Sherman listened patiently. It ended, and Sherman could hear Alex walking away, further into the site. Sherman waited a long time, and then, finally, followed him.
Alex sat down on a short stack of wooden pallets. He had at last lost his self-consciousness. He snivelled, miserably.
‘What am I going to do?’ he asked the empty lot. ‘What am I going to do?’ He didn’t mind much if he died right there. His mouth was foul with whiskey. He felt sick, but it wouldn’t come up. He wanted to go home and sleep forever. He wanted Carey. He wanted to die. He wanted his mum. He didn’t know what he wanted.
He took his phone out, and looked at it, and put it away again. He wondered if he might be going mad.
Sherman moved out of the shadow of the fence and into the light. He moved quietly, on the balls of his feet. His gun was in his hand. Alex was half turned away from him, staring into the far corner of the lot, where one of the lights was out and the adjacent two-storey building left that side in darkness.
There was a sort of generalised sobbing and wailing going on. Sherman knew at that moment that this was more elaborate than he’d have needed for a set-up. There was no accomplice. This had been nothing to do with MIC at all.
Alex sobbed again. The lad was upset – anyone could see that. And Sherman felt sorry for him, whatever his problem was. But Sherman still intended to shoot him in the face.
He waited until he was close enough to be sure of making a chest shot in a hurry.
‘You,’ Sherman called. ‘Boy.’ Alex was still looking away. He made no acknowledgement.
‘Alex!’ he called. Slightly louder. The boy’s head turned in surprise.
Who? Alex saw a man with a gun. He stood up suddenly, feeling very sober. It looked like the man who had chased him at the supermarket. The gun was pointed at him.
‘Yeah, pal. You.’ Alex gave a sudden jolt of fright. Seconds ago, when in no prospect of doing so, he had thought he perhaps wanted to die. Now, presented with a golden opportunity, his body chemistry was telling him the opposite. He discovered that he did not want to die at all. The whiskey vanished from his system. He was sober, and terrified.
‘Alex Smart,’ said Sherman. ‘You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, lad. A lot.’
Alex struggled to say something. He had never had a gun pointed at him before. He said: ‘Whu-whu-whu-whu-’
Sherman stepped forward and Alex yelped. ‘Easy,’ said Sherman. ‘Hands where I can see them.’
Hands where I can see them? Sherman thought. Does anybody actually say that?
Hands where I can see them? Alex thought. They say that. They actually do say that.
Alex realised he had had no idea where his hands were. He discovered that they were straight out in front of him, as if his unconscious had decided it was possible to fend off bullets by the act of protesting politely against them, like someone refusing a canapé at a party. Please don’t. I couldn’t possibly take a bullet in the gut. I’m watching my weight.
Alex’s hands shot up level with his head.
‘Sir,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Whatever it is, I’m sorry. I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but I – I think you’ve got the wrong person, sincerely, sir.’ The whiskey hadn’t entirely worn off. Alex struggled to pronounce ‘sincerely, sir’.
‘You’re Alex Smart?’
‘Yes. I mean no. Sorry. Yes. Sorry. I didn’t mean to lie. I mean. I got confused.’ Alex was breathing fast and shallow. Terror made everything very clear to him. He could see Sherman’s sandy hair and hard little face – or, at least, he was aware of them. All he literally saw was the little black hole in the end of the gun.
He talked to Sherman and looked at the gun.
‘I’m Alex Smart, but you must mean a different Alex Smart, I mean. There’s been some sort of mix-up. I’m a student.’
‘Are you?’ said Sherman. ‘That’s nice for you.’
‘I’m at Cambridge. I do maths. I don’t do…’ He trailed off helplessly. He didn’t know what it was he didn’t do, or – rather – how to articulate the mass of things that people presumably did do that led to people pointing guns at them, but that were so far outside the sphere of all the things Alex did as to occupy a separate category of existence.
‘Cambridge, eh? Mummy and Daddy must be very proud of you,’ said Sherman, in a not altogether friendly way. ‘But I’m afraid I couldn’t give two shits what you do or don’t do. Not two shits. You’ve got this machine. It’s not your property. And I want it back.’
Alex was even more baffled. What machine?
‘I don’t know, sir. Please. I don’t know what you’re talking about -’
I don’t know what you’re talking about, Alex thought. I actually said that. That’s what people always say in films, and they are always lying, and something very horrible always happens to them.
‘- I mean, sorry, I know how that sounds, I really don’t know, I promise I don’t. I don’t have any machines. Please. You can search me and everything. Just please don’t -’ and he couldn’t bring himself to utter the words ‘shoot’ and ‘me’ out of the fear that it might put an idea into the man’s head which would not otherwise have occurred to him.
Overhead Sherman could hear the sound of a helicopter. It flickered through his head that he should run – that that might be MIC come to disavow him, or the FBI come to take him in – and then he put the thought out of his head and concentrated on killing the young man who he believed had killed his friend.
Sherman hadn’t liked Davidoff, not that much. But a point of principle was, as he saw it, at stake. Davidoff had been in his regiment. He had been beside Davidoff when they were digging into a position in the Iraqi desert under fire, and discovering they were on top of a mass grave had given each of the sandbags they filled a name: Abdul, Mustapha, Mohammed. They had spent a night dug into that position. This soggy little prick knew nothing of that. And the only thing that would get Sherman out of the hole he was in with his employers and with the law was in this lad’s possession.
‘Please,’ said Alex.
‘No,’ said Sherman. He took a step closer to Alex, who had raised his hands, palms out, like a hostage in a black-and-white film. ‘Mate, the way I see it is this. You killed my friend. You have this coincidence machine. And this is nothing personal but I’m fed the fuck up asking nicely.’
Sherman had at no point asked nicely, it occurred to him fleetingly. But he kept the gun level. This was not personal. No. It was personal. He gestured with it for Alex to move – down the fence towards the unlit corner of the site, further into the shadow, further away from the human noise of the street.
‘I – I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Alex. ‘I’ve got money. Please. I can help you. Please.’
It was as Alex went, stumbling sideways down the fence line, that Sherman realised the boy had suffered a failure of imagination. He didn’t realise that Sherman meant to kill him – or if he did realise it he was not allowing himself to believe it. He thought he belonged to a different story. His was a world in which people didn’t kill each other, except in foreign countries and on television. At some level, this little twat thought that one day he was going to be telling people about this.
It made Sherman hate him – but also envy him. This wet, spoilt, selfish, privileged little wanker. Sherman was not only going to kill Alex, he realised then, but he wanted to.
If he’d kept his eyes on Alex, Sherman would have seen that realisation communicate itself to the young man he was about to kill. He’d have seen a face, streaked with drying tears, turn to fear and bewilderment. Alex in that instant knew, for the first time, what it was to be properly hated; to be hated to death.
Sherman would also have seen Alex’s eyes, an instant later, attempt to focus over his shoulder on a pudgy woman in early middle age emerging from the far corner of the yard, followed by a tall man with grey hair. The woman had a gun in her hand.