Part Two

I was tidying up the last of the trays when Ray came into the kitchen.

He looked all round the place before he said anything. I didn’t turn round from what I was doing but I knew he’d spotted something.

“You’ve done them all, then, Billy,” he said.

“That’s right,” I said, stacking a load of trays.

“I just came in to see if you needed a hand.”

“Well it’s all done, as you can see.”

I dried my hands on the tea towel and looked at Ray.

“Coming up to watch the box?” he said.

“No, I don’t fancy that tonight.”

Why the fuck didn’t he clear off?

I put the towel down. Ray had never been a prime mover in his life but he’d seen a lot of schemes played and he was sharp enough to realise something was on and he was very reluctant to leave the kitchen.

I took out my cigarettes.

“What’s on tonight, anyway?” I said. “Anything good?”

“Coronation Street.”

I looked at my watch.

“Nearly finished,” I said.

“I’d better go up then,” Ray said.

We looked at each other for a minute or two longer. Then Ray turned and went out of the kitchen.

I waited till he was well out of the way, then I dashed into the shower room. Steam was everywhere. Tommy was already getting the bricks out of the wall and Gil was stacking them behind the bench.

“I think Ray’s on to it,” I said.

“Never mind about that,” Tommy said, “open that door and keep a bleeding look out.”

I began to take my clothes off. In the middle of the room was an exercising bicycle that Ray had left there that afternoon when he’d had a quick sweat up and shower. The bicycle should have been put away in the weights cell with the rest of the equipment. There was something out of place about it sitting there in the middle of the shower room. Especially as Ray had been the last one to use it.

“For Christ’s sake, Billy,” Tommy said. “Get minding.”

“All right, all right,” I said, “let me get out of my fucking trousers.”

I walked towards the door just wearing shirt and pants. The door opened. We all froze.

It was Ray. He strode into the room, towards the bicycle. But he stopped dead when he saw that the hole had been opened up.

“Ray,” Tommy said, his voice a low shriek. “What you doing? The bleeding door.”

Ray didn’t move. He just stood by the bike and stared at the hole. Then at Gil. Tommy’s words hadn’t registered at all.

I leant forward and closed the door.

“What’s happening?” Ray said.

Tommy bluffed it.

“What do you mean, what’s happening?” he said. “We’re stashing some gear, that’s what’s happening. And you nearly gave us fucking heart failure didn’t you, my old son?”

Ray kept looking at Gil. Then in a quiet voice Ray said to me: “What you told him for?”

The noise of the showers confined Ray’s voice to my ears.

“It was Tommy’s idea,” I said. “They used to know each other on the Moor.”

Ray still didn’t move.

“Ray, come on,” I said, arms beseeching. “Shift the fucking bike out. If they check the weights cell we’re nicked.”

“Either that or give us a hand with the bricks,” Tommy said. “Don’t just stand there like a spare prick.”

Ray thought about it. Then he picked up the bike. He’d had the sense to realise the fact that if he’d offered to help with the bricks, and it was right what he thought, we were making one, then he’d have got a bar over his head. So all he could do was to pick up the bike and leave us alone.

I opened the door and let him out and closed the door behind him.

“Well, that’s it,” said Tommy. “He’ll tell Walter.”

“It’s too late to worry about that now,” I said, taking my shirt off. I wanted to go down in my underwear to cut out the risk of snagging on the brickwork.

I was the biggest, so it had been agreed that I should go first.

I climbed into the hole and eased down head first for the second entrance into the cellars. I wriggled my head and shoulders into the cellar opening but my feet were still sticking out into the shower room through the first hole. It was a tight fit round my shoulders and with my feet outside I couldn’t get any purchase to push myself through.

“Tommy,” I said, “push on the soles of my feet.”

“Right.”

He nearly broke my fucking ankles but the pressure allowed me to force myself through a little further. And now my feet were in the chimney so I could brace them on the back of the chimney and force myself through that way. When I was halfway through I felt in the darkness for the steel girder Tommy had told me about. It ran across the cellar roof and the only way down was to grab hold and swing, unless of course you went through head first on to the cellar floor.

The cellar was pitch black. My fingers found the damp iron. I heaved and swung and then I let go. I hit the cellar floor and overbalanced and jarred my elbow on the floor. I straightened up and lit a match. The bundles of clothes were on the floor. I blew the match and grabbed my clothes and put them on. Then I picked up Tommy’s bundle and waited for him to drop through. He was only a couple of seconds behind me. I gave him the bundle and he got changed while Gil made his way down. There wasn’t a bundle for Gil. There hadn’t been time. He had to take his chances in what he was wearing.

The hooked rope was in Tommy’s bundle.

“Got the rope, Tommy?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Christ,” said Gil. “I can’t see a fucking thing.”

I reached out and grabbed hold of Gil and pushed him behind Tommy.

“Hold on to Tommy,” I said. “He knows the way. I’ll hold on to you.”

We moved off. It was slow going. Tommy knew the way through the cellars, knew how many arches there were to the wall where the tunnel was, but he had to feel his way along. I just hoped his arithmetic was up to scratch.

It took us nearly five minutes to feel our way to the tunnel. I kept wondering what was going on upstairs, whether or not Walter had started creating, whether or not the screws had missed us, whether or not they’d found the hole.

“Here we are,” said Tommy. “And so’s the ladder, my lovelies.”

Gil and I stopped. There was a short silence, then Tommy grunted as he pulled back the bar he’d cut through.

“Done it,” he said. “I’ll go through first with the ladder.”

I heard the ladder being pulled through. Then Gil and I felt the bars and found the bent one and crawled through into the tunnel. We had to go bent double like miners in a book of Orwell’s I remembered reading, but at least with the tunnel there was only one way to go and that was forward. After a while I saw dim light ahead of me, drifting down the ventilation shaft.

Tommy was already going up the ladder when I straightened up into the ventilation shaft. He took the padlock off and opened the grille and stepped out into the yard without making a sound.

I followed him out, and then Gil. Now we were all out in the open. Naked. No cover.

But the nick was quiet. No commotion. Nothing had gone off inside. Not yet.

I pointed to the dangling rope.

“Gil, up there. And don’t make any noise on that plastic. It’s murder.”

We ran to the rope and Gil started up. Tommy went next. He was halfway up the rope as Gil pushed himself up through the hole.

He made a terrible racket.

You cunt, I thought. Why the fuck did we bring you?

The sound of the plastic rattled and cracked through the yard’s silence. Then the racket stopped. Gil must have got to the office roof and pulled himself up.

Tommy went through the hole and didn’t make a sound and all the time as I climbed up the rope I was expecting to hear the alarm go off. But it didn’t.

I went through the hole without making any noise.

I was in the open air. I could hear the sound of the city.

I looked towards the office roof. We had to cross it to get at the section of wall we wanted. Gil was outlined against the sky, balancing on the edge of the office roof. Tommy and I began to crawl towards him.

Gil waved us back with his hand. Tommy and I stopped dead. Gil got down on to the plastic and began to crawl back towards us.

“What in Christ’s name is he playing at?” Tommy said.

When he got near enough to speak Gil said:

“We’re rumbled. There’s a screw with a dog looking towards us. He must have heard us on the plastic.”

I felt sick.

“Us!” Tommy said. “Listen, you cunt . . .”

“Shut up!” I said. “We’ll have to go the other way.”

“What other way ?”

“Across the plastic.”

This was the only alternative. Back across the plastic and drop down by the remand wing that butted on to the other side. Then round the end wing to a spot I’d seen when I’d been over the main prison, towards the main gate. I knew we had a good chance of getting over if we could make that spot. In any case, we had no choice. And there was no time left for gut-crawling. We had to leg it.

Gil picked up the rope and wound it round his waist. Tommy went off first, then me, then Gil. The noise was like thunder. As I ran I could see men getting up at their windows in the remand block, silhouetted against their cell lights. Then I heard Wally’s voice coming on the wind.

“You bastards,” he screamed. “You fucking bastards.”

His voice sang in my ears as I ran.

“On the roof,” he screamed. “Cracken’s on the roof.”

We got to the end of the plastic.

Tommy said: “Hear that cunt?”

“Yes,” I said. “If we’re put back he’ll wish he’d let us get away.”

We ran across the roof of the remand wing. Gil unwound the hooked rope as we ran. When we got to the edge of the roof Tommy fixed the rope and we all slithered down to the ground.

The wall was only forty feet away from us but this section had a continuous line of barbed wire bracketed along its rim. The spot I’d got in mind was where the wall joined a relatively low building near the gate. The nearest part of the building was single-storey, with a flat roof. From this I’d figured we could get up to the rest of the building, then on to the barbed-wire-free wall and down.

