I mean, to steal a
pond
and everything… That had to be worth…
The computer buzzed. He jumped, then shuddered, guiltily…
That had to be worth
… uh…
Fantastic.
He’d made contact with the site already –the graphics began downloading… (This was a Wesley-specific site. The main one –the real caboodle –and impressively professional-looking, too, all things considered… which in itself was, he supposed, slightly…
hmmn,
well, slightly
creepy
…) and –
yes –
things were going fine –hadn’t seen the pond stuff yet, but there was information on Wesley’s general whereabouts over the last seven days and a hotline
… uh…
Click
A tiny click. That was it. Nothing bigger or louder or stronger or fiercer.
Just a click. Like an old-fashioned camera taking a picture. Like the sound of a handset placed down onto a receiver –
Click
Then the whole thing just went… just went… just… wrong… no… just went…
Ted reached out his hand.
Just went…
Christ…
Just went…
HAYWIRE!!
Screen filled up with a strange, red lettering, repeating and repeating and repeating and repeating. Computer made a kind of strangled squeak (a
yelp?)
like it was being suffocated, slowly. Or rapidly. Or kind of… kind of… kind of
curdled…
Ted frowned. He released the mouse and moved a hesitant index finger towards the keypad, pressed the space-bar, nervously. Nothing happened. He got more emphatic. Slammed the keypad. Nothing. Just chaos –continuing –and more red –and more chaos.
He tried not to panic. Was this a crazy happening of Leo’s devising? But it didn’t
seem
like Leo’s kind of… didn’t… Ted continued tapping, ever more frantically.
Now even the mouse wasn’t working. It’d quit. It’d been swallowed. It’d been mauled…
devoured
by… by… what
was
this thing? Was it
his
fault? Was it outside? Was it contagious? Was…
Fuck.
Everything just jamming and then this spew of information, awful red, then jamming again. Then that terrible last gasp, that choke, that horrible sinking feeling that you sometimes got at the cinema when there was a problem with the projector and the film reel started… started
melting…
and then… and then… and then…
Virus.
Oh shit. Oh
shit.
Ted yanked out the plug at the wall –saw the computer die literally split
seconds
before he killed its power (he pretended he didn’t see it) like that machine in a hospital which monitors your
heart and goes, and goes…
blip, blip, blip, blip, blip, blip, blip…
then…
zeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Ted grabbed the permission slip he’d written out earlier, crumpled it and binned it. He felt sick. He was frantic. Kept looking about him. Over his shoulder.
Oh shit. His face was wet with sweat. Armpits soaked. Hands like…
Oh shit oh
shit –
Now he was really, really…
Oh
Mary Mother of bloody Jesus –
Now he was
really…
He crossed himself, instinctively. It was a bred-in-the-bone habit –completely automatic –yet to the casual, pagan observer (from the street, from the pavement, through those huge plate glass windows), Ted might’ve looked like he was actually tying a
noose
for some kind of imaginary hanging –for a lynching –for a Necktie Party. With himself –gentle, kindly, brown-eyed Mr Teddy –as the honourable, the very honourable, Necktie-ee.
Suddenly every-damn-body wanted a piece of the boy. He was ultra-magnetic. His allure was irresistible. He was the prize draw –the golden goose –the plum pudding. They all craved a slice of him.
Absolutely bloody
typical,
Jo ruminated (gazing up ahead towards his small but lean and fast-loping form, her neat features hard-etched with unashamed yearning, but her tidy mouth half-smiling, as if –somehow, somewhere –she was perfectly well-apprised of her own hypocrisy).
So from being the
least
interesting individual on this whole bloody island, she mused, testily (and not entirely unreasonably), he’s now the most wanted, the most fascinating, the most… Her eyes rapidly jinked left a-way and scoured the horizon –giving the lie, immediately, to all her fine hypothesising.
‘I’ll be depending on you…’ Shoes observed furtively, as they eclipsed the Wimpy at a fast trot.
‘Pardon?’ Jo had almost forgotten that she was walking with him, that they were talking, that they were already in the middle of something. She was still hare-brained from her early start –
Exhausted
Had been working too… Had grown too… Had become too… Now what had they called it? Those people from the Hospital –those smug, useless, worthless Health Administration brown-noses? Too intent? Assiduous? Violent?
