Hours later – or was it minutes? – and without saying anything to each other, they both opened their eyes at the same time and stood up. I got to my feet, too. The rector stepped toward me and took both my hands in his.
“You’re welcome in God’s House, child. You have sought sanctuary with us, and you will find it here. For the time being.” Behind him, Simon was beaming. “This isn’t going to be easy, for any of us. Before we go on, I need you to answer me honestly. Do you have anything with you, any weapons?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
“No guns or knives? Explosives?” he said, eyeing my backpack, which was lying on the floor.
“No.”
“Do you mind if I, or Simon here, have a look?”
I did mind, as it happened. It wasn’t really my stuff, it was Britney’s, and it was all I had in the world, but I wasn’t really in a position to argue. I undid my bag there and then and tipped it out, the contents spilling onto the tiled floor: food, bottles of water, my cigarettes, some spare undies from Britney.
“We don’t allow smoking in here. I’m sure you understand that.”
I shrugged.
“And your pockets? Would you mind turning out your pockets?”
I dug my hands into the pockets of my coat and my jeans and added old tissues, my lighter, the last bit of change to the pile on the floor. Fifteen years old, and that was everything I had in the world.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to search you.” I shot him a warning look. Now we’re getting to it, I thought. Any excuse for him to stick his fingers where I don’t want him to. Dirty old man. If they started anything, I was ready to defend myself. Neither of them looked like much of a threat to me.
“Simon,” the rector said, “will you do the honors?”
Simon looked more frightened than me. He stepped forward. “I’m sorry about this.” He gently patted my shoulders, and then his hands moved under my arms and down my body. He crouched and patted each leg in turn, his face turned away from my crotch but coloring up all the same. When he’d finished there were beads of sweat on his forehead – sheer stress, I should think. It was a pretty safe bet that he didn’t get that close to a woman too often.
“No, that’s fine,” he said, straightening up. “Nothing there.”
“Good. Now, gather up your things and, Simon, if you show our guest…”
“Jem,” Simon said quickly.
“If you show Jem into the vestry, I will speak with the police and explain that this isn’t a siege. We need to open up; there’ll be people queuing outside for Matins.” He bustled off toward the main door, keen to put his day back on track.
Simon showed me into a side room, where there was a table, and some chairs, and a rack with loads of cloaks and things hanging up.
“Just put your things down here.” He was having trouble looking me in the eye since he’d frisked me. “Tell you what, I’ll put the kettle on. No milk, I’m afraid, but I could make us a black coffee or tea. I’ll just get some water.”
He disappeared into the toilet but left the door open. The tap was running for a long time, and I could hear the squelching of soap as he washed his hands, before the unmistakable sound of the kettle filling up. I know I was pretty grubby from sleeping in that ditch, but I had a feeling it wasn’t just a bit of mud and grass he was washing away.
He smiled straight at me when he emerged. “That’s better. Now, tea or coffee?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
“I’ll talk to them on one condition: They must let Spider go – my mate. I need to see him. He hasn’t done anything. If they let him go, I’ll talk. You can tell them that.”
The rector let out his breath like a burst of steam. “Must we really go backward and forward like this? You are in serious trouble, young lady. If you have done nothing wrong, if you have nothing to hide, then you should talk to the police. Nothing bad will happen to you if you tell the truth.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right.”
His nostrils flared. “I don’t like your attitude. Appalling things have happened. Innocent people have died. We need to get to the truth. We need to find those responsible. It’s not a laughing matter.”
“I’m not laughing,” I said, “but I’m not talking to them. I don’t trust them. Why should I? They’ve taken my friend away.”
“He was a suspect,” he said, his mouth slowly shaping all the words like he was talking to a very young kid or a foreigner. “Of course they’ve taken him away. And if he has done nothing wrong and he tells the truth, they will let him go again. Perhaps” – his voice softened-“perhaps we sometimes don’t know people as well as we think we do. It’s possible that your…your friend didn’t tell you everything. That you got caught up in something you knew nothing about…”
“No!” I shouted, my voice echoing through the place. “It’s not like that. You’re like the rest of them. You’re twisting things around, trying to make him into something he’s not. It wasn’t him at the London Eye. It was me.”
They were both looking at me intently now. “Go on,” Simon said.
“I didn’t do nothing. I just knew that something was going to happen that day. I could see that lots of people there were going to die.”
“How did you know?” The rector was waiting for me to tell him I did it, I planted the bomb.
“I can see the day, the date, when people are going to die.” They looked at each other quickly. “I could tell you both yours, your last days, but I never will. I never tell people, it’s not right. But when I saw that all those people had the same day, that day in London, I was scared. I didn’t want to be there, so we ran away.”
“What do you mean, you can see the date…?”
“If I look at someone, I see a number. It’s kind of inside my head and outside at the same time. The number is a date.”
“How do you know what the number means?”
“I’ve seen enough death. I know. Anyway, I was right, wasn’t I, about the London Eye? I was right to run away.”
They looked at each other again.
“Why didn’t you go to the police, tell them what you knew?”
“Why do you think? It’s all so simple, isn’t it? Tell the truth and it will all be alright. Maybe it’s like that here, but it’s not where I come from. They see a black kid with some money, they see a dealer. They see a couple of kids, just chilling somewhere, hanging out, they see a couple of muggers. They need to collar someone for a crime, they collar someone – one of the usual suspects, anyone who fits the picture, doesn’t matter. Truth and lies, it all gets mixed up. No one would believe me.”
“It’s certainly…unexpected” – the rector was picking his words carefully-“what you’re saying. But if that’s what you believe, then you should tell them. They will be able to do tests that can exonerate you, test your clothes for traces of explosives.”
“Set me up, you mean.”
His turn to get angry. “No!” he shouted, slamming his fist against the door. “That’s not how it works in this country. There are processes, checks and balances. You must trust the system. It’s what keeps this country civilized.”
I closed my eyes. What can you say to people like that, part of the system themselves, or so naïve they believe all that establishment bullshit? I couldn’t argue against them, anyway. I didn’t have the words that would make them listen, respect me; didn’t know their language.