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I can hear my heart and my head pounding, and another man’s voice maybe fifty feet behind us, shouting, but I can’t tell what. The Stranger lurches to his feet, as I am on all fours, and I scream, ‘Dougal, get behind me!’
The terrified mop of red hair and tears and bloody knees, and a bruised face with the Stranger’s fingerprints embedded in his cheeks, runs as fast as his ridiculous small legs will allow, behind me, before the Stranger is fully upright.
I can hear the cries of a man getting closer behind us, shouting, ‘You sick bastard, you sick bastard …’ and the pounding of his feet on the dirt. I look up and notice that the Stranger’s glasses have smashed, and his face, an average forty-five-year-old face, is red and stained with dirt and sweat. He looks down at me, with either confusion or fear or disgust, and then his eyes dart upwards and behind me at the menacing sound of larger feet than mine running towards us all, and I can clearly hear the chasing man’s voice now, shouting, ‘You sick fuck! You sick bastard!’
I raise myself onto my knees as the Stranger lunges forward. His dirty old badminton trainer makes sharp hard contact with my stomach, and seems to sink further in than it physically should. I scream in pain, folding forwards. He calls me a ‘bitch’, but in a tone that lacks conviction.
Dougal screams as I hear a blurred and breathless voice behind me yelling, ‘You sick fuck! I’ll fucking kill you!’
The Stranger turns and runs down the alley, towards the sunlight at the other end. I lie on my side and clutch my stomach, and moan at a pain I have never felt before. I have never been kicked in the stomach before. Dougal is behind me crying and pawing at my back. I push myself up onto knees that nearly buckle, and my stomach yells with pain, and my head thuds noisily with pumping blood and bruising. I turn and accept a screaming, crying red-faced child into my arms. He holds on to me tightly, then pushes me away, then holds on again.
The pounding of large feet slows, but passes us, and the chasing man shouts as he speeds up again, ‘Go back the other way,’ and then coughs so hard I am positive he won’t catch him.
I pull little Dougal’s head away from my chest, and hold it between my hands, and ask him if he is hurt. He nods his head, and continues to cry. I push myself to my feet, and holding Dougal in my arms, ignoring the thrashing pain in my stomach, and the thumping in my head, and the aching in my legs, and the tightening in my chest, I struggle back down the pathway, back the way we came.
Dougal quietens down slightly as we walk the long walk – we were two-thirds of the way down the alley. Where was the man planning to go? Did he even have a plan? Or was it just an impulse, a shocking unexplainable moment of opportunity?
Eventually I say into Dougal’s ear, ‘There’s your mummy,’ as we reach the sunlight. His face whips around to see his hysterical tall mousy mother clutching at her other two children. Dougal starts to kick and scream and struggle with me to be set free, and I lower him to the ground. He runs into his mother’s arms, and falls instantly silent, as she cries loudly for the both of them.
I lean against the wall, wiping stinging beads of sweat out of my eyes, clutching at my stomach, trying to control my breathing. It only takes a couple of seconds for me to start to cry as well.
I hear the wail of police sirens coming close, and see a small gathering of people across the street staring at this strange soap opera by the opening of the alley. A police car screeches up, and I shield my eyes from its electric-blue lights, which remind me of the flashing neon signs outside strip clubs in Soho.
The doors burst open as the wailing siren stops, and a radio full of static says, ‘We’ve got him this end.’
I wipe my eyes, and want my mum to hug me too. I want to tell her that a Stranger with broken glasses and a rotten smell hit me, and he kicked me, and I’m finding it all suddenly very personal. He wanted to hurt me. I cry because I am scared by what I did. I am scared at the thought of chasing a child snatcher, a Stranger, down that alley. I cover my eyes with my hands and feel sick, as a nauseous sliver of pride turns my stomach and a voice in my head whispers what I know before I can silence it. I ran fast.
I throw up a cup of black coffee and half a Skinny Blueberry Muffin on the street. That’s all there is.
Staring down at the pavement, I feel proud.
