The Three (35 page)

I murmured something about a few extra pounds not being the end of the world. My nerves were on edge. Paul certainly
didn’t look or act like a raving lunatic–(not entirely sure what I’d been expecting, maybe some kind of strait-jacketed madman with rolling eyes)–but if he suddenly lost it, lunged across the table and tried to throttle me, there was only one weedy nurse to stop him.

Paul read my mind: ‘Are you surprised at the lack of supervision? Staff cut-backs. But don’t worry, Duncan’s a black belt in karate. Aren’t you, Duncan?’ Paul waved at the nurse who chuckled and shook his head. ‘What are you doing in London, Elspeth? Your agent said you’d moved here. Did you leave the States because of the unfortunate political climate?’

I said that that was one of the reasons.

‘I can’t say I blame you. If that prick in the White House gets his way, soon you’ll all be Living with Leviticus. Where the gays and naughty children are stoned to death and the acned and menstrual are shunned. Lovely. Almost makes me grateful to be in here.’

‘Why did you want to see me, Paul?’

‘Like I said on the phone, I heard you were in England. I thought it would be nice to meet face to face. Dr Atkinson was in agreement that it might do me good to meet one of my biographers.’ He belched behind his hand. ‘He’s the one who gave me your book to read. And it’s lovely to see a fresh face in here. Mrs E-B comes once a month, but she can get a bit much. Not that I’m short of requests for visitation.’ He glanced at the nurse in the booth. ‘Sometimes I get as many as fifty a week–mostly from the conspiracy nuts, of course, but I’ve had a fair few marriage proposals. Not as many as Jurgen has, but close.’

‘Jurgen?’

‘Oh! You must have heard of Jurgen Williams. He’s in here too. He murdered five school children, but you’d never know it to look at him. He’s actually rather dull.’ I had no clue how to respond to that. ‘Elspeth, when you put my story in the book… Did you listen to the original recordings, or just read the transcripts?’

‘Both.’

‘And?’

‘They scared me.’

‘Psychosis isn’t pretty. You must have lots of questions for me. You can ask me anything.’

I took him at his word. ‘Please let me know if I’m crossing the line here… but what happened in the last few days before Jess died? Did she say anything to you that made you… made you…’

‘Stab her to death? You can say it. Those are the facts. But no. She didn’t. What I did was unforgivable. She was put in my care, and I killed her.’

‘In your recordings… you said she taunted you.’

‘Paranoid delusions.’ He frowned. ‘All in my head. There was nothing strange about Jess. It was all me. Dr Atkinson has made that very clear.’ He glanced at the nurse again. ‘I had a psychotic break, brought on by alcohol abuse and stress. End of. You can put that in your next book. May I ask you a favour, Elspeth?’

‘Of course.’

He rummaged in the plastic packet again, this time extracting a slim exercise pad. He handed it to me. ‘I’ve been doing some writing. It’s not much… some poetry. Would you mind reading it and letting me know what you think? Maybe your publishers would be interested.’

I decided not to mention that I didn’t have a publisher any more, although I suspected they would jump at the opportunity to publish poetry written by a notorious child murderer. Instead I said I’d be happy to and shook his hand again.

‘Make sure you read all of it.’

‘I will.’

I watched him waddling away, and the grey-skinned nurse escorted me back to the security entrance. I started reading the book on the taxi ride home. The first three pages were filled with short, appalling verse with titles like:
Cavendish Dreams
(Reading a line/For the twentieth time/Makes me reflect/We are all actors) and
Flesh Prison
(I eat to forget/Yet it makes my soul sweat/I think… will I yet/Ever say no?).

The other pages were blank, but on the inside of the cardboard back cover were the words:

Jess wanted me to do it. She MADE ME do it. Before she went she said that they’ve been before and sometimes she decides not to die. She said that sometimes they give people what they want, sometimes they don’t. Ask the others, THEY KNOW.

Sam, what would you have done with this? Knowing you, you would have contacted Paul’s psychiatrist immediately, let him know that Paul was still in the midst of some sort of psychotic break.

That would have been the right thing to do.

But I’m not you.

