Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite! (13 page)

'What?'

'The accident, if that's what it was, happened four months ago,' said the woman. 'We were talking about the Jigsaw Man.'

'I haven't been here four months. I have not,' I said. My voice broke on the last three words.

Had I been here four months?

'When you leave later you'll notice that it's spring. But before you go, we need to talk about the Jigsaw Man.'

'You're letting me out?'

Agent Crosskill muttered and said 'Jesus,' under his breath.

'You've been free to go whenever you wanted.'

'No I haven't!'

'Has the door been locked?'

'There are guards with guns!'

My voice cracked again on the word guns, so that it came out like it had three syllables. I had to get some sort of control. They were just screwing with me.

'There are no guards with guns, nor have there ever been.'

I took a deep breath, held her gaze for a moment, then rose from the desk and walked quickly to the door. My legs felt weak, but I didn't stumble. Pulled the door open, as if hoping to take the guy with the gun by surprise, and looked up and down the corridor. It still disappeared into the far distance in either direction, as it had previously, but it was deserted.

The thought of dashing off came to me, but where was I going to go? I would've had to try every door handle, and that had very quickly sucked the life from me when I'd done it previously. How many times had I tried it? Once, twice? Maybe ten. Maybe twenty? Now that I thought about it, thought about the amount of times I had left my room with some kind of expectation, it felt like a recurring event.

I walked back inside and closed the door. I sat down at the desk. They had won. For the moment. Maybe forever. I didn't know. But sometimes they meant what they said, so perhaps after I'd talked about the Jigsaw Man they would let me go.

'What do you want me to say about the Jigsaw Man?' I asked.

'Tell us about the Jigsaw Man,' said Agent Crosskill.

I was staring at the woman. Didn't take my eyes off her. It was like she'd spoken without moving her lips.

'It always seemed a bit odd in Glasgow. Like he was hiding from something. Running away. But hiding in plain sight. A guy in his forties, fifties maybe, doing jigsaw puzzles. Then one day he was gone, and maybe that tied in with the mystery of him. Not maybe, definitely. That just added to it. Then there was his tale of four wives...'

'Did you ever think that that there was your metaphor? That he hadn't had four wives, that the wives were a metaphor for four something else?'

'Such as?'

'You tell me.'

I lowered my eyes and looked at the desk.

'I don't know. Four... I don't know. Do you know? You want to do charades for me, and maybe I can guess?'

'Don't get lippy, kid,' said Agent Crosskill. I think he might have been about the same age as me.

'One word, one syllable, sounds like
wives
,' said the woman, her voice deadpan. Nice comic delivery. For an American. Nevertheless, I thought about it.

'Lives,' I said. 'Lives? He'd had four lives?'

'You tell me,' she said again.

'What does that mean? You just got me to say lives. I said lives because that's what you wanted me to say.'

'The Jigsaw Man has four lives,' she said.

'How is that possible?'

'Not so long ago you had two lives, how was that possible?' she said.

She held my gaze for a moment and then raised the slightest of curious eyebrows.

'Two lives,' she said, with a casually thespian hand gesture. 'Some people might think that a bit strange.'

I looked between the two of them. My annoyance and its partner in crime, recklessness, were beginning to wane. I was confused. I didn't know what they wanted. I didn't know how long I'd been here. I didn't know how they knew so much about me. I didn't understand how the Jigsaw Man could have had four lives, if indeed that was the case, although hadn't he told me that there were four of him? I'd been trying not to think about that, because it had been such an absurd notion.

'You can go now,' said the woman. 'We need you to find the Jigsaw Man, then you can see your family. If you try to contact your family before locating the Jigsaw Man you will be terminated. And that applies to all media, not just turning up on your wife's doorstep. Phone, e-mail, letter, text message, Facebook, little coded messages on Twitter. Anything. Do not go near their house.'

'What if the Jigsaw Man turns out to be living with my wife?' I said glibly, the annoyance returning.

