Thirteen (14 page)

Voices came at him:

“You're in shock, lad. You should sit down.”

“Keep him away from the car.”

“His mother's in there.”

Hatfield was laid on the ground. Adam could hear him saying the words
police
and
stop
, but in his civilian clothes the man looked like a delirious and anxious father.

Fire again tried to reach Adam. One little spark hit the thin finger of gasoline, and the line of flames started heading back toward the gas tank.

Hatfield, still on the ground, stretched his arm across the highway. “Fire—there will be a fire.”

Adam edged away from the car.

There was a panicked flurry of activity; requests and warnings were shouted with concern and sometimes excitement; three people appeared with fire extinguishers and sprayed the car, unevenly but effectively.

All attention was on the immediate entertainment.

Adam looked across to the other lane. Traffic crawled past, faces turned toward the drama. Free theater.

He staggered toward the barrier that ran down the median.

“Are you okay?” asked a woman, wandering over.

“Yes, yes. I need some air, that's all,” said Adam.

In the distance a siren wailed. People looked down the lines of vehicles to see a police car threading its way toward the scene, followed by an ambulance. Another distraction.

Adam sat on the central crash barrier. Further along he could see it had buckled and was surrounded by small pieces of debris, but here it was smooth and cool to his touch. As more people came forward Adam could see the scene becoming confused, individuals growing more interested in the event and less in the specifics of helping.

Another woman perched next to him and said, “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I just want to sit away from what has happened, quietly. Please let me go over there.” Adam nodded toward the far side of the highway, across the opposite lane, away from the accident. “Please.”

People rarely refuse children's requests. They usually help kids in trouble. Anxious, she glanced over at the crashed car, but who was she to stop the boy? She only made a half-hearted effort.

Pushing her arm away, Adam quickly dragged himself over the barrier, then lurched between the traffic edging south, the direction he had traveled from.

Chief Inspector Hatfield turned to look for Adam. He sat up, wincing. “Adam? Where is Adam?” he asked.

“Who?”

He thought for a second, cunning slipping into his mind. “My son. I want my son brought here.”

Someone spotted Adam on the opposite lane. He was being hooted at by cars, then a bus obscured him from view.

“Help me up,” said Hatfield. “Help me up
now
.” He shuffled forward like a drunk. “I want that boy back here!”

Adam glanced back after the coach had passed, still standing between two lines of crawling traffic. He could see Hatfield rising and pointing.

A red Nissan Micra passed in front of Adam as he reached the very far side of the road. Six lanes separated him from Hatfield now, but their eyes still met through the traffic and the crowd.

“Get that boy!” screamed Hatfield. Thoughts of what Coron would do were beginning to well up in his mind, half formed, but preceded by acute desperation coated in fear. “He is not my son. I am a police officer.” Hatfield poked around inside his jacket and pulled out ID, waving it vigorously in front of those around him.

A police car and an ambulance were stopping nearby.

Adam stared back as a tractor-trailer began to rumble past, the cab pulling a long white tank bearing a skull-and-crossbones symbol. He was hidden for a few seconds.

Hatfield shouted at the police officers who leaped from their car. “I am Chief Inspector Hatfield. Get that boy, now!”

The police looked across the lanes of traffic as the white trailer with its hazardous-chemicals symbol left their line of sight.

Adam wasn't there.

“He's over there somewhere. Check the trees. Call for support. Anything. I need that boy caught.” Panic's bony fingers clawed at Hatfield's insides as he hobbled forward, staring up and down the highway for any sign of Adam.

“Adam!” he shouted. “Adam! Adam! Adam!”

The ambulance crew looked around from their place by the crumpled car and one of them went across to Hatfield. “Sir . . .”

The police officers ran, leaping in front of the cars and running up the bank. Small trees dotted the area, but Adam wasn't behind any of them. They reached the top of the slope. On the far side was a field scattered with cows.

“This is stupid,” said one. “He can't be there. He must be on this bank. You go left and I'll go right.”

Hatfield hobbled toward the center of the road, brushing off the paramedics trying to stop him.

After running for a couple of hundred yards in either direction, the policemen on the bank turned to the chief inspector, shrugged and held up their hands in a gesture of defeat. The boy had disappeared.

“Adam!” cried Hatfield uselessly into the pale sky.

Meanwhile, Adam was crouched down, grimacing as he clung to the back of the white tractor-trailer cab, as the road whistled past at fifty miles per hour. He held on to two thin strips of metal with stiff fingers, his legs vibrating between two precarious footholds. He was cold and felt faint.

Immediately behind him was a tanker full of something dangerous. But he was steadily leaving the real danger behind.

Chief Inspector Hatfield made three calls. The first was to the Old School House. Then he called the cell phone of a very senior police officer. Finally he spoke to his police station.

After about fifteen minutes the truck carrying Adam angled off the highway and slowed. A number of other long vehicles came into view. Adam found that he had seized up in one position. Then, as the driver dropped to the ground on one side, Adam did the same on the other, holding his back like an old man.

He ran to the trees beyond the parked trucks. The area was bleak, damp, metallically cold, lifeless. The trailers were obstinate weights dragged by aggressive engines. Drivers left their cabs in a hurry and returned reluctantly, wandering past oily puddles and soggy plastic bags. Adam felt a loneliness that he had never experienced before. The world had gone wrong.

In the distance sirens passed.

