Читать книгу Three Steps Behind You - Amy Bird - Страница 26

Chapter 14

Have you ever experienced that sensation, when you arrive in the area where your best-loved lives, of being watched? Not in a sinister way, a Nicole way, but in an expectant way. As I step out on West Hampstead station, I feel the Adam bubble surround me. He may not be here right now, he may be at work, but I am here to serve his purpose – for my purpose is his purpose, really – and I can feel his spirit know that. ‘Behold,’ it says, ‘here is your servant come to wait upon your wife.’ It would be more accurate if it said, ‘Behold, here is your servant come to wait upon your wife, then seduce her for his research; think how close master and servant again will be.’ But it cannot know everything, and the fact of a beneficent eye watching me is enough.

Unfortunately, though, not all eyes are beneficent.

Some eyes drive brown cars.

In particular, some police eyes drive brown cars. A particular brown car. One I came to know quite well after the accident, because it kept appearing outside my home, and Adam’s home.

So when I see it parked at the top of Narcissus Road, I know police eyes are nearby.

And not just any police eyes. The piercing eyes of DC Pearce. The man to whom I owe my honed knowledge of lawyers, handcuffs and coffee machines. To add to all the ones I had, that first time, years ago, when it wasn’t him.

DC Pearce and his detective act. He was a very good actor. Method, probably. I can imagine him spending his childhood acting like a detective, wearing a mac, inspecting things with a magnifying glass, throwing flour over doorknobs, pretending he was dusting for finger prints. My parents bought me a kit like that, once. Adam and I tried to snort the flour, like normal kids. I hadn’t wanted to, but Adam had made me. It felt wrong – a present they’d given me, when they were alive. Snorting it, when they were dead. Adam said it was like what people used to do with snuff. That it would be fun. Adam said a lot of things.

And here is DC Pearce’s car, at the top of Narcissus Road.

The car is empty, so Pearce must be on the roam. Detecting. Further down the road. With Nicole, maybe? His fellow watcher.

I could just run.

I could run back to the train, catch it all the way to Adam City.

But actually, there’s no time for that. Because DC Pearce is walking right towards me.