Cagney has the sick little fuck up against a wall, and the sick little fuck has the audacity to tremble. Cagney can’t punch him, but not because he doesn’t want to. Cagney wants to obliterate him, wants to bring the wall down upon him, wants to see his nose battered and black and pouring with blood, and to hear him moan as the life and the evil seeps out of him. But a policeman has a firm hold of Cagney’s arm at the elbow, and is forcefully prising him away. They should let him smash the sick little bastard apart with the fury of God; they can’t do it themselves, at least not in public, without being accused of police brutality, and sparking a peaceful protest of civil rights banners waved by bored housewives and fools. Cagney, on the other hand, has never been a policeman, so he can punch whomever he wants, if he is willing to take the consequences. And in this instance, the end very surely justifies the means. Still a constable pulls his arm away forcefully.
‘Let go of him. We’ll take it from here – let him go.’
‘You sick fucker, you want to mess with kids? They should let me kill you now!’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it,’ the man whispers as tears stream down his face.
The rage inside Cagney surges up like a twenty-foot Atlantic wave, but a second policeman grabs his other arm, and pulls him off, throwing him to one side. They spin the man around and slam the side of his face up against the wall, slapping a pair of handcuffs on him.
‘Whatever you do, it’ll be too good for him! There’s no justice any more.’ Cagney bends over with his hands on his hips, and coughs loudly. Speaking has pushed his body over the edge. His chest feels magnificently precarious; it may collapse at any moment. He feels bile rise in his throat, and throws up a little, at the end of the alley. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, stands up and leans back against the wall, clutching his sides.
He knows better than to run. A man in his condition shouldn’t run. There is no official medical term for his condition. He just knows it by the affectionate term ‘Jack Daniel’s’. He has a minor case of ‘Marlboro Reds’ as well, but he doesn’t think that one is terminal. Neither of his conditions need be life-threatening, as long as he remembers not to run.
One police car pulls off, carrying the man, and Cagney glares after it, trying to catch his breath. A policeman from a second squad car approaches him with his hands on his hips like a sheriff of a small town, about to quick-draw.
‘Are you ready to go, sir?’
Cagney looks up at Constable Cary Grant, and shakes his head, aware that nothing may come out when he tries to speak, that his trachea may have combusted from the heat and the fury in the back of his throat.
‘What?’ It is all Cagney can manage, with any clarity.
‘Sir, we’ll need you to come down to the station with us.’
‘Why?’
‘To file a report.’
‘Why?’
‘So we can prosecute that bastard for snatching kids.’
Cagney is repulsed at the constable’s efforts to appeal to some shared sense of old-fashioned ethics while nobody else is listening. He knows that in a court of law the policeman wouldn’t be calling that bastard a bastard – he’d be too busy looking over his shoulder at all the do-gooders and politically correct morons.
‘I can tell you everything I know here.’ Cagney inhales as deeply as he can, and concentrates on not falling to the ground. He steadies himself against the wall as casually as he can. ‘Some woman starts shouting outside my office …’ take a breath, ‘“He’s got my child,” et cetera …’ Breath. ‘I get downstairs, and some girl has already gone haring after him, but the mother is beside herself …’ huge breath, redness of the face, lung collapsing, ‘and what else can I do?’ Pause for emphasis, and oxygen. ‘But it’s the girl you want to talk to. She’d already got the kid back by the time I caught up with him.’ And relax. And fuck it, breathe hard.
Cagney looks down at his feet, wheezing, suddenly aware that he is impressed, which is rare these days. The girl was stupid, she was doubled up when he ran past, probably badly hurt, but it was impressive none the less. Stupidly impressive. Cagney nods his head once, in approval. And then shakes it. She got lucky. She couldn’t have fought him off if he’d gone for her instead. Some things are still meant for men to deal with.
‘You need to come and file the report, in the proper way.’
The constable looks at Cagney with confusion; Cagney shrugs it off. Why isn’t he grasping his hero moment? – that’s what this fool is thinking. But he doesn’t know Cagney, and it’s going to take a lot more than a bit of a jog and a man half his size to make him want to wear a medal.
‘I’m not involved, just speak to the girl.’
‘If you didn’t want to be involved you should have stayed in your office. Now we have to go.’
The policeman grabs Cagney’s arm, and Cagney gives up, allowing himself to be guided towards the police car. He has used up his energy store for the month. Cagney hasn’t been in a police car for ten years, but it smells the same – of fear and disinfectant – and he feels just as caged. He looks down at his lap as they stop at traffic lights, and passengers in passing cars stare in.
‘You did well today, mate,’ the officer remarks from behind the wheel.
Cagney ignores him.
