Andy's Blog

James wrapped his hand around the hammer's handle, and his world exploded. "Thumper," said Officer Haynes, and James' sullen demeanour was split by a reflexive grin. Almost nobody used his real name, these days, bar the few local coppers who'd got to know him in their professional capacity, Haynes among them. It was always an obscure pleasure, but the thrill only lasted a moment before his frown returned. Smiling made his bruised eye ache.   Haynes crouched down outside his patrol car to address the fourteen-year-old ragamuffin in the back seat. "What was it this time?" he asked.   "They said I wasn't real," James replied sulkily. "They said I didn't have a mum."   Haynes clicked his tongue and looked over at the other boys, being tended by his partner and a first-aider. Between the four of them they had something like a decade and four hundred pounds on James, but they'd somehow still come off worse. Picking on a kid...

There was a tension in the air.   James Foster navigated the baking, crowded streets of London in June with an ease borne of decades of experience. Of course, it helped that he was a man over six feet tall and notably broad, and even in this notoriously self-involved city the crowds naturally parted before him. Not that he was particularly aware that this was unusual. As far as James was concerned, this was just what crowds did when you walked towards them - this bubble of personal space into which nobody would dare trespass. That's simply how crowds work! Otherwise people would be walking into each other all the time.   As the sun beat down on the crowds James could feel the familiar pressure of a building storm, the clouds gathering above the tower blocks determined to reach critical mass and turn the winding roads into a mess of new rivers. It was always a distraction, like the clouds were gathering inside his head, squalling and clamouring for attention. He squinted up a...