Accidental Crime - 30

Jarrod

Jarrod was not used to running, particularly in suede shoes, and he felt overwhelmingly underprepared for sprinting through oncoming pedestrian traffic while every passing second brought him closer to the inevitable moment when a hand would land on his shoulder and the chase – and quite possibly his life – would be over.

He hadn’t yet dared look back. It was, perhaps, conceivable that the man’s lungs had been overworked from years of dedicated smoking and he had flagged at the first corner and was now hunched over, perhaps leaning one arm against a shop window, desperately trying to regain enough oxygen to continue walking, let alone running. Equally, it was possible that Jarrod had inadvertently angered the county’s most promising 200m runner in twenty years and that, despite his retirement from competitive racing, he was still a regular member of Green’s Gym and recently secured a new personal best on the running machines, reassuring him that he was as fit as he had ever been.

There was little time to think as he ricocheted off shopping bags and shoulders, barging his way unceremoniously down the surprisingly long street, but more than once he found himself wondering whether hurtling through the crowds actually made things worse than if he simply stopped and faced his fate. Didn’t his actions make it look as if he had meant to dislodge the mobile, that he was right to be considered guilty, that he had every reason to flee? Did innocent people run? More than that, did innocent people show little regard for the welfare of stuttering toddlers – at least two had found themselves swiftly swung out of the way by panicky mothers so far – and not even pause to say sorry when their knee had firmly collided with the jaw of an unsuspecting Labrador?

An alley-way appeared up ahead. If, by some miracle, he had established enough of a lead, he could, perhaps, disappear to the right in barely five seconds time and leave his pursuer flailing around in confusion, whilst he escaped through a conveniently-placed fire escape, taking him into the safety of the shop. In fact, now that he thought about it, why hadn’t he just gone into a shop by the main entrance, recruiting a helpful sales assistant to hide him while the man foolishly believed her insistence that she had ‘never seen him’?

The alley-way had appeared and there was little time left to consider what should have been done. Leaping and ducking under an oncoming umbrella, he tumbled into the narrow passageway, too late to change his mind.

His elbow scraped against the damp concrete as he fell, the lasting reminder of his heroism/cowardice – he was yet to decide which – guaranteed in scar-form, or at least an unsightly scab that he would savour scratching until he had pealed away every last flake of its protective coating. His jeans instantly became annoyingly wet, the coldness tingling his skin beneath, prompting his hands to frantically wipe and pat away at the material. He gazed around the scene of his intended escape as he raised himself to his feet. A few eyes had lingered on his tumbling body but were now passing out of sight as the wall blocked his view of their departing frames. They had, perhaps, briefly considered offering to help, their natural instinct prompting them to at least pause and look, if not actually intervene, but the swift movement of legs and heads redirected up and down the street suggested that few were concerned how Jarrod’s drama would play out. He was remarkably alone. In one leap he had detached himself from the bustle of the crowd and landed in the dampness of a narrow world he hoped offered a gateway to freedom from the impending danger that was surely only seconds away from revealing itself.

The walls that surrounded him seemed unimaginably tall, as the words ‘too high, you can’t get over it’ from a childhood song resounded between his ears. In truth, it was too high for any man to get over it and the expected ladder or outside stairs were distinctly absent from the view that stood before him. He had hoped, even in his most pessimistic moment just prior to the leap, that there would at least be one wall-scaling device that he could use to climb away from danger, trusting that the grip of his shoes would give him a slight advantage as his pursuer’s smooth, flat-bottomed soles left him slipping and sliding on every step. There would, of course, be a door that he could kick down or shoulder-barge – in all likelihood he wouldn’t even bother to check whether it was already unlocked – and he would then sprint past a flurry of confused faces, safe in the knowledge that he could lose his nemesis if he could find a door to the adjacent or parallel street, hail a passing cab and crouch beneath the window as the taxi driver pulled away at speed, Jarrod’s breathless instruction to ‘move, move, move’ ringing in his ears as he pursued an unspecified destination.

