Jim Crace - All That Follows

“Yes, understood — and all too bloody well.” The officer turns off the telescreen. “That’s bloody tasered us, that’s what that’s done.” The other commanders shake their heads in glum agreement. This is a mess. A classic case of excessive and unwarranted, which at best will earn the NSF another roasting in the liberal press — especially when it transpires, as it must, that their captive was not a danger at all but just a nosy parker — and at worst will have its payoff on the streets. Riots, possibly. The mood is jittery already. And it could escalate. The “demo mob” has a hero and a martyr now.

“What was he doing there, anyway?”

The duty CO checks his report sheet. “Picking up his car, it says.”

Leonard has not yet seen the news reports or video. He has been sleeping for an hour or so, despite his bruises and the narrowness of the banquette in the custody cell. The night’s events are tumbling. He makes no sense of them. He mostly dreams of Maxie crashing through the windscreen of the Buzz. But when the command team sends for him, he’s dreaming that he and Maxie have escaped from Alderbeech. Together. Bullets wing the car at first. Then they find themselves in empty neighborhoods with no one in pursuit. “I came for you,” he says to Maxie, the streetlights turning into stars, a sudden blast of light. “Comrade Leon saves your sorry arse.”

The sudden blast of light comes from a set of interrogation lamps, pointing toward the ceiling. The duty CO stands at the end of the banquette, grinning stiffly and holding Leonard’s coat, belt, and shoes and an envelope containing his cell, ID fob, and keys. His instructions are to bring Mr. Lessing up to the visitors’ lounge without his seeing a television screen and to sit him in the soft-backed chair facing the window, out of harm’s way. It is here that he is served a canteen breakfast on a tray while the service paramedic dresses and photographs his wounds and makes light of “the rugby damage” he’s received. A middle-ranking female officer has been instructed to placate and scold the prisoner before releasing him. He should leave the building persuaded that it’s best to make no fuss. Certainly any complaint for wrongful arrest or a claim for damages would be “mischievous and unwarranted.” She shakes Leonard’s hand and offers her regrets for the “necessarily firm” treatment he received. The three men responsible have already been suspended from all duties, she explains, glad to see that he looks surprised and guilty when he hears the news. But the truth is that Mr. Lessing has been foolhardy, in her view and in the view of anyone who saw him on the street this morning. Straying into the middle of a security operation is never wise. But — she’s checked — he has not broken any laws. “We can congratulate ourselves,” she adds, pleased with her bantering tone and the phrasing she practiced before walking into the lounge, “that this is still a nation where straying is not a crime but merely inadvisable. And inconsiderate. And best not repeated.” There will be more questions to be answered, possibly, but not in custody. He can expect a home visit, perhaps. But in the meantime, it might be better, judicious even, if “discretion is allowed to rule the day, on both our sides. We will not be releasing your details to the press, out of consideration for your privacy.”

She does not say that her next task is to preempt any problem he might cause by ghost-briefing some of the NSF’s pet dependents in the press, telling them what she’s learned from a NADA leak just a few minutes ago: that this Leonard Lessing might not be as squeaky as he seems. Somehow he’s linked to Maxim Lermontov and to the not-so-missing girl. He has history as a militant, some Texan connection. He is known to be someone who has provided information to the police. He’s been spotted in a cafeteria with Mrs. Emmerson. Foolhardy, indeed. She shakes his hand again. “Now, let us reunite you with your vehicle, Mr. Lessing. You look as if you’d benefit from …” She pauses, judges that she’d better not be personal. “From forty winks.”

Francine is sleeping in the car, her mouth hanging open like a child’s, when Leonard is finally returned to the now almost vacated waste ground a little before 10 a.m. She must have checked out of the room as soon as it was light and waited at the Buzz for his return, not panicking, even though his cell was off, but finding comfort in logical and reassuring explanations for his absence, as he’d expect of her. She’s always level-headed when she has to be. His yellow cap is clutched in her hand, he sees. That’s puzzling, although he can’t say why. He has to reel back through the events of the morning before he recalls losing it and where. It’s all a haze at first. He can clearly remember the early walk through Alderbeech, the conversations that he had—“What are you? Press?”—the two marquees, the engulfing shadows of the garden wall. Each step of it is still crisp in his memory. It’s crisp until the fireflies start to glow. But when the mayhem begins, the snatch squads and the stun grenades, the heavy boots, the heavy fists, the hoisting of his body in the air, the impact of the metal wagon into which he’s thrown, the shouting and the threats, he cannot concentrate or be certain of the details. Is that concussion or champagne? Is it himself or Maxie Lermon whom he can half remember crashing to the ground? The scene itself has lost its definition. Victim and witness are the same. All he remembers now is haste and pain. Everything is physical.

Leonard rubs his chin. It’s dislocated, possibly. It’s tender, for sure, from the tip into the jawline. It is as though the stubble hurts. Now he more clearly remembers being punched — rubbing the injury has helped — and how the sudden, expert blow clicked his head back sharply. That’s the moment his cap came off. He has it now. The pain shot through his face and shook his forehead with such force that his cap detached and dropped into the street … where Francine picked it up. Finding her husband’s cap but without her husband under it must have unnerved her, surely. It would have been a shock. He’s touched that she has bothered to retrieve it, even though she hates the cap—“That filthy thing”—dislikes all hats on men, and has threatened many times to chuck it in the bin. He needs to believe that she was worried for him just a bit. He looks for signs of anxiety on her sleeping face. But there are none. She looks serene and comfortable for once. Perhaps she fell asleep as soon as she sat in the Buzz and hasn’t realized that he’s been missing for — what? Almost six hours now.

It is tempting to remove the sun cap from her grasp and pull it on. Leonard likes to drive in it, especially to gigs and concerts. His much-repeated tease is that it helps him to concentrate, not only on the driving but also on the music he will play. He has never worn the cap onstage, of course. He knows it isn’t cool or hip. Francine has persuaded him of that. It isn’t blue. But afterward, when he is signing programs and booklets, he sometimes pulls it on, just for fun; its slogan, QUEUE HERE, seems pertinent and witty. He leaves it, though, in Francine’s grasp. He does not want to wake his wife just yet. He is not in a hurry to explain himself to her. He wants to settle himself and unravel his story first, sort out what he has dreamed from what occurred. Besides, the prospect of her waking up naturally only to find him sitting calmly at the wheel is an appealing one. He can play it very cool, he decides. He looks forward to her gasp of pleasure and relief, and then the shock when she sees his injuries.

Leonard succeeds in driving out of Alderbeech through the busy Sunday traffic and almost reaching the motorway before Francine wakes briefly. She puts her hand on his thigh and says “Sweetheart” without even opening her eyes. When he squeezes her fingers, she says “Sweetheart” again, more flatly than before, her voice a little slurred.