By the time he reached Lombard Street Giles was seriously out of breath, he slowed up. Running wasn’t really possible against the sheer weight of suited commuters hurrying home, or to more meetings, or to grab another café latte and five minutes breathing space away from number filled screens and buzzing phones. He was only ten minutes late, but Giles did not like to keep a lady waiting,
A few weeks before he’d gone away, Giles had been introduced to Joanna Anderson-Flint at a dinner party given by mutual friends. She had seemed unimpressed with him almost to the point of hostility, yet towards the end of the evening her defences crumbled, they’d exchanged numbers and seen more of each other.
Now he was back in the country indefinitely, Giles was keen to develop their relationship. Jo was four years younger than him, a hedge fund manager who believed without question Giles’ claim to be a civil servant. Her hair was shorter than his, yet her features delicate and feminine enough for that to look pretty rather than severe. With heels on she was tall enough to look him almost straight in the eye and had a way of staring at him, as if she could see right through everything he appeared to be, that Giles found both disturbing and arousing. When Jo left a message suggesting early drinks, a Hellmouth would’ve had to have cracked open in Trafalgar Square to keep him working past five o’clock.
Despite the fact that it was freezing, Jo was stood outside the pub.
‘If you’ve just arrived that’s impressive timing.’
She pulled back from his attempt to kiss her cheek, so Giles reached out to open the door, but Jo grabbed his arm.
‘Not here, there’s something I need to say. Can we walk for a minute?’
Reluctantly he nodded. The pleasure he felt on seeing her vanished. So that was that, what the hell had he done? Even if she wanted to tell him too many people were pressing around them, walking side by side was difficult, meaningful conversation impossible.
Halfway up the road stood a church fronted by a small walled courtyard. Giles followed Jo in, relieved when she stopped at the door, he had no love of churches and no desire to be in one now. The grey stone of the deep-set porch shielded them from the worst of the cold and created a quiet vacuum from the crowds just a few metres away.
‘Wren?’
Jo broke the silence, though he was desperate to dispense with small talk and get it over with, the pedantic scholar in Giles forced him to reply:
‘Hawkesmoor - a-a tribute to the Hall of Vitruvius.’
She gave him a rueful smile.
‘I knew you’d know,’ Jo said
‘Sorry, I really ought to learn to let things pass, but it is a bit late in the day to reinvent myself.’
‘I wouldn’t say that, you did an amazing job last time…Ripper.’
Once when he was seven and playing in the garden on a baking hot August day, Giles had found a grass snake sunning itself on a log. Full of childish enthusiasm, running inside to tell his father and share his discovery, Giles had failed to notice that the patio doors had been closed and ran straight into them, resulting in a deep jagged cut that went almost from his hairline down to his eyebrow. The shock had been so abrupt, the change in emotion so sudden and so intense that it had been several moments before he had even cried out. Now decades later the man felt exactly as the child had done and it took a while before he could find his voice.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’ve been waiting to be recognised, wanting you to,’ said Jo. ‘Kept having to remind myself that it was unlikely, perhaps if my hair was still purple.’
‘Star,’ said Giles, horrified. ’You’re Star, aren’t you?’
‘I was once,’ she replied gently. ‘There’s no need to be so scared, I’m not here for revenge.’
Star had joined them during her Easter holiday from school, their parents were clueless as to what Randall’s existence in London was like and assumed that he would look after his little sister: plump and seventeen, all she did was wear white and smile a lot. She quickly developed a massive crush on Ripper who took her virginity to wind Randall up and her locket to sell for drug money.
Last time Giles had seen her was at the inquest into Randall’s death, which due to the Council exerting its influence had proved inconclusive, despite overwhelming evidence. Looking younger in her school uniform, hair back to its original colour and neatly plaited, Star had sat between her parents, just as he had sat between his as every damming detail of the abomination of a life that he’d been leading was made public.
‘Then w-what what do you want?’
Giles hung his head.
‘I wanted to see you that’s all. To find out what sort of man you became, had the chance to become,’ she said bitterly. ‘I’d have known you anywhere.’
