Ten Days (14 page)

The man and child had disappeared. She made herself retrace in her mind the route in, the number of steps through the flat, counting them back, as with one arm around the woman's shoulders she stretched the other out in front, feeling for the gap where the door should be. Her mind told her that this was a small flat: how hard could it be to get out? But her perception told a different story: it was as if the smoke, black now, had become the room and it was infinite. She had no idea which way to go.

Time slowed. Somebody breathing heavily. A distraction. She wished they would stop – until it occurred to her that what she was hearing were her own laboured breaths. She took a deep breath in. It almost choked her. She started panting, trying that way to expel the smoke from her lungs. ‘Where's the door?'

No answer.

‘Door,' Cathy bellowed as if, even without English, the woman would understand.

She could feel the shaking of the woman's head.

What if they were going the wrong way? That's it. The door must be behind them. She made to turn.

The woman grabbed hold of her wrist. It was her place: she would know the way out. Except the woman then seemed to be frozen and trying to keep Cathy with her.

‘Come on.' It would soon be too late. Which way to go?

A memory flashed through her mind like smoke. Something she needed to remember. She tried with all her might to pull it to her.

She saw Ruben walking with his arms outstretched. That was it: that's what she needed to do.

She reached out her arms, first in a straight line and then, as she went forward, the woman still holding on to her wrist, she widened them. One hit what felt at first like a wall, but when she ran her hand down she found that it was grooved. An architrave: they must be at the door. She took a step forward. An indent underfoot. A mat. They were on the landing. Which meant that the stairs were to the left.

Or were they to the right?

‘Where are the stairs?' She couldn't see the woman any more, could only feel her face and the tears that were rolling down. ‘The stairs!'

No response.

Left, she thought, they must be on the left. She turned left.

A hand pulled her. Not the woman's this time. The man's. His face jammed close to hers. She could smell his sweat and it smelt of fear and smoke. The woman grabbed hold of him, running her hands down his arms, and then she began to wail.

‘Come on,' he was shouting at them both.

The woman was shaking now, so hard Cathy could feel the tremors passing through herself.

‘Her baby! She thinks you've lost her baby.'

‘She's safe. She's outside.'

The woman wailed even louder.

Cathy folded her arms, one over the other, to make a cradle. Standing tight against the woman, she raised the arms to rock them back and forth, touching the woman's head to show the motion, back and forth, back and forth, before taking the woman's arm and pointing it in the direction – right – of the stairs.

The woman's cries ceased.

‘Let's go.' The man turned. ‘Hold on to my shoulders.'

Cathy placed both hands on his shoulders and the woman did likewise to hers, and then the man led them across the corridor and down the stairs.

How he led them out she would never know. The air was so thick, a wall of black smoke that, bending low as he told them to do, they had to push against. Each step took an age; each breath felt like it could be her last. Give up, a voice kept telling her, give up. The only thing that stopped her from listening to that voice was the woman's hand on her shoulder and an overwhelming need whose name was Lyndall. Give up, she thought again, and then another sound: the heavy burr of a helicopter passing overhead.

They were out. The air she gulped made her dizzy. She dropped to her knees. Gasping. One thought: that she should be left there to do nothing else but breathe.

‘Get up.' Hands got hold of her and hauled her, scraping her skin, across the ground.

She wanted to get away from those hands. ‘Let go.' A voice that sounded nothing like hers. ‘Let go.'

At last they did let go.

She was no longer moving, or being moved – was just lying there. The relief of it. She lay still, summoning up the strength to open her eyes. When she found it, she saw that either the night had clouded over or else something had happened to her vision. She tasted grit and ash. Felt something pushing at her lips.

Why wouldn't they let her alone? She moved her head away. They pulled it back.

‘Drink.' One hard finger on each side of her jaw forced her mouth open.

They poured in a deep slug of brackish-tasting water. She coughed and the water was regurgitated.

‘Sit her up.'

Hands looped under her arms and hauled her up.

Sitting, her breath came easier. This time when the bottle touched her lips, she took it for herself.

‘Take it easy: sip it.'

