Ten Days (16 page)

Chahda was a good officer and, as last night had demonstrated, solidly dependable. Still, Joshua thought, there was something out of kilter, some dragging of feet when it came, for example, to pulling the records of the officers who'd been witnesses to the death in Rockham. Perhaps it was a reluctance to single out any officer for blame: a position with which Joshua had some sympathy, especially at this early stage when passions were inflamed. But you didn't get to be Commissioner without knowing that the thing you most wanted to hide from public scrutiny would end up as the next day's banner headline. They needed, therefore, to cover all eventualities. Chahda, who'd spent so long as deputy, should know this.

‘We're here, sir. And so's the press.'

Already! He sighed and pulled up the knot of his tie, and placed his peaked hat on his head, feeling for the straight brim. A breath in, a direction to self to say nothing but to say it pleasantly, before he opened the door and stepped out.

The press pack didn't take any notice of him. Corralled behind a set of barriers, they were all too busy straining to hear what Home Secretary Peter Whiteley had to say.

A set-up. Must be, because this many hacks would not have turned up by chance, and on a Sunday morning well before the meeting started, especially when most of them were probably nursing riot hangovers. Someone must have tipped them off. Whiteley's wife, perhaps, whose clear ambition, according to the PM, was to ring in another change of decor in Downing Street. Or Whiteley's Special Adviser, Patsy or Patricia something or other, whose short skirts drew attention to her long legs and who always seemed to be hanging on her boss's every word. The PM had dropped a hint that there might be something special, and he didn't mean Special Advice, going on there. Not that Joshua gave a toss how many women Whiteley, or any other politician, bedded: not as long as they all left Joshua alone to get on with the job.

He walked round the car towards the entrance, where a functionary was waiting to lead him to the Cabinet Briefing Office in the cellar between Parliament and Trafalgar Square. As he handed over his phone, and before he passed through the door, he turned for a last glance at the Home Secretary.

Whiteley was in full spate, banging his right fist against the palm of his left.

Probably promising to personally raid the houses of every single rioter and clap them all in irons, Joshua thought, and then he went in.

10.15 a.m.

Banging and a woman's voice – ‘Open this door' – followed by more banging.

Cathy grabbed for her dressing gown.

‘Open up.'

‘I'm on my way.' She ran to the door and wrenched it open.

Jayden's mother, also still in her dressing gown and looking worse than ever, said, ‘What have you done with him?' as soon as she saw Cathy.

‘Done with who?'

‘My son. Jayden. What have you done with him?'

‘Isn't he back?'

‘No, and Lyndall said you'd gone to find him.' In Elsie's paranoid world, anyone prepared to go to the trouble to look for her son was as likely to chop him into little pieces and throw them in the river as bring him safely home. ‘Where is he?' The top of her dressing gown opened to give Cathy a glimpse of the lace of a nightie that, once white, had turned a muddied grey. ‘What the fuck did you do with him?'

If anybody else had talked to her like that, especially after the night she'd had, Cathy would have closed the door on them. But she made allowances for Elsie, who, she suspected, had a severe case of agoraphobia on top of the belligerence she never could restrain.

‘I didn't find him,' she said. ‘But that doesn't mean he wasn't there. I got diverted.'

‘Well, why isn't he home?' Elsie was gnawing at the edges of an already bloodied fingernail. ‘He's dead, isn't he?'

‘He can't be dead. We would have heard if he was. And,' remembering how quickly Pius had been contacted about her, ‘if he was hurt we'd also have heard.'

A series of staggered inhalations had the effect of robbing Elsie of almost all her breath: ‘So where is he?'

‘Maybe he slept the night elsewhere?'

‘He wouldn't. He doesn't. Not unless I have one of my turns.' She meant one of her explosive rages during which she would break any object that came to hand. It sounded ugly, but Cathy, who often took Jayden in during these episodes, knew that his mother never threw anything directly at him, the only collateral damage being the crockery he had taken to acquiring in bulk from the pound shop he worked in.

