London Blues (23 page)

I laughed to myself at the thought of the police suddenly appearing here and searching the car. I'd have a tough time explaining the shit away: ‘I wonder if you could hold on
for a few minutes, officer. My black dealer friend is in the woods there taking a piss. He's the chap you need to speak to.'

‘Certainly, sir. You are obviously completely innocent. We'll wait over there until the black gentleman reappears. We're sorry to have troubled you.'

‘Not at all, officer. Any time.'

A tough time indeed!

I flick the end remains of the cigarette out the window and lazily yell to Sonny to get a move on. There's no reply. What's he doing? Has he got a stricture or something?

I get out of the car and stretch. I've got a slight ache in my lower back so I lean forward and touch my toes a dozen times. That always gets rid of it. I light another
cigarette
and go over to the wooden gate.

‘SONNY! SONNY!' No reply.

I can see some distance into the wood in most directions. There's no sign of Sonny anywhere. How far does he have to go before he feels it's safe to take a leak? Half a mile? What a dumb black fucker!

I climb the gate and sit on the top rail facing the car and the road. I puff on the cigarette and wait. I look up the road in the direction we just came. Still and silent. I look down the road. Still and silent. Everything's still and silent. I'm the only thing here … I'm the only thing here. I'm the centre of the universe. It's just me … and the car … and the dope.

But what about Sonny?

Sonny wasn't coming back. This thought swept through me with such certainty I shuddered. Sonny had gone. I was here alone. A sitting duck. A patient sitting duck.

There was a sound coming from back up the hill. An urgent sound. I could hear it but I couldn't identify it. An urgent sound getting louder … getting nearer. Racing. It was a speeding car. It was two speeding cars. It was three.

I threw my cigarette away, swung my legs over the gate, jumped down and began running through the
undergrowth
and through the bracken. The only sounds I could hear were my heavy breathing and the crash of my feet. I stumbled and fell several times but I was on my feet again before I hit the deck. Onward. The ground begins to rise steeply and more of an effort is needed to maintain my pace. I crash and careen through the bushes. Don't stop. Don't look back. Just keep going.

Then I'm out of the wood and fall on my face. I'm in the middle of a narrow lane, my face hard against the road surfacing. Tar fumes filling my head. I can hear my heart beating like a kettledrum. I can also hear a car far off. Several cars. I can hear shouts. Dogs barking.

I'm up and on my feet again. I'm running again. I'm
running
through a gap in a hawthorn hedge and then I'm racing through a field that skirts another wood.

Any moment I expect a hand on my shoulder and some copper saying, ‘That's far enough, son.' Any moment now it is going to happen. It really is.

I steady myself against a massive pollarded oak tree. I take some deep breaths. The sweat is pouring off me. I don't know what to do except keep moving.

I can hear muffled shouts and muted dog barks coming from far below in the valley, borne up on the evening wind. And then I hear a sound nearer. Much nearer. A car comes to a violent halt in the lane behind me. I hear more men and dogs. There are shouts. The vehicle's doors are slammed. I listen. Who's there? What are they doing? What's going on?

I listen intently. I listen for every sound. They don't seem to be coming this way. No, not this way. They're going off into the woods back down the way I came. They're going away from me.

Now I'm running again. I've got to keep moving. I cannot stop. I must keep going. Must keep moving. I'm running for my life. Running. Don't stop. Don't ever stop. Run and run and run and you'll get away. But don't stop. Just don't stop.

My feet now leave the ground. I arc through the air. I don't have to run any more. I'm propelling myself through the air. I'm airborne. Sailing. Speeding through the ether on sails made of gossamer. Borne by the winds. I'm flying away. Up and away. Just like a dream, only this isn't a dream. This is for real. I'm a soaring kestrel. I'm Icarus.

