Chamberlain told me to pull up a chair and sit next to him. Sharon and Andy stood behind us, looking over our shoulders. We were hunched in tight so that we could see the screen properly.
The list of names was a long one, running right down the screen out of sight. Jen Ballard was second from the top, just below Peter Addington. I remembered Peter Addington. He played right wing for the first eleven. He was only a little kid but he was quick and skilful. I remembered a goal I’d scored, a header, from a free kick he’d taken.
Further down I saw more names that stood out from the list. Damien Gregory. Nigel Hampton. They were in the team too. Who else? Karen Jenson. I’d gone out with her for two weeks. She was the first girl who’d ever let me put my hand inside her bra. I hadn’t wanted to move ever, ever again.
‘You can leave messages about yourself. To say what you’re doing with your life. If I click on a name it shows the message.’
Chamberlain moved the cursor at random and highlighted a name. It was James Waits, someone I didn’t remember. I thought that was odd. It was a small school, how could I not remember?
‘Still living in Louth,’ the message read. ‘Two kids. In the Wheatsheaf most Friday nights if anyone else is around.’
‘What a thrilling guy,’ Andy said. ‘Your best mate was he?’
Chamberlain hit the back button and we were looking at the list of names again. He scrolled up until the tiny arrow hovered over Jen Ballard’s name and then he looked at me.
‘Open it,’ I said.
The site was a meeting place, a forum for old schoolmates to get in touch. I’d heard of it, but never visited it before. You could tell your peers what you had been doing with your life. All you did was find your school and type in the year that you left and then everyone who had registered was listed, along with their biographies. I found the idea depressing, and seeing it now, the reality was more so. Nigel Hampton for instance: he was the first eleven’s captain. It was largely due to his left foot that we won the county trophy, beating Gainsborough in the final. He’d been a real star that night, driving us on when we were two-one down with ten minutes to go. Did I want to read that he was now a supermarket manager living in Hull, with four kids and a hatchback?
Maybe it was just that I didn’t have any particularly great memories of school, apart from that golden half-hour with Karen Jenson in the sports hall. I’d been happy enough at King Edward’s but made no lasting friends, largely due to the fact that I had to keep my home life pretty private. Friends weren’t welcome at the Rucker house. At King Edward’s I put on a front mostly, one I got off pretty well but never felt comfortable with. Leaving was a release from all that and there wasn’t anyone I even remotely missed. I’d certainly never felt the need to tell the kids I grew up alongside what was happening in my life. And nor did I have any desire to get into any sort of dialogue with them.
Jen Ballard, however, hadn’t felt the same.
‘Went to Manchester Uni after school where being a specky four eyes anyway I studied optometry. Had a wild time (it’s true, honest) before moving to London in 1994. I’m now an optician living in London with two lovely kids and an even lovelier husband. Though, if you ever meet him, don’t tell him I said that.’
Chamberlain moved the cursor down to see if there was any more text but there wasn’t. I read the entry through, then frowned.
‘She doesn’t say she’s pregnant. Or living in Clapham. OK, so Cherie, Carolyn Oliver, she found her through this, but how did she know about those things? Why choose her and not one of the other women on the list?’
‘There’s something else. You can leave individual messages for people, have an individual dialogue with them. Maybe Jen Ballard did that, with her killer.’
‘But why would she, with someone she didn’t know?’
‘She wouldn’t,’ Chamberlain said. ‘She’d only do it with someone she remembered. Someone who’d got in touch with her first.’
‘Well then.’
‘But someone could have left a message for her.’
‘Like who?’
‘Like you.’
‘But I’ve never seen this before. I’ve never signed up.’
‘Then how come your name’s listed?’
‘What?’
‘Your name. It’s there. See. I found it just now.’ Chamberlain moved back to the list of names and scrolled down to mine. It really was there. ‘Billy Rucker. Left 1985.’
‘How the hell did that get there?’
‘Click on it,’ Andy said.
Chamberlain did so. The screen went blank and an hourglass appeared. I was nervous, waiting to see what would happen. The page became clear. Then, there it was, everything I’d apparently been doing for the last seventeen years, encapsulated in two short lines.
