Lifers Read online

  “When did you last see Alice Wilde?” asked Sinclair. Preston swallowed hard and bit a fingernail. Breathe, he told himself. Get it right. Remember what Mace said: The best lies are the ones closest to the truth.

  “Couple of days ago,” he said. “Friday. The fourteenth.” He’d told this story a few times now, but only to himself in the bathroom mirror. Any inconsistencies and Sinclair would be onto them, probing and tugging until it all unraveled. Then she’d be outside telling Dad his kid was a liar and Faulkner senior wouldn’t be able to show his face in the station again. Having his son interviewed by his boss while he paced up and down outside in his uniform must feel pretty bad as it was, Preston figured.

  And then there was Alice. He couldn’t let her down either—he’d made her a promise. It’s just that he hadn’t ever dreamt it would come to this.

  “Tell me about your final meeting,” said Sinclair, her gaze cold and steady.

  This was it. Preston took a shaky breath and started. “It was Friday night,” he said. “Start of break. Maybe six thirty. Alice came round after school.”

  “She often do that?” Sinclair said.

  Preston nodded.

  “Describe her behavior that evening, please, Mr. Faulkner.”

  Easy: She’d been weird. All wrong. He’d tried to get it out of her, but she didn’t want to talk. Instead, she’d skipped through some tunes, half watched Netflix; restless, walked to the window and back, looked down at the rush-hour traffic. Preston had kept pushing. They’d known each other since they could barely walk—that’s what you get from living across the corridor in the same apartment building; Alice and her mum in 23, Preston and his dad in 25—you get to know a person so well you know when they are hiding something. And Alice hadn’t been right for ages. Weeks. Since she hooked up with Ryan, in fact.

  Then, just as she had to go home for dinner, there was the crazy promise she made him keep. The pleading eyes. She’d held his hands in hers, tight around the knuckles until his fingers went white; she was intense. Scared.

  “Alice was fine that night,” said Preston, and he raised a smile—the same empty one he’d given the visiting volunteer community officer when he’d asked all this stuff yesterday. “We listened to some music, we watched a bit of TV. She talked about her homework. She was looking forward to the holiday. We both were. Then she went.”

  Sinclair’s face went empty. She didn’t like what she was hearing, but she was trying to keep it out of her voice and eyes. This cop was cleverer than the community support guys, though, Preston was sure of that. She was going to see through this. “I need you to think hard,” she said. “This could be important. Did Alice have anything unusual to say to you? Any”—she paused, looking for an appropriate phrase—“last words?”

  Yeah, three of them. They came this morning.

  “Press,” she said that previous Friday evening, holding his hands too tight. She stood close to him. Their feet were almost touching at the toes. “I need you to listen. What if I went night-walking and didn’t come back?”

  And since those ten words, Preston hadn’t slept. Instead he’d been fighting his bedsheets through the empty hours when the city outside dreamt, and hearing Alice ask him, “What if I went night-walking and didn’t come back?” over and over again. He’d known better than to laugh when she first said it. She’d been doing that thing with her lips—pushing them tight together in a thin line—that she did before exams when she was thinking things out.

  Plus, it was the closest their faces had been since forever. Since they’d been really small, since way back, when close faces didn’t mean anything. He could see her pupils dilate, feel her breath on his lips. She smelled of science, period five, the day before October break.

  “What do you mean?” Night-walking, he was thinking, and a dark half-understanding was starting to grow, a sense that things weren’t the same between them anymore.

  “Say I went away,” Alice said. “Exploring.”

  He thought of her on her bike—the beat-up BMX she wheeled around town on weekends. “Exploring what?”

  Alice shrugged. “The unwatched life,” she said. She was all riddles that night, as if she was speaking a script. “You’d come and find me, wouldn’t you?” She was close to whispering. It sounded like a threat.

  “Yeah.” There’d been next to no hesitation in Preston’s answer. “I’d find you,” he said. And he’d meant it.

  “Mr. Faulkner,” Sinclair said slowly. “My question.”

