Dreams of Leaving (66 page)

‘What's it look like?'

‘You've got no idea, have you.'

‘Give us a hand then.'

‘Get out the way.' He shoved Vince aside. He gave the print one swift tug and it came away from the wall. A screw scuttled down the stairs and round the corner.

He ran up the stairs and turned left on to the street. When he reached the corner he stopped to inspect the print. It was an airbrush drawing of a Coca-Cola bottle. He leaned it against an iron railing and was just turning to ask Vince why he had such fucking awful taste when somebody grabbed his arm and swung him round. There were about three policemen standing there with about another three policemen standing behind them. He almost said Hello, Hello, Hello. He didn't, but the thought made him grin.

‘Oh, so we think it's funny, do we?' one of the policemen said.

Fuck off, Moses thought.

Another picked the print up off the pavement and examined it with great interest as if he was in the market for that kind of thing. He probably was.

‘Is this yours?' he said.

‘Certainly not,' Moses said. What an insult.

‘Where did you get it from then?'

‘Over there.'

‘Over where?'

‘That wine-bar over there.'

Where was Vince? Moses wondered. His bloody idea. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Vince being questioned by some other policemen. It was unclear exactly how many.

‘That your mate, is it?'

He didn't like the way they kept jumping to conclusions so he didn't say anything this time. He had the impression – a dim impression, submerged in pints and pints of alcohol – that he had said too much already. He silently cursed that honesty of his which always floated to the surface when he was drunk.

‘I think,' the policeman with the print said, ‘that we'd better return this to where it belongs.'

The policeman who was holding Moses reached for his walkie-talkie and, just for a second or two, his grip on Moses's arm relaxed. Moses jerked free and made a break for the nearest side-street. Darkness flowed round his body like fur. Lights bounced on either side of him. Like swimming, this running. So effortless and smooth. Ridiculous, actually. He wanted to stop and laugh. His idea (inspired, he thought, by memories of Top Cat) was to hide in a dustbin until the policemen blundered past and then dart off in the opposite direction. But when he turned the corner
he couldn't see a single dustbin. Not one. No dustbins? he thought. Where do they put all their rubbish? He was still running, but the confidence was draining out of him. Dismay filtered into his bloodstream. Escape began to seem less and less feasible. As he looked over his shoulder to see where the policemen were, his foot caught the raised lip of a paving-stone and he went sprawling. The next thing he knew, there were half a dozen policemen kneeling on his back.

‘Got you, you bastard.'

‘Resisting arrest, eh?'

‘You're in big trouble, you are, mate.'

Their breath stank of triumph and sour milk. He tried to look round to see exactly who the breath belonged to, only to have his face rammed sideways into the pavement.

‘Don't you bloody move, smartarse.'

‘You're in big trouble, you are.'

He didn't move.

‘All right, get on your feet.'

How could he do that? At least five of them were still kneeling on his back.

‘I said get up, cunt.'

He laughed. ‘You told me not to move.'

He shouldn't have laughed. A fist (or something designed for a similar purpose) crashed into his kidneys. He gasped. These were hard men, he realised. They would smile at you and then knock the teeth out the back of your head if you smiled back.

‘Got a right one here.'

‘He's in big trouble, he is.'

‘Come on, get up.'

They eased off his back – unwillingly, it seemed to him – and gripped him by the arms. All right, he thought. I'll get up.

They marched him back towards the wine-bar, two in front, two behind, one on either side. Everything bar handcuffs. Two squad cars waited on the road, engines idling. The crackle of walkie-talkies. Blue whirling lights. A small crowd gathering. This can't be real, he thought. This can't all be for me.

They passed Vince skulking in a doorway. He made a face, powerless, apologetic, and shrugged. There weren't any six policemen kneeling on
his
back and calling him bastard, Moses noticed.

They escorted him back through the door, down the stairs (past the two ragged holes and the telltale rectangle of clean white wallpaper) and into the bar. One policeman stood guard over him while two others held a
conference with a squat middle-aged man who was, presumably, the manager. The few people left in the bar stared at Moses with open curiosity.