And like Icarus I now crash to earth, against something hard and unforgiving. Masonry. My face hits part of it first and then my shoulder crashes into another part. I lie there on my back taking deep breaths as my consciousness
reassembles
itself. I'm staring at the dark clouds and waiting. Something cold and wet runs down my face, then down my neck and under my shirt collar. There's a crescent moon up there looking like a child's painted cutout. There's silence here. Pure silence. Not even a murmur of wind now. And an enveloping blackness. A pit of unknowing.

Later my eyes slowly opened and focused on rare and strange shapes towering high above, vaulting into the night sky. Ahead of me in the darkness I see a wall
silhouetted
. Several walls thrusting up. Ghostly arches. Walls and arches enshrouded by ivy or clinging vines. What is this? I look to the left and then to the right. Isolated walls detached from any structure. A sepulchral silence. An
abandoned
overgrown shell.

I open my mouth and my face seems to crack down my left cheek. I bring my hand up and feel some dried
sediment
that streaks down to my neck: blood. My fingers trace its path up past my temple to a dried gash just within my hairline. There is a sharp pain here and a dull pain in my shoulder, I'm motionless and I wait for something to change, but nothing does.

Why am I here? What has happened?

Slowly fragments of memory float up from some abyss of mind and dance into order. Sonny. What became of Sonny? Why was he gone for so long? Where is he now? Did something happen to him in the woods?

Quiet. Still. I listen with every cell in my body but I hear
now only the light wind caressing the trees. No footfalls. No voices. Nothing. Whoever was in pursuit is in pursuit no longer. They have lost me. Lost me.

I push myself up and lean against a wall. I take deep breaths and hope I have the energy to do something. A cloud passes from the moon and a cold light illuminates this tableau: a deserted, ancient church overgrown with centuries of neglect.

I take shaky, tentative steps ahead, one at a time. I must not rush. I will get there. Each and every step is carefully considered and worked out. This is important.

The wood gives way to a field and I am upon a footpath that is straight and undeviating. The path dissolves into the darkness but is obviously aligned on the twinkling lights far ahead.

My steps become more steady and certain as I continue. I see other lights and car headlamps sweeping in great arcs through the night.

I've got to get back to London.

The path brings me to the side of the Royal Oak pub, the same Royal Oak our directions were based on. I walk quickly past the people drinking outside and continue along the road. Several cars pass me and I realise I am teasing Fate by appearing as a roadside attraction. Whoever was after me back there must now be out looking for me, searching the roads and lanes. I climb over a gate and follow the road from behind the hedgerows.

I do not know where I am going but this looks an important road and it will lead somewhere, eventually. Houses appear and I am forced to resume walking along the road itself. I walk so as not to attract attention. I walk at not too fast a pace with my back straight which is now no easy task with the increasing pain in my shoulder.

Ahead to the right I see across the fields a small bridge. I walk diagonally across the field and discover a small stream where I clean away the blood from my face and neck. The water is warm and tastes sweet.

A signpost points to somewhere called St Ippollitts and, straight ahead, to Hitchin: 2 miles. I have no alternative but to continue. Detached country houses appear on either side of the road and I continue. I am now in the environs of Hitchin and soon I will be in the town itself.

I now go down a sunken curving lane with tall trees towering above. There are some eighteenth-century houses on the right and, some distance later, a vast church over to the left beyond what appears to be a market-place or a car park. The church looks almost like some ancient cathedral, big, but not quite big enough.

I merge with the Saturday night revellers. I feel safer here: better to be lost amongst people than lost in the country. I stop two girls and ask them if there is somewhere I can get a cup of coffee? They point to beyond the church and I head along an alley that brings me to a modest little café full of teenagers. Not so much a coffee bar as a tarted up transport caff. But the coffee is hot and nobody looks at me, they must see enough victims of Saturday night pub brawls not to give them a second look. That dreadful
Telstar
pop record is blasting out of a jukebox, exacerbating my
headache
. Every time the door opens I look up to see who is coming in. I don't know who to expect but there are people out there looking for me … and I don't know who they are.

