Free Behindlings by Nicola Barker Page B

foot? Are you crazy?’ she scowled over at him. Smoke in her eye again. ‘It’s a piss-ugly walk. Nothing to see.’
    ‘I like to walk,’ he said, ‘I like the fact of walking.’
    He found the pale flash of her lashes fascinating.
    ‘It’s miles.’
    ‘I know exactly how far it is.’
    She spat on her hands and rubbed them together. Then she thought of something and stopped what she was doing.
    ‘I get it,’ she said, a teasing tone suddenly hijacking her low voice as she removed the cigarette from her mouth and held it, half-concealed, inside her moist, milky palm, ‘you’re one of those…’ she scrabbled for the word, ‘those following people. A Back-ender. You walk places.’
    ‘Behindling,’ Arthur corrected her, looking disgruntled, but nonetheless refraining from either denying or affirming her assumptions.
    She chuckled dryly (sounding, Arthur couldn’t help thinking, like a territorial squirrel: a base, clicking, gurgling), then she focussed in on him again, ‘It’s been all over the local papers because of the clue mentioning Canvey in that stupid, chocolate bar treasure-hunt thingummy.’
    ‘The Loiter,’ Arthur interjected impassively.
    She nodded. ‘Clue three, I believe. Daniel Defoe once called it Candy Island,’ she grimaced, ‘whoever the fuck he is.’
    ‘Robinson Crusoe,’ Arthur’s eyebrow rose disdainfully, ‘he wrote it.’
    ‘Oh…’ she shrugged, ‘and what with that poor man dying, obviously.’
    ‘Don’t hike across beaches if you can’t understand the tides,’ Arthur counselled, somewhat unsympathetically, ‘especially in Anglesey. The water’s always been treacherous there. Everybody knows it.’
    ‘Good point,’ she concurred, ‘you heartless bastard.’ Then she smiled, casually up-ended her cigarette, softly blew onto the smoking tip of it and carefully inspected the glowing embers below, her knuckles peppered with flecks of ash.
    Several long seconds passed before she replaced the cigarette between her lips, grabbed hold of the bike, carried it to the edge of the pavement and stuck out her pale thumb. Now she was hitching. Now she was done with him.
    Heartless. Yes. Bastard. Yes. Arthur took these two words on board –not even flinching –and packed them neatly into his mental rucksack. ‘Good luck,’ he said, yanking up his actual rucksack, settling it comfortably between his two lean shoulders and walking on again.
    Katherine Turpin turned and stared after him, her chin high, her lips skewed, her characteristically disdainful expression seeming, for once, oddly ruminative.
    He was raddled. Yes. Emaciated. Yes. A rope. A bad thumb. An oar. An old oar. But even she had to admit that he walked, well, beautifully. An oiled machine; his legs snapping in and out with all the smooth, practical precision of a trusty pair of ancient, large-handled kitchen scissors.
    There goes a man, she thought idly –cocking her hitching thumb a couple of times like she was striking a flint or popping a cork –there goes a man who should always keep moving.
    ‘He’ll head straight for the library.’
    Doc threw out this apparently random observation towards Jo so pointedly, and with such clear intent, that had his wordstransmogrified into a volleyball they’d have hit her square between the eyes. They’d have fractured her nose. It was a fine nose.
    ‘I said the library, ’ he reiterated, ‘and that’s an absolute bloody certainty.’
    Jo glanced around her, just to double-check she wasn’t simply imagining. No. It was beyond question: he had purposefully singled her out. She drew a deep, preparatory breath. ‘But how do you know?’ she asked cautiously, her voice wavering slightly at the prospect of a rebuff.
    ‘He always goes to the library when he first arrives somewhere,’ Doc elucidated matter-of-factly, as if there was nothing at all remarkable in his sudden decision to include her, ‘he considers the library the best place to gather local