Ken MacLeod - Intrusion

The coffee was safe to drink now. Hugh gulped it.

‘So what happens now?’ he asked.

‘You’re free to go.’

Hugh stared at him. ‘And my wife and my son?’

‘Waiting for you at the police station, with your parents. You’re all out of trouble. Free and clear.’

Hugh still couldn’t believe it.

‘And the other people, the people in London, Geena and, uh, Joe? All the conspiracies that got thrown at me between punches?’

‘Oh, that,’ the man said. ‘That stuff only got on your wife’s profile because of Islington Social Services, and I don’t doubt the audit trail for this whole disgraceful hoo-ha leads straight back to them. That’ll go on my report, don’t you worry. And I’ve reset the parameters on your good lady’s profile. She’d practically have to starve a kid, beat it and sell it before she gets flagged up as an unfit mother. You needn’t expect any more trouble from that quarter. Nor from the police, or the security services, as long as you keep your nose clean. As things stand, there’s no evidence that any crime has been committed at all.’

Hugh looked down at the air pistol, still in the bag. ‘There might be fingerprints, DNA traces…’

‘Are you trying to get yourself back in trouble?’

‘I’m just not sure I’m out of it. I keep expecting a trick.’

‘Trust issues,’ the man said, nodding. ‘You’re going to have these, or so the shrinks tell me. No, really, you’re free to go. Fingerprints, DNA… the local plod didn’t have time for that, but we’ve had a quick look in the lab, and it’s all very messy. You must have let your little pals get their grubby paws all over it when you were a lad.’

Hugh had never let any of his friends know about the air pistol, let alone touch it. He looked the man in the eye and nodded firmly.

‘Yeah, ’fraid so. Lesson learned.’

He stood up, slowly, and moved to reach for his jacket and fleece. The man jumped up and held them for him as he put his arms down the sleeves.

‘Thanks,’ said Hugh.

‘No hard feelings, eh?’

The weight of the jacket, or maybe the torch and radio and battery that had been placed in its pockets, was already making Hugh’s shoulders ache. He shrugged anyway.

‘None at all.’

He stuck out a hand to shake. The man, instead, handed him the bag with the gun.

‘Take it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours, and it’s legal.’

Hugh put it in his pocket, and the man sat back down at the desk. He put on glasses, and started rattling his fingers on the table, as if he’d forgotten about Hugh and was already busy on another problem.

Hugh hesitated. The man looked up.

‘Someone will see you out,’ he said.

Hugh saw two Military Police approaching, and he couldn’t help but feel for a moment dread rather than relief. Trust issues. He took a grip on himself and stepped firmly out of the cubicle into the aisle to meet them.

‘Oi!’ the man called out. ‘Wait a mo!’

Hugh stood still, feeling as if a huge weight that had been lifted from his shoulders had just crashed down again, then stepped back into the opening of the cubicle.

‘One last thing,’ the man said, frowning at him over the top of his glasses. ‘I almost forgot. Speaking of shrinks. In case you happen to consult one over those hallucinations you’ve been having, or anything else… If I were you, I’d keep my trap shut on any mention of seeing visions of past or future ice ages. Particularly future. “The sunshine beyond winter”, and all that. Good grief! What were you thinking?’ He shook his head, as if in disbelief. ‘Not a word, in these or any other circumstances. That kind of loose talk can bring a chap right back up on the radar, flashing bright green. Know what I mean?’

Hugh was still having trust issues when the two Military Police dropped him off from the unmarked car outside the police station, and waited at the kerb, engine running, until he went inside. His legs shook as he stepped over the threshold. He opened the swing door to the reception area with a hand that pushed only with its fingertips.

Sitting on plastic chairs at the side of the room were Nigel, Hope and Nick. Nigel’s suit was grubby, and he looked exhausted, his face deeply lined, as if he’d aged five years overnight. Hope was staring straight ahead. Nick saw him first and jumped up and ran to him and hurled himself into Hugh’s open arms, and Hugh forgot the pain. He looked over Nick’s head, buried in his shoulder, and saw Hope still seated. She gazed at him as if afraid he wasn’t there, or as if he might be snatched away at any moment. One of her hands was closed, on her lap, and the other held an open plastic water bottle. Still staring at him, she clapped one hand to her mouth, and followed it with a long swig from the water bottle. She set the bottle down on the floor, and stood up, and walked towards him, smiling like a suicide bomber.

It had been a good summer, Hope thought. Not the weather – rainy, damp, or at best a silvery overcast most days, with the occasional glorious breakthrough of deep blue sky and blazing sunshine, though according to the news the year was shaping up to be one of the hottest on record – but how things had gone, and how she felt. This mid-August mid-morning, she sat at the table in the back room of Mairi’s shop, sipping coffee and nibbling biscuits and feeling that life was good. Nick, out playing in the wet, in the drysuit that had become like a second skin, was at this moment out of sight. A glance through her glasses showed her where he was, swimming in the shallow water a hundred metres to the left along the shore. He had a wrist phone, which he was so proud of he needed no urging to wear it all the time. He didn’t know that its camera and sound and GPS tracker were on constantly, but he didn’t need to. Right now he was laughing and splashing and talking to someone – one of his imaginary friends, or one of the real friends he’d made among the village kids. Hope didn’t mind which. He was going to be a much more confident and outgoing boy when he started primary school in a few weeks.

Hope had mixed feelings at the prospect of going back to Islington. On the one hand, they were all having a great time up here. She enjoyed working undisturbed but having at least one person to wander over and talk to whenever she liked, and she’d come to quite welcome the occasional stint behind the counter. The view through the patio doors was often grey, and today the sky was just about black, but it was better than the wall of a basement flat and people’s boots going by. Hugh had benefited from working so much in the open air, having a dozen workmates rather than one or two, and banter with folks who shared the same jokes and references as he did, even if their parents or grandparents were English or Polish or Pakistani. The outdoor work and the wider social life had seemed to help him at another level, if the diminishing frequency of the bad dreams and the long silences and the thousand-yard stares was anything to go by. And they all got on well with Nigel and Mairi. Over the past weeks Nigel had become rather careless, as the locals put it, about going to church and keeping the Sabbath and minding his tongue. It had become something of a minor scandal in the parish of Uig, which had very little scandal and made the most of what it could get.

On the other hand, Hope longed to be back in a place of her own, without treading on other people’s toes or getting underfoot all the time, kind and laid-back though Nigel and Mairi were about it. She yearned to shop for the baby’s arrival, and not in Stornoway. And there were only so many bootees and hats and cardigans that one woman could knit, though try telling Mairi that. ‘It’ll be a long winter,’ she’d say, above a brisk rattle of needles. On top of all that, Hope missed London. She missed the street and the strangers – the strangers more than her friends, come to think of it. She missed meeting people every day who might recognise her and know her name but who didn’t know her at all – and above all, who didn’t want to know. Unlike everybody here.