A few of the small upper windows were open in the canteen, to let out the fug of all those bodies in too-close proximity and with it the mingled sound of their voices, like a score of radios playing simultaneously: soaps, comedy, sports chat, songs from the shows and the hit parade, old and new. Randall carried on past, leaving all the factory buildings behind him, until at last he came to the smaller gate opening on to the road up to Warren House. The walk from one end to the other, twice a day, six and a half minutes there, seven minutes back (going against the slope), was what he liked to refer to as his exercise regime.
Tonight he had just become dimly aware that there was no one on the warren when he stopped in his tracks. There were lit cigarettes, but not on the other side of the valley: right in front of him.
‘Fucking run!’ a voice — feet away only — called out.
It was not directed at Randall, but at the other shadows behind the cigarette tips, who at once took to their heels, to the accompaniment of tins jostling, heavily, within the confines of plastic bags. Instinctively Randall shot out a hand and was amazed — horrified almost — to find himself holding a fistful of denim jacket. Palms went up protectively in front of the face.
‘Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me!’
The boy — despite the high pitch of the voice, it was a boy — was no more than fourteen. It occurred to Randall that if this boy and his friends were from the warren then he had been living here through one entire generation of underage drinkers.
‘They all said you’d gone.’ The boy was snivelling, and almost certainly drunk. ‘They were saying we should go in and see if we could get the gold taps off before anyone else did. I never wanted to do it, swear.’
Randall loosened his grip and at once the boy wriggled free and ran off, laughing.
‘You fucking dick!’ he shouted and there was more laughter from the direction of the stream where his friends had stopped and regrouped.
‘I am, though, aren’t I?’ Randall said under his breath. He stooped to retrieve the bag the boy had dropped, a quart bottle of cider inside, two-thirds empty, and carried it, a finger through one twisted handle, up the drive to the house.
Inside, he set the bag on the floor behind the double-locked door then switched on all the lights, upstairs and down, lest anyone should doubt he was home, and put a call through to the local police station to ask if they had a patrol in the area. ‘That,’ said the desk sergeant, ‘is not the kind of information we give out over the phone, for reasons which I am sure you will understand.’
He had heard and read enough down his years here to understand perfectly.
‘But say there was, if you could ask them to check the perimeter of Warren House.’ He looked through the blind. The red glows were restored to their traditional position across the valley. It was on the tip of his tongue to add that the cops might want to do an age check on the crowd drinking up there — Who would be the fucking dick then? — but the answer, he suspected, would still be him, and he let the thought, and the blind slat, drop.
He had already stripped to his shorts and T-shirt when he heard the engines on the road outside. At least two. The patrol that dared not leak its location. A moment later the intercom buzzed. It buzzed again, twice, before he reached it. The instant he flicked the switch the voice barked at him.
‘Randall? Open the gates.’
It was Jennings. Randall had only just managed to get his second leg into his pants when the Scot was out of his car (had it even come to a halt?) and thumping on the front door.
‘Coming!’ Doing up his buttons; the thumping getting louder. Jesus. ‘Coming!’
Jennings didn’t even bother with his normal potted version of the niceties, but marched past him into the vestibule. ‘Pack a bag,’ he said (a scowl as he saw the cider bottle, sticking out of its sack). ‘Quick.’
‘Hold on,’ said Randall. ‘You can’t throw me out of here, and anyway there’s still…’ He couldn’t think where he had set his watch, ‘…hours yet.’
Jennings had walked straight up the stairs. Randall in his astonishment could do nothing for the moment but stare so that by the time he did set off in pursuit Jennings was already on the landing headed for the bedrooms. He was coming out of Randall’s own room when Randall caught up, proclaiming violation of civil liberties, international protocols, threatening to phone the American Consul, the papers…
Jennings shoved a shirt into his arms. ‘Get dressed.’
‘Not until you tell me what is going on.’
Jennings drew a long envelope from his overcoat pocket and held it out towards him.
Randall took a step back. ‘What’s in it?’
‘Bearer bonds.’ He held the envelope out further. ‘They aren’t going to blow up in your face, unless you were to try cashing them yourself, which I don’t recommend.’
‘But where are they from?’
‘People who would rather not see the factory close.’
‘Prior? Thatcher?’
Jennings rolled his eyes. ‘I am surprised you could even ask.’
‘I thought you told me once you only served whoever was in power.’
‘Until whoever is in power starts to act in a way that is entirely contrary to logic and justice. There is a difference between neutrality and rank stupidity.’
Randall was feeling suddenly light-headed. That they were standing here on his landing, him only half dressed, discussing matters of state and high finance.
‘Your Mr DeLorean is very hard man to defend sometimes,’ Jennings said, ‘but I am far from alone in thinking that factory down there is its own best argument.’
Long afterwards it was the ‘far from alone’ that stuck in Randall’s mind, the threat beneath its surface reassurance. Jennings drew from his pocket a second envelope.
‘You will find a ticket in there for the six-thirty New York flight from Shannon Airport.’
‘But, that’s…’
‘One hundred and seventy-five miles, although you might as well add on another hundred for the state of the roads on the other side of the border… If you are lucky you will do it in six hours, although the flight, once you are on it, is at least direct.’
Still something in Randall resisted. ‘Why like this? Why not just wire it?’
‘Because wires inevitably have points of departure as well as arrival that can be traced.’
He looked Randall straight in the eye a moment longer then made to withdraw his hand. ‘Or maybe you would rather I just ripped the tickets up.’
Randall reached out and grabbed them and the envelope with the bonds.
‘I will put a call through to the police on both sides of the border.’ The tail end of the sentence disappeared with Jennings into Randall’s room. He returned with two ties, the least worst of which, a tweed-knit (that tweed-knit, bought a DeLorean-Motor-Company lifetime ago en route to Detroit), he handed to Randall. ‘I’ll pass on the registration number and ask them to speed you through the checkpoints.’
Randall was turning round, turning round, scouring the floor.
‘Shoes, is it?’ asked Jennings. ‘You left them on the bathroom floor.’
He got his shirt on, his tweed-knit tie, his jacket, his shoes, finally. He found his watch, his passport and a carry-on into which he threw a couple of things at random. The second envelope, with the tickets, went in there, the first went, uncomfortably to begin with, into his breast pocket.
He had worked his way in the course of this down into the vestibule again. Jennings went ahead of him and opened the front door. He stood aside, holding the handle.
Randall was not quite sure what to. He went to hug Jennings, who stayed him with a raised hand.
‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘Just go.’