‘Has someone turned them to stone?’ Lyndall’s joke foundered under the uneasy crack of her voice.
‘It’s going to kick off,’ Banji said. ‘They’ll make sure of that.’
She wasn’t sure whether the ‘they’ he was referring to was the police or the group of young men who had also sidled into view. They were not luxuriating in the warm evening; they were moving with a serious intention that soon displayed itself. They went over to the unguarded panda car, stopping within ten yards of it.
‘They’ll do something.’ Banji was now clearly talking about the police. ‘Even if they don’t have the right protective kit. They have to do something.’
The battering ram of young men seemed to agree. They looked expectantly at the police lines.
The police in the lines looked back. And did not move.
Later, when Cathy thought about how it had begun, it came to her as a series of freeze frames.
First off a fluid moment: one of the youths separated himself from his group and strolled over to the shop whose boxes were still laid out on the pavement. He picked up a box, returned to his starting point, put down the box, took out a cabbage, backed off a few yards and then began to run.
Freeze frame: the man in full stride, his arm stretched back behind him.
The cabbage arcs up on a high trajectory towards the car.
The cabbage hits the front windscreen, which cracks.
Those two sides – the group of youths and the police – face each other.
Freeze frame.
And then double time.
The box of cabbages became a focal point, a stopping place for grabbing arms that reached in, withdrew and threw, until the air was thick with flying cabbages. They hit the car and dented it as, attracted by the noise, more members of the crowd started running towards the commotion.
The police did not react.
The first of the group were already advancing on the dented car. Someone tried to pull open a front door. When that didn’t work, someone else placed his elbow against the cracked glass on the driver’s side and jerked it back. The glass caved in. He inserted his hand through the gap, pulled up the lock and opened the door. Someone pushed him aside and dived into the car, soon to re-emerge, triumphantly, with a trophy. A CS canister. The sight produced a long drawn-out cheer.
And still the police did not move.
We should go, Cathy thought, but somehow couldn’t tear herself away.
More of the youths were in the car, ripping it to pieces. One of their number must have released the handbrake. A shout went up: ‘Roll it.’ The men in the car scrambled out as a handful of other youths got behind it and, at the shout of ‘One, two, three, push’, pushed. The car edged forward.
‘One, two, three push.’
This time, before the ‘push’, Cathy was certain that she saw the young men stop and look at the police line, as if, she was later to decide, daring the police to react.
The police did not react.
‘One, two, three . . .’ There must have been a slope in the road because this time on the third ‘push’ the car rolled forward and did not stop until it hit the kerb. It mounted the kerb before slipping back. It was now directly in front of the vegetable shop.
A man, the owner, came out of his shop, his hands up as if to wave the car away. He shouted ‘Help!’ at the watching lines of police. ‘Come help me.’
No reaction.
As the youths lined themselves up behind the car, readying themselves for a last push, the shopkeeper and his sons, who had also dashed out, planted themselves at the car’s front end. They laid their hands on the battered bonnet and pushed. The car seesawed backwards and forwards for a moment in a contest that the shopkeeper was bound to lose save that several of the youths pushing at its rear voluntarily gave up, while a couple of the others were physically wrenched away by Banji.
‘One, two, three push.’ The people at the car’s front end were now in the majority, and the car rolled backwards, coming to a halt in the middle of the road.
Such an odd sight. A battered patrol car, isolated as a row of police just looked on. It was a trophy that the crowd began to circle. Round and round they went, banging hands against open mouths and whooping.
A voice yelling in Cathy’s ear: ‘They’re going to torch it.’ Lyndall’s voice. ‘Hurry up, Mum. We have to leave.’
Hand in hand they began to run, pushing against a tide of excited incomers. A ‘whoosh’. They stopped and turned. Just in time to see a thin jet of fire flare from the open petrol cap of the police car. And then, as the people around it stepped away, the car exploded.
A collective howl, exultation and rage mixed, rose up into the night and although some of the crowd now retreated from the burning car they were soon replaced by others who, drawn to the blaze, joined the whooping dance around the flames, while a small subgroup split off from this crowd to run over to the bus and around it until they had disappeared from sight.
The bus began to rock, imperceptibly at first, so that Cathy thought she might be imagining the movement, but then she realised that they were pushing it from the side, forwards and back, slowly at first but then gathering speed, a huge red pendulum whose main arc was forwards and towards the street, until, one more heave, and the bus tipped over. Spotlit by the burning car, it arced down, gathering speed as it neared the ground, and then it was down, splinters of broken glass flying out, to the sound of cheers and breaking metal, the bulk of the crowd racing for it.
‘Come on. Quick. Let’s get out of here before they set the bus on fire.’
8.25 p.m.
The untidiness of the hedge was history. Or at least it would be once Billy had bagged up the last of the cuttings.
It had taken longer than he’d expected. Hours in fact, although he had had a break to watch the match and the post-match commentary, which he’d bookended with an extended snooze.
A rare treat to spend a Saturday without demands and he’d milked it – not that he didn’t miss the girls but they’d be back, at which point Angie would be over the moon about his good work.