Despite that what she wanted to do was gulp it down, she sipped it. This time the water stayed down. When she'd had enough, she upturned what remained over her head, and the smoke that had filmed her vision dissolved.

‘You okay, love?'

She nodded. And heard a shout. ‘There she goes.'

Heads turned towards the building. Hers as well.

She saw the downstairs shop ablaze, and she saw flames licking out of the upper floors. The building was groaning, cracks and crashes coming from deep within it as ceilings fell down onto floors and floors collapsed through to floors below.

To think that she might have been in there.

Above, the helicopter kept circling, its spotlight picking through the crowd that was beginning to edge away from the blazing building. Except, she saw, for a handful of youths who were going forward, intent on offering something to the fire. Something tawny.

A fox. Must be the one whose path had crossed with hers. Then it had been sick; now it must be dead, because it made no effort to get away, neither when the hands held it up nor when they thrust it away.

And then there was a dead fox flying though the air and landing in the building that was to be its funeral pyre.

Sunday

1.30 a.m.

Even before Peter had put his key in the lock, he heard the sound of rioting. When he made his way into the living room, he found Frances on the sofa, the dog at her side, both of them gazing at the blaring television.

‘Shocking, isn't it?' He kissed her on the forehead.

She looked up. ‘How was it?'

‘It was worth doing,' he yawned. ‘I know you were concerned – and perhaps you were right, I was a little in my cups – but there's nothing like having to control chaos to sober up a man. I spent some time in New Scotland Yard – got a full briefing from the Deputy Commissioner – and then I went to the office and concentrated on clearing the decks. If this continues – and the police opinion is that it will – I'm going to be busy.'

‘Yes, darling. I'm sure you will be.' She kept her eyes on the television.

Perhaps some remnant of her earlier anger was still lurking. He leant down to tap the dog on its nose. ‘Budge up.'

The dog shot him a dirty look, but it did let him take its place. ‘Sorry to have deserted you mid supper.'

‘Don't worry, Peter. I understand.' She was still concentrated on the flickering images of a burning building.

‘Did they stay long?'

‘Quite a while. We came in to see what was going on and then found we couldn't tear ourselves away. As a matter of fact,' she glanced at her wristwatch, ‘the last of them only left fifteen minutes ago.' A pause and then: ‘Would you like a nightcap?'

An unexpected suggestion, especially when she'd been so sniffy about his earlier drinking. He looked at where she was sitting, out of range and still concentrated on the television. He said, ‘Good idea.'

She went over to the drinks cabinet. ‘Cognac?'

‘Why not?'

She poured a small drop into one belled glass and considerably more into a second, which she then handed to him. She came back to sit beside him, and for a while they just sat there, swirling their glasses and warming them in their hands. She was closer now, although her gaze still kept straying to the scenes unfolding and endlessly repeating on the television.

‘Ghastly, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' she nodded, ‘ghastly.' A pause as she took a small sip of cognac. ‘And mesmerising.'

His cognac smelt of figs and cinnamon, and it tasted of slightly salty caramel as it slipped down the back of his throat. ‘Horrifying would be a more appropriate descriptor.'

‘Yes, it is horrifying. But you know,' now she did look up, ‘I've been sitting here for hours, watching, and the more I watched, the more I began to think that there must be something wonderful about throwing caution to the wind, like they have, and just acting.' She must have seen his objections welling because she went on, hurriedly, ‘Not that I'm for a moment condoning the destruction – nothing like that. But every now and then I see people, obviously poor and presumably without prospects, caught up in the middle of this awful riot. And they look happy. No, not just happy. They look jubilant.'

‘Of course they do. They're bent on destruction.'

‘Are they really?' Her tone was so flattened there was no way of knowing whether she'd taken offence (that he'd seen fit to lecture her?) or was being sarcastic (telling him, once again, that she was the one who had taught him the basics of politics?) or was merely disappointed (that he would not empathise with her childish excitement?). The last, he decided, when she put down her glass and got to her feet. ‘I'm off to bed.'

‘I wish I could join you. But I better get back to the office. Plan for COBRA. I only dropped in to pick up a change of clothes. I'll do some tidying up in the kitchen before I go.'