He heard the word
prosecute.
Heav-y. He exchanged a brief glance with the manager. The manager's eyes were loaded with scorn and disgust. Oh, come
on,
Moses wanted to say. I wasn't going to
steal
that thing. Who'd want to steal anything that corny?

‘He liked the place so much,' the girl behind the bar was saying, ‘that he had to take a piece of it with him.'

Now that hurt. He remembered smiling at her earlier in the evening and he remembered her almost smiling back. She wouldn't even look at him now. She went on polishing glasses, her eyes screened by her hair, her lips twisted in contempt.

Some kind of decision was reached. One of the policemen pushed him through the bar, up the stairs and out on to the street. A squad car drew alongside. The policeman spoke into his walkie-talkie.

‘– have successfully apprehended the criminal – '

Criminal?
Criminal?
I'm not a criminal, Moses thought.

Oh yes you are, said the policeman's face.

Moses was bundled into the back of the car. He had to sit between two policemen, his shoulders drawn together, his arms dangling between his legs. The lights of the King's Road raked through the interior as they moved away. He felt a sudden sense of elation at the novelty of it all.

‘See that shop?' he cried. ‘That's where I bought these boots!'

The two policemen in front exchanged a glance.

What was wrong with them? Moses wondered. They'd made their arrest, the tension was over, why couldn't they loosen up, have a bit of fun? He stared at them one by one, these four policemen who didn't know how to enjoy themselves. Where was wit? Where was laughter? Where, if nothing else, was job satisfaction? He wanted to entertain them, but all his jokes fell on stony faces.

Then a frightening thought occurred to him. So frightening that he was almost too afraid to ask.

‘You're not Peach's men, are you?'

Both the policemen in the back stared straight ahead, expressionless, unblinking.

‘You know.
Peach. Chief Inspector
Peach.'

Not a flicker of recognition.

‘He runs a police station. Somewhere down south. Pretty small operation by your standards, I suppose.'

Still nothing.

‘You really don't know him?'

‘Don't know what you're talking about, mate,' the driver said.

‘Well,' Moses said, ‘that's a relief.'

But then he thought, they
would
say that, wouldn't they. If they
were
Peach's men. He tried another tack.

‘Where are you taking me?'

They wouldn't say.

He leaned forwards and peered at the fuel gauge. Almost empty. Not enough to get to New Egypt then. Thank God for that.

‘Hey,' he said, ‘careful you don't run out of petrol.'

‘I think you'd better shut it,' the policeman on his left said.

‘Oh,
life,'
Moses exclaimed. ‘I was beginning to think you were all dead. Bit worrying being driven along by four dead policemen.'

‘
Christ,'
the driver muttered.

The car swung left into a narrow backstreet. Now Moses knew he hadn't been kidnapped by Peach, he began to relax, take in his surroundings. They passed a girl with blonde hair standing by the side of the road. She looked at him as if she knew him. He waved. The girl smiled. Her smile reached through the closed car window, past the taciturn policemen, and into Moses's heart, where it glowed. There is nothing to beat the smile of a girl you have never seen before, he thought.

‘Peach offered me a job, you know.' There was something about the silence of these policemen that made him talk. ‘He said I'd make an excellent police officer. No,
magnificent,
he said. What d'you think of that?'

Before anyone could reply they had pulled into the kerb and parked. Moses was manhandled out of the car and on to the pavement. Seen in the bleak light of the street-lamps, the policemen had hard closed faces, the kind of faces that believe in duty, violence, Margaret Thatcher, and a good chauvinistic fuck on Friday nights.

‘You know, I don't like Peach very much,' he laughed, ‘but I like him better than you lot.'

The grip on his upper arm tightened. He would have a bruise there in the morning – and it wouldn't be the only one either.

