Free Stuart by Alexander Masters

falling bomb, some more:

    Above you, the noises could be of people just leaving the staircase at the top; or, equally, stomping across the floor directly above. Sound is impossible to place.
    Push through this door, out of the stairwell into Level D, and you will see in front of you 15,000 square feet of car park that is completely empty.
    This is where the homeless sleep.

    â€˜â€™Ere, Jonny, stop pissing on that bloke, he’s trying to snooze.’
    â€˜Can I have another sarnie, pl
eaaa
se? I’ve only ’ad three…’
    This is where the homeless sleep.
    â€˜Coffee with five sugars, love, ta.’
    â€˜Jonny! Get over here and tell Linda…’
    â€˜Aww,
that’s not fair.
Penny’s
had six.
And
she’s nicked a burger and chips from that geezer outside Gardenia. Gooo on, jus’
one
more…’
    â€˜Is that five? You sure? Put another one in, just in case, pet.’
    â€˜JONNY! He don’t want ketchup poured over him neither! He’s not a frigging hot dog! Come here, it’s important, tell Linda about Psycho. Honest, Linda, not joking, he’s a nutter–he’s taking over Level D. A danger to everyone. Giving us a bad name. Like, we don’t even dare go down to Level D no more. You don’t know him? Where have you been the last five months? JONNY!’
    Linda was one of the two members of the Cambridge Homeless Outreach Team in those days. Her job was to walk round the city streets in the evenings talking to anyone who looked homeless: i.e., anyone selling the
Big Issue
or three months away from a bath or stationed in public spaces at lower than a standing position. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she ran the soup kitchen in the market square. This service is gone now, but in the late 1990s it was not only a charitable provider of food and hot drinks to rough sleepers, it was the best way to learn street gossip.
    That evening, after the soup kitchen was locked away, Linda met up with her work colleague, Denis Hayes, an ex-film cameraman, and went to seek out Psycho.
    For outreach workers, the best way down to Level D is by the car ramps, because it brings each floor gradually into view–allows them to assess the situation slowly and not to pounce in on it through small yellow stairway doors at one end.
    â€˜I always think if I wanted to do a film again, the scene that night would be the opening shot,’ remembers Denis. ‘I’ll never forget that image. It was, like, co
oo
old. Me and Linda go right down until we get to the last bit, Level D, and that would be how I’d start. Coming down the ramp from Level C above, panning slowly across this eerie, vast space. Empty car park. Left to right: not a car, not a car, not a car, nothing, nothing, and then…
Psycho!
    â€˜What he reminded me of was an IRA hunger striker. Skeletal, in his cell, all his things around him. He was like that man in
Birdie,
crouched on the end of his bed. Nobody could make him up to look how he did at that moment. Angry as hell. Hated me. Hated Linda. Hated everything from the fucking dust upwards.’
    Psycho!

8
    Stuart says it is a ‘blinding’ idea.
    He is in my study again, standing by the piano, swiping the air with his arm in excitement. He and I and half a dozen street homeless smackheads and drinkers will sleep rough on the concrete pavement outside the Home Office, corner the Home Secretary when he arrives for work on Monday morning, and
force
him to release Ruth and John. That’s Stuart’s inspiration.
    Always the first to discourage unnecessary illegality, Stuart points out that we will have to warn the police about what we are going to do, but not tell them until after 4 p.m. on the previous day, ‘because that way the courts will be shut and it’ll be too late to get an injunction what can stop us. Then there’s the security cameras.’
    I look quizzical.
    â€˜All over. And that’s not counting the