There wasn’t even a door. Not high above, not on street level to the left or the right. Of all the alleyways he could have chosen, he had opted for the one that was well and truly a ‘dead end’. He had never considered the impact of those words before. Up until now they had been mere words, a well-known label for a road or path that doesn’t go anywhere, but now they had assumed a new, haunting significance. He had brought himself to his own end; this place would be his dead end, the place people laid flowers against the wall, perhaps accompanied by tear-stained cards letting him know that he was loved and would be missed. The local ‘paper would use it as a chance to step up the intensity of its ‘Let’s kill off murder’ campaign and scores of ex-classmates would be rounded up by journalists eager to discover whether he, like every other young victim, was an ‘amazing person’, ‘full of life’ and ‘a popular and extremely likeable young man’. Dawn would tell his parents that it was ‘all her fault’, that he had been a hero answering her call in her time of need and that she had never had a chance to tell him what he really meant to her. They, forgiving as always, would wrap their arms around her and tell her that ‘everything would be OK’, that she shouldn’t think such things, that no-one really knows why these things happen to us.

But Jarrod knew. Of course he knew. This had happened because he had brushed his hair in public. That was the message he needed plastering across the local papers: Brush your hair and you’ll be inviting a brush with death.

There was still time to return to the street, to the relative safety of other people. The crowd of onrushing legs, paws and wheels was barely ten feet away and it was always possible that his pursuer had long since rushed past and that this brief hideaway had served its purpose after all.

He stepped forwards, ready to return. As soon as he placed one leg in front of the other, the stockier legs of his enemy appeared before him, the full appearance of a hot-blooded pursuer framed by the skyline walls. The man’s head was turned in his direction. Frustrated mothers were wheeling their prams around his now-static frame, staring menacingly into his defiant eyes as they freed a finger to raise in his direction.

Jarrod’s feet refused to move as the man’s legs swung his intimidating frame round to approach the privacy of the specially selected alleyway.

How had an afternoon with Mansfield led to this? He had asked for nothing more that day than to feast on the short stories he had finally laid his fingers on, to escape into a world of secret selves, tea and cake and unexpected flurries of French. He wasn’t supposed to die like this. He didn’t expect a long life but he had anticipated reaching 42 at the very least. Who died at 22? He didn’t smoke, he didn’t bungee jump at the weekends, he didn’t even own a particularly sharp knife. He had surrounded himself with soft paperbacks, literary sandbags that would fend off all the dangers the world outside threw at him, but where had that left him? He knew nothing of fighting. Perhaps if he had actually read The Count of Monte Cristo instead of just assuming that he knew the storyline already he would have at least been equipped to engage in a sword-fight. Lawrence had shown little interest in fist-fighting, and naked wrestling – a scene he had found little reason to make mention of when Dawn had asked him how he was getting on with Women in Love – seemed an unlikely prospect. Besides, weren’t Birkin and Gerald wrestling to relieve stress and represent a kind of unity and bond between two men that was unlike that shared with women? There was very little to suggest that the alleyway was about to play host to such free-spirited exhibitionism and a conviction of public nudity was not the ideal way with which to round off his afternoon.

The man strode towards him, his chest expanding and contracting with speed, as a smile formed on his reddened face. Beyond the man’s shoulders, Jarrod saw pedestrians pass by without a glance in their direction. Nobody slowed down, nobody stopped to check if everything was all right, nobody prepared to grab the man from behind, pinning his arms to his back while Jarrod fled to safety. As pair after pair of feet shuffled past, hurrying to the nearest shop to indulge their need rather than pausing to take care of his, he could not help but feel a profound disappointment in those with whom he shared society, whatever that term might mean. If this wasn’t a time for people to stand by one another then when was?

Before long, Jarrod’s view of the world outside, in all its disappointment, was obscured by the overpowering presence of his pursuer standing before him. There was nowhere else to look.

As he refocused his eyes on the intensity of the man’s expression, a flash of light reflected off the knife that he was now clutching between the shaking fingers of his right hand, sending Jarrod recoiling and stalling mid-breath, as the weapon that would begin a cascade of mournful regrets and recollections shone brightly in the afternoon sun, its vicious potential revealed in the beauty of the glowing silver.

Jarrod tentatively padded his pocket, half-hoping he had somehow slipped in a knife of his own precisely in case such moments as this arose. Not that he would be prepared to use it if the time came; he had always maintained that a knife was to be used for spreading, not stabbing. All he had was a slightly-used tissue, which would surely be no match for the knife. Even an entirely clean tissue would struggle to put up much of a fight. He was embarrassingly underprepared.

And yet, his knife-bearing pursuer seemed almost too prepared, almost as if this whole thing was some sort of elaborate plan. Perhaps he had intentionally knocked his mobile against Jarrod’s hand, planted the other passenger in just the right seat to provide the fatal blow and was now bringing his plan to fulfilment by murdering an unsuspecting member of the public with a knife he had ordered especially off eBay only last week? Why else would he come prepared with a knife? Were the streets really full of people crying out for someone to rush to their rescue with a timely knife, ready to cut a kitten loose from a trap or slice the hog roast so that the people could eat, drink and be merry?

