Ten Days

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.

‘Are you receiving?’ A voice sounded over the high-pitched whine that seemed to slice through his ears. ‘Billy, are you receiving?’

Oh, right: they’d been wanting to tell him something. ‘Yes.’ So overwhelming was the buzzing in his ears, he couldn’t tell if he was shouting. ‘I’m receiving you.’ Bright striations of light were all he could see, and beyond them, black.

‘It’s the Lovelace,’ he heard. ‘We’re picking up rumours of a hostile build-up inside the estate.’

The Lovelace was a no man’s land for the police on a normal day. In this situation, it was every policeman’s worst nightmare.

‘We can’t have a repeat of ‘85…’ which Billy knew was shorthand for the horror of PC Keith Blakelock’s death at the hands of a mob in Broadwater Farm ‘… but we do need you to check this out so we can either dismiss or confirm the rumour.’

And if it was confirmed, he thought, then what? But this thought he kept to himself, saying only, ‘No problem. I’ll have India 95 do a full heat survey — see if there are any legs to the FWIN.’

3.25 a.m.

More than anything, where Jayden wanted to be was home. Not immediately — first he’d knock at Lyndall’s to make sure she was safe.

Her mother wouldn’t like him knocking in the early hours, but her mother was not like his: she’d know that he had only done it out of concern. She’d probably be up anyway: not easy to sleep in this racket.

And after he found Lyndall was safe — she would be, wouldn’t she? — he’d cross the landing and let himself into his flat. Quietly, so his mother wouldn’t hear. Good chance of that. Of all the people in the Lovelace, she’d be the only one flat on her back and snoring loud enough to shake the windows. And even if she was awake, then even she, who got so angry when she was frightened, couldn’t blame him for being late. Could she?

First, though, he had to get home. He’d been trying, but every corner he’d turned had been blocked either by rioters or the police. He didn’t know which was more dangerous: probably both. And now again, he cut off left, meaning to go down a shortcut he knew, but saw something burning at its end. He couldn’t go near. Couldn’t risk getting involved. Or arrested.

No choice but to find somewhere out of the way where he could wait until the path was clear. Turning away from the site of the riots, he sloped off down the road.

3.30 a.m.

Pius was hunched so far over the steering wheel that his nose was almost touching the windscreen. Lyndall was in the back and also leaning forward, in her case so she could lay a hand on her mother’s shoulder and keep it there.

The hand felt hot and oppressively heavy. Cathy had to use willpower not to move away from it. Her nerve ends were thrumming, making the confinement of the car almost too much to bear; it was all she could do to stop herself from wrenching open the door and jumping out. If she had, she wouldn’t have been hurt: the car was crawling along so slowly a brisk walker could have overtaken it.

The night was inky black, not from clouds but from smoke. She could see the swirls it made around the street lights and how layers of it kept drifting through the car’s full beam. She dreaded to think about the lives that might have been lost in the fires that had made that smoke.

She wouldn’t think of it.

She would keep her mind occupied by planning what she was going to do when they eventually did reach home.

She’d have a shower, she decided, even before a cup of tea. She’d stay in the shower for as long as it took to get rid of the stink of smoke that seemed to have saturated not only her clothes but also her skin. And after that, she’d throw her clothes into the washing machine. No — she wasn’t going to wash them; she was going to chuck them out. Not in the kitchen waste — too close. She’d take them downstairs to the communal bins. And then? Banji, she thought, I’ll ask him to come over. In fact, she reached into her pocket, why not ask him now?

Her phone was so black it didn’t even look like hers. She wiped the soot on the skirt she was planning to throw out and tried to switch the phone on. But either the fire had damaged it or else its battery was dead. She thought about asking Lyndall for hers, but she didn’t think Lyndall had Banji’s number. And besides, she now remembered, Banji had lost his phone. He’d told her so what felt like weeks ago but was probably only yesterday.

‘What day is it?’

‘Sunday,’ Pius said, adding absently, ‘I must remember to prepare my sermon,’ as if this were something he often forgot. He had moved even closer to the steering wheel and also turned on the windscreen wipers.

It isn’t raining, she nearly said, but then she realised that he was using the wipers to sweep away a film of grey ash that was obscuring his vision. ‘How many buildings have they set light to?’