*

He was escorted into a grey room with bare walls and no windows. Two policemen in regulation shirtsleeves stood on either side of a solid wooden desk. One was tall and sallow; a few strands of black hair had made the lonely journey across the top of his bald head. The other, stockier, had a bull neck, sloping shoulders, and a blur of ginger hair on his forearms. They had already taken his name and address (they had taken his belt too,
and they had dropped it into a transparent plastic bag which made the belt look important and rather dangerous, and meant he had to hold his trousers up by hand). Now they were telling him to take off his boots. Try it sometime when you're drunk. Hold on to your trousers with one hand and reach down for your laces with the other. Impossible. Either your trousers fall down or you do.

After two or three attempts he said, ‘I can't.'

The tall policeman walked round the desk and stood over him. ‘Take your bloody boots off, Moses.' The Moses was a sneer.

The stocky policeman laughed. ‘Are you a bit Jewish by any chance, Moses? Are you a bit of a fucking yid?' He draped his forefinger across his nose as he spoke.

‘None of your business,' Moses said. For which he was shoved in the back by the tall policeman. He keeled over, landed face down on the floor.

‘Take your boots off, Moses.'

‘I thought it was only blacks you beat up,' Moses said, and instantly regretted it. A highly polished shoe smashed into his ribs.

‘Didn't hurt you, did I, Moses?'

‘You're making things difficult, Moses Bloody Highness.' The tall policeman read these last three words off his official form as if Bloody was Moses's middle name.

‘So are you,' Moses said.

‘I suggest you shut your mouth and get on with it.'

Both the policemen had voices that grated like machines for grinding the organs, bones and flesh of cattle. They would make mincemeat of him if he wasn't careful. He thought of Mary's voice and almost cried. He fumbled with his boots again, managed to undo one of the laces.

‘Look at that. He did it.'

‘Amazing.'

‘Now do it up again.'

‘What is this?' Moses said. ‘Kindergarten?'

‘You don't deserve to be treated any other way – '

‘Bastard.' The stocky policeman liked to finish off the tall policeman's sentences for him. They were a real team.

Moses tied the lace. ‘Now what?'

‘Now take your boots off.'

He muttered under his breath. He untied the lace again. Then he stood up. He let go of his trousers, gripped his left boot in both hands and began to hop round the floor. It just wouldn't come off. His trousers slipped down to his knees, tied his legs together. He fell over again.

‘I'm bored with this game,' he said.

‘You're not doing very well, are you – '

‘Jewboy.'

‘Not quite so fucking smart as you thought.'

‘Oh piss off, will you?' he said. Anger was beginning to seep through the many layers of his drunkenness.

A shoe pinned his wrist to the floor.

‘We don't like that kind of language.'

‘Specially not from a stupid cunt like you.'

The tall policeman moved towards him, a sheen of sweat on his high balding forehead.

‘I'm going to report you two,' Moses said.

‘Did you say report?'

‘Yeah. To Chief Inspector Peach.' Bravado now, bluff, anything.

‘Peach.' one of the policemen scoffed.

‘You piece of shit,' said the other, and landed a shoe just above Moses's left eye.

‘Haha,' Moses said. Red and orange planets whirled across the darkness as he closed his eyes. One of them looked like Saturn. ‘If I said Manchester, would you start dribbling?'

The shoe landed again, somewhere on the back of his thighs.

‘Crime is order,' he shouted as they came at him again. ‘A policeman said that.'

‘I'll give you crime is order.'

‘Crime is order, my foot.'

Two different shoes landed simultaneously in two different and tender places.

‘All right, that's enough.'

‘Peach's important,' Moses murmured. ‘Peach's my friend. He'll be down on you like a ton of bricks.'

But the policemen had gone and he was alone.

Cold lino floor. Distantly aching body. One grazed hand beside his face, the redness too close to his eyes. Unwillingness to move.

Cold.

*

It was some time before the door opened again.

‘Would you come this way, please?'

Moses had propped himself against a wall. He turned his head and saw a young police officer with a soft face and freckles. His voice polite, almost subservient. Classic interrogation technique, Moses thought. One moment
he was bastard, the next he was sir.