Ten Days

by Gillian Slovo

  Frances frowned. Good – a sign she had her thinking cap on. ‘The PM has Parsons up to it,’ she said. ‘Despite the reshuffle, Parsons remains his man.’

  She was, as ever, right. Parsons’ name had been top of the list of those who would never in a million years vote for Peter. ‘But why would the PM set his dogs on this death?’

  ‘He has gone out on a limb on the drugs issue,’ Frances said, ‘throwing the party into uproar. The opposition are jumping on the bandwagon, quoting police resistance to the measure. So if he can provoke the country into concern about the police, he thinks he might be able to turn the tide. He can’t do it himself, so he’s recruited Parsons.’

  Which put a new complexion on Yares’s phone call: ‘Of course that must be it. How clever of you.’

  She smiled. Not so much the ice queen now. ‘We should talk about the lunch. Our table is close to some fairly influential Party funders. We will not be sitting with them, I’ve made sure of that. We don’t want to give too much away until we are sure we have all our ducks in a row. All we need at the moment is to meet and greet, with a word or two in relevant ears. I’ll make the running. You follow.’

  ‘Don’t I always, darling?’

  Too frivolous. She turned her head and looked at him. Sharply.

  Knowing that it always took her a while to come out of one of her glooms, he should have been more careful. ‘I depend on you,’ he said.

  ‘Do you?’

  That acid tone again.

  Irritation rising, he thought, that’s it, I give up. She, of all people, should know how burdened he was by work and responsibility. She certainly did know that the Home Office was the most perilous of all the great ministries of state, never mind the dangers attached to trying to unseat his Leader. And yet here she was playing her own petulant games. He had no patience for it. Not any more. If she wanted to tell him what was bothering her, she should come out with it. In the meantime, he would hold his tongue. He turned his head away from her to look out of the window.

  Uniform blue sky. Women in skimpy clothes lying on brown grass. Roses that had flowered and withered before their time. Bloody heat. He found himself wishing for the end of summer even before the real summer was properly underway.

  ‘Are you having an affair?’

  ‘What?’ Of all the things that might be bothering her, this was one that had never occurred to him. ‘An affair?’ Ridiculous echo. Must do better.

  ‘Just answer the question, Peter.’

  ‘I will. If that’s what you want. But before I do, do you happen to have a suggestion as to who I might be having this supposed affair with?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I do. I’d say it was your Special Adviser.’

  ‘With Patricia?’ Incredulity hyped up his voice.

  She was in contrast very calm: ‘Do you have another Special Adviser?’ When he didn’t say anything, she continued: ‘I thought not. So, Peter, tell me, are you having an affair with your Special Adviser, Patricia Diaz?’

  ‘Is that why you phoned Patricia this morning? Were you checking up on me?’

  He caught his driver’s eye again. He hoped the soundproofing worked, especially when Frances raised her voice to say, ‘Answer the question. Are you and Patricia Diaz having an affair?’

  ‘No.’ He lowered his voice. ‘We are not.’

  ‘Is that the truth?’ She was looking at him fiercely, as only Frances could.

  ‘Yes, it is the truth. Cross my heart and hope to die.’ He did it. He crossed his heart. ‘There. Does that satisfy?’

  He could see, by the softening of her expression, that it did.

  He reached across for her hand. Thank goodness she gave it to him. ‘Whatever made you think I was having an affair?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Your early rising. Your late returns. The way she looked at me when you both stepped out of the lift.’

  ‘The way she looked at you.’ Echo again, but needs must. ‘Come on, darling, that’s absurd. As for the hours I keep: the House is your second home and has been for most of your life. You know how extreme the demands are, especially when one becomes a minister, never mind a secretary of state.’

  ‘Yes, I do know. And I also know many MPs play away from home. Daddy led the hunt, if you remember.’

  Not that he or, come to that, most of the country could forget. Her father (thankfully now deceased) had been a notorious philanderer. His womanising, played out in public, had caused his wife, and his four daughters, awful misery.

