Peter Helton - Falling More Slowly

‘Sir!’ He turned around to the voice behind him. It was Botts. And behind Botts, blissfully unaware, approached the skateboarder, doing a showy slalom around the promenading people.

McLusky pointed. ‘Botts, stop that skateboarder!’

The officer turned around, walked into the man’s path and opened his arms wide. ‘Stop, police!’ The skateboarder careered past him with an easy manoeuvre and turned the speed up, looking panicked across his shoulder at the officer.

‘Not like that, Botts.’ McLusky picked up the bicycle and threw it at the skateboarder just as he whizzed past him. It hit him at waist height and sent him sprawling on to the tarmac. ‘Like that!’

Botts trotted up. ‘Sir, my bicycle.’

The skateboarder groaned as he disentangled himself. He remained sitting on the ground, massaged a wrist and bellowed at his assailant: ‘You fucking maniac!’

McLusky held out his ID for him. ‘The nice officer asked you nicely. I’m not so nice, of course.’ He wagged a finger. ‘Motorized skateboards — not allowed in the park.’

‘You can’t be serious. I could have cracked my skull open.’

‘Yeah, that’s another thing. No helmet, so I thought I’d have a word.’

‘You’re nuts. I’m going to sue you for assault. I’ll have you investigated and thrown off the force.’

Botts went to help him up. ‘Calm down. What’s your name, sir?’

‘I’m going to sue him for endangering my life — ’

‘Up you get.’

‘I don’t need any fucking help. I can’t believe this.’

McLusky briefly wondered how his method of stopping skateboarders might go down with the super. Not so well if he had got the wrong man, perhaps. ‘Actually, you might be an important witness. Tell us your name.’

‘It’s John. Witness to what?’

‘Any other names?’

‘John Kerswill.’

The name rang a distant bell. Ah, yes. ‘You wouldn’t be in any way related to Joel Kerswill?’

‘What if I am?’

‘Well?’

‘He happens to be my son.’

‘Visited him lately?’

An hour later McLusky still kept up the pressure on John Kerswill in interview room 2. ‘You were seen near the Knowle West bomb, shortly before a man died in his car there.’

‘I told you I live near there now. I must have been just testing it out, I don’t often ride in the street, only when I’ve been working on the engine. The new electric board needs no work at all, of course.’

Austin couldn’t contain himself. ‘We’re very happy for you.’

McLusky impatiently flicked at a file of photographs containing pictures of the bomb victims. ‘Come on, Kerswill, the jury is never going to believe that, it’s too much of a coincidence. You just happened to be right there on Brandon Hill moments before the bomb went off, too? And you skated right past your own son.’

‘I didn’t know that, did I? I didn’t see him. It really was coincidence. Stuff like that happens all the time.’

‘Are you telling me you didn’t recognize your own son?’

‘I didn’t really look, did I? I was skating. People just sort of become obstacles, you don’t look at what they look like, really, you’re busy skating.’

Austin nodded knowingly. ‘People become obstacles. Of course with bombs going off in parks you might have fewer obstacles to avoid.’

‘When the bomb went off, where were you? How far away?’

‘Already at the bottom of the hill. Nearly. Close to the exit.’

‘Did you go back?’

‘Yeah. A bit. But not close.’

‘Why not?’

Kerswill took a sip of polystyrene tea. He stared at the grey liquid left in the cup and shrugged. ‘I’ve been sort of avoiding things. I thought people might be after me.’

‘For …?’

‘Child Support. They do go after people.’

‘The story of your son’s injuries was plastered all over the front page. Did you visit him in hospital?’

‘I couldn’t, could I? And it said he’d only been lightly injured.’

‘Well, I myself did visit your son in hospital. And I met your wife. She wanted me to pass on a message in case I ever ran into you.’

Kerswill looked up. ‘Yeah?’

‘You don’t want it, son.’ The ‘son’ had just slipped out. The man was older than McLusky yet he dressed like a teenager and ran around on a skateboard. In broad daylight.

Kerswill looked contrite. After a long silence he spoke slowly, eyes unfocused. ‘I suppose you would call it a mid-life crisis.’ A slow shrug. ‘We were married for what seemed like forever. I just thought I saw my life slipping away, work, home, work, home, the wife at me all the time about money, nothing but work … I mean, they get taken care of when there’s no one there earning, it’s not like they’re starving and I never meant it to be forever. I hadn’t planned it, either. I just flipped one day, took the van and left. I didn’t even take much of my stuff, I was going to go back, only I really needed to get away for a while.’

‘But going back got harder.’

Kerswill brightened up. ‘Yeah, that’s right. The longer I’d been away the more I couldn’t imagine going back. I knew it was selfish but with every day it got even more selfish. I mean, I felt much freer again doing just enough decorating work to keep me going. I could do what I wanted.’

‘Riding a skateboard.’

‘Not just that, but yeah. A powered skateboard is … it’s like magic, it transforms things.’

‘Your own son didn’t recognize you, so I expect you have been transformed, Mr Kerswill.’

‘Well, I had the hair spiked and all that … It said in the papers he’d been to an interview for an apprenticeship when the bomb went off. I wonder if he got it.’

‘I strongly suggest, Mr Kerswill, that you call him and ask.’

Where was the camera? She couldn’t go to Barcelona without a camera. Rebecca toured the flat again, finding yet more of her things to throw into the holdall or stuff into a bin-liner. Five days in Barcelona, what would she need? It was a college trip and they’d be traipsing through museums, Picasso, Miro, Gaudi. Didn’t he fall out of a tram and die? She subjected the clothes she picked up from the floor to a sniff test and dispatched them into holdall or bin-liner respectively. She’d find somewhere else to live when she got back. Liam was all right but he was a bit old, over thirty. There was no way she could introduce him to any of her art school friends, that would really freak them out. A policeman, he would never fit in there. Especially since he was so down on drugs too, any kind of drugs. She couldn’t make him see that there was a difference between hard drugs and, let’s say, a bit of E. He wouldn’t even let her smoke one piddly joint in the house. It got really boring and there was no telly. Why would anyone want to live like that?

Sketchbook, drawing stuff, she’d need that, had packed it, but she wouldn’t go without the camera, the one on her mobile was rubbish. Well, she’d looked everywhere twice, there was only one place where it could be now, and that was Liam’s manky old Polo. She vaguely remembered having it last time he’d given her a lift, perhaps it fell out of her bag. He’d gone to work this morning with DS Austin in his nifty Nissan, why didn’t he get a car like that? They were cute. So she’d go and check, the old wreck was always parked round the corner. The car keys were nowhere to be seen but he never locked the thing, probably hoping it might get nicked but she doubted even a joyrider would go near it.

It was a shame it couldn’t work out because she really liked Liam, he was quite funny and really kind but he totally cramped her style. It made her feel like she was living in two different worlds, living a double life almost, with college friends in one and Liam in the other. She couldn’t really tell him what she got up to with her mates, he wouldn’t approve, and she couldn’t take him with her. He was always busy and on call anyway and liable to be dragged out of bed at unholy hours like this morning. Bed, now that was the one thing she would really miss him for. He was so different from the other guys she had slept with so far, a lot gentler. And a lot rougher, too. Liam always had that puzzled look when he woke up next to her and then he’d break into a smile as though he’d just been given a present. Every time. She’d miss that. She’d probably miss that most.