Dead Men's s Boots

I’m arresting all five of you for the attempted abduction of a mentally ill person against his-’ Kenneth clamped a massive hand on my lapels. I swatted it vigorously away. He came back again with both hands, and although I parried again he managed to get a better grip this time and keep his purchase.

He outweighed me by a good fifty pounds: I could have taken him, but only by playing dirty, and getting myself banged up for assault at this stage of the game wasn’t a risk I could take. I let him pull me aside and pin me into a corner of the cell while Paul got the door open again and he and his colleague manhandled the massive steel frame through it, hindered rather than helped by Webb’s unnecessary instructions and ubiquitous presence. ‘To the right, Paul. No, to the left . . .’

‘Mind your feet, Doctor Webb,’ Paul rumbled, and then there was an agonised yelp from Webb that did my heart good. But they were out in the corridor now and picking up speed: my delaying tactics had foundered.

‘Okay, boyo, you just stay put,’ Kenneth growled, wagging his finger sternly in my face. But as he turned to follow the others I shouldered past him and got to the door first.

We trotted along the corridor in a strange and unwieldy procession: Paul and the other nurse pushing the frame along after Doctor Webb, the ugliest drum majorette in history, flanked on one side by Jenna-Jane’s tame lawyer and on the other by me, with Kenneth bringing up the rear.

When we got to the reception area they faltered to a stop, staring out through the double doors onto the small apron of the Stanger’s front drive. In theory, I knew, there should have been a van waiting there, its back doors open and a ramp in place, with a happy crew of psychiatric interns and burly removal men all ready to take Rafi aboard and whisk him away to his new life in Paddington.

The van wasn’t there, though. Presumably it was still out on the road, or stranded at the Stanger’s gates: meanwhile the drive had been colonised by three or four hundred young men and women who were singing ‘You can’t kill the spirit’ with as much wild energy as if they knew what they were talking about. They were mostly in casual dress, but black T-shirts predominated and on a lot of them I could pick out the slogan DEATH IS NOT THE END.

‘Holy fuck,’ Paul muttered, under his breath.

‘What . . . ?’ Webb demanded, words seeming to fail him for a moment. ‘Who are all these people?’

‘Mostly the local chapter of the Breath of Life movement,’ I told him helpfully, relieved that they’d all made it on time. ‘I met some of them a couple of days ago. Really nice guys, once we’d got past the small talk and the mutual fear and loathing. They were fascinated when I told them what you and J-J were up ›nd Reto.’ I didn’t mention the frightener I’d had to put on Stephen Bass – threatening to tell his tutors and the police about his hobbies of vandalism, stalking and criminal damage – before I could get him to agree to this. That seemed to fall under the heading of a trade secret. ‘Oh, and I think those guys over there,’ I went on, ‘are from a national TV network. You see the letters on the side of the camera? They stand for Beaten, Buttfucked and Clueless, and they’re talking to you.’

Webb shot me a look of horrified disbelief and opened his mouth to speak. But his words were lost to posterity, because at that moment the double doors of the Stanger swished open and Pen strode across the threshold, bang on cue.

‘Where’s my husband?’ she demanded, projecting beautifully for the cameras and standing dead centre between the doors so that they slid impotently backwards and forwards on their tracks, unable to close on her. ‘What have you done with my husband, you bastards? I want him back!’

Webb blinked, his jaw dropping. He turned, at bay, to face Pen and took a step towards her, but then stopped as flashbulbs popped out on the drive – one, two, then a whole cluster all at once. The paparazzi were moving into position on either side of the doors so that they could enfilade anyone coming out from a variety of photogenic angles.

‘Miss Bruckner!’ Webb struggled with the polite form of words, forcing them out through clenched teeth. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You and Ditko aren’t married. You don’t even—’

‘He’s my common-law husband!’ Pen shouted. ‘We’re married in the sight of God! And I’m not letting you put him in a concentration camp!’

Webb was struggling to make any sound at all now, his complexion getting darker and more alarming by the second. ‘The – the MOU in Padddington is not a – a—’

‘Oh, look what they’ve done to him!’ Pen wailed, pointing at the frame and Rafi’s glum, limp form hanging in the centre of it.