The Game (Tom Wood)

TWELVE





Andorra la Vella, Andorra

The man with sandy blond hair watched. He’d been watching all day. He would be watching into the night. He would watch the next day. Maybe even the day after that. Nothing but watching.

Some people didn’t like to watch. They got bored with the monotony of it. They grew complacent. They became irritated. They missed details. They didn’t do the job they were supposed to. They were lazy.

Not the man with blond hair. He didn’t get bored. He wouldn’t become irritated. He was never lazy. He maintained focus whatever the hour. However long he’d been watching for. No matter what the circumstances. It was the way it should be, even if it hadn’t always been so. As a young man he had lacked patience. He had hungered for excitement. Such was the folly of youth. Now, he could appreciate the quieter moments of life. He appreciated them because they were so very rare and therefore so very precious. Yes, he liked to watch.

It was such a simple thing, to watch, but no small skill was required for that simplicity. Anyone with sight could watch. Yet to watch successfully meant to remain unseen in return. The man with sandy blond hair knew himself to be not unmemorable. He had enough height and breadth to make him stand out. His face had sharp features. His eyes imprinted themselves for ever on anyone who looked into their depths. Yet, despite his conspicuous appearance, he shrouded himself in a cloak of the mundane that few could hope to peer behind.

The scenic locale and the sunshine made watching a more outwardly agreeable experience than perhaps it could have been, but a pleasant temperature and environment were quite unimportant to him. It would have made no difference had he been lying on frozen ground with an inch of snow across his entire body. He took his pleasure in the watching, not in the circumstances of the watch.

A riotous mob of pigeons flapped and crowded before his feet, eager enough for the bread he threw to them that they passed underneath his legs and between his feet. Across his lap lay a baguette that had been baked that morning and gave off the most wondrous of homely fragrances.

He was seated on an ornate iron bench set in Parc Central in the heart of the town that served as the capital of Andorra. It was a tiny settlement of less than twenty-five thousand people, and where often he discovered the charm of a town was in direct disproportion to its size, Andorra la Vella broke the rule he had witnessed the world over. He found it a horrid, soulless place, its buildings concrete monstrosities. Even the surrounding mountains failed to make a favourable impression. They were lumps of ugly rock fit only for the most ironic of picturesque postcards. He would not be sad to see his excursion here come to an end.

The man with blond hair carefully pulled chunks from the baguette’s soft innards. While he rolled them into little balls between finger and thumb he tore off pieces of crust and fed them between his lips.

The pigeons waited impatiently for the bread, but he only flicked it among them when he was happy the ball was perfectly spherical. Such attention to detail greatly mattered to him.

When the ball of bread sailed through the air the resulting melee caused him to suppress a smile. Many times he’d watched the stronger pigeons shunt the smaller birds aside as they chased after the bread, else the fastest or most cunning pigeons would get to the food first and flap away before they were relieved of their prize. The weak and the slow were left hungry. It was life’s eternal struggle played out in miniature at his feet. He silently applauded the actors who performed with such passion. So savage and yet so very beautiful. Bravo.

A middle-aged woman strolled by, draped in finery, dragging along a dog with bulging eyeballs and so small even the pigeons showed no fear of it.

‘You shouldn’t feed them,’ the woman called to him. ‘They’re a nuisance. Pure vermin.’

‘As are we all, madam,’ the man with blond hair said back. ‘But at least the pigeons have no pretence of grandeur.’

She frowned and quickened her pace.

‘Everyone’s a critic,’ he whispered to his actors.

He flicked another sphere of bread. It landed near the woman’s feet and the pigeons whooshed in her direction. She yelped and fled, jerking the tiny dog with her. It yapped.

This time he didn’t suppress his smile.

Parc Central was one of the few green areas inside the town, but the surrounding valley was green under the summer sun. The pretty young mother and her son came here so often because it was so close to the boy’s school. The child still enjoyed playing on the swings and roundabout and climbing on the frame. They came most days after school and sometimes at the weekends too. The man with blond hair knew because they never went anywhere without his knowledge – without his presence.

They lived in an apartment nearby. Although only a small dwelling it was located in one of the town’s most exclusive neighbourhoods. The mother worked part time as a sous chef in a fine restaurant and earned each month less than half the sum of the apartment’s rent. He had eaten at the restaurant and found the food to be quite excellent, if a little heavy on the saturated fats.

The mother saw him on occasions, of course, like she saw other people on the street or in the park, but she strolled through a simple existence unaware of just how dangerous life could be. She failed to see through the mundane cloak that encased him. She dismissed him as just another man. A local, perhaps. Uninteresting and harmless. She didn’t see the monster. But she would when the time was right.

That time was coming.