The Canal (8 page)

“Just please explain to me what happened on the night you hit him?”

“I
am
. I had an argument …”

“With him?”

“No, with the man I was seeing at that time. A good man, a man who knew nothing other than working hard for a living, providing for those he loved. A man who bought what he was told to buy. A man who simply lived. A good
man. We argued … We hated each other, we wanted no part in each other. So I got in my car. I got away from him … I’ve never seen him since. I think.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve never wanted to, that’s why.”

“You said
I think
 …”

“…”

“So you have seen him since?”

“…”

“I thought so.”

“But I’m not lying to you. This is the truth. I’ve never told anyone this before. I was driving … 
away
 … I just wanted to get away from him. I was taken by the views of the city. I could see everything there was to see. It was all sprawled out before me. I was alive. I felt connected to the night. My TT. Me, alone, away from him … And then I saw him, he was just standing there. I saw him. I passed him. He didn’t see me, so I followed the road. I knew it would take me back around. I knew it would take me back to him. I had been driving for about two hours, just around and around the M25. I sometimes liked to do that—eighty-ninety miles per hour and heading absolutely nowhere, just around and around, just driving along. I got off somewhere near Dartford. I found myself on Shooters Hill Road heading towards Blackheath. I circled the heath a few times, not really knowing where to go. The streets were completely deserted just off the main drag. I remember thinking it looked odd. I felt strange. It was maybe three a.m., but the reports in the media stated that he was hit sometime between one-thirty and two-thirty a.m. I saw him walking towards Wemyss Road from Paragon Place. He was walking slowly and looked like he had been drinking. The news reports said that he had been drinking with his work colleagues. Apparently he was far away from home and was
probably trying to flag down a taxi. But he looked local to me. He looked like he belonged. Apparently he socialised with work colleagues each Thursday night … I followed along Paragon Place. He must have sensed me, as he started to quicken his pace. He didn’t look at me, not once … Not that time, anyway. I slowed alongside him, but he just stared at his feet. I crawled alongside him for about ten metres before I continued down Paragon Place and onto Wemyss Road. I immediately turned left onto Montpelier Row, continuing onto Prince of Wales Road. It was there that I decided to go back around to Paragon Place again, to see if he was still there, dawdling along. He had ventured onto Wemyss Road. I pulled up behind him and turned off all my lights … Just my stereo playing, that song,
that perfect song
 … I think I hit him at about forty miles per hour just as he stepped into the road to cross to the other side. It was perfect timing, as if it had been rehearsed many times. It was like he’d been suddenly plucked up from the ground and flung mercilessly into the night. He hit the curb head first behind me and probably died on impact. I looked at his crumpled body through my rearview mirror. My heart was beating quickly, so quickly, so frantically. I backed up the TT to get a closer look. I got out. His eyes were wide open, just staring up into the night. And that smile on his face, I’ll never forget that smile. The one thing I regret—the one thing that haunts me—is that I should never have gotten out of the TT. I should have remained inside. I should’ve remained intact … I wasn’t too bothered about the damage at the front of my car. Like I said, I knew of places where I could get that fixed … He was nothing to me, just some random human being. I just had to do it … because I could. If they find me—which
they
at some point will—I still won’t be able to answer their questions. I’ll never be
able to answer them. Not the absolute. All I can say, all that I could tell them, the one thing … his eyes … as I approached him, just as he stepped out onto the road, he turned and looked directly at me. At least this is how I remember it now. He looked at me … 
into me
, you know? Just before I hit him.
Just before I hit him
.”

“I don’t know what to say …”

“You don’t have to say anything. I just had to tell you this … It’s funny.”

“What is?”

“I almost wish that I could go back … just to see …”

“What for?”