'Hard to see how that works out well for you,' she said.

'Great.'

I looked at Agent Crosskill who was studying his fingernails. Perhaps he was bored now that she'd said the interrogation was over.

'Are we clear?' she said.

'Not even remotely.'

'If you have any questions, ask them now, as we're about to walk out this room and you're on your own.'

'I thought the Jigsaw Man was in the next room.'

Crosskill tutted with annoyance and shook his head, but he didn't look up from his fingers.

'There are four Jigsaw Men. Or, more to the point, there's one Jigsaw Man but there are four of him. We have three. We need the fourth. We've been looking for the fourth for twelve years. We can't find him. We'd like you to find him. Then you can get your family back.'

'This is what this is about? Me finding the Jigsaw Man? It's not about the plane crash?'

She hesitated, then shared a quick look with Agent Crosskill.

'We have no direct interest in the plane crash, although ultimately it did help put you on our radar. There are other people who will be interested in the plane crash if they find out about you, but if you help us find the Jigsaw Man, then we can help you with that. That's why you shouldn't contact your family prior to locating the target.'

'How can I possibly find the Jigsaw Man when you haven't been able to?'

She stared across the desk and didn't say anything. I glanced at Agent Crosskill and then back at her.

'How do I even begin?' I asked.

'Start with what you know,' she said.

And then, quite abruptly and in perfect unison as if they had choreographed the move, the two agents rose from their chairs and walked from the room, Agent Crosskill stepping back and letting his female colleague go before him.

With the door open, I could see that there was still no guard standing outside.

––––––––

J
ones stayed for two days and then had to get back down south. She was part of a ten-day scriptwriting workshop in Kent. Screenwriters would be working on their scripts at some gathering in a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere – if Kent has a middle of nowhere – and she was one of the acting ensemble who'd perform the scripts at the end of each day.

It didn't sound like a great career move or anything, didn't compare with a part in some ITV drama broadcast to millions on a Sunday evening, but it paid and she said those kinds of things were fun.

We didn't leave the flat in two days. We ate, we slept, we had sex. I called Brin six times. Three times when Jones was in the bath, three when she was sleeping. I wouldn't usually call twice a day, but I was trying to make sure that Brin didn't call me. I was controlling the flow of information. It worked. She didn't call, and she thought it sweet that I called as often as I did.

Jones still had that detached quality about her, as if some part of her wasn't there at any given time. A slight disingenuousness, something to which I was happy to be wilfully blind. You never felt as though you were seeing the full picture, or being told the whole truth. Yet I was comfortably able to ignore it for those two days.

Right from the start she'd talked about the farmhouse acting stint, so I knew she'd be gone by the time Brin arrived. I had no idea what was going to happen beyond the two days. More than likely I'd never hear from her again, or at least not in the immediate future. There was sex and there was food and there was a lot of talk about those old times in the Stand Alone that hadn't been so old, but there was never any talk about the future. She had the farmhouse thing, and then she had a quick turnaround before heading off to Italy for a month, and then she had some filming in Wales on a BBC drama she didn't seem to be able to remember the title of, and then she wasn't sure but she thought there was something.

She headed off on schedule, still smiling, still beautiful, and I was left with guilt and an uncomfortable feeling that the next time I heard from her it would likely be at the most awkward moment possible.

By the time Brin arrived three days later I'd already found a new, bigger flat to move into; by the time Jones completed all her acting commitments as I knew them, we'd already moved. I didn't leave a forwarding address and I changed the phone number.

I was fairly confident she wasn't going to get in touch, but I had to be sure she couldn't. Not without really trying. And Jones wouldn't really try.

Yet when she left, boarding the train to London from Platform 1 at Central Station, it felt like dying. It felt like everyone I'd ever loved had died at the same time. Right there, at that moment. I wanted to run after her. I wanted to leap onto the train and walk into the carriage and sit down opposite her. But I knew if I did that her face would drop, or I'd get that vague look that would just say, 'Why?'

