Caught in the searchlight, caught as if he were an escapee from the nick, one arm thrown across his eyes, the other brandishing an entrenching tool. Caught bang to rights. Dave looked up and saw a neotenous head and a cigarette falling towards him end over end. While Carl saw some chav or fucking pikey … a shambolic, middle-aged fatso … trying to nick the fucking patio! A pathetic thief who had his mouth wide open yet couldn't scream. In the red cave Carl saw the wet root of his tongue uselessly gargling. He didn't recognize the man — but he knew who he was. Carl cried out, 'Dad! Dad! There's a beastly man in the back garden!' Even as he taunted one man and conferred a title on the other, he thought, Beastly beastly? Where the fuck does that come from?
They held Dave Rudman overnight at the police station on Rosslyn Hill. The cell he sat in was only a few hundred feet from Heath Hospital, but Dave was in no mood to ponder such narrative circularity, the centrifugal striving of the individual against the widening gyre of history. The magistrate, however, understood Dave and history, although, having his record laid out on the bench in front of her, she viewed it in a different light. While the non-molestation orders that had been imposed on Michelle Brodie's ex-husband may have lapsed, here was the original source materiaclass="underline" the violence in the marriage, the breaching of previous orders, the assault in the restaurant, the psychiatric treatment. So it was only reasonable for the magistrate to assume that the victims of this obvious thug would be looking for a charge of criminal trespass, perhaps even — given that he had gone equipped with a mattock — malicious damage and intent to wound?
When Dave was eventually bailed, there was someone on hand with the same intent. 'What the fuck was that for?!' he exclaimed, rubbing his smarting cheek.
'What was it for?!' Phyllis screeched. 'What was it for? It was for being an irresponsible fucking wanker!' Her wiry curls sparked with anger as she prodded Dave down the wheelchair access ramp for the Highgate Magistrates Court. What must we look like? he thought. Fat old boiler duffing up a bald old git of a drunk … She confronted him on the pavement, her accent flattening into Essex as it did battle with the artics booming past within inches of them. 'Djew fink you ain't got no responsibilities any more — issatit? Izzit?' He shook his head. ' 'Cause if that's the way you feel you can piss off — and I mean it. There's Carl, there's Steve and there's … well,' she hesitated, 'well … there's me.'
'Carl?' He didn't mean to provoke her — he was genuinely incredulous. 'Carl? He doesn't even know who I am — I haven't seen him properly in years.'
Phyllis sighed, her exasperation was so profound — it was heavier than the hill they stood upon. Then she was calm again. She took a ball of tissues from the pocket of her denim skirt and screwed it into her eyes, one after the other. 'Let's go and get a cuppa,' she said, taking his arm, 'then you can tell me what the hell you thought you were up to. Somebody needs to do something about this whole balls-up, David, and that somebody isn't you.'
Fucker Finch was wearing a floor-length, dirty grey shift, and there were manacles on both his chubby wrists, from which dangled chinking lengths of chain. When Dave came into the empty bar, he was sitting at one of the round glass-topped tables, fiddling with a headache-pill dispenser shaped like a mobile phone. It was late morning, and the whole ground floor of the Charing Cross Hotel — half a French chateau hammered on to the facade of the station — reeked of furniture polish. Contract cleaners in nylon tabards were whipping the carpeting with the flexes of their vacuum cleaners.
'What's all this about?' Dave asked without any preamble.
'This?' Fucker held up the pill phone. 'Iss fer Nuro-whatsit, Nurofen.'
'No, not that, the cloakything.' He took a fold of Fucker's shift between his thumb and forefinger. 'Lovely bit of shmatte by the way.'
Fucker gave a mordant shrug. 'Iss burghers, today, we're mennabee burghers today.'
'Burgers? Whaddya mean?'
'Burghers, Tufty, the Burghers of Calais, there's a statchew of 'em in that park by Parliament. Plan was fer us to dress up like 'em and chain ourselves to it.'
'Isn't that a bit low level for your mob? I mean, the old Bill'll cut you off that in seconds.'
'Yeah, I know what you mean, mate' — Fucker necked a couple of Nurofen with a swallow of lager — 'but we gotta take whatever opportunities present themselves — thass what Barry says. There's a debate in the Commons today what affects all us single dads, an' they'll 'ave every 'igh fing fer miles under surveillance. Me, I get a buzz ahtuv the 'igh ups. Far as I'm concerned — the 'igher the better. When I'm up there it's a big fucking buzz — better than sex, better than charley. I feel, y'know, alive.'
Dave consulted his watch. 'So when you heading over, then? It's gone eleven thirty.'
'Nah, y'don't geddit.' Fucker shook his rubber face. 'I'm surplus to requirements, I am. I pitches up wiv me robe an' manacles an' it only turns out they've got six other fucking burghers in hand already. So 'e mugs me off, don't he.'
'Y'know Fucker — Gary,' Dave spoke as softly and reasonably as he could, 'you want to be careful with that lot, Higginbottom in particular. It could all come on top — you know what he's like.'
Fucker snorted, 'Yeah, yeah, I know what 'e's bloody like. I tellya, Tufty, it's like poetry watching him do all that telly stuff — 'e's got more front than Brighton. I swear, I sometimes fink 'e's 'aving a bubble wiv 'em, 'cause 'e ain't like that wiv me, 'e's juss an ordinary geezer.'
'He's using you, Gary — '
'Oh, yeah? Well, maybe that's the way I want it, it's all up wiv me, Tufty, all I got left is this an' it's a matter of prints-supple — thass wot it is, a matter of prints-supple. Even if I never get to see the kids regular again, least I'll 'ave made me point.'
Dave tried another tack. 'What're you doing for money, then, Gary?'
'Gelt? I'm fucked, mate — I 'ad to let the begging box go. Weren't no point in 'anging on to it anyway — I bin nicked so many times this year they was bound to take me badge.'
'Did you sell it?' Dave asked, thinking of his own old Fairway underneath the arches off Vallance Road.
'Sell it!' Fucker guffawed. 'Nah, I didn't bloody well sell it, my old man was renting it for me on the half-flat, donchew remember? Fing is' — he leaned forward conspiratorially — 'I borrowed a couple of grand on it before I let it go, so now I've gotta give the old manor a bit of a wide.' Fucker swerved his manacles across the table.
From deep inside the station came the mammoth door chimes that precede an announcement; here, at the very epicentre of the Knowledge, a hefty realization was requesting admission. 'They're looking for you, Gary,' Dave confided, 'couple of Turks, heavy mob, they've been round at Ali Baba's — Mo thought they were after me, but it's you they want, innit?'
'I dunno, mate — don't fucking care neever. 'Ow they gonna find me anyway? I'm kipping in a fucking bail hostel over Vauxhall. Barry sees me right for a few quid, an' whenever I go out' — he gave his manacles a shake — 'I'm always in disguise!'