Looking for Dustin Hoffman, and Finding a Body in the Park

This happened to me last week, and is a story provisionally called Looking for Dustin Hoffman, and Finding a Body in the Park. On getting up at 6am and slowly leafing through a magazine over a coffee, I remembered from the news the night before that Dustin Hoffman was in town, and more importantly, that he owned a house in Kensington. As I was thinking idly about what the rich and famous would do to get about without being recognised, it suddenly occurred to me that, if you were Dustin Hoffman, perhaps you would get up very early and go down the road to Hyde Park, to have a look at the lake, the Palace, the swans and all that. So, suddenly finding some enthusiasm, I grabbed on my running gear and headed up the road.

I was still in a low-key morning mode. Jogging sounds too extreme - it's more like a ridiculous jokey walk as I try to avoid running on the concrete. At 630am, the shops are opening, things are introverted and tucked into their own wrappings. All except for the few office workers striding assertively forward, eyes engaged, suits and sneakers. I was somewhere in-between, still sleepy, still on a quest.
The best part is getting to the Park, selecting the route and opening up onto the soft grass with a looser running stride. I chose to go through the trees, gigantic dark park sentries, forming a veritable border along Knightsbridge. Their wafting elongated pink blossoms belied their monumental structure. I reminded myself of the mission - to find the Marathon Man. So, Hoffman style, I got into the ‘running zone’ – a quasi-meditation state embedded in the rhythm and repetition of the running stride. Loosening the shoulders and upper chest, breathing from below, letting it in, exhaling loudly.

Getting up the slight incline, the park is actually quite buzzing with joggers. I wondered if I’d left it too late, my ‘early bird’ was suddenly looking at a crowded field. Any half-famous celebrity would have coolly got out of there half an hour ago. No matter, I was enjoying it by now.

As I neared the lake, I could see a dark shape on the pebblecrete path, like a large black rubbish bag someone had left there. As I got nearer, the rubbish bag developed two boots and a pair of trousers, and I wondered what someone had done to leave a motorbike outfit piled there on the ground, like it had just had an accident. As I circled carefully from about 10m, I could work out red rubber gloves, then again circling there was a head, with hair, a body, a crumpled mess lying strewn like a crumpled piece of rubbish in an impossibly distorted wrecked position, tumbled, the limbs could not fit together like that in one piece, pieces were broken, it was a snapped dropped body, a person, lifeless.

Crumpled like a thrown ball of paper. Arms twisted the top half in one direction, the bottom in another, no human life to hold it together. Ghastly, thrown and discarded, wrecked cavity…like it had been dropped off at speed by an impatient malevolent force, I stared in disbelief. To get a grip I retreated backwards, scanned for others.

Joggers nearby were indifferent, locked into their own worlds, with headsets, eyes focussed on the goals ahead. Couldn’t they see what was there? I ran towards the gate, towards the Park care truck I’d seen earlier.

There was a young woman jogging towards me, beaming and brightly brushed, headset on, backpack full of office clothes, running towards the city. ‘I’m sorry, do you have a phone, I think there’s a dead body over there’ – she stopped, shocked, disbelief. Why was I sorry - I felt insensitive, I should have thought to break it to her gently. Gasping, with quick jerky movements she upturned her bag, fumbled for her phone and dialled 999. Somehow she was feeling the panic and shock I could not feel, I felt indifferent to. Through tears she got emergency services to come right over, ‘can you describe him’ – ‘no I cant go there, it’s too horrible, I can’t look, his hands are bright red’ – ‘excuse me’ I tried to interject, ‘they are red gloves he’s wearing’…..’Excuse me’, I almost felt like saying, ‘can I have the phone, that was MY dead body, I found him, can I talk to them’, but she was handling it, it would be a good story at the Office for the rest of the week. In the midst of this we both steeled ourselves to look closer at the motionless lump of ex-person lying there.

Other people were running past, stopping for a moment, doing a brief jogging semi-circle, hands to mouths, then running on. One man evidently a tourist even came over to take photos, studied shots from careful angles. We both looked at each other aghast, ‘can’t believe people, who would do that’ ‘I cant believe people are just ignoring it’. The operator maintained a steady flow of calm. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a foot move, but dismissed it, or perhaps couldn’t see the point of changing the course of events, I was almost needing something to shock me.

The ambulance emerged from the pink blossom perimeter. Our waving arms drew it to us magentically. The ambulance arrived and as its shadow pulled over the decimated man, he unfurled like a jack in the box. The impossible angle unfolded into a contortionistic acrobat, with maniacal dreadlocks, red rubber gloves who kept on performing crazy manipulations. As the ambulance men crouched to reason with him he told them to ‘fuck off’.

As I jogged away from the scene of the crime a fellow who had observed the scenes’ resolution jogged beside me and said he had seen the same guy yesterday and thought he was dead. ‘did you call anyone’ I asked him, ‘no, he’s just a tramp but its good that you did at least’. As I jogged back I reflected that we may have just inadvertently been had by some derelict performance artist, some performance Mike Moore, and I hoped that the young woman’s day wasn’t too ruined. And I took one last rueful look for Dustin Hoffman amongst the people sitting on the park bench. I felt unsettled all day, and went back that sunset to sketch the white swans on the pond.