  ‘I would never do that to you.’

  ‘You had better not.’

  He squeezed her hand. ‘I need you, Frances, by my side. I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise that.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  So plaintively asked, her question both warmed and annoyed him. ‘You have to trust me.’

  ‘I do. I will. But if you betray my trust . . .’

  She didn’t complete her threat because by then they had arrived.

  3 p.m.

  The Lovelace was subdued. Doors open and people outside on the landings to escape the heat, but even the smallest of children, who couldn’t know what had happened, didn’t seem to have the heart to play. As for the adults, what conversation there was, was carried out in voices too soft to be overheard.

  If it had been me, Cathy couldn’t help thinking, if it had been me. She kept checking her watch, wondering whether Lyndall should already have arrived home from school, and this despite that she knew it was too early. If it had been me . . .

  She kept an eye out for the fox, but even that proved no distraction. Had it been real? And if it was, had it been sick? Or worse, rabid? Perhaps she should go home and phone the RSPCA.

  She didn’t feel like going home. With the meeting due at her place later, she needed provisions. She counted the change in her purse: if she was careful, she could manage.

  It was so humid that her skin was moist with perspiration and her throat raw. She needed water and she needed it now. Since she was just then passing the local Londis, she stepped in.

  It was a small outlet, run by one of the Somalian newcomers to the area whose daughter went to school with Lyndall, and it was usually a relaxed place. But what she heard when she stepped in was a voice raised in anger.

  ‘What the fuck do you mean you can’t?’

  She knew that voice and the man who, with his back to her, banged a fist against the counter: ‘You’ve got no right to refuse.’

  ‘Banji?’

  He whirled round, looked at her and then looked right past her.

  ‘Banji. It’s Cathy.’

  ‘You think I’m such a fucking muppet I don’t know who you are?’ He turned back to the counter behind which Mrs Sharif was standing. ‘Just sell me a can – I’ve got the money – and I’ll get out of your fucking way.’

  Mrs Sharif shook her head.

  He slammed both hands down on the counter and pushed on them: he was about to vault over. And would have done so had not Cathy run up to grab him by the arm and pull him away from the counter.

  ‘What the fuck?’

  She could smell his breath, sour and stale. ‘Mrs Sharif can’t sell you alcohol.’

  ‘Why the fuck not?’

  ‘Because she hasn’t got a licence.’

  ‘Oh.’ Fury mutating into something closer to confusion. ‘Hasn’t she?’

  She could see Mrs Sharif inching along the counter. She was heading for the telephone at its far end.

  The last thing anybody needed was more police. ‘Come on.’ She tugged at Banji’s arm. ‘Come, let’s get some air,’ and to Mrs Sharif: ‘Don’t worry. I’ll make sure he doesn’t come back.’

  He let her lead him out of the shop, but once they were outside he shook her off. ‘Call this air?’ He seemed unsteady on his feet.

  ‘Are you drunk?’ But he’d given up all intoxicants. Or at least he’d told her that he had. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Are you?’ he said in imitation of her voice.


  Walk away, she told herself, and not for the first time.

  She did not walk away.

  He looked awful. His trousers and dirty white T-shirt were what he had been wearing yesterday, and they were both now so crumpled he must have slept in them. Or not slept at all, which was probably the case: the whites of his eyes were pink.

  ‘What happened?’ The last she’d seen of him he’d been let off by the police with a caution.

  The fury seemed to drain out of him then. In its place: a misery that crumpled his expression as he said, ‘They killed him.’

  ‘Yes.’ She felt herself relax. ‘They did.’

  ‘And I didn’t stop them.’

  She reached out a consoling hand.

  He jumped as if her touch could burn. ‘I was watching out for him.’

  ‘You did what you could.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t fucking good enough, was it?’ His face was screwed up in rage, an unaccustomed sight coming as it did from a man whose manner these days was a non-committal containment that made him seem almost devoid of emotion.

