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CHAPTER TWO – GREEN STRIPE

JIMMY DIDN’T MOVE. He had landed on his shoulder and his eyes were still shut. Glass rained around and on top of him. He could hear it falling on the roof of the car that was asleep next to him, and he felt some hitting the side of his face. He lay there, waiting for the pain. Why hadn’t he blacked out? Then he thought maybe he had blacked out. Maybe he was in hospital and the whole misunderstanding about the men coming to get him had been cleared up.

But Jimmy knew that wasn’t true. He brushed fragments of glass away from his eyes and opened them. He could see the light of a street lamp winking at him. He didn’t understand why there was no pain at all. He wiggled different parts of his body. Everything moved just as he wanted.

He rolled his neck as one last test to make sure he wasn’t actually dead. He looked up to the sky, then saw his house and the broken window. Dad’s going to kill me, he thought. For a second, he thought he saw Mr Higgins’ bony nose peeking through next door’s curtains, but Jimmy’s eyes were still bleary.

Then he picked out two faces looking down at him out of the glass-lined hole. Those two really will kill me, he thought. But he didn’t get a chance to panic. That strange feeling crept up on him again, like a tropical wave filling his insides. It moved faster this time as it swooped up the side of his head. Jimmy tried to keep his mind switched on; he didn’t like surrendering control of his body to whatever this was. It may have saved his life, but next time it tried anything as stupid as throwing him out of a window, the result might not be the same.

He couldn’t stop it, though. Now that he knew he hadn’t been hurt by the fall, Jimmy wanted to spring up and run as fast as he could. But he didn’t move. His body stayed exactly where it was until the two heads moved from the window. They were coming down for him. Run now, please, he thought, but still he didn’t get up from the drive. Instead, he tucked his elbows into his chest and rolled over twice until he was under the car. The ground was cold, and bits of glass stuck into him as he spun over them. He felt around the undercarriage of the car and found a place for his fingers to grip. Then, with just the strength of his forearms, he pulled his whole body off the concrete. He hooked his toes under a fold of metal and waited.

There was dust and grime all over him. He could feel grease crawling down his arms and dripping on to his face. Slowly, he paid attention to his thoughts again: if he had run, the men would have jumped into a car and chased him down. But what instinct had told him to stay put and to roll under the car when the men weren’t looking? Then he noticed the ridiculous position he was in, clutching the underside of the car. Where had this strength come from?

Now the two men came running out of the open front door. Again, Jimmy could only see their shoes.

“No visual,” shouted the shorter man, looking up and down the road.

“You were meant to stop him getting out of the living room.”

“He used his strength against me.”

“That’s rubbish. He doesn’t know yet.”

“Then how did he break your finger and jump out of the window?”

“Put it in the report.”

Jimmy was getting more confused by the second. What didn’t he know yet? Then he heard the crackle of a walkie-talkie.

“The boy’s out. Establish a perimeter. We have no visual,” one of the men said. Jimmy saw one pair of feet run over to the back of a van that was parked in the street outside the house.

“What are you doing?”

“You don’t expect me to sniff him out do you?”

“The dogs won’t do any good, you fool,” was the response, but the van was already open. Jimmy heard barking and saw two sets of paws padding around the driveway. Then the dogs dipped their noses to the ground and Jimmy saw their faces, their mouths drooling in the lamplight.

“I brought down a sock,” said one of the men. Then he pulled both the dogs towards him on the long leashes. “There you go, boy. Good boy. Go fetch.”

The animals circled the car, creeping like thieves, every now and again lifting their faces for a second, then snorting back to the ground. Jimmy watched one of them getting closer, walking right along the side of the car. It stopped at the level of Jimmy’s face and sniffed around. He had read that dogs could pick up a scent better when it was wet, and the ground was definitely damp. Jimmy held his breath.

“Get those dogs back in the van. They’ll only cut their paws on the glass.”

Both dogs were pulled quickly away. Jimmy was relieved for the moment, but even more confused. Why hadn’t they picked up his scent? Jimmy sniffed, trying to recognise his own smell, then realised that was silly.

Then came more footsteps and a voice Jimmy knew. “Are the handcuffs really necessary?” It was Jimmy’s father coming out of the house.

