‘Help me,’ said Harriet. ‘James – help me. They’re hurting me. Help me. Fuck. Please help me.’
James didn’t have any choice. If she had been screaming, he may have been able to ignore it, but she was asking for help, and so he would have to help her. He would have to intervene – it was what planners did, an unfortunate compulsion of duty. He spent most of his life observing, but essentially he was an interventionist – it was his job to get involved. Plus, he was on very strong drugs, which were impairing his judgement.
James was never able to fully describe what happened after that – not with anything as primitive as words, which in any case had never been his strength. A five-million-pound work of contemporary art, an avant-garde jazz opera or a beautiful game of pinball might represent it with more precision and clarity. Striding into the centre of the room, he could at least take advantage of his height. Policemen weren’t tall any more, and he was able to tower above them, to configure himself into an imposing and belligerent position. But, and he had forgotten this, although he was very tall, he wasn’t all that strong. Nor did he have any technique or training for this kind of thing – after all, he had gone to a fucking grammar school.
The policemen released Harriet and rushed towards him, while James clenched his fists and threw his arms forward without any great skill. It was, therefore, bad luck that the first thing to happen was that James punched one of the policemen directly in the throat. It was, everyone could see, an act of terrible violence and there was a gasp of appreciation from the room. Surprised and hurt, he had not so much fallen but squatted down, in obvious distress and pain. James wondered if he should now try and help, or else maybe start to kick him.
It was a shame that the officer that James had felled was the young Asian rather than the large white man. Not just symbolically – it might also have given him a chance to escape. For the one still standing was stronger and much better at fighting. He attacked James with great ferocity and competence. There were no idiotic punches, instead he seized James by the shoulders and pushed him hard into the wall. James in turn grabbed his chest and pushed back as hard as he could, and as he did so, another canvas fell loudly to the floor.
And then, suddenly, just as they’d got started, they both stopped as if by mutual agreement. The fallen officer slowly raised himself and started to unstrap something from his belt. The other one took a step or two back. James, who hadn’t really known what he was doing from start to finish, put his hands up in the air.
‘I think you had better come with us,’ said the policeman.
James nodded. That did seem the sensible thing to do. It had to be more sensible than fighting. The rest of the room was no longer quiet. There was a very loud and disagreeable humming, as everyone started talking at once. As far as James could tell, the consensus seemed to be that he had disgraced himself, but not in a good way – not in a contemporary art way. There was no need for him to be held – he very badly wanted to get out of there. His head down, he walked out between the police officers and into their car.
What with his geography degree, his certificate in town planning and his detailed knowledge of building standards, James was in a better position than most to analyse the spatial arrangements of his police cell. He wondered if it was any larger than the statutory minimum. It certainly felt small, but there again he was so very tall.
It was, James thought, probably an encouraging sign that they hadn’t taken much interest in him when he had arrived at the police station. An officer with very good manners had taken his details and asked James to empty his pockets. Another one had taken his phone, his shoes and his trouser belt, and escorted him to the cell. A minute later, he returned and kindly gave him a plastic cup of water and a grey cotton blanket. After that, they seemed to largely forget about him.
But for someone who was still trying to cope with the after-effects of cocaine, a night in a police cell was hardly ideal. He needed to embark on a long, meditative walk, but he could cross the floor of the cell in just three steps and there wasn’t much else he could do, except sit on a narrow bench. It would have been easier to put up with if they’d locked him up with Harriet, but she had fled. He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but she had managed to evade arrest. It occurred to James that that was a serious offence, although probably not as serious as punching a police officer.
It was dark and cold – it seemed a very long time ago that he had been overheating in an art gallery. The Metropolitan Police Service probably procured ten thousand grey cotton blankets each year, with unit cost being the only consideration. It was insubstantial, not large or thick enough, and offered very little warmth or comfort. Another problem was that it was also incredibly noisy. He had hoped that the prisoners in the other cells would be asleep or morbidly depressed, but in fact they were making dreadful sounds, like primates in a Victorian zoo. He was almost certainly the best-behaved prisoner in the whole building. Meanwhile, out on the streets of East London he could hear sirens and horns, shouts of rage, drunken chants and threats of violence, maybe even a helicopter. For a moment he wondered if a riot or an attack on the station was taking place, but no – it was just the sound of the greatest night of the week, the sound of a highly successful urban economy.