So she walked out of my life, and there was nothing I could do to stop her, and it felt like dying. All the things I did thereafter, moving house and changing numbers and trying to disappear, were all done despite the fact that I still loved her. I felt lonely and sad and uncomfortable, like I could never give Brin my very best. And those were the feelings I took into our marriage.

*

I
spent the bulk of the six months between turning up on Nairn beach and the plane crash living in a small flat in Inverness. I made plans, all sorts of plans for travelling around the UK, the lack of a passport preventing any thoughts of going abroad. More than anything I wanted to go and check on Brin and Baggins to make sure they were all right. There was no reason they shouldn't have been – I'd already lived through those six months, after all – but I just wanted to see them.

I really needed to see Baggins and, as time went on, I forgot about those uncomfortable few months with Brin, and missed her more and more. Yet, all those things I'd said to Amber back in Nairn when I'd first arrived still held true. I knew Baggins was fine and happy, which was coupled with the thought of seeing another me, something which I couldn't bear. The other me, living with my wife and child, happily pouring coffee to happy customers, and watching Baggins play hockey for the school team. Sleeping with my wife as well, although I knew that they wouldn't be having much sex. That wasn't something that had happened so often.

But then, what if those six months with this other me were different? What if she had been funny with me the first time around, but then took to this other guy?

That was the kind of thing I tried not to think about.

I cracked one evening and lifted the phone. I hoped Baggins would answer, something which she was happy to do, more often than not. I wasn't going to speak to her, I just wanted to hear her voice.

'
Hello
,' she would have said
.
'
Hello? Hello? Is anybody there? ... Mum!
'

That was all I wanted. But it was me who answered the phone, so I hung up. I determined there and then that I was getting on the train south the next day, and would watch Baggins from afar. But the determination had gone by the following morning.

My converted $400 lasted a few days, and right from the off there were enough sporting results that I could remember. I didn't want to draw attention to myself, so I moved around the betting shops of Inverness and its environs – Dingwall, Nairn, Aviemore, Forres, Elgin – placing small cash bets on fairly obvious sports results. My lack of a bank account or credit card prevented me from taking the more anonymous online betting approach. It didn't matter.

I guess I could have made a killing, but that wasn't what I wanted. I needed to keep my head down, and then when the time was right, carry out my great plan to somehow usurp the other guy before he got on the plane which, if I listened to my waitress friend, might well involve killing him.

Then there was the option of just letting him die on the plane. Either way his future looked bleak.

Occasionally I wondered if I should confront him in private and tell him not to get on the plane, that he had to leave. Clear out. Let me move back in with my wife and kid. I could turn up at any time, usurp him by whatever means, and then take his place. And then, ultimately, not get on the plane.

I really didn't know what to do, so instead I frittered away the months, thinking that something would come to me. Some great idea that would solve the problem of existing in two places at once. However, for the most part I found that the second I started thinking about it the whole idea made me feel so uncomfortable and so stressed that I switched off.

I put the question and the weirdness of the entire situation in a compartment in my head, and opened it less and less as the months went by.

It didn't seem right that there should be two of me, so in some way I became someone else. I didn't follow any of the same sport. There was no point. I knew all the results. I watched American football and baseball. I found myself watching golf and tennis for the first time since I'd been a teenager.

Once or twice I travelled as far as Aberdeen, in order to try out different betting shops. Always made sure I cleared the train ticket and another few nights' board somewhere. Football was the best bet. I knew everything, as the results had all stuck in my head. Chelsea 2-1 over Arsenal. Torres to score first. West Brom 3-3 Swansea. Rangers drawing with Dunfermline. Manchester City to be three points clear at the end of September. I occasionally put on bets that I knew wouldn't pan out. I was just a guy who often got lucky.

I sat and stared out at the sea a lot. I travelled along the coast and visited old fishing villages. Went to a few museums. Learned about the old trades.