Earnest?
Ah…
Earnest
But was that reasonable? Was that… was that… was that
just?
Jo blinked –
Yes
And then there’d been the meeting with Dewi. To be so… so…
Invisible
– it’d brought stuff back which she’d all but forgotten about. Teenage stuff. The… the
pull.
God. Then to top it all off, the added stress of her unexpected discovery –with the Loiter –I mean wasn’t that just… just
crazy?
Really? Wasn’t it?
Far too much complication for one… what had they called her?
Earnest?
Far too much complication for one plain, clean,
earnest
female to endure, let alone… let alone process.
Why am I here?
‘Oh
you
know…’ Shoes chided, gently, ‘to tell me what’s going on with that slip of paper. For some stupid reason the boy has taken against me lately. He keeps stuff back. And he rips the piss a bit, too, when he thinks he can get away with it.’
‘Really?’ Jo shot Shoes a sympathetic sideways glance. From close up his profile was magnificently unbeguiling. He was corpulent (his chin a shuddering cacophony of roughly pleated flesh, a scrum of melted beef lard in a furious blue-white, an unguent waterfall; each dribbling tallow-cascade part-solidifying upon a former, fatter, thicker layer. His chin was like something you might see in a cavern –underground, spot-lit –inside a
gorge.
Something pale and dimpled that dangled from the ceiling. Something petrified).
The bottom half of Shoes’ face was decidedly unshaven, but at the top end, his dirty blond hair receded, unforgivingly, and the hairline was dark with ancient dirt. Blackingrained.
But no. She looked closer. Not dirt.
Ink.
A coarse navy stain. A spider’s web spanning his skull, and a mess of other crazy stuff, curling, in sensuous tendrils, along his nape, behind his ear.
Her eyes settled, finally, upon the three books he was clutching. Had to keep him sweet. For the books. Needed the books. Couldn’t risk him… although didn’t the boy say earlier that the Geordie wasn’t much of a reader (wasn’t that what the boy had said)? That he
couldn’t
read? Which was actually –when she thought about it –rather… well, rather… what was the word she wanted? Strange? Ironic?
Funny?
Nope. Jo tempered herself, sharply. That was cheap. That was a bad way to be thinking. Even idly.
‘I’ll do what I can, Shoes,’ Jo replied (using the name again. Had to keep using the names), struggling to keep her breath at the pace they were moving.
The boy –several yards ahead of them –was deep in conversation with Hooch. Hooch was smoking a roll-up (the tiny cigarette bound in a curious dark brown paper). He offered it to the boy (Jo’s every medical instinct rebelled against this gesture) but the boy declined.
No.
She saw his lips shape it.
No.
Patty had one small fist pushed inside his green Parka pocket, his four knuckles, visible, pushing out, hard, against the cheap jacket fabric. The slip of paper –she presumed –still hidden within. He plainly wasn’t giving anything away. Not yet. Or at least she didn’t…
Hooch suddenly dropped back. ‘Little shit won’t give it up,’ he grumbled, flicking his half-finished fag over his shoulder. He was limping slightly. ‘Although if I know Wesley it’ll just be a few rhymes about birdsong and lavender. That’s generally the line he takes with librarians. Goes all sentimental on them. Gets their sad old juices flowing with this namby-pamby schmaltzy stuff. Poetry’s
always
been a brilliant hook for his whoring.’
Jo grimaced. Even during their brief acquaintance she’d already begun to develop a sizeable sheath of misgivings about Hooch’s take on things (at least with Doc there was some suggestion of integrity. Although what that meant –morally –in relation to the actual practice of Following –a questionable occupation at the best of times –she wasn’t sure exactly). She disliked Hooch’s tactlessness, though. His cynicism. His subtle but constant overstepping.
Hooch noticed Jo’s tick. He was struck by it. ‘So what’s
your
problem all of a sudden?’
She shrugged.
‘No. Go on,’ he was emphatic, ‘spill it.’