  Preston felt the heat in the memory fade. He didn’t like being referred to as Faulkner. PC Faulkner—that was Dad, not him. “She didn’t say anything unusual,” he said. “Just ‘see you tomorrow’ or something like that. I mean, I can’t remember exactly, but … ” He trailed off. Mace had warned him against overtalking.

  “And you’re sure about that?”

  “Yes. I’m sure.”

  “Because you don’t sound it.” Sinclair leaned back in her chair. Her suit jacket was creased at the crooks of her elbows. Her white blouse was crumpled. The light above them had started an exasperated buzz.

  “I am,” said Preston. This time he made sure his voice was firm.

  Sinclair gave a little grunt and returned her attention to the folder, leafing thoughtfully. “And there’s been no contact since then?”

  “None.” She’d spot the lie, surely. Preston felt his phone pressing against his thigh, front-right pocket of his jeans. Sorry. Going in. It felt warm, as if it was overheating. What if the chief detective asked him to place it on the desk? He tried not to squirm. “None,” he said again.

  “She didn’t call or text—and make you promise not to mention it?” Sinclair’s pause was perfectly timed. She smiled. “To the police, for example.”

  Preston bit his tongue. Friday night, he thought. She means Friday night.

  She’d shouldered her schoolbag and made for the door. Still wound up tight and frightened, but at the same time with that shine in her face that came when she had purpose. “One more thing, Press,” she’d said. “Will you promise me something?”

  He’d still not clocked how serious this was getting—that would come later, in the long, stripped-back hours of sleeplessness, listening to sirens and students out on the streets below the high-rise. “Sure. Anything.”

  “If the cops come, don’t tell them about this.”

  He had laughed. There was no hint of levity in her expression, though. Her eyes were big and serious, her neat fingers tight around the strap of her bag. His face had fallen then. “Course,” he’d stuttered. “I won’t let you down.”

  Two hours later, he would let her down in ways he couldn’t have possibly imagined, ways that would wake him up and torture him at night.

  “No,” Preston lied. “She never even mentioned police—why would she?”

  Sinclair had found the sheet of paper she wanted. She raised it, bent it toward herself, and studied it. “We’re just about done here,” she said, looking up, sustaining that empty smile. Stupidly, Preston smiled back. The heat of the relief had tipped him off guard. “Before I get you back to your father, though, I wonder whether you can tell us anything about this, Mr. Faulkner?”

  Sinclair placed the sheet of paper on the table between them.

  Preston felt his heart give a start of recognition. He felt his mouth open slightly, his eyes widen. Sinclair had got him. Whatever he’d promised Alice, he’d given himself away in the closing moments of the interview.

  The picture was a graphic of a hand, open-palmed with its fingers unfolding. There was an eye in its palm. And underneath was the part the chief detective wanted him to see. Sinclair would know he recognized the writing there.

  The Jupiter Hand, the text said. And underneath, a version of those weird words Alice had chosen when they’d last met: Watchers of the unwatched life.

  The light flickered and buzzed. Unwatched. Weird choice of word. The room seemed to dip into darkness, as if a shadow had shouldered the m
oon out for a moment. Preston rubbed his eyes.

  “Familiar?” Sinclair asked. Her hand was poised, pencil at the ready.

  She wanted answers.

  He’d first seen the hand and the eye that previous autumn.

  DCI Sinclair’s question brought it all rushing back. In a weird way, it might have been the last time they’d been happy together, that day way back, Alice and Mace and him. Properly, stupidly, carelessly happy, as they used to be when they were younger.

  They’d been walking across the playing fields, back from the shops, the grass half mud, the rain coming down in fine sheets. They’d got cans of soda and gummy bears, heavy wet coats and cold hands, and they were heading for the warmth of the computer rooms.

  The three of them had logged on, a desktop each, side by side. There’d been a handful of other students around that day: a kid finishing a Textiles project, two girls giggling at a bunch of online videos. Mace had tried stealing Alice’s candy but ended up yanking a book from her bag instead. With Alice, there was always a book. This one had been a big, battered novel with Post-its fringing key pages, a bearded guy in a prison cell on the cover.

  “What’s that?” Preston had said.

