  ‘Still sounds good.’

  ‘Well okay, then. It’s… well, it’s not a date.’

  ‘No.’

  I’d meant it as a joke, but realised – as she replied – that I’d said entirely the wrong thing. That used to happen with Amy all the time, before she disappeared. We’d both be happy, having a lovely conversation and the sun would be out, and then one wrong word from me would turn the whole day on its head. Make the sky go dark; make us both not know where to look, or what to say. It was good to know that I hadn’t lost the knack.

  ‘Okay,’ I said softly. ‘Well, I’ll see you there.’

  ‘Yeah. Thanks for ringing.’

  ‘Take care,’ I said, and pressed [CANCEL] on the call.

  The kitchen was suddenly very quiet. The enormity of what I’d just done was hanging in the air; I could just make out the shape of it, and saw enough to know that it was wrong.

  The year before, when I was still hung up on material things and the idea of being part of something that mattered, I would have stood and agonised about my actions. I would have fought with my conscience over it. But that was all past now. I’d learnt the best way to deal with these things. A two sentence thought which was hard to face but seemed increasingly easy to take to heart.

  It’s done now, and you can’t change it. So deal with the consequences.

  And what I’d found was: that thought is like a box. That’s how I imagined it, anyway: a black box up in the loft. Whenever you’re facing anything you want to save until later, or don’t really want to face at all, you open the box and drop whatever it is inside. And so that’s what I did. I put my conflicting emotions about what I’d done that evening in the black box, allowed the lid to seal itself, and forgot all about them.

  And then I went upstairs to exercise.

  My punchbag was the shape of a man’s upper torso, minus the arms: a strange, jet-black sculpture, resting on a strong, metallic pivot in the same way that a work of art might rest on a plinth in a museum. There, however, the similarity ended. It had square indentations for eyes and mouth, a rough block of a nose, and not so much a neck as a curve from non-existent ears to rounded shoulders. From certain angles it looked angry; from others, the expression seemed more pained. When I’d first bought it, Amy had referred to it as The Scream.

  While I talked to Kareem earlier, I’d also been downloading a six-minute dance track from Liberty, and I put it on now, looping the play function and knocking the volume up to three below maximum. One less sense to worry about while I trained. In fact, it was so loud that, when I started work on the bag, I couldn’t even hear the punches land. I like my music that loud; I like to feel the cobwebs being blown out of my head.

  My routine was pretty standard. One hundred jabs with each arm. One hundred jab-crosses, leading with each arm. By that point, my shoulders would be trembling. One hundred hooks, alternating body and head shots, generally at random. And then a combination: jab, jab, hook; jab, jab, cross. Whatever, really. I’d throw in a few kicks for good measure, but only when I could get away with it realistically, and maybe even add in elbows, knees and – rarely – a headbutt or two. Twenty minutes later, I’d be warmed up – ready for the main event.

  I warmed up hard that night – so hard, in fact, that I was dripping with sweat and almost unable to throw a punch by the time I’d finished. I didn’t know whether it was the correct way to train or not, only that it was the way I’d found worked best for me. Start at the bottom, feeling as drained as possible, and then try to make it through the workout. If I was in a real fight, fresh and full of energy, then all well and good, but if I was caught on my last legs, I wanted a precedent to work from of how it might feel.

  This time, I was cut off before I could even begin.

  Maybe the banging at the door had been going on for some time. I don’t know: I only recognised it when I went over to the computer to change the track. I wanted something heavier: more industrial. Instead, in the silence, I got a hammering fist on the front door downstairs. I threw a towel over my shoulder and went to answer it.

  It was raining outside, and there were two guys in black raincoats waiting on my doorstep, hunched against the cold. The first one showed me his badge and said:

  ‘Inspector Wilkinson.’

  But I didn’t need that to know he was a cop. The i-Mart logo was all over the left breast of the raincoat. I watched a few droplets of water fall off the edge of his hat, heading down past a slightly pained face.

  ‘We’re looking for Jason Klein,’ he said.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘We’d like you to come down to the station,’ he told me. And then eyed my upper body. ‘Preferably with some clothes on.’

  ‘What’s it about?’

  He looked at me. Rain was slashing down on the road behind them, but closer to it sounded more intimate. It was tapping on their hats.

  ‘We’ve found a girl’s body,’ Wilkinson told me. ‘We need to speak to you.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was a McDonald’s moon that night: two great big, golden arches staring down at me from the black sky, with stars twinkling beside and around. I’ve always hated that one the most: a big M – M for Moon – as though we’re all so stupid that we need everything labelling for us. The Nike tick annoys me, too. Everything’s okay, it seems to tell you, when you know that – really – it isn’t at all. I guess that my favourite, aesthetically speaking, would have to be Pepsi, but Benetton could sometimes be quite inventive.

  No, fuck it – my favourite was old-fashioned plain. The night I’d met Amy it had been that way: three-quarters waxing, which was still slim enough to be free from advertising. Not exactly the stuff that poetry’s made of, I grant you – a kind of half-fat and unremarkable moon – but you need to take what free
space you can get these days, and so that’s what I’ll take.

  Amy.

  Wilkinson wouldn’t tell me any more information than he’d told me at the house. They’d found a girl’s body, and they wanted to speak to me. But what else could it be? I couldn’t think of anything. My body rocked with the motion of the car. I was aching slightly from the force of the exercise, but my mind felt very calm and passive.

  Amy.

  The police car headed quickly through drenched streets. There were a few people around, black as the shadows between the buildings, and the pavements looked so dark it was as though it was raining oil and not water. I supposed that it could have been. Clouds, sponsored by Esso. Bright lights turned to blurs through the front window, before the screeching wipers smeared away the rain; water pattered on the roof, like pins dropping. We tail-ended a pair of bright red lights for half a block, and then headed onto the freeway. The city dropped away to the side, and the driver sped up a little.

  The in-car radio was tuned to i-Mart’s main station, and they seemed to have Will Robinson caught on a loop. I could have screamed: if there was one thing I didn’t need right now it was shitty pop music, but I didn’t have long to suffer. In ten minutes, we were there.

  The Bracken police centre was floodlit in amber, with enormous, upturned lanterns bathing the building from all four sides and making its naturally orange brickwork all the more pronounced after nightfall. With its black canopies and foyered entrance it was often mistaken for a hotel – all twenty storeys of it – and I figured that more than a few late-night travellers had turned off the freeway over the years expecting a Holiday Inn. It had been built a decade earlier, when the police service was privatised. Bracken was one of three national hubs, connected to a spider’s-web of regional, and then local, offices. Following the i-Mart business model, the police force farmed out their officers to areas where ‘sales’ were lowest, setting up clusters of shops in key target areas and taking them over. In this case, the product on offer was a low crime statistic – coupled, of course, with some exemplary computer produce. i-Mart – to protect and to serve; Microsoft never even saw it coming. Where do you want to go today? Directly to fucking jail.