by Neil White
I grabbed someone’s arm, a young woman, chain-store clothes, her eyes scared and upset.
‘What’s happened?’
She stopped, bent double, panting. ‘Someone’s firing into the street.’
I looked back up the road. ‘Is anyone hurt?’
She nodded and wiped her eyes.
‘I saw a man on the floor, blood on his face.’
I turned away. I had all I needed. I didn’t wait to say goodbye, and when I looked back around, she had gone.
I thought I heard sirens. The Armed Response Team was on permanent standby in London and I wasn’t far from major terrorist targets. They would be here in no time and this would be as near as I would get. I saw it was getting busier ahead, the streets full of people getting away from the shooting. If there was anything in the story, the news agencies would get the official releases, the CCTV footage. I would have to feed on the scraps I could pick up here, something different. As I saw the crowd, the running, the panic, I knew I had the angle: the reaction of the people who had been there, the human story.
I pulled out my camera and set it to telephoto, squashing the spread of heads. As I took pictures, the tide kept on coming, some running, some walking. I saw a young family, a couple of children just under ten with an anxious young mother. She was panting, shaking, clutching her children tight. I got some pictures of the children. The first rule of journalism: always get the children.
All the time, their mother was talking. ‘We were just shopping, you know, just walking around. People around us ducked, like out of instinct, then there was a second shot.’ She waved her hand in the air, breaths short and panicky. ‘Then people started running.’ The woman straightened herself as if to emphasise her point. ‘Someone was shooting into the street.’
I tried to concentrate on the children, but all the time I was making mental notes of what she was saying. She had tears in her eyes when she said, ‘… and what about my children? A daytrip to town isn’t supposed to happen like that.’
I blinked. There was my line. I thanked her and set off again.
I didn’t get far before I realised how close I was to it. I could see the bob of police helmets, silver glints reflecting sunlight. They were pushing people back, away from the scene. The crowd was getting thicker, but as I pushed I was able to get to the door of my apartment building, not much more than a door squeezed between two shops. I ducked inside and rushed upstairs.
As soon as I got in, I went to the window. I could see a crowd of police around a man on his back. There was a dark patch on the pavement next to him, spreading into the cracks. He had his arms by his side, a funeral pose. He was in front of the Cafe Boheme, green awnings keeping the inside in shade, but I could see frightened faces looking out. Soho had always been a brave place, always done its own thing. This was the outside coming in, and people looked scared.
I lined up the body in my viewfinder, ready to start clicking, when I paused. There was something about the face which was familiar. I zoomed in, and when I did, I felt my hands go slick. I had something big.
I zoomed in close on his shattered head, his face blood-red, his cheeks sinking, hollow. I pulled back to put it into context, the deserted pavement littered with a body, napkins blowing against his ankles. I saw the faces in the Cafe Boheme looking at me, half of them hating me, the rest looking for an answer. I didn’t have one.
I heard a shout from the street below my window. I recognised it straight away. It was the police. My dad was a policeman, up in the frozen north. One thing he always told me was that if a policeman shouts at you to stop, you make sure you stop, because he’ll only ask once. And I knew I couldn’t get busy with my hands. I didn’t know if the armed unit had arrived yet, but they were only human. They would only get a pinprick of time to decide if the shine in my hands was a gun. If they decided wrong, I’d be dead.
I relaxed and looked down, nice and slow, my camera now slack in my hand.
‘Jack Garrett,’ I shouted. ‘I’m a reporter, freelance. I live here.’
As I held out the camera, I saw the policeman relax.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘How long have you been taking pictures?’
‘Not long enough to help. How is it over there?’
He didn’t say much, and I could tell he was unsure. Was I the shooter? He didn’t know. He was young, maybe younger than my own thirty-two. ‘Quiet,’ was all he said.
‘Have you got the shooter hemmed in?’
He smiled warily. ‘This is turning into an interview.’