After
FCTC
came out, I thought maybe I was the only person in the world who didn’t think there was something supernatural (for want of a better word) about The Three. I’ve lost count of the number of whack-jobs who pleaded with me to puff their self-published books on how The Three were still alive and living with a Maori woman in New Zealand/being experimented on in a secret Cape Town military base/hanging out with aliens in Dulce Air Force Base New Mexico (I have proof, miss martins!!!! Why else is the world still going to hell!!!!!). And then there are the countless conspiracy sites that use quotes or extracts from
FCTC
to ‘prove’ their theories that The Three were possessed by aliens or were multi-dimensional time-travellers. (The following are the ones they tend to fixate on:)

BOBBY
: ‘One day
I’ll
bring [the dinosaurs] back to life.’

JESS
: ‘It doesn’t work like that. A fucking wardrobe. As if, Uncle Paul.’

‘It was a mistake. Sometimes we get it wrong.’

CHIYOKO
: [Hiro] says he remembers being hoisted up into the rescue helicopter. He said it was fun. ‘Like flying.’ He said he was looking forward to doing it again.

There are even several websites dedicated to discussing the implications of Jess’s obsession with
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

But the rest of us have to admit that there’s a rational explanation for all of it: the kids survived the crashes because they got lucky; Paul Craddock’s version of events re Jess’s behaviour was just the ramblings of a lunatic; Reuben Small could easily have been in remission; and Hiro was simply aping his father’s obsession with androids. The kids’ changes in behaviour could all have been a result of the trauma they’d suffered. And let’s not forget the hours of material I chose
not
to include in the book–Paul Craddock’s lengthy complaints about not getting laid; the minutiae of Lillian Small’s daily life–where absolutely nothing happened. That Amazon reviewer was spot on when he accused me of being manipulative and sensationalist.

But…
but
… ‘
She said that they’ve been before and sometimes she decides not to die. She said that sometimes they give people what they want, sometimes they don’t.
’

I had a number of options. I could visit Paul again, ask him why he’d chosen to give me this information; I could ignore it as the ramblings of someone who was mentally ill; or I could throw rationality out of the window and look into what the words could possibly mean. I tried the first option, but I was told that Paul wasn’t interested in having any further contact with me (no doubt because he was concerned I might reveal what he’d given me to his psychiatrist). The second option was tempting, but presumably Paul had passed this onto me for a reason:
Ask the others, THEY KNOW.
I guess I thought that looking into it wouldn’t hurt–what else did I have to do with my time apart from delete abusive emails and wander around Notting Hill in a vodka-fuelled haze?

So I threw reason out of the window and decided to play devil’s advocate. Say that Paul was repeating something Jess had told him just before he’d killed her, what
did
it mean? The conspiracy nuts would have a trillion theories about
they’ve been before and sometimes she decides not to die
, but I wasn’t about to
contact any of them. And what about:
sometimes they give people what they want, sometimes they don’t
. After all, The Three
had
given people–or at least the End Timers–what they wanted: apparent ‘proof’ that the end of the world was nigh. Then again, Jess had given Paul what he thought he wanted–fame; Hiro gave Chiyoko a reason to live, and Bobby… Bobby had given Lillian her husband back.

I decided it was time to break a promise.

Sam, I know it used to drive you crazy when I kept things from you (like the entire first draft of
FCTC
, for example), but I gave Lillian Small my word that I wouldn’t reveal that she’d survived the car crash that killed Reuben and Bobby. Out of all the people I’d interviewed for the book, her story affected me the most–and I’d been touched that she trusted me enough to contact me when she was in hospital. The FBI had offered to relocate her, and we decided after that it would be best to break contact–she didn’t need any further reminders of what she’d lost.

I doubted the FBI would simply pass on her phone number, so I decided to give Betsy–her neighbour–a shot.

The phone was answered with a ‘
Ja
?’

‘I’m looking for Mrs Katz?’

‘She no live here no more.’ (I couldn’t place the accent–it might have been Eastern European.)

‘Do you have a forwarding address? It’s really important.’

‘Wait.’

I heard the thunk of the handset being dropped; the thump of bass in the background. Then: ‘I have a number.’

