Ten Days (27 page)

What did I do, Cathy thought, as Lyndall lifted up a hand to touch the blood that trickled from the cut on her cheek, red turning to pink as it mingled with her tears.

She never hit Lyndall. Never. ‘I'm so sorry.'

‘What's the point of being sorry?' delivered on a ferocious glare.

‘I didn't mean to hurt you.'

‘Don't you dare touch me again.' Lyndall was more angry than hurt. She pushed past Cathy and down the corridor to the bathroom. She opened the door, shut it, opened it again to poke out her head and say, ‘And, yes, I will clean the cut,' before slamming the door shut.

There was the sound of the bolt being drawn, and after that Cathy could hear her own jagged breaths – as if she had been running – and to punctuate them the sound of someone really running outside on the landing. Someone being chased. Shouts of ‘Stop!', which she ignored.

She looked down.

When the bag had fallen, it had also broken, and everything had spilt out. She saw a tin of condensed milk, a can of cola, half a loaf of sliced white, a tin of baked beans and a can opener. For what? she wondered, and then, refocusing the question, for who?

9.40 p.m.

That it had come to this, Billy thought. That they were actually contemplating using water cannons on the streets of London. I mean, yeah, they had them, but they'd had them in storage for years and every previous Home Secretary had, with the backing of most of the good guys in the service, refused to give them the green light. This Home Secretary had seemed no different from his successors: they all talked up law and order while cutting resources, but they also took their lead on operational matters from senior management. And yet this Home Secretary and his boss the Prime Minister were outdoing themselves in their promises of the methods they would use to quash the rioters, methods that the Commissioner had gone on record rejecting.

Something was going on behind the scenes. And, Billy thought, as he kept plodding forward, one foot in front of the next, when politicians manoeuvre it's the police who end up picking up the pieces. Once the public got used to water cannons, there would no putting the genie back into the bottle. Before anybody knew it, every plod would be carrying a gun.

He caught this uncharacteristically gloomy thought. Told himself it was fatigue talking. Forget your average tour of duty, he'd been on his feet, with only the occasional half an hour of shut-eye, for over eighty hours. And counting, given he was on his way back to base in Rockham.

He should have been there already but had chosen to walk rather than be driven, and also to take the long way round, by the canal. It was a whim of his to breathe some air, although in this heat, and with smoke still hanging low, there didn't feel to be much air around. But at least he was on his own, if only for this moment.

As this thought occurred, he realised that he wasn't going to be alone for much longer. Ahead some fifty yards, two men were standing. They were facing each other and their voices were raised, although he couldn't make out what they were saying. As he moved closer, he realised that only one of them, male IC3, was talking, at the same time jabbing his finger into the other's chest.

Billy sighed. His minder was right: he should not be out here on his own. Not so close to angry Rockham and dressed in the full kit. He could so easily become a target.

The two men were caught up in their row; they hadn't even noticed him. He could turn away. Leave them to it.

‘You're a bastard,' he heard. ‘You and all the rest.'

A falling out amongst thieves?

‘He wasn't a danger,' he heard. ‘Hit first, ask later: that's your way, isn't it?' Another jab that pushed the second man backwards. ‘You were supposed to help him. Not kill him.' More jabs, and the other man visibly staggering under their impact, which is when Billy saw that he couldn't get away because his attacker had hold of him.

‘Bastard police.'

That's when Billy saw that the victim, also IC3, was in uniform.

Stupid bloody plod, out here on his own. Even as he registered the irony of this judgement, Billy was already running towards the two, shouting, ‘Break it up.'

Adrenaline, and stupidity, had driven him thus far. Now, as he came upon them, he realised that the man in uniform was no policeman.

Billy's baton was already in his hand. With a flick of his wrist, he expanded it to its fullest length. ‘Break it up.'

He pushed the presumed victim out of the way and flicked his baton so that the presumed attacker was forced back and against a fence.

‘Fuck off.' The man shook his head wildly, as if that might be enough to shake Billy off.