Just one more bag to fill and then, he thought, a pizza and a low-alcohol beer. Perhaps two. He’d earned them. As he began to sweep along the pavement, he felt his phone buzz. He pulled it out and clicked it on: ‘Yup?’
‘Billy? It’s Mike.’
Mike was not part of that weekend’s command complex, so this must be a social call. Billy felt himself relax. ‘What’s up?’
‘A bus on fire in Rockham.’
‘Oh yeah? Course there is. Pull the other one.’
‘This isn’t a wind-up,’ Mike said. ‘I’m on the ground. The station’s under siege and there’s hardly any Level 2 here. They’re going through the call list – you’ll be hearing from them soon – but I thought I’d give you a heads-up so you can organise your kit.’
Without thinking about it, Billy had straightened up, and when he asked, ‘How bad?’ he sounded extremely calm.
‘Really bad. And it’s only going to get worse.’
9.15 p.m.
Jayden had dreamt this same dream, and on more than one occasion. He and Lyndall walking down an unfamiliar street. Him reaching out for her, like she (he was never in any doubt about this in the dream) wanted him to do. But as their fingers touched, a hot wind, no, not a wind, a tornado ripped them from each other, and he was sucked up into the twisting centre, powerless as she seemed to shrink, or else he was being blown further and further away from her – he couldn’t tell which it was. He only knew that he could no longer make her face out in a gathered crowd.
And now he found himself living this dream even though the street they were on was Rockham’s main thoroughfare and they had been torn asunder not by a wind but by the force of the rampaging crowd. Her hand reached out for his, but he was jammed so tight that he had been lifted off the ground, with the thrust of the group carrying him away from her.
He saw her mouth open. He knew she must
be calling to him, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying, and soon he couldn’t see her either. He struggled to free himself and eventually managed to tunnel his way out of this cyclone of people, many more of whom were heading in the opposite direction. He lowered his head and barrelled against this oncoming tide, back to the place where they’d been parted. But she was long gone.
He thought he heard her name, not once but many times. He scanned the crowd as that implausible cry ‘Lyn-dall, Lyn-dall’, which his imagination must have summoned up, mocked him. He tried to jump up, the better to see where she might have gone, but that set the people around him jumping, the action spreading through the crowd so that all he could now see was a myriad of bobbing heads. He felt a terrible sense of failure: he had not kept her safe.
A bang, and the tide turned, and he with it, all of them running at the noise that was the bursting into flames of a squad car. Then he saw Lyndall, lit up by the flash of the explosion. She was safe. With her mother at her side.
He could have reached them, he should have, but something, perhaps the way they stood, so close to each other, held him back.
She was safe. That’s all that mattered. He saw them turning away. Like he should too. Get back to his own mother.
The fire around the police car had helped clear the path, especially now that some of the crowd were making for the bus. He could easily have gone and caught up with Lyndall. And yet knowing she was safe had released him.
To what?
To be here. In this moment. With all these people. Some of whom he knew. Some of whom he didn’t. All of them flushed by the heat, and the fires, and not knowing what was going to come next, and, yes, now he felt it flooding through him he could name it for himself: exhilaration.
His life upturned. His early rises to open and clean the shop and buy the breakfast and bring it back and leave it for his mother who, despite how hard he shook her, never would get up. And then the trudge to school, and he always on the late register, and those mouths that spoke at him words he was too tired to take much notice of, detentions handed out which he had to miss because it was time to get back to work again.
All those people – his teachers, his boss, the social workers. These people who were always telling him who he was and what he had to do. They were nowhere here. Fuck them. Fuck their rules. Fuck their prohibitions. The things they told him he couldn’t do. The things they told him he couldn’t have.
They were nowhere here. Those people who always told him what he was allowed.
The police, yes, he could see them, were there, but they just stood and looked. And here he was with all the others. He could do what they were doing, he could pick up a brick, look there was one, he felt its rough edges in his hand, and he could surge on and into one of the broken shops.
‘Let’s get ‘em’ – that chorus rising and he joining it – ‘Let’s get ‘em’, and he didn’t care who it was they were going to get, he just wanted to act, to be carried along by the crowd and to do what they were going to do. And already there was the sound of breaking glass, and shadows were flitting in and out of shops that had been blasted open, and people coming out, not just the young and not just men but all kinds of people, holding things they’d grabbed, and he too, all he had to do was move with the tide and he could have some of what they were having, things he’d only ever dreamt of owning: trainers, not the old sad ones he wore, but the ones other kids flaunted, the confident boys who stood out. He didn’t even have to break in or anything – he let drop the brick he was holding – it was already done. All he had to do was follow. And now, before it all disappeared.
‘Come on.’ He was talking to himself and to the night: ‘Come on,’ urging himself forwards, laughing even, oh how much he wanted to do something, anything, without first having to think of the consequences. To be in the now, like he never was.
Because. He stopped. The crowd surging past.
Because.
If he got caught.
If he didn’t make it home.
If he wasn’t there to buy the breakfast.
If he didn’t put it on the table.
If all those ifs came to pass.
