The pickets are giving it a round of applause and cheering. I steadfastly ignore them, and take up position where I was. The gates swing closed electronically. I'm hoping things can go back to how they were but now an old feller picket with a Japanese headscarf starts them all off singing. 'He's our friend, he's our friend, he's our friend!' they chant to the tune of 'Here We Go'. Hotfaced, embarrassed, I pretend to have just heard something over the radio and wander off. I stop, go back and climb the ladder to the security man who sits in a little conning tower pressing a button to let the gates swing open for the lorries, only it's not a button I see now, it's a key in a panel of controls. I tell him I have to talk confidentially on my radio. He doesn't notice that it's really a scanner. He steps out and goes a couple of rungs down the ladder so I can just see the white-banded cap on his Group 4 head. I look down at all the executive cars parked in named places. I pull the key out the panel. The gates will stay locked. The executives will be staging an unofficial sit-in tonight. Banged them up goodstyle! 'Cheers mate,' I say to the security guard as we swap places at the top of the ladder, and give him a wink like the lorry driver gave me.
Strong legs pump my way home. I feel super-charged and whole, like I've squared some circle. Like I've locked on to the magnetic north in all my wandering and whatever bad things happen now are at least framed. I have a compass. Now I'm more than halfway home, though, my legs have started to feel lodestone heavy.
*
Home, I take off my helmet and put it on the table. I fold my jacket and put the helmet on top of it. I sit in the chair and wait now for the bad thing to come.
The door buzzes. I've left it open. I stay in my chair. They'll be in in a minute.
'Hello?' calls a voice. I hear footsteps, I see faces. Two young CBOs. They hold themselves very distant, wanting to have just enough for canteen chatter but not wanting to breathe the air of a hell that might be waiting for them too. 'Because you didn't bring the uniform in, I'm afraid we've got orders to come and take it from you.'
It's been a while now since he said that. They're still here. My hand rises, eventually it reaches my throat. I unplug the black clip-on tie and lay it on the table. In a disconnected trance I undo the top button, staring into space where perhaps their heads may be. Slow fingertips find the next plastic button down. I unbutton this one too. I bring my other hand up to help me do the third button. My hands fall softly down. Slowly I raise my arms out to the sides. Without a word the two CBOs come forward. Gently, they unfasten all the buttons of my shirt and the two buttons on the cuff of each sleeve. One of them positions my arms straight up. He slides the shirt off over my head. Fingertips are undoing the laces on my black shoes. They undo my belt. Very carefully, they stand me up and slide my serge trousers down over my legs. Words now. 'Lift up,' murmurs the voice belonging to a hand at the back of my knee. A horse's leg in the blacksmith's hands. 'Other leg.' They sit me back down. I hear them empty the pockets. Lowered keys settle on the table as quietly as if they were being lifted. Loose change is stacked. I hear them folding the heavy trousers. I see a hand lifting a folded blue tunic. I hear the black handcuff wallet put inside the upside-down helmet, hear them tread quietly away and the door close.
*
I don't know how long I've been sitting here in boxer shorts and socks. It's very dark now. And cold. I reach out and pick up the scanner. Switch it on. Nothing, no one. Radio silence. The only man in the electrostatic of the night sky, looking for a friendly word in space. Somewhere to snag and hold, to stop me boosting into space.
Peeled
Chain-smoking like a lab beagle on Charing Cross Road. I think I've set my lungs on fire. Feel lungs smoulder like the start of a sofa fire. If I breathe in will I fan the embers? An open-topped, sash-staircase tourist bus goes by. A Japanese tour guide with microphone stands on the top deck. I strain to hear what he's saying over the bus-chuga-drone and the amp-waving, blustery wind. 'He's on John Manners Patrol, heh-heh,' he says. 'He's on Manners Patrol!'
*
In Leicester Square — ach! all the ugly tension of the pulling vibe. All the violent dissatisfaction. All the short-changed mullahs and northern ale lads not ready to give it up and go home. On the steps of the closed Underground, late-night maintenance workers in grimy orange jackets look on at the crowds, enjoying a reprieve from the Speak Your Worth machine of Friday nights. A life-size cut-out of Laurel and Hardy in the window of a hardcore porn shop. 'I'm frightened Ollie!'