Adam sighed and held his head in his hands. It was dark. He had no money and no phone. He wished that he had taken some of the money from the shed. Just a tenner would have made all the difference. He had no ticket for London, no food, and only the clothes he stood up in: jeans and a blue Superdry top, the only suitable things that could be found that morning. The morning—so long ago, and things had seemed bad then.

Continuing the journey in the same way he had escaped the accident was not an option. Though he was desperate enough to take the risk, he could easily fall off and certainly would be
spotted when the truck reached London. People would point. The police would be called.

He could steal something. Money? Adam didn't worry about whether this was right or wrong; suspected of murder, and at risk of abduction, what was a little bit of theft?
And I once felt bad about taking a packet of Toxic Waste from Mr. Rawley's Corner Shop
, thought Adam wryly.

Food from Dumpsters? Adam feared he would have to get used to that. Scavenging was the future until . . . until . . . 
until when?

He gazed into the distance as another bus pulled in, spitting out its crowd of passengers.

His mind turned over as he watched: each bus, regardless of the company, followed the same pattern. Tickets were rarely checked when people got back on. Children's tickets were
never
checked.

Adam had to move quickly; he had heard somewhere that criminals had to move fast after a crime. Or was that the police?

In the bathroom Adam noticed that most of his injuries were hidden by clothing, though his hands were grazed and dirty. He had a large bruise on his right shoulder and one on his right thigh. There were three cuts on his face, the worst just below his mouth. He dabbed at it but it still leaked blood. He shoved clean tissues into his pockets.

Others in the bathroom gave Adam wary stares. Although he was only thirteen, he seemed to provoke fear rather than concern.

Only one man, a burly truck driver, spoke: “You need to be more careful, son.”

Adam wandered outside toward the busses, past CCTV surveillance.

At the same time, a police car, blue lights flashing, was heading down the highway to check the service station. It had taken the police twenty-five minutes to widen their search.

Adam saw that one bus was about to leave. The driver was
standing in front of the vehicle, drawing on a cigarette. An old lady was asking him something. “All right, my dear, I'll get it for you,” the man rasped, then went to the low side door where the luggage was stored.

Adam saw his chance. He walked forward, head down, straight on to the coach and down the aisle. Those who saw Adam didn't notice him. A mother was feeding her daughter a cheese-and-pickle sandwich; a university student was searching for something on an iPod; an old man with a tie was engrossed in a
Daily Mail
article.

The siren was closer now, pulling into the service station.

Adam slumped into his seat near the back of the bus as the driver threw away his cigarette butt and clambered back on board.

“All here?” the driver asked, being friendly. He was nearly at the end of his journey.

“Yes,” came the collective dull response.

“Anyone here who shouldn't be? Anyone forgotten?”

“No,” said with slightly more enthusiasm.

Police officers strode into the service station as the coach pulled out.

Adam saw the clock outside Victoria Station: 8:47 p.m. Hunger ate at him, but he dismissed it, looking instead at a man sitting at the side of the pavement with a cardboard sign in front of him: Homeless and in Need of Help.

Adam understood that he was in the same position. He started approaching people, “Can you spare some change so I can get home?”

Six of the first twelve pedestrians ignored Adam; the other six said “No” (aggressively, with stares) or “Sorry” (sympathetically, but with similar stares).

He persisted. “Can you spare some change so I can get home?”

The thirteenth person stopped as if he had been expecting
the question. He was a young man with glasses and rosy cheeks. He gave Adam the smile of one bubbling with contentment and mild amusement. “Yes, I can spare some change. It's my responsibility to
give
; it's
your
responsibility to
use it wisely
.” He reached into his pocket. “Please take this as well. God bless you.” He handed Adam a small leaflet entitled
Jesus Saves
and a fiver.

Five pounds! Adam had always dismissed a fiver as barely sufficient for popcorn and Coke at the cinema, but now it seemed like riches.

He immediately bought a cheeseburger and caught a bus that crawled through the packed streets of London toward Trafalgar Square. He looked at the people surrounding him and sighed; they seemed to have so little to worry about.

Buses passed Trafalgar Square monotonously, pulse after pulse, full of solemn travelers: thousands of people and a misty night to get lost in. The twinkling city lights were wrapped in gray.

A bus stopped; a child stepped off and dashed across the road as the green man flashed. Brown hair, slim, wearing a blue top.

Two policemen saw. “Hello,” one said. “I think we've found our boy.” The other spoke quickly into his radio as they broke into a run. They put out their hands to slow the traffic and crossed toward the lions and Nelson's Column.

The suspect walked quickly across the square.

“Let's get him.” They darted forward and grabbed, forcing the child to the ground. There was no resistance.

“Adam Grant?”

“No, I'm not Adam
anyone
,” came a girl's voice. “You've got
real
problems if you can't tell boys from girls.”

She was a girl of about thirteen.

“Sorry,” one of the policemen said, helping her to her feet. “Very sorry.”

Then back on the radio: “False alarm. False alarm.”

Adam threw a piece of gravel at the window. It made a sharp tapping sound and then another as it fell down onto a watering can. He huffed.
Damn. Come on
. He threw again, making more of a clunk than a ping. There was movement inside the room, and the curtain twitched. Next time the stone ricocheted off the window inches from a peering face. Adam waved his arms silently, vigorously.

Asa appeared at the window. “Adam?” He knew somehow that this was an occasion that required whispers.

“Look. I can't explain. I need your phone.”

“Have the police let you go?”