She wouldn’t manage. Not if he wasn’t there.
‘Come on.’ They were calling to each other, and they were still coming on.
All of them but him.
He dropped his head and turned away.
9.55 p.m.
The table was groaning with Frances’s splendid food and lit by candles to soften the velvet night. Around the table were close friends, all of whom were supportive of his leadership bid. Not that it had even been broached: they knew, without Peter having to say as much, that what he needed more than anything was a break from the relentless pressure. So they gave it to him, following his lead in keeping the conversation light.
Oh, the joy of relaxing with people who understood and who, even more importantly, were not going to sell his every unguarded word to the tabloids.
He kept their glasses topped up with a particularly subtle Gigondas rosé, which had gone down very nicely. If the heatwave continued, which the weathermen were now saying was a distinct possibility, he would have to organise another couple of cases. He reached for the bottle.
‘Here, let me.’ Frances’s hand covered his before slipping under it to take the bottle. She got to her feet and began doing the rounds of the table, and by the time she’d reached him, the bottle was empty. He twisted round: there were two upturned empties in the ice bucket and that was it.
He made to rise, but Frances now laid her hands on his shoulders. ‘Don’t worry, darling, I’ll fetch more.’ For a moment she stayed where she was and, although it was hot, he felt his tight shoulders relaxing under the pressure of her kneading fingers. He let out a long sigh of contentment.
‘Me next’ – this from one of their guests.
Frances laughed, removed her hands and, having guaranteed ‘I’ll be back’, made her way through the garden and to the kitchen.
‘A marvellous woman. You lucky man.’
A chorus of agreement circled the table while Peter thought about his luck. He reached for his glass and drained it of its last few drops. More soon to come.
Not, however, that soon. The conversation moved through the greatest gaffes ever committed in public, and then, raucously, in private, and still Frances did not return. There were bottles in the wine fridge: he knew because he’d put them there. He turned to look through the darkness and towards the house.
The kitchen was lit up, so he could see her clearly. She was standing with her back to him. She wasn’t moving – not bringing out dessert, then – and she wasn’t anywhere near the wine fridge. What on earth? He was about to go and check on her, but when she turned to look his way he saw that there was a simple enough explanation for her immobility: she was on the phone. He could see her nodding as she held it to her ear. Someone must have phoned, although he hadn’t heard the ringing, which, given they’d rigged up an amplification system, was odd.
She seemed to be staring straight at him, although since she was in the light and he in the dark he knew that she wouldn’t be able to see him. Perhaps she was just glaring in that way of hers in order to transmit to whoever was on the other end that they needed to stop talking and hang up. Which is exactly what happened. Her hand moved the phone down to the counter.
She’d be back soon. He turned to their guests. And heard her calling. ‘Peter.’ She’d stepped out of the kitchen, phone in hand. ‘You had better take this.’
He glanced at his watch. Nearly ten. It must be important or Frances would have given the caller short shrift. He sighed and pushed himself to his feet. ‘Duty calls.’ He took a step forward, only to trip over the blasted dog, who was always underfoot.
‘Steady.’ As the dog yelped, one of the guests reached out a hand to stop Peter falling. ‘Better have some coffee, old boy.’
To prove that he wasn’t really drunk, he walked in a deliberate straight line t
o the kitchen, where Frances stood, phone still in hand. ‘It’s the Commissioner,’ she said. ‘Something about Rockham.’
‘Covering his arse, I bet.’ Peter reached for the phone.
But Frances kept hold of it for a moment. ‘If it’s serious, take it seriously. With the PM at the summit, this is your chance. The Party already knows what you’re capable of; if you play this right, you can also show the Country.’
‘Indeed.’ He took the phone from her. ‘Home Secretary here,’ sitting down as he listened to what Joshua Yares had to say. In the background, Frances busied herself making coffee.
11 p.m.
The Lovelace rang out with shouts and the pounding of feet, people running either towards or away from the trouble.
‘Jayden’s not back.’ As Lyndall turned away from the balcony’s edge, her eyes filled with tears. ‘Something must have happened. I’ve got to go and get him.’
‘I’m sorry, darling, I can’t let you.’
‘You know what Jayden’s like: he always wants to please. They’ll make him do things and they won’t keep him safe. Please – I have to find him.’
‘You’re a mixed-race kid in what is effectively a race riot. If the police pick you up – and in that circumstance they’ll go for anybody they can get – you’ll be in trouble.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘Well, I do.’
Lyndall bunched her fist and hissed out one word – ‘Hypocrite’ – through tight lips.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You must have lectured me a million times on how we are only strong if we band together. And now, when one of the vulnerable that you’re always on about is in trouble, all that matters to you is that your daughter is safe.’
It was a speech delivered on such a stream of righteous indignation that it almost made Cathy laugh. Except this was no laughing matter. ‘You’re my daughter and you’re only fourteen. It’s my job to keep you safe.’
‘And Jayden is my friend. It’s my job to keep him safe.’
‘I’m sorry, but the answer is still no.’ Cathy held up a hand to stop a fresh onslaught: ‘How about if I went?’
Ten Days Page 10