‘It’s only…’ Jo smiled brightly at him with her neat lips and
straight teeth –a beaming smile (but her cork-coloured irises were so tightly fixed into their glassy whites that when she blinked they very nearly
squeaked
with suppressed hostility), ‘it’s just a matter of… well,’ she shrugged, ‘of accuracy, really. In riddles, precision is everything, don’t you reckon?’
Nobody agreed. Nobody disagreed. In fact nobody said anything. So she continued on, determinedly, ‘And you just said, “If I
know
Wesley.” But surely the whole point is that you
don’t
know Wesley…’
Hooch interrupted, but Shoes got in first.
‘Oh he
does,
’ Shoes defended him, patently horrified by the tack Jo was taking, ‘he
does
know Wesley. Hooch knows everything. He’s…’
‘But I
do
know everything,’ Hooch spoke up himself, echoing the Geordie crossly, and talking him down, eventually, ‘I know all there
is
to know about Wesley. I’m an authority. I’ve watched him for over twenty-two months now, and I’ll tell you this for nothing: there’s not much you can’t learn about a person during twenty-two months’ serious observation. That’s almost two
years.
It’s probably difficult for an outsider to even conceive…’
‘I’m hardly the outsider here, Hooch,’ Jo’s tone was unexpectedly cutting.
‘And bearing in mind, Hooch, the days you took off, every now and then…’ Shoes hastily intervened, trying –and rather nobly, Jo felt, under the circumstances –to distract Hooch slightly.
‘What of it?’ Hooch snarled (ignoring Jo’s comments, ignoring her). ‘My mother’s
funeral?
When the van broke down in
Morecambe?
What of it? That hardly amounts to…’
‘Yes. No.’ Shoes was already regretting his intervention, but still he kept on at it, ‘And… well… then there’s…’ he winced, nervously, ‘then there’s… then there’s the problem with your… your foot and everything…’
‘The
spur?
Big bloody
deal.
So I had a minor operation on my spur. That’s hardly the stuff of major television
drama,
is it now?’
Shoes kept quiet this time. They walked on. Eventually, though, he muttered, ‘Doc’s always said how important it is to appreciate the fact that Following, while an apparently intimate act, is not, in itself, an
act of intimacy…
’
His voice petered out.
Hooch harrumphed. ‘The thing about Doc,’ he spoke loudly, at first, then quietened down, on reflection (although Doc was now a good way ahead of them, striding on, resolutely), ‘is that sometimes he talks a whole load of
palaver
that he can’t even make head-or-tail of himself. Because he thinks it makes him look clever. And he wants to create the same kind of
mystique
around himself that our dear friend Wesley has. But the whole thing’s just
moonshine.
Just humbug.’
This time, Jo intervened. ‘If Wesley refuses to speak to the people who follow,’ she said, ‘surely that means he doesn’t much
appreciate
the Following, and that, in turn, means that even while there’s a real comradeship between you all, and a real
physical
closeness to Wesley, still there’s no proper… no proper…’ Jo lost her thread, but it didn’t matter. She’d made her point… ‘So isn’t that what Doc’s getting at? Isn’t
that
what he meant?’
Hooch flashed Jo a glance several stages beyond withering. But she didn’t wither. In fact, if anything, she rallied, ‘I mean how many times have you actually
spoken
to Wesley? Face to face? How many
proper
conversations have you ever been involved in with him? Fair enough, you might know what his favourite food is or his date of birth, you might know facts about him, but…’
(And Jo could see, by Hooch’s expression, that even withholding
this
much information was very nearly killing him)
‘… but do you know
why
he likes, say…’ she grasped something from thin air –they were passing a seafood stall –‘why he likes whelks one day better than eels, or whether he drinks tea because he enjoys it or because he suffers an allergic reaction to instant coffee?’
‘Here’s a funny thing…’ Shoes quickly interjected, ‘and it’s fairly incredible, Jo, but I actually have…’
He paused, delicately, ‘I actually have…’ his voice dropped to a whisper, ‘I actually have your name
tattooed onto my arse.
’
Jo blinked. Twice. This was not quite the kind of input she’d been anticipating.