  Alice had looked up from her screen, distracted. “ The Count of Monte Cristo,” she’d said. “Guy called Dantès gets framed for a crime. Locked up in this weird nightmare prison on an island off the south coast of France. Classic. Way too complicated for your tiny brains, boys.” Mace had riffled through it, started reading sections in a silly voice. “Elliot Mason,” Alice had declared flatly, “sometimes I genuinely wish we’d never met.” She’d pulled up a website and had been spending the last few minutes silently studying it.

  Mace was still skimming with a grin. “You know what the CIA was fond of doing with American prisoners?”

  Preston and Alice had groaned as one. “I’m sure you’re going to tell us,” Preston had said.

  “I’m one hundred and twenty percent serious, brotherman. Mind control experiments. They ran for over twenty years, starting in the fifties. Seriously … ”

  Preston had gotten pretty adept at switching off when Mace got like this, and he’d found himself reading Alice’s screen over her shoulder instead. “Urban explorers?” he’d said, studying the site. “Urbex? What’s that?”

  Alice had raised her chin from her hand and indicated the screen. “The real world’s interesting enough if you look at it the right way. Lift your eyes,” she’d said. Then she’d repeated it—kind of implored it, really. “Lift your eyes, Press.”

  “What are we looking at?” he said.

  Alice had scrolled down then, leaning back from the screen so they could see. It was a community site: posts with text and pictures from loads of members. The pictures looked like a collection of interiors—abandoned buildings, stairwells, elevator shafts, rooftops. Then they changed into cityscapes at night, shot from tall buildings. Then one from the gantry of a crane. One from the teetering summit of a skyscraper.

  Alice had grinned at them and her eyes had danced brightly. “Urban explorers look at the world in a different way,” she’d said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “They go looking for the secret parts of cities.”

  “Where is that?” Mace had asked, pressing a sticky index finger against the screen. Alice had shrugged, scrolled up and down a little more.

  “Any of Manchester?”

  “Oh yeah, plenty.” Alice had taken them back to the home page then. And there’d been a series of tabs giving access to the posts in complex categories. Preston still remembered the list: Cranes. Hospitals and asylums. Apartment buildings and offices. Sewers and cellars.

  He gave a whistle. “Nice one.”

  Alice was filtering the entries according to place now. She found Manchester and brought up the posts. At the top of the list was a post—some guy calling himself Urbex808 had put it up—composed of a series of pictures taken from the telecom tower—the city a blanket of golden lights beneath the glow of a smoky autumn evening, the sun still blurring the edges of the skyline. There was no doubt, Preston thought; it was daring and impressive stuff. The telecom tower was seriously high.

  Mace had nearly choked on his gummy bears. “Christ!” he’d said. “How did they get up there?”

  Alice gave a satisfied smile. “See?” she’d said, turning the screen so they could all look. “Everything looks different if you know where to go. Nothing’s boring. Our problem is—we forget how to look. We forget to lift our eyes.”

  There’d been a silence then, and Alice had retraced her clicks, back to the home page. It was strangely designed—all Gothic black decorations. At the top of the screen was the site’s unusual title: The Jupiter Hand. And to the right of the text, the image Sinclair was to show him months later: the open-palmed hand with its curling fingers, the eye nestled in the center of the palm like a dark coin. Underneath the picture was the phrase “Watchers of the unwatched life.” It had struck Preston as stupid and funny and a bit self-important-sounding at the time. He’d grinned at it as he read—whoever these guys are, they really fancy themselves, he thought.

  But he didn’t think that now. That image, that weird phrase, made him cold and uneasy. There was something sinister lurking under it. Something dangerous.

  “How did you find this?” he’d said.

  “Ryan,” Alice had said. She’d shrugged, pulled off her hat, and ruffled her hair.

  She hadn’t elaborated.

  That reluctance to speak, Preston thought in the back of the car as his dad drove him home from the police station, had been something to do with Ryan. Even way back then, before they’d started to drift apart, she’d been seeing Ryan. She hadn’t told them; she’d kept it secret—they wouldn’t find out about it till much nearer Christmas—but they’d started going out. Ryan, an older guy with a car and a city-center apartment of his own.

