Page 20

Twenty

Tuesday 7pm

Tom

There was something familiar about the young man. Tom thought he might be one of his students, though why one of his students would be here, in a piano bar in New York, Tom didn’t know. The edges of the bar had gone fuzzy. It was all still there, he knew that, he just couldn’t quite see it. The young man was talking to him, holding Tom’s arm, and speaking rapidly into Tom’s ear. Something about his mother. Did Tom care about this boy’s mother? He thought he was probably expected to care because he was in charge of all the students.

“This is a dream. It isn’t real.”

Who said that? Charlie? “My mother is calling. I’d better go and talk to her.”

Tom thought he heard his own mother, but it was a dream. It wasn’t real. He hadn’t seen his mother for years. She didn’t like him.

The young man’s face swam into Tom’s view, looming larger and larger until it filled the screen. Screen?

“My mother is trying to kill me,” he said. “I need your help.”

He heard his own mother’s voice again, calling to him to wake up. Was it time for school? Had he slept too long. She would be so angry if he wasn’t ready by the time she left for the hospital. Tom looked round, expecting to see his bedroom with its desk and bookshelf, but instead all he could see was the young man’s face.

“You have to help me.”

Charlie

There was no shelter that Charlie could crawl to. The building next to him was a blank concrete facade, darkened by pollution stains and interrupted only by air conditioners in upper storey windows. Parked cars lined the street, but any pedestrians must be hiding from the rain. There was no choice but to somehow get up onto his feet and walk. But every part of him hurt: his stomach, his ribs, his face, his arm, his kidneys. It wasn’t the first beating he’d had and the memory of how long the blows would take to heal was not comforting. Knowing that Andrew Dwyer had something to hide wouldn’t help him in the short term either.

The wall had no handholds to help pull himself up. There was nothing to do but to roll onto his hands and knees and push until he could get his legs underneath him. He did it at the price of a spinning head and another rush of blood in his mouth. He leaned against the concrete wall and waited for the nausea to pass.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Walking would keep him warmer, circulate his blood, and that would ease the worst of the pain. He hoped. So, he walked, step by stumbling step, with no idea where he was or where he was going. At least, he thought, the rain would wash the blood from his face, knees and hands. The Brutalist building beside him appeared to be an above-ground nuclear bunker with a mural of NYPD cops stuck to the side. Slowly it dawned on him that it must be a police station. Could he go in and ask for help? He thought about it. He remembered the police officers at the shooting and their lack of interest in his story, and the way the FBI had taken his clothes as if he were a suspect. Brody Murphy had faded into the background when he’d been kidnapped. There had been no police sirens following the delivery van. The thugs had pushed him out of the van here suggesting they were familiar with the area — did that mean they had friends in the police? Is that why Murphy had disappeared? Had he known? God, but he needed to think.

The sign at the cross street swam into view: 122nd. The flat was at 110th. He could walk twelve blocks — anyone could walk twelve blocks — and have a hot shower, put on some clean dry clothes and with luck there would be food.

The twelve blocks felt like the longest walk of his life. His clothes dragged against his sore skin, doubling in weight until he could barely lift his feet. As he walked, a few pedestrians appeared, hurrying with their umbrellas, taking no notice of him, ducking in and out of lighted shops. The scent of hot food made him salivate but he was too filthy to enter and he feared that if he once stopped moving, he would never re-start. Wales is known for rain. Rain made the hills green and the trees grow. Welsh rivers burst their banks every year. Charlie thought he knew rain. But this rain felt like a punishment for wearing the wrong clothes, for his lack of foresight, his assumption that the sunshine would last.

At last, he reached the apartment building, dimly aware of a police cruiser double parked on the opposite side of the street. The two shallow steps by the door almost defeated him, but he got to the front door and managed to extract the key from his sopping pocket with fingers frozen and unbending. By the time he got inside the flat, he was shaking with cold and fatigue. He collapsed onto the shoe bench by the door and began to peel off his wet things. Each garment resisted until he was sobbing with frustration, but he was finally naked, his wet things inside out on the floor by his feet.

And there they can stay.

Bruises were forming on his stomach and side. His knees and hands were scraped and reddened. His face just hurt, and he didn’t plan to look in a mirror. A shower would help. If he could find the energy to walk the five or six steps to the bathroom and turn on the shower.

He managed it and the water was painful and wonderful at the same time. He could have stayed there for hours, except he couldn’t.

The intercom buzzed. Charlie ignored it. It buzzed again. And again. And again.

In the end he gave in, dragging himself out into the hall and stepping over the tangled garments.

“What?” he snapped.

“Police. Open the door please.”

No. Go away.

But he knew they wouldn’t. He pressed the door release and went to his bedroom for a towel to wrap round his body. He kicked the wet clothes into the corner. When the buzzer rang on the flat door he was as ready as he could be.

Detective Marion Levine had brought a friend, another plain clothes woman who produced her badge wordlessly.

“Mr Rees,” Levine said, “we’d like you to come with us to the police station to answer some questions.”

Charlie had used the same words himself, many times. They meant: “Don’t make us arrest you, because we aren’t quite ready for that yet, but you’re coming with us whatever.”

He sighed.

“Take a seat, ladies. I need to get dressed. You’re welcome to watch if you think I’m going to run away. I think you can probably see I’m not armed.”

The un-named officer blushed. And followed him along the wonky-floored corridor to the bedroom where she stood in the doorway and watched him dress, her hand resting on top of her gun.