Too much to look at. My eyes swivel and sway, spin, fidget and flicker. Head up, down, around, neck screwing tight into the base of my skull. Brain emulsifies to fatty droplets inside my forehead. Oh no, not this again. I try breathing slowly. Feel like I'm running out of air when I let the long breath out. Feel like I'm gonna pop my lung seams when I hold the big breath in. And inhale. And exhale.
In the rocking compartment I saw a man look at her funny, so Pm following this woman out Belsize Park tube. She regrets the miniskirt now. A creeping silver car slows. The fat bastard at the wheel has been in the minicab business exactly fifteen seconds. Sees me clocking him. Drives by. 'You re certainly getting the results, John.' Cheers, Mickey.
Ten feet ahead of me she turns off into a dark street. I hesitate. Without the uniform this is tricky. What do I do? I hate this. She fears me. I'll go away. But then, but then suppose something happened up that dark street? (I mean that's where it would happen, after all.) What would happen if I wasn't making sure it didn't? If I wasn't doing my job? I clear my throat and start singing a hymn.
A little look over her shoulder as we turn off Rosslyn Hill. I try to look like I'm not following her, but then that's just like someone who was following her. She's worried I might be a stalker! I try to reassure her by singing a bit louder. She's out of range so I shout the hymn and get closer. 'Do but themselves confound … '
She drops her keys at her front door, then gets in OK. I take the scanner out of my pocket. Switch it on. 'I'll see you when I see you, then … All right, bye then, bye.'
I cut through the Breaconbridge Estate. I remember Kieran pointing out the top of Breaconbridge Tower. The Andrews had taken over the whole top floor and lived in separate flats. Two balconies at the top of the tower bristling with giant dishes, telescopes, and an aerial. Check for probable nominals. Eagle Eye. Yeah, yeah. It'll come to me when I get there. I'll come to it. It'll come to fit when it is what it is. 'I'm nearly at the door now, pet.'
Making sure this female doctor gets home safe from the Whittington nightshift. Hornsey Road. Mustard door. I feel a connection between us. Wish I could tell her that we're both in the emergency services, kind of. If we lived in a village we'd be friends, but the world being as it is, all I can do is look out for her, watch her, check up on my old mate from behind the glass of a parallel universe. And see she gets home all right.
'We know where he lives, saw him in town and followed him home, Tone, and its only by … '
It cuts out. Furious, I'm about to throw the scanner on the floor when the signal comes back again. I freeze. Scanner still poised behind my head spear-chucker style.
'Right, I'll burn his fucking house down for starters. I know how to get his phone number off it so we can let him know we're on our way.'
'When's it on?'
'I'm at the end, tonight'
'Now?'
'Yeah, … But tomorrer. Set up an alibi. Dawn's or whatever. Fuck it, whatever. S'y'later!!'
'S'later!'
No internal rhythm, brain spinning so fast I'm all a hollow echo-chamber of soiled phrases and shop-jingles, echoing in a vomitorium. Brain whirring too fast to think. It's them. It's on. It's all still on.
Through Highbury Fields, on to Highbury Crescent, an avenue of handsome sycamore trees along the path through the park. Bark peeled in patterns off the sycamore trunks reveals smooth, bleached patches in the dark. And then, strangely, just as I'm thinking about UltraViolet MacKenzie I see her walking slowly, slowly down the street, studying the
pavement a few inches ahead of her careful feet. As I draw near hoping to scrape past without her noticing me, she looks up as if I'd just walked into her office. In a tiny, placid voice, and like we're in mid-conversation, this intimate nutter stranger says, 'The social services are saying I can't have home visits, I said you weren't a policeman, why can't I have home visits if the social says I can?' She glides calmly away, having forgotten entirely that I'm there.
Where was I going again? The broken bridge estate. No, I've just been there. Lost my way. I'll stop and have a coffee somewhere. Yeah, coffee, sit down, bifta. I'll find somewhere near here soon. That Tex-Mex over there.