‘Calm down,' and, as the man tried to move forwards, he said it again, ‘Calm down,' and poked the baton into the man's clavicle.

The man went still.

‘That's better. Now what's all this about?'

The white of the man's eyes were suffused with red and his breath stank of over-stewed onions and stale alcohol. He tried to turn away, but Billy held him speared. ‘I asked you a question. What's going on?'

‘They killed a man who did no harm.'

‘So you thought you'd take that out on a traffic warden, did you?'

The man's mouth opened. His jaw agape. Comical really. He twisted his head and looked. And what he saw made his fists unfurl.

This one under control. Out of the corner of his eye, Billy saw the other beginning to back away.

‘Oi, you. Come and stand where I can see you properly.'

The man shuffled into vision.

‘That's better. Now, from what I saw, this man here,' he jabbed with his truncheon, just enough to make sure he kept quiet, ‘looked to be in the process of assaulting you. Do you want to press charges?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘I don't want trouble.'

‘Okay. Go on home, then.'

That's all he needed to say for the man to turn tail and, head down, begin to almost run.

‘Slow down,' Billy called after him. ‘Stay calm. Use the back streets. And for pity's sake, don't wear your uniform after dark, not with the streets as restive as they are.'

As the man walked more slowly, Billy turned back to the other. ‘What are we going to do with you?'

No answer.

Billy didn't have one either. On the one hand, he had seen enough to arrest the man. He'd clearly been drinking and, by the wild redness of his eyes, staying up all hours. Probable rioter. If they kept him in, they'd likely find him on the footage.

On the other hand, that could tie Billy up doing the paperwork, and the Rockham officers would hardly thank him for adding another body to the overcrowded nick, and . . . Well, that was the puzzling thing. Something about this man. How immediately he had stilled himself when the baton went up to his neck: as if he knew what would happen if he didn't. How horrified he had been when he realised he'd attacked a traffic warden. How he met Billy's gaze now rather than look away. How he held himself quietly but not because he was cowed. On the contrary, his expression showed defiance. As if he were daring Billy to take him in. And all this, despite having the look and the smell of a down-and-out.

If Billy did arrest him, he'd have to frogmarch the man along the bank until a squad car could get to them. He thought about the chaos, not only in the Rockham nick but in every station within a radius of ten miles. He thought about his minder, who'd be wanting him back, and about the men who'd think he'd sneaked in a rest they weren't allowed. And then he thought about the water cannon, and the military men who were being parachuted into the higher ranks, and the way the politicians were talking, and he thought that soon the discretion that even the lowliest bobby was allowed and had been since the beginning of the force would be history.

Which was the clincher. He let his baton drop and telescoped it in.

‘Go on,' he said. ‘Go home.'

The man didn't move.

‘Hop it.' And when the man still didn't make a move, it was Billy who chose to walk away.

9.45 p.m.

A rap on his office door. A head poked round. ‘Excuse me, Home Secretary.' Some junior from the outer office.

‘Can't you see I'm in the middle of something?' Usually enough to rid himself of unwanted interruptions.

Not this time. ‘Home Secretary?'

‘Yes?' When he jerked his head up, he was revisited by the wash of the sunset that had bloodied the sky. ‘What is it?'

‘Your wife.'

Again he seemed to hear that unrelenting ticking of a clock that had punctuated his day. ‘What about her?'

‘She's here.'

His first thought was that he'd forgotten something they were supposed to be doing together, although he couldn't think what that might be. His second thought, as he stretched across for his diary, was that she had come to spy on him.

‘Should I . . . ?'

‘Yes, yes. Show her in. But before you do,' he pointed at the wall clock, ‘Take that out, will you?'

He pushed away the document he'd been working on as the junior rose up on tiptoes to hook the clock off the wall and carried it away.

Clock gone. Merciful silence.

