Omega

She looked mildly surprised at this but didn’t question it. He had no desire to return to what might be the scene of a crime.

THIRTY-NINE

“Listen,” I said to Tanya, “I’m really sorry about what happened last night. It was unforgivable.”

She was driving the Toyota, taking us back home. I’d waited faithfully outside the pub, even when it had started to rain. She’d been more relieved than angry with me but had insisted I promise never to go walkabout again. I was surprised she had come alone, without backup. Apparently Geoff had returned to work as soon as he knew that she had located me.

We turned down a side street that I thought I recognised. And there was the house, near the end of the street, with its white wooden fence and black wheelie bin tucked in a little brick enclosure. Curtains half drawn on the window, no sign of present habitation. But no, the door was navy, the windows PVC rather than wood. Had I misremembered it?

We turned on to another road. I glanced at Tanya, but she wasn’t looking my way. Had she deliberately driven down the street to see how I would react? There was no evidence that she had.

“Why he?”

“This alter-ego of yours,” Tanya remarked. “Do you think he’s real?”

Did I? On arrival she’d quizzed me remorselessly about Owain’s existence while swabbing mud from my shoes with a rag. She had taken it perfectly seriously, avoiding the obvious judgement that it was all a huge figment of my disturbed imagination. Which didn’t mean that she didn’t think it, merely that she wanted to be clear about its extent.

“He seems real enough,” I said. “With a life of his own. It doesn’t have anything to do with me, except for the fact that we’re counterparts, linked. Does that make sense?”

“And you think he’s cracking up, becoming homicidal?”

“It certainly feels like it. As if something’s awakened in him.”

She glanced at me. “Intriguing way of putting it.”

I saw what she was getting at. “The thing is, at first I just assumed that it was me who was inhabiting him. It didn’t occur to me that it might be the other way around as well.”

“You think he’s looking to set up permanent home here?”

I couldn’t believe she was discussing this madness so calmly. “If I was him, I would. Believe me, this is a much better place than where he lives.”

“But it has its attractions?” She was eyeing me. “You describe it with a certain sort of relish.”

I couldn’t deny it. “It’s alluring,” I admitted. “Exotic in a morbid sort of way. And the game’s not yet up.”

“No,” she said, with what I thought was a note of regret. “I can tell that it isn’t.”

“Are you going to say anything to Geoff?”

“About this?”

“About what happened last night?”

“You must be joking.”

We stopped at traffic lights. I recognised the Catford one-way system. Everything looked so blandly normal, people scurrying by with umbrellas and hunched shoulders.

Neither of us said anything further for the rest of the journey. It was a silence clamorous with unspoken thoughts.

Tanya’s house was in a quiet leafy street in Sydenham. She reversed the Yaris into the driveway.

“Well,” she said as though there had been no pause in our conversation, “the thing I want to know is what you’re doing to do about it.”

Assertive action. She was always one for sorting out problems by doing something rather than waiting for things to happen.

“It isn’t that easy,” I said, following her out, my legs feeling wobbly. “I keep coming and going.”

“You’re indulging yourself, Owen.”

This sounded harsh. Or was it? The truth was, a part of me enjoyed the escape. But not at the expense of ending up there permanently. That was the ultimate danger.

The first thing Tanya did when we were inside was to check the telephone messages. I watched her face shift from disinterested curiosity to vague puzzlement and finally to a weary exasperation.

She put the phone down and looked at me.

“What?” I said.

“It’s Rees.”

“Oh?”

“Calling from a mobile. I rang him earlier but no one was answering.”

“But he called you back?”

She shook her head. “He was obviously in transit. Now he’s in West Byfleet.”

The place was familiar but it took me a moment to recall its significance. My father was in a nursing home there.

“Did you arrange something with him, Owen?”

I shook my head.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“He thinks you did. He’s asking where we are. According to him, we’re supposed to be meeting up at the home.”

I remembered the conversation, but we’d made no firm plans. It was the last thing I wanted, or expected, to hear.

“He’s already there,” Tanya said.

PART FOUR MANIFEST DESTIN

FORTY

Owain was finishing off a gristly sausage sandwich when Giselle entered the canteen. A leather-gloved warrant officer lingered in the doorway as she walked straight to the table, nothing in her face, and said, “It’s time.”