Just In Case Part 4

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks,' Coach spat. 'Look at you. With a little training you could run all day.'

Justin stared at Coach, amazed and suspicious. David Case had never looked like a runner. It was one thing to change your shirts, quite another to a.s.sume an entirely different body type.

'Case!' Coach snapped impatiently. 'You're not brain-dead, are you? That could disqualify you.'

Justin shook his head: But I hate sport. And then: Perfect.

Coach rolled his eyes. 'An answer, Case. Any answer will do.'

'OK,' said Justin. Boy wagged his tail.

Peter grinned when he heard. 'You'll like it,' he said. 'Not at first, of course, it's horrible at first. But you get used to it eventually.'

Justin didn't expect to like it, now or ever. Cross-country seemed a perverse sort of self-abuse consisting of endless gruelling runs through the unattractive suburban landscape egged on by a wisecracking s.a.d.i.s.t whose life had repeatedly been blighted by mediocrity.

Coach's team had never captured a county championship. Coach himself had never discovered a future Olympic champion. No boy had ever returned to Luton Secondary years later to report that running had played a formative, nay, pivotal role in his life. The extra pay Coach received for three afternoons a week enduring the contempt and indifference of fifteen talentless teenage boys did not begin to compensate for the extent of his disenchantment.

Despite knowing all this, Justin was secretly pleased to have been plucked from athletic obscurity. No one had ever suggested that he could run at all, much less all day. David Case was certainly no athlete, but Justin? Justin was loaded with potential.

Without his noticing, he had already begun to change shape. Over the previous eighteen months he had grown six inches. His legs, always disproportionately long in relation to his torso, had lengthened further and his feet had grown two and a half sizes. But he was soft and slow, and it took a leap of faith to imagine he'd ever be different.

His first practice involved circling the school track at what felt like excessive speed, with Boy bounding around him joyously. After ten minutes he began to flag. Thirty minutes left him collapsed by the side of the track gasping for air, legs shaking and contracted with cramp, lungs on fire, throat dry, stomach heaving. Boy licked his face once, then settled down gracefully next to him for a nap.

'Hey, you suck!' hissed one of his teammates.

One by one they pa.s.sed, skimming around the grey outdoor track, each competing for the most hilariously entertaining insult.

'Hey, Granny.'

'Puss puss p.u.s.s.y.'

'd.i.c.khead.'

'Oi! Head Case!'

This last, from Coach.

Justin barely noticed the insults. He was too busy trying to restore the flow of oxygen to his brain.

Peter said nothing as he flew past, but his silence exuded compa.s.sion.

Seven of the fifteen boys on Justin's team had been chosen for their ability to outrun the local constabulary, five others were blackmailed into partic.i.p.ating, their academic potential so limited that alternative excuses had to be found to keep them in school. Most of this group whiled away unsupervised moments stopping for f.a.gs by the side of the track.

Justin didn't smoke, so he ran instead, discovering in the process that Coach's evaluation had not been entirely wrong. Day by day he improved, modestly, steadily; soon he discovered a jawline and hard planes of muscle in his legs. He began to look different, rangy and fast, and best of all found he could run more or less indefinitely. His chest would eventually feel crushed under the strain of oxygen deprivation, at some point his muscles still pleaded with him to stop, but the pain took longer to set in, bothered him less, became familiar. He could keep up for longer periods and when he matched Peter stride for stride he felt triumphant.

His dog helped, loping gracefully by his side, lean and effortless. When Justin felt discouraged he concentrated on Boy's stylish gait, his n.o.ble spirit.

I am a greyhound, Justin thought as he ran, I am king of dogs. I skim through time and s.p.a.ce at the speed of thought. The unknown is my prey, I bring it to earth in a single exquisite bound.

He could feel the syncopation of his paws on the track, his narrow muzzle piercing the air, no sound except the pounding of his large, n.o.ble heart. He ran silently. He was an air hound, a sight hound, deadly in pursuit of a rabbit, a taut bow, a spinning arrow. For whole minutes at a time he was graceful, joyous.

The insults tailed off, at least from Coach.

'How'd I do?' Justin asked, panting, his legs shaking, body streaming with sweat.

'Jesus,' Coach muttered, staring at his stopwatch. Ten thousand metres in just under thirty-eight minutes.

Justin's chest swelled with pride. A few weeks ago he could barely stagger round the track.

It gave him hope.

Perhaps whatever it was, he could outrun it.

13.

Justin whistled.

Come on, Boy! Walkies!

Boy bounded over and jumped up on his master, nearly knocking him over. He was a big dog, nearly a metre at the shoulder. Justin rubbed him behind his ears. Good boy.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his mother watching him out of the corner of her eye. What's the matter, he thought peevishly. Hadn't she ever seen an imaginary dog?

She appeared anxious, perhaps about the safety of his little brother in the presence of such a large animal, though Charlie showed no sign of fear. Anyway, surely he, Justin, was ent.i.tled to a pet of his own choosing. Come to think of it, why hadn't she and his father provided one? Maybe if he'd had a real dog, he wouldn't feel so threatened.

Then again, maybe not.

Justin wanted to see Agnes again, but his desire was tempered with uncertainty. He was young, not suave or knowing. Not brilliant or s.e.xually irresistible. He had quite a handsome dog, but it didn't exist. In short, he didn't add up to much.

Which made it all the more surprising when, a little more than a month after they first met, Agnes phoned him.

'Justin Case, at last. There are twelve Cases in the phonebook; your number happens to be the eleventh.'

Justin was struck dumb.

'h.e.l.lo? Are you there?'

'I just... it's just...' Perfect, he thought, I've developed a speech impediment.

