Jim Crace - All That Follows

Now Leonard is pretty certain what’s happened in their absence. Not a burglary but a bust. The raiding party has returned. Those policemen and the NADA man who spoiled his birthday and turned the house upside-down on Saturday have come back for a second visit. And not long ago, by the looks of it: it was after the newspaper deliveries, that’s for sure. Either they knew what he and Francine were up to all along (and that is worrying) or his phone call from Maven’s prompted it. They rang the bell and, getting no response, just let themselves in to snoop around, smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, and create more mess. They won’t have taken off their shoes, he’s sure of that. It does at least explain why nothing seems to be missing and there is no sign of forced entry. Locks and alarms are meat and drink to trained policemen. They probably set up some means of reentry during their first visit. They might have lifted a window latch or even taken an impression of the front-door key. They must have some device for identifying and unlocking alarm codes. Such chilly arrogance. They should know better, though, than to smoke in someone else’s home.

Leonard is offended. He has suppressed his outrage over everything that occurred earlier this morning, before first light, following his final visit to the hostage street. It has not been clear till now what he should feel about it all, the dark disturbances of Alderbeech, or what to do. Now, attached to this uncomplicated principle, the integrity of private households, passive nicotine, all his buried resentment wants to be expressed. He puts down the canvas bag of gifts on the kitchen worktop and pats his pocket for his cell phone. He’ll call at once. He will demand an explanation and apologies. Some recompense, perhaps? First he’d better check the other downstairs rooms for further signs of impertinence and damage, before searching for the number stored on his cell from yesterday’s call to Agent Rollins. He doesn’t suppose that Rollins will be reachable on a Sunday, but that shouldn’t stop Leonard from leaving a firm message of complaint about this latest, odorous intrusion. He’s pretty sure that it is Rollins himself who broke in this time. What had he said, so icily, on the first visit? “Let’s leave it there, for the moment.” Leonard should have guessed. A second visit was implied. What were they looking for, what had they found?

There is a fourth used mug and, astoundingly, a greasy plate smeared with sauce and crumbs on the carpet in front of the futon in the teleroom. The screen is switched on, although the sound is muted. “Make yourself at home. Do, please,” Leonard mutters peevishly to himself. This room shimmers even more loudly than anywhere else in the house with unexpressed noise. So that is all he’s sensed on the upstairs landing, the implied chatter of a silenced telescreen. Now he can relax. He can indulge his anger. He regrets that he hasn’t taken the phone number of the woman officer who apologized to him this morning. Someone ought to kick up a fuss among some top brass about this invasion. If the three officers who knocked him to the ground when he was trying to reach Maxie were suspended from duty, the men who broke into his house (in the absence of “the authorizing householder”) should expect at least the same. Their actions were literally unwarranted (he smiles at this; he’ll use the play on words in his complaint) and are proving to be, in many ways, more upsetting than the rugby tackles and the blows he endured in Alderbeech. He might have brought those on himself. At least in this case nobody can accuse him of being foolhardy. Or inconsiderate. He strikes the futon with the belt.

It is that hair again that catches his attention. Maxie’s on the telescreen for an instant, and then almost at once it is replaced by advertisements. Leonard hunts for the console and finds it end-up on the mantel shelf, almost hidden by a vase of teasel heads and dried artichokes. He settles with it on the futon, in his usual place. It’s odd to realize that despite the drama of the past few days, he hasn’t even glimpsed a television or heard any broadcast news since seeing Lucy’s face on the concourse telescreen outside Maven’s store on Saturday. He’d better update himself before he phones, see what they’re saying about the ending of the siege. He shuffles through some channels and, as it is now almost exactly midday, is showered with a choice of news bulletins. Every one has Maxie. There’s no escaping him this morning, or the mug shots of the other two arrested “suspects,” all photographed in the NSF custody suite within hours of the freeing of the hostages. Leonard recognizes the decor, though that’s a generously inexact description of the cells’ stippled gray walls, the canvas investigation screen, and the strips of interrogation lamps. It is a shock for Leonard — and a bit of a lost opportunity — to learn too late that he was so close to Maxie during the early hours. Maybe, stretched out on their banquettes, they were separated only by the thickness of a wall. They could have shouted out. They could have talked.

On Noonday on BBC National, Leonard’s preferred station, Maxie Lermon is on the left of the picture, his head pushed back against the investigation screen, his features coarsened by the flash of police and agency cameras. He needs a shave and looks exceptionally tired, more hollowed out and cornered than he seemed in the flesh before dawn. Even his hair is lifeless. But — other than some grazing to his face, which Leonard knows was caused by the tarmac in the hostage street — there is no sign of bruising or evidence of beatings. He is expressionless, bored even, as if he’s only posing for a passport photograph and has briefly put his features on hold. The face staring from the still-muted screen a meter from Leonard’s own face is too remote and stationary to truly care about. Nevertheless, Leonard freezes the image and copies it. He enters his Personal Briefcase, selects Menu, Archive, Album, Austin, and adds this latest image of Maxie and his two comrades to the file of photographs. Again he goes a little closer to the screen and peers at them — the sooner he retrieves his glasses, the better — looking for the romance in their faces, looking for the valiance . But the police photographers have done their duty, providing unheroic public images that present the hostage-takers as sullen, dull, defeated. People without feeling.

Leonard sees it now. He cannot help but cry out in astonishment. The screen’s a mirror, suddenly. He’s looking at himself. A younger self — an old press photo taken on the evening of the Mercury. Then, almost before he has a chance to focus properly, a second image glides across, a close-up portrait not yet nine hours old. He reaches for the console and finds the volume button but is too late to catch the commentary. So he jumps to EuroFox and then to Sky and Five and each time is greeted by the same dramatic still of himself, now with shared agency captions but no name as yet: “Prizewinning jazz musician arrested at hostage site” or “Saxman detained, questioned. Terrorist links.” It shows him in compacted profile, his left cheek pressed to the pavement, his shoulder pushed against the curb by a combat boot, the barrel of an automatic weapon pointing at his face, his beach cap trodden into the dirt but still the only touch of brightness — of summer, come to that — in the photograph. He is expressionless, but the image is flattering. As Francine says, he has no sag. His jaw and chin look less than fifty years of age, despite the almost two-day stubble and the blood.

Leonard’s hand is trembling now. He drops the belt at last, flexing his aching fingers. It is astounding to discover that while he has not been watching the news, he has become the news, he has been living it. It’s too early to know if this is a pleasing or a costly development. A pounding heart can signify both things. He takes a copy of the still, pastes it in the open Austin file, next to the Gruber’s photograph. Then, on an impulse, he zooms in on himself in Texas, October 2006, and drags the expanded image across the screen until it sits next to the shot from Alderbeech. Now he can compare. What has become of him?