The Perfect 10

I can hear my heart and my head pounding, and another man’s voice maybe fifty feet behind us, shouting, but I can’t tell what. The Stranger lurches to his feet, as I am on all fours, and I scream, ‘Dougal, get behind me!’

The terrified mop of red hair and tears and bloody knees, and a bruised face with the Stranger’s fingerprints embedded in his cheeks, runs as fast as his ridiculous small legs will allow, behind me, before the Stranger is fully upright.

I can hear the cries of a man getting closer behind us, shouting, ‘You sick bastard, you sick bastard …’ and the pounding of his feet on the dirt. I look up and notice that the Stranger’s glasses have smashed, and his face, an average forty-five-year-old face, is red and stained with dirt and sweat. He looks down at me, with either confusion or fear or disgust, and then his eyes dart upwards and behind me at the menacing sound of larger feet than mine running towards us all, and I can clearly hear the chasing man’s voice now, shouting, ‘You sick fuck! You sick bastard!’

I raise myself onto my knees as the Stranger lunges forward. His dirty old badminton trainer makes sharp hard contact with my stomach, and seems to sink further in than it physically should. I scream in pain, folding forwards. He calls me a ‘bitch’, but in a tone that lacks conviction.

Dougal screams as I hear a blurred and breathless voice behind me yelling, ‘You sick fuck! I’ll fucking kill you!’

The Stranger turns and runs down the alley, towards the sunlight at the other end. I lie on my side and clutch my stomach, and moan at a pain I have never felt before. I have never been kicked in the stomach before. Dougal is behind me crying and pawing at my back. I push myself up onto knees that nearly buckle, and my stomach yells with pain, and my head thuds noisily with pumping blood and bruising. I turn and accept a screaming, crying red-faced child into my arms. He holds on to me tightly, then pushes me away, then holds on again.

The pounding of large feet slows, but passes us, and the chasing man shouts as he speeds up again, ‘Go back the other way,’ and then coughs so hard I am positive he won’t catch him.

I pull little Dougal’s head away from my chest, and hold it between my hands, and ask him if he is hurt. He nods his head, and continues to cry. I push myself to my feet, and holding Dougal in my arms, ignoring the thrashing pain in my stomach, and the thumping in my head, and the aching in my legs, and the tightening in my chest, I struggle back down the pathway, back the way we came.

Dougal quietens down slightly as we walk the long walk – we were two-thirds of the way down the alley. Where was the man planning to go? Did he even have a plan? Or was it just an impulse, a shocking unexplainable moment of opportunity?

Eventually I say into Dougal’s ear, ‘There’s your mummy,’ as we reach the sunlight. His face whips around to see his hysterical tall mousy mother clutching at her other two children. Dougal starts to kick and scream and struggle with me to be set free, and I lower him to the ground. He runs into his mother’s arms, and falls instantly silent, as she cries loudly for the both of them.

I lean against the wall, wiping stinging beads of sweat out of my eyes, clutching at my stomach, trying to control my breathing. It only takes a couple of seconds for me to start to cry as well.

I hear the wail of police sirens coming close, and see a small gathering of people across the street staring at this strange soap opera by the opening of the alley. A police car screeches up, and I shield my eyes from its electric-blue lights, which remind me of the flashing neon signs outside strip clubs in Soho.

The doors burst open as the wailing siren stops, and a radio full of static says, ‘We’ve got him this end.’

I wipe my eyes, and want my mum to hug me too. I want to tell her that a Stranger with broken glasses and a rotten smell hit me, and he kicked me, and I’m finding it all suddenly very personal. He wanted to hurt me. I cry because I am scared by what I did. I am scared at the thought of chasing a child snatcher, a Stranger, down that alley. I cover my eyes with my hands and feel sick, as a nauseous sliver of pride turns my stomach and a voice in my head whispers what I know before I can silence it. I ran fast.

I throw up a cup of black coffee and half a Skinny Blueberry Muffin on the street. That’s all there is.

Staring down at the pavement, I feel proud.

Cagney has the sick little fuck up against a wall, and the sick little fuck has the audacity to tremble. Cagney can’t punch him, but not because he doesn’t want to. Cagney wants to obliterate him, wants to bring the wall down upon him, wants to see his nose battered and black and pouring with blood, and to hear him moan as the life and the evil seeps out of him. But a policeman has a firm hold of Cagney’s arm at the elbow, and is forcefully prising him away. They should let him smash the sick little bastard apart with the fury of God; they can’t do it themselves, at least not in public, without being accused of police brutality, and sparking a peaceful protest of civil rights banners waved by bored housewives and fools. Cagney, on the other hand, has never been a policeman, so he can punch whomever he wants, if he is willing to take the consequences. And in this instance, the end very surely justifies the means. Still a constable pulls his arm away forcefully.