Jarrod was bursting with questions but the man had now grabbed his coat with his left hand and was dragging him closer, the knife tantalisingly hovering barely six inches from his seemingly-doomed stomach. Words, carefully chosen, would be his only defence.

‘Please. Please, don’t hurt me. It was an accident. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,’ he spluttered, the tone of his voice assuming a more feminine edge than usual.

‘Your wallet. Now!’ the man demanded, beads of sweat slaloming down his forehead with remarkable haste.

Jarrod’s thoughts turned to the 50p off Organic Tea voucher he would never get a chance to use, the time he would waste signing up for a replacement library card, and the trolley token he had found so useful. He recalled the advice Uncle Paul had passed on one day – ‘if you ever get mugged, just give them the wallet, don’t go and get yourself killed by trying to be a hero’ – but what had sounded so good in theory made little sense when faced with the prospect of losing your Nectar Card.

‘There’s nothing in it,’ he foolishly lied, his left hand quivering as he spoke, dampened slightly by the suicidal drops of sweat departing from his enemy’s face.

The tip of the knife pierced the skin beneath Jarrod’s chin. The message was clear: one more wrong move and his modelling career would be over before it had even begun.

‘OK. OK,’ he conceded, his left hand reaching slowly into his jacket pocket to extract the wallet. It was slightly disappointing, he felt, that the murder he had imagined had been reduced to a simple mugging; he’d be lucky if there was even a paragraph in the ‘paper about this, let alone a full-page article with accompanying obituary and ‘photo gallery.

The knife was lowered as he flicked open the leather buckle, as if to check that this really was a wallet, and the moment gave Jarrod the chance to assess the fear in the man’s eyes.

He was clearly in the position of power in their encounter and yet there was something pitiful about the anxiety he displayed and Jarrod found himself itching to ask whether this was his first time, whether he had the honour of being his debut victim.

He pocketed the wallet and returned the knife to its threatening position.

‘Your phone. Now!’ he snarled, clearly buoyed by the success of his first demand. What exactly would he ask for if Jarrod continued to be so obliging? Perhaps now was the time to let him know that his jeans were only a tenner in the sale and his pants came in packs of 5 for £3, easily affordable and not likely to earn much of a profit? His shoes were worth slightly more, he’d give him that, but the chances of them being the same size seemed slim.

In terms of cost, losing his mobile was no disaster and, if Jarrod could only be given the time to explain that there was barely £1.50 left in credit, perhaps the man would consider it an unnecessary effort to pursue this further.

‘Fine. Here you are,’ he responded, transferring the ‘phone from his pocket to the man’s sweaty palm in one swift movement, not even noticing the arrival of a new message, before adding, ‘but that’s it OK. Please. I haven’t got anything else.’ He offered the greatest look of defiance he could muster, staring into the eyes before him with a conviction that he hardly believed possible in such a situation.

‘Now, turn around,’ he ordered, ‘and walk slowly towards the wall.’ Clearly overestimating Jarrod’s desire to gain instant retribution the moment he backed into the street to flee from the scene, the man nudged his arm until he could no longer see the glowing silver poised delicately behind his increasingly-unsteady fingers, his body fully turned to face the wall that had so disappointed him when he had first stepped foot in the alleyway. His legs strode forwards with robotic poise, his muscles stiffening as his eyes became blind to the whereabouts of the knife. There was something devastatingly unsettling about not being able to see the weapon that could cause him to fall in one foul swoop. Equally concerning was the prospect that he would realise he had shown his face in broad daylight and Jarrod’s photographic memory would have little difficulty identifying him in a parade. If King Lear had taught him anything – and he wasn’t entirely sure that it had – then it was that knives could be used to pluck out eyes and, although Gloucester’s experience in the play brought him profound insight and realisation, he had decided that blindness wasn’t for him and, if it came to it, he would pull out every single move he remembered from the Karate Kid films to fight his way out of this one.

Jarrod’s right foot landed in a puddle, splashing a few muddied droplets onto the previously-dry left. He sighed deeply. He wasn’t getting much out of this mugging at all.

The tip of the knife slowly circled his lower back, as if tracing the perimeter of his kidneys. It seemed quite a leap from his wallet and ‘phone but there always seemed to be quite a demand for transplants, so it didn’t seem as impossible as he would have hoped. The man lay his hand upon Jarrod’s left shoulder, the knife maintaining a steady poise while his fearful skin quivered in anticipation.