The police radio crackles, and Officer Charm chats away for a minute, letting out a brief snort of laughter.
The radio lazes into a stream of static, and the officer turns round to face Cagney as the car sits at a pedestrian crossing, allowing an elderly couple with a black Lab to idle across like they own the road.
‘I don’t know what they’re putting in the coffee in Kew, but the girl didn’t want to come down the station either. She wanted to go to the gym! The pair of you have probably saved that kid’s life today, and we’ve nearly had to cuff you both to get you to make a report!’ The policeman laughs again, but Cagney looks at him with disdain. The officer turns back to the wheel, shaking his head, and muttering, loudly enough for Cagney to hear, ‘Rude bastard.’
Cagney concentrates on the view, appalled.
She wanted to go to the gym? She saves a boy’s life, and she wants to go and lift weights?
‘What was that?’ The officer partially turns his head towards Cagney in the back of the panda car.
Cagney repeats himself, loudly.
‘The world’s gone to hell.’
I fidget outside of the police station, waiting for a taxi to arrive. I said they shouldn’t waste a squad car on dropping me back home; I don’t pay taxes for them to ferry me around. In truth I didn’t enjoy the experience of sitting behind the thick smeared glass in the back seat. It reflected me badly. I’m going to go to the gym, but it’s not as if exercise is the only thing I can think about, especially after this morning’s incident. I just need to clear my head. They kept calling it ‘an incident’ in the station. There was an ‘incident report’, and it makes it sound less threatening if I think of it that way. I just need to run it out of my thoughts. I don’t want to go home and sit around and dwell on what could have been.
I was in the station for a couple of hours. It was quiet, not frenetic the way it is on the television. I didn’t see gruesome pictures hanging on the walls of dismembered prostitutes. A couple of people came and went, I had another cup of coffee, eventually, and the policemen seemed to crack a lot of jokes, appearing to enjoy their crime fighting.
It took an hour for the medical. It was all conducted in a small green room with a neon strip light, behind a battered white screen on wheels, on a tired old hospital bed that looked like it was playing host to the biggest germ party ever thrown. I was rigid with discomfort for the entire examination, afraid that I’d catch something itchy from the foam in the bed, embarrassed at the skin crêpes around my stomach when they made me lift up my top. And then, of course, I kept crying. They said it was shock – a young policewoman with stern hair and thick eyebrows held my hand a couple of times and called me brave, which made me cry even more. I’m not great with compliments, any kind. My hand would involuntarily dart up to shield my eyes, as the tears started to swell anew, but she kept yanking it down, to test my blood pressure, or witness my shame – I’m not sure which.
The result of one dirty fist to my head, and one badminton-trainer kick to my stomach is nothing more than some nasty bruising. I was surprised. I felt sure something must have been broken or ruptured, a vein popped or a bone cracked. At the time of being kicked, being punched, the pain had been obscene. It wasn’t just the force of the blows, it was the shock.
I tried my best not to forget anything. I told them about the smell in the alleyway, which seems to have smeared itself permanently on my skin like Satan’s own brand of moisturiser, but I don’t think they wrote that down. They said that the assault charges against me will actually be vital in prosecuting the Stranger, as ‘kidnapping’ for such a short period of time could be hard to prove. It seems so odd to me that the man’s intention was clear – to take the child – and yet now they have to prove it to people that weren’t even there, and the events of the morning will be painted differently by his lawyer in court. He may be able to plead temporary insanity or something similar. I told them that I thought he was scared by himself, not insane, but they didn’t write that down either. The policeman said they’d be in contact, with the details of what happens next. There is, of course, the prospect of a trial, as well as some kind of trauma counselling that I can go for, as the victim of a violent crime. When they said this I explained that he hadn’t used a gun, and they looked at me strangely again. They gave me their phone number and said I could call them if I remembered anything else, and that the counsellor would be in touch shortly, so I said fair enough, as nonchalantly as I could muster.
