Дэвид Митчелл - Utopia Avenue

‘Didn’t the SS have an eagle too?’ asked Floss.

The crush from behind grew as demonstrators ahead filled the road around the square. The big area of grass and trees in the centre of Grosvenor Square was walled off by police, who had badly underestimated the size of the crowd they needed to contain. Exits from the square were blocked, so the thousands of marchers at the front had nowhere to go. The crush grew denser until the barriers around the park in the square gave way, in several places at once. A body fell on top of Dean and a heel pressed his knee into the soft turf. A roar rose up, like at the start of a football game or a battle. If the day had been a summery pop single, it was now flipped over onto its darker, rockier B side …

Dean was lifted up by Lara Veroner Gubitosi, who murmured in his ear, ‘Let the love-in begin,’ and was lost in bodies. Whistles blasted. Smoke stained the air. Kenny and Floss were nowhere to be seen. The sun had dimmed to half-light. ‘ Fuck the pigs! Fuck the pigs! Fuck the pigs! ’ Officers manning the lines around the square retreated back to the police phalanx in front of the embassy. Who was on whose side? What were the sides? Projectiles rained. A tinkle of glass – a ragged cheer – ‘ We got a window! ’ Another cheer. ‘ Another one! ’ Screams. ‘ Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! ’ An earthquake? In London? Horses charging, a dozen or more, straight at Dean. Mounted officers swung truncheons like Victorian cavalry swinging cutlasses. People ran under the trees, where the branches were too low for the mounted police. Dean fled into the path of another horse and into the path of another and into the path of another, and tripped, saving his skull from a skull-crushing truncheon by a whisker. A hoof slammed the turf inches away from his head. Dean scrambled to his feet, finding a rag of hairy scalp stuck to his hand. A man with an LBJ mask hurled a smoke bomb at the police. Dean ran in the other direction but no longer knew which direction that was. The battle line kept looping in on itself. Louder, louder: ‘ Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh! ’ A gang of coppers caught a man and pounded, pounded, pounded him with truncheons and boots. ‘ That enough love an’ peace for yer? ’ They dragged him off by his hair. ‘ Out of the way! ’ A copper was being stretchered past, his face like a butcher’s tray. Dean wanted out of Grosvenor Square. The band was due to fly to Italy in forty-eight hours. Getting arrested would be bad: a trampled hand, disastrous. But where was the exit? Police blocked the Brook Street exit with a wall of Black Marias into which they were slinging protesters indiscriminately. ‘ Fuck the pigs! Fuck the pigs! Fuck the pigs! ’ A black horse pranced Dean’s way. A hand grabbed Dean’s scruff and pulled him onto a doorstep. ‘Mick Jagger?’

Dean’s rescuer shook his head. ‘Nah, I’m an impersonator. Go thataway, this ain’t no place for a street-fighting man.’ He pointed to the mouth of Carlos Place, where the police were letting people out of the square.

Dean made no eye contact as he passed through the uniformed filter. He remembered the end of the nursery rhyme: Here comes the chopper to chop off your head. He walked down Adam’s Row. Through an archway, he saw a gang of three kicking a hippie on the ground. They had shaved heads, like monks, and one had a Stars and Stripes flag T-shirt. What tribe were these? Not mods, not rockers, not Teds. They worked methodically. Their victim had curled into a shuddering ball. One of the shaved-heads noticed Dean watching. ‘Yeah? Want a taster too, do yer, yer cunt?’

Dean ran through his options. He walked away …

… like a coward. Dean revisits the scene on a bedbug-infested mattress in a police cell in a suburb of Rome. Kenny, he found out the next day, had been arrested and had had his nose broken. And now it’s my turn to spend a night in a cell. If Harry Moffat could see Dean now, banged up in prison, he’d laugh his tits off. ‘ I fuckin’ told yer so! ’ Or maybe not. He’d had a letter from Ray the day before they left for Italy. A contact at Alcoholics Anonymous had got Harry Moffat a job working nights as a security guard. One slip off the wagon, though, and he’s out. But for now, he’s a nightwatchman. Like Jasper’s song. Ray says he’s changed a lot. Maybe Ray’s right. Maybe I’ve been carrying a hatchet so long I don’t even notice it.

A mosquito flies into Dean’s field of vision.

It settles on the wall by his head.

Dean splats it and inspects the wreckage.

Have yer forgotten how the old bastard used to belt Mum? If that’s not worth a lifelong hatchet, what is?

Lunch arrives. It’s a mug of instant soup. Dean can’t identify the flavour. He can only hope it hasn’t been gobbed into. There’s an apple and three biscuits with the word ‘TARALLUCCI’ baked into it. The biscuits are bland, but the sugar’s welcome. Footsteps approach and a key turns. It’s Big Cop making a beckoning gesture. ‘ Vieni .’

Dean’s hopes surge: ‘Are you letting me go?’

‘ Hai uno visitatore .’

The windowless interrogation room is lit by a strip light speckled with flies, living and dead. Dean sits at the table, alone. He hears a typist on the other side of the door. Two men are laughing. Minutes limp by. The men are still laughing. The door opens.

‘Mr Moss.’ An Englishman in a pale suit, riffling through papers. He looks over his gold-rimmed glasses. ‘Morton Symonds. Consular Affairs at Her Majesty’s Embassy.’

Ex-military , thinks Dean. ‘Good afternoon, Mr Symonds.’

‘Not for you, it isn’t.’ He sits ramrod straight. He places an Italian newspaper in front of Dean and points to a photograph. ‘This is not the publicity your Mr Frankland was hoping for.’

The photograph shows Dean Moss being frogmarched out of the airport with his hands cuffed. ‘Is this a national paper?’

‘ It certainly is.’

Then if I know my Mr Frankland , thinks Dean, he’ll be over the bloody moon. ‘At least they printed my best side.’

A pause. ‘Do you think this is all a lark?’

‘Dunno ’bout “lark”. The way I’ve been treated’s a farce. What’s the story with the others?’

Morton Symonds performs a small huh. ‘Mr de Zoet and Mr Griffin have been released without charge. They’re staying at a pensione near the airport. Mr Frankland is being questioned about tax obligations and monetary control violations.’

‘Which means what?’

A sigh. ‘You can’t just take five thousand dollars out of the country. There are laws against it.’

‘It wasn’t five. It was two. And why not? We earned it.’

‘Immaterial. And, for you, the least of your problems. You’re being charged with common assault –’ Morton Symonds checks a file ‘–assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest and, most gravely, drug trafficking.’ He looks up. ‘Still a lark, is it?’

‘It’s bullshit is what it is. They punched me . See?’ Dean stood, undid his shirt and showed his bruises. ‘I might’ve kicked a reporter ’cause he shot off a flash in my face but the dope – was – planted .’

‘The authorities beg to differ.’ The consul scans the newspaper article. ‘I quote,“Captain Ferlinghetti of the Polizia Fiscale told reporters, ‘ Our handling of these hooligans sends a message to foreign celebrities: if you flout Italian laws, you will regret it. ’” Symonds looks up. ‘You’re facing jail, Mr Moss.’

‘But I didn’t do what they said I did.’