‘It’s been thirty years,’ said Giles not moving.
‘Anywhere,’ reiterated Jo. ‘Then you turned out to be rather nice, which complicated things.’
He looked up.
‘Ran stopped being an actual person. Twenty-one is such an iconic age to die, isn’t it? Twenty-one and extremely handsome - instant hero status.’
Giles saw that Jo was close to tears.
‘So the myth of perfect Ran who could’ve been anything, done anything evolved. Totally diminishing who he was, especially the criminally inclined drug addict he became in your company.’
The opposite was true. It had been Randall who’d held Giles in his arms, nuzzling his neck and whispering comforting words, helping him work up the courage to stick a needle in his arm for the first time.
‘Seeing you has made everything clear, brought Ran down from the clouds and made him real again. He wasn’t perfect and you’re not evil. I‘ve been believing both those things were true for too long.’
‘I hope it brings you peace.’
‘And I hope that you’ve never known any’
Suddenly it seemed as if Jo could no longer bear to be near him, with one last contemptuous glare she pushed past.
‘You should have been punished,’ she spat as she hurried away.
‘I was.’
********************
On his third circuit past St Mary’s P.C Ryan saw that the man was still in the doorway. In nearly fifty minutes he’d gone from standing to sitting on the steps, but nothing else had changed, he was continuing to stare at the ground as if he’d just seen a monster rise up from it. Seeing as monsters didn’t exist the police officer knew there must be a more prosaic reason for the man’s distress and decided to intervene.
In any other part of London the poor bugger could have stayed there forever without being noticed, but this was the Square Mile. Every single working day 350,000 people crammed themselves into a few streets and carried out more financial transactions than anywhere else on the planet. The pace was furious which is why people who were motionless drew attention to themselves.
He walked up to the man, stopping before he got within arms reach because you could never tell who was and who wasn’t capable of lashing out.
‘Good evening, sir. Is everything alright?’
‘Yes, yes t-thank you.’
P.C Ryan heard the stammer and took in the obviously expensive overcoat and fancy watch. Another one’s lost the plot, he thought to himself. During four years as a member of City of London Police he’d stopped being surprised at what banking types were prepared to do for money, yet remained unable to get his head around why. The long hours, the stress, the relentless pressure to succeed pushed people to the edge and a fair proportion of them over it.
He’d attended incidents at stations, in coffee shops where the smallest delay had proved to be the final straw and reduced some highly educated, designer clothed city slicker to screaming or sobbing fury. Last week he had been twenty minutes at Bank tube with a woman only a couple of years older than himself who could give him the closing prices of the DAX but couldn’t remember which train she needed to get home.
‘It’s a bit cold to be sat out here like this.’
‘I’m sure you are right, officer.’
Nice and polite, he observed. He sometimes got grief off older members of the public who resented being told what to do by someone young enough to be their son or even grandson. This one looked horribly knackered, but also like underneath it all he could be a decent bloke and mercifully when he stood up, seemed to be in good shape. It was the overweight, red-faced ones who even on a day like today would be sweating that made him nervous.
‘Rough day, sir? What’s your name?’
P.C Ryan was glad when Rupert gave his details without hesitation. He also realised that the stammer was slight, not the uncontrollable stop-starting that often indicated a breakdown.
‘I’d get a taxi tonight if I were you. Get yourself home before the match starts.’
‘Match?’
How can Rupert not know about tonight’s game? He’d been gutted when he was scheduled for this patrol.
‘UEFA Cup - Chelsea versus Ajax.’
‘Football’s not really my thing.’
But you said it kindly, noted P.C Ryan. Could’ve been patronising then.
‘Still, better off in the warm, eh?’
‘I should go back to work. Now I’m unexpectedly free.’
You people never know when to stop.
‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
‘Hmmm, certainly. Thank you for for your help, officer.’
‘Back to King William Street then, Rupert. Straight there, no more hanging around. You’ll freeze.’
P.C Ryan watched him go. However rich you’re making yourself mate, he thought. It isn’t worth it.
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