“Hello,” he said. “I’ve seen you before, I’m sure. You’re the boy with the camera.”
Kip seemed to feel two worlds colliding, the world he saw through the lens of the Nikon spinning and crashing through the wall of reality like a wrecking ball through the shell of a condemned tower block. He noted the monster’s clean, almost polished-looking nails, the small scar at the corner of his mouth that made it look as if someone had cut him there once with a razor blade. The idea that he was the watched instead of the watcher was enormous and fundamental and somehow awful.
He felt the air go out of his lungs, as if the world had expanded outwards, crushing his chest. Oddly enough it was the same feeling he’d had the first time he saw Sonia’s naked breasts.
“I’m going to be a photographer,” he said at last. “That’s why I have the camera.”
He saw the man’s lips twitch, and Kip waited for him to laugh at him, or else demand to see the photographs he had taken. That was what people did, if they were interested at all that was, and then Kip would either have to refuse or hand over the Nikon, let the man see the multiple images of himself that were now locked inside the camera’s memory, that final close-up, the sunlight flashing off his glasses and into the water.
Instead of asking to look at the pictures the monster smiled, his ridged and slightly yellowed incisors clearly visible.
“I thought as much,” he said. “I recognized the signs, you see.” He leaned back on the bench, his arms locked across his chest, his skinny wrists snaking out from the sleeves of his army jacket. Kip could not tell if the man was trying to patronize him in some way or if they were having a proper conversation.
“What do you mean?” he said. “The signs?”
“I mean I was the same at your age. Things were different then of course, none of this digital rubbish. I had a Minolta SR-7 and it weighed a ton. I didn’t give a damn about that though. I took it everywhere with me. I got so used to the weight of it around my neck I felt wrong without it. Have you ever used film? A film camera I mean, rather than digital?”
Kip shook his head. It was a subject that embarrassed him, because his reactions were based on feelings and not experience. He knew that some people were obsessed with film, some of the younger photographers even were obsessed with it, and with something they called the tangibility of the image. Kip thought it was a load of crap. He liked to think of the Nikon as an extension of the eye, an optical application, the closest thing to actual seeing that there was. He loved the cleanness of digital, its lack of pretension. The idea of film, with its cumbersome processes, the unnecessary delay between the act of taking and the act of seeing, was something he hated.
He might have known the monster would be a film user. Everything about him suggested it, even his clothes.
“Are you a photographer then?” Kip said. “Do you work for the magazines?”
“I used to be. Not for the magazines though. I did other stuff.”
“What kind of stuff? Would I know your work?”
“You wouldn’t know my work at all. I worked for the police, as a forensic photographer. My work, as you like to call it, has the curious distinction of never having been seen outside a courtroom.”
“You mean, you used to go and photograph crime scenes, things like that?”
The monster nodded. “It’s not as glamorous as it sounds though, believe me. You see these American cop shows and think it’s all about being rushed to the scene of some murder or other. Actually it’s about having to get out of bed at two in the morning to take pictures of a sales rep who’s managed to get his legs crushed in a motorway collision. It wasn’t exactly the career I imagined for myself. Actually I got into it by mistake.”
“By mistake?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Why did you give it up?”
“That’s a long story, too. But my dad died last year, left me a bit of money. Not a fortune, but enough to give me some breathing space. You never know, I might even treat myself to a new camera.” He sighed and stretched out his arms, cracking his knuckles in a way Kip found nauseating. “You should keep at it,” he said. He got up from the bench. “You might even have what it takes.”
Kip stared up at him, not moving. He hated the way most adults had of making you feel like a moron, almost as if they resented you for their own failures. It occurred to him that it might all be bullshit anyway, that the monster was trying to lure him with the talk of his defunct Minolta the way he had lured Rebecca Riding with sweets or Jackie magazine. Even here he was out of date; most perverts these days used the internet. He wondered why he hadn’t used some of his father’s money to update his wardrobe.
There was a restlessness that hung from him, baggy and shapeless as his ill-fitting jacket. Kip felt certain he was the killer, as he had felt certain when he first saw the man coming out of the garage. Instead of being afraid he felt a tense, nervous pleasure, knowing that he was ahead of him again, the watcher now instead of the watched.
“I’m Edwin Kiplas,” he said suddenly. “Everybody calls me Kip.”
“Dennis Croft,” said the monster. “I’m sure we’ll see each other around.”
Croft held out his hand and Kip took it. Croft’s hand was dry and rather small, but he had a strong grip, the wiry fingers grasping his own as if he meant to try and stop him getting away. Kip thought of Rebecca Riding and felt a tremor go through him. Then Croft was gone, striding along the tarmac path that skirted the lake then cutting across the grass towards the Manor Park library. Kip watched him merge with the other walkers, become one of them. In less than a minute he was out of sight.
Kip waited ten minutes and then followed him. As he came out of Old Road on to Lee High Road he looked both ways along the street, half convinced that Croft would be lying in wait for him, but there was no sign of him. He wondered what Croft had meant when he said he was sure they would see each other again. His words seemed to hang in the air, like a threat or a curse.
After supper he went to his room and browsed the internet for information about forensic photography. There was a careers website that told him most forensic photographers were nonprofessionals, police officers with only the most rudimentary training in the use of a camera. Of the others, those who had actually set out to become photographers in the first place, most worked for specialist agencies. Kip supposed that Croft had been employed by one of these agencies; he couldn’t imagine him as a cop, of any description. He was too evasive, too much of a loner. You could say he had loner written all over him, that he was a loner archetype.
The agency guys were pretty well paid, because like doctors they were always on call. The careers website listed this as one of the job’s main disadvantages, but Kip found he liked the idea. He thought a job that was that unpredictable would be difficult to become bored with. One of the agencies, a firm called Trulite Legal, had posted a series of photos of an office block gutted by fire. The photographer was named as Andrew Watson and the crime was a suspected arson. Kip liked the light in the photos, the strange dead whiteness that made the burned out windows look like portholes into outer space. Most of all he liked the way the pictures showed what was there and didn’t tamper with it.
When he Googled Dennis Croft there were no relevant finds.
At a little after 11.30 he heard his mother coming upstairs. It was only then that he realized his father had still not come home. His computer whirred, fanning itself in the darkness. He could sense Lynn outside his door, listening to see if he was still awake. After a moment she sighed and moved away. A floorboard creaked. Kip jumped off his bed and went to open the door. His mother was standing right outside. She gazed at him stolidly, her expression caught midway between surprise and despair.