I buy a second cup of coffee and a pork pie and a Kit-Kat. I stare into the cup and try to make sense of what has happened. What became of Sonny in the woods? How did the police know where to find us – if, indeed, they were the police? Who but the police have dogs anyway? Were we followed from London? Did they know Sonny's
destination
? Did some grass tip them off? Each question spawned further questions. Each question fragmented into a further dozen unanswered puzzles. But the dominant question, the one I kept returning to was: why was Sonny so long in the woods? Was he setting me up? If so, why? Was he some ‘licensed' drug dealer delivering up bodies to his corrupt police contact or what?

I was wasting time sitting here and trying to reduce the unknowable to the known. It was time to get moving. I'll finish the coffee and go as soon as Stan Getz stops playing
Desafinado.

A young bloke at an adjoining table said there was a railway station about ten minutes' walk away. I could get a train to London from there.

I went down a wide street called Bancroft with graceful houses on either side. This leads to the suburbs of Hitchin and then, further on, past a looming granary (or
malt-house
?) was a turning with a sign saying
STATION
APPROACH.
The Approach is more like a broad drive leading to a country house. Stacks of chestnut trees in an avenue to the right where the ground rises steeply. Sylvan, all right. Ahead a solid brick Victorian Gothicky building with
BOOKING HALL
above the entrance. Looks friendly enough.

Some taxis waiting patiently in the forecourt. Some kids in leather jackets strutting around a couple of motorbikes. A couple of railway workers rolling cigarettes.

I was cautious about just walking in and buying a ticket. There might be somebody waiting for me. I could see no police cars, nobody suspicious. I had to chance it.

The ticket clerk told me I had a 20-minute wait for the next King's Cross train. I bought a single ticket and went down the steps and along the passage underneath the tracks to the far platform.

I got a bar of chocolate from a slot machine and sat down on a bench which afforded me a good view of anyone who might come through from the ticket office. It wasn't
unreasonable
to think that whoever had the resources to mount tonight's little operation also had the resources to travel over here.

If the police were to appear I could head down the track and into the darkness. It would take them a few minutes to get across to where I was, enough time for me to vanish … I hoped.

I finished the chocolate and lit a cigarette. An elderly couple appeared on the far platform followed by a few of the leather jackets. The couple sat down while the kids hotfooted it to a waiting room. An express train thundered by without stopping and temporarily blocked my view across.

When the train had gone and the smoke and steam had lifted nothing appeared to have changed on the far
platform
, but I felt a rising unease.
Something
had changed. But what? I couldn't put my finger on it. The elderly couple were now staring in my direction. They were still, silent and staring.

There was a noise from somewhere in the darkness down the track in the London direction. A noise like a muted cry or shout. I could see nothing. I looked across to the couple and they were walking back into the booking hall. A noise again, like muffled footsteps. There was
something
or someone down the tracks. I stood up. Some
movement
. Two men in suits were walking down the track towards me. The station lights now illuminated them more, I could see the shine on their shoes. These were not railway workers.

I turned and walked quickly down the platform away from them. I'd head down the steps, along the passage under the track and make good my escape. But as I approached the steps two other men were coming up them. They were looking at me and smiling. They were both in their forties, expensively dressed in suits and light
raincoats
.

‘Hello, Tim,' said the taller of the two.

‘Who are you?'

‘We've got some friends of yours across there. Please follow us.'

The two figures who had appeared down the railway track were now standing a couple of yards behind me. Just standing there staring at me. I looked down at the men on the stairs and then I looked along the platform in the ‘up'
direction. A further two figures stood motionless at the far end of the platform.

My question was ignored. I rephrased it: ‘What's this all about?'

‘I've asked you to follow us.'

And so I followed them down the steps and along and up to the booking hall in silence.

The taller figure now said, ‘Inspectors Cox and
Weatherburn
of the Metropolitan Police are waiting to take you back to London.'