‘I’ve been messing people’s lives up and getting away with it,’ the message read.
‘So far.’
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Shit. So. So she went on here. Carolyn Oliver. She wrote that about me. But it still doesn’t tell us how she found out Jen was pregnant.’
‘She must have signed up as you,’ Chamberlain said. ‘I logged on as myself so I’ll have to go out and then back in. Then we can see if she left Jen a personal message. Or if Jen left her one. You one. OK. It’ll only take a second.’
Chamberlain hit the backwards key several times until the home page appeared. ‘FriendsFound, helping you get connected.’ In more ways than one, I thought. I watched as Chamberlain typed in my name. He moved the cursor down to the next field but then he stopped.
‘Bugger.’
‘What is it?’ Andy asked.
‘You need a password to log on. Otherwise you can get in, as I just did, but you can’t leave or access any messages. Mr Rucker, what would your password be?’
‘How would he know?’ Andy snapped. ‘He never registered, did he? The girl registered pretending to be him. She could have used anything.’
‘We only get three tries.’
‘Fuck. Oh well, good work anyway. We’ll have to get a warrant and then get in touch with them. But it could take days.’
‘Wait,’ I said. I leaned forward and hit some keys. Eight asterisks appeared in the box. When I hit ‘enter’ the screen changed to a dialogue box, asking me to enter the name of my school.
‘It’s worked. How did you know what the password was?’
‘It Was You,’ I said. ‘I typed in It Was You.’
‘Bingo,’ Andy said.
It was all there. You could access your own messages, the ones you’d sent, as well as the ones coming back to you. Every woman whose name was listed had received a note purporting to be from me. Billy Rucker. The message I’d sent to each and every girl in my year was simple and easy but it was clever, too. The note was individually named and addressed but the body was the same.
‘Hi,’ the message said, ‘remember me? I was really pleased to see your name when I signed up for this. Thought I’d drop you a line. What’s going on? Still in Louth or did you move? You a career girl or done the mum thing? If you have, let’s hope your kids are as cute as you were! Let me know.’
No wonder I’d got some replies. Fifteen in all out of the twenty-six I’d sent. Over half expressed some sort of surprise at hearing from me. Some said that yes, they’d had children, some said no, they hadn’t. One said no way and two said no, not yet. Most were brief notes but one reply was quite a bit longer.
‘Hi, Billy,’ it read. ‘Course I remember you. I read your entry last week, as a matter of fact. I should update mine. What’s all this about ruining people’s lives? You broke a few hearts I remember (blush, you probably never even knew) but I can’t imagine you being horrid to anyone. Anyway, I’ve done both the career thing and the mum thing, which should impress you immensely. And I’m going to do it again! In about four months. What about you? Where do you live, anyway, you didn’t say?’
Chamberlain moved on to the reply I’d sent and we all read that I’d told Jen I was living in London. The same day she’d got back to me and asked where, telling me that she was in Clapham. After four more back and forth we’d tentatively arranged to meet. In her last message Jen had sent me her address, telling me to pop in if ever I was in the area, her tone not quite believing that I would. It was dated 2 November. Three days ago. Jen had said that she had a few days off work and would be home in the afternoons. I’d replied to assure her that, yes, I really would stop by.
We all read the last message over a few times, none of us saying anything. It had been so easy. I remembered what Cherie had said to me. She’d thanked me for finding her latest victim for her. I let out a breath. Chamberlain shook himself together and took us out of the site. He hit ‘start’ and then ‘shut down’ and the screen hissed as it went to black. I stared until it became a blackboard, the pluperfect chalked up in an elegant, sloping copperplate. I was moving all of my stuff from the back row to the front, changing places with Julie Smith for staring out of the window. I was red-faced but Jen looked horrified, like she wanted to hang onto Julie and never let her go. When I sat down next to her Jen seemed to cringe, shrinking away from me, as far away in her seat as she could get.
‘Did you go out with her?’ Andy asked, as Chamberlain passed the laptop back to Sharon. ‘Was she your girlfriend?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I hardly knew she existed. I barely took any notice of her at all.’