Tommy and I ran towards the building. The ground was damp and cold under our feet. Gil was still by the wing, trying to shake the hooked rope free. Tommy reached the building first. He put his foot on a window sill and went up on to the flat roof. I followed him up and waited for Gil. By now he had freed the rope and was running towards us, winding the rope round himself as he went. He was about twenty feet from the building, just past the corner of the wing. I got set to stretch out a hand to help him up.

Then a screw rounded the corner of the wing, coming from the other side. The screw was only a few feet behind Gil but Gil didn’t see him or hear him.

“Behind you,” I shouted.

But as I shouted the screw dived. The tackle took Gil entirely by surprise. He hit the ground face first. The screw tried to scramble on top of him but Gil lashed out with his feet and caught the screw in the chest. Gil managed to get to his feet again and made a few more yards to the building. More screws pounded round the corner of the wing. The first screw was up again and charging for Gil.

Gil was at the building now but he was never going to be able to get up on the roof. They’d pluck him off before he got a foot on the sill.

“The rope,” I shouted.

Gil started to unwind the rope but the first screw jumped him again. Gil tried to fight him off but by the time he’d freed himself the other screws had arrived and he was smothered.

“I’m sorry, Gil,” I said.

Gil lay on the ground, fastened there by the screws. He looked gutted, but he nodded to me in reply.

I took off after Tommy. Behind me the whole nick was in uproar.

Tommy was at the far corner of the flat roof looking up at the next part of the building. This was a facing wall, about ten foot high, but about six inches from the top a line of foot long spikes jutted out horizontally. I grabbed Tommy by the waist and pushed him up. He grasped the spikes and heaved himself and swung his legs, wrapping them round the spikes so that he was hanging on the horizontal line. Then he manoeuvred himself so that he was on top of the spikes and then all he had to do was to roll himself over on to the roof.

I took my sweater off and threw it at the spikes until they caught in the wool. I began to pull myself up. But the sweater started to tear. I couldn’t trust my weight on it. Tommy was leaning over the edge of the roof, looking down at me.

“Tommy,” I said, “double the sweater.”

Tommy didn’t move. He just kept looking down at me. Every time a whistle blew or a walkie-talkie crackled on Tommy’s head would flick in the direction of the sound.

I thought: he’s going to leave me.

“Double it, Tommy,” I said.

Then he leant forward and took the sweater off the spikes and twisted it into a rope and lay down and hung the sweater over the edge. I grabbed hold and scrambled up until I could get a hold of the spikes. Tommy straightened up and began to move away. I couldn’t seem to lever myself over the spikes the way Tommy had done. I was too heavy. Tommy was out of sight now. In my desperation to get over the spikes one of them cut into my hand and sank into the flesh. Pain flashed up my arm. I almost let go.

“Tommy,” I shouted.

Tommy’s voice came from somewhere on the roof-top.

“Come on, Billy.”

“I’m fucked on the spikes.”

There was a silence. Then Tommy appeared back at the edge. I laughed, as though everything was some big joke.

“I’ve clobbered my hand,” I said.

Tommy leant forward and grabbed my shoulder and pulled me over on to the roof.

“Thanks,” I said.

“For Christ’s sake,” he said. “Let’s move.”

We took off on the edge of the roof, along a concrete drainage system that led straight to the section of wall without the barbed wire. Away to our left there was a complex of peaked tile roofing. We got to the wall. From where we’d approached it, the top was only eight feet above us. We scrambled up it like monkeys and looked down over the other side.

We were overlooking a thirty-foot drop down on to the road that ran round the nick. Beyond the road was a patch of open common. But there were about twenty screws scattered about at the bottom of the wall.

Even though we drew straight back one of the screws spotted us.

“There’s one of them.”

Tommy and I looked at each other.

“What do you reckon?” I said.

“Don’t know, Billy.”

Everything was ashes in my mouth. The muscles in Tommy’s face were slack and his eyes were full of tears.

“We can’t drop from here,” Tommy said.

I looked back at the complex of tiled roofs.

“I’m going that way, Tommy,” I said. “Coming?”

Tommy didn’t move. Screws were rushing about outside the wall.

“Tommy?”

Nothing.

I scrambled across the roofs, away from where the screws were shouting. I reached the edge. I was only twenty feet off the ground. The tiled roof I was overlooking finished up about ten feet above the ground.

Ten feet. All I had to do was to slide down the tiled roof and I was out.

Everything was very quiet. Light from curtained windows fell softly on the back gardens. The faraway sound of the city rustled in the night air. I stayed where I was for a while, taking stock.

To my left, the cobbled street disappeared, cut out of sight by the buildings that supported the roof complex. But although I couldn’t see, I knew that that way the road must lead back towards the nick, to the main gate. To my right, where the last garden was, the road made a right-angled turn beside the garden and then disappeared out of sight beyond the last house.

That was the way I had to go.

I lay there for a little while longer, listening. The nick could have been a thousand miles away: behind me all was silence. I decided to move.

I pulled myself up and straddled the roof. Then I froze. Footsteps. Coming from the direction of the nick, clattering up into the night air from the cobbled road. I looked down. Screws. About fifteen of them. All bunched up, running towards the end of the gardens where the road turned sharp left.

I stayed where I was. A perfect silhouette against the night sky. But not one of them looked up. They rounded the corner and disappeared behind the end house. This was the time to make my descent, in the shadow of their noise, to cover any racket I might make. I swung my other leg over the roof, gripped the ridging and let my body pendulum down against the tiles. Then I let go. I slid the rest of the way down the roof. Then there was empty space. For a second, I was in free fall, touching nothing. Then the ground, soft earth jarring through my whole body. I toppled and rolled the fall and then I was still, my face sideways in the damp tickling grass. I moved my fingers and felt the earth and the wetness of the grass. I breathed in and the clean moist smell of outside filled my brain.

Then I pressed my hands against the earth and stood up and walked to the edge of the cobbled road. The sound of the screws had gone now. I looked to my left, back towards the end of the nick. Nothing. I turned to my right and took the same route as the screws. When I got to the last house, I turned left, still going the same way as the screws had gone. But over on the right there was a T-junction. I turned into this, never looking to either side of me, just straight ahead.

I was really hitting it now. The road was recent. Ahead of me, it ran over a hump back bridge. Beyond the bridge, a well-lit street, intersecting the road I was on.

To my left, a blank wall.

To my right, a police station.

The illuminated sign jutted out from the wall, police. They were all in there, typing their reports. No idea that Billy Cracken was standing outside in the dark a few yards away. Now I knew I’d made it. I began to run towards the bridge.

I crossed the bridge. Behind me it was still dead. I slowed. In front of me were the bright lights of the intersection. A single-decker bus slowed down to cross the road I was on before it turned up towards a shopping centre that I could now see to my left. If I’d had any money I’d have hopped on it. But the bus crossed the road and picked up speed and ground its way up towards the shopping centre. A cold wind stirred the puddles and shredded the sound of the bus’s grinding gears. Then the intersection was quiet again.

I ran across the intersection and made for the pavement and took off the way the bus had come. About twenty yards ahead of me was another road, turning off left, which would put me back on the same direction as the one I’d taken from the nick.

But between me and this turning, a young man wearing a blazer was standing by the edge of the pavement. He’d been watching me since I’d crossed the intersection, as if he knew something was up. I kept running towards him. He moved to step in front of me. I thought for a moment that he was going to make a grab for me. I could have punched holes in him but that wasn’t the point: so far I’d got away sweet and I wanted it kept that way. I kept going, my eyes on his eyes all the way. When I reached him he stepped to one side, one foot in the gutter. I turned my head as I passed him so that I could still keep eyeball contact with him. Neither of us said anything. There was just the sound of my footsteps and the billowing of the night wind.

Then I reached the side road and turned left. Now I was completely out of sight of the intersection.

This new road climbed narrowly upwards, shop-fronted on both sides. And there were people in it. But I guessed from the gloom at the far end of the road that it was leading me away from the town centre. So I kept on running, past the betting shop and the Boots and the Co-op and the pub and past the staring faces of the people until there were no more people and no more lights, to where the shops fell away into the darkness. And to my right, even darker than the road, a common. I cut into its erasing shadow and slowed to a walk.

I was on a dirt path that led diagonally across the common. Ahead the night-black silhouette of a church with a sprawling graveyard. To my right, the beginning of a line of trees that joined the path further ahead of me. It was nice not to have to run, to feel secure. But best of all was the openness, the freeness, the limitless sky and the shuddering wind.

I looked back to the road. A car was pulling up at the edge of the common. Coming from the direction I’d come from. The car stopped. Nothing happened. Then the doors opened. Men got out wearing dark blue uniforms. They stood by the car, looking into the darkness of the common.