  Not so in the past. Then he had been quick to anger. And then he had also drunk a lot and taken other things besides.

  ‘I lost my phone,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you deaf or what? I lost my fucking phone.’

  Okay, she thought, so he lost his phone. She took hers out of her pocket. ‘You can use mine.’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. Violently. ‘What if she rung back and you answered?’

  She must be his wife – his ex-wife. That he’d had an acrimonious break-up was one of the few personal details he had let slip.

  ‘You could number guard it,’ she said.

  He backed away even further. ‘You don’t understand.’ He’d raised his voice again – ‘Nobody does’ – and hardened as he glared at her. ‘I’m all alone.’

  Such accusatory self-pity, as if he was so much worse off than everybody else. ‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ she heard herself saying. ‘Use my phone. Or don’t. Just do me a favour and stop whining.’

  There: the end of tiptoeing around him in case something she did made him leave her. Let him go if he wanted to. It would be better if he did. She looked at him, straight, waiting for his bite-back.

  He threw his head back and laughed. Long and hard, and he kept his balance while he was doing it. He isn’t drunk, she thought.

  A memory of that previous night: Banji held down and unable to get the police to hear what he was telling them – that they were killing Ruben. It must have been unbearable. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.’

  He took her by surprise again. He reached out and touched a gentle finger against her lips. ‘Don’t be sorry. Be feisty. It suits you, Cathy Mason.’

  So many lightning changes of mood: a dance she couldn’t follow.

  But then Banji was a man who never would be followed. ‘Catch you later,’ he said. ‘Something I have to do,’ and he walked away.

  10 p.m.

  ‘It’s late,’ the Reverend Pius said. ‘And we’ve had a productive meeting. We are agreed. We’ll set off from the Lovelace tomorrow at three, and others will join us outside the police station. We’ll support the family while they seek an explanation from the police about their actions in relation to Ruben. Once they’ve been given that, we will disperse. Thanks, everybody, for attending and to Cathy for opening her home to us.’ He stretched and tried to conceal a yawn that anyway sounded out.

  No wonder he was tired: he’d had to work hard to contain the rage that had at moments threatened to burst out.

  ‘That was well chaired,’ Marcus said.

  Cathy nodded her agreement, although she was distracted. One final look around the room as the crowd that had packed her living room thinned confirmed it. ‘Banji wasn’t here,’ she said.

  ‘Were you expecting him?’

  ‘After last night? Yes, of course.’

  ‘Well, you know what Banji’s like.’ Marcus got to his feet and also yawned. ‘They seek him here, they seek him there, the Lovelace seeks him everywhere.’

  He said it so sweetly it made her laugh, but still: ‘You’ve never liked him, have you?’

  ‘I don’t like him.’ Marcus shrugged. ‘I don’t dislike him. I don’t know him. Does anybody?’

  Yes, she nearly said. I do. But then she thought back to the way Banji had behaved that afternoon, and then to their more distant past, and she realised that she never had been able to predict what he would do.

  ‘You better come.’ Pius, who had left the room, suddenly reappeared.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s your daughter.’ Before she had time to press him, he was gone.

  She went after him as fast as she could, weaving her way past knots of people still picking over what had been discussed. She had to stop herself from knocking some of them to the ground. It was a short distance to the hall, but it seemed to take an age to get there. Then she found her progress even more impeded. People were moving forward but so slowly. She could not understand it. She stood on her tiptoes and looked over their heads to see that the crowd, instead of dispersing, was standing just outside the door.

  What had this to do with Lyndall? She’d been in and out during the meeting – bored, Cathy had assumed.

  ‘Excuse me.’ One last push and she was over the threshold.

  ‘Look.’

  Pius was smiling, and when she looked to the place he was pointing at, she understood why.

  The night was aglow. Not with a fire that burnt – that had been her first thought – but with a soft, shimmering light. It was like looking at a cluster of stars, except this light came not from the sky but from down below.