Elsie's jagged breaths transitioned into a wailed-out ‘What am I going to do?'

Such a pathetic sight. Cathy felt like hugging Elsie, but she knew better than to touch her or even verbally to sympathise – two of the many things that Elsie could not abide. So instead she said, ‘It was chaos last night. There were barricades everywhere. He might not have been able to get home. He might have stayed with someone.'

‘Who? Lyndall's his only friend.'

Surprised that his mother had actually noticed this, Cathy thought, should I? And then she thought, yes, she had to, to prepare Elsie. ‘The only other thing I can think,' she said, ‘is that he could have been arrested.' And, quickly, before Elsie could react, ‘It's unlikely. Jayden never makes trouble. But give me a couple of hours and if he's not back I'll go check with the police.'

‘He has to come back,' Elsie said, which Cathy took as agreement to her plan.

Poor Jayden, she thought, as she closed the door. It wasn't Elsie's fault that she was such a liability, but it must be a terrible strain on him.

10.20 a.m.

The underground briefing room was packed. As if the PM himself was chairing, Peter thought. All the players had pitched up: the police, of course, and the head of the NPCC, and there were video links to many other police authorities. But more importantly from Peter's point of view, every one of the major secretaries of state had been willing to sacrifice what was probably their only morning off in order to attend the meeting. A sign, he knew, not so much of the gravity of the situation – it wasn't yet clear how grave it really was – but of the seriousness with which they viewed his bid for the top spot.

For or against him, they wanted to watch his play. And if it went well, he thought, they'd give him good reviews.

He was in his element as a chairman, a conductor orchestrating a collective conversation, bringing in the strings here and the wood there to make the music sound as he wanted it to sound. To do this properly, one must know one's orchestra, their vanities and their concerns, and the things that they didn't do so well, and these he had spent a long time studying. As a result, things were going swimmingly. The only possible fly in the ointment was the Commissioner, but Yares had so far played along. Probably intimidated by the serried rank of politicians.

Well, if he changed his mind and decided to step out of line, Peter was ready for him.

On the other side of the table, Joshua kept his own counsel. Someone had to, what with the monstrous collection of egos in this room. Forget the newbie police commissioners, who were having a marvellous time being beamed into COBRA to guff on endlessly about what they could and couldn't do while the Home Secretary nodded his encouragement – they could be forgiven for being star-struck and anxious to impress. He had less patience for the behaviour of the politicians: the Foreign Secretary, who, oddly, hadn't gone with the PM, wittered on about how this was going to play abroad, his real point being how good he was at reassuring Johnny foreigner; the Justice Minister, whose second double chin puffed up as he vowed that, with him in charge, magistrates would understand the need to impose the most draconian of sentences; Defence, who continuously interrupted everybody to offer military support should it be needed; and as for the man in charge of Work and Pensions – well, he wasted precious time outlining his many measures to combat gang culture, although what had happened in Rockham and then spread had nothing whatsoever to do with any gang. In short, they were all blowing their own trumpets, as politicians were wont to do. Or auditioning to keep their jobs, Joshua thought, as Whiteley moved them on to the next topic, namely police leave, which, he now informed them, he had ‘ordered cancelled'.

He had said the same thing on the BBC. Joshua could not, would not, let it go unchallenged. He leant forward. ‘Sorry to interrupt, Home Secretary, but I am sure that what you meant to communicate here, and in your interviews this early morning, was that leave has been cancelled. Which it has been. By me – it being an operational matter that falls within the remit of the Office of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.'

Whiteley smiled. ‘Thank you, Commissioner.'

Was that menace in his smile?

‘A slip of the tongue,' Whiteley continued. ‘That is of course what I meant to say.'

And, yes, it was menace, because when he added
,

‘I am confident that . . .'

the stress he afterwards placed on his repetition of Joshua's phrase:

‘. . . the Office of the Commissioner . . .'

was meant to ridicule, and when he continued:

‘. . . has done everything it can to counter the dreadful scenes we saw on our streets last night . . .'

his sarcastic tone belied his words
.