I ran. Straight for the sanctuary of the trees. The surging power of my run soothed away the alarm. This was what fitness was all about. Not competing for medals or prizes but for your life. As I ran I felt unbeatable. I flew along on the wind. Nobody was going to take me back now.

I reached the trees. Their dark protection closed around me. I smiled to myself as I pushed forward in the blackness.

Then, suddenly, I was treading air. Mug, I thought. You fucking mug. Then I hit ground again and I started to roll, over and over, flattening saplings and bushes until I crashed into a big tree and slithered to a stop.

I lay there in the blackness, cursing.

I didn’t feel any pain. I knew I’d injured my wrist from the way I’d fallen, but when you break something in the course of being shocked by something else, the pain sometimes waits a little while before coming. I moved my body slightly. Nothing. If there had been, the movement would have let in the pain. I moved my legs. Again, nothing. I sighed relief.

Then I realised I’d lost a shoe. I began cursing again. I rolled over on to my knees and swept the ground all around me. It was useless. I couldn’t even see a hand in front of my face. Fuck it, fuck it. I’d rather have broken my wrist.

I slowly became aware of the sound of water behind me. I stood up. Water lapping on mud. The river. I walked to the edge of the water and forced my eyes to accustom themselves to the darkness.

The river was about twenty-five yards wide at this point. On the other side of the river the bank was dark and tree-lined, just like the side I was on, but beyond the trees were the lights of houses winking a hundred yards back from the bank. No sounds of search parties. But behind me, on my side, foliage shifted and branches crackled.

I kicked off my other shoe and slowly walked into the water, making no sound. Then I chested forward and launched myself in a silent breast stroke. The middle of the river felt very open and exposed but I made the other bank without any scream going up. I crawled about ten yards up the bank and into the trees and sat and listened. Everything was quiet again.

Now the whole balance had changed. Wet clothes and no shoes meant I had no chance of passing in the street. God alone knew when I’d be able to make the phone call. For the next few hours all I could do was keep out of the way.

After a couple of minutes I heard the occasional shouts and barks and the flashing torches of the search party as it splashed about on the other side of the river. Now and then a duck would go up and that was all the luck they were going to get. I went up the rest of the bank and set about finding my hidey-hole.

Beyond the trees was a complex of gardens crisscrossed with paths, like allotments, only neater, more floral, stretching up as far as the row of window-lit houses. The houses were all terraced, no gaps, so I found myself a nice bush to crawl under and lay there massaging my clothes with the palms of my hands to try and get rid of some of the damp.

Rain began to fall again, heavy and determined, slapping down the leaves of the bush I was under. At irregular intervals I could hear groups of young people arriving at the houses, singing, shouting, slamming doors, switching lights on and off and generally creating a racket. I lay there for a good hour, listening to the goings on, hating all the noise-makers for being what they were, free and young and full of future. But gradually the noise died as the arrivals got fewer and fewer and soon I was able to hear different sounds, the sounds of searchers going through the gardens. I crawled from under the bush and made for the houses. Most of the lights were out now. I picked a back yard with less illumination than the rest and slipped through the back yard gate and closed it behind me. The yard was small, about fifteen feet long by twenty feet wide. I got into a corner and pressed myself against the wall so that the outhouse guttering would give me some protection from the rain. Upstairs in the house some students were moving about getting ready for bed. The light from their upstairs window fell in a bright square in the yard, but where I was my dark clothes sank into the shadows. Another hour must have gone by. Then the downstairs light came on and the back door opened. An old boy came out and went over to a dustbin which was only six foot away from me. He lifted the lid and slid some rubbish into the bin. If I’d moved there’d have been no chance. He was facing directly towards me. And of course the shivers were never more eager to dance through my muscles than at that particular moment. The old boy put the lid back but it slipped down between the dustbin and the fencing. The old boy bent forward and fumbled about down the side of the bin. Finally he got a proper grip on the lid and fished it up and clanged it down on top of the bin. Then he went back inside the house and closed the door. I decided to move. All I needed was the alarm to go up and all the search parties would be concentrated together round the river bank and I’d have no chance. So I went through the yard gate and back into the gardens and found another bush and lay down again until by my reckoning it was about eleven o’clock, near the graveyard hour.

It had stopped raining. Now the moon was up.

I picked my way back down to the river and walked along the bank in the direction I’d been following before I’d had my swim. On both sides of the river was beautiful landscape with trees casting long shadows over the rolling lawns. I must have gone for almost a mile when the scenery abruptly changed. Ahead of me was a riverside industrial estate, all wire netting and sodium lighting. One way round it was to move inland and make it back into the streets. Which in my present state was suicide. I stood at the river’s edge and looked at the water. The current was running the way I wanted to go. Depending on my fitness, there was a chance I could swim most of the way out. And there’s nothing like testing the limits of your fitness, I told myself.

I waded back into the water. This time the cold was much worse. It hit me like the coldness of a swift-running tap. I went farther in and lunged forward into a swim. My skin felt as though I was sliding over iced razor blades. I kept telling myself that soon I’d get used to it, but my body wasn’t listening.

I swam past a half-submerged pipe. A long tailed rat was sitting on the end, its fur spiked by the wet. The rat watched me as I swam by, curious but unafraid.

The cold got worse. It was blanketing my strength. No use. I had to give it up. Any farther and I’d be good for sod all. I veered right and crawled out of the water.

I’d got out by a piece of derelict ground, the remains of a demolished warehouse. The chasms of former cellars pitted the wasteland. This wasteland was bounded on three sides by the backs of Victorian warehouses. The fourth boundary was the water. There was no way out except back the way I’d come.

I sat down on the ground and stripped off my clothes and wrung them out. Then I picked up handfuls of dirt and rubbed the dirt all over my body, trying to soak up the damp and the cold. Across the river I could see the red neon of a cinema clock rising above the skyline. It was a quarter to twelve.

I walked up and down at the water’s edge, trying to warm my body so that my brain would un-freeze. One thing was for sure. I wasn’t going back in the river again. And I wasn’t going trotting around the town at this time of night either. When the streets were empty the law had eyes the bigger to see you with. And in any case I had to have some daylight to see if there was any way out of the wasteland.

I put my clothes on and clambered down into one of the cellars. I found a brick alcove and sat down, my back to the wall. The only thing I could do was to wait for the morning.

The night was endless. Sleep was out because of the cold. To pass the time I counted out every quarter of an hour in seconds and then when I thought a quarter of an hour had passed I’d get up at the cellar’s edge and look across at the cinema clock to see how far out I was. This kept me going for a couple of hours. For the rest of the time I roamed about in the cellar pit, trying to walk off the aches that the cold had put in my muscles.

Then the first deep blue of daylight began to colour the sky. When the blue had turned to grey I got out of my hole and did a reccy round the backs of the warehouses to see if there was a way out.

At one point there was a fifteen foot break between the warehouses: a fifteen-foot wall, no more than ten feet high. I swung myself up and found myself looking into a cluttered builders yard. There was a small office and inside the office there must have been a telephone. It would have been simple to break in and use it. But I couldn’t start moving again till the next evening so that would have been madness. And the office was new, not a rotten old shed. You never could tell what would be wired and what wouldn’t these days.

But beyond the office there was a double iron gate that opened on to the road. That was all I needed to know.

I dropped down again and went back to my foxhole and watched the dawn break. Sounds of the city’s awakening drifted across the river. In the road beyond the builders yard traffic began to pass by more frequently. Milk carts whirred and buses rattled. At seven o’clock the gates to the yard clanged open. Then after a while bright sunlight penetrated the haze and began to warm the earth and colour the city. A light breeze sidled off the river. I settled down to wait for the night to come again.

Seven o’clock. Evening. I straddled the wall and checked the yard. Nothing—I dropped down and walked to the side gate, soundless in my stockinged feet. I listened for any sounds in the street outside and then when I was certain everything was fine I climbed over the gate and landed on the cobble-stones beyond.

The street was empty. There were no pavements. Eyeless warehouses butted right up to the cobble-stones. Brighter lights winked at the end of the street. I began to walk towards them.

I came out into a well-lit motorway feeder. To my right, a roundabout.

I crossed the road and made for a group of old Victorian office buildings that promised darker back streets. The beginning of the first street I reached was bridged by one of the roundabout feeder roads, and as I walked underneath I could see a bowling alley on the bank above me, its entrance crowded with boys and girls spilling out over the pavement in a twittering flux, unaware how rich they were.

I carried on down the back street. If I saw anyone approaching me I’d cross over to the opposite side of the road so that they’d have less chance of noticing my stockinged feet.

After about a mile the buildings began to thin out. I was reaching the edge of the city. Straggling pockets of suburbia twinkled all around me. Then even the semis became fewer and I was in open fields.