  He was the one who had gotten her into this stuff.

  His dad dropped him back at home, lingering in the lobby with the squad car in a no-parking zone outside while Preston waited for the elevator.

  “I’d better go,” his father said, raising a weary hand, palm out—a signal that seemed to mean both stop and good-bye both at once. “I’m on nights after this, remember,” he added, “running around after politicians. There’s that big New Conservative conference the day after tomorrow.” He replaced his cap.

  Preston tried summoning a smile. “Have a good day, Dad.”

  Upstairs in the flat, he shut the door of his room behind him. For a few moments he stared at his things, feeling somehow detached from his surroundings. His books looked odd: a bunch of photography manuals, a load of travel writing from Mum—the stuff that always got her enthusiastic—a bunch of comics. The pile of magazines at the foot of his desk seemed somehow childish. So did the skateboard and the bike helmet with its stupid stickers. If he’d ever had a younger brother, Preston thought, this is what his room would’ve looked like. It was like a bedroom borrowed from another boy. He sat on the bed and wiped his face.

  No wonder Alice preferred hanging out with Ryan. Sharing secret plans with him. Scribbling in her notebook.

  Preston blinked his head clear. Her notebook. It came back to him as if it had been waiting for this moment to reveal itself.

  Wednesday morning, the previous week; he and Alice and Mace sharing greasy hash browns from a paper plate in the school cafeteria before the start of lessons.

  Alice was up at the counter getting hot chocolate, and her schoolbag was on the table in front of them, her copy of The Count of Monte Cristo sitting open on the table with Post-its marking the pages she liked.

  Mace was goofing around. “Oooh!” he’d said, going through Alice’s stuff with a grin. “A diary!” And then he was pulling out a notebook from the back of Alice’s bag: proper grown-up notebook with a loop of elastic to hold a pen against it. “Dear Diary,” Mace had begun, adopting a feminine squeak. He unsnapped the elastic loop. “Today I realized the t
rue emptiness of my life. Hanging out with two Year Tens with only a brain cell to share between them has finally driven me to despair … ” Preston had laughed through the performance. Mace was right; the two of them often said that if they’d never shared the same apartment building, there was no way Alice would’ve ever come near them: two lads a year younger and a whole lifetime less cool.

  Then Mace had opened the notebook, and instead of continuing his performance, his face had hardened into something somber. “What’s this?” he’d said, placing the notebook open on the table between them. Preston had checked for Alice then, feeling a little fist of guilt against his stomach. She was waiting for her drink. They shouldn’t be looking at her stuff like this. Preston had leaned forward.

  There were maps. Pages and pages of little hand-drawn pencil maps. Manchester streets, routes, sections of the city circled.

  “Put it back, Mace,” said Preston.

  Mace had pulled a face. “Pirate treasure!”

  Some of the maps were colored, felt-tip lines in red and blue and black. One or two had been crossed out entirely, scribbled through and replaced by new versions. One page had the word mist written across it, and a loop of felt-tip around it. Even at the time Preston had thought it was strange, tucked away at the end of Back Half Moon Street. And on another page, Alice had drawn an open hand with an eye in its palm. The one that Sinclair had shown him. The one on the website. This wasn’t homework or studying or stuff for exams. The two of them had known, instinctively somehow, that the contents of the notebook were a private matter, a secret project.

  Alice was coming over now, walking slowly, tired. “Put it back,” Preston had said, and they’d fumbled it between them for a moment, so that she saw before they could slip it back in her bag.

  The weird thing? She’d been really angry. She’d scooped up her stuff, spilled her hot chocolate. “Jesus! I can’t believe you guys sometimes,” she had hissed. There had been the start of tears at the edges of her eyes. She looked weary and burdened. “You’re pathetic!” she’d said, louder than she should, and stormed out. A couple of kids from the year above whooped and cheered at that, delighted by the dramatic distraction. Preston had felt himself twist with embarrassment. What an idiot he’d been. That book meant something to Alice. He’d messed it all up just by looking at it.