Pat Barker - Border Crossing

‘How long?’

‘Twenty minutes.’

She rang off, leaving Tom feeling that he’d overreacted. He phoned the police and explained the situation to a lethargic desk sergeant, who seemed inclined to take a long statement over the phone. Tom cut him short and put the phone down, with very little hope that any action would be taken. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

And then, because the feeling of being a rat in a trap was more than he could bear, he went to the other end of the living room and pulled the curtain aside. For a second there was no response, then another explosion of blue flashes. The hell he was overreacting. They were over the railings and into the forecourt now, lenses pressed against the window. He looked at Danny, who’d followed him across the room. ‘Well,’ he said, with an attempt at cheerfulness. ‘At least it’s not petrol bombs.’

Danny had gone white. ‘It will be by the time they’ve finished.’ He caught Tom’s expression. ‘Oh,c’mon, there’s plenty of people hate me enough for that.’

Martha arrived fifteen minutes later, banging with her clenched fists on the door and shouting her name. She almost fell into the hall,’ then helped Tom to force the door closed behind her. Never had the smell of cigarettes and industrial-strength peppermints been more welcome.

‘So what’s all this, then, Danny?’ she demanded.

Danny’s voice shot up into a pubescent register. ‘It’s not my fault. I was followed. I came back here because I didn’t want to lead them home.’

‘Have you told anybody?’

‘No.’

Martha threw down her bag. ‘Well, somebody did.’

‘You don’t think it’s just guess work?’ Tom said.

‘No. They’re not parked out there on the off-chance. They know. ’

‘It doesn’t matter how they found out,’ Danny said. ‘They’re there.’

‘It bloody does matter,’ Martha said. ‘Do you know how much work went into supplying you with a new identity?’

She doesn’t want to lose him, Tom thought. And she knows she has.

‘Did you phone the police?’ Martha asked.

‘Yes. I told them about Danny. They should be on their way.’

The next twenty minutes were like saying goodbye on a station platform. A limbo state in which nothing meaningful can be done or said, it’s already too late, and yet the other person’s still there, and one longs for, and dreads, the moment of actual severance. Neither Tom nor Martha could have the conversation with Danny that each of them wanted, and neither, in front of him, could they say anything useful to each other.

‘Where will they take me?’ Danny asked.

‘Somewhere safe tonight, then probably down south.’

‘London?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

‘You’ll write to me, won’t you?’

‘Yes, probably care of your new probation officer. I won’t necessarily know your new name. But you ought to be all right transferring to another university and all that, once they’ve got the papers sorted out.’

A short silence. ‘Danny, would you mind if I had a few minutes alone with Martha?’ Tom asked.

‘No, of course not.’

Martha looked surprised, but got up immediately and went into the hall. They left the door open.

‘Look, Martha, all this stuff about transferring between universities is cloud cuckoo land. He needs to be in hospital.’

She peered through the open door. ‘He seems all right. Well. In the circumstances.’

‘He’s pulling out of it now, but he has been very bad, he shouldn’t be left on his own.’

‘Well, he won’t be alone tonight, because I’ll stay with him. And I’ll pass on what you’ve said. I can’t do more than that, and I can’t guarantee anybody’11 listen.’

‘That’ll have to do, then. It’s not enough.’

It wasn’t enough because he hadn’t said enough. He was shielding Danny in ways he had no time to think about.

‘Tom, are you saying he needs to be in a secure hospital facility? Because if you are, you know what that means, don’t you? The Home Office is going to rescind his parole.’

‘Yes, I know.’ He glanced at Danny, who seemed to be aware of being observed, and turned to look at him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying that.’

In the silence that followed, they heard the shriek of a police siren. Martha said, ‘That’s them now. We’ll need a coat or something to put over his head.’

Tom fetched his coat from behind the utility-room door. It was the one he’d been wearing when he and Lauren went for that walk along the river path, and, as he took it from the peg, a powerful smell of river mud filled the room. He never had remembered to have it cleaned. He took it back upstairs with him. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘This’ll do.’

A fist banged on the door and Martha went to open it. Suddenly the hall was lull of policemen in uniform, radios crackling at their hips.

‘Don’t worry about that lot, sir,’ an inspector said, pushing his way to the front. ‘We can’t shift them altogether, but we’ll get them moved to the end of the street. And if you have any more bother just give us a ring.’

A policeman waited, looking over his shoulder, one hand on the half-open door.

‘I’ll have to go, Tom,’ Martha said, raising her face to be kissed.

‘Good luck, Danny,’ Tom said, handing him the coat.

Danny smiled. ‘I seem to make a habit of walking off with your coat.’

‘Keep it this time.’

Martha ran to get her bag and came back hitching it over her shoulder, looking pale and excited in a slightly shame-faced way. Tom watched a policeman wrap Danny’s head in the black folds of the coat. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s only till they get you into the car.’

‘Right, then!’

The inspector nodded to the man by the door. And then they all barged out into a chaos of clicks, whirrs, shouts and flashes. Martha followed. Tom saw her walk round the car and get in the other side, while one of the policemen, shielding Danny’s head with his hand, pushed him down on to the back seat.

The car nosed forward, journalists trotting alongside, shouting questions, holding cameras to the windows. The remaining policemen forced them back. Thwarted, they came running back to Tom, who nipped into the house and slammed the door in their faces. He didn’t see the car pull away, accelerate and disappear round a bend in the road.

Shouts from the street as the policemen persuaded the press to move further away. Tom leant against the door, his burnt hand pressed into his armpit, gasping for breath as if he’d just returned from a run, and stared at the space where Danny had been.

After a few minutes he pulled himself together, went upstairs to the bathroom and held his hand under a stream of cold water for a foil ten minutes. It should have been done immediately, of course, but even now it might help to minimize the damage. Turning off the tap, clumsily, with his left hand, he inspected the burnt areas.

The fingers were swollen and shiny, but the only real injury was to the palm of the hand, which was badly blistered, though as far as he could tell all the blisters were intact. It wasn’t possible to go to the hospital. He could imagine what the headlines would be if he turned up in the casualty department now. He had no choice but to do the job himself. It was difficult, working only with his left hand, but he padded the burnt area well, and managed to wind clear tape round his hand to keep the wads of lint and gauze in place. Then he took painkillers and sleeping tablets, and crashed out on the bed.

It was late morning when he woke. After lying for a few minutes, blinking, he crawled out of bed, cradling his burnt hand, and went across to the window, where he peered through a crack in the curtains, trying to make out whether the reporters had gone, or merely retreated to the end of the street. He couldn’t see anybody, except Mrs Broadbent setting off for the shops, leaning heavily on her trolley, which was really a sort of disguised Black Watch tartan Zimmer frame. After trundling a few yards down the street, she turned and went back, trying the door handle to make sure that it was locked. And immediately Tom remembered another old lady who’d done exactly that, and died because of it.