Danielle asked the audience to give Eve a round of applause and in the noise of it, Jim turned to Noreen and said, ‘We have to go. Now.’
‘But I need to get Katie’s book signed.’
Katie.
He had completely forgotten she was why they were there.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But do it quick. I’ll meet you at the back door.’
Noreen looked like she was about to protest. Jim turned away before she had the chance. All around him people were rising from their seats, turning to talk to one another, moving to form a long queue in front of the chair where Eve Black still sat.
Jim moved away from it, in the direction of the rear doors.
The bookshop was long and wide, curving slightly at its middle. Jim passed tables of books; the cash registers; a children’s section, strung with colourful bunting. The crowd thinned out more and more the further he got from the front and, by the time he was in Reference, he was alone.
Finally.
He stopped to lean against the nearest bookshelf and take a breath for what felt like the first time in several minutes.
We know how he picked them.
But they couldn’t. It just wasn’t possible.
He needed to get home, to get back to the book, to read on.
‘Jim! There you are.’
Ed Healy’s voice. Again. Close. The man must be standing right behind him. Jim arranged his face into an expression of pleasantness and turned around to face—
Eve Black.
So close, there was barely two feet of clear air between them. He could see the fine hairs on the sides of her face. The glittery stuff on her eyelids. The fluttering of her pulse beneath the delicate gold necklace sitting in the little hollow at the base of her throat.
She was staring at him.
And then, smiling at him. Widely. Flashing a neat row of bright white teeth.
‘This is Eve,’ Ed said. ‘Eve, this is Jim Doyle.’
She didn’t extend a hand, or move towards him at all. She was standing perfectly still, staring intently at his face.
‘I remember you,’ she said.
Jim’s knees threatened to give way and he found he had to actively instruct them to keep him standing, to consciously dispatch the pertinent messages from his brain. He opened his mouth but no words came out.
There were no words any more, anywhere. His mind was only an emptiness, cleared entirely. He didn’t even feel like he was inside his body any more but standing nearby, watching this happen.
‘Don’t you remember me?’ Her eyes were still on his, searching. ‘I looked very different back then. My hair was long and dark.’
Jim had never had a heart attack but he thought he might be having one now. A sudden blockade of pain in his chest, an acidic burning in his throat, tightening in his throat. Being completely unable to take a breath. Panic approaching like a tsunami in the distance.
Eve was looking at him quizzically.
Say something. Say something. SAY SOMETHING.
Jim pushed the words out. ‘I don’t … I don’t remember.’
Eve exchanged the briefest of glances with Ed.
‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s not a crime.’
Jim felt as if his entire body might burst into flames. He tried to wet his lips with the tip of his tongue. ‘Wh– where …?’
‘Togher Garda Station,’ Eve said. She waved a hand dismissively, threw him a small smile. ‘It was very brief, don’t worry. I wouldn’t expect you to remember me. I’m just good with faces.’
Like a sudden shock of freezing water, it came back to him. Two, three years ago. He’d been on the reception desk in Togher. She’d come in, looking to speak to a Garda who, it turned out, now worked with the GNBI, the National Bureau of Investigation, out of Harcourt Square in Dublin. Aisling Feeney. It was nothing. Three or four minutes at the most.
The only reason Jim even remembered the interaction was because of Aisling Feeney. She was one of the two Gardaí who had visited the woman at Covent Court and taken the knife and the rope she’d found under her sofa cushion. It was Feeney who’d submitted it into evidence officially; it had been her signature on the bags.
Ever since Jim had taken them from the evidence room and made them disappear, he’d been aware of the name.
But that was years ago, and Gardaí were involved in all sorts of business, and for all Jim knew the woman asking for her was a relative …
But it had been Eve bloody Black.
‘Have you lost Noreen?’ Ed asked him. Then, to Eve, ‘He got dragged here by his wife tonight. She’s probably waiting for you in the signing queue.’
‘Oh, really?’ Eve said. To Jim, ‘Noreen? I’ll keep an eye out for her. I’ll tell her that her husband helped with the book. To keep an eye out for his name. It’s there.’
It’s there.
‘How are you?’ Jim blurted out. He asked it because he thought that’s what a normal person in this situation would ask. They would be concerned for Eve. They would feel sorry for her. They would hope that despite everything, she had found a way to have a good life afterwards. ‘I mean—’ He cleared his throat. ‘How are you now, these days?’
For a moment, Eve seemed bemused.
‘I’m—’ Before she could say any more, someone tapped her on the shoulder. A staff member, it looked like. They whispered something to her about the queue and she nodded and said she’d be right there. She turned back to Jim. ‘I’m in demand, it seems like. I better get over there and start scribbling my name in other people’s books. Lovely to meet you, Jim. And please don’t feel bad. I was only messing with you. I wouldn’t expect you to remember me. Thanks for your help, though. I appreciate it. I’ll keep an eye out for Noreen so I can sing your praises.’ Now she did reach out, but not to offer her hand. Instead, she coiled her fingers around Jim’s left wrist, clasping it. She met his eyes. ‘Thanks for coming. I hope we meet again soon.’
The voice in Jim’s head, the other voice, the one that told him all the risky things were good ideas, scrambled up out of the depths and made the words—
‘And I hope you catch him.’
—come out of his mouth.
‘Thank you.’ Eve smiled. ‘Fingers crossed.’
And then she was gone, and Ed was saying goodbye, and Jim was hearing a buzzing inside his head, growing louder, and he moved to go, pushing his way out of the shop, the crowd now dispersed throughout it, most of them holding their copies of the book, and then he was going through the swinging door and now he was outside, on the street, the sky dark and the cobbles glistening with rain, drizzle on his face, trying to steady his breathing, to reset the rhythm of his heart.
She knows.
She knows he’s the Nothing Man.
But she couldn’t know. It wasn’t possible.
But she’d told him his name was in the book. Why would she write about someone who’d spoken to her for a couple of minutes three years ago?
And what the fuck was this about them finding out the connection? That wasn’t possible either.
He needed to get home. He needed to read the rest of the book.
The door behind him swung open and Noreen came out.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘thanks for waiting for me.’