I Saw a Man by Owen Sheers Read Free Book Online Page A

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    “I think so.” Picking up the chopping board, she tipped the slices of courgette and red onion into a saucepan. “The uncle’s agreed to contribute. He’s our in, as long as we keep him on board.”
    There was something about the way she’d said “our” and “we” that made Michael look up from his editing. The words had been possessive more than inclusive.
    She was facing away from him, her head bent as she crushed garlic cloves with the flat of the knife. Her hair fell either side of her neck, revealing a nub of vertebrae at the top of her spine. Somehow, all through the winter her skin had held its honey colour, as if it knew where she really belonged.

    “The uncle?” he said. “Sorry, love, which one is this again?”
    She turned to face him. Her expression was like that of a nurse imparting news to a relative.
    “The one about the boy from Easton,” she said, leaning back against the kitchen counter and crossing her arms. She still held the knife in her hands. The scent of the garlic pulp on its blade came to him. “The kid who went to Pakistan. His uncle’s agreed to go back. To make the introductions.”
    He remembered now. Three young Muslim boys recruited at a mosque in Bristol. They were only seventeen, eighteen years old. Like backpackers on a gap year, they’d left for a training camp on the Afghan-Pakistan border. Two of them had returned, but a third had not. Sightline had approached his family about making a documentary. That was all she’d told him, months ago now.
    He put down his pen.
    “That’s amazing,” he said. “Well done. Focus must be over the moon.”
    She smiled and looked down for a moment. And she was right. Suddenly it was funny. Suddenly they both knew what was coming, and the knowing of it made her wary attempt at disclosure seem ridiculous. Michael decided to go with the smile, even though a dull ache was already lodging between his ribs.
    He leant back and put his feet on a chair. “But who’s on their books who could handle something like that?” he said. “I wonder…”
    She looked back at him. “It would be two weeks. Max.”
    “When?”
    “As soon as we can get visas and travel sorted. And a fixer, but I’ve…” She trailed off.
    “But you’re already on to that,” he said.
    “Yes,” she said quietly.
    And then it wasn’t funny anymore, as if the humour they’d discovered had been sucked out of the room with her confirmation.

    Pushing herself from the work surface, she came to him, lifting his legs and placing them on her lap as she sat down.
    “It wouldn’t be Afghanistan,” she said. “We’d do it all from Pakistan.”
    “Would it be safe?” he asked.
    She shrugged. “As safe as it can be.”
    She leant forward and took his hands.
    “It’s a really important one, Mikey. His uncle, the sources he’s mentioned. No one’s had this kind of access before. No one. I mean anywhere. We’d be the first. And the group he’s with, this kid, they actually want to talk. They want to tell their side of the story. And so does he.”
    He knew, as he stroked the back of her hand and she squeezed the fingers of his, that he could only go with this. He could only ride the contours of her desire, and that somewhere under that deepening ache in his ribs, that was also what he wanted. It was what they’d promised each other from the start. To help each other be happy, whatever that meant.
    He lifted his feet off her lap and leant forward, taking her face in his hands. “Just,” he said, kissing her lightly, “be careful.”
    Her lips were warm, and as she kissed him back, pulling him to her, her mouth tasted of the onion she’d been eating as she cooked.
    “Thank you,” she whispered, putting her arms about his neck. “I owe you one Mikey boy.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    WHEN CAROLINE WAS killed, Michael brought so little back to London he made the move himself, loading his belongings into the back of their Volvo. He’d decided to sell Coed y