The message from Macey was that Chuck Walker was in a bar with the sophisticated woman. Macey would be waiting outside. He had told us where to meet him. Driving there, with Tommy Brogan handcuffed in one of the cars behind us, I barely noticed the day. The sense of anti-climax in me was like inertia. The unexpected reawakened me.
Macey wasn’t there. The three of us got out of the car to look around. Bob went and told the other policemen to stay in their cars. While Brian and Bob and I were standing in the busy street wondering what to do next, Brian suddenly said, ‘There he’s!’
I thought he meant Macey. Some distance away I saw Macey’s sharply dressed figure signalling to us among the people. It was a few seconds later that I noticed what Macey’s signals meant. Chuck Walker was in the street with a tall, blonde woman. They were an interesting couple, the lady and the rottweiler. They were nearer to us than Macey was. They were coming towards us. Even as we saw him, he saw something else.
It must have been an amazing image for him, like glancing sideways in a mirror and seeing a skeleton’s head. He had already passed the first police car when he looked casually into the second and saw Tommy Brogan in the back. Then he saw us over the heads of the crowds in the street. He spun and noticed the other car. He turned back towards us and then he wasn’t there. There were the people jostling in the street and there was the woman among them, still unaware of the suddenness with which relationships can end. Seeking to avoid bumping the passers-by, she was holding up the expensive plastic bag, which presumably contained something they had shopped for — instant memento.
We were trying to force our way through the mob and the other policemen had come out of the cars and there was no sign of him. We were separated and moving around aimlessly when I looked through the window of a café. I saw the man behind the counter looking around him. Something had happened he didn’t understand. I went in. The place was busy and some of the people at the tables had the same ruffled appearance as the owner, as if a sudden wind had blown through the place. I stared at the owner. He was frightened. He looked towards his back shop.
As I went through there, I heard the sound of a door being kicked open. Locating the sound, I saw the outline of Chuck Walker. His shoulders almost filled the doorway. He had his back towards me. Ahead of him was nothing but high wall. As he turned back, I thought I might just live long enough to regret that all he had had in front of him was wall.
As he rushed me, his body filled my vision. I knew what I wanted to do but that isn’t always a great help. The punch I tried to throw was deflected like a gnat. He hit me in the stomach and then something, his fist or his forearm or his elbow, jarred into my neck. I fell through the doorway back into the space behind the counter. He was on top of me and he had a knife. I stayed very still. I saw the mole on his cheek. I saw the gargoyle malevolence of his face, the eyes lit eerily as if a torch were under them.
‘You’re ma hostage, polis,’ he said. ‘If they don’t let me pass, you’re dead.’
For a moment I agreed. I could see my name in the obituary column. He trailed me to my feet and, as he did so, I jabbed my index finger and my forefinger in his face, one for each eye. Stumbling, he hit his hand on the hot-plate, where an abandoned egg was crisping. The knife fell. I kicked him in the balls. His body buckled. His head happened to be about six inches from the hot-plate when I caught it. I held it there. If my hands could feel the heat, his face must have been scorching.
I had thought I was hunting evil. I had tracked the quarry down and found me. The café, the place where people eat and chat, volleyed away from me. I felt it disappear, sucked into darkness, and I was alone with my rage, and with my hands on a man who stood for an almost total contempt for other people. In that moment I hated him in a way that frightens me still. There was nothing he could do to me now but I still held him there. I felt what I can hardly believe I felt. I said what I am ashamed to have said.
‘Do you want fried face?’ I said.
He felt the seriousness of the offer. And he screamed. I was near in myself to what I had loathed in others. His animal terror broke down into garbled speech, the plea to be human.
‘It was Brogan,’ he was saying. ‘Tommy Brogan. Did it. He did it. Not me. Not me. He did it for Mason. Ah was just there. Ah’ll tell you. Ah’ll tell you.’
‘Not enough,’ I shouted.
‘Jack!’
It was Brian Harkness. The café came back. The other policemen were with him. People were standing at their tables, staring at me. A woman was hiding her small son’s face. Brian pulled me away and Bob Lilley put handcuffs on Chuck Walker. I suddenly saw the separateness of Chuck Walker’s enormous hands, enclosed together in the metal, like a predator in a glass case. It was glass in which I could see my own reflection. As we came out, I felt it was like one of those occasions you see memorialised in newspaper photographs, when they’re leading the criminal to the car. But the way people were looking at me, I was the one who should have had the coat over his head. With Chuck Walker stowed in the second car, we stood in the street.
‘I wouldn’t have done it,’ I said.
I was talking to myself.
‘No,’ Brian said.
Bob didn’t say anything.
‘Anyway, let’s go, Jack,’ Brian said.
‘No,’ I said. ‘You two get Mason on your own.’
‘What? Jack.’ Bob wasn’t taking me seriously. ‘Behave. You’ve got to complete the circle.’
‘There’s circles inside circles,’ I said. ‘I’ve got another one to complete. There’s a man I have to see. Brian, you do me a favour? When you’ve sorted this out, you dump my stuff at the flat? The bag’s in the boot. And there’s an ashtray I bought. And don’t forget what’s left of the Antiquary. I might need it. Oh, and a couple of paintings.’
I gave him my spare keys to the flat. That was what made them accept that I wasn’t coming with them.
‘When’ll we see you?’ Bob said.
‘Monday at the latest.’
‘What about tonight?’ Brian said.
‘Maybe. We’ll see. Good luck. When you’re lifting Matt Mason, make sure you don’t drop him.’
‘You watch yourself, you,’ Bob said.
They went into the car. I walked for a little, a very little, till I found the first bar. I took two whiskies fast, waiting to see if they would remind me of who I was. I felt strange to myself. I was still hollow with anger. I sat staring ahead and talking to no one and smoking and trying to calm myself. I came out of the pub and went by a very roundabout route to Michael Preston’s flat. But by the time I arrived I wasn’t significantly quieter. The flat had its own door to the street. It was a woman who opened it.
‘Jack?’ she said.
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m Bev.’
The accent was Australian. We shook hands. She preceded me up the stairs. She moved well. Michael Preston appeared in the hallway at the top. He shook hands with me.
‘Jack and I’ll talk in the study, Bev,’ he said.