‘No need.' One pat on the skirt of her frock and the dog was at her side. ‘I've done most of it already,' and then, and with the dog close on her heel, she left the room.

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL FOR INQUIRY USE ONLY

Submission to the internal inquiry of the Metropolitan Police into Operation Bedrock

Submission 9992/D/23–D/45: photographic evidence gathered by Air Support Unit 27AWZ, call sign India 95, between 03:00 and 03:13 hours on
                              

Camera stills 0678/D23–D45

location: Rockham police station and Rockham High Street

subject: day two disturbances

Supplemental photographic evidence captured by 27AWZ in the vicinity of:

(a) Rockham police station

(b) Rockham High Street: 20–50 metres north of the police station

(c) Rockham High Street: 150 metres north of the police station

The attached photographs catalogue the spread of disturbances in the immediate surrounds of the Rockham police station.

Numbers D23–D29 indicate the pressure on the Level 2 trained officers safeguarding the police station.

Numbers D30–D39 catalogue the advance of the eight officers led by Bronze Leader Chief Inspector B. Ridgerton as they push northwards along Rockham High Street.

Numbers D40–D45 show the fire in the commercial/residential premises (known in the area as Budget Stores) 150 metres north of the police station on Rockham High Street. These photographs include the location of three LFB appliances as they await clearance of the area (see images D30–D39) in order to gain access to the fires set in the roads and to the burning building.

3.15 a.m.

Rockham had once been Billy's beat. Poor as it undoubtedly was, he'd come across a lot of good people here. At this point, however, as pillaging took the place of protest, he was beginning to hate the whole borough and all who sailed in her. Without exception.

‘Don't you even think of sleeping,' the sergeant in front of Billy grasped one of his drooping constables by the shoulder, ‘or I'll lay you out myself.' His fingers must have passed through padding and into bone, and dug in hard, because the constable tried to shake him off, thus shaking himself back into the moment. Now the sergeant strode behind the line of six constables, walloping each on the helmet as he passed. ‘Hold the line,' his voice loud enough to penetrate the pandemonium, ‘hold the fucking line.' His shouting was designed as a counter to the people who were banging and throwing things and blowing on car horns, creating a racket so deafening it was enough to disorient the strongest man. This, combined with the fear they must all be experiencing, could produce a kind of tunnel vision in which their hearing would also close down. Their sergeant's voice, to which they were so acclimatised, was there to break through this, which it clearly did. Their muscle memories kicking in, the men lined up closer to each other.

‘You're doing a great job. Keep formation.' He'd been shouting for so long his voice was breaking, but now he somehow managed to raise it to another level: ‘Keep together. Here they come. Shields high.'

They lifted their shields and held them high as a line of youth ran at them, stopping within hailing distance and letting loose a barrage of splintered paving stones that, lit by the starburst of a flaring firework, soon came raining down. A second pack of rioters – they were beginning to organise themselves – followed, also throwing their makeshift missiles. And then came one of those now familiar pauses that punctuated this ritual: attack, counter-attack and retreat having gone on for hours, leaving both sides exhausted. They used this moment before re-armament and re-repulsion to try to out-eyeball each other.

Into the hiatus the sergeant yelled, ‘Sit rep on the left,' to stop his men being hypnotised by the other side, and, sure enough, the descriptions of the looting taking place down the side street furnished by the officer on the left was enough to pull them out of any such possible trance. The sergeant transmitted the information back to Billy, who nodded and waved a hand to indicate that they should move towards the line of youths already in the process of re-forming.

‘Forward on my count,' the sergeant called. ‘One, two, and together: charge.'

They were members of the Met's Territorial Support Group, the toughest of the tough, bulked out by the gym and protein shakes, and they were a ferocious sight, especially when on the move. ‘Charge!' their sergeant ordered, and they charged, one of their number bawling out,
‘Semper Paratus,'
which he must have lifted off the Manchester TAU, and then repetitively
‘Semper Paratus'
until his comrades took up the cry, changing it to
‘Semper fucking Paratus'
as, with all the courage of this slogan, they charged forward, scattering the opposition.