I smiled back, wider, more teeth. ‘Oh, come on, officer. It’s all going to come out.’
He looked like he was going to start talking, like he was fighting an urge to help, to tell a story, but the conversation was broken up by the chop-chop of a news helicopter buzzing the scene for footage. We both looked up, but when I looked down again he had straightened himself, set his pose.
‘Vultures, aren’t they,’ he said, flicking his eyes to the sky.
I shrugged. ‘Freedom of speech,’ I said, giving it one last try. ‘It’s a human right.’
‘And so is the right to silence,’ he replied, and then turned away.
I said nothing. I just wanted to keep my camera, not have it seized as evidence. I knew what was on there was valuable. The encounter with the policeman was already part of the story.
I looked at the pictures I had taken, I knew I was right. There it was, a small splash of colour on the back screen of my camera, the biggest story of the week. I zoomed in, just to make sure, but I knew. I had recognised the body as soon as I had seen it. Henri Dumas, the Premiership’s top scorer, last seen wearing the big money blue.
I was stunned, too surprised to do anything at first. I took a deep breath and rubbed my eyes, weighing up the need for sleep against the need for the big story. I was freelance. I could go to bed, or have another beer. Let the big guys have their day.
I smiled to myself. Maybe it was my turn for the big time.
Turners Fold, Lancashire, is a small slate town on the edge of the Pennines, an industrial template, surrounded by scrap grass hills and the shadow of Pendle Hill, green at the base, bracken brown at the top, barren, always dark with cloud.
Turners Fold, ‘the Fold’ to the locals, is typically northern: tough, proud, and hard-working. The colour is dark. The grass around it grows short and clings to the hills like stubble, broken only by grey stone walls. The towns and villages are all close by, but the hills intervene, and at night they sit like shadows, topped by the orange glow from the next town.
Like most mill towns, there was nothing before cotton. It breathed life into the town, built its buildings, shaped its people.
But it made the people tough, smothered the town in smoke and scarred the green hills in strips of terraced housing, lined up like computer memory, gutters zigzagging like saw-teeth, doors and windows right onto the streets, dots and bumps in the smooth lines. Cotton owned the town and owned the people, gave them a living, a bond.
The mills have gone now, the land left behind filled with prefab community centres and self-assembly superstores. Some tall chimneys are left, redbrick, out of keeping with the blackened millstone grit that makes up most of the town, reminders of what had once been. A canal runs through the centre, low metal bridges connecting the two sides of the town, weekend barges now the visitors. A hundred years ago the children went to work, their nimble hands good for the machines. Now, they hang around in packs, their faces hidden, living off cheap lager and stolen diazepam.
Just as cotton built the houses, the cotton kings sought a legacy in the civic buildings in the small triangular centre of town, large and impressive against the strips of Victorian shopfronts, dusty and dark, faded glory fighting against the superstores in the next town. Banks, pubs and estate agents cluster around the triangle, spilling onto nearby streets, spreading out like the points on a compass. In the middle of it all is the Horrocks clock, black and white face on a tall stone monument, hemmed in by the
town hall and the old Post Office, just by the cobbled town triangle.
The Swan Inn was humming nicely nearby. The name didn’t fit. It had neither grace nor beauty, it was just somewhere for the daytime crowd of never-worked and laid-off to swap stories and hide away. The whole place smelled of old smoke and spilled ale, the varnish on the small round tables cracked like veins and covered in white rings. A large screen hung from the ceiling at one end and there was a pool table at the other.
Two men were sitting on stools by the bar. They were just passing time, swapping tales over warm beer, watching the landlord prop up the bar in the other room, the snug, kept away from them by the wooden partition with stained-glass edges.
One of the men was Bob Garrett, the best policeman in Turners Fold never to be promoted. Middle-aged, his back not quite as straight as maybe it once was, the hair not quite as full either and scattered with grey. But there was a sharpness about him, like he could sense what was going on around him, a stern calm, the eyes brooding and mean. His jaw was set firm, no slack-jawed gum-chew.