I didn’t tell them that I already have a therapist. It feels indulgent. I started seeing him about eight months ago, when I first realised that I might need to talk as well as run. I like to discuss abstract theories, and he likes to make me find some relevance to them in my life. Given a heavier case load, I don’t think he’d still be seeing me, but I pay my money and he listens. I find it interesting, although I’ve learnt that he doesn’t deal in answers. He doesn’t think we are talking about the right things. He thinks I am avoiding my own issues, that I need to focus on the real. He nudges me in the same direction every week, and I dodge it. But as I say, I pay my money …
I already know that I don’t want to talk about the incident, relive it or even think about it. Even with only a few hours’ hindsight it seems strangely unimportant, because I did it, I suppose. I can’t say that to my therapist; he’ll have a field day. But to retell it will make it terrifying, will give me nightmares that I am sure won’t creep up on my dreams unless I am forced to rehash it all. It almost never happened, and in fact it was over in a matter of minutes, and hopefully Dougal is young enough not to be scarred and scared for life. I have come out of it with nothing more than a black eye and a bruised midriff.
I jump up and down on the spot a few times, then lean against a railing, and check my watch. Taxi drivers always claim to be no more than ten minutes away. They are liars. The only time a taxi will ever arrive on time, or early for that matter, is on an evening when you are going out and you haven’t decided which shoes to wear. In these instances they will be tooting their horn angrily outside of your flat before you’ve even hung up the phone to taxi control.
I hear a lung-disturbing cough behind me. I turn round and shield my eyes from the sun, and make out a figure standing rigidly about fifteen feet away under an old Judas tree. I recognise him as the man who chased the Stranger this morning. He is close enough to lean against the tree trunk, but he doesn’t. He is wearing a thick, black roll-neck jumper, and black trousers – doesn’t anybody listen to the weather forecasts except me? It must be thirty degrees, and it’s not even midday yet. His arms are folded in front of him.
He is tall, over six feet. I approximate that he is late thirties, but it’s hard to tell because his face is scrunched up, squinting at the sun, so that his expression makes him seem older than he actually is. He could be thirty, or fifty, but the negativity pinching at his eyes suggests he is one hundred. He is still very red in the face, and I’m not sure if it is the heat or the run that has caused it. He looks like a man who has had the life knocked out of him, who has just lost a custody battle to a promiscuous and alcoholic wife, or finally had his sentence quashed after fifteen years in jail for a pub bombing he did not commit. I wonder what could make a man look so drained. Maybe the Stranger attacked him, and there was some kind of fight …
His face is broad and pale, and he could do with stepping out from that shade and into the sun for a while. His hair is dark and short but slightly bushy on top – he must have to tame it every morning – and I can tell he finds this irritating. I’m sure he hates his hair. It is peppered with grey around his temples, and he has distinguishable sideburns, also dusted with grey. His features are strong but cold, his eyes are deep-set and his nose is positively Roman. He reminds me, standing there staring off into the distance, of those old sepia photographs of ageing Hollywood leading men you see in documentaries, who were a harshly flawed attractive that seems inexplicable these days. He looks like a closed book that wants to stay closed, and the dust is already starting to settle on his hair. It is hard to see what is muscle and what is fat beneath his black jumper, but I only realise that I am staring when his eyes dart upwards and catch mine. Our gazes lock for a frame – not even a second – but it is enough for my cheeks to flush pink with humiliation. I spin round, and walk two paces forwards to check for my cab, but the road is completely empty, and I feel like a fool.
I hear him cough again, but not to attract my attention. His cough is out of his control – this is clearly not a man who runs regularly. My breathing had regulated itself minutes after the incident, moments even, whereas his lungs sound as if they may still collapse. I glance back over my shoulder to approximate how much he weighs and his eyes dart up and catch mine again.
I touch my toes, for no reason other than to do something quickly, and I feel ridiculous. It must actually look like I am trying to impress him with my arse, or worse, my flexibility. I am giving him the impression that I actively seek out children to rescue on Sunday mornings in an effort to meet men. But can I walk over there and explain that I was merely working out his body-fat-to-lean-matter ratio? I’m not sure, given the circumstance, which version will sound less appalling.
I am going to have to speak to him. If I see him at the trial I will die of shame. I need to clear up this awkwardness, and make it plain that I don’t find him attractive. It’s an old habit that is refusing to die, the need to reject first.
I push myself up from the railing I am leaning on, and inspect my running trousers for specks of my morning vomit, summoning up the courage to small talk. I cross my arms, and walk determinedly towards him with my head down. I hear him cough again, uncomfortably. I glance up only when I sense that I am a few feet away, feeling the temporary coolness of the shade of the tree above me.
