Nick Harkaway - Tigerman

The Sergeant lowered himself to the floor, his shoulders resting against the side of the bed. He looked straight ahead, towards the television but not at it, and the boy thumbed the remote. Hasp was replaced by a cadaverous Brit the Sergeant had met once or twice, who stooped like a stork and seemed on the screen to take joy in nothing. In person he was a voracious eater and drinker with a high, startling laugh which seemed to erupt from the narrow face. He must have been up on the roof of the old prison house last night: the footage was excellent, like something from Tahrir or Beirut, all darkness and flame. Again, the Fleet was no part of the picture: ‘. . pall of smoke hanging over the town, and the very real possibility of more violence to come. .’

The television went mute, and the Sergeant realised the boy was looking at him, and waiting. There was no time in this moment for his hesitations and his fears, so he went ahead.

‘Your mum. Your mother. I know who she is now,’ the Sergeant said. ‘I mean, I know the story, or something very close. Arno found it all out, I never managed it. You must have known I was trying.’ And that was true, he realised. The boy could not have missed the inquiries, would have been informed by the same network of gossips from which he got all his local knowledge. And he had neither helped nor hindered. But is that yes, or no? Don’t try to decode. Just talk. It would all be so much easier if everyone talked more.

He realised he had stalled. ‘I don’t know where she is. Is she safe? Do you want,’ he swallowed, ploughed on, ‘do you want to bring her here?’ It was very hard to say. Please bring the person who owns your loyalty into my house. The person whose claim on you I cannot hope to match . But he was not in the business of claiming the boy, had promised himself this was not about possessing him. It was about uplifting, about supporting. He would give what he could, take what was offered, and that was all.

The boy looked at him for a long moment, and his face was inscrutable. Was this measurement or verdict? Was this silence a judicial sentence, or the time taken to uncover his own response?

He went back to looking at the silent television, the endlessly looping images of his burning home. The Sergeant sat with him and let his fear and his hope drain away into the floor, until they were both just there, in the room. In a moment, something would happen, but not yet. For now, the offer was there, and all its capacity for hurt.

‘She is there,’ the boy said, tonelessly. He pointed at the shanty. ‘In the south side, at the edge. Sometimes she is there. Sometimes in the mountains. She comes and goes.’ He named a street.

The Sergeant nodded. ‘Is she there at the moment?’

‘She wasn’t,’ the boy said. ‘But now she may be.’

‘Won’t she stay away?’ The Sergeant pointed at the screen.

‘No,’ the boy said. ‘The fires are pretty.’

‘Will she. . will she be all right?’ Amidst the burning town.

‘No. Yes.’ The boy shrugged. ‘Unknown unknown, right? But she will not be kept safe. She does what she does. They will come to her house or they will not. Burn it or not. She will be there, she will flee, she will stay. Kswah swah. ’

No , the Sergeant realised. Of course. He cannot compel her, in this or in anything. Anyone else he can bargain with, cajole and haggle. He can trade or finesse. But for her he has only himself, and he is a currency she does not recognise.

‘Like hell.’ The words slipped out of him, and he smiled to take the sting. ‘I’ve dealt with refugees before, who didn’t want to come. Done medical evacuation, too. Done it all. You can’t pick her up and pop her over your shoulder because that would be disrespectful and I understand that. But I bloody can, if that’s what it takes.’

He saw the boy’s eyes widen, as if this was an answer he had never considered, and perhaps it was. Then the Sergeant’s shoulder was once more being hugged, fiercely and breathlessly, and his sleeve was wet with tears. You do a lot of crying, don’t you? he thought, wonderingly. But then, I suppose I did, too, when I was little. And wondered why he no longer did. It wasn’t as if the world was notably improved. Although here, now, with the boy looking to him for support in something so important, and accepting his help, perhaps the situation was all right, after all.

The doorbell rang, long and loud, and then again and again, with anger or urgency. Not rioters , he thought. They do not ring the bloody bell. Someone who respected his house. Inoue, or Kershaw, or even Pechorin.

But it was none of them, and when he opened the door the world was once again upside down.

‘It’s the only place, Lester,’ Dirac said.

The Frenchman stood on the stoop, and beyond him was a small woman with two children, both of them wearing makeshift bandages. The woman was coughing: smoke inhalation, but not terrible. Behind her was a man with a gash down one cheek, and behind him there was a family, and behind them more and more in a straggling line which wound away into the dusk.

The wounded of Beauville were looking for help. And for shelter from the gang, the Sergeant realised. It was medieval. When all else is lost, you go to the keep. He had set himself up for this: he had played the role of British Imperial person, and they had seen him do it and had not needed him. But now they did, and so here they were, and he must open the door and let them in or turn them away into a night filled with likely horrors. He felt the colour drain out of his face.

Dirac shrugged. ‘You’ve got room.’

Which he had, and orders to keep a low profile — but now that they were here, sending them off again would be a story. A better, louder one than just taking them in. No doubt Dirac must be seeing double, leading a snake of fleeing families to the dubious safety of a house which might not want them. And just as surely, he must know that the Sergeant could see the image too, and could not in face of it default, even if he had wished to. But this is trouble, real trouble. I can feel it coming.

The Sergeant stepped aside, and waved them in. ‘All the way through to the west wing,’ he said. ‘Get them settled in and I’ll turn on the power. The water won’t be hot for a few hours. Do they have food?’

‘Some.’

‘Bloody hell. How many?’

‘I did not count.’

The Sergeant threw his hands in the air. Dirac laughed. ‘That was almost French.’

‘I’ll give you French. Good evening, ma’am,’ he added automatically to the corpulent matron passing his threshold. ‘All the way down to your right and perhaps you’ll take charge of the bathroom facilities and make sure decency is observed?’

She nodded stoutly, and carried on.

The boy gazed with wide eyes at the incomers, as if they were something he had never imagined and could not now entirely account for.

‘If they fill up the west wing, shove them in the east one, we’ll have to board up the windows but it’s sound,’ the Sergeant said. ‘We’re keeping this floor for a hospital and the upper rooms here for storage and so on. No one goes in my room or yours, at all, and no one in the comms room or the bloody armoury unless I say so,’ and please let me not have to go that road , ‘and keep a space for the lady we were discussing close to you.’

The boy nodded. ‘And the hot Barracuda,’ he added firmly.

Dirac choked a little. The Sergeant stifled the desire to argue or to shout at both of them, and ran to the comms room.

‘This is Ferris for Africa.’

‘Hold, please. Put your thumb on the plate.’