“I’m afraid they are, Ian,” said one of the men. Jimmy held on tight to the car, his knuckles going white. He watched the feet of his family marching out to the street. First he watched his father’s, then saw that his mother had been allowed to put on some shoes instead of the slippers she had been wearing. Then came Georgie. She had also changed out of slippers and into trainers. But then there was one more pair of shoes. There must have been another suit that he hadn’t seen, who came in after Jimmy ran upstairs.

These shoes were an anonymous black, and shiny just like the shoes of the other two men, but something about them made Jimmy look twice. There was a pattern on the toe that he recognised from somewhere; he just couldn’t work out where. He watched them walk slowly away from the house. He was sure he had seen those shoes before. Then again, maybe the fall had given him strange ideas instead of bruises and broken bones.

Jimmy watched everyone stepping through the puddles. One of the pieces of glass on the ground offered him a strange, distorted reflection of the people walking about. Everything was upside down and he couldn’t make out their faces, but he could see their outlines. He wondered if any minute somebody could catch a glimpse of him reflected in the same glass, or even see his whole face if there was a puddle that caught the light.

Then Georgie unknowingly provided the perfect distraction. She picked up her foot and kicked out at one of the men, nearly hitting him. “You’re not taking me,” she shouted. Jimmy felt a jolt of excitement. “Help! Police!”

If anybody can fight, Georgie can, he thought, remembering all the times he’d been pinned on the bed with his head under her arm. He willed her to keep screaming; surely someone would hear and get help.

But then his father’s voice cut in. “It’s OK Georgie, we don’t want to cause trouble. Quiet now.”

“No, I’m not letting them take me!” She was shouting louder, and then she kicked out again, this time landing a sharp blow in the middle of the man’s shin.

“Hey,” said the man, grabbing his leg and rubbing.

“I’m not going with you!” And she ran. Jimmy watched her feet disappear from view and thought he could hear her shouting something. It sounded like, “I’m going to help Jimmy”.

They had a chance now. Maybe someone had heard Georgie shouting and would call the police. Maybe even Mr Higgins would decide not to be so deaf just when it was important, and get them some help.

“Let her go. We don’t need her,” said the man who had been kicked.

“Your leg OK?”

“Stupid kid. You take these two in the van, I’ll follow in the car.”

“And how’s your finger?”

“Shut up and put them in the van. The boy won’t get far.”

Jimmy wondered why the men didn’t seem to want Georgie. And why were they taking his parents? This was clearly no ordinary kidnapping. One suspicion had taken hold and wouldn’t let go: that something about Jimmy made him the target of men in suits with guns, and that this something was connected to his sudden ability to jump out of windows without getting hurt.

Two engines started up. He had to get a look at the van. It was his only way of finding out who was taking his parents away.

He eased himself on to the ground and rolled out, just in time to see the back of a car pulling away. There was no number plate. It was a long black car with blacked out windows. A large black van was in front of it. They prowled like cats, agonisingly slow.

As they turned at the bottom of the street, he saw the driver of the van in silhouette, with one front-seat passenger. That must be the third man, he thought. The one I didn’t meet.

The light of the street lamps glinted off the windows and something caught Jimmy’s eye. It was the only thing about the vehicles that wasn’t completely black. On the side of the van, towards the back, was a fine, vertical, green stripe. It was just thick enough for Jimmy to make out and no more than ten centimetres long. In the same place on the car was an identical green stripe. He saw it for just a snatch of time, so short that as soon as he had seen it he doubted himself. The van and the car turned the corner, disappearing as if they had never been there.

Jimmy walked back to his house and for the first time noticed that he wasn’t wearing any shoes. He picked his way through the broken glass, which wasn’t easy in the dark. The front door was locked. Of course it was. They all thought Jimmy was on the run somewhere, loose in the suburbs of London.

Everything seemed very quiet. There was no traffic, just the low hum of the city and the sound of lonely cars somewhere in the distance. One of them had Jimmy’s parents in it. Then he thought about Georgie. Where had she run off to? Did she think she was going to be able to find him? Jimmy shivered and wondered whether his sister was as cold as he was. At least she had shoes on.

He hauled himself up the wall at the side of the house and stretched over the gate to lift the latch. It swung open with a creak. He took another glance over his shoulder at the street, but couldn’t see anything. Then he turned to the path that ran down the side of the house. It was darker than he had ever seen it.

Jimmy told himself not to be so scared. It was his own house and he knew there was nobody there. Any noise, he told himself, was just a stray cat. He started repeating it in a whisper. “Any noise, it’s just a cat.”