I Googled the area code–Toronto, Canada. Somehow I couldn’t imagine Betsy in Canada.

[Sam–the following is the transcript of the call–yeah, I know, why would I have recorded it and transcribed it if I wasn’t planning on using it in a book or article? Please, trust me on this–I swear you will not be seeing
Elspeth Martins’ Truth about The Three
on sale in a store near you anytime soon:]

ME:
Hi… is that Betsy? Betsy Katz?

BETSY:
Who is this calling me?

ME:
Elspeth Martins. I interviewed you for my book.

[
long pause
]

BETSY:
Ah! The writer! Elspeth! You are well?

ME:
I’m fine. How are you?

BETSY:
If I complain, who will listen? What do you think about what is happening in New York? Those riots on the news and the fuel shortages. Are you safe? Are you keeping warm? You have enough food?

ME:
I’m fine, thanks. I was wondering… do you know how I can get hold of Lillian?

[
longer pause
]

BETSY:
You don’t know? Well, of course how would you know? I’m sorry to tell you this, but Lillian has passed. A month ago, now. She went in her sleep–a good way to go. She didn’t suffer.

ME:
[after several seconds of silence while I fought not to lose control–Sam, I was a fucking mess] I’m so sorry.

BETSY:
She was such a good woman, you know she invited me to stay with her? When the first of the blackouts hit New York. Out of nowhere she called me and said, ‘Betsy, you can’t live there on your own, come to Canada.’ Canada! Me! I miss her, I won’t lie. But there’s a good community here, a nice Rabbi who takes care of me. Lily said she appreciated how you made her sound in your book–smarter than she was. But what Mona said–what poison! Lily found that hard to read. And what do
you think about what is happening in Israel? That schmuck in the White House, what does he think he is doing? Does he want all the Muslims down on our heads?

ME:
Betsy… before she passed, did Lillian mention anything… um… particular about Bobby?

BETSY:
About Bobby? What would she say? Only that her life has been a tragedy. Everyone she ever loved taken away from her. God can be cruel.

I hung up. Cried for two hours straight. For once they weren’t tears of self-pity.

But say that I had spoken to Lillian, what
would
she have said anyway? That the Bobby who came home after the crash wasn’t her grandson? When I interviewed her all those months ago, whenever she spoke about him I could hear the love in her voice.

Ask the others, THEY KNOW.

So who else was there? I knew Lori Small’s best friend Mona was out (after the
FCTC
furore she denied ever having spoken to me), but there was someone else who’d encountered Bobby and hadn’t come away unscathed.

Ace Kelso.

Sam, I can just picture your face as you read this: a mixture of exasperation and fury. You were right when you said I should have put his reputation first. You were right when you accused me of not fighting hard enough to have his admission that he saw blood in Bobby Small’s eyes taken out of the later editions (another nail in the coffin of our relationship). And yeah, I should have destroyed the recording refuting Ace’s claim that he’d said it off the record. Why the fuck didn’t I listen to you?

The last time I’d seen him was in that soulless boardroom in the publishers’ lawyers’ offices, when he was told he didn’t have a case. His flesh hung loose on his face, his eyes were bloodshot, he hadn’t shaved in days. His threadbare jeans sagged at the knees; his tatty leather jacket stank of stale sweat. The Ace I’d interviewed
for the book and seen on TV was square-jawed, blue-eyed–a real Captain America type (as Paul Craddock once described him).

I had no clue if Ace would even talk to me, but what did I have to lose? I Skyped him, fully expecting that he wouldn’t answer. When he did, his voice was blurry, as if he’d just woken up.

ACE:
Yeah?

ME:
Ace… Hi. It’s Elspeth Martins. Um… how are you?

[
a pause of several seconds
]

ACE:
I’m still on extended sick leave. A euphemism for permanent suspension. What the hell do you want, Elspeth?

ME:
I thought you should know… I’ve been to see Paul Craddock.

ACE:
So?

ME:
When I met with him, he was adamant that what he’d done to Jess was the result of a psychotic break. But as I was leaving he handed me a note. Look, this is going to sound crazy, but in it he said that–among other things–Jess told him she’d ‘been here before’ and ‘sometimes she decides not to die’.