At first I was bemused by his reaction. He had just been telling me how the rope and the knife had led nowhere, so why was he so excited that I had seen them once?
But it wasn’t the information itself that ignited him, but the fact that fourteen years later, he was getting it. The nature of my information was what excited him. I had known it all this time but I hadn’t recognised its significance until recently.
All these years later, things could still come to light.
And so a new phase of the Nothing Man investigation began, years after his last attack, in the very same house where he was last seen. I pictured him in another house, maybe one with a wife busy in the kitchen and children running around, or grandchildren at this stage, since his own children, if he had had them, must surely be grown. I imagined him feeling safe, maybe even smug, sure that since he had avoided detection all these years, no one was ever going to come for him now.
But I was coming for him, with Ed by my side.
It was only a matter of time.
In six months, no day at Centrepoint had passed as slowly as Thursday did. Jim was not only bored but exhausted from having barely slept two nights in a row. He killed the minutes of his shift by picturing himself at the book signing, standing inches from Eve Black while she had no idea that Jim was the subject of The Nothing Man. Afterwards he used the few hours his white lie about working full days had bought him to park again down by the Marina. This time, he used it to take a nap in his car. He was so exhausted that it was his only option. Finally – finally – it was gone six and he and Noreen were on their way into town.
They were driving along the quays when Noreen said something about an interview.
‘Interview?’
‘Yeah.’ Noreen was looking out the passenger’s side window. ‘She’s going to be interviewed first, then she’ll sign books after.’
Jim kept his eyes on the road. ‘You never said anything about an interview.’
He had been imagining a long queue of people, snaking around the tables and bookshelves of the shop, giving him ample opportunity to look at the woman at the top of it before he got there himself and she saw him. Now he had to throw that out and replace it with rows of folding chairs and her sitting facing them, able to look out into the audience and see every face if she wished. He didn’t like last-minute changes. He didn’t like feeling blindsided. Details mattered. Preparation was key.
When Jim moved his hands out of the ten-two position on the steering wheel, he saw the black leather shiny with his own sweat. He moved them back.
‘Who’s interviewing her, then?’
‘Some journalist,’ Noreen said.
‘Which one?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Look it up.’
‘Won’t we find out when we get there?’
‘Look it up.’
She sighed. ‘Fine.’
Jim turned the car into the multi-storey car park on Paul Street.
‘“Danielle Kennedy”,’ Noreen read aloud from the screen of her phone. ‘It says here she’s a reporter for the Irish Times.’
They parked near the elevators on Level 1 and got out of the car. The bookshop was only a couple of minutes’ walk away now and Jim could feel the weight of what he was doing on his shoulders, hear the little voice at the back of his head telling him that he should stop, that this was a bad idea.
But there was a much louder voice telling him that he should go, that she was never going to recognise him in a million years, and that this was necessary reconnaissance.
That was the voice he trusted.
They entered the bookshop via the back entrance, on Paul Street. As soon as Noreen pulled open the door a step ahead of him, Jim felt the muscles in his back release and relax. The shop was packed, the heat and noise and buzzing chatter of what was easily more than a hundred warm bodies hitting them like a wall as they stepped inside.
Noreen had the opposite reaction. She didn’t like busy, noisy spaces and so avoided them. But that meant she was ill-equipped to deal with them when a situation forced her into one. Jim could see the change in her: suddenly tense, eyes roaming, face pinched with concern.
‘Oh,’ she said, half-turning back to him. She looked paler than she had a moment ago, although that might be the harsh lighting in the shop. And maybe it was the body heat of the assembled crowd that had forced a few beads of sweat out on to her upper lip, the one she regularly let a line of fine, white hairs grow along. ‘I don’t know about this. It’s much busier than I thought it would be …’
She looked to him for help.
‘We’re here now,’ Jim said. ‘We’re not leaving.’
He stepped around Noreen and then away from her, moving deeper into the shop, towards the thickest crush of bodies.
There were rows of folding chairs laid out and each one of them was already taken. That meant he would have to stand, which would make him even more conspicuous once Eve Black had taken her seat in one of the two leather armchairs arranged on either side of a small table at the side of the room, facing the rows of chairs. At least there wasn’t a stage or stools; her view of the audience would be from their level. Still. The table had two bottles of water on it, a small vase of flowers and a copy of The Nothing Man stood on its end.
Jim kept moving closer to the front of the store, pushing his way past elbows and turned backs. He could see there was another, larger table set up just inside the main doors, half-filled with glasses of wine and water, and next to that an identical one piled high with copies of the book. There was a tiny pocket of clear space just beyond it, near a display of notebooks. If he stood there, he should be close enough to see her but far away enough to make it difficult, if not impossible, for her to see him.
Jim started to push his way towards this spot.
He felt a tap on his shoulder.
He wasn’t going to turn around, assuming it was either Noreen or one of the shop workers he’d made the mistake of conversing with, however briefly, the last time he was here.
But then he heard a voice say, ‘Jim?’
A male voice. A familiar one.
He turned.
Ed Healy.
The fucking bastard.
‘Ed!’ Jim stretched a smile across his face and held out a hand. ‘Long time, no see.’
‘Too long.’
They shook, three solid pumps.
‘How’s life treating you?’ Jim asked.
‘Good, good. Can’t complain. You?’
‘Ah … you know yourself.’
The two men regarded each other for a beat longer than felt right.
Then Jim said, ‘You’re still at it, I presume?’
‘Ah, actually … I’m just winding down. Finishing up at Christmas. I thought I’d hang on for the thirty but things changed and I just woke up one morning and realised that I wanted to start living my life instead of waiting to do that, you know?’
Jim nodded, even though he had no idea what the fuck Ed was on about.
‘What about you?’ Ed asked. ‘What are you up to these days?’
‘Private security.’ That was Jim’s stock answer whenever he ran into any of his former colleagues.
That’s what the retired ones tended to say to him too, but they meant bodyguard for some rich eejit, not security guard in a bloody shopping centre.