Which didn't last, as he should have known it wouldn't, because the ticking was in his head, and here it came again as Frances was practically bowed in – she had this effect on all his staff. As he made his way over to her, he couldn't help thinking of a recent nature programme he'd half caught in which whichever Attenborough lookalike they were trying out had said that the spider commonly known as the blonde, otherwise called the yellow sac, was responsible for most bad domestic bites.

‘Darling.' He kissed her proffered cheek, impressed as always that she had managed to keep so cool in the heat. ‘Didn't they ring to tell you I was working late? I did ask them to.'

‘Yes, they rang. But I was in town having a drink with Amanda and we were passing by. So I thought I'd drop in.' She continued on with her 360-degree examination of his office.

Yes, he almost said, it is big, but there's still nowhere that I could have hidden Patricia. ‘It's sweltering out there,' he said and, assuming her full search must naturally include his bathroom, ‘Would you like to wash up?'

‘No, thank you. I'm fine.' Her gaze had been snagged by the wall-mounted TV, on which the riots were silently playing. ‘Where's that?'

‘Rockham again. It was calm earlier, but now it's got so bad they've had to wheel out the water cannon – the old ones Boris got conned into buying years ago. I'm surprised they still work.'

That look, her thinking look again, which produced: ‘That might cook the PM's goose.'

His thought as well.

Did she think like him, he wondered, or had she taught him to think like her?

‘Trouble is,' she said, ‘it might also cook the government's goose. Questions are already being asked as to what you've done to fuel such rage.'

She was always so critical. So ready to point the finger. It was getting on his nerves.

But then he told himself he was only tired. And overworked. Which, speaking of: ‘I'd love to come home with you but . . .' he pointed at the piles of papers on his desk.

‘It's fine,' she said. ‘Amanda's waiting for me downstairs.'

‘Well then . . .'

That would normally be sufficient to get her out. Not this time. Instead: ‘About your appearance at the committee.'

‘You watched?'

‘Naturally.'

He knew what she was going to say next: that he should have warned her he was going before the committee. That he usually did. But with one thing and another . . .

‘We should have talked about it beforehand,' she said.

‘I would have consulted you, darling.' Did the endearment sound as awkward to her as it was beginning to sound to him? ‘You know that I normally do. But I had such a lot on today, including watching the PM throwing his weight about at COBRA. And what I told the committee was true: it was my first day at Environment. I signed an already approved document. The decision had nothing to do with me.'

‘I see.' She blinked.

‘Is there something I'm missing here?'

‘I'm not sure.' She frowned. ‘Something about some of those names. I think we might actually have . . .' And then her expression cleared. ‘No, perhaps I've got it wrong.' She nodded in that definite way she had. ‘I have. And it's totally correct: permission for the factory had nothing to do with you. Well,' she was smiling, ‘I can see you have a lot on. I'll leave you to it.' She turned, treating him to a last sweep of her straight blonde hair, this way and that, tick, tick, exiting his office while he continued to stand there wondering what her visit had really been about.

10 p.m.

Joshua had buffed his shoes and shined them twice, so it was unlikely that the slightest strand of tobacco or smear of mud remained. Even so, his eyes kept straying down.

Nothing to do with the shoes, this he knew, and everything to do with the fact that they'd left him in that alleyway, ignoring his bangs, until he'd been forced to phone his driver to come and pull him out. With the likely result that he'd soon be the laughing stock of every bobby in London. The only reason that an exaggerated account of the incident might not be circulating in the evening paper is that the explosion of violence in Rockham – and elsewhere – was all anybody was currently interested in.

The situation was at crisis point.

A few days is all he needed. By then he'd have most of his men back from leave and enough bodies in mutual aid to get a proper hold on the situation. But he might not get those few days. Wheeling out the big guns, namely water cannon, for the first time in mainland Britain, and also the increasingly talked-about strategy of using tear gas and baton rounds, might satisfy the hangers and floggers, but anybody who had ever tried to police a disturbance in which unrelated groups of troublemakers came together to create anarchy would know how ineffective such methods of mass control could turn out to be. Never mind that their going in heavy risked provoking even more people out onto the streets, something that was already taking place in Rockham.