'Never mind, I need to see you. I'll meet you in ten minutes at the cafe on West Street.'

Agnes hung up.

Justin stared at the receiver. Why had she phoned? Perhaps he had amnesia. Perhaps he and Agnes often met at the cafe to chat about... about international economic destabilization.

His life seemed to be getting away from him.

He entered the cafe.

'Table for one?' asked the waitress with an air of resentment.

'Two.' His voice warbled slightly.

She pointed at a table wedged between the toilet and the kitchen. He ignored it, chose a booth in the corner with a view of the street, sat down and ordered a cup of tea. By exercising preternatural restraint, he made it last nearly the entire half-hour during which Agnes did not show. Doubt and self-loathing took root in his brain.

He was about to pay his meagre bill and crawl into the street howling with psychic pain when he saw her pink bob, bob-bobbing along outside the window. Today she was disguised as a geisha in a brightly coloured kimono, short green felt culottes, white foundation, huge dark gla.s.ses and six-inch platform clogs. Over one shoulder hung a striped plastic portfolio.

She threw him a kiss through the window and entered the cafe. Justin slumped in his seat, embarra.s.sed to have been kept waiting.

Agnes arrived at the table, amused. 'h.e.l.lo, Justin Case. I'm terribly sorry I'm late.'

'h.e.l.lo.' He looked at the floor.

She stood very still until he looked up again, then slipped the gla.s.ses down her nose and stared straight into his eyes, smiling the smallest, most seductive of smiles. 'I am extremely pleased to see you.'

'I...' he began, but found he couldn't go on. He reached for Boy, and gathered the warm elastic skin of his dog's neck in one hand.

I wonder if I'm in love, he thought. Or if she is? At his feet, Boy raised one eyebrow and gazed up at his master.

Justin waited as Agnes settled herself daintily into the seat opposite, waved a tiny handkerchief patterned with cherry blossom and ordered camomile tea with the demure, murmuring voice of a geisha. When she finally turned back to him, she reminded him of a blank-faced exotic bug. It made him nervous not to see her eyes.

She lifted the portfolio off the floor, laid it flat on the table between them, and leant in close. 'I'm sorry it's taken me so long to print these up. But...' Here she paused for dramatic effect and lowered her voice to a whisper. 'It was worth the wait.'

Beneath the table, Boy rolled over on to one side, stretched ostentatiously, closed both eyes and began to snore. Agnes opened the portfolio, slid out a pile of proof sheets, placed them in front of Justin, and sat back in her chair.

He picked up the first.

The boy in the pictures was slim, almost scraggy. His hair was longish, his skin very pale. In a frame marked with an 'x', he had his hands crammed into the front pockets of his jeans. His body was in profile and he appeared to have turned to look at the camera only an instant before. His expression was suspicious, anxious, slightly blurred.

It was a long moment before Justin realized he was looking at himself.

'Well?' said Agnes.

'Well, what?'

'Well, what do you think? Isn't it amazing?'

Amazing wasn't the word he would have chosen. He looked like someone else entirely. Someone pale, anxious and well-dressed. Considering his mission, it was thrilling. Considering everything else, it was deeply disturbing.

'That's not what I look like.'

She beamed at him, triumphant. 'It wasn't. Until I saw you.'

He thought about this.

'So what will you do with them?' he asked finally, riffling through the sheaf of proofs.

'They're not important. You are. I can't believe I found you in deepest Luton.'

Justin winced.

'Don't look so frightened. You don't actually have to do anything. You're perfect the way you are.'

What way am I?

'But before I take more pictures, there's somewhere we need to go. When are you available?'

He was always available. He looked at Agnes. Did she want to have s.e.x with him? Did he want to have s.e.x with her?

'Where are we going?'

'London.'

London? You could hardly get more dangerous than that. Kigali maybe. Or Baghdad. He glanced up at Agnes, who was calmly flipping through her diary as if entering the heart of urban darkness were the sort of thing she did casually, without considering the consequences the international terrorists, homicidal taxi drivers, care-in-the-community cases let loose to push unsuspecting out-of-towners under trains.

He shuddered.

'How about nine a.m. Sat.u.r.day week at the station?'

Having no diary and no previous engagements, Justin said yes.

14.

Long before Einstein thought up his theory of relativity, any child could explain that some days pa.s.sed slower than others and some weeks appeared to drag pretty much into eternity.

The ten days between Justin's two meetings with Agnes moved with as much directional momentum as a satellite tumbling in deep s.p.a.ce. There were times when he sat in cla.s.s staring at the huge black-and-white inst.i.tutional clock, drifted off into a long reverie about his tragic demise in the concrete jungle or his future s.e.xual prospects, and awoke hours later to find the hands in exactly the same position as before. It defied the laws of something or other, something he might have known more about had he paid attention during physics. Instead, he settled into a stalled world devoid of linear motion and gave up all hope that the day he longed for and feared in equal measure would ever arrive.

A quarter of a second later it did.

Justin awoke on the morning of their meeting, pulled an ancient green anorak over his new clothes, inserted himself back into the swiftly moving stream of ordinary time, and set off to meet Agnes.

Luton was not a big town, and it took less than fifteen minutes to walk to the station. As he walked, he fantasized about their day, rehea.r.s.ed once again in his head for what had become, in the intervening period, a series of profoundly erotic possibilities. This line of thought forestalled more familiar and disturbing ones, the ones that involved being kidnapped by Estonian mafiosi, blown up by animal rights activists, repeatedly stabbed by a bus driver with a grudge. Each of the last ten nights he had floated off into a semi-dream world in which Agnes couldn't keep her hands off him; each night their interaction became more elaborate, more erotically complex. At some point reality and fantasy switched places so that his dream life became more vivid than his real one.