Dreams of Leaving (67 page)

‘What've you got lined up for me now?' But the alcohol and the drugs had worn off and he felt drab and slow, utterly incurious. Police procedure – the exhaustion, the monotony, the waiting – had tranquillised him; he would submit to each new development quite passively.

‘Fingerprints,' the new policeman said.

Wincing, Moses climbed to his feet. He followed the new policeman out of the room, down a corridor that smelt like a hospital (and no wonder, he thought, feeling his injuries), and into a room that was as cluttered as the previous room had been bare.

The policeman produced a packet of Embassy Number One. ‘Like a cigarette, Moses?'

Suspicious, Moses searched into the policeman's freckled face; it contained nothing but innocence. ‘Thanks,' he said. ‘You smoke the same brand as my dad.'

The policeman lit the cigarette for him. While Moses smoked, the policeman prepared a flat oblong tin and several printed sheets of paper.

‘Give me your hand,' the policeman said.

Moses raised an eyebrow and crushed his cigarette out.

‘The fingerprints,' the policeman explained with a grin. ‘It's easier if I guide your hand. Unless you've done it before, of course.'

‘No,' Moses said. ‘This is my first time.'

He watched as the policeman took his fingers one by one and carefully but firmly rolled them from left to right, first across the ink-pad in the oblong tin, then across a sheet of paper that had been divided into squares, one for each finger. He realised that he was collecting the kind of information that Vince specialised in. That fucker. This was all his fault.

Afterwards, when he was washing the ink off his fingers, he said over his shoulder, ‘You know, I think you're OK.'

The policeman grinned.

‘Seriously,' Moses said. ‘I've come across quite a few policemen recently and you're one of the nicest I've come across.'

The policeman's grin broadened. ‘Thank you,' he said.

‘What's your name?'

‘Harry.'

‘Not Dirty Harry?'

‘That's an old joke, Moses.'

‘Sorry, Harry. People always make the same jokes about my name too.' Moses dried his hands on the towel provided. ‘Hey, Harry. I was thinking of becoming a policeman. What d'you reckon?'

Harry shook his head slowly. ‘I think you'd better forget the idea.'

‘Why's that, Harry?'

Harry pointed at the fingerprints on the table. ‘I don't think they'd look too good on your application form.'

Something sank in Moses. A slow lift in the tower-block of his body. Going down. ‘Oh yeah. Shit. I suppose you're right.' Then he turned and looked appealingly at Harry. ‘But I would've been tall enough, wouldn't I?'

‘Oh yes.' Harry squinted up at Moses. ‘You would've been tall enough, all right.'

After the fingerprints came the mug-shots. One frontal and two profiles were required. Harry sat Moses down in a metal chair, then crouched behind his camera. He told Moses which way to look and not to smile.

‘So I have to look serious, do I?' Moses said.

‘That's right.'

‘Can't have our criminals smiling, can we?' Moses composed himself, assuming an expression of great, if slightly wounded, nobility. His chin raised, he thought momentarily of Mary again.

Harry straightened up. ‘You can relax now.'

‘I bet those were pretty good pictures,' Moses said. ‘Could you get me a few copies?'

Harry laughed. ‘I'm afraid not. It's against regulations.'

‘Shame, that. Are you sure?'

‘I'm sure. Now there's one last thing, then you can go. You have the right to make a written statement. You don't have to, you understand. But you can. If you want. It's entirely up to you.'

Moses considered the proposition for a few moments, then he said, ‘Yes, I'd like to. I feel like writing something.'

Harry sighed. He gave Moses a biro and the appropriate form (with its heavily ruled lines, it looked like the bars on a cell if you turned it sideways), and left the room. When he returned five minutes later with two cups of coffee he peered over Moses's shoulder. He sighed again.

‘What's wrong, Harry?' Moses said. ‘Don't you like it?'

Harry peered over Moses's shoulder again, then he frowned and scratched his head. ‘Are you sure you want to do this? You don't have to, you know.'

Moses read through what he had written so far. At some points he nodded, at others he chuckled. It made a good story. He decided to cross out the bit about the policemen's breath smelling like sour milk. That probably wouldn't go down too well in court.

‘Yes,' he said, ‘I want to do it. One thing, though. What do I say about being beaten up by those two policemen in the other room?'

Harry took a deep breath. ‘That's a very serious allegation, Moses.'

