I could feel sweat prickling at my armpits and forehead as well, but for a different reason. Her words drifted over my head as I read the story beneath the headline: These are the first pictures of the two young delinquents seen running away from the London Eye minutes before Tuesday’s terrorist bomb exploded. Police are stressing that at this time the two are considered key witnesses who may hold vital information about the terrorist attack. They have issued an urgent appeal for them to come forward.
Rita had stopped talking and was sitting, mangling her apron in her damp hands. Nobody spoke for a minute.
“Thing is,” said Spider, “people can trace phone calls, can’t they?”
“And you don’t want to be found.” Her eyes flicked between the two of us, not judging, and I thought that her Shaun must have been an idiot to leave a mum like that.
I clocked her number. Fifteen, sixteen years to go. Would she see her son again, or would it be fifteen years of missed birthdays, lonely Christmases? I tried not to think about it – not my problem.
“Tell you what. If you left a number, I could ring for you, after you’ve gone,” she said. “I could ring after a couple of hours, tomorrow if you like, just to let ’em know I’ve seen you and you’re doing OK.”
Spider nodded. “Yeah, yeah, that’d be cool. Give us time to be on our way.”
“I’ll get some paper and a pen.” Rita hauled herself back onto her feet.
I leaned forward over the Formica table. “Are you crazy?” I hissed.
“What?”
“Giving her your nan’s number?”
“Like she said, she can ring tomorrow, when we’re long gone. It’s sound.”
I didn’t say anything, just pushed the paper across the table toward him.
“What…?” he started to say, then he saw the picture. “Oh, shit.”
We both looked toward the counter. Rita had her back to us, feeling around under a pile of paper for a pen. I tucked the newspaper into my coat, and, without speaking, we picked up our bags as quietly as we could and got up out of our chairs, trying not to scrape them on the floor.
I looked back when I was by the door. Spider was still by the table. What the hell was he doing? He reached into his pocket and got a couple of fivers out of his envelope. For Christ’s sake, I wanted to scream, we haven’t got time for that! I eased down the door handle and pulled, praying that there wasn’t a bell about to betray us. It was OK, and I slipped out, Spider close behind me now.
“Don’t run, Jem. Just walk. Keep it cool.”
We were only a few feet away when we heard Rita’s voice coming out of the open door. “Where did…? Wait, come back!” We quickened the pace.
“Don’t look back, Jem. Just keep going.”
I didn’t need to look back. In my mind’s eye, I could see her standing in the doorway for a while, watching us disappear, then turning back, picking up the five-pound bills, and holding them in her damp hand as she sank down into a chair. Breathing heavily in and out, thinking of us, thinking of Shaun…until she realized the newspaper was gone, put two and two together, and reached for the phone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The town’s High Street was full of police informers. Every passerby was a pair of eyes and a mobile phone. While we’d been isolated in the country, I’d started to think we were just getting paranoid, that it was all in our heads, this need to run and hide. My picture on the front page of the paper told a different story. It was real. They were all out to get us. Walking along the road, it felt like it wouldn’t be long now. Even in a sleepy little market town in the middle of nowhere there were hundreds of people out and about: people who watched the news, went on the Internet, read newspapers.
Another thing was bothering me. Try as I might not to meet people’s eyes, I couldn’t avoid them all, and there they were again: people’s numbers. Telling me stuff about strangers, handing me their death sentences. I wanted to walk around with my eyes closed, to blot the numbers out. I didn’t want to be reminded that everyone around me was going to die. The reason was walking beside me, holding my hand. Spider. For the first time in my life, I had someone I wanted to keep hold of. The date on the paper – December 11 – was like a slap in the face. Only four days to go.
“Listen,” he said urgently. “We’d better buy some supplies quickly and then find somewhere to disappear. We’re too obvious here.”
He wasn’t kidding. There may have been a few people walking or driving along who were lost in their own thoughts, not paying us any attention, but everyone else was clocking us. I guess we were a pretty odd sight: two scruffy kids, one ridiculously tall, the other looking like a midget beside him. And I guess my hunch in the car had been right: Most of them didn’t see a black man from one year to the next. There were certainly no other black faces around today. It was like one of those programs on TV, only in reverse – you know, where some white guy goes into an African village and the kids rush up to him, touching his white skin and feeling his hair. Except no one was rushing up to us. They looked at us and looked away. One woman, coming toward us on the sidewalk, glanced up quickly and then made her kid walk on the other side of her, away from us. And I thought, Sod you, whatever we’ve got, it’s not contagious, you stuck-up cow.
We found a convenience store. Spider unwrapped some ten-pound notes from his wad of money and sent me in. I grabbed stuff as quickly as I could: a few chocolate bars and bags of chips again, yeah, but also some sensible stuff this time – water, fruit juice, cereal bars.
The store, squeezed in between an antiques shop and a greengrocer’s, smelled stale. It was packed from floor to ceiling with snacks and drinks, newspapers and magazines, loads of porno ones. It was like a little bit of London parachuted into the middle of nowhere. The guy behind the counter was reading a newspaper as I went ’round choosing. You could tell he was watching me.
I put the stuff on the counter. There were cigarettes behind him, so I asked for half a dozen packs, and then I spotted something else: three or four flashlights huddled together on the shelf. I bought two, and the batteries to go with them. He put the stuff in a couple of bags, watching as I fumbled with the money. He knows, I thought as I stood there. He knows.
He took the money. “Ta,” he said in a gravelly voice, like his vocal cords had been shredded by fifty years of smoking. Then, as I turned to leave, he called out. “Here…”
And I knew the game was up. What was he going to do to us? An old git like that couldn’t stop me, could he? I kept walking.
“Hey, you!” he shouted louder. I turned ’round. “You forgot your change.”
I went back and took it from him silently.
Outside on the street, I gave Spider one of the bags to carry, and he grabbed my free hand in his. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
We ducked into a side alley between two shops. It twisted and turned, behind houses and past some vacant lots, then out onto a canal towpath. We followed it along for a bit. A wall sprang up on the other side of me, and a train rattled past beyond it. We came to a tunnel. The path was narrow- a damp, cold, curved wall on one side, a railing on the other to stop you from falling into the canal.
Spider let go of my hand. “You go ahead. I’ll be right behind you.”
It was difficult to see where you were treading, and my ankles kept twisting on the uneven path. Halfway along, I started to really lose my nerve. A figure appeared at the end I was heading toward: a big, dark shape blotting out most of the light. I looked over my shoulder, expecting to see someone behind us, too – it was a perfect place to trap someone – nowhere to go, no one to hear you scream.