Rain began to drizzle down. Away to my left I heard a train go by, a mile or so away. I decided to make for the track. It would be perfect. A straight road without traffic or pedestrians. I climbed over a gate and began to trot across the fields, avoiding roads and farms as much as possible.

Then I came up against the poxy river again.

I stood on the bank and swore. It was narrower here but it was still the poxy river. There was no way round it. If I wanted to make the railway I had to cross the river.

This time I took my clothes off and wrapped them up into a bundle and walked into the water holding my clothes aloft and began to swim. The river was much swifter here. It might as well have been twice as wide the time it took me.

In the middle I was tipped by the current. The bundle nearly went under but I trod water and managed to keep the bundle above my head but I was swept quite a way down the river by the swiftness of the current. It took me over twenty minutes before I finally made the other side.

I climbed up the bank and tore some leaves off the bushes and rubbed myself all over. When I was as dry as I could get I unwrapped the bundle and began to get dressed. Then I realised that I’d lost my socks in the river. It had to be the river. I’d been careful to roll the socks up on the other side. They must have dropped out of the bundle when the current had jolted me. Just the same I ferreted about on my hands and knees in case they’d fallen out on to the ground. But even as I looked I knew I wasn’t going to find them. I punched the ground with my fist and swore at the sky. I didn’t deserve to be out. First the shoe and now the fucking socks. They’d never have let me in the scouts. I stood up. Another train went by on the distant trade. I looked towards the sound. I was only wasting time.

It must have been nine o’clock when I reached the track. I climbed the bank and began to run at a comfortable pace, making sure I kept to the sleepers. But the pace was the only comfortable thing about that run: the track had been laid on a base of flint, like shingles. A lot of the stones had flowed on to the sleepers. With almost every step a flint cut into the soles of my feet. It was too dark for me to be selective and there was no alternative to running so I had to bear the pain or give up. A typical Cracken situation. The only way I could cover it was to blank the pain out of my mind by thinking of what was waiting for me once I’d made the phone call. I thought of Sheila and the kid and my mates and all that freedom they’d got laid on for me back in the Smoke. I thought of Sheila and Ronnie as they would be right now, wide awake, by the phone just waiting for the call. And the kid, fast asleep in his cot, not knowing he was going to see his Daddy. I kept running and I kept thinking and the pain kept ripping into my feet.

After four hours or so, I had to stop. My feet couldn’t take any more. What had made things worse for me was having to scramble off the track and down the bank every time a train came along: the relief it gave my feet only increased the pain every time I got back on the track and started to run again.

I came to a railway arch and sheltered there until dawn. It was no use trying to sleep: the drizzling rain had soaked me just as completely as the river had done.

I waited for the dawn.

But, surprisingly, I did sleep. It might only have been for a few minutes, but I slept. I awoke out of a dream that was full of screws dancing round a rope and on the end of the rope was me, trying to drag myself up, to the top of a limitless wall, but my muscles weren’t operating properly, they were stiff and cramped and my body was heavy, waterlogged, and all the screws were laughing because the fall was inevitable, and before falling I looked into each of their faces and each of their faces was Walter’s face. The laughter grew louder and I let go of the rope and I awoke.

Daylight. Still raining. A train was coming down the track. I ran out of the archway and sprinted along the track, looking for cover. On either side of me were, at the bottom of the banks, hedgeless fields. No cover at all. All I needed was for a car to pass over the arch and for the driver to see this fleeing shoeless madman on the track below him. The train was getting nearer. Was it close enough for the driver to spot me? I veered sharp right and skidded down the bank and kept on running. Ahead of me was a small solitary bush, sprouting crazily next to the never-ending fencing. Pain told me that the sprint had opened the wounds in my feet. Wind rushed in my ears and there was the taste of blood in my throat.

I reached the bush and dived underneath. There was hardly enough of it to cover me. Then the train roared past and the bush shook and the noise grew fainter and then there was silence.

I peered out of the bush. I was only about eighty yards from the road. As yet there didn’t seem to be much traffic but if I left the bush only one driver had to spot me and that would be enough. Likewise with the trains. There was nothing I could do but wait for the darkness again.

The drizzle turned to heavy rain. I was soaking again. My resistance was getting lower and I was feeling the cold now. My feet were swelling and I felt sick with hunger. But all I could do was stay put. I wasn’t going to screw it up just for the sake of a day.

I’d been there about two hours when a man I guessed to be a young farmer drove a small horse box along a dirt track, stopped, and led a horse into the adjoining field. At first he urged the animal to canter round and round the field, calling to it, whistling at it, generally enjoying the exercise even more than the horse was doing. Then he called the horse to him and gave it some sugar and when he’d done that he took his gear from the horse box and bridled and saddled the horse and rode the horse round the field for the best part of half an hour. The man and the horse made me feel better. I felt some kind of contact with them, as though they were players and I was an audience and the show was entirely for my benefit. There was a security in watching them, a feeling of rightness about their movement.

But I felt even emptier when the man loaded the animal back into the horse box and started the engine and drove away.

The rain kept raining. The bush gave me hardly any protection. Raindrops were causing me even more discomfort than the cold. When I’d been moving the rain wasn’t too bad, but just lying there the raindrops gradually began to feel like ice-cold needles jabbing at my skin. I kept thinking that the rain had to stop soon, but it didn’t. Sometimes it would come down even harder, perpendicular, spiteful, but these bursts only lasted a minute or so at a time.

A tremendous instinctive inertia forced me to stay put, no matter how uncomfortable it was becoming. A thousand times I must have said to myself, fuck it, take a chance, move, but each time I forced myself to stay put. It was like being paralysed: each moment I thought my body would break into flight, but each moment nothing happened.

But by the afternoon I was too cold. I couldn’t stay there any longer. Although night was a long way away, the rain was causing a false dusk, gloomy enough for me to risk it. Once I’d decided, acted, I was glad. Sod the risk. It was worth it to be moving again.

I ran under the arch and along the track for about half a mile. Then I came to a gangers’ hut. I couldn’t believe my luck. Somewhere I could get dry. Somewhere out of the piercing bloody rain.

I opened the door. Vandals had smashed everything worth smashing and tarred their initials on the walls. But there was a bench that was still intact so I closed the door behind me and sat down and began to strip off my soaking clothes. I happened to glance up at the door. Hanging from a nail was an old greatcoat. I stood up and slowly walked over to the door. I couldn’t believe it. A coat. I reached out and touched it. It was dirty and mouldy and tatty but was a coat. I took it down from the nail and held it in my hands. It was the warmest thing I’d ever felt in my life.

I went back to the bench and draped the coat over it and took off the rest of my clothes and wrung them out and then I lay down on the coat and watched the steam rise off my chest. If I’d had something to eat or drink I’d have been the happiest man in the country.

When night came again I set off again down the track. But before I left the hut I’d torn up my winter vest and wrapped the pieces tightly round my feet and ankles. This gave my feet more protection than if I’d just been wearing socks. I took off down the line as fast as I could go.

After about half an hour I saw that I was running into a small town. A few minutes later I came to a small housing estate which lay to my left; on one of those quiet street corners there would be a telephone kiosk. I left the track and climbed a slatted fence and walked across a patch of wasteground that joined a straggling going nowhere road that led out of the estate.

The streets were deserted. Light from curtained windows fell warm and cosy on the neat front gardens. Now and again as I passed a house I could hear the muffled telly sounds beyond the curtains. Upstairs lights were on up and down the street; bedtime for the kiddies.

I turned a corner and straight in front of me, opposite a bus shelter, was a telephone booth. There was no one about. I walked up to the booth and opened the door and went in and dialled the operator. This was it.

“Number please?”

“I’d like a transfer charge call, please.” I gave the number and the false name.

“One moment, sir.”

The operator went off the line. Wind droned round the phone booth. In a house across the road a light went off.

The operator came back on.

“Go ahead please.”

“Yes?”

Sheila’s voice.

“It’s me.”

She began to say my name, but I had to cut her off in case the operator was still plugged in.

“Tell Ronnie I’ll see him in the morning.”

I gave her the phone number, the street and the name of the town. I told her to tell Ronnie to bring the clothes and the money and to pick me up at the phone booth at eight o’clock the next morning. There was no time to tell her anything else. She began to say how she thought I wasn’t going to make it but I had to cut her off again.

But not before I’d heard, in the background, Timmy’s cry.

