checked her over while a detective tried to make sense of her replies. As Church watched, she looked up at him. In the second when their eyes met, Church had a sudden sensation of connection that went beyond the shared experience: a recognition of a similar soul. It was so intimate that it made him uncomfortable, and he looked away.
'Do you feel up to a few questions, sir?' The detective offered a hand and Church allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. The CID man seemed unnaturally calm for the activity going on around them, but there was an intensity in his eyes that was disturbing. As they headed towards the water's edge, Church saw the body in the glare of a camera flash; the neck had been broken.
'How long was I out?' Church asked.
The detective shrugged. 'Can't have been long. Some postman on his bike heard the commotion and we had a car here within five minutes of his call. What did you see?'
Church described hearing the noise of the fight and then seeing the tall man mugging his victim. The detective eyed him askance, a hint of suspicion in his face. 'And then he attacked you?'
Church shook his head. 'I don't think so.'
'So what happened to you and the young lady?'
There was an insectile skittering deep in his head as he fought to recall what he had seen; he was almost relieved when the memory refused to surface. 'I was tired, the ground looked so comforting …' The detective gave him the cold eye. 'How should I know?' Church looked round for a way to change the subject. 'Where's his briefcase?'
'We didn't find one.' The detective scribbled a line in his notebook and seemed brighter, as if the disappearance of the briefcase explained everything; a simple mugging after all.
Church spent the next hour at the station, growing increasingly disturbed as he futilely struggled to express his fears in some form the police could understand. In reception, he bumped into his fellow witness, whose expression suggested she had had a similar experience.
'Look, can we go and grab a coffee? I need to talk about this,' she said without any preamble. She ran her fingers through her hair, then lightened. 'Sorry. Ruth Gallagher.' She stuck out a hand.
Church took it; her grip was strong and confident. 'Jack Churchill. Church. They weren't having any of it, were they?'
Ruth sighed wearily. 'No surprise there. I'm a solicitor, in court every day. I found out pretty early on that once the police have discovered the most simplistic idea out there, they're like a dog with a bone. If they want to file this under M for Mugging, by God they're going to, and nothing I'm going to say will change their minds.'
'A mugging. Right. And JFK got roughed up that day in Dallas.' Church watched her features intently, trying to discern her true thoughts.
She looked away uncomfortably, disorientation and worry reflected in her face.
There was an intensity about her that Church found impossible to resist. They went to a little place on St. John's Hill at Clapham junction, filled with hissing steam from the cappuccino machine, the sizzle of frying food and the hubbub of local workers taking an early breakfast. They sat opposite each other at a table in the window and within seconds all the noise had faded into the background.
Sipping her coffee hesitantly, Ruth began. 'What did we see?'
Church chewed on his lip, trying to find the words that would tie down the errant memory. 'It seemed to me that his face began to change.'
'Impossible, of course,' Ruth said unconvincingly. 'So there has to be a rational explanation.'
'For a changing face?'
'A mask?'
'Did it look like a mask to you?' He tapped his spoon in his saucer. The merest attempt at recollection made him uncomfortable. 'This is what I saw: a man, much bigger than average, picked up someone with a strength he shouldn't have had, even at that size. Then he turned to us and his features started to flow away like they were melting. And what lay beneath-' He swallowed. '-I have no idea.'
'And then we both went out at exactly the same time.'
'Because of what we saw next.'
Ruth gave an uncomfortable smile. 'I'm not the kind of person who has hallucinations in a moment of tension.'
Church glanced out of the window, as if an answer would somehow present itself to him, but all he could see was a tramp on the opposite side of the road watching them intently. There was something about the unflinching stare that disturbed him. He turned back to his coffee and when he looked again the tramp was gone.
'This whole business is making me paranoid,' he said. 'Maybe we should leave it at that. We're not going to discover what happened. Just put it down to one of those inexplicable things that happen in life.'
'How can you say that?' Ruth exclaimed. 'This was real! We were right at the heart of it. We can't just dismiss it.' She leaned forward with such passion Church thought she was going to grab his jacket. 'You must have some intellectual curiosity.'
'I find it difficult to get curious about anything these days.' There was a hint of surgical dissection in the way she eyed him; he almost felt his ego unpeeling.
'At least give me your number in case one of us remembers any more details,' she said. It was too firm to be a request. Church scribbled the digits on a paper serviette and then took Ruth's business card for her practice in Lincoln's Inn Fields with her home number on the back.
As he rose, she said, in a quiet voice that demanded reassurance, 'Were you frightened?'
He smiled falsely, said nothing.
The days passed bleakly. Winter receded a little more, but there was still an uncomfortable chill in the air that even the suffocating central heating of Church's flat seemed unable to dispel. Once spring was just around the corner, he always used to feel an urge to get his hands dirty in some dig or other, grubbing around for flaking bits of pottery or corroded nails which used to instil in some people a depression for the fleeting nature of life, but always filled him with a profound sense of the strength of humanity. At that moment, as he dredged deeply for any remaining vestige of enthusiasm to help him complete a manual for spreadsheet software, the feeling seemed further away than ever. It was compounded by a terrible uneasiness brought on by what he now called that night; whatever secret his mind held pressed at the back of his head like a tumour, sometimes feeling so malign it unleashed a black depression of such strength he found himself considering suicide, a feeling he had never countenanced before, even in the worst days after Marianne had left.
Dale, one of his few friends from before (he always saw his life as two distinct units, Before Marianne and After Marianne), was so shocked by his latest state of mind he almost attempted to press-gang Church into getting some kind of medical help. After a wearying struggle, Church had convinced him it was simply a passing phase, while secretly knowing neither Prozac nor EST could put him back on the road to well-being. The only option was to lance the boil, unleash the memory, and how could he do that when it was so unbearable in the first place?
'You've got to start getting out, you know.' Dale, always the most irresponsible of his friends, suddenly sounded like some geriatric relative. Church, seeing how he was infecting others, winced with guilt.
'It's not as simple as that.'
'I know it's not as simple as that. I'm not stupid,' Dale bristled. He swigged from his beer bottle, then suddenly flicked it in a loop in the air and caught it without spilling a drop. 'Hey! That was good, wasn't it?'
'Marvellous.'
'Okay. This weekend. We get a bootful of cans and take off for Brighton. Drink them all under the pier, a few burgers, a mountain of candy floss, then off to the pleasure beach and see who's first to vomit on the rides. You know it has to be done.'
Church smiled wanly; two years ago he would never have guessed Dale would have been the one to stick around. 'It's a good idea, but I've got too much work on. Financial planning software, for my sins. It's got to be in by Monday.'
Dale said, resignedly, 'You remember the time you cancelled your holiday in Cyprus and bundled us all into the car for a week in Devon to cheer up Louise after her dad died? That was spontaneous fun.'
Church shrugged. 'Cyprus would have been too hot that time of year, anyway.'
'You don't fool me. You'd been planning for that holiday for months. Years probably, knowing you. And you gave it up in an instant.'