‘It's not an allegation, Harry. It's the truth. Have you seen my eyebrow?'

‘I understood,' Harry said slowly, ‘that you sustained that injury while resisting arrest.'

Moses subjected Harry to long and careful scrutiny. Then he drew a line, very deliberately, under what he had written. ‘In that case,' he said, ‘I've finished.'

‘Don't worry,' Harry said as he signed the statement, ‘it'll be all right.' (It wasn't all right. Two weeks later Moses appeared at Horseferry Road Magistrates' Court. The judge told him he was childish and irresponsible, and fined him £50. He almost charged him with contempt of court too. For leaning on the dock. The judge had white hair and a bright pink face. Moses had never seen anyone who looked so consistently furious.)

‘You can collect your things now,' Harry said. ‘There are some friends of yours waiting for you.'

Moses tossed his polystyrene cup into the waste-paper basket. ‘Thanks, Harry.' He paused by the door. ‘Just think. We could've been working together.'

Harry grinned and scratched his head.

‘Not any more, though. Eh, Harry?'

‘Goodbye, Moses.'

‘See you, Harry.'

Moses walked back to the duty-room where he was handed his personal effects. Through a window of reinforced glass he could see Vince, Eddie and some new girl of Eddie's. She was wearing skin-tight red and white striped trousers. The officer on duty seemed to think that she was something to do with Moses.

‘Blimey, look at that,' he drooled. ‘You're a lucky bastard.'

‘Arrested, beaten up, my Wednesday night ruined,' Moses murmured. ‘Oh yes, I'm a lucky bastard all right.'

But the officer didn't seem to hear him. Still mesmerised by those stripes.

Moses buckled his belt with great relief. How nice to have two hands again. Amazing invention, belts. He had always taken them for granted in the past. Not any more.

He met his friends on the steps of the police station like a hero returning.

It was just after two in the morning.

They all went dancing.

*

Everybody who came into contact with Mary during the six days between Alan's death and the funeral seemed, either openly or covertly, to be
congratulating her on the way she was coping.
Coping.
The word nauseated her. The way she saw it, that kind of sympathy came from the same family as condescension, a distant relation, perhaps, but still family, and if there was one thing she couldn't stomach it was being condescended to, however obscurely. She thought she knew what they were picking up on, though. They were picking up on surface stuff: her dry eyes, her efficient manner – her armour, in other words. She wore a lot of lipstick and kohl. She wore stiff fabrics too, nothing that swirled or floated, nothing vague. Her airiness had evaporated completely. She displayed instead a kind of ironic practicality that verged, at times, on callousness. ‘No, the funeral's happening very quickly,' she heard herself inform a neighbour on the phone. ‘Apparently not many people died in Muswell Hill last week.' Inside, though, she was still trying to get used to the idea that she had been cheated. Her. Cheated. Her
anger
at that. She wanted to whirl round and, levelling a finger, cry, ‘Don't think you can pull the wool over
my
eyes.' But you can't talk to death like that. Death doesn't have to listen to anyone.

She saw only the necessary people – the priest, the funeral directors, Alan's father. She made an exception for Maurice. He came round on the Tuesday. He didn't treat her as if she was ill, or wounded, or mad. He simply looked at her across the table without pity or embarrassment, the slow bones of his hands cradling a cup of tea, the right shoulder of his grey jacket worn shiny by long familiarity with dustbins. That stare of his spread a safety-net that she could fall into. Those hands made her feel strangely comfortable. She even smiled as she said, ‘I want you to take all Alan's clothes away with you.'

‘You mean dump them?' he said.

She shook her head. ‘No. I want you to have them.'

The dustman lowered his eyes.

She watched his hands wander on the surface of the table. She thought of plants moving on the bottom of the sea.

‘I know you never really spoke to Alan,' she went on, ‘but you would have liked each other. I know you would. I can't imagine anyone I would rather give his clothes to. Please take them, Maurice. Who knows,' and she surprised herself by laughing, ‘some of them might even fit.'

‘You do me good,' she told him as she showed him to the door. ‘Come again, won't you?'

‘Next Tuesday suit you?' He grinned at her. It was one of his jokes.

‘Next Tuesday's fine.' She watched him shamble down the garden path, his feet flapping on the concrete as if his ankle-joints needed tightening.