I opened the door of the kiosk. Rain was foiling again. The street was still empty. I walked back towards the railway. I didn’t see a soul. I climbed over the slatted fence and squatted down, my back leaning against the planking. The rain began to come down harder. I thought about Sheila and Timmy and what it would be like tomorrow when I saw them. I stayed like that for about an hour. And got thoroughly soaked. I couldn’t stay there all night. There had to be some shelter somewhere. I followed the line of the fence but there was no cosy railwaymen’s hut along this stretch and I didn’t want to get too far away from where I was going to get picked up: the less open ground I had to cover in daylight the less chance of somebody seeing me and arriving at a brilliant deduction.

I climbed over the fence and went back into the estate. Still lifeless. Rain raced down the dead streets. I walked to the edge of the estate, but keeping within a good distance of the phone box. Here there was an older street, pre-war suburban, more respectable than the estate it flanked. The very best sort of council estate with dainty little front gardens contained behind neat privet. Some of the houses had garages built on to the side walls. I stopped outside a house that had a double garage. There was a light on in the hall but the bowed front window was black with night. I opened the front gate and walked up the path and round the side of the garage. There was a trellis gate and beyond that the back garden with the dining room light twinkling on the wet grass. I pressed the latch on the gate. The trellis-work shuddered. Beads of rain cascaded down on to the concrete path. I pushed against the gate. Wood scraped on concrete. I stopped pushing. In the next house a toilet flushed and a landing light went on and off. I waited a few minutes and pushed the gate again. It shuddered open enough for me to squeeze through. I went round the back of the garage. There was a small door that led into the garage, right next to the kitchen door. The kitchen was in darkness. I could hear the television beyond the dining room curtains. I tried the garage door. It was unlocked. I opened it and went in.

A small square window in the garage’s front door let in the light from the street lamp. There was a Hillman Minx and two children’s bikes. There was also a door that led into the house. There were panes of frosted glass in this door. Beyond the panes, darkness.

I hunted round the garage for a tap. But there was no tap, only a box full of empty bottles stacked by the back door. I took each bottle from the box very carefully, to see if there were any dregs. There were lager bottles and beer bottles and spirit bottles but they were all empty. But at last I came across a lemonade bottle. There was an inch or so of flat liquid in the bottom. I unscrewed the cap and sniffed it, in case it was paraffin or something like that. But it wasn’t. It actually was lemonade. I put the bottle to my lips and drank. It was beautiful. The nearest I’d ever get to the Elixir of Life. I kept the lemonade in my mouth for as long as I could, just so the taste could keep working on my palate. Finally I swallowed the stuff but the taste stayed with me.

I put the bottles back in the box. Then I went over to the Hillman and tried the doors. All except the nearside rear door were locked. I opened the rear door and got in and lay down on the back seat. It was real penthouse stuff to me, feeling the softness of the upholstery against my body. But even so, I couldn’t sleep. I was too full of excitement at the prospect of the next morning. I just lay there in the warmth of the car, imagining what it would be like in a moving car, belting down the motorway towards the Smoke.

When daylight came I stayed in the car for another hour. I reckoned that whoever lived in the house wouldn’t be a shift-worker, and that the earliest they’d be up and about would be around half-past-six. I didn’t want to move before I had to, so I lay there in the car trying to pace out the time to around six o’clock. But after about an hour I began to panic. Lack of sleep and food was making me light-headed. I began to want to doze off. One time I actually closed my eyes and almost fell asleep. I jerked myself upright in panic. It was no good. I couldn’t chance it any longer. I had to take my chances in the street. But at least I was warm and dry and in an hour or so I’d be travelling at seventy miles an hour.

I opened the car door and held it open to let some of the stale air out. Then I noticed some mud on the upholstery so I leant back into the car and wiped the seat. After I’d done that I closed the car door very quietly and went over to the garage door, the one I’d come in by. My fingers closed over the door handle. I took one look over my shoulder just to check that I hadn’t left anything out of place.

Then a shaft of light spurted through the frosted glass panels of the door that led into the house. Inside, somebody called goodbye. Then footsteps, coming towards the door with the frosted glass panels. The footsteps stopped. A bolt was drawn. Then a key turned.

I opened the garage door and pulled it to behind me but without closing it properly. I heard the other door open and close and then footsteps going over to the Hillman. I looked to my left. The kitchen light was on. I could be seen from the window. I went round to the side of the garage. The neighbouring house was in darkness. I leant against the side of the garage and waited. I heard sounds of more bolts being drawn. Then one of the garage doors was opened. I looked towards the end of the garage. I heard the other door being opened. It swung into view, overlapping the end of the garage wall. I could see the man’s fingers gripping the woodwork and his feet beneath the door. And the door was the one with the window. When the door was completely open he walked back into the garage. I saw his head as he passed the window. Middle-aged, glasses. A trilby. All he would have had to do was turn his head.

The Hillman started up. It idled for a minute or two, then it crept out of the garage. The car stopped, a door opened. Footsteps back to the garage. The fingers appeared again round the edge of the door. The door was dragged shut. Now I could see the Hillman. The man walked past the car to the gate that opened on to the road. He lifted the latch and swung back the gate. Then he got back in the car and drove the Hillman out into the road. I pressed myself against the garage wall as he walked back from the car to close the gate. All he had to do was to look as he fastened the latch. But he didn’t. He walked back to the Hillman and slammed the door and drove off.

I waited a few minutes before I made a move. I listened for noises in the street and round the houses. When I was as satisfied as I could be I walked away from the garage to the gate. I felt naked. I lifted the catch but I was shaking so much that I let it drop back again and before I’d realised what I’d done I’d tugged at the gate, making a row that rang up and down the empty street. Whoever was left inside the house must have heard it. I’d made the whole of the fencing rattle. I got the gate open and without bothering to close it I took off down the street. But I stopped running when I saw a milk float whirring round the corner. I couldn’t change direction because that would have looked great, a running man, changing direction, with rags on his feet, haring off the minute a milk float appeared. I kept on walking towards the milk float, playing up the shuffling tramp bit, hands in great-coat pockets, shoulders hunched. The milkman gave me a quick look but it didn’t interfere with his whistling. He opened a garden gate and rattled his crate down on a doorstep and pressed the doorbell. Settling-up time. I was tempted to shamble over to the float and lift myself a pint, but at this stage in the game blowing the whole thing with only an hour or so to go would have been suicidal.

I carried on until I came to the phone box. I went in and rang the operator and asked her what I should dial for the time and she said such and such a number but she could give me the time herself, should she do that? Well it was just coming up to twenty-five to eight. I thanked her and put the receiver down. Twenty-five to eight. Twenty-five minutes.

They’d be here in twenty-five minutes.

I opened the door and went outside and sat down on the low wall next to the box. About two hundred yards away to my left was the main road. Dual-carriageway. Traffic already zooming up and down it, the morning sunlight flashing on the racing paintwork. That was the way they’d be coming. A right turn, a U-turn, the door would open, and there’d I’d be, sinking in warm upholstery, a steady seventy under the morning sun.

The street was still empty. The man with the Hillman must have been the only early starter. It would be after eight o’clock before they all started making it for wherever they spent their eight hours a day. But still I was taking a risk by sitting there. My euphoria was making me careless. The milkman hadn’t sorted me but it was the kind of street that wouldn’t be keen on a tramp taking up residence outside the telephone box. A nose between the lace curtains and a quick phone call to the local nick would be enough to put the damper on things. So I got back in the phone box and watched for the Rover.

I calculated the time to be five or ten minutes past eight. People had started to leave their houses, walking or driving, on their way to work. One or two kids were amongst them, uniforms buttoned, satchels swinging, eager for the new day.

It must be quarter past eight now, I thought.

A big car turned into the street off the main road. My heart leapt. The car was white. The right colour. I peered through the dirty panes. Yes. The right colour. But the wrong car. A Triumph. It purred past the kiosk and disappeared down the street.

Never mind. What’s quarter of an hour? Jesus, if they’re here before half past eight I should think myself lucky. Anything could happen. Traffic bottlenecks. Slow service at petrol stations. Anything.

More time passed. Clouds drifted across the face of the sun. The street became grey again. Gone half-past now, I thought. Must be gone half-past.

Another car came in off the dual-carriageway. It was white. I could see that much. And the right size. But this time I waited. The car got closer. A Rover. Yes, it was. A bloody beautiful Rover. I pushed open the kiosk door and ran to the edge of the kerb. The Rover was fifty yards away. It began to slow down. They’d seen me. This was it.

But the Rover didn’t keep on coming. Instead the car turned left into one of the side streets. All that was left in the street was the echo of the Rover’s engine. Then nothing.

I felt sick. This time I’d been sure. I stood there on the edge of the pavement staring at the spot where the Rover had turned off. Then I heard footsteps approaching along the pavement. I tinned my head in the direction of the sound. A schoolgirl. About twelve years old. Staring hard at me, almost faltering in her step, wondering whether or not it was safe to pass by. Her parents had done their job well. I turned away again. The footsteps quickened and then she passed me. I watched her as she walked away. She didn’t look back.