Remote
Channel-trawling with the remote. Keep coming back and coming back and coming back to the same scene. There's other more innocent, more rewarding things to watch: an alligator documentary, To Have and Have Not — all good for the soul perhaps but I pass them by. Keep coming back to where there's this man bound and gagged. He is tall with slightly balding fair hair. He winces every time a gun is levelled at his battered head.
Hopping through the fifty-one channels I fancy I can still hear his muffled whimpers through the skirting boards of Tom and Jerry; or under the newsreader saying it's the worst snowfall (why not the best?), round the cape of QVC diamond sales on The Shopping Channel, and orbiting back through Countdown, Fifteen-To-One, Jeopardy!
But none of these can compete with the sensationalist thrill of seeing a man in fear of his life. I don't think I'm alone here, but why is it that this stuff is more exciting? Why don't we strive harder to get on to less zappy but more subtly rewarding planes of experience?
Coming back from the kitchen with these questions in my head and a plate of chicken sandwiches in my hand, I notice the tall, balding trussee slithering across the wooden floor trying to escape, the stupid fucker. I put my plate down on the coffee table, careful not to put it on the edge because if I accidentally knock something over I find I get really angry. I have to be careful about that. I walk across and kick him in the stomach.
Weakly he tries to call for help, of all things, but his shout-volume is fractioned by the gag: the long-division sign in his maw.
I politely tap him with the steel gun on flinching cheek. He has the bruised and bloody face of a slow learner.
'Now each time you make a mistake,' I say, 'you will hear this sound.' I pull back the ratchet of the hand-cannon.
Uncouth Behaviour
They were loud. I don't care for loudness in public places.
I had gone to eat alone in a large and noisy Tex-Mex.
Sitting in my padded green bomber-jacket, eating alone. Tough among all the happy eaters to get my food down even though I hadn't eaten for two days and nights.
I was on a small table for two. Five feet away was a long table with a bunch of City boys. They were making the shit jokes posh people make and think is wit. They were singing songs — our songs, working-class songs — they had no business singing. Celery, celery … Fuck off, you Norman cunts. City boys' night out. Celebrating what exactly? Maybe a new contract won — but these City-types can never go out without behaving like they are celebrating their fragile economic supremacy, the rout of all else. And I do not care for loudness in public places.
Under the din I rested my eyes on a small point of calm. She had delicate Jewish features, olive skin and straight black hair that was perhaps a bob when not behind her ears for work. Petite with very large breasts which she'd tried to hide behind a baggy black cardigan. Walking or standing the waitress was foal-footed on the wooden floor: not sure of her right to a place on earth, not sure it'd hold her tiny weight. There was something oddly assailable about her. For some reason she lacked the usual human force-field. As she stood near waiting for my selection from the easy-wipe menu, how easy and natural it would be, I felt, to reach out and put my arm around her tiny waist; or just pick her off her uncertain ground, sit her on my table like a child and have her carry on with her order pad as if nothing had happened. Maybe it's good, I was thinking, that I'm at least aware of these bad ideas.
Tried to ignore the roar from their table by watching the waitress, chewing the cardboard nachos very slowly. Living in the corner of her eyes she ignored the noise from the big table behind her while she attended some middle-aged, portly man who leaned back sweatily in his open shirt, leaning right back in his chair looking up at her as if she was holding grapes or her tits over his beaming boat. It being unconscious, this openness vibe, it must have driven her to confusion that she got in so many tight corners. If she did. Yes, she probably did. A legacy of sexual abuse? They say abusers often marry abusees. Or abusees marry abusers. What did that make me, staring at her now, I wondered.
A crust of bread landed on my table. I stared at it. Then, without looking at the City boys I threw it back and carried on eating my indigestible dip.
Same crust came back again. I looked up. A tall, muscly cove with thinning blond hair met my stare. Pointing at the crust, I slowly mouthed three words — 'pick it up!' — like I was helping him cheat in an exam. He got up and came over to me. 'Whooo's from his mates at the long table. And then it happened again. This thing that happens in these situations happened then, in the face-off with this man who could no doubt have creamed me — he hesitated. I felt that same beatific eagerness spreading over my face, like everything I ever wanted had just happened. Not a hard look, not a look of menace or macho aggro-geezer, just a sort of serenity. I was at home here (thanks, maybe, to Kenneth the coach-driver) and he hesitated, then decided not to do what he came over to do. He just broke out in a face-saving leer and took the crust away.
