Free Shooting in the Dark by John Baker Page B

walked.
    Geordie thought about what Janet had said while he put his coat on, and he thought about it some more when he got down on his haunches to say goodbye to Barney. The dog licked his face, eyes, nose and ears, and would have gone on for much longer if Geordie hadn’t pushed him away.
    He got to his feet and kissed Echo on the forehead and Janet on the lips. ‘You’re all a mystery to me,’ he said. Everybody I know is a mystery.’
     
    The sky was overcast. There was an oppressive feeling to the grounds of the university. The students had gone down and apart from the ducks there was only a gang of gardeners cutting and clearing timber. The hollow sound °f their axes followed him, and when he stopped to talk to the statue of the Buddha, they were still there, in the distance. Chop-chop, chop-chop, a sound echoing with nostalgia, though there were no trees in Geordie’s childhood or anywhere in his memory.
    He missed the bus and decided to walk into town. The rain had held off so far, and he hoped it would give him another twenty minutes. Besides, there was something he wanted to think about, something on the tip of his brain. He couldn’t formulate what it was, and hoped the walk would give him the peace to root it out. For the last couple of days it had been there in his head, like an itch.
    When he passed the Barbican he thought of calling in, see if Sam was working out in the gym, trying to get his hand to work again. But Sam would be with Angeles at this time, either with her or keeping an eye on her.
    Nevertheless, when he’d crossed over the road, he found himself looking back, somehow expecting Sam to come out of the Barbican entrance. There was no one there, though. No one in sight, only the feeling that he was being observed.
    What it was, it was probably lack of sleep. He wasn’t getting enough rest so his mind was playing tricks with him. You had to have enough REM sleep - rapid eye movement sleep - otherwise you didn’t dream, and then you couldn’t concentrate on the day. Geordie wasn’t sure if he’d got that right, but he could ask Marie later, she knew about that kind of thing, in fact it was her who told him about it in the first place.
    Cutting through Dixon Lane to Piccadilly the feeling was still with him. He glanced behind a couple of times, but there was no one there. A few spots of rain hit the road and dried up immediately. The sky was in two different moods, couldn’t decide what to do.
    He deliberately hallucinated footsteps. The feeling of being watched was so strong, so real, that he wanted to give whoever it was observing him a physical form. There were eyes on him, pinned on him. That was not an hallucination. It was exactly like it had been the other day in Parliament Street, that prickling sensation at the back of the neck.
    A big truck went past, and the guy behind the wheel eyeballed Geordie, gave him a real stare. Registration number HUD something, couldn’t get the numbers. There was a moment there when Geordie thought the guy might’ve been contemplating running into him, just checking to see he’d got the right man first.
    Maybe you’re going mad? Geordie thought. Losing it? This business of Angeles being watched had somehow got lodged in his mind, and that, combined with the lack of sleep, was rotting his brain. Jesus, and it would have to be now, he thought, when he’d got Janet and Echo and his life seemed to be sorting itself out. That was just the kind of trick the mad genius who ran the universe got up to. Give a guy everything he ever wanted, then turn his brain into mushroom soup.
    He didn’t go mad when his mother ran off with the landlord or when they put him in the council home. He didn’t go mad when he was homeless, flogging himself to perverts and begging on the streets. Oh, no, he came through all that. He didn’t go mad when he started working with Sam and that crazy woman shot him in the back. He had to wait until now, until he had Janet and