I went back into the kiosk. More and more children appeared. I watched them go by, trying to keep the panic from rising too far up my chest. After a time there were no more children. The street was empty again. Nine o’clock. It must be nine o’clock, I thought. An hour. Where were they?

Then the phone rang. The sound screamed up and down my nervous system and I whirled round and scrabbled the receiver off its hook.

“It’s me.”

Sheila’s voice, crackly and distant.

“What’s happened?”

My own voice sounded high and twisted.

“They won’t be there.”

I stared into the reflection of my eyes in the kiosk mirror.

“They won’t be here?”

“The car broke down. Miles from anywhere, on the way up. Ronnie had to phone a mate to fetch them back.”

“Why didn’t he come up with him?” I said, already knowing the answer, just letting the panic operate my mouth.

“How could they? The other feller wasn’t in it.”

“Why didn’t you come up on the train with clothes and money?”

“Billy, don’t be a damn fool, you know . . .”

“All right, all right. So what’s happening. What the Christ is Ronnie doing?”

“He’s fixing somebody else. He has to be careful. He can’t risk it again himself so he’s got to spot someone safe.”

“So what about me? I’ve got to be bleeding careful too, haven’t I? I’ve . . .”

“Billy, listen. I’m seeing Ronnie at one o’clock. He’ll have fixed it by then. I’ll have to phone you after that.”

“Just like that. Listen. I wouldn’t be risking hanging round this box if I hadn’t . . .”

“Billy, be careful. Don’t blow it now. Not now. Phone me back. That’s all you can do.”

I couldn’t say anything else. I put the phone down in the middle of something Sheila was saying. I closed my eyes and leant against the door. I felt terrible. I’d geared myself up to being collected at eight o’clock, to getting in the car, to eating, to changing. Now I had to wait till two o’clock to find out what was going to happen. I might not even have someone come for me for a couple of days. Christ. And now I had to start the discipline all over again. I had to keep myself together till two o’clock. And then till God knew how long after that. I’d sustained myself for the last twelve hours on the thought of that lifeboat travelling up from London. Now I had to start all over again and it was an adjustment I couldn’t take. The thought of it utterly demoralised me. I felt beaten, and I began to treat my depression with the balm of self-pity. For the first time I began to think I might fail.

The kiosk door opened a little against my weight. I pushed the door the rest of the way open and walked out. For a moment or two, I just stood there, staring down the empty road towards the dual-carriageway. Then across the road a front door opened and a woman appeared. She was carrying a shopping bag. Her actions were quite normal until she reached her front gate and noticed me. Then she slowed down and gave me a long look. She took her time opening and closing the gate. Her eyes were on me all the time. Even as she walked away she kept looking back over her shoulder at me.

I had to pull myself together. I’d allowed myself to take too many risks because the thought of the Rover speeding up to get me had made any thoughts of danger seem trivial. But now I was down to earth. I was a million miles from home and I had to be careful. Again.

I hurried down the road and turned right, back towards the edge of the estate, towards the railway. I had to find somewhere to lie low until two o’clock. On the wasteland to my right there was a row of three hoardings. Nothing behind them except more wasteland and beyond that fields and a few houses. I crossed over and made for the hoardings. One of them was advertising Skol Lager. A picture of a great big glass full of translucent yellow liquid and the glass dripping with ice-cold perspiration. I remembered the swig of lemonade I’d had in the garage.

I rounded the hoarding and squatted down in the damp grass. At first I closed my eyes and tried to get sleep to blot out my depression but sleep wouldn’t come. The thought that I might fail kept dragging across my brain.

For the first time I began to feel really thirsty. No hunger, just thirst. I kept thinking about that big yellow glass of lager on the other side of the hoarding. I wanted to get up and walk round and have a look at it, as if just staring at it would make me feel better. The thirst was so bad I was beginning to feel light-headed like a man in the desert with his mirage of a palm-shaded waterhole.

Then, a long way away, I heard a clock strike. Ten o’clock. Four more hours. But at least I’d know when to move for Sheila’s call. That made me feel a little better. But not much. My skin had begun to obsess me. I felt like an alcoholic with withdrawal symptoms: every inch of my skin was crawling and I couldn’t stop scratching. I’d scratch in one place and get blessed relief only to have to move on to the next area in a never-ending process.

Then the rain started again. This time a fine drizzle, as depressing as the view across the dead wasteland. The whole world seemed damp and dead and motionless.

The far-away clock struck a quarter to two. I stood up and peered round the edge of the hoarding. There was no one about so I walked over to the road and made for the phone box. As I got close to it I tried to fight the uncontrollable hope that was welling up inside me. I had to keep that down in case Sheila’s news was bad. My system couldn’t have taken another bashing.

I got in the phone box and waited. Half an hour went by. Maybe I’d got the time wrong. Maybe she’d phoned just before I’d got to the box. But if that was so, she’d keep ringing wouldn’t she? I picked up the phone and got the operator to dial Sheila’s number. No reply. Maybe she was still with Ronnie. Ronnie could be having trouble fixing things up and that’s why she wasn’t back. Or she could have been picked up. The Filth could have sussed out the new flat. They’d never be able to hold her, but they just might play awkward to make things difficult for any arrangements we were making. Anything could have happened.

I leant on the metal directory holders and looked out at the drizzle. The box was warm from my body heat. I began to feel drowsy. I wanted to sleep. Maybe when I woke up I’d find it was all a bad dream, and in fact I was lying next to Sheila between clean sheets.

There was a rat-a-tat on one of the glass panels. I jerked upright. A woman, waiting to use the phone. I pushed the door open and stumbled out, saying something about being sorry, waiting for a call, and the woman glared at me and frowned as the warm smell from the kiosk hit her. But I was too numb either to react to her or to worry about any consequences there might be. I just sat on the wall and stared at the houses opposite and waited for her to come out again.

She didn’t take long. The door swung open and she bustled out, pulling on her gloves and giving me all the contempt she could muster. I avoided her gaze and stood up and went back into the box. Now there was a faint female smell mixed in with my own, a pleasant furry glovey silky smell that made me feel nostalgic for a past experience I couldn’t quite define.

And still there was no phone call. After about an hour I phoned again. No answer. I began to sink into a maudlin apathy. The whole thing was becoming too much of an effort. I had a pain in my chest and my breathing was becoming shallow and rasping. The warmth of the kiosk was hatching out all kinds of wishful thinking in my passive brain. One idea that kept drifting in and out of my mind was to get myself committed to hospital. At one point this really became a very attractive proposition. A nice crisp clean bed and something to drink. Some hot soup, say. Tomato soup. That would be fantastic. Hot tomato soup. I rationalised it by telling myself that they wouldn’t check me out, but really it wasn’t a rationalisation at all, just an example of the weakness that had crept into my brain.

Children began to pass the kiosk on their way home from school. The chest pain was getting worse. Breathing was very difficult now. Purely psychological, I thought. A way out of the impasse. A way of excusing myself if I failed. I could say that I couldn’t go on, my chest was too bad, I had to give in, how could I go on? If I hadn’t gone to the hospital, well . . .

More time passed and the decision to risk the hospital got stronger and stronger. A couple more people arrived to use the phone and each time I left the box I almost kept on walking, but out in the cold drizzle my thoughts would take a reverse. The phone box was my life line, my oxygen mask. Outside the box, all I wanted to do was to get back into the warm, near to the phone.

When the street lights came on I tried to get Sheila again.

This time she was there.

“Where were you?” I said.

“Ronnie’s had problems.”

“I’ve been here all the time, waiting . . .”

“I phoned twice. The line was engaged. Listen . . .”

“I just . . .”

“Listen. They’ll be there at eight. Eight o’clock. They’ve got everything you need.”

Outside on the pavement there was a young fellow waiting to use the box, looking in at me.

“They’re on their way?”

“Yes. They’re in a red Morris Oxford. One of them will be wearing a sheepskin jacket. Are you listening, Billy?”

The young fellow on the pavement kept looking at me.

“I’m listening.”

“They’ll stop by the box and the one in the sheepskin will get out and go into the box. They’ll do this every quarter of an hour until nine. Right? Then they’ll go. They’ll have to go at nine. So you’ve got to be there.”

I don’t care what main-liners say about the heroin racing through their bloodstream or what women say about having a baby, this news was the complete ecstatic experience. They were on their way. The weight of the last few hours fell away from me. I was alive again. The transfusion was working.

“I’ll be there,” I said.

“They can’t wait after nine.”

“I know,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll be there.”

I put the receiver back on its cradle. This time the face in the mirror was smiling.