Not that they'd be gone for long. They were guerrilla fighters, albeit in expensive tracksuits and branded trainers, whose only objective was to ruck with Billy's men. His men, on the other hand, who would have been capable of controlling a much bigger crowd if members of that crowd had stayed together, were slowed down by their cumbersome kit and the need to protect each other and the public. They must be itching to lay hands on the yobs, but to do so was to risk isolation. And woe betide any man who found himself alone in this mob.

‘Stop,' Billy called, his instruction passed on by the sergeant's ‘Halt, halt,' to which the men responded by wheeling to a halt and at their sergeant's yelled ‘Regroup', re-forming themselves into a line.

They'd gained another ten yards and even this was dangerous.

Their safest bet would have been to consolidate their position at the earlier crossroads rather than trying to force forward to the next. But because fires were being set, they had to forge ahead. To add to their difficulties, an orgiastic bout of thievery seemed to have taken hold of the whole community. Only five minutes previously, Billy had spotted an apparently respectable middle-aged couple pushing a trolley piled so high with nappies and powdered baby milk they could have kept a Romanian orphanage going for a month. He had watched them coming close: close enough to clock him. Their panic at the sight of him almost made him laugh. But it didn't take them long to figure out what he already knew – that there was no way he could expose himself, or abandon his men, by nicking them – and so, as they slowly trundled away, they were the ones to be laughing.

Too dumb to see the blinking of an overhead CCTV camera. That would soon have them laughing on the other side of their faces.

CCTV was all very well, but still it rankled not to catch people in the act. But Billy needed the men to push on while keeping them and the ‘innocent' safe. It was a job made more difficult by the ever-present plague of sightseers. Women, some with babes in arms, would you believe, were laughing and cheering and pointing as if this was a circus they had paid to see, even though, Billy knew, should the criminals decide to turn on the onlookers, as they might easily do, these ‘decent' people of Rockham would be the first to expect protection from his men.

They were unlikely to get it. Having left a contingent of officers outside the police station, and dispatched another to ring-fence the solvent factory, this group of constables and their sergeant were the only mobile and kitted-out representatives of law and order in a three-mile crime scene of arson, robbery and riot. What they were doing, and the length of time they would most likely have to keep on doing it, required almost superhuman effort.

They were a long way off from being able to establish order. The red in the air indicated premises ablaze – and the police were nowhere near. The clang of pipes dragged against corrugated iron was a signal to other looters to come and help lever security gates off shop entrances – and the police weren't there either. And although a section of his precious TSG had control of the perimeter of the solvent factory, if any of these young animals got wind of this strategic target, that too would soon be lost.

‘Billy,' a voice sounded in his ear. ‘Are you still there?'

Where the fuck else was there for him to go? ‘Yes,' he said, ‘I'm here.'

‘There are fresh messages coming through on the FWIN. You need to hear them.'

3.19 a.m.

If an outsider had happened to drop in to the Scotland Yard operations room on that early morning, they would have been forgiven for mistaking the quiet for nothing of much importance going on. The reality was that the worse the news, the more intense the hush. And now the room was deathly quiet.

The screens had multiplied, with still more being carted in. On them were maps and CCTV feeds from various sites, too numerous for any one officer to keep up with. Another clutch of officers were plugged into headphones, monitoring the traffic between the Bronze Commands and their burgeoning Silvers before relaying the information on.

The map of Rockham stood centre stage, the disturbances there being, thus far, the worst. And growing ever more dangerous. Although Billy was the best in the business, his earlier previous requests for reinforcements had turned, as the night wore on, into staccato demands to ‘Send more men. Send more men.'

Trouble was they just didn't have any more men to send.

The previous week's forty-eight-hour marathon of separating the participants of an EDL sit-in outside the Home Office from the counter demonstrators meant many of London's Level 2 trained officers had taken this weekend as time in lieu. In another room, a handful of officers was rousting this lot out of bed, checking that they weren't too inebriated to be of any use. The early heatwave had also prompted members of the TSG, knowing how hard pressed they'd be at the start of the world cricket series in which Pakistan and India, currently on the brink of war, were due to play, to take their annual leave. Most of these had had the good sense to leave London, and many of them were also sensible enough to turn off their phones at night.

