The Planner(88)

As he huddled on the concrete bench in the corner of his concrete cell and listened to the sounds of the city being destroyed, James suddenly realised that he did have a worldview. It wasn’t quite a revelation, for he’d probably always had it. It probably wasn’t a philosophy either, and it might not be worked through enough for Felix, but it did have the advantage of being easy to articulate: people were fucking hopeless. It wasn’t just that they were terrible and cruel bastards, although they often were that as well, and the problem wasn’t death-knowledge or insatiable longings – the main problem was that they just weren’t any good. They were incompetent at living, they couldn’t be trusted to reason effectively, and almost everything they wanted made them unhappy.

It wasn’t obvious why this was the case – it could just be a cosmic misfortune or the deep strategy of a wanker God or, more plausibly, that humans had evolved to live in an entirely different set of circumstances from the ones they now found themselves in. Fuck knows. The important point was that it was true: they were no good at making decisions that would maximise the well-being of themselves or those around them. And so they shouldn’t be allowed to.

Immediately afterwards, he fell asleep. Perhaps it was all the vodka cocktails or maybe, as he’d hoped all those months ago, with revelation so came peace. He slept deeply, without dreaming, but not for that long, as deciding when to wake up wasn’t his prerogative. It must have been no more than six hours later when another police officer opened the cell door.

‘Okay, you’re going to have to get out now. We need the cell for someone more important.’

James padded down the corridor in his socks, following the officer back to the front desk. His possessions were already waiting for him, in a neat little pile.

‘Is that it then? Is it all right for me to go?’

‘Yep, you can go for now. I’m sure we’ll call you back in here before long for a proper chat.’

He was, thought James, exactly what you’d want a London policeman to look like. He was big and black, with a wide smile and flat shiny nose.

‘So you’ll be charging me?’ said James, not entirely sure what that even meant.

‘We’ll give you a call. It depends if anyone wants to press charges and what the witnesses say. You may just get a caution. Although young Ravi might have something to say as well.’

‘Ravi?’

‘Ravinder. The officer you lamped. If he wants to take it up, then you’ll be in trouble. We don’t take that kind of thing lightly.’

No, James could see that. It wasn’t like working in town planning, there was solidarity here. The class system wasn’t going to do him any favours either. If he was an Etonian who had gone on the rampage at Oxford it might be a different matter. Plus, as ever, he was far too old – this had been a young man’s crime and might have been treated as one if he had in fact actually been a young man.

‘Don’t worry too much. We’ve got enough going on. Come back as soon as we call you, say sorry, bring flowers and a box of chocolates. It’s not up to me, but I’m pretty sure you’ll just get a caution and that will be the end of it.

James put his shoes on and left the police station. He was, he had to admit, completely satisfied with the level of service he had received. The cell might have been small but it was clean, and the officers had been well mannered and highly trained. He felt the early morning sun and the air and his spirits, exhausted as they were, gave a little surge. He couldn’t quite understand why he didn’t feel much worse than he did. He was on Stoke Newington High Street, and he knew that somewhere not all that far away must be his favourite sex club, but the only geographic landmark he could recognise was the sun, plump and warm as it rose above the City of London. He started to walk towards it, southwards, towards Southwark. He was, despite all that had happened, not without hope.

He turned his phone on. There was nothing from Felix but there was a text message from Harriet, sent just before midnight: ‘That was a bit mad! What happened to you? Hope things okay xx’. He sent a message back: ‘I’ve just got out of police station. Are you ok? Where did you go?’

If nothing else, she ought to be impressed with that. He had, after all, spent a night in a police cell and he had done it for her. That was quite a gesture – heroic even, by modern standards. But when the phone rang in his hand ten seconds later, it wasn’t Harriet. It was Rachel.

‘Jesus Christ. You’re in so much fucking shit it’s almost unbelievable.’





16

29 March