‘Nobody messes with Hilary. You got it?’ He squeezed Jarrod’s shoulder with a disturbing over-familiarity, before releasing his grip and sniffing forcibly, Gaveth-like, as he promised an end to the scene. ‘Now, I’m gonna walk away and you’re gonna wait right where you are, you hear me? You’re not gonna say anything. You’re not gonna do anything. You got it?’

The gruffness of his tone, which was undoubtedly seeking to conceal his anxiety, infuriated Jarrod almost as much as the name he had just revealed. One name had rendered the possibility of retelling the story of his terrifying mugging completely useless; there was, quite simply, no way he could bring himself to confess that he had been held at knife-point by a man named Hilary. Lying was being forced upon him. He would need to substitute in a more appropriate name – however he looked at it, Hilary just didn’t seem to fit – every time he recalled the story if he were to receive the required level of sympathy from those who would gather to hear him tell the tale of the day he withstood the might of the city’s most notorious armed bandit.

‘I said, you got it?’ he asked again, the volume increasing considerably as his desire to flee the scene as soon as possible noticeably grew.

‘Yes. Yes, sir,’ Jarrod responded, with all the exasperated panic of a pupil caught passing notes in class.

The knife released its pressure from his back, his organs sighing in relief as the man’s feet shuffled backwards before a rapid scraping noise indicated that he had swivelled and hurried away, the sound of high-paced walking resonating in Jarrod’s ears as he maintained his view of the slightly-irregular brickwork before him. Although there was little prospect of the man returning, he could not bring himself to trust that the danger had passed and remained stationary, counting the bricks before him and scanning the surface for the closest approximation to a middle-point that he could find. He padded his pockets, hopeful that somehow his possessions might have been slipped back in, as the man realised he had made a terrible mistake, but they were hauntingly empty and there was little denying that he was beginning to feel an anger that had deserted him when fear had seized its moment to shine. What troubled him was not the anger itself but his struggle to identify its source, to know for sure what it was that angered him.

He thought of Dawn tempting the speed cameras to find her guilty doing 32 mph as she raced into the city centre, expecting him to have his hands clasped round Nigel’s shirt, Hilary-like, as he bravely waited for her arrival. He thought of the patent office that never was, the Post Office masquerading as the central venue for their unfolding drama that afternoon, the alleyway that had proven so disappointing in his time of need. He thought of the bus that he so rarely took, the spit that lingered in his hair, the agonising need to run his fingers through it, the lack of patience he required to sit it out until the journey was over and he would be obstacle-free to brush away without fear. He thought of the ‘phone call he had answered, the toilet trip he had interrupted, the afternoon with Mansfield brutally ripped from his schedule. He had quit his job to be free from the demands of others, to give time to the reading and the writing that would finally give him the words he needed to make sense of the world as he saw it, and yet, as he stood staring down at his soiled suede shoes, he had found himself at the end of an alleyway counting the bricks on a wall while a man named Hilary rifled through his receipts while playing ‘Snake 2’ on the slightly-scratched screen of his second-hand mobile.

He turned around to face the world he knew he must return to but which now seemed to offer so little. Without a ‘phone available, the chances of keeping tabs on Dawn’s every movement seemed slim and the conversation he knew he must have with his bank seemed slightly more important than continuing the chase towards an invisible venue. There was something quite depressing about the fact that a random bank clerk – probably called Cheryl or Debbie – would be the first to hear of Hilary’s theft, that he would be forced to utter the words ‘I was mugged’ to a complete stranger who would probably take one quick look at him before concluding, ‘well, that is hardly surprising is it?’. There would probably be forms to fill in, questions to answer, signatures to sign, numbers to recite, passwords to fret over, while his eyes nervously watched the clock, wondering just how many diamond rings the man could purchase with every passing minute. Cheryl/Debbie would remind him, of course, that the beauty of chip and pin was that if he didn’t know Jarrod’s number then there was nothing he could do but this would do little to ease the fear of his next credit card bill listing twelve trips to Bermuda.

He rejoined the forward-thinking legs, paws and wheels that journeyed up the street, retracing the steps that he had taken only minutes earlier. Only, this time there would be no need for toddlers to fear, no reason for dogs to wince, as the steady pace of communal walking maintained the distances that would preserve the decorum of the pavement.

He glanced at his watch. Almost two o’clock.

There were still far too many hours left in the day.

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