I sat on a chair in the corner while Andy and the rest of the officers left, leaving two in the hallway downstairs. Another on a roof opposite Sharon’s door. While Sharon went down to talk to them, give them keys to the street door, I gazed out of the window over the darkened water. Across the canal I watched as Andy’s car drove over the bridge and disappeared up Broadway Market. He had to drive slowly because there were a lot of people about. It was Bonfire Night and crowds were beginning to head towards London Fields for the display. Through the window I could see mums and dads holding on to toddlers, bigger kids with luminous sticks of plastic in their hands. A man was selling bug ears with flashing lights inside and I could see some teenage girls down on the towpath wearing them. They were waving sparklers, orange name trails chasing the silver flashes through the black night air. I stood up and above the heads of the growing throng I could see the top of the pyre, soon to be ablaze. The figure balancing there had his arms outstretched, as if he was pleading. As if he was saying abuse me, humiliate me, burn me, whatever you want to do to me, do it.
Just do it now.
I felt flat and defeated. Humiliated. This person, this girl, she could do whatever she liked with me. I was a puppet and she was moving around from place to place as she chose. The helplessness I’d felt in the taxi stayed with me, it wasn’t changed by the fact that Sharon was alive. Someone else wasn’t. This girl, Cherie, she could do these things, to people near to me or far. And I couldn’t stop her.
When Sharon came back in she sat on the side of the table and held my hand. She smiled softly but didn’t say anything. I thought about the drive I’d just taken, across London, to get to her. I thought about how prepared I’d been for what I might find and then I thought about Jen’s husband. David Tyler. Coming home, with no idea. He hadn’t been prepared for what he’d see. His wife, his unborn child, lying on the kitchen table. He would have heard about it all on the news, maybe would have warned his wife to be careful when she was out, but there was no way he’d have thought it could happen to her. To him. To his family. I shook my head and thought about Jen, seeing her at Manchester, coming out of herself, thought how bright and funny her emails were. What would her family do without her? Her lovely kids, her even lovelier husband? And what would they say on the website? Would Karen Jenson ask Nigel Hampton: did you hear what happened to Jen Ballard?
Sharon was looking out across the canal. The fire had been lit and flames were shimmying towards us along the windows of the shops and flats on the market, leading up to the Fields. After five minutes Sharon stood up.
‘Let’s go,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘I love Bonfire Night. Let’s go. Now. Just you and me. I mean it. We’ll be in a big crowd, all dark. Come on. I want candyfloss, I bet they have some.’
I looked up at her. ‘OK.’
‘And I don’t want to talk about anything. Just you and me. There’s still you and me and through all this tangled mess we need to get to each other. To reach each other. Even just to see each other. It’s like I’m still in Afghanistan.’
‘OK,’ I said again.
Russian cannons split the sky into fragments of blue and gold and indigo. The music was loud, perfectly timed with what was happening overhead. Sharon and I edged through the crowd and I wasn’t worried, not at all. We were invisible, pressing our way through swathes of people all rooted to the spot and looking upwards, barely even noticing us. Sharon found a tree and we leaned back against it, watching the show through the branches above us like a scared child with its fingers in front of its face. As jags of light slashed the sky my mind went to Cherie, and I saw her in the act of her crimes. Cutting. Slicing. Trying to get to the thing she’d been denied. I went over her words and then I wondered: what if she’d found me dead? What if I’d been hit by a car last year? What would she have done? Or what would she do when there were none of my women left to hurt? She’d carry on, that’s what. I knew it. And she’d have started with no prompting from me. It had just come to her, that’s what she’d said. And it felt so right. As much as she thought this was about me, her desire for revenge, an equalizing of pain, it was about her. Her needs. I was her focus for now because she needed one. But she’d find another excuse. The agony of seeing women about to be granted what was taken from her for ever would be too strong. I doubted, actually, if she’d really blamed me from the start. Her father would have taken it all, in spite of what she said. Only if he was removed would her need drive her to the next person in line. Me. Once again I thought of him, Brian Oliver, and I tried to imagine the trauma he had caused his daughter, how great his abuse must have been to have turned her so far. Chester police were looking for him, Andy said. I was pretty sure they were never going to find him.