A beat. A moment for Joshua to realise that the conflict he'd hoped to avoid was upon them, a reality made visible by the way the other occupants of the room looked everywhere but at the two antagonists. Even the PCCs on their video links sensed something brewing and were looking first at Whitley and then at Joshua, as if at a tennis match.

‘But is it not true, Commissioner,' Whiteley continued, ‘that what happened in Rockham was a replay of Tottenham 2011? Did the Met not learn those lessons? Could you not have contained the situation?'

‘Yes, we could have,' Joshua said. ‘At least we could have once. But there is now a solvent factory in Rockham, and its existence played havoc with our contingency plans. If it had gone up, we would now be dealing with a raging fire and multiple casualties. So we had to divert some of our best-trained officers to guard this factory. This, combined with the cuts to the force, meant we just didn't have enough officers on the ground to contain the Rockham disturbances.'

‘Clearly you did not.' A brief smug smile. ‘But there is also another matter to be discussed. You would agree, I expect, that the best policing is preventative?'

A typical politician's trick: to state the obvious. Joshua nodded.

‘Pity then that you and your “office” seemed to have absolutely no intelligence that any of this was going to unfold.'

‘Don't you think it's a big mental leap,' Joshua kept his voice calm, ‘to assume that because one man died in unfortunate circumstances, rioting was going to break out?'

‘A leap?' Whiteley's tone was even calmer. ‘Perhaps so from your point of view. But from where I sit I have been disheartened . . .' he looked down at his briefing notes for longer than could realistically have been necessary, ‘to discover that,' he used a finger to tap twice at the sheet of paper in front of him, ‘fifteen people have died in London in police presence – that means out on the streets or in custody suites – during the last year. And that not a single charge has arisen from these deaths. Knowing this, one might be forgiven for assuming that there would be a build-up of hostility towards the police, which was bound to come to a head. Especially in a place like Rockham, where there is no love lost between the community and the force.' His emphasis on that word
force
seemed to crack the air.

Joshua could feel Anil Chahda shifting in the seat beside him. Probably wanting Joshua to shut this conversation down. ‘I think you will find, Home Secretary,' Joshua said, ‘that this number is lower than in previous years.'

A pointed furrowing of his brow. ‘And therefore acceptable?'

‘We do everything we can to prevent such deaths. But our officers are on the sharp end. We have to deal with people suffering from alcohol or drug abuse, or from mental-health problems – especially given the cuts in social services – or with people who are just ill and don't know it, on a daily, an hourly, basis. In this climate, there are bound to be accidents.'

One eyebrow nearly touched the other. An extended pause and then, ‘Don't you think we should leave it to the appropriate authorities, in this case the IPCC, to judge whether this particular death was an accident?'

Oh, he was good, this politician, at playing Joshua at his own game. If it had been a tennis match, he would definitely have won.

And he knew it. ‘We have a full agenda,' he said. ‘Rather than pre-judging the results of an ongoing IPCC investigation, I suggest we move on.' His gaze shifted from Joshua. ‘Deputy Commissioner Chahda, now would be a good time for your report on the measures that you have put in place to combat further unrest in Rockham.'

1.50 p.m.

When he couldn't find a way to get home without encountering further trouble, Jayden had headed in the opposite direction. He ended up by the canal, where he waited until the sun began to rise. He could still hear noises coming from Rockham. He was so tired. He curled up in a dip in the bank, close to the bridge where the alkies usually congregated, and closed his eyes.

He hadn't meant to fall asleep, but he woke up later, hot, thirsty and covered in soot. He had no idea what time it was; all he knew was that his mother would be wild. He hurried along the edge of the canal.

It was quiet now. So quiet he almost managed to convince himself the whole thing had been a dream. But the closer he got to the Lovelace, the greater was the visible destruction. At one corner he saw firemen arcing up their hoses to damp down a smouldering pile of bricks and cookers and fridges and some pieces of furniture, which, apart from the building's metallic skeleton, was all that was left.