To John and Claire, who have to share,
because to put one before the other just wouldn’t be fair.
Jim was on patrol. Head up, eyes scanning, thumbs hooked into his belt. The heft of the items clipped to it – his phone, a walkie-talkie, a sizeable torch – pushed the leather down towards his hips, and the weight of them forced him to stride rather than walk. He liked that. When he got home at the end of the day and had to take off the belt, he missed the feel of it.
The store had only opened thirty minutes ago and the staff still outnumbered the customers. Jim circled the Home section, then cut through Womenswear to Grocery. There was at least some activity there. You could count on a handful of suited twenty-something males to come darting around the aisles round about now, eyes scanning for the carton of oat milk or pre-packed superfood salad they were after, as if they were on some sort of team-building task.
Jim stared into their faces as they rushed past, knowing they could feel the heat of his attention.
He made his way to the entrance, where the department store met the rest of the shopping centre beyond. He watched people coming and going for a few minutes. He checked the trolleys, all neatly lined up in their bay. He paused at the bins of plastic-wrapped bouquets to dip his head and breathe in deep, getting a whiff of something floral and something else faintly chemical.
One of the bins appeared to be leaking water on to the floor underneath. Jim pulled his radio off his belt and called it in. ‘We need a clean-up by the flowers. Possible leaking bin. Over.’
He waited for the crackle of static and the drawl of the bored reply.
‘Copy that, Jim.’
This time of the morning he liked to have a surreptitious read of the headlines. He moved to do that next. But before he reached the newspapers he saw, in his peripheral vision, someone duck behind the carousel of greeting cards about fifteen feet to his right.
Jim didn’t react, at least not outwardly. He continued with his plan, walking to the far side of the newspaper display so that he could face the cards. He picked up a paper at random and held it out in front of him. He looked at its front page for a beat and then slowly raised his gaze.
A woman. For this time of the morning, she looked the part. Trench coat on but not buttoned up, large leather handbag resting in the crook of one arm, stylish but functional shoes. A harried look. A young professional on her way to work, trying to knock one thing off her endless list of ‘Things To Do’ before she had to go into the office and do more of them – or maybe that’s just what she wanted you to think. There was something tucked under her left arm. Jim thought it might be a book.
A ding-dong sound interrupted the quiet muzak playing throughout the store before a disembodied voice boomed, calling someone named Marissa to Flowers. That’s Marissa to Flowers, please; Marissa to Flowers.
The woman picked one of the cards and looked at it as if it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen in her life.
Jim had the newspaper held up high. If she looked at him from this angle she would see the grey hair and the age-spotted hands, but not the ID hanging from his shirt pocket that said SECURITY in bright red lettering.
The book slipped out from under her arm and fell to the floor with a smack. She reached down—
The Nothing Man.
The words were printed in a harsh yellow across the book’s black, glossy cover.
As she bent down and picked it up, Jim could see the same three words on its spine too.
Blood suddenly rushed into his ears in a great, furious wave, filling his head with white noise. It had an underlying rhythm to it, almost like a chant.
The Nothing Man The Nothing Man The Nothing Man.
He was dimly aware of the fact that the woman was now looking at him, and that it looked like he was probably staring at her. But he couldn’t pull his eyes from the book. He was rooted to the spot, deafened by the chant that was growing louder all the time, only moments away from becoming a full-blown, wailing siren.
THE NOTHING MAN THE NOTHING MAN THE NOTHING MAN.
The woman frowned at him, then moved away in the direction of the tills.
Jim didn’t follow to check that she was actually going to pay for the book, which he might have done under normal circumstances. Instead, he turned and walked in the opposite direction, towards the aisle where they stocked the stationery supplies, a small selection of children’s toys and the books.
It’s fiction, he told himself. It has to be.
But what if it wasn’t?
He didn’t have to search. Three entire shelves were taken up with its display. Every copy was facing out. A dark chorus, screaming at him.
Pointing at him.
Accusing him.
They hadn’t been there yesterday, Jim was sure. The stock must have come in overnight. It must be a new book, probably just released this week. He stepped closer to look for the author name—
Eve Black.
To Jim, that was a twelve-year-old girl in a pink nightdress standing at the top of the stairs, peering down into the dim, saying ‘Dad?’ uncertainly.
No. It couldn’t be.
But it was. It said so right there on the cover.
The Nothing Man: A Survivor’s Search for the Truth.
Jim felt a heat spreading inside him. His cheeks flushed. His hands shook with the duelling forces of his desperately wanting to reach for the book and the part of his reptilian brain trying to stop him from doing it.
Don’t do it, he told himself, just as he reached out and took one of the books from the shelf.
The hard cover felt smooth and waxy. He touched the title with his fingertips, feeling the letters rising to meet his skin.
The Nothing Man.
His other name.
The one the newspapers had given him.
The one no one knew belonged to him.
Jim turned the book over in his hands.
He came in the night, into her home. By the time he left, only she was left alive … The sole survivor of the Nothing Man’s worst and final attack, Eve Black delves deep into the story of the monster who terrorised Cork City, searching for answers – and searching for him.
After all this time …
That little fucking bitch.
Jim opened the book. Its spine cracked loudly, like a bone.
First published in the UK and Ireland by Iveagh Press Ltd, 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Eve Black
IVEAGH PRESS IRELAND LTD
42 Dawson Street
Dublin 2
Republic of Ireland
Material covered in The Nothing Man was featured in the article ‘The Girl Who’ first published by the Irish Times.
The author and publishers have made all reasonable efforts to contact copyright-holders for permission, and apologise for any omissions or errors in the form of credits given. Corrections may be made to future printings.
The right of Eve Black to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 987-0-570-34514
For Anna
and all the victims whose names we tend to forget, or never learn
THE VICTIMS
Alice O’Sullivan, 42,
Physically assaulted in her home on Bally’s Lane, Carrigaline, Co. Cork, on the night of 14 January, 2000.