‘Let go of him. We’ll take it from here – let him go.’

‘You sick fucker, you want to mess with kids? They should let me kill you now!’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it,’ the man whispers as tears stream down his face.

The rage inside Cagney surges up like a twenty-foot Atlantic wave, but a second policeman grabs his other arm, and pulls him off, throwing him to one side. They spin the man around and slam the side of his face up against the wall, slapping a pair of handcuffs on him.

‘Whatever you do, it’ll be too good for him! There’s no justice any more.’ Cagney bends over with his hands on his hips, and coughs loudly. Speaking has pushed his body over the edge. His chest feels magnificently precarious; it may collapse at any moment. He feels bile rise in his throat, and throws up a little, at the end of the alley. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, stands up and leans back against the wall, clutching his sides.

He knows better than to run. A man in his condition shouldn’t run. There is no official medical term for his condition. He just knows it by the affectionate term ‘Jack Daniel’s’. He has a minor case of ‘Marlboro Reds’ as well, but he doesn’t think that one is terminal. Neither of his conditions need be life-threatening, as long as he remembers not to run.

One police car pulls off, carrying the man, and Cagney glares after it, trying to catch his breath. A policeman from a second squad car approaches him with his hands on his hips like a sheriff of a small town, about to quick-draw.

‘Are you ready to go, sir?’

Cagney looks up at Constable Cary Grant, and shakes his head, aware that nothing may come out when he tries to speak, that his trachea may have combusted from the heat and the fury in the back of his throat.

‘What?’ It is all Cagney can manage, with any clarity.

‘Sir, we’ll need you to come down to the station with us.’

‘Why?’

‘To file a report.’

‘Why?’

‘So we can prosecute that bastard for snatching kids.’

Cagney is repulsed at the constable’s efforts to appeal to some shared sense of old-fashioned ethics while nobody else is listening. He knows that in a court of law the policeman wouldn’t be calling that bastard a bastard – he’d be too busy looking over his shoulder at all the do-gooders and politically correct morons.

‘I can tell you everything I know here.’ Cagney inhales as deeply as he can, and concentrates on not falling to the ground. He steadies himself against the wall as casually as he can. ‘Some woman starts shouting outside my office …’ take a breath, ‘“He’s got my child,” et cetera …’ Breath. ‘I get downstairs, and some girl has already gone haring after him, but the mother is beside herself …’ huge breath, redness of the face, lung collapsing, ‘and what else can I do?’ Pause for emphasis, and oxygen. ‘But it’s the girl you want to talk to. She’d already got the kid back by the time I caught up with him.’ And relax. And fuck it, breathe hard.

Cagney looks down at his feet, wheezing, suddenly aware that he is impressed, which is rare these days. The girl was stupid, she was doubled up when he ran past, probably badly hurt, but it was impressive none the less. Stupidly impressive. Cagney nods his head once, in approval. And then shakes it. She got lucky. She couldn’t have fought him off if he’d gone for her instead. Some things are still meant for men to deal with.

‘You need to come and file the report, in the proper way.’

The constable looks at Cagney with confusion; Cagney shrugs it off. Why isn’t he grasping his hero moment? – that’s what this fool is thinking. But he doesn’t know Cagney, and it’s going to take a lot more than a bit of a jog and a man half his size to make him want to wear a medal.

‘I’m not involved, just speak to the girl.’

‘If you didn’t want to be involved you should have stayed in your office. Now we have to go.’

The policeman grabs Cagney’s arm, and Cagney gives up, allowing himself to be guided towards the police car. He has used up his energy store for the month. Cagney hasn’t been in a police car for ten years, but it smells the same – of fear and disinfectant – and he feels just as caged. He looks down at his lap as they stop at traffic lights, and passengers in passing cars stare in.

‘You did well today, mate,’ the officer remarks from behind the wheel.

Cagney ignores him.

The police radio crackles, and Officer Charm chats away for a minute, letting out a brief snort of laughter.

The radio lazes into a stream of static, and the officer turns round to face Cagney as the car sits at a pedestrian crossing, allowing an elderly couple with a black Lab to idle across like they own the road.

‘I don’t know what they’re putting in the coffee in Kew, but the girl didn’t want to come down the station either. She wanted to go to the gym! The pair of you have probably saved that kid’s life today, and we’ve nearly had to cuff you both to get you to make a report!’ The policeman laughs again, but Cagney looks at him with disdain. The officer turns back to the wheel, shaking his head, and muttering, loudly enough for Cagney to hear, ‘Rude bastard.’

Cagney concentrates on the view, appalled.

She wanted to go to the gym? She saves a boy’s life, and she wants to go and lift weights?

‘What was that?’ The officer partially turns his head towards Cagney in the back of the panda car.

Cagney repeats himself, loudly.

‘The world’s gone to hell.’