The others must have been surprised when he backed off instead of getting it on with neat, skinny me. On his way back to the table, one of the sweaty others held up an empty lager jug and bellowed, 'Go and get the waitress!' Still standing, he raised index-finger in a 'Right-ho' gesture, set off … and came back moments later with the waitress over his shoulder. Her head by the small of his back, her arse where his radio would be if he was me and I was still what I was. Roars of approval from his mates, round of applause. Then mock slapping-forehead Inspector Dreyfus-type gestures, with 'Uh-oh,' and 'Did you have to?'
He set her down.
'Don't mind him,' said a short scrum-half in yellow tie and red forehead. 'Don't mind him — he's completely insane!' Yeah. Crazy. A madman. A wild force of nature, him. A total madman. Wild. Demented. Psychotic. The scrum-half gave her a tenner which she slipped quietly into the big pocket of her wrap-around white mini-apron. Smoothed the whole thing out, hadn't he? Yeah, it's all straightened out now. Tenner, that should cover it.
Pretending to have laughed it off, she quickly took their orders.
The situation had passed. They didn't know how close they came. I pushed my plate away and stared at the table.
It doesn't matter, said a voice in my head, they've said sorry. She doesn't seem too shaken. What am I like when I'm drunk? Am l so much better?
I've never done this, said another, louder voice, and they think this makes them great fucking lads. They'll retell this one. Look at big cunt now with his beaming face soaking up the plaudits. Hero of the Night. Hero of the Fucking Night.
It's nothing. They were quite polite with the girl, really. They all said sorry. It was just high spirits and everything was smoothed out. It's just 'cos I'm on my own in a crowd. Right. Right.
Wandered off for a few blocks out in the night air. Heading back fast to the restaurant I told myself I was just checking nothing else had gone off. Seeing him alone at the cashpoint I told myself this was his Last Supper and nicked him at gunpoint.
We got into a scuffle getting into his car. At the front door he was like a horse refusing the starting stall. Someone had spelt 'MURDERAR' wrong on my wall. I had to use the pistol-butt once maybe two times. Twice at most.
And then with him sitting on the wooden floor at gunpoint I began: 'You know why you're here?'
'No.'
'Y
ou were uncouth.'
'I didn't break any law. I'm law-abiding.'
'Which law is this?'
'The law.'
'You let evil into you. If a kid from the Cannoncourt estate let the same amount of devil into his soul, it would be a recognized crime. Sliding scale, it's a sliding scale. Why should he be hit harder than you, eh? Why? You never wanting for anything your whole life.' Just to freak him out a bit I put on like a mad face. Did a sort of nutter face.
'I know how it is … ' he said, winding up some pathetic bit of preppy psychobabble.
I inclined my head as if to say 'I think not, El Cunto,' and he gave up the gambit. 'Your only way out of this,' I said 'is if I see a particular look on your face. Now I'm not going to tell you what that look is, you're going to have to arrive at it, to achieve it yourself.'
He didn't look up or say anything. Smiled to himself, got up saying, 'Fuck this.'
I got up and grabbed him.
'Get off!' he shouted. I smacked him in the face, ran him to the wall, his head banged against it. An arm went up to his head I punched him twice more left and right and he went to the ground with a little blood and not much fuss.
Once he was sitting on the wooden floor with his wrists cuffed behind him I brought him the picture of me in uniform with the Home Secretary just to impress upon him the gravity of his situation; to make him think this was a special underground department. I trussed his legs with washing-line and put the telly on.
I felt very calm. And that in itself meant a lot to me: to punish him or not to punish was one of those decisions you won't know is right until you take it, until you take it and feel a rewarding gladness descend upon neck and shoulders, gut and heart.
*
I could have done without him being there when I got back from my walk. I put the telly on again, though, and zapped channels with the dibber. Coming back with a chicken sandwich and crisps, however, he is slithering to the door, trying to escape. Not yet. Not nearly yet. No-oh-oh-no. But what? What then? Now what? What is it? What?
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