The fury in his expression showed that he meant every word. Jayden turned to go. He heard a loud ‘Aaaaaaahhhh.’ He looked over his shoulder. Mr Hashi, broom held above his head, was running at him.
He also ran. Out of the shop, his vision blurred by tears he didn’t know he was shedding. And when he heard someone shouting, ‘Stop,’ he ran faster, and faster still at the shout, ‘Police: stop where you are,’ rounding the corner, his feet pounding in an effort to get as far away from Mr Hashi’s shop and from the Lovelace as he could.
2 p.m.
Jayden was still not back.
When Cathy walked to the police station, to check whether they had him, she found it ringed by uniforms. The new sign had been demolished – concrete couldn’t have set in time – and the only way of getting in was to pass through a narrow corridor between two police lines.
As she made her way towards it, a familiar figure emerged.
‘Banji.’
He kept walking away from her.
‘Banji.’ She started running.
He had a head start and he was moving so fast that he rounded the corner before she had time to catch up with him. She kept running – ‘Banji’ – her sandals slapping against the road. ‘Banji.’
He must have heard her, he couldn’t not have, but he neither stopped nor turned. At the same time he didn’t seem that serious about getting away from her. If he had run, she would have lost him, but he didn’t run. And when she came abreast of him, and when she grabbed his arm, although he still didn’t turn he did stop moving.
She scooted round to stand in front of him. He looked a wreck, his clothes messed up by what looked like oil and his eyes bloodshot. And cold as well. Like a stranger’s, and when he said, ‘What a sight you are,’ his icy voice showed that he didn’t mean a sight for sore eyes.
She didn’t know whether he was referring to the sweat pouring down her face or her badly singed hair. It didn’t matter: what she registered was his hostility.
Part of her wanted to ask why he hadn’t bothered checking on her and Lyndall. What she said instead was, ‘What were you doing in the police station?’
‘I went to tell them what I saw on Friday,’ he said. ‘Not that it’s any of your fucking business.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘And why the fuck are you following me?’
‘I wasn’t.’
‘A coincidence, is it, that everywhere I turn, I bump into your lard arse?’
It was as if he’d hit her. She took a step back.
‘You haven’t changed, have you?’ He closed the space between them. ‘All those years ago, you clung on like a limpet. You’re fatter now – I’ll give you that – but you’re still the same fucking drag. Who never could take a hint.’
As she stood, reeling from the impact of his words, he flicked out an arm. She stood her ground. He wouldn’t hit her. Surely not.
He did. He hit her in the stomach. The blow was not hard enough to cause her to double over, even though this is what she did. Because of shock that he had hit her.
‘Get away from me,’ she heard him saying. ‘And stay away. I’m warning you. Stay away.’
And then he went.
There was a small park – more a green enclosure and children’s playground, really – nearby. She made her way to it.
This oasis, surrounded by council blocks, had once been gardened to within an inch of its life, with primroses and marigolds planted in strict rows and anything more luxuriant severely pruned. Scorched-earth gardening, Lyndall used to call it. Now, as Cathy pushed open the squeaking gate, she saw that the earth had been, quite literally, scorched. Not a single flower had survived the water ban, while what grass remained was brown and so full of thistles that no one would ever dream of trying to sit on it.
This had once been a place where mothers could let their young children run free. Now half the slats on the bench that Cathy went to sit on had been broken off, and under the section that was still useable lay used syringes.
He had hit her.
She kicked the syringes. Pushed them further back under the bench.
Actually hit her. And for no reason. The shock of it hurt more than the actual blow.
She disgusted him. He’d made that clear.
A voice inside of her protested. She had not been following him. And she had not done anything wrong. And yet this voice was soon drowned out by a much louder one. A voice that said that he was right. That she was fat. That she was slow. And that she couldn’t see a hint, never mind take one, even if it slapped her in the face. If she had been able to, she never would have let him back into her life.
All these years since Lyndall’s birth that she told herself she had changed. Grown up. Become a different person.
Ridiculous. She was the same fool she’d always been. Who – and however hard she tried to keep the sentence at bay, it still came bursting out – who had loved a monstrous man.
Who still loved him.
That was the worst of it. The things she had told herself. That she was over him; that he was nothing to her; that it was better he had gone. All lies. That’s why, when she’d bumped into him after all those many years, she had invited him into her home. Because she could not bear to lose sight of him again.
As if this had ever been her choice.
Last night she had not cried. Not in relief when she’d escaped the burning building. Not when she had heard that the woman she had rescued might never recover from the effects of the fumes she’d inhaled. Not when Lyndall and Pius had been moved to tears by the unfolding mayhem. But now her tears were splashing her neck, soaking her blouse.
She made no attempt to wipe them away. She sat and went on crying as if her tears would never stop. And all because a man she had trusted and loved had once again abandoned her.
11.55 p.m.
The call came just before midnight, Joshua’s home phone ringing. He picked it up to hear someone say, ‘Hold for the Prime Minister.’
At long last.
