Jim Crace - All That Follows

Leonard is so engrossed by these prospects, and so beset by the cold, that he does not notice until his way is blocked that the street ahead is clogged with vehicles parked across its width. Personnel carriers are drawn up, sideways, their tires against the curb, their bodies rocking from movements within, beyond the blackened glass. A police car passes, moving slowly, with its headlights off. An ambulance does the same. The night is getting busier with maneuvers and arrivals, and the pavements are already thick with men in protective uniforms moving heavily and deliberately, not speaking but doing what they can to keep the noise down, though not out of consideration for the suburb’s sleeping residents. There’s something curious that Leonard can’t identify at first but, when he stops to take it in, is not difficult to spot for anyone who’s been in Alderbeech before, during the siege. The regulars, the men who’ve worked duties out here for the past few days, the foot soldiers, the local units on secondment from traffic duties and street patrols, are, as usual, wearing either their salmon-pink high-visibility jackets or silver-yellow strips. But the small groups of armed units from the National Security Forces, standing solemnly and tensely by their carriers with automatic weapons and battery shields, are wearing blacks, dark blues, and grays, and not a silver button between them. Not only are they staying quiet, they’re dressed not to be seen.

It is as he suspected. “They’re going in. They’re absolutely going in,” Leonard mutters to himself, as if Francine or Lucy were at his side, although the phrase going in is too low-key. Clearly something less civil is intended. What’s certain is that it’s rare and it’s unsettling to see such firepower on active duty in a British street. Assault’s a truer word. Offensive is the perfect word, in both its senses. Here’s a chance to watch it live. Francine will be sleeping now. She doesn’t even have to know if, instead of picking up her car at once, he spends half an hour at the barrier again, just to be a witness. In the flesh.

The plainclothes officer controlling access to the inner streets of Alderbeech with an Uzi resting on his forearm is curtly adamant. He shakes his head at Leonard’s ID fob. “That’s not legit. Police personnel and residents only. You don’t score,” he says, indicating the way back with his chin and clearly not prepared to waste a word or moment more on this civilian. Leonard does not argue or complain, despite the young man’s lack of courtesy. He isn’t dressed for it. He doesn’t look the part. Anyway, the decision is out of his hands now. No pasarán . No witnessing. He’ll just have to collect the car and drive back to the Woodsman for Francine. But again, at the entrance to the waste ground and just twenty paces from their Buzz, another man, this time in uniform, spreads a hand a centimeter from Leonard’s chest and orders him to stop. That open area is off-limits, he explains, “for the foreseeable.” Leonard shows his ID fob once more, points to where they have left their car, promises that he will be only three minutes at the most, and then off home. The policeman whispers into his shoulder radio and nods his head.

“Go ahead, mate. Three minutes max.”

“What’s hitting off?”

“I’ve no idea.”

Their tiny car (“It’s built for elves,” a neighbor once remarked) is dwarfed and hidden by the caravan of blank-sided vehicles and panel trucks that are now occupying almost every meter of open ground. Driving away through what narrow gaps remain will be tricky. Impossible, perhaps. It’s just as well they didn’t bring the wider, longer gigmobile. There’d be no escape, except on foot. Leonard collects his thicker coat from the rear seat, and finding his yellow beach cap in its pocket, pulls that on as well. He’s feeling warm and jaunty, suddenly. He whistles as he hunts between the vehicles for an easy route onto the street.

A man is in the shadows, urinating on a lorry wheel, by the sound of it. When he emerges finally, buttoning his uniform, he shines his billy torch at Leonard and the Buzz and nods a greeting. “Nippy,” he says.

“It’s glacial,” Leonard agrees, presuming that the policeman means the weather and not their elfin car. He routinely feels for his ID and holds it up, but this officer does not bother to check. He’s not suspicious in the least. If Leonard has reached this far and has a car parked among the police and NSF vehicles, clearly his presence is legitimate, despite his shabby appearance.

“What’s hitting off?” Leonard asks again.

This officer is less reticent and less officious than his colleagues. He is, though, tired and cold and bored. “I couldn’t say what’s going on exactly, but it’s about time,” he says. “I’ve been on nights since Thursday. So have you, by the looks of it. What are you? Press?” Leonard nods, not meaning to deceive or at least not lying for any purpose. He’s written pieces now and then for Jazz UK and Impro Quarterly . “I’m not supposed to speak to press.” The policeman points toward the exit on the far side of the open ground and the two dark blue marquees that were being raised yesterday afternoon. “You’re down that end, then. On the right. That’s press.”

Leonard does not step into the marquee, although he can see the journalists inside, in their showy winter hats and overcoats. A few are helping themselves to coffee; some are doing their best to catch a little sleep; others are readying their microphones and cameras. They are uncharacteristically muted. All look tense, chilled to the bone, and not in the least thrilled to be selected for this night patrol and required to prepare dawn choruses for their Web sites and their breakfast shows. He waits for a minute at the marquee’s entrance flap, delayed by the coffee smells, and pretends to puff on a cigarette — it’s chilly enough for breath to look like smoke — until he’s certain that the officer he’s spoken to is looking elsewhere. Then it takes only seconds to walk the extra meters along the far side of the marquee and into the lee of a shoulder-high, grit-dashed garden wall, where he is out of sight. Again he stops to mime a cigarette and take his bearings, though no one’s watching him. He’s baffled, actually. Just a few minutes ago he was standing by the car, ready to drive away. Now he’s hiding in the shadows, and closer to the hostage house than he’s allowed to be, closer than is wise. But he hasn’t broken any laws, so far. A fib, perhaps. Otherwise, he’s just slipped through their nets, unintentionally. Too easily, in fact. Three officers have questioned him and let him go. Security is lax. It’s not his fault. He’s come to collect his car. That’s what he’ll say if anybody else challenges him. He is a man without a plan — except to be nosy for a minute or two.

But as the moments pass, Leonard feels himself edging forward rather than retreating. It’s not that he is being shoved by someone other than himself: “Go on, Leonard, one more step.” That’s familiar; he’s always being urged ahead, by Francine in particular. On this occasion, he’s not being shoved so much as drawn. Drawn toward a rendezvous. Another dozen steps or so and he’ll be there, wherever there might prove to be. He sucks in air and fills his lungs, for confidence.

The public barrier where Leonard has already stood on two occasions to view the hostage house is still in place, he sees, but, unsurprisingly, there is no one waiting there, no hardcore and determined group of insomniacs to join and mingle with. In fact, apart from a pausing, puzzled cat, making humpback bridges with its spine as it patrols, the visible neighborhood is lifeless. The streetlights burn with only Leonard to witness them. Security monitors in a hundred stationary cars flash red, unfailingly and independently, deterring nobody. The nation sleeps. This could be anywhere, anywhere where nothing’s going on — except there is a shiver in the air, the kind of geared-up atmosphere that perhaps it takes a musician’s ear, or a cat’s, to pick up on, a charged hush, the sort of breath-sucked quiet that often means the sky is jittery and heralding a thunderclap, or shooting stars, or rain.