He’d looked after the townspeople for twenty years, joined up after walking away from a lower-division football career to spend more time with his young wife and even younger son. He made new drinkers twitchy, drinking on the way home in his black trousers and white shirt, the creases and stiff collar marking him out, but when he was off-duty he was done with judging.
He looked up when he heard a shout.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
It was the landlord.
‘Somebody’s shot Dumas! Look, look! Henri Dumas, he’s fucking dead.’
‘What are you talking about?’
The landlord pointed excitedly at the television, permanently tuned to a sports channel, his stomach quivering with excitement, the sign of too long in the job. The drinkers in the bar shuffled towards the screen, the intermittent barks of conversation hushed into silence.
‘Look at the news. Someone’s shot Dumas.’
‘What? Henri Dumas?’ asked an old man, looking up from his copy of the Valley Post.
‘Is there another? Someone has killed him.’ The landlord reached for the remote to turn up the volume and then grabbed a glass without looking to pour himself a beer, the bitter all tumbling froth.
There was the sound of glasses being put down and then a respectful silence as the latest news from London echoed around the bar. Bob Garrett stared in disbelief.
The landlord walked away, his beer settling in the glass, shouting his opinion as he went. Foreign players. Bring nothing but trouble. Someone shouted that maybe he took a dive. The bulletin soon gave way for a Gillette commercial and everyone drifted back to their space. Bob Garrett watched them all go and then turned back to the television, wondering what sort of world lets people shrug off someone being killed in cold blood.
It didn’t take him long to realise that he didn’t have the answer, so he turned back to his drink. He looked around as he lifted the glass. The news had been a break in the day, nothing more.
THREE
It was quiet when Laura McGanity walked towards the corner of Old Compton Street and Greek Street. She could see the small huddle of people around a cafe table: a police photographer, the owner, a mini-flock of detectives, all looking at the floor. They were all grim-faced and quiet, and she knew what they were thinking: that they had met their idol, close enough to touch, but that it wasn’t supposed to happen like this, stood in a flak jacket and protective helmet in a stone-cold empty street, blood at their feet.
There were a few detectives walking with her, the extra hands drafted in to help out. Laura was moving slowly, looking around her, trying to get a feel for where the shots might have come from.
‘What do you think? Evidence collection or a vigil?’
Laura looked towards the voice. It was a young officer she had never met. She looked back to the scene ahead. She could see the photographer getting busy around the bloodstains, a compass on the floor, with a ruler setting the scene for scale. The long-range shots had already been taken, the tourist snaps, a collection of views along a trendy London street. Now he was down to the money shots, the stained pavement under a green awning.
‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Both, I suppose.’
They ducked under the crime-scene tape. The detectives exchanged smiles and nods, businesslike.
‘Detective Constable McGanity. Glad you could join us.’ It was one of the detectives, a young star on the rise. He glanced at his inspector as he spoke, looking for points.
Laura smiled. It wasn’t how she felt, but the only defence she had was to look unbeaten. She knew what the other detectives thought of her. Token woman. Keep the politicos happy. A drain. Too wrapped up in childcare to do her job properly.
‘Sorry, John, but I got held up finishing the jobs you couldn’t manage.’
‘Not today.’ It was her inspector, Tom Clemens, a grizzly detective, known for his growls. He said it quietly, but everyone around him knew that he meant it. He was getting older, his stomach growing over his waistband, and what hair he had left was now grey and whisker-short. But every young detective wanted to end up like him.
Laura pulled at her shirt collar, throwing a warm breeze down the front of her flak jacket. Hot days in London just hang there, the heat swirled by traffic, disappearing only at night. She always thought that body armour must have been tested in December, because it wasn’t made for days like this one.
She kept looking down as the detectives were briefed, and then they set off in their pairs, intent and thoughtful, leaving her behind.
She looked up when her inspector addressed her.