  ‘Your daughter and her friend did this.’

  So that’s why Lyndall and Jayden had been out so early. They must have gone to the wholesalers to buy tealights, which, in their glass containers, they had placed at regular intervals across the Lovelace. Down one of the gangways the river of light went and up another, as if following a route. And, yes, that’s what they were doing. The kids had marked out Ruben’s last walk with light and, yes again, her eyes confirmed it because there, in front of the community centre, was a great cluster, so many of them that it was from here that the impression of burning had come. A great flowing mass of light.

  She looked and she looked. Her vision seemed to blur.

  ‘Magnificent.’ Pius’s voice in her ear. ‘And to think they keep lecturing us that we have a problem with our youth.’

  She nodded but could not speak.

  Lyndall must be here somewhere. She had to find her. She scanned the crowd and sure enough there was her daughter standing next to Jayden.

  She could not speak, but she could do something better. She clasped her hands together and she put them over her heart and lowered her head and held it there, not in prayer but in appreciation of the great gift that they had been given.

  Saturday

  8 a.m.

  With his wife and daughters away for the weekend, Chief Inspector Billy Ridgerton, cadre-trained in public order critical incidents, had done a fellow officer a favour by agreeing to take his place on call.

  Last time he’d volunteered, there’d been major and almost simultaneous ructions in four different locations. He couldn’t be that unlucky again. To reinforce this conviction he’d got up late – late for him, that is – and made himself a cup of instant coffee that he drank standing up.

  The sun had yet to round the building, and for one glorious moment, as clouds swept across the sky, it looked as if the heatwave might be about to break. An illusion: the clouds soon dissolved, leaving a sky so blue it was clear they were in for another scorcher. He’d promised Angie he’d have a go at the unruly hedge that was strangely flourishing in the heat. Better start before it got too hot. But first he should check the available intel, just in case his services were going to be required.

  There
were the usual football fixtures, all of which looked to be, in policing terms, well under control. There were also a couple of fairs in London’s parks which, barring the spontaneous immolation of a bouncy castle, shouldn’t cause much trouble, and a vintage car race that might at worst lead to a bit of a traffic build-up. The only item of concern was the vigil that was due in Rockham.

  Billy already knew of the death – an awful misfortune and one every copper dreaded – and he was familiar enough with Rockham to know that when things got hairy there, they really got hairy. Before he set to on the hedge, he decided to check if there were any issues by phoning the station and asking to speak to Rockham’s Commander, CS Gaby Wright.

  ‘She’s up north at a conference,’ he was told. ‘Policing for change or some such bollocks.’

  ‘Okay, so are there any issues?’

  ‘Issues?’ The sergeant sounded clueless: he must have been an acting, and a new one at that.

  ‘Any likelihood of things going pear-shaped?’ How much more clearly did Billy need to put it? ‘Any reason for me to get my kit? Come over? Lend a hand?’

  ‘Hold on a mo.’ Maybe he was a pretender rather than an acting, because he now covered the phone rather than putting Billy on hold, so that Billy could hear a muffled conversation, the bozo who’d answered consulting one of his colleagues and then at last coming back to say, ‘We’ve done a risk assessment and there’s no reason to be concerned.’

  There was always a reason in Rockham, but it wasn’t Billy’s job to point this out. He’d asked and they’d answered, and they’d ring if things started to go wrong. Shoving his mobile into a pocket, he went to the shed to fetch the clippers and a spade – he needed also to pull out all those bastard shoots which were coming up through the dried-up lawn – and then he set to dealing with the hedge.

  11 a.m.

  ‘Excellent choice.’ Peter made his way to the back of the garden to where Frances was sitting in the shade of the oak. ‘It’s far too stuffy inside.’ He leant over to kiss Frances. The dog, who had been lying under her chair, barked and would have nipped his leg had he not jumped smartly back. ‘What’s got into her?’