A lucky coincidence that the PM had caught him at home. He’d only just dropped in to pick up fresh shirts, his intention being to return to work.
He could have sent his driver for the shirts, but he hadn’t fancied those big boots plodding through his private space. And it was helpful to leave the pressure of the control room, if only for a short time. Time to think. Which, come to think of it, he was getting a lot of as he kept holding for the Prime Minister. Seconds turned into minutes. He looked impatiently at his watch.
‘Joshua.’ That familiar voice. ‘Sorry to have kept you waiting.’
‘Not a problem. Are you on your way back?’
‘I shouldn’t walk out on the negotiations.’ A pause, while Joshua wondered how the negotiations could be more important than the country going up in flames. ‘I trusted you to deal with this,’ the PM continued. ‘How could things have got so out of control?’
‘There have been cuts,’ Joshua said.
‘Cuts . . . the perennial excuse when anything goes wrong. It won’t wash, Joshua. Not when everybody has had to pull their belts in.’
‘There have been other factors,’ Joshua said, ‘that affected our ability to respond. We had to divert valuable manpower into guarding the solvent factory in Rockham. If it had gone up, all hell would have been let loose. If we hadn’t had that to contend with, we might have had enough men to stop the rioting in its tracks.’
‘I see.’ The doubt in the PM’s voice suggested that even if he saw, he didn’t believe it, a suspicion confirmed when he followed up with: ‘I understand you clashed with the Home Secretary at COBRA.’
‘He was spoiling for a fight.’
‘Probably not the best idea to give him one.’
Pot, kettle, black, Joshua thought, but before he could frame this thought into a coherent sentence, the PM shifted the terrain. ‘Look, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate, and I am confident that you will resolve the problem asap. I’ll let you get on with it. But before you go, have you h
ad time to look into that matter I mentioned the other day?’
What was he talking about?
‘When you came to Downing Street.’
Oh. That.
‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ Joshua said. ‘I did look into it.’
‘And?’
‘And there is no record of Teddy having been picked up.’
Another pause followed by: ‘Good. Well, I’m sure you’re busy. I’ll leave you to it. Goodnight.’
11.55 p.m.
Cathy could hear the din of riot issuing from the television, cutting through the similar noises that were reverberating through the Lovelace. In every living room in all the land, she knew people must be sitting on the edges of their sofa, mouths agape as they watched the riots spreading. Not her.
Banji’s blow had felled her. She had come home and gone straight to bed, where she lay for hours staring up at the ceiling, looking at nothing as darkness fell.
He had done it to her twice. That’s the thought that kept recurring. Twice.
The first time she’d been young and desperately in need of love. He’d been everything that she was not: streetwise, sure of himself and enigmatic. Even his ability to stomach drugs and alcohol had seemed exotic to her then. But when he’d left her, she’d persuaded herself that it was for the best.
Fine. Good. We make mistakes and move on.
She had spent years making herself feel better by pretending that she’d never really loved him. Now she knew that for the lie it was, and now, as well, she knew the truth. Which was that he had never really loved her.
She could forgive the girl she once had been; she didn’t know if she’d ever be able to forgive the adult.
The sound of running feet. She shut her eyes.
The door burst open. ‘You’ve got to come and see this, Mum.’
‘I’m tired.’
‘But you’ve got to.’
All she wanted was to be left alone.
‘Come on.’ It was clear from Lyndall’s stance, feet planted and hands on hips, that she was determined to get her way.
Easier to follow her to the living room than to resist, so that’s what Cathy did. ‘What’s so interesting?’
Lyndall pointed at the television. ‘Keep watching. It’ll be on again in a minute.’
The screen showed one of those loops they used when everything is happening at once and they didn’t have sufficient cameras to cover it. Footage, already familiar, of fires burning, and policemen in retreat, and a woman jumping with her child from a building.
‘I’ve already seen this.’ She made to turn away.
‘Wait. It’s coming.’
A new sequence. The skeleton of the building she had run into yesterday. Still smouldering but with no roof and no outside walls.
‘Yes, I’ve seen that as well.’
‘Not that,’ Lyndall said. ‘Wait.’
The camera panned away from the shafts of metal that had once been a building to the street below and towards a barricade that hadn’t previously been there. Flames rising, youths throwing more fuel on a bonfire. Another pan but this time with a change of angle, coming as it did from behind the police lines and towards the barricade. The camera stayed on a man who had separated himself from the group and, as the camera stayed on him, looked straight at it.
‘See who it is.’ This from Lyndall.
Unlike his fellows, this man did not bother to hide his face. He looked, dead centre, at the camera, smiled and raised an arm. And before the camera tilted down, the cameraman presumably scrambling out of the way, the man smiled again and threw a burning bottle. And that man was Banji.