I also knew that, though she’d let me go this time, she’d come for me. I suddenly realized. For the last fifteen years of my life I’d looked for people, hunted them down in one way or another. Now it was my turn. The research the girl had done, the time spent at the Lindauer, on the Internet. It was all directed at me. She’d caught me then let me go, like a cat with a mouse in its paws. I wondered when she’d decide to finish me off. I wanted her to try. Again I felt powerless, knowing that she had everything on me while I was nowhere, even though I knew her name. I didn’t know how she’d strike, or when, but I knew that she would. Waiting for it would be the worst.
I felt a nudge in the ribs and I turned from the burning rivers in the sky. Sharon was shaking her head. I asked her what was wrong and she asked me how I could look at boring fireworks when there were her lips to be kissed. Lips about as unkissed as lips could be. I kissed them and we stayed kissing and there wasn’t anything else. When we paused, Sharon brought a hand up to my face. It was Strauss now, via Stanley Kubrick, the sound seeming to rumble out of the earth beneath us.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
‘What?’ Sharon said.
‘I said, “I love you too.” ‘
‘Oh.’ Sharon laughed.
‘What?’
‘Well…?’ she giggled some more. ‘I actually said, “Hello, you.” Not I love you. It’s the noise.’
‘Hello, you. Oh, great.’
‘And you said, I love you too!’
‘Yes, I did. But I didn’t mean to, not if you just said hello! I’m taking it back. It wasn’t fair.’
‘You can’t. You said it. Ha ha. But I do love you and I wish I’d said it. Oh, Billy.’
‘What is it? Hey, come on. It should be me who’s crying, lulled into a confession like that. What is it?’
‘It’s just. Well, we’re not understanding each other at the moment are we?’
‘It’s hard. It is. With…’
‘No. We’re not talking about that.’
‘No, but it is.’
‘Just me and you. I’m going to try to understand you, Billy.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. There’s nothing to understand…’
‘Shhh now, enough. You didn’t finish what you were doing. I’ve been away a long time, you know.’
I bent down and Sharon lifted her mouth to me. I moved past it and pretended to find some dirt in her ear.
’What, you thought I was going to kiss you did you? Oops.’
Later, when I was in bed, waiting for Sharon to use the bathroom, I tried to imagine what she’d look like. If there really would be anything to see. I was curious but nervous about it too. But when Sharon emerged she was wearing a pair of silk pyjamas and as she got in next to me she turned the light out. The pyjamas didn’t stay on long but in the dark it was difficult to tell. I thought about putting the light on but Sharon didn’t want me to. Just you and me, she said, nothing else. No complications. But there was something else. I felt it, living, between our moving bodies, in the very centre of us. Afterwards, in the dark, I couldn’t help but continue to feel its presence, lying there, waiting, waiting. Timing everything on its head without knowing it. I remembered the bond that I’d formed with it in the taxi over there. With this rapacious little thing that would grow and demand and suck and cry and take over my life. Sharon stroked my face. She turned onto her front. Should she do that?
‘You’re a sweet man, Billy Rucker. And you don’t deserve any of this to have happened. The girl you found, Carolyn Oliver. What happened to her was terrible but she’s crazy. You don’t have to say anything, but it’s true. It’s not your fault. Anyway, thanks for the fireworks.’
‘No problem, babe.’
‘I don’t mean that. Though I do as well. Thanks for giving me a little time. Us a little time. We don’t have much time left now do we, just you and me? Are you scared?’
‘I’m excited.’
‘Well, I’m scared. This feels like an end just as much as it feels like a beginning. The end for the us that was before. Each of us, and us together.’
‘You can’t have a beginning without an end.’
‘You’re right. I love you, Billy.’
I smiled and kissed the side of her face and Sharon turned back over. She took my hand and pressed it against her belly.
‘Hello you, too.’
Soon Sharon’s breathing began to level out. I closed my eyes and was back in London Fields. My back was cold but my face was burning, as I stared at the darkened, tethered figure up above me. He was completely surrounded now, the pack of unleashed flames, tongues out, leaping up at him. I watched until the pyre shifted decisively and he disappeared, quickly and without protest, into the blaze.