Peter watched as the tail-lights of the police car disappeared around the corner at the end of the road, the spiteful red dots dragging great bloody streaks along behind them in the glistening reflection of the wet road.
Twice now Peter had been forced to retreat into the shadows as passing cars had disturbed his desperate efforts to recover his knife. Once it had been a carful of yobbos, drunken revellers shouting into the night. Their car had hurtled into the road at speed. Peter had been on all fours and had had to roll out of the gutter onto the pavement. The souped-up white Sierra had screeched past, sending up an arc of spray, further soaking Peter’s retreating body. Another second, a moment’s hesitation, a slower reaction, and all Polly’s problems with the Bug would have been over. But he survived, wetter, dirtier and angrier. The Sierra sped on, its reckless driver unaware of how close he had been to killing a man.
Peter retrieved his coathanger and returned to his task, but no sooner had he done so than a police car appeared, not screeching and hurtling but prowling. He sat on the kerb and waited for it to pass. It seemed to take for ever, slowing to a crawl as it drew parallel with him. He put his head in his hands and ignored it. The police officers inside the car repaid the compliment. A few years previously they might have investigated, but the night streets were now so full of people with nowhere to go that if the police looked into every sad-looking case they passed they would never get more than two hundred yards from their station.
When the coppers had gone and he had the street to himself again Peter knelt once more in the filthy gutter and resumed his delicate task. It was clear to him that if he dislodged the knife it would fall completely out of reach. He would have only one chance to touch it with his wire. Hook it, or knock it away for ever.
“Peter! What on earth do you think you’re doing!”
He spun around, dropping his piece of wire, which fell with a tiny clatter into the drain.
“Mum!”
“Get up out of the gutter!” Peter’s mother said. “You’re filthy and you’re soaking. What’re you doing? Are you drunk?”
Peter had been gone so long that his poor mother, unable to sleep, had come out searching for him. She had known where to look, of course. There was only one place he would have gone at that time of night. She felt so angry, even though she knew that he couldn’t help it. It was all starting again. Just when she had hoped that perhaps he was getting over his madness it was all starting again.
“I dropped my knife, Mum.”
“Good. You shouldn’t have had it, anyway. You know they’re illegal. What were you doing with it in the first place?”
“Just playing with it.”
“Playing with a knife? In her street? A knife, Peter! What if you were caught?”
Sometimes Peter’s mother just wanted to break down and weep. She really did not know how much more of it she could bear. If that woman thought she had it hard, she should try being his mother.
Peter refused to go home. His mother tried ordering him, reasoning with him, pleading with him, but he was adamant. She stepped forward into the flowing gutter and reached out to him. Her shoe filled instantly with filthy water. Peter merely drew away.
“Come home, Peter!” His mother pleaded one more time.
“I’ll come home when I’ve got my knife back,” was all he would say.
She gave up. There was nothing she could do. She cried all the way home, her tears mixing with rain, making her half blind.
Peter went back to the builder’s skip to root out another piece of wire.
34
Jack sat back in his seat and quaffed deeply at his whiskey.
“So come on. My question. Tell me what you do now.” He had some information about Polly from the file that Gottfried had prepared, but not much. Jack had specifically asked his secret agent to confine himself to a couple of current photographs and Polly’s address. He had not wanted even Gottfried to know any more about Polly than was absolutely necessary.
“I’m a councillor,” Polly replied.
Jack’s face showed that he was not impressed.
“What, you mean like an analyst? A therapist? You tell fucked-up people to blame their parents?”
“Not a personal counsellor, Jack, a town councillor. I’m on the council.”
Jack laughed. “The council! You’re on the council! I thought all hierarchies were fascism.”
Yet again Polly rose to the bait. “I was seventeen when I said that, for heaven’s sake! Although they are, of course, but all structures are not necessarily hierarchical-”
Polly stopped herself. This was ridiculous. “I don’t want to discuss politics with you!”
“OK, OK. Whatever you say, Polly.”
A silence descended. Polly was getting impatient with Jack’s enigmatic visit, but she did not want him to go and he did not seem anxious to explain himself, so there was very little she could do.
“So what do you do on your ‘council’ then?” Jack asked and Polly did not like his slightly patronizing tone.
“I’m with the office of equal opportunities.”
Jack sniffed and his patronizing tone became slightly more marked.
“What? You mean it’s your job to make sure there’s a suitable quota of disabled black Chinese sodomites getting paid out of public funds?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I do,” Polly snapped sarcastically. “You’re incredibly intuitive, Jack. I had no idea you were such an expert on local government.”
“We have people like you in the army,” Jack said, and now it almost sounded as if he was sneering. “Checking out that we have enough women in combat training. Homosexuals, too, that’s coming. A queer quota. Can you believe that?”
Polly enquired if this offended Jack, and he replied that it damn well did offend him.
“You think that makes me a fascist, right?” he added.
The atmosphere between them, having been definitely warming up, was now becoming chilly.
“Well, I certainly think it makes you a bit of a dick-head.”
Jack went over to the kitchen table and grabbed the bottles.
“Have another drink, babe,” he said, “and let me tell you something.”
“Don’t call me babe.”
Polly was still sitting on the bed. Jack marched back across the room and sloshed more Bailey’s into her half- full glass before refilling his own with bourbon. He had not intended to discuss this issue but he felt too strongly about it to let it go. Besides, this night of all nights Jack wanted Polly to understand something of his point of view.
“Christ, where do you people get off! Gays in the military. What does it have to do with you, anyway? You don’t care about the army, you hate it, you wish it would turn into a network of creches for single mothers! But you still think you can tell us how to run it-”
Polly raised her hand for him to stop.
“Hang on, hang on. Hang on! Me?” she said. “Don’t lay your shit on me, mate. I’m a council worker from Camden.”
“I’m talking about your kind, Polly. It doesn’t matter where you come from or what job you do. Your kind are international.”
“My kind!” Polly protested. “What the fuck do you mean, my kind?”
“Your kind, Polly, that’s what the fuck I mean. Your kind.”
Jack was sick and tired of them. These liberals, these feminists, these gay activists. The army wasn’t a laboratory for social experimentation, it was the means by which the nation defended itself. He had tried to explain this point at the congressional hearings into sexual bias in the armed forces and what a waste of time that had been. It had been like Canute trying to turn back a tidal wave of bullshit. What an impotent fool he had felt, sitting