I pushed open the door. The man who’d been waiting had gone. I didn’t look to see where to. All I could think of was the phone call. This time I knew I’d be all right. It had that feel to it. Adrenalin pumped my elated thoughts through my brain as I strode back towards my hoarding. Just a couple of hours. Nothing. A couple of hours meant nothing. Not now. I was breathing properly now and I could smile at the pathetic defeatism of the hospital idea. I knew that even if the car never showed I would be able to adapt accordingly. The spell was broken. My strength and self-reliance had returned and I was determined not to rely on anything but my own abilities again.

I began to cross the road to the turning that led to the hoarding. Three men stepped out of the darkness of the turning. One of them was the guy from outside the phone box. There was no mistaking who they were. The Filth. The elation I’d got from the phone call had furred up my other faculties. I should have tagged the rozzer outside the kiosk as soon as I’d seen him, no trouble. But I knew I had no worries. They were as surprised to see me as I was to see them. They’d probably been called out on a routine check because somebody had phoned in to say they’d seen a tramp hanging round the phone box obviously up to no good. And so the Filth had come out, just in case, but not really expecting to come up with Billy Cracken, so they’d only sent them three-handed. And when the young rozzer had copped for who the tramp actually was, they’d got no choice but to come at me before I cleared off, while the uniform in the car radioed in and upset half the dinners in the town.

I stopped walking. They stopped as well. There was about twelve feet between us. The soft drizzle was still falling. Behind me, at the far end of the road, the traffic swished by on the dual-carriageway.

The young rozzer was the one to speak.

“Can we have a word with you, sir?”

You really had to hand it to them. Faced with Billy Cracken, a twenty-five year man, they still kept themselves covered. They still gave you the “sir.”

One of the other rozzers had been staring at me particularly closely. Eventually he gave the nod and said: “That’s him.”

They began to walk forward again. They moved with a controlled casualness, as if they weren’t really closing in on Billy Cracken, as if there wasn’t going to be any trouble at all.

There wasn’t.

I let them get to within six feet of me. Then I took off. Straight down the road towards the dual-carriageway, the wind roaring in my ears, the rain flicking in my face, coat flying, my face grinning a wild grin that described my feeling, my knowledge that nobody was going to take Billy Cracken.

Fighting with the wind in my ears was the voices of the rozzers, calling for me to stop, and I thought, Silly bastards, of course I’ll stop, I never realised that you wanted me to stop, or else I wouldn’t have taken off in the first place.

As I neared the dual-carriageway I checked the traffic as I ran and I gauged that if I kept running straight on, straight across the opposing flows of traffic I’d get over without being run over. Which I did. Cars braked and swerved but I made it. I glanced behind me and saw two of the rozzers hesitating while the traffic dispersed. The other rozzer must have been beating back to the squad car. On my side of the dual-carriageway was a low slatted fence, the perimeter of one of those multi-purpose school playing fields with a dozen football pitches crammed end to end and side by side. I clambered over the fence and took off into the flat darkness. Eventually I reached a concrete playground and beyond the playground there was a bicycle shed and behind the shed another fence. I went over this fence and I was in allotments again, but this time they were the real thing with sheds and neatly dug vegetable patches and the rusty paraphernalia of the suburban gardener. I paused for a moment. I couldn’t see the rozzers against the lights from the dual-carriageway but that didn’t mean to say that they weren’t there, beating across the field after me. I took off again. Over another fence into a street of small flat-fronted terraced houses. I kept going. This street would be alive any minute now. Patrol cars would be screaming on their way. I turned right as soon as I could, into another street with the same kind of houses. Then I turned off left and then right until I was a good three or four streets away from the allot-ments. But I couldn’t just keep on running. I’d be picked up in no time. I had to find somewhere to hide. But whatever I found was bound to be chancy, especially if they did a house to house. But there was no choice. I was finished if I stayed on the streets.

The street I was in was terraced just like all the others. Every now and again there’d be a passage, tunnel-like, leading to the back gardens. I tinned into one of the passages and at the end of it were two latched gates. One right. One left. I took the left one; there were no lights shining from the house on to the back garden. Everything was quiet. I closed the gate behind me and walked to the end of the narrow garden. At the bottom of the garden was a lumber shed about as big as a small outside toilet. The door was split in two, halfway up, like a barn door. I opened the top section and looked inside. It was too dark to see anything so I leant over the bottom half of the door and felt about in the dark. My fingers touched something solid but loose and dusty at the same time. Coal. What did you expect, I thought. A four-poster? I climbed over the bottom half of the door and pulled the top half to and lay down on the coal and tried to make myself comfortable. Then I waited and I listened.

It didn’t take them long. I guessed there were seven or eight squad cars screeching into the area, building up over a period of about a quarter of an hour. Then there was silence for a while. What were they going to do? Hang around and do the house to house or assume that if they couldn’t spot me straight away I was making it farther away and spread themselves accordingly? Even if they did that, they’d leave somebody on tap, just in case I was still around.

I lay there in the dark, trying to find some foolproof way of gauging when to move. I only had a couple of hours to play with before the car showed up at the box.

After a while I heard a different kind of vehicle sounding off a few streets away: the door-bell tones of an ice-cream van. An ice-cream van, at this time of year. But of course they’d have drinks on sticks and probably orange juice and coca-cola. The thought of something like that within easy reach began to stir the coalhouse dust in my throat and my nostrils.

If this whole scene had been down south, the phone box would be alive by now. If it had been the Yard that was involved they’d have already gone over the box from top to bottom and then got it staked out so that in no way would I have got back to it without being picked up. If you’ve got to have the rozzers after you, I thought, the farther north you are the better. I had to take my chances, but at least I wasn’t up against the Yard. And the chances had to be taken.

I waited for what I guessed to be an hour. No klaxons, no fresh screeching of tires. I climbed out of the coalhouse and made my way up the garden to the passage. Then along the passage. I stopped halfway along and listened. Nothing. I moved towards the arch of light. Very slowly I poked my head out. The street was empty. Now all I had to do was walk out into the street. That was all. Once out, there was no cover, nothing. A patrol car could pass the end of the street and I’d have no chance. But there was nothing else for it.

I stepped out. At least my footsteps were silent. Which was as well, because I’d decided to run: no use trying to play the dawdling tramp any more, not now they were wise to me.

I darted to the end of the street and pressed myself against the wall of the end house and peered round the corner. Again, nothing. Crazily, the old joke passed through my mind about the fellow falling off a skyscraper and as he passes each floor he says, “so far so good, so far so good.”

I took off again and filtered through a few back streets stopping and starting like this. Finally I came to the last row of terraced houses and when I stuck my head round this last corner I could see the allotments and playing fields straight in front of me.

I could also see a patrol car.

The car was parked almost exactly where I’d come out of the allotments. There was only one of them in the car. That probably meant that at least one other rozzer was wandering about doing a bit of casing. And there was no way of telling where the casing was being done, whether in the allotments or in the streets around me. But that didn’t matter as much as the problem I had of getting across the road. The only thing in my favour was that the car was facing away from me so that if I moved the only way the driver could see me crossing was in his driving mirror. But it was still too risky. The slightest movement on an empty road would be enough to make him flick his eyes up to the mirror. The other alternative would be for me to backtrack into the streets and finally come out at the far end of the road, far enough away from the car to chance making the crossing. But this meant travelling through streets I hadn’t travelled through before, and there was no way of knowing what I’d find in them. For all I knew there could be a patrol car in every one of them.

I leant against the wall and swore. Then I heard the bells of the ice-cream van again. I chanced another look round the corner. The van was coming down the road where the police car was, travelling slowly along in the same direction that the police car was facing. Only the van wasn’t an ice-cream van. It was a fish and chip van. A fish and chip van with an ice-cream sound. It swished slowly past the end of my road and the smell drifted across to me in the van’s slipstream and my stomach turned over. The smell of the fish and chips was stronger than my thoughts on how to get over the road. The sickness of my hunger churned around in my stomach.

Then I heard the van begin to slow down. It was stopping. I chanced another look round the corner. The van was stopping. Pulling in behind the police car. Pulling in between me and the rozzer.

It must have been one of the van’s regular pitches. I heard the doors being opened and then I saw women drifting over to where the van was standing. But I waited a while because now more than at any other time the rozzer would be looking in his mirror and I’d no way of telling how much his view had been obscured by the chippie.

Then the door of the police car opened. The rozzer slowly got out and dawdled over to the van and stood by the group of women clustered round the serving window. As the women were served they hurried back to their houses with the warm newspapers pressed to their bosoms. And then they’d all gone and there was just the rozzer. He stepped up to the window and gave his order and stood back with his hands on his hips and looked up into the night sky. Then the chippie handed the parcel through the window and the rozzer sorted out his money and gave it to the chippie and took the parcel and turned away and strolled back to his car, unwrapping the parcel as he went.

