The spool fell silent. Arnold had been running for ages. If he’d been a man on the road he’d have reached Penzance.
Riley went to the kitchen, bit an apple and threw it in a plastic bag. Still chewing, he opened the cage and dropped Arnold onto the fruit. Then he followed the lane that led to Limehouse Cut. The bins were out. A crowd of polystyrene pellets skittered along the pavement, white and vibrant in the darkness. He swished the bag across his trouser leg, like a boy with sweets from the corner shop — sticky things out of tall jars held out by Mrs O’Neill. She’d only ever been kind to him —but with a pity that had guessed everything, that had stripped him down to the contusions. ‘He has tempers.’ That’s what his mother had said of Walter. Tempers. It sounded like something Babycham would have ordered with lemonade and a cherry. ‘Not to worry, son,’ his mother once said. She wiped her own split lip as if she’d just finished her fish and chips. ‘You fell off your bike, all right?’ Her eyes had dried like a desert, centuries before.
When he reached the canal, Riley halted. The bag swung by his leg. Hesitating, he began to think. In a way Walter, John Bradshaw and Arnold belonged together. Each of them, in very different ways, had been so much stronger than Riley And with that terrible thought, he let go.
18
Despite expectations that he would sink quickly under the weight of wet clothing, George had remained afloat. An action somewhere between swimming and treading water led him away from his point of entry He felt a colder current around his feet; the smack of small waves made him spit. He was being pulled now, towards the full flow of the river. The final supporting pillars rose out of the shadows to meet the abrupt ending of the wharf’s run. George turned into the water.
In so far as this moment had received any planning, George had intended to give his final thoughts to John. To his surprise he found himself upon the tracks of his own childhood, running down a winding path, at the back of a string of council houses in Harrogate. It was a sunny day; the ground was ribbed and dry underfoot. To his right were fences and small gardens with sheds … windows framed white in walls of red brick … A shining cat lay sprawled upon warm slate; to his left there were trunks and branches, screening a tennis court of orange grit … and then a bowling green … a velvet stage for men in white coats with bald heads or big caps … He was skipping and hopping, for the sheer joy of being alive, feeling his heart ache with the strain. He was ten. And he wanted to stay that age for ever. At the end of the path was a thick patch of dock leaves at the base of a tree by his home. George began to sink, just as he remembered kneeling down, panting and curious, to taste a bright, crisp leaf as though he were a rabbit.
Something made of metal hit George on the head. Instinctively his arms flailed and he surfaced with a gasp. Bobbing in the water was a tin can. Looking up, he saw a boy sitting at the end of the wharf, his legs idly dangling. A small shaved head cut a fine serrated hole into the sky Suddenly he vanished. Rage ran hot through tired old veins. ‘The little brat …’ George was panting now Cold had seized him as though it were a weight. Panic gripped him. The boy appeared again at the edge of the wharf. George shouted for help. A thin arm swung out, and something angular swiftly cut a fine arc against the sky like a shooting star without light. It struck the water with a deep thud. The arm flashed again.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ yelled George. In a frenzy he shook off his coat. Enraged, he began moving towards the side. The boy relaxed, followed the swimmer’s progress, walking along the rim of the wharf, tossing chunks of broken masonry. They landed around him casually George hauled himself up the rusted ladder and collapsed, spewing water, onto the quay His teeth worked in unison with a vivid memory, and he began to weep. The sun was warm upon his neck, and he was a lad again, on his knees at the foot of a tree, tasting a leaf. It had been surprisingly bitter, when he had wanted it to be sweet. He arched his head, opening his streaming eyes: the boy was sauntering towards the perimeter fence, hands in his pockets.
George tried to shout, but nothing came from his throat. He clambered to his feet and stumbled after his persecutor. Several times he fell, cutting his hands and knees. The pain quickened him. Frantically George continued his ridiculous pursuit, driven by a senseless desire to express an elemental, livid gratitude. Beneath the radiance of a street lamp, the boy stooped, working his way through a hole in the netting. By the time George stood dripping in the road that ran adjacent to Mr Lawton’s fallen kingdom, the assassin had gone.
A couple of hours later George swayed beneath the fire escape and was stunned to find his bed made. As consciousness became pain and a deep, immense shivering, delusion eased away his last waking moment: he could have sworn he saw a figure coming down from the steps above.
19
When Nancy had gone to bed, leaving Riley in his rocker, she’d tossed and turned, annoyed by questions as if they were lumps in the mattress. Where was Mr Johnson? What should she do with his notebooks? Who was the man in the photograph? With this last, Nancy had, in fact, made some headway: it might be Riley’s father, she thought, because he never spoke of him. Or maybe his mother had sent it: he didn’t speak of her either. That was Riley He was so different, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that he’d never had parents. She laughed at her own joke, changed sides and plumped her pillow. Listening to Arnold, she finally became drowsy.
Nancy woke up. Something in the house was slightly different, but she didn’t know what. Riley wasn’t beside her … but she could hear him in the kitchen. The back door opened and closed. A tug of sympathy took Nancy out of bed and to the window: her man couldn’t come to bed; he had to walk himself like a dog, until he was so tired that his mind couldn’t worry him. This is what British justice had done to her man — to a man who’d done nothing wrong.
She moved the curtain an inch or two. At first she couldn’t see anything. Some of the windows on the other side were lit round the edges … and the bins were out. Her breath steamed the glass. She gave it a rub with the sleeve of her nightie, and then she saw him. Riley was at the top of the street. She knew his walk, by the way his arms swung like loose ropes.
Nancy climbed back into bed and twenty minutes later, Riley slipped between the sheets. She didn’t stir and he didn’t move. Almost at once, he began snoring with his hands behind his head. Nancy couldn’t get back to sleep because she was distracted: something had been altered in the house, and she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.
20
In his sleep Riley was running down a dark corridor towards a window, its frame blurred by light. His footfalls were silent. All he could hear was the breathing of the Thing behind him. Blinded, he broke though the glass as though it were tracing paper. His stomach spilled out and he began to fall.
Even as he fell, he knew this was the old dream — the dream that had begun the day of his acquittal. And even as the stairs appeared, he recognised that this was the development — like a turning of the pages in his mind — that had started after he’d received the photograph. He was observing himself, and yet experiencing the rise of terror.
All at once the nightmare cut location. Riley was no longer falling. His stomach was in his belly He was walking along a small corridor in a silent terraced house. Upstairs there were three bedrooms. Outside, at the back, there was a small garden with a gate that led to three trees. He didn’t know why he knew all this, or why he was aware that the front door was green, or that the kitchen floor had been laid with fake marble. It was simply part of the sensation of being in this empty house. He moved slowly like an underwater diver. Sunshine lit the floating dust. To his right, through a doorway he saw an iron fireplace. The grate was clean. By the hearth were a pan and brush on a stand; the poker was missing. A kind of barking started in Riley’s guts — a juddering sensation brought on by the recognition of his surroundings: this was home. He noticed that he was not a man, and not a boy; that he was in between the two. Ahead and to the left he saw a hand on the carpet. It hung off the bottom step of the staircase. The bystander in Riley vanished. Riley became Riley in his entirety. Slowly bravely his eyes moved along the arm, up the shoulder and onto the matted hair.