The two policemen re-emerged from the street and melted back into the throng. I turned and walked in the opposite direction down my side street, away from the crowds. Turning right I saw people again at the end of the street and headed for them. At least I would be well ahead of the two policemen. Before the intersection I stopped and took out my map. I was well acquainted with its boulevards and grids of streets but had seen nothing so far that enabled me to orientate myself. Even if I were to, though, I knew the map would only represent a fraction of the city — or of the City, as I now came to think of it. I slipped into the crowd, slouching in an effort to blend in.
I looked around and accidentally caught the eye of a judge at the next corner. Behind his head was a street name — Great North Road — which I remembered from the map so I dropped my eyes and shuffled past as part of the general tide of wretched humanity. I felt the judge’s eyes burning holes in the back of my head but when I had put enough distance between us that I felt half safe again I ducked into a doorway and took the map from my back pocket. I found Great North Road at the left of my map and worked out which way I was going. Then I reasoned that as I had been travelling south on the motorway and had found the City by wandering down a service road on the left-hand side of the road I had to go west in order to get back to the car. The Great North Road forked off the map near the top left-hand corner and there was no sign of any motorway or major road to the left of it.
I didn’t dare ask anybody if they knew where the motorway was. Giff had been quite clear: there was no motorway. There was, of course, there must have been, but these people didn’t know about it. I stepped back into the main street and set off in the other direction, heading north-west. For the first time I looked properly at the shops lining the route. They were drab and anonymous, named only after what they sold: SHOES, FASHION, IRONMONGERY, BOOKS. Displays were rudimentary and unenticing: windows full of dead flies and wasps, the odd badly dressed dummy, mismatched pairs of cheaply made shoes.
I turned my attention to the road. There were two steady streams of cars and trucks and I wondered if I would perhaps be better off in a car. I looked around but couldn’t see any cabs. What would I have said to the driver? Just drive up here for a bit so I can see if it leads to the motorway. He would have said what motorway and I would have been heading straight back into trouble.
I walked up the Great North Road as unobtrusively as possible, feeling I ought to do something about my appearance but reluctant to do so as it would be like admitting I was stuck here for longer than I wanted to be. People brushed by on both sides, many carrying their brown paper packages stencilled with the letter M. Soon — when the pavement began to empty as they turned off into old, greasy-looking side streets — I realised no one was talking. In place of a buzz of conversation there was only a shuffle of feet, the slap of leather on slabs and cobbles. Had the police and street-corner judges cowed the people so much they were too afraid to speak? What did they have to hide?
I neared a kiosk selling newspapers, tobacco and confectionery. Some of the remaining pedestrians stopped to make silent exchanges with the vendor, an old grey man with heavy glasses. Crumpled old notes passed between them and the old man folded them into his pocket, handing out coins from his other pocket, taken seemingly at random. No one inspected their change. They just tucked their paper under a free arm or dropped a packet of cigarettes into a shopping bag. The kiosk looked like a stand in a railway station but more old-fashioned, with a timbered, lean-to, almost unfinished look about it. I tried to peep around the back to see if it was only half-finished but a small crowd pressed close to me and to avoid drawing their attention I was forced to move on. As I passed by, I read the blurred billboards that proclaimed: NEW LEADS IN HUNT FOR REGICIDE.
A police car growled past and I looked the other way, wishing I could have gone back for a newspaper, but caution made me carry on walking.
Since entering the outskirts the night before when I’d seen the ice-skater perform her impossible jumps I’d seen nothing else to suggest this was the city of my dreams. The dogs, the police presence, the general level of paranoia and this apparent hunt for some king killer suggested something quite different. I didn’t want to think about it.
I concentrated on finding the motorway. I’d left the map now and as I walked further north-west I was becoming increasingly isolated. If a police car came by they’d be sure to pick me up. There were fewer shops, and gaps had started to appear between buildings. I looked down the side streets on my left but always at the bottom there was just another street of redbrick terraces running across. I heard a car with an ominous, low, rumbling engine and slipped through the first shop doorway I came to.
There was a sound, which was oddly familiar, and it was only when I took in my surroundings that I recognised it as the empty hiss of a runout groove. I was in a record shop. The smell of old much-thumbed sleeves washed over me. There were racks around the walls holding stacks of LPs, and a free-standing unit in the centre of the small, musty shop. At the far side was the counter and an old-fashioned till. Behind the counter was a door that was ajar but there was no one tending the shop. I was the only customer. Faint noises came from the half-open doorway. I also heard the police car cruise past the shop but instead of heading straight back outside I turned to one of the racks and flicked through the sleeves. They were all blank. I selected one at random and withdrew the contents. The transparent paper in the centre crinkled as I slid the record itself from the yellowed inner sleeve. The black vinyl shone like my father’s shoes and when I looked close I could see a tracery of small scratches and insignificant scuff marks like those he had always tried to hide by slapping on Cherry Blossom Shoe Polish and brushing until he could see his face in the shoe.
I wondered what the record was. The label, like the sleeve, was blank. Over the loudspeakers I could still hear the stylus bumping around the runout groove of whatever record had been playing. I made my way over to the counter and looked around for the turntable. It was on a ledge below the counter and my heart stopped when I saw the record was only halfway through. The noise I was hearing had been recorded. I remembered the white label I’d dreamt the Siouxsie lookalike had brought me and I felt my stomach muscles contract. Then I heard something that made me shiver: a high-pitched squealing sound accompanied by the drumming of running feet. It was coming from the half-open doorway.
As I ducked under the counter and stepped through the doorway I slipped back twenty years.
I was coming downstairs first thing in the morning. My father was out doing some strange shift work. My mother was getting dressed upstairs and above the tinkle of her jewellery and the rustle of Radio Two on her transistor I could hear the pitter-pat of scampering feet and the squeal of the fast turning wheel. I trailed my fingers against the raised knobbly paint patterns — like purple waves breaking on some dream shore — on the hall wall and turned into the dining room. The squealing got louder, the feet ran faster. I went and crouched down in the corner and watched our second hamster as he ran on and on against the gravity which meant he would never climb to the top of his wheel but would be condemned forever to run on the spot. I knelt down in front of the cage and watched him run. His little black eyes seemed to register the futility of the effort and yet he carried on running, even despite my close attention. If anything he started to run faster.