“To see if he was really looking at me …”

I once looked up on the internet the most common injuries relating to hit-and-run incidents. There weren’t that many I could think of without help. The injuries were countless: traumatic brain injury, skull fractures and haematoma, along with extensive damage to hands, arms, forearms, shoulders, and wrists. Fingers are often crushed. Lower limb damage to legs, hips, knees, heels, and feet are also extremely common. Hidden internal injuries are manifold: torn spleens and severe damage to organs, such as the heart, kidneys, liver, bowels, lungs, and the aorta often lead to internal bleeding. The whole spectacle is a bloody, rotten mess. I have never stopped to look at car accidents for this very reason.

The canal was silent. Not a sound could be heard. It was as if the wind had taken it all away. I looked to my feet. I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I imagined it happening all over London, the entire country: gleaming cars hitting tired, worn-out random people, in random streets, in random towns, and random cities. I imagined it occurring
all over the world: the cool exterior of each car smashing into warm living flesh.

“Do you fancy coming to get something to eat with me …?”

“I’m not hungry. Telling you all this has left me feeling cold. I’m going to leave now.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Will you be here tomorrow?”

“Yes … I will.”

“Good. So will I …”

“Where were you on Thursday, the seventh of July, 2005?”

“The bombings?”

“Yes.”

“I was walking to work. The same job I have just left … recently … I was on Moorgate wondering why the streets were swamped, people walking in the road, police on every corner, and why the majority of people were walking towards me, away from Bank, away from the square mile, the City. I had no idea what had happened. This must have been around the time after the bus exploded, all the way in Tavistock Square … when people weren’t still too sure what was happening, or when they had realised the severity of it. Everyone seemed to have their mobile phones to their ears. I remember their faces, those people streaming towards me. It’s funny, I never give other people on the street a second glance, I don’t generally care about strangers. But that morning their faces penetrated deep inside me. Each and every one of them.”

As I began to speak about what I did that morning she inched closer to me on the bench. She did this obviously and without trying to disguise the fact. It was a warmish day, and she was wearing a thin white dress that was almost transparent. When her left leg brushed up against my right it felt like it was her naked flesh touching me. She was wearing flip-flops. They were silver and black. She had immaculately painted toenails—jet black. I looked at them, each of her perfectly filed toenails. The toe immediately next to her big toe was longer, this was concurrent on both feet. Her feet were beautiful. I wanted to touch them, to plant soft, gentle kisses upon them, to caress them. To put each between my teeth, to bite down tenderly. I was aware of each of their movements: subconscious movements executed at the tips of the nerve endings.

I continued to talk about that day.

“I often think about what turns ordinary human beings into mass murderers and terrorists. There must be more to it than mere religion, fanaticism, fundamentalism. There must have been other key factors? … It’s all so futile. So pointless …”

“You’re wrong, of course …”

“Why? What makes you think that?”

“There is a point to it. Of course there’s a point to it. There’s got to be a point to it, otherwise …”

“Otherwise what?”

“Otherwise it’s not worth doing …”

“So, you’re saying there is a point to the London bombings?”

“Yes.”

“A
point
to the mass murder of those innocent, everyday, working-class Londoners?”

“Yes, there has to be. Why else would they have done it?”

“But it’s all so futile …”

“It’s the banality of evil, that’s what it is. Ordinary human beings doing extraordinary things. It happens. It happens in all wars … Human beings haven’t changed, just killing machines have …”

“But it’s wrong …”

“I know it’s
wrong
. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a point to it …”

“What were you doing?”

“When?”

“On Thursday the seventh of July, 2005?”

“I was sleeping.”

“Sleeping?”

“Yes, sleeping. I slept through the whole thing …”

“How?”

“I was tired. But I knew it was going to happen.”

“How?”

“I just knew. It was obvious to me. It was obvious to everyone … I woke up that day. I don’t watch much television so I didn’t know immediately. It was only when I heard ladies talking about it in the newsagents that it clicked. It wasn’t a shock to me. I just wanted to know who they were.”

“The victims?”

“No, the suicide bombers. I knew it was suicide bombers. I wanted to see their faces—they were so young, and so … 
extraordinary
.”

