'As soon as the briefing's over, you'll have a chance to read the file. You can catch up on the details then.'
'Okay.'
It felt ridiculously uncomfortable in here. At least Greg had stopped looking at Mercer now, but even with his attention directed at the floor his expression remained the same. I could practically feel the carpet wilting.
'Pete?' Mercer said. 'Simon? Anything you want to add?'
He seemed to be speaking mainly to Pete, his second-in-command, but Pete looked unhappy at the attention, reluctant to offer his support either way.
What was being left unsaid here?
Simon saved everyone from more embarrassment.
'Whatever the case, we carry on in the same way, surely?' His voice was quick, matter-of-fact. 'We follow up the van, the girl. So it doesn't matter, does it, and we can simply see what further evidence arrives.' He paused, and to me his next sentence seemed loaded. 'Make a decision then.'
Pete nodded, said nothing.
Greg shrugged, satisfied but feigning uninterest.
'I agree,' Mercer said. 'That's how we'll proceed. Mark will spend the afternoon reading the file. Let's divide what the rest of us need to do.'
So I was going to be playing catch-up. That was all right. In the light of the disagreement, I was curious to see what I would make of the file - see if it shed any light on what was happening among the team. In the meantime, I listened carefully as they received their assignments.
As well as continuing the computer work, Greg's IT team would review the CCTV footage. Simon would follow through the forensics. Pete would handle a small press briefing in half an hour, during which Simpson's name would be released to the media and a request for acquaintances called Jodie or Scott to come forward would be made. Then he would chase up Simpson's exes and see if any of them matched the girl's description, just in case Jodie wasn't the girl's real name.
'We
have
to find this couple before dawn,' he pressed.
When the briefing was finished, everyone gathered their things together. Greg seemed eager to get out of there; Simon was making a phone call, indifferent to the tension; while Pete moved slowly. I heard him sigh quietly as he picked up his papers.
Mercer passed across a note with a case number and log-in code, and I decided to put everything else out of my head for now. There was work to be done. I turned to the computer and typed in the details. The screen froze while it loaded, and then a few seconds later the file title appeared at the top.
Case file no A6267 50/50 Killer
3 DECEMBER
16 HOURS, 50 MINUTES UNTIL DAWN
2.30 P.M.
Scott
Number 273. We text each other at the same time.
Scott sat back, rolling the scrollbar with the mouse to check he hadn't already included it. Ridiculous if he hadn't ... but no, it wasn't there. How could he have forgotten that one?
He reached the top of the list.
Five Hundred Reasons Why I Love You.
He scrolled back to the end and typed: Number 274.
And then paused, his fingers hovering over the keyboard. After a moment, he grimaced, considering the flashing cursor.
After he'd cracked the two hundred mark, it had become a lot harder - that was when it started drying up. New reasons did keep occurring to him, but it was usually because Jodie had said or done something that caught his attention, like with the crossed texts earlier. It didn't matter, he supposed - as long as it kept happening. And it did. Even with things as difficult between them as they'd been recently, he still found himself noticing details about her that he loved, and returning to his list to add them as soon as he could. It made him happy. At the same time, it made him sad.
Now his mind was blank, and the next one wouldn't come. He needed reminders.
Leave it for now.
Scott pressed [ctrl-s] to save the document and then alt-tabbed from the Word file back to his art software. The current view showed three different pictures of his face. He should have been working on these anyway.
The pieces he was concentrating on recently, they all consisted of either seven or nine paintings of an object or a person. The first in the series was always photo-realistic, although usually done in strange colours. The face on the left of the screen, for example, had been painted in shades of green and yellow, but other than that it could have been a photograph. When the first painting was finished, he scanned it into the computer and manipulated it with the software: blurring it slightly, perhaps, or hardening the edges of the colours so that the whole picture became blockier. Then he printed it and painted a copy of the image. That was the second piece in the series. And so on. It was an iterative process. He ended up with a row of small canvases showing an image slowly disintegrating, reducing itself to the bare components of colours and shapes.
Somewhere along that line, the viewer lost track of what the object was. The last painting in this series of self-portraits would be four rectangles of orange and green, dividing the final canvas slightly off centre, like a stained-glass window. Only three images in, the picture on the right of the screen had become alien. It was recognisably human, but Scott couldn't see much of himself in it any more.
Artwork. There was theory and intent behind what he did, but his degree was far enough in the past for him to have relaxed on that front. A younger version of him might have sniffed at it, but he painted this way because it interested him and, all else aside, the results looked good.
Other people were starting to agree. A small gallery in town had taken some of his single pieces, sold a couple - it wasn't much money, but it was something. They'd phoned a fortnight ago, interested in showing more of his work, so he'd taken this week off to get a few more together. When he got the call, he'd been enthusiastic, but then disappointed by Jodie's reaction. She was pleased, or she said she was, but it was shot through with the same lack of enthusiasm - indifference, almost - that permeated the rest of their lives.
Last night, for example. She'd come home from work and flopped on the settee. He'd asked what was wrong and she'd said nothing. But he wasn't the type to let things like that go, so it had turned into an argument, and eventually she'd gone and flopped in the bedroom instead. It often happened. Their flat was well-decorated, clean and spacious, but sometimes when he watched her mentally pacing the place, it was as though she needed to find an undiscovered room or go insane.
The feeling was contagious. They hadn't been happy for months, and although his instinct was to do something to make it right, he had no idea how. Her refusal to talk about whatever was bothering her created a knot of frustration inside him, and sometimes it grew so hard it hurt him to swallow.
He looked at the face on the screen. Perhaps it was down to the photograph he'd started with or the choice of colours, but the one thing you could say for sure was that it was sad. So maybe not so alien after all.