If the disorder continued, as it looked set to do, the NPCC would soon take over the coordination of mutual aid. But for the moment it was Joshua's job to hit the phones. Which opened its own can of worms. Gone were the days when a Met commissioner could phone a chief constable in Avon or in Manchester, or any other of the forty-three authorities, and find himself talking to somebody with whom he had probably at some point in his career worked and after they had weighed up the situation, policeman to policeman, cohorts of riot police would be dispatched to London. But because of the election (so-called – the numbers voting being so minimal as to make the word ‘election' laughable) of police and crime commissioners, Joshua now had to walk the gangplank of phone calls to pumped-up PCCs who had little experience of policing and even less of reacting well when woken in the dead of the night. So unproductive had been his first few conversations, he'd decided to continue his ring-round in the morning once the chief officers had had the time to tell their commissioners in words of no more than two syllables, and preferably less, how the prospect of London going pear-shaped was not in their best interests.

And while all this was going on, the number of troublemakers on the streets kept increasing. Oh, for the days when people, and by people Joshua included the under-twenty-fives, actually slept at night. Now, six hours in, clubbers, fired by drugs and drink, had come out to join those already recruited by BBM, with the result that the convulsions were radiating through the entirety of south London.

It didn't help that the beast of the twenty-four-hour news cycle was getting all the red meat it had ever dreamt of. Reporters who'd fantasised about going to war could now stand happily in front of marauding crowds, burning buses and buildings, and youths using golf clubs to break through windows, to tell tales of fire engines and ambulances queuing, and not a policeman in sight. All Joshua had to do was look across at the TV, on silently in one corner, and, as often as not, he would catch that looping image – a woman with a small child in her arms, leaping from a burning building – and that would tell him, as if he needed to be told, how bad it was and also to know how much worse it might soon be.

And now this new FWIN, warning of trouble in the Lovelace.

3.20 a.m.

A hand shaking Cathy. So roughly that her bed in Casualty seemed also to be shaking. Another symptom, she supposed, of the terror that had gripped her even as she'd slept. But then a voice: ‘Mum.' Lyndall's voice. ‘Mum, are you okay?'

She opened her eyes to find Lyndall bending over her. ‘I told you not to leave the flat,' she said.

‘And I told you never to run into a burning building.' Lyndall wrapped her arms around her mother, hugging so hard that Cathy couldn't help but wince. She slackened her grip. ‘I'm sorry.'

‘I'm just a bit bruised is all. How did you know I was here?'

‘The hospital phoned Pius.'

‘And you came. After you agreed to stay put.'

‘I didn't come on my own, Mum. Pius brought me. They said your lungs are clear of smoke. We've come to take you home.'

3.21 a.m.

Before Billy had the chance to discover what fresh delight the new Force Wide Incident Number was warning of, his minder yelled, ‘Duck,' an instruction he reinforced by raising his shield and simultaneously pushing down on Billy's head.

Just in time. The skirmishers had re-armed and returned, and now a fusillade of pavement fragments pelted down on the line of officers and beyond. This bombardment was accompanied by a set of Roman candles, one of which passed over the front ranks to hit the tarmac within a foot of where Billy was crouched. He watched as it bounced, once, twice and a third time, until it ended up in the area below his protective shield.

With his minder still pressing down on him, he could only continue to watch the show unfold. A bang and a blaze of white and then, almost, it seemed, in slow motion, a stream of stars shot out of the candle to hit the left-most underside of the shield, before ricocheting to the right and then rebounding. The candle was now a crazy fizzing thing, his only protection from it the arm he held over his eyes in such a way that he could still see and thus have a chance of dodging the sparks. Its emissions continued to batter the shield until at last – and it seemed to take an age although it must only have been a few seconds – the candle burnt itself out. He stamped down where he thought it had landed, although he couldn't be sure: the glare had blinded him.