“Extraordinary?”

“Yes. Who else would physically turn themselves into a machine primed for mass destruction? These are extraordinary people to me, ordinary people transformed …”

“But you can’t say that!”

“Yes, I can. I can say whatever I want to say: the suicide bomber is an extraordinary human being. An extraordinary individual. An extraordinary machine …”

“A misguided individual, more like. This is nonsense.”

“No. It’s not. It’s nothing new either.”

“I don’t care, it’s horrific. Those people … the victims … It’s all so wrong.”

“But you know as much as I do why they do it.”

“I do?”

“Yes. You do. There’s nothing left to believe in anymore. All is fiction. Somehow, we have to invent our own reality. We have to make the unreal real. It’s interesting to note that a sizable minority of extremists are recent converts. They have nothing else to do. We are empty. You know that …”

“Yes, I do … Everything is boring.”

“Exactly …”

I felt closer to her in that moment.

It was a horrific conversation but I felt closer to her. She appeared more open to me, more susceptible to things … more aware. I was uncomfortable with what she was saying to me, yet she excited me that moment more than I ever thought possible. She inched even closer, whispering each word into my ear; I could feel her breath on my cheek. She was so close to me.

I was finding the urge to grab her too much.

I didn’t know what to do.

My own urges for destruction had always been with me. In what seemed a harmless game to me at the time, I had, in fact, made my own homemade explosive device as a teenager. It was a crude device made from Lego, masking tape, the charcoal and oxidising agents from fireworks, and a
simple fuse—I used a brand called Air-bomb Repeaters that has subsequently been banned. The idea to make an explosive device came to me in the classroom after a chemistry lesson with a teacher I hated. The idea was a bit of fun—I wasn’t aware of the danger or the illegality of my game. It never occurred to me that what I was actually doing was in any way wrong. I didn’t think my actions to be a deviance in an otherwise normal existence. I am in no way pathological; my conventional values and morals have always been pretty sound—but looking back it is obvious to me now that they weren’t, nor have they continued to be. I don’t think I understood what irony was back then, so it couldn’t be described as anything other than a banal act of violence. No one pushed me into doing it—I acted alone. During that same winter the Provisional IRA were involved in their own banal acts of violence. At that time I couldn’t really entertain the idea that my own efforts to create my own explosive device, no matter how clumsy, and those acts of the IRA cells in mainland Britain could in any way be related, but now, as I listened to her, her warm breath on my cheek, it all became quite clear.

I cannot begin to describe the joy I felt when I first detonated my rudimentary device. It was in London Fields behind what is now called The Pub in the Park. I forget what the pub was named then. I remember lighting the fuse and running away. The anticipation of the explosion was like an itch deep within me—completely unreachable. It seemed to take an age, but I knew not to run back to it. And then, taking me by complete surprise …

BANG!
 … The thing went off. It was the birds fluttering out from the trees above my head that startled me more than anything. People came out from inside the pub, too. I kept running, all the way home without looking back. When I got there I ran all the way upstairs without acknowledging
anyone. I turned the TV on in my small room and hid under my duvet. I was convinced that the police would be knocking on my door at any moment. I don’t think I slept that night, at least I’m not sure I did.

The following morning, quite early, I returned to the spot where I had detonated the crude device. My heart was beating, my palms sweating. I thought the police would be waiting in the foliage to pounce on me. To my amazement the explosion had left a small crater in the soft earth. I stood over it. I gasped. Red entrails and fur were scattered around it, the last remnants of a grey squirrel that had been cut down. It looked like it had been blown to smithereens. Either that or a fox had devoured it in the night. Even though I knew it was wrong I began to laugh, even though I knew this image of the dismembered squirrel would haunt me for the rest of my life it was still, up to that point, the greatest feeling I had ever experienced. I felt real. Like I had achieved something. Now, years later, it sickens me, it leaves me numb, like I can’t breathe.