He stands very straight and looks at me, and then away furtively for somebody that might rescue him this time, but we are the only heroes in town today. I’m going to clear this mess up as quickly and as cleanly as possible, and walk away.
‘Hi.’
He just stares at me.
I feel my throat contract, but continue, ‘I’m Batman, you must be Robin …’
I laugh; he stares at me blankly.
‘We both ran after the same man this morning … the man who took the child …’ I can’t bring myself to say the word ‘snatched’.
Even though I am now blocking him from the sun, the scrunched-up expression on his face doesn’t budge.
‘This morning, literally,’ I check my watch, ‘a couple of hours ago? We ran down that alley … I was on the floor, you ran past and told me to go back the other way …’ I am speaking too quickly, I know. And my cheeks are flushed, I know this too. ‘You know, this morning? Surely you can’t have forgotten already?’
‘I haven’t forgotten. Yes.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes I am that man.’
‘Oh. I thought you meant “yes?” as in “what do you want?”.’
I laugh sharply. He looks away. And maybe even shrugs his shoulders in agreement, but I might be dreaming that. Finding me unattractive is not a reason to be this rude, although most men I’ve met think it is reason enough to cut me dead.
‘I thought I recognised you, but I wasn’t sure because, you know, I was on the ground when I saw you the first time, which is why I was looking at you just then to make sure it was you … Anyway, I’m just waiting for a cab, to take me home.’ I try to finish brightly, but it just sounds needy.
He stands in silence.
I could walk away, of course. I may never meet this man again, we may be on different days of the trial – who cares if he thinks me rude? I could just walk off as if I hadn’t said a word …
‘I can’t believe how long it took, in there,’ I say. I gesture towards the police station with my head. ‘But some of that was the medical. I’m a little bruised.’ I point to my stomach.
I get nothing, no reaction whatsoever. I should just walk away.
‘But of course it’s nothing really, considering what happened. I guess you caught him then? Good for you.’ I give him a thumbs-up gesture, and actually recoil at myself.
Silence. Why can’t I stop talking?
‘I don’t really know what I was thinking, but I guess in those situations you don’t really think, do you? You just do … I mean you just act … or you don’t know how you’ll act … you can’t plan for it … why would you?’ My voice trails off pathetically into a whisper, ‘Or whatever …’
I think I might cry again, from the effort. My eyes start to sting. A lump grows in my throat.
He is properly older than me; a grown-up. I only ever feel like an adult if I am holding a baby. Twenty-eight doesn’t feel as mature as I dreamt it would when I was a child, and it seemed that my life would be sorted and settled by twenty-five at the latest. He looks around, and I look around, and he smiles weakly at me, unimpressed. I thought he might be different from the rest, given his efforts this morning, which makes me feel stupid. It was a rare moment of heroism that you rarely witness these days, but it doesn’t really say anything about him. I never feel that I am meeting anybody new. We are all trying to be the same person, the same ideal, and the result is that we blend into a big ugly gloop of unexceptionality. The same hair, the same clothes, the same trainers, the same opinions, the same jokes, the same lives. Why would I expect this man to be any different? I am not interesting to him, not blonde enough, not bubbly enough, or whatever his criteria, and that is all that matters in his head.
But then he juts out a hand, to be shaken. ‘Cagney, Cagney James.’
My eyes widen involuntarily. That’s not a name, it’s a 1950s detective show, complete with black-and-white opening credits, and old-fashioned sirens under the theme music, and bad edits and childish graphics.
I remember my manners and offer my hand to be shaken. ‘I’m Sunny. Sunny Weston. Just Sunny.’
I see his eyes widen too. He has trained his face into deadpan but this time his reaction was too quick to suppress. I wonder if he is ever caught so off guard that he smiles.
‘Your name is Sunny?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sunny?’
‘Yes …’
‘Like Perky, or Happy, or any of the other dwarfs?’ He looks at me with incredulity.
‘And who was Cagney?’ I ask. ‘The dwarf who liked to drink and sleep with hookers?’
We are still shaking hands, our fingers clenched in a mutual rage. Given the chance I believe we would break each other’s bones. Simultaneously we pull away, equally alarmed.
I wriggle my hand to cast him off me, and pray my cab will arrive and toot its horn and that will be that. I glance up at his face but he is staring at his fist. I won’t call it electricity. It was just … funny. Weird funny, not ha ha funny. Not good funny.