Monday
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL FOR INQUIRY USE ONLY
Submission to the internal inquiry of the Metropolitan Police into Operation Bedrock
Submission 1051/W: camera stills 6473–6503 gathered by Support Unit 31AXZ, call sign India 97, taken between 0:55 and 02:05 on
location: Rockham High Street
subject: continuation of disturbances and community response
Photographs W6473–79 indicate an apparent stand-off on Rockham High Street between alleged looters and Rockham residents, who, it is assumed, are shopkeepers guarding their premises. A variety of weapons – steel poles, sticks, bricks – can be seen in the hands of both opposing sections. A man, IC3, can be seen to the left of the photograph apparently arguing with the alleged rioters.
Photographs W6480–85, show the putative looters dispersing after the ASU hovered directly above them. Photographs W96–98 show the man, IC3, also running away.
Photographs W6499–6503 show the Rockham High Street now calm. The ASU was given instruction to proceed to a location outside of Rockham following reports of new disturbances.
8 a.m.
The line of Joshua Yares’s lips tightened as he sped-read his way through that morning’s newspapers.
The red-tops had all gone for alliteration, with headlines such as ‘England Explodes’ competing with a more punitive ‘Dixon’s Disgrace’ and what was probably an early edition’s ‘Rockham’s Ruin’. What the papers also shared, and this included the broadsheets, is that they read like comics, their terse prose outgunned by photographs of buildings burning, people panicking, rioters rioting and crowds of police apparently doing nothing but looking on.
Joshua’s lips tightened some more when he saw that, despite the huge variety of available images, every editor had opted to include the identical two: the first was the woman, child in arms, plunging down three floors to escape her burning home; the second was a close-up of the man all the tabloids had nicknamed ‘Molotov Man’.
A rap on his door. He shifted the papers aside. ‘Come,’ and then, ‘Come in, Anil. Take a seat,’ watching as his deputy plodded over to the desk and gingerly lowered himself into the chair opposite. ‘How are you holding up?’
A weary shrug. ‘I’m afraid it’s still an uphill battle, sir. The NPCC organised a couple of TAU coachloads for us – sorely needed. They were on their way when word came that it’s about to kick off in Salford, so they had to turn back. We’re getting them from further north instead – the Durham and the Scottish chiefs have been helpful – but it’s all going to take time.’
‘Until we’ve got enough bodies to push back, we’ll just have to exert as strong a hold as we can,’ Joshua said. ‘Meanwhile, did you find a moment to glance through the papers?’
‘I did, sir. Grim reading.’
‘That it is.’ Joshua picked up the topmost tabloid, opening it to its centre spread where an oversize picture of the Molotov-throwing man
was surrounded by smaller photos of other kinds of mayhem. ‘You must have seen this.’
‘Couldn’t miss it.’
‘Once the press picks its face of evil, they never let go. If we don’t find this man, they will – and then they’ll throw him in our faces. We need to know everything that can be known about him and then we need to find him.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘No more surprises. Everything.’
‘I’ve already put an officer on it.’
‘Put on more if that’s what it takes. I want this man found.’
‘Should I issue an APW?’
‘Not at this juncture. We have to assume he’s still in Rockham – it’s where he’ll feel safest – but gone to ground. Tell CS Wright to leave no stone unturned.’
‘Even if it inflames the situation?’
‘I want this man and I want him here, on my carpet, as soon as he is picked up. Is that clear?’
‘Crystal, sir.’ Chahda levered himself out of the chair. ‘I’ll get on to it right away.’
10 a.m.
Come the hour of the emergency debate, MPs who’d gathered in the Members’ corridors to swap horror stories from their constituencies piled into the Chamber, squeezing close on the benches, latecomers jostling each other in their efforts to stay within the lines to give themselves a chance to have their say.
The Prim
e Minster, who was still in Switzerland, had asked Peter to lead his government’s response. Another political miscalculation, Peter thought, and, given that all eyes were now on Parliament, another chance for him to shine.
The Speaker gave him the nod: ‘Home Secretary.’
He got up, slowly, from the front bench and in the same languorous pace stepped forward to lay his notes on the dispatch box, taking a moment then to look around. He could feel the weight of expectation on him, and he felt it not as a burden (the House being for once united) but as an embrace. He took a deep breath in. ‘I am confident that I speak for the House,’ and then, conscious that the suspended microphones were picking up his every word and relaying them out to a wider than usual audience, he added, ‘and that I also speak for the nation when I condemn the criminality of the past thirty-six hours. There can be no excuse for the burning of homes, the raiding of shops, the robbery of members of the public and the attack on police officers.’ He waited for the rumble of agreement to pass through both front benches and around the House, and even after it was over he let the silence stretch before lowering his voice. ‘We will restore order,’ he said. ‘And we will punish the offenders. Make no mistake about it, we stand united in our determination to preserve our way of life.’
As a fresh tide of ‘Hear, hears’ died away, he let his voice drop another notch.
‘The police,’ he said . . .
‘The police,’ Joshua heard, and pumped up the volume on his TV.
‘. . . and especially individual officers, have shown considerable courage against the odds. Twenty-five police officers have so far been treated for their injuries, and we fear that there are likely to be further casualties. I know the House will join me in thanking them, and their fellow officers, for their courage and in wishing the injured a speedy recovery.’
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