— Yeah.
— Well fuck knows then. CCTV is killing good policing. Rivers is here, talk later. Oh. Hang on.
Hawthorn looked at his phone. It was filthy, covered in a film of grease. Dirt clogged the sockets. A patch of some sticky unidentifiable substance adhered to its screen. Child was coming back to the table with two coffees.
— Hawthorn?
— Yes.
— Rivers.
— Morning, sir.
— He’s tripping, isn’t he?
— I don’t think so.
— He’s in surgery now?
— Yes, sir. No one seems to know if he’ll make it.
— Did he actually say vintage?
— He said old and old-fashioned. Child offered him vintage and he took it, like it was the word he’d been looking for. He was specific about running boards, unprompted.
Rivers was quiet for a moment.
— There’s that Chrysler thing. It has sort of fake running boards. Well. OK. If that’s what we’ve got then that’s what we’ve got. The Good Samaritan who stopped and called it in is a Mr Jetters. I’m sending him to Highbury. Go down there and get a statement from him. Stay in touch with the hospital though. There’s a uniform on the way for presence, but I want you back there as soon as he’s out of surgery.
Alan Jetters was a thin man in his forties with blood on his shirt. They found him in reception, pacing. He was in a hurry, he said. He needed to get to work. But he was full of adrenaline and really he wanted to talk. Hawthorn apologized for keeping him, shook his hand, introduced Child, offered him tea. He didn’t want tea. They found a room on the second floor. Child went off to the toilet. Hawthorn took off his jacket, glanced at the machine.
— We’ll just wait for Detective Child to get back.
— Does he get a lot of ribbing?
— What’s that?
— Child. Over his name.
— Oh, ribbing. A little. Yes. I suppose he does. I’ve stopped noticing really.
— That’s not good for a policeman.
— No.
— To stop noticing.
— No.
Hawthorn sat at the table writing things in his notebook.
Child came back. Hawthorn fiddled with the machine, then moved out of the way to let Child do it. The building was overheated. He thought about bullets and cold and Daniel Field’s red hands, pink hands, stuck in the air. He missed the cold.
— Is this going to take long? Jetters asked. I’m late for work.
— So is Daniel Field, said Child.
There was a silence, in which Child, turning away from the machine, shot Hawthorn a wink. Then they were all sitting, and the little lights were green.
— He died?
— No, not yet. He’s in surgery. His condition is very serious.
— I didn’t know his name. I asked him, but I couldn’t make out … Anyway. I’m happy to be of whatever help I can. Of course.
They got him to say his name, his address, his date of birth. They said their names.
— Can you just tell us, Hawthorn said, everything that happened, from the beginning?
He offered too much detail. He told them about his usual morning routine, about the slight differences there had been that morning. He told them his route to work, what was on the radio, what the weather was like, how he’d felt, what he was wearing. He was fascinated by the fact that he had guessed that the gunshot was a gunshot as soon as he’d heard it, even though he knew nothing about guns and had never been near one, apart from a go at clay pigeon shooting on a weekend away once, and he hadn’t liked that, because he was no good at it, and found those sorts of organized work outings quite awkward. And so on.
Hawthorn wrote things down.
He had been approaching the turn from Almond Road on to Hampley Road when he’d heard it. The first thing he saw when he turned the corner was Daniel Field on the ground. He had driven over to him, pulled in and gone to help.
— He was writhing. Half shouting. Half shouting and half crying. He seemed in terrible pain. He was clutching his stomach, he had his hands pressed to his stomach, but there was blood seeping through his fingers.
Hawthorn wrote down seeping. It occurred to him that it was the wrong word.
Jetters had taken off the scarf he’d been wearing and used it instead. Then he’d called 999.
— Did he say anything?
— He kept saying fuck. And not much more I’m afraid. A lot of groaning. He seemed to pass out for a moment — and when he opened his eyes he said What happened? but that was all.
— You talked to him.
— Yes. I jabbered. I don’t know what I said. A lot of nonsense I imagine. You’ll be alright. Hold on. Ambulance is coming. That kind of thing.
— Did he look at you?
— Yes. Yes he did. When I first arrived he looked me in the eye, and I think for a moment he wondered if I was … if I was there to do him harm. He looked scared of me. Perhaps he was just scared anyway. But when I made it clear that I was there to help he didn’t look at me so much.
— Can you tell us anything, any half words, anything that sounded like words, that he said? That you can remember.
— Well. I asked what had happened. What happened? And he said car. And I asked, Someone in a car? and he nodded. It was only then that I thought of the possibility of them coming back. I mean, it was, I was … it’s strange how the mind works. I had seen him, and I had known, somehow, that he had been shot, and I had stopped and gone to help without really thinking about it, and it was only when he said car that I thought uh-oh, and I realized that they might come back — that someone had actually shot him, someone had tried to kill him, and that they might still be around, and that I was possibly in some sort of danger.
He shifted in his seat slightly, cleared his throat.
— No one came back, though?
— No. No one. I started to look over my shoulder a little, after that. I asked him what type of car. He said ochre.
— Ochre?
— Ochre.
— Are you sure?
— Yes.
Hawthorn looked at Child. He was grinning.
— Do you think he might have said old car?
— Old car?
— Old car.
Jetters shrugged.
— Yes, I suppose so. Old car, ochre. Yes. It could have been old car.
Hawthorn wrote for a while but Child kept silent.
— What else?
— What else did he say? I don’t think he did say anything else, much. I’m not sure he was trying to say anything. Apart from the couple of questions I asked him, it was just groans and cries and squeals, if I can say that. Extreme pain I imagine. Lots of Gods and Christs. Though some of that may have been me. He was puffing and blowing. Shivering. He was terribly cold. It was cold there. Dark. Cold and damp and miserable really. I remember thinking that it would be a terrible place to die. I took off my jumper after a while. Partly to help with the pressure, but also because he was so cold.
— There are street lights there. Aren’t there?
— It’s shadowy, rather than dark, I suppose. There are lamp-posts, yes. He was about midway between lamp-posts. There are pools of light, pools of shadow.