‘What are they saying on the news?’ he asked.
Laura shook her head. ‘I don’t know. We’ve maybe got a few hours of shock before we get grilled.’ She looked around. ‘So what have we got?’
‘Not much,’ he answered. ‘We’re going door-to-door, trying to find where the shots came from. But it’s a slow job. If the shooter is still out there, he’s going to be waiting a long time for the knock on the door.’
‘He’s gone,’ said Laura simply. ‘Joined the crowds, headed back into town.’
‘I know that, but I’m not going to risk being wrong.’ Tom looked down at the bloodstains, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know what Dumas did to deserve this, but he’s upset someone.’
‘Where do you think the shots came from?’
He nodded away from the Cafe Boheme, towards Charing Cross Road, past the bars and cafes, Ed’s Diner, neon Americana squeezed into a corner plot. ‘The guess is somewhere over there. The people sitting outside looked instinctively one way when they heard the first shot.’ He looked back down at the floor. ‘It gets him in the right side of his chest as he’s standing. When he took the second shot, the one to the head, he had spun around, clenched up, looking into the cafe. His head snapped backwards like he’d taken the blow from the front, from inside the cafe. The people nearest to him ducked and looked that way, and that’s when the scramble around the tables started. But I think that was just instinct, going from what they saw, and no one has reported seeing the gunman in the cafe. If he’d been nearby, somebody would have seen him, without any doubt.’
‘No grassy knoll.’
He nodded. ‘One gun, two shots.’
Laura smiled. She guessed there’d be a conspiracy website online within twenty-four hours, but Laura was aware that a bullet does strange things to a head. The bullet pushes the blood out, so it can force the blood and brains out of the exit wound like a jet spray. And Laura knew that a pressure hose kicked backwards, not forwards.
Tom raised his eyes upwards. ‘We just need to know where they came from.’
Laura looked around, chewing her lip. There were five exit routes for the shooter and apartments above most of the shops and bars. Laura noticed For Sale signs, meaning empty properties. The best place to start.
‘What theories are we working on?’ she asked.
&nbs
p; He sighed. ‘Right now, we don’t have one. Likely some crackpot did this, just for the attention. But we’re going to look into Dumas, see if he has any secrets. We’ll look at drugs, women, money, gambling, but I’m not convinced.’
‘Why not? Drugs and gambling follow fame like a best friend. You get drugs and gambling, you get bad people chasing debts.’
Tom shook his head. ‘Too much chance. This involved planning. How did anyone know Dumas would be here? My guess is that it was a gay thing, you know, like targeting anyone down here. Just seems that Dumas was in the wrong place.’
Laura looked at her inspector. She could see his forehead glistening with sweat. It was a simple shooting but she detected a fear, like he knew that whatever happened from now on would be crawled over by every hack in the land, breakfast news for the masses.
‘Maybe the gay thing was about Dumas,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m only guessing, but maybe it was some kind of violent outing. You read the papers. A few thousand men play football for money in this country, and maybe one, possibly two, have come out. There must be more gay footballers out there. Why not Dumas?’
‘Have you seen his fiancée?’ Tom said, knowing nearly everyone had seen virtually all of his fiancée, glamour shots and daily updates keeping the tabloids in business.
‘Of course I’ve seen his fiancée,’ she said. ‘I’m just saying keep an open mind.’
‘If you’re going to kill a football star,’ he said, ‘you do it properly. He’s got the money to get security, so you make it one hit, one shot, guaranteed no cock-ups.’ He wiped his forehead. ‘It will be some nutter. It always is.’
‘I made some calls before I came out,’ said Laura. ‘To Drugs, Vice. No one’s threatened Dumas and he isn’t known to us.’ When there was no answer, she asked, ‘What next? Just try and work out where the shooter was first, to see what’s there?’
‘We’ve got people going round all the businesses, seizing any CCTV footage. Got any better ideas?’
Laura looked at the floor again. She guessed not.
