I wanted to kill him.
I made the complicated journey home, and it seemed to take days, and I saw nothing.
My private excitement had become public and banal. There was nothing unique about my idea, or about me. I was just another writer, predictably chasing what was already a cliché. My thrilling secret, so jealously nourished and protected, had turned out not to be a secret at all. Everyone knew about it. They laughed about it. As if it meant nothing to them. And I was convinced that Lloyd Page was laughing at me. That he had seen the distress in my eyes, had interpreted it immediately and accurately as the shock of discovering that you are just like other people.
I climbed into my bed almost as soon as I retuned home. I curled up and slept and gave no thought for anything. I no longer cared.
And I might have stayed there forever, had I not arranged with Rosemary to spend my Sunday afternoon meeting with her policeman. She had done me the favour, and had made much of the trouble she had gone to. I could not cancel. Rosemary hovered over me in judgement and — much to my annoyance — that still mattered. Perhaps it mattered more.
And the man’s name was Child. Despite — or because of — the pit into which I had fallen, there was something too attractive about that to ignore. I wanted to meet a man called Child. As I cowered in what could only be described as a childish abjection, furious at the unfairness of the world, I wanted to know what it was like to be an adult called Child. I lay on my bed and wished for nothing more than to be back in my mother’s arms, behind my father’s legs, and I desired the company of children. I wanted to be a child. I lay there in the dawn, after twelve hours of post-traumatic sleep, and the appointment took on the hallucinatory shape of a play date, an adventure with sticks and streams and fields and trees. I fell asleep again to the clatter of children’s voices, urging each other simply on.
I expected him to be black, this Child. I don’t know why. But there were not many people in the café and the only man on his own was a pasty white. I regarded him from the doorway, disappointed. He looked like a policeman. He looked tall and solid and gormless. He was crouched over a tabloid lying open on the table. Chewing. He had a coffee cup in front of him, and a can of Red Bull. I was irritated. I looked around again. There was a woman on her own. I hoped for half a second that I had misunderstood, or not listened to anything Rosemary had said to me, and that Child was a woman. But Child was definitely a man. I looked back at him. He had stopped chewing and was regarding me, his can of Red Bull held in mid air. He raised his eyebrows. His face was pale and slightly twisted somehow. His dark hair was cropped very short and his nose looked like it had been broken a couple of times. He looked like a thug. I walked over to him. As I did he folded his paper, wiped his hands on a napkin, and stood up. He was tall. He wore jeans, and a cheap shirt that seemed to cling to him in an unattractive, wrong-size kind of way.
— Detective Child?
His hands were large, but his grip was surprisingly gentle.
— No, actually.
I looked at him, confused. He seemed to blush.
— Child couldn’t make it. He asked me to come along instead. I’m Hawthorn.
— Oh.
— I hope that’s OK. I work with Child.
— I’m … I … Hawthorn?
— We’re the same rank, he said.
I stared at him. He looked like an idiot.
— Right. OK. I was expecting … Is Child black?
He tilted his head a fraction and paused. It annoyed me.
— Why?
We were still standing. I looked down at the table. It was the News of the World. His coffee cup was empty. Policemen love suspicion.
— Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I won’t keep you long.
— Did you specifically want to talk to a black officer?
— Specifically? No, not specifically. I suppose you’ll want a coffee. Is that coffee?
I stalked off to the counter. I don’t know why I was so annoyed. Specifically annoyed me. His not being Child annoyed me. The newspaper and the Red Bull annoyed me.
I bought him a second coffee, and a tea for myself. It cost a fortune.
— You’re a writer?
— Yes. A writer. Fiction. Not fact. Do you read?
He shrugged.
— I haven’t read any of yours I’m afraid.
— No. Well. No. Never mind. Why couldn’t Child make it?
He shrugged again.
— Some last minute thing. Family thing.
Right. He sat there stirring sugar into his coffee, a half smile on his face, his eyes sometimes drifting over the room, following people’s movements in some sort of police surveillance instinct. I took out a notebook and propped it up against the edge of the table so that he couldn’t read it.
I didn’t care, but I asked him what he did. What his duties were, how things were organized. The idiot had to think about some of it, correcting himself over the most basic things. I asked him how much he was paid and whether he was an alcoholic. He thought that was funny. I asked him whether he beat people up, lied, framed suspects, broke the law. His half smile stayed in place. His voice slowed a little sometimes, and he regarded me closely, as if I was a little interesting, but his politeness remained intact. Everything about him annoyed me more and more.
— People think you’re stupid.
— They do?
— Not you … specifically. Not necessarily. The police. The Met. Stupid, incompetent, dishonest, violent, crass, arrogant. Useless.
— Is that what you’re writing about?
I glanced at my notebook. Borough. C.I.D. Serious Crime Command. Death. Rape. Murder.
— No. I’m writing about terrorists.
— Ah.
— Were you around on 7/7?
He frowned. His smile disappeared. For a moment I had the horrible feeling that he was going to tell me that he’d been down in the tunnels. That he’d been first to the bus. That he’d held someone dying in his arms. That I knew nothing about anything.
— I was on leave, he muttered. Out of the country.
— My commiserations.
He scratched his nose, and the half smile returned.
— I’m writing about the Olympics. About a terrorist attack on the Olympics.
He nodded. He didn’t, to my fury, seem surprised.
— I’m not sure I can be much help with terrorism stuff.
— No. I know. I know that. I’m meeting with some anti-terrorist officers next week to discuss that side of things.
I barely even paused over my own lie. I have no idea where it came from. He glanced at me. Nodded again. A little hesitantly.
— I had been thinking of using you, or Child I suppose, or some other ’umble copper, as the basis of a character, my central character, my hero.
His half smile was infuriating. It hovered over his face indecisively, ready to fall one way or the other. It left all his options open, committed him to nothing, offered nothing, and waited for me to make another move. It was a police-helicopter smile.
— An ordinary policeman who stumbles over the plot, and who, against the odds, with no one listening to him, no one believing him, etc, becomes the hero of the story, stopping the bad guys at the last minute, saving the Olympics, saving London.
— Nice, he said, his expression unchanged.
Nice. He was mocking me. His face remained blandly polite. There was nothing you could point to in his voice or his demeanour or his eyes, but he was mocking me.