As he made his way round to the back of the house, he started singing it quietly to the brightest tune he could think up. Barefoot, and singing about cats, Jimmy felt like an incompetent burglar. Car grease blackened his cheeks. When he caught his reflection in a side window he thought it was almost funny.

Knowing it would be locked, he tried the back door. Then he looked for an open window, but there wasn’t one. He considered climbing the front of the house to get back into his bedroom, but it would have left him too visible from the street. Instead, he picked up a large stone from his mother’s rock garden and slammed it through the kitchen window.

As much as there is any right way to break a window, Jimmy did it the wrong way. Afterwards, he remembered that people in TV shows always used their elbows, and put a blanket or something in the way. Jimmy had just pushed his hand straight through. Now there was more glass all over his clothes and falling on his feet. Some had hit him in the face. Fortunately none went in his eyes. What had happened to his ability to do things right? If he did have some strange power to escape dangerous situations it would be much better if it didn’t just disappear when he needed it.

Jimmy reached in, undid the latch and opened the window. When he had scrambled inside, the first thing he did was pick up the phone. There was no dialling tone. All he could hear was the blood surging through his head and his short breaths. He found his father’s mobile, but the casing was smashed. Jimmy quickly realised too that there wasn’t any power in the house. He wasn’t planning on staying anyway. He couldn’t just wait at home while his sister was in the streets on her own and his parents were being taken away in a van.

Jimmy tried to think quickly of all the things he might possibly need, but his heart wouldn’t slow down enough to let him. He didn’t even know where he was going or who he was running away from. He went upstairs for his school bag and threw the books on the floor, replacing them with a change of clothes and an extra jumper. Then he picked out some food from the fridge–as much as would fit in the bag. There were some chocolate bars as well, and he grabbed an apple, in case he really got desperate. He opened the freezer and reached around at the back until he found the wad of cash that his mother kept there for emergencies and pizza. Finally, he jammed his feet into some shoes, still wearing his wet socks with glass trapped in the fibres.

As a last-minute thought, he went looking for a torch. He knew there was one in the house somewhere. He ended up on all fours searching in the bottom of a kitchen cupboard. It was then that he caught sight of his wrist. There was a huge piece of glass sticking out from the base of his left hand. But it didn’t hurt. He hadn’t even noticed it until now: a lethal shard of glass.

He carefully pulled it out. It had gone deep into his flesh–more than a centimetre–but there was no blood. Jimmy wiggled his fingers. He clenched his fist. It seemed fine. There was a cut in his skin where the glass had been, but instead of being red, there was just a deeper layer of skin which looked sort of greyish. That had never been there before. He should have been bleeding to death by now. He considered putting a plaster over the cut, and even prodded it a few times, but decided that as it didn’t hurt, it would be a waste of time to administer first aid in the dark. He spotted the torch and calmly popped it in the top of his bag, then went to sit at the kitchen table.

The house was completely quiet. Jimmy had never realised how lonely silence could be. He stared at the door and couldn’t help imagining his parents walking in, all smiles and jokes. Two mugs waited by the kettle for someone to pour tea. But nobody was coming back. He had never felt so alone.

It’s all so strange, he thought, but the strangest thing of all was him. He went up to his bedroom and looked down at the fall he had made.

The glass shimmered like broken stars and a black tear dripped down Jimmy’s cheek. He wiped his face, smudging grease on to the back of his sleeve, then looked again at his wrist. What was this inside him? What had made him jump out of the window? He thought about why he hadn’t been hurt in the fall, and why he wasn’t bleeding now. A second later he heard his mother’s terror in his head. Why had his father let those men into the house? Why had his parents walked away with them so calmly? And why had Jimmy’s father not wanted Georgie to shout for help?

Jimmy picked up his bag, ran downstairs and out of the front door. If he was going to help his family he would have to get away from the house. And he needed the police. When the men in suits came looking for him, there would be more of them. Maybe he should learn to fight like he had in his bedroom, whenever he wanted. Otherwise he was just an eleven-year-old boy with a dirty face.

Jimmy started walking in the direction the van had gone. The suburbs of London swallowed him up; one semi-detached family house after another in a groaning mess. Thousands of people were asleep in their beds and Jimmy walked past their front doors trying to remember where the police station was. After a time he walked almost without direction. The streetlights just seemed to make the shadows darker, so that’s where he walked, wary of anything that looked like a black car with a green stripe.