Her smile lasted.

When his lorry had turned the corner, she walked back indoors, stood
by the phone. Facts, she thought. Facts, not emotions. She knew roughly what had happened to Alan. She knew that he had collapsed on Ealing Broadway at about two forty-five on Saturday afternoon. She knew that he had died of a thrombosis, a hardening of the artery walls which, according to the doctor who signed the death certificate, ought to have been detected years before.
(‘Ought?'
she had wanted to scream at him, this placid careful man, because he had, for those few minutes, represented the entire profession to her. ‘Why
wasn't
it then? Why
didn't
you?') Now she needed to know
how
it had happened. She needed an eye-witness account. She needed to be able to see every detail.

She dialled the police in Ealing. After twenty minutes of being transferred from one extension to another, after repeating her story at least half a dozen times, she was given the number of a Mrs Hart (a name that Moses must have run his finger over a thousand times, she thought, while searching for his own). Mrs Hart, she was told, had been present at the scene of her husband's death and would be able to provide her with the information she required. That same afternoon she drove to Ealing. Mrs Hart lived in a walk-up council block not far from Ealing Broadway. The stairs smelt of urine and then, higher up, of meat-fat. Mrs Hart's flat was on the fourth floor.

When Mary knocked on the door of number 72, an old woman with silver hair answered. ‘Mrs Hart?'

The old woman nodded.

‘I'm Mrs Shirley.'

‘They said you was comin'.' Mrs Hart ushered Mary into her lounge. ‘Wos your name, love?'

Mary told her.

‘Mine's Ruby. Ought to've been born on Valentine's Day, didn' I?' Her narrow eyes gleamed like an animal's – trust rather than cunning, though.

They sat down on a brown and yellow sofa. A gas fire bubbled in the corner.

‘I'm sorry about your 'usband.' Ruby laid a hand on Mary's wrist. ‘It's a bloody world, isn' it?'

Mary nodded. ‘I wanted to ask you what happened that afternoon. What you saw. It's so hard not having been there.'

‘I can imagine, love.' Ruby shifted to face Mary, her hands folded like gloves in her lap. ‘Well,' and she took a deep breath, ‘I was on me way to the shops. Fifteen minutes' walk from 'ere. It's the steps, see. Murder on me legs.' She rolled her eyes and Mary smiled. ‘I was walkin' up the main road when this bus come along, number sixty-free I fink it was. There's nobody at the stop, but the bus stops anyway, to let somebody off. Then
this gentleman goes past me, well, I mean you can tell, can't you, an' 'e's shoutin' an' wavin' an' all sorts for the bus to wait for ‘im like. The driver sees ‘im runnin', but you know what some of them drivers're like, right bloody bastards if you excuse me language. Wos 'e do? 'E puts ‘is foot down, dun 'e. Well,' another deep breath, ‘the gentleman, 'e carries on runnin' ‘cos the bus is goin' pretty slow, then all of a sudden 'e keels over. Jus' keels over right there on the street. I fought 'e must of tripped or summin' so I goes over to 'elp ‘im up like. 'E's lying on ‘is back in 'e, wiv ‘is eyes open but sort of starin' an' 'e sees me an' 'e smiles an' 'e says, “Stupid,” 'e says an' I says, “Wos stupid?”, finking 'e means me an' 'e says, “Fancy slippin' on a banana like that,” an' I look round for a banana an' there in't no banana is there an' I look at ‘im an' I'm about to tell ‘im there in't no banana an' what's 'e talkin' about banana but then I look a bit closer like an' I see 'e's dead. Well, there's all these people shoutin' about get a nambulance an' I says, “Wos the point of a nambulance, 'e's dead in 'e.” An' 'e was wan 'e. Frombosis, the doctor said. Nuffin' to do wiv no banana.'

Tears were falling from Mary's eyes. Alan had died alone. Among strangers. Without understanding. She had been so far away. Too far away to comfort, to explain, to reassure. That degree of distance from someone she had been so close to. It dismantled her armour. Her make-up ran, her body crumpled in Ruby's arms. That one weekend away had opened up a gap for ever. She couldn't leap over or build a bridge. She could only sit at the edge and pour her tears into it. One day, when she had cried enough, perhaps she would be able to swim across. She would be returning from that weekend for the rest of her life. Even on her deathbed she still wouldn't quite have reached home.