Hawthorn and Child by Keith Ridgway Read Free Book Online

on the hill he looked at the city lights and the airplanes circling over south London like a lid closing on a jar. He stamped to keep his feet warm and tried to get lost. He took a bus to Muswell Hill and took a bus back again. He had another coffee in a tiny Turkish place and pretended to talk about football. He sent text messages that were vague. He thought about various people. He sat on a bench in Highgate with a view over everything and let himself cry a little. It wasn’t so bad. It stopped after about ten minutes. He wondered why he didn’t want to go home. It was not far. He could go home and have a shower.
    He kept walking. He drank more coffee in an all-night McDonald’s. He dozed off for a while. By the time the staff woke him up he was almost late. He started walking back towards Finsbury Park.
     
    He stood outside the house on Nestor Lane. There was silence. The night was dark and the street lamps were like hoods. He looked up at the windows. He expected to see Walter Andone looking back at him, his face against the glass. Then he expected to see Walter Andone’s silhouette. Reaching out to him. The windows were all curtained. The upstairs ones seemed frosted with condensation. The date sat in the corner of his eye, on the right, like a time stamp in a photograph. The house did not look that old. It did not look like shelter. It did not look like a place where you might go to be warm, to sleep, to sit with loved ones and retreat from the day and from the city. It looked like something you would grit your teeth to enter. It looked like all the city surrounded it as an antechamber , a place to rest, and it was the building that contained all the work and the toil and the pain of things.
    He walked. He walked with his hands in his pockets. He pretended that there was nothing in his mind.
    Things come out of the past.
    They had taken down the tape on Hampley Road and it was open to traffic. There was no traffic. There were incident boards. Shooting. Witnesses. Serious injury. Please call . He looked up towards Plume Road and paused. Cars in the distance sounded like other things, natural things. Waves on water. The wind in leaves. He walked along the path and listened to his footsteps.
    He came to Daniel Field’s blood, dried on the path like old chewing gum. There was a discarded swab stick in the gutter. At the foot of the wall lay the yellow marker, fallen from the place where the stray bullet had struck. He stared at the silver shutter. It was dull in the gloom. It was cold. He looked at his watch and retraced his steps a little. Then he pretended he was Daniel Field and walked as if on his way to the tube station. He imagined he was carrying a shoulder bag. His head naturally turned towards the ground. He looked at the little bit of London at his feet, at the smudges and marks, the scuffs and scratches, the tiny scraps of paper stuck to the stone. Tiredness allowed everything to flow into everything else. There was nothing distinct. A head full of condensation. He moved over the black marks of dropped liquids, cigarettes, spit, blood, dog shit, pollen and rain. In a thousand years this would all be buried. He halted at the stain. He heard a car come up behind him.
    He didn’t turn. He looked ahead. The car edged into his field of vision, slowly and smoothly, its wheels turning in the corner of his eye like a thought. It was dark. A dark car. But it was not black. There were no running boards. There were no silver handles.
    – Detective. Hello there. Detective?
    Hawthorn turned. He looked back up Hampley Road. It was empty. He looked towards Plume Road. Then he looked down at the car in front of him. He had to drop to his haunches to talk to the driver.
    – Hello, Mr Jetters.
    – How is he? Daniel, I mean.
    – He’s good. He’ll be fine. He’s expected to make a full recovery.
    Jetters turned briefly and looked ahead. He smiled.
    – That is great. That is great to hear.
    – His mother, said