The Detective's Daughter

13

Wednesday, 12 January 2011

Jack stepped on the crack in the paving. He blamed the man in the car waiting at the zebra. For a moment their eyes locked and Jack thought here was a man like himself, at home in the night-time streets. The darkness was his friend; like Jack he had nothing to fear.

Jack had stared at him – or where the man’s face should be because when the car trickled closer, its headlights dazzled Jack – and this was his first mistake. He should have paused to get his bearings, instead he took a step and that’s when he stepped on the crack.

He knew the walk to Earls Court off by heart and should not have been gulled into the stupid error. Every paving stone was part of his plan but the car made his concentration slip and with it his boot.

A crack was not a real line but his dictum covered gaps between paving slabs, edges and boundaries of objects and buildings, so had to include cracks. He stared down, teetering on a high wire; in the light of the lamp-post the paving slab was a map of London, the crack being the river and the fissures and runnels rat-runs. He was hot with shame: the driver would know the extent of his mistake. The car had gone.

Night, when most of London was asleep, was Jack’s best time of day. At the end of the rush hour, faces made way for lines: pipes and guttering, eaves and roof slopes, wavy lines of bunched cable and stubby lines of the sleepers beneath his cab. The line in the pavement straddled life and death and by trying to see the car driver he had tempted mortality.

If Jack’s colleagues liked him, and this was an overstatement, it was because he was prepared to do the ‘Dead Late’ shift that finished after midnight. Most drivers hated the endless tunnel hours, claiming the silence and continual darkness killed their social lives and their ability to be polite. Jack drew comfort from the overarching brickwork with its mutely held secrets of over a century and a half; he resented having to come above ground.

He had a social life.

The street was silent; once grand houses sunk to shabby hotels with plastic signage clamped to crumbling stucco. They highlighted the banality of his blunder. This awareness thrilled up his leg, making his heart flutter like a bat trapped in his chest. His instinct was to jump off, but he refused to side-step – literally – his responsibility. He remained on the line, taking in the significance. He must learn from his mistake; he made few, so such opportunities were rare.

The driver was out of sight so he would put him out of mind. Jack hugged into his coat and, walking, tried to retrieve his rhythm, relieved that at this late hour no one else had witnessed his transgression.

A young man slouched in the portico of a hotel, the firefly glow of his cigarette giving him away. There were no security cameras here; it was a blind spot. Jack wove between the parked cars, taking care to avoid splits in the camber and the lines of the drain grille. He flicked up a cigarette from the packet he carried for these eventualities; he preferred roll-ups.

Jack wore a pleasant smile. His polished brogue mounting the bottom step, he asked for a light.