The Things I Know(21)

She screwed her eyes up and cocked her head. ‘I don’t really understand what you mean. Give me an example.’

Grayson looked up, as if trying to think of one that he was happy to share. ‘A good example might be when I went out on to the walkway, just outside the front door of our flat. I saw my friend Reggie.’

‘Your next-door neighbour. The one with the credit card.’

‘Yes, him, I saw him, and he looked really scared. His pupils were wide and he was breathing quickly and he didn’t have a top on and he was sweating, but it wasn’t a warm day; in fact, it was quite cold. I smiled at him, and he looked at me as if he needed help, and I said, “Are you okay, Reggie?” And he shook his head briefly and still didn’t speak, but stared at me as if he needed some help. I was watching his face, trying to figure out how to help him and what might be wrong, and saw him look down briefly, and when I followed his eyes I noticed he didn’t have any shoes on. I thought I’d figured out what he needed, so I shouted, “Oh, your feet! Do you want me to go and find you some shoes? Your trainers? Or I can lend you my slippers?” As I said, it wasn’t a warm day and I thought it couldn’t be nice to be standing there in bare feet on the concrete. And then he smiled at me and, even though he didn’t answer, he looked happy that I’d asked, grateful. And that was what I noticed. That’s what I remember about that day. What I think about.’

He paused. ‘But I think what other people might have noticed or might remember most is that the whole sky was lit with the on–off bright blue light of the sirens that coloured the darkness, or the fact that Reggie had his arms up behind his back and was being held still by two police officers in stab vests. And that there were six other police officers on the walkway. But I didn’t really see them, not at first. I only saw my friend and that he was frightened and that he had no shoes on. I wanted to help him. I wanted to figure out what was wrong, like a puzzle. That’s what I do for my job – I solve problems, puzzles.’

Hitch had known someone similar to this man in primary school, a boy who had extra lessons, like her, a boy who did not know why it was important to keep his clothes on in public but who could do maths. Any maths. He’d had Asperger’s, she remembered. Did Grayson?

‘Shit! I’ve never seen that many police officers. What had he done?’ She sat forward on the sofa, entirely rapt.

‘Oh, he killed someone.’

‘He killed someone?’ She gasped and laughed at the same time. ‘Well, I wasn’t expecting that!’

‘Yeah, well, he says he didn’t mean to, so it was an accident, really, but we have a legal system and he was found guilty by a jury.’

‘How long did he get?’

‘Twenty-six years.’

‘Shit!’ This story was as exciting as it was shocking. Mr Grayson Potts came from a whole other world.

‘Yep, it’s a long time. I keep thinking I should go and visit him. I’ve written to him, and I thought I might wait until I get a letter back before I turn up. You know how some people are about visitors.’

She paused before she answered and stared at him. ‘I think you seem like a kind man, Grayson – kind and a bit weird.’

‘So I’ve been told, especially by Liz, who sits next to me at work. She calls me the expert puzzle-solver and she thinks I’m so good at it because of my weirdness.’

Hitch laughed, and he smiled at her.

‘What do you mean by “puzzle-solver” – like crosswords and things?’

‘I can do those, but that’s not really what I meant.’

‘Rubik’s cubes?’ She was running out of ideas.

‘No, I mean general problem-solving; it’s part of my job. I can look at lines of data and spot patterns and it feels important to me. I don’t know why, but I need to turn the data into a straight line in my mind and find the pattern.’

She blinked at the man. ‘I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’

He turned to face her and his expression was pained, as if it was too hard for him to explain – and not for the first time. ‘If you think about a page of facts – columns and columns of dates, prices, quantities, percentages or whatever – I can look at it and, after a period of time, I can change the way I see it in my mind until it looks like one of those puzzles where you have to guess what number comes next or what’s missing. I don’t know how I do it and I don’t know why I do it, but I’ve always done it and, in my job, guessing those missing numbers, seeing the gaps, or knowing what comes next is very important because it’s classed as a prediction, and that means I know before most other people what’s going to happen.’

‘Like magic! Like a trick!’

‘Yes, I guess it is if you can’t do it. But it’s not a magic trick. It’s just that every single line of data is like a circle, a cycle.’ He drew the shape in the air with his finger. ‘The only variant is how long it takes to repeat that cycle, but I open up the circle, lay it flat in my mind and, as I say, I can see a pattern and spot the gaps.’

She stared at him and hoped she was managing to disguise the crease of confusion that tried to form on her brow. He looked at her face and began again with renewed enthusiasm.

‘When . . . when I look at a list or a spreadsheet, it’s a bit like reading music to me. I can spot the rhythm of the numbers, like notes on a page, and just like with a piece of music, if a note is wrong, out of tune, a misplaced number, a gap, something odd or interesting . . . it jumps out at me and I can work it out from there.’