It was then that I crossed the road. As I reached the curb on the other side I heard the clunk of the police car door as the rozzer closed it behind him. Now there was no way that he could see me in his mirror. The chip van was completely obscuring his view. The van’s engine started up and I straddled the allotment fence and dropped down the other side.

I moved carefully away from the fence, into the darkness of the allotments. After I’d gone a little way in, I looked back to the row of terrace houses, unearthly bright under the sodium street lights. The rozzer was still in his car, feeding. There was no sign of anyone else.

This time I avoided the school and hit the playing fields at a different spot. I began to walk across to the lights of the dual-carriageway.

Then, outlined against the bright lights, I saw six or seven rozzers walking towards me, all strung out on a sweep operation. They had no lights; at least if they had they weren’t using them yet. They’d use the lights when they got to the school and the allotments. No point in using them on the playing field. Cracken wouldn’t be hiding out in the middle of a playing field.

They hadn’t seen me yet. I wasn’t silhouetted the way they were. But if I moved, if I tried to get back to the allotments, they’d be on to me. And the same if I tried any other direction.

My heart felt like concrete. Tears welled up in my eyes. After everything, this. I’d been too cocky. I’d been too sure.

The rozzers got closer. Still no one spotted me. Then I realized something. They’d just come out of the bright sodium of the dual-carriageway; I’d been flitting about in darkness for the last couple of days. My eyes were adjusted to the blackness: theirs weren’t. There was a chance.

Very slowly, I let myself sink to the ground. I didn’t make a sound, but I moved in ultra-slow motion. Then, when I was on the ground, I curled myself up into a ball and pressed myself into the wet earth. Then I waited.

I could hear their footsteps now. Then the rustle of their clothes, the sound of their breathing. I lay there wound up like a spring, waiting for a boot to stumble into my back and burst me open.

But they passed. There was no boot, no sudden cry of surprise. The rozzers passed me by.

I didn’t move until I heard them hit the allotment fence. Then I chanced turning my head to see what they were up to. I saw the lights go on and the legs swing over. Now I could move. But I didn’t get up. I crawled. I crawled until I got close to the dual-carriageway, but not so close that if I stood up I’d be picked out by the sodium. Which was what I had to do. I had to get to my feet so that I could sec over the perimeter fence and suss out what the Filth had fixed up on the other side.

There was a van and a couple of cars. Complete with drivers. Three of them, standing together, braving a natter.

I dropped down again. I could do nothing but go parallel with the perimeter until I got far enough away to go over the fence without being seen.

But this time I didn’t crawl. I ran, bent double, like Quasimodo. I covered about two hundred yards like this but I had to keep stopping for a rest: doubling myself up had brought back the pain in my chest.

I reached the end of the playing field. The perimeter fence made a right-angled turn in front of me. Beyond this there was no sodium lighting. Just suburban houses that faced on to the dual-carriageway. But the houses formed a curve, not a straight line. So in front of them the dual-carriageway must follow the same curve. Enough of a curve to make my crossing invisible from the crowd of rozzers way down below me.

I climbed the fence and dropped down into the back garden of the first house. There were no lights on in the house. I walked round to the front garden. Cars flashed by but there were no pedestrians. I went through the garden gate and began to walk along the pavement until there was a long gap in the traffic. Then I took off across the road and into the nearest side street. When I came to the first house without any lights showing I got off the road and worked my way back to the telephone box via a route of back gardens. This way I only had two streets to cross. Finally I came out into a front garden about twenty yards away from the kiosk. I dropped down and made my way to the privet hedge and pushed myself into the leaves and looked over the low brick wall towards the kiosk on the other side of the road.

The street was empty. All the chopping and changing I’d been doing made me lose track of the time. It could have been eight or it could have been nine. I’d no idea. As far as I knew the Morris could be just half a mile away, on its way back to the Smoke. It might even have passed me on the dual-carriageway. No, I thought, it couldn’t have done that. They’d have spotted me for sure. Surely they would. The feeling of desperation began to creep back into me again, like the awareness of my physical condition now that I was stationary again. The pain in my chest, the damp, the hunger. All spreading through me...

The sound of a car. A car had turned into the street. Slowing down as it approached the phone box. Then it stopped, but the engine didn’t cut out. A door opened. I pushed my face through the leaves and looked towards the phone box. It was a police car. A rozzer got out and walked over to the box. He glanced round as if he didn’t really expect to cop for anything. I just stayed how I was, staring through the leaves at the rozzer and the car and the phone box. I daren’t move in case the leaves rustled and I was spotted for. But in my gut there was enough movement for me to be going on with. All that I needed now was for the Morris to show while the rozzer was still glancing round.

But eventually the rozzer got back in the car and the car pulled away and then the street was silent again. So that’s what they call a stake-out up here, I thought. A periodic visit to the phone box. If I’d have been in any other condition I’d have had to smile. That and the fact that their visit might coincide with the Morris’s visit.

Then about three minutes after the police car had taken off there was the sound of another car engine approaching the box. I peered through the leaves again. A Morris Oxford. And it was stopping. My heart jumped but then it began to fall on a sickening downward curve. The Morris wasn’t maroon. It was black. Sheila wouldn’t have made a mistake: telling me the wrong colour could have had me back inside, no trouble. She’d said maroon and that was what she’d meant.

The Morris pulled up next to the box. No one got out. I couldn’t see into the car because a strip of sodium was reflecting off the windscreen.

Then the offside door opened. A man got out and walked towards the telephone box. The man was about twenty-five years old. He had close-cropped fair hair. And he was wearing a sheepskin coat. Sheila had told me to look out for a man in a sheepskin coat.

The man in the sheepskin coat looked around the area where the box was in much the same way that the rozzer had done. In my mind I was trying to decide which was wrong, the car or the coat. Suppose Sheila had been told the wrong colour, and this was their last circuit? The man began to walk back to the car. He shook his head once as he went. I stood up and swung my leg over the wall. The man carried on walking but whoever else was in the car must have said something because the man stopped and turned and looked straight at me.

“Billy?” he said.

I nodded my head.

“Billy?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Billy.”

I began to move towards the car, slowly at first, then my movements got quicker and quicker until I was almost falling headlong over the bonnet. The man in the sheepskin coat was holding open the rear door. Everybody was talking at once.

“Christ, what took you so long?” said the sheepskin.

“We’ve been here waiting for nearly five minutes,” the driver said. “We’ve already been here once before.”

“The car. It should have been maroon,” I said.

“It is maroon,” said Sheepskin.

“Maybe it looks black in this light,” said the driver. “Sodium does that.”

“That’s what it must have been,” I said. “The sodium.”

The car U-turned and made for the dual-carriageway.

“You hungry?” said Sheepskin. “You must be. How does fish and chips grab you? Got ’em from a van in between circuits.”

I smiled, a weak, silly smile. Fish and chips. From the van I’d seen earlier. Me and the rozzer. The same fish and chips.

“Yeah,” I said. “Great.”

Sheepskin twisted round in the passenger seat and handed me the warm parcel.

“What about a drink? Scotch, beer or tea?”

“Tea,” I said. “With a drop in it.” A thought struck me. “You don’t have any lemonade, do you?”

“Lemonade?”

“Doesn’t matter. Tea’ll do nicely.”

Sheepskin began unscrewing a flask. The driver said:

“There’s fresh clothes under the back seat. You’ll have to lift it. I should change once we get out of this place.”

“Thanks.”

“There weren’t any road blocks on the way up,” Sheepskin said, handing me the flask cup.

“They still think I’m in the area,” I said.

“Shouldn’t have any trouble, then.”

I took the tea and drank. The car turned on to the dual-carriageway and began to pick up speed. On my right were the playing fields.

“Plenty of Filth about at any rate,” Sheepskin said, twisting round in his seat and looking through the rear window at the police cars and van still parked by the playing fields.

The tea spread through my body and I began to feel a wonderful weak helplessness. No more decisions, no more risks. They were being taken for me. I felt like a child again. Protected and cared for. The town disappeared behind us and we were in the limbo of the night motor-way, unrelated to the real world. I emptied the cup and sank back in the warm upholstery.

Sheepskin turned round again.

“Want some more?” he said.

I shook my head.

“How are you feeling now?”

“Fine,” I said. “Fine.”

“Wait till you see the papers,” he said. “You’ll feel even better. Christ, you’re the biggest thing since Hiroshima. I mean . . .”

The driver cut in on Sheepskin.

“Later,” he said. “Leave it till later. All he wants to do now is to sleep. Don’t you, Billy?”