He alt-tabbed back to the list and scrolled up to find it.
Number 87. Even though it's stupid, you support my painting.
The first bit of that was something like his standard self-deprecation; if you put yourself down first, it reduced the risk of getting hurt. In the early years of their relationship, Jodie would have told him off for that, especially about his art, but now ... he wondered how she would react. Maybe Number 87 wasn't even true any more.
Scott felt it more than ever, but it was as much a part of their general unhappiness as anything else. It was okay to have dreams when you were younger, but at some point they needed to be abandoned, didn't they? His paintings wouldn't buy them out of here; the menial work they did to make a living wouldn't; and so if nothing changed then this was it. They would carry on in exactly the same way for the rest of their lives, and at the moment that was impossible.
He scrolled back down.
Number 274 ...
It was the last one on the page. If he could at least get this one, he'd have three full sheets of reasons.
His mobile phone was on the table beside the keyboard. He picked it up, reading again the text she'd sent him earlier:
hi again gorgeous[?] boring day here[?] hows painting goin? cant wait to c u later. sorry for how ive been. Love u w all my heart. x x x x x
Scott put the phone aside, smiling. That was all it took. One message, or a short conversation, in which she talked to him the way she used to, and everything was wiped clean.
Of course, it was a transitory feeling, and the concern would build up again - but everything in life was one foot in front of the other. As long as they both held on, they could weather this and, instead of driving them further apart, perhaps facing this problem together would eventually bring them even closer.
Number 274.
Despite everything, he typed, you don't give up on me.
He'd started the list at the beginning of the year.
They'd just moved into this flat, and had begun to realise how lively their new neighbourhood was going to be. In their short tenancy, they'd already seen a midday car-jacking, listened to a minor stabbing in the alley behind, and been evacuated due to a bomb scare in the charity shop up the road. It was the best area they could afford to rent in, and the flat was nice enough, but neither of them felt safe, happy or remotely at home.
There were still boxes everywhere: some half emptied, others parcel-taped shut, as though if they didn't unpack it meant they weren't really staying. They'd taken out the kitchen stuff and put away a few clothes, but their only genuine concessions to making this home were the stereo and the TV, which had both been set up on the first night.
They were sitting in the front room watching television. Jodie couldn't stand to miss the soaps, while Scott could take them or leave them - mainly leave them. Either despite that or because of it, her devotion was about to become Number 56.
Before that, though, the situation got to him.
'This is shit.'
Jodie looked at him, then rested her head on his shoulder.
'Yeah,' she said. 'But we'll survive.'
He put his arm round her. 'You think?'
They'd been taking turns: one of them moaning, the other being optimistic. It was an unspoken agreement. If both of them went down at the same time there'd be nobody left to pull them out.
'Yeah,' she said. 'Because I love you.'
He touched her hair gently. It was dark and straight and thin; she didn't like it, but he did. Touch her hair and you touched her head straight away. It made her seem more fragile than she actually was.
'But I love you more,' he said.
She tapped his chest. 'No, you don't.'
'Yeah, I do.'
This, one of their regular games, would become Number 5.
'Prove it.'
'Prove it? There are a hundred reasons why I love you.'
She shifted to look at him. 'Go on, then.'
'What?'
'One hundred reasons.' She was warming to it. 'Let's have them.'
'Hmmm.'
'You see? All talk.'
'No.' Scott stood up. 'I was thinking where I could find a pen and paper.'
Actually, he was thinking: shit. But he was also thinking that here was an opportunity to do something good: something that might inject a little light into the situation. So he went through to the hallway and rummaged in a couple of boxes, returning a minute later with a notepad and a pen.
Jodie was wearing a bemused smile. But it was a happy one, too.
'You don't really have to, you know.'
Scott pressed his finger to his lips as he sat down next to her. 'Shhh. Watch your soap, woman.'
'Okay.'
She turned her attention back to the television, and he sat next to her and started writing. Line after line. Occasionally she craned to look, and he had to tilt the page to hide it from her.
'Ah-ah.'
'Let me see!'
'Not yet.'
A hundred reasons. When he started, he had no idea how difficult it was going to be or whether he'd make it. But he could feel Jodie beside him, smiling quietly, trying not to show how pleased she was. It was the happiest he could remember her being for ages, and it was more than enough to keep him going: scribbling down one after another. Hold that smile.
A few minutes later, the credits rolled on the television.
He flipped the page, carried on writing.
Now, nearly a year later, Scott minimised the Word document and headed into one of the spare rooms. One of the benefits of such a cheap area was that they'd managed to find a place with three bedrooms. Of the two they didn't sleep in, one belonged principally to Scott. He kept his painting equipment at one end, his weights at the other.
Stretching his neck from side to side, he set up the barbell on the bench and put some loud music on the small stereo.
Weights were a hangover from his teenage years, when he'd been skinny and a little physically aimless. He'd picked them up when he was fifteen and, to his own surprise as much as anyone else's, he'd kept with them until now, at twenty-eight, they were a regular part of his life. He lifted three times a week, for at least an hour each time, and when he missed more than one session in a row he got anxious and thought less of himself. He knew it was stupid, but he felt it anyway. Apart from that, it gave him the chance to switch off for a while. It was an escape - or was meant to be in this case.
He warmed up by bench-pressing a lowly thirty kilos before stacking the ends of the barbell with extra weights and taking it up to ninety. Then he lay down and took a careful grip, adjusted his hands slightly, breathed in and out. The heavier weights were always a shock to the system to begin with.
He lifted it, exhaled, lowered it, lifted it.