The Fly Guy Read Online Free PDF

hands reaching up from an urban grave. He walked up and down the desolate street, searched for the house, the door through which he had followed The Fly Guy, but could not find it.
    That day and the next he searched. He scanned the papers and police radio for reports of missing or murdered girls, but there was nothing. Henry drove back to the docklands again and again.
    He began to lose confidence in the reality of this creature. Henry hadn’t seen anyone cast a glance to this weird misshapen man in their midst. Was he the only one to see it? Henry couldn’t decide which scared him more, the monster being real, or the monster existing only inside him.
    Day after day he waited for The Fly Guy to reappear. No new cases came in. He wandered around the city, looking into windows, standing on street corners, until he gradually began to fade into the city.
    * * *
    Martin was frustrated by the way the story just dissolved.
    When Alison got home, she found him sitting at the table in front of his laptop holding his hands behind his head as if surrendering. By now he spent all of his time at her table. Where she used to put bills, there was now a pile of newspapers and dog-eared property magazines with red and orange circles around apartments and houses big enough for two. On the corkboard next to pictures of her parents was the first check he received from Noire and Martin’s favourite bits of feedback from fans of Henry Bloomburg. A man in Budapest said the stories were nightmarish parables. A woman in Burnley wanted to take Henry home and give him something of her own to investigate. A man in Detroit had read “The Puppet Master” at the hospital bed of his comatose lover who opened his eyes for the first time since an accident six weeks previously just as Henry witnessed the puppets come to life.
    Alison put her bag and a bundle of magazines and folders on the counter and switched on the kettle.
    “Having problems?”
    “Hi, babe. I just don’t know if this story is finished or not.”
    “Is it long enough to send?” She hung up her jacket and took off her shoes, rubbing the soles of her feet and her heels. All day she had been walking around properties, showing clients around big old city houses with high ceilings and kitchens the size of her apartment.
    “Yeah. I guess … it’s long enough. I don’t think it’s finished, but yeah, it’s long enough.”
    “Send it then. It can always be the first part of something. How long have you been sitting in front of it?”
    “All day.”
    “Press send, sweetie.”
    Martin attached it and sent it to Noire . He got up from the table and went over to her, putting his arms around her waist.
    “I didn’t get dinner ready again, sorry,” he said.
    “That’s okay, let’s get something on now, I’m starving.”
    “Why don’t you come into ICE tonight? To keep me company? It’s such a drag.”
    “Won’t Ozzy be working?”
    “Yeah, but it’s still a real drag of a job.”
    “Martin, I’m tired, I don’t want to sit in ICE while you and Ozzy work.”
    “Call your friends, come on.”
    She broke away, turning to open the cupboard and reached in for a pot.
    “I’m tired, I’m not going to come. Can you get the pasta out, and that paste we like? I’ll mix up something nice and easy.”
    She hadn’t been to ICE for months. The dark bar and drunken conversations shouted above the noisy music seemed light years away from where she was during the day.
    In the office she was taking every opportunity she could, volunteering for everything that the bosses threw onto the front desk. She made a point of finding out who was buying what, which investment companies were bulk-buying repossessed properties. Be interested, she kept telling herself. She made notes on index cards which she secretly kept in her purse. At lunchtime she went up to the rooftop terrace and pointed out into the cityscape, locating buildings and matching them up with companies, names, saying the name