I don’t know who phoned the police. I hadn’t slept, neither had Cassie. We’d lay in bed, side by side, like two calcified stalagmites, with our noses dripping, waiting to get interred in the same tomb. We couldn’t help but listen. And sometimes I’d get up, and sometimes she would, to see what Bob was doing now. There was little point. He was doing the same thing that he’d already being doing, shifting from foot to foot and keeping guard at the window. His spouting of random nonsense out of the window at passer- by must have eventually made one of them flip and phone the police. Or maybe it was me, or Cassie? We could no longer tell what we’d said or done.
There is a popular saying: you know you’re getting old when the policemen start to look young. That applied to the policeman who came to our door. He was the right age, mandatory slim build, and with his slicked back black hair looked as if he’d jumped straight from school into his costume as a police officer. They’d even given him a walkie-talkie. But his partner looked younger, if that was possible, maybe because she was so small. Her walkie-talkie hung like a Stephen King blockbuster on her belt. I couldn’t imagine those two overpowering our local lollipop man, never mind the hardened criminals of pulp-noir novels. Or maybe it was just me?
Cassie brought them into the house. There was no reason not to; none that I could think of. And then Cassie done that crying thing, that she does, as easy as making tea or coffee, and the two kids sitting on her couch, the two police officers, were bound to her by tears, as her newfound friends. As if that wasn’t enough, the two police officers radioed for another officer. He must have been there dad, an uncle or something, because he had grey hair and looked like a Sarge, at least that’s what they called him.
Sarge blew out his cheek. ‘That’s a tricky one Cassie,’ he said, because, of course, he became a friend too. ‘We could charge your son with a breach of the peace, if you were willing to press charges. Then when we get him into the cells we could ask the police doctor to have a look at him. The procurator fiscal will never press the charges anyway, but we can’t do anything unless you are willing…’
‘Don’t hurt him,’ said Cassie.
‘Right,’ said Sarge.
The three of them stood up, put down their coffee and tea mugs, and even moved the biscuit plate. I expected to hear some kind of struggle from upstairs. But Bob followed them down the stairs, as tranquil as a Tabby.
‘Sorry, we need to put the cuffs on,’ said Sarge to Cassie, and Bob held out his wrists like a cartoon Egyptian mummy.
‘I’ll phone you when I get him into the cells,’ added Sarge, as a parting shot.
‘Thanks,’ said Cassie, to all her new found friends and started crying again. And I was actually smiling, like an idiot, that the police had taken away somebody that I knew.
True to his word, Sarge phoned. He said the police doctor had given them the go ahead, to take Bob up to Gartnavel, for a more formal assessment of his mental health. And true to Cassie, she bubbled and cried and thanked God and Sarge for all that they had done.
A nurse from McKenzie ward in Gartnavel phoned Cassie later to get more details about Bob’s condition, because nothing, he said, made sense. But that made sense to us. It was as if we’d been in a decompression chamber and were now breathing fresh air.
‘I’ll never complain about the police again,’ I said.
Another nurse from McKenzie ward phoned later to ask Cassie the same questions that the other one had asked. But we didn’t care. When it happened once more, I even sniggered and said, ‘don’t they write anything down?’
It took me a while to admit I was knackered. Cassie looked even more tired. But we straightened out the house and tried to get it back into some kind of order. Bob had planked stuff. I’d find one half of a pack of cards in the bin and the other half would have just disappeared, as if by magic. Knives and forks grew out of the strangest places. We even tried to eat a main meal, but ended up just picking at a Chinkies, with plastic forks.
When the phone went again I thought it was Gartnavel wanting to do their good-nurse; bad- nurse routine, so that we’d crack and tell them everything we knew about Bob, but it wasn’t. It was Mary’s sister Erica.
Mary shook her head and swallowed back her tears. ‘Erica’s seen Bob on Dumbarton Road. She said he looks terrible and they’ll need to do something, because he cannae walk about like that. He didn’t even have any shoes on. She spoke to him, but he said “he was fine, there was nothing-a-matter with him and it was you that needed locking up”. He meant me,’ said Mary, ‘what we going to do?’
‘They’ll need to take him back. It’s as simple as that,’ I said trying to convince her and me.
Erica’s husband, Bob, phoned us shortly afterwards. Then Erica’s son Billy. Then a neighbour. I don’t know how he got our number. But they were all saying the same thing. Bob was wandering about Dumbarton Road, without shoes on, and talking rubbish. The young boys that hung about there were making a fool of him. Somebody would need to do something.
When I heard a chap at the door I almost expected it to be Bob. I looked out the window, but I could hear the crackle of the walking talkie. This time it was two different police officers. I brought them in, sure that Cassie would soon have some new friends. Maybe it was there age. Maybe it was because they were two middle aged males, that weren’t even Sarges, but they seemed more wary. They were suspicious of us, looking ahead and round corners as if someone unexpected was going to spring out. They plodded through the formalities of who they were, and wanted to know, who I was, and who Cassie was, and our relationship to Bob and whether we’d seen him recently or not- as if not had been an option.
But we didn’t really care. We were just glad to see them. But then the taller of the two said something that was really stupid, when Cassie explained that Bob was hanging about Dumbarton Road, he asked ‘do you know if he has a remote control device on his person?’
On his person. He used those words, as if he’d come straight from Dixon of Dock Green casting. And remote control device? That was Blakes 7. But he was a detective, so I think he figured from our facial expressions, that neither me or Cassie knew what he was talking about.
He was back to his Dixon of Dock Green speak. ‘You see, we’ve had a report that a remote control device went missing, from Mc Kenzie ward, about the same time your son absconded. The staff there reported it, and seemed to believe that he may have taken it.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ I said, not even swearing, or anything, ‘you’re actually here looking for a telly’s remote control device?’
‘Phone that ward,’ I said to Cassie when the police were away. ‘I cannot believe they allowed him to leave. He didn’t even have any shoes on. He picks thing up and put them down, picks things up and puts them down, and couldn’t tell you if he’s Santa or if it’s Christmas; they fucking let him go and they’re moaning about a stupid remote. I don’t believe that. Phone them!’
But Cassie was already on the phone to them. She didn’t need me to tell her. I don’t know whom she spoke to. But she placed down every word like a slab, with a straight edge, so that there could be no misunderstanding. I wandered away to make tea, every confidence she’d get it sorted.
‘I believe that this is the remote control device you are looking for,’ I said, holding out the gadget from our living room.
But a residue of anger still held Cassies’s features in place. She looked at me with cold blue eyes, as if I was a stranger.
‘They said that he was a voluntary patient, and it was up to him whether he left or not,’ she said.