‘Two when last I was there. And cars as well. And tyres as…oh dear.’ Pius braked so abruptly that she was thrown forward and would have hit the windscreen if not for the dual restraint of her seat belt and Lyndall’s hand. ‘What on earth?’ His exclamation was more an expression of disbelief than a question.

Something had stepped into the road in front of their car and then had stopped.

Not something. Someone. A tall, thin white man.

A tall, thin, naked white man.

‘A streaker!’ Lyndall lifted herself out of her seat to get a better view.

The man raised both arms up, high, in a V, his fingers splayed as if he were trying to touch the sky. His mouth was open, his lips stretched to inscribe an O, although the scream he seemed about to let loose was never delivered. He stood like this, motionless for a while, making sure, presumably, that they took in the whole sight of him, before dropping his arms, closing his mouth and ambling the rest of the way across the road, over the pavement and to a low wall. He put his hands on the wall and pushed down, leaping up and over, treating them to a last glimpse of a pale bottom before he vanished from sight.

‘Needs to spend more time in the sun,’ was Lyndall’s comment.

‘Poor man.’ Pius, who had turned the engine off, now sparked it back on. But instead of driving off he steered the car over to the kerb. ‘We’re close to the trouble,’ he said, ‘and the church can’t afford to lose this car. I’ll walk you the rest of the way home.’

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL FOR INQUIRY USE ONLY

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

Submission 9992/D/67: photographic evidence gathered by Air Support Unit 27AWZ, call sign India 95, between 03:23:14 and 03:28:18 on

Camera stills D/67/a — t

location: Rockham police station and Rockham High Street

subject: demonstration

Images 67 a) to c) show a number of fires that had been set in the vicinity of the police station and Rockham High Street. As can be seen from the dark shadows caused by the fires, burning tyres were involved. Images 67 d) to h) show a crowd gathered around the fires.

At the request of Bronze Leader Chief Inspector B. Ridgerton, the Air Support Unit then took a series of thermal images over the Lovelace estate.

The images l) to t) show a temporary build-up of people on the outskirts of the estate who, over the course of several minutes, began to disperse. At 03:26:43, Air Support Unit 27AWZ, having transmitted to Bronze Leader the assessment that the Lovelace was calm, passed, on further instructions, over the estate before heading in a north-easterly direction towards the solvent refinery and then northwards to trace the spreading disruption.

3.30 a.m.

When Lyndall asked ‘What’s that?’, Cathy followed her pointing finger over the burning barricade to see something moving in the dark. Her first thought was that the air had turned to inky water along which waves were travelling. But what she was looking at was too fragmented to be waves; it now seemed more like the beating of wings. Birds, she thought, except these shapes were smaller than any bird. Bats then? No, not bats either. This fluttering was weightless and inanimate, dark flecks twisting like leaves on a rising current of air. As they flickered past a street light, she saw that these leaves were black. Like leaves of a nuclear winter, she thought, or a volcano. ‘It’s ash,’ she said.

Which now floated down, feathery specks settling on their heads and shoulders and fragmenting in their hands when they tried to brush them off.

‘I want to go home.’ As soft as Lyndall’s voice was, her unease was unmistakeable.

‘We’re not far,’ came Pius’s equally tense reply.

3.30 a.m.

From the dark stillness of the city viewed through Peter’s office window, it was almost impossible to credit the reports that other parts of London were going up in flames. But should he glance over at the flat screen on the wall behind the conference table he would be bound to catch another glimpse of a woman so desperate that she had pitched herself and her young child out of the window of her third-floor flat. It was a miracle that neither of them was badly hurt. Given the reports coming in, it would be another miracle if they managed to get through the next few days without fatalities.

That the thin veneer of civilisation could be so easily ruptured was alarming, Peter thought. And then that equally alarming follow-through thought that, with the PM away, it fell on him to try to patch it all back together again.

He glanced at his watch: 3.30 a.m. The PM would soon be ringing back. He sighed — so loudly that the three male members of his staff who were working at the conference table all looked up. Not so Patricia — more accustomed to his noises, he supposed, as he registered the intensity of her concentration while she tracked the progress of the disturbances through social media on three separate screens.

He looked away.

What to do? That was the question: what to do?

He breathed in, about to let out another deep sigh, but instead he sniffed the air. He smelt coffee and not the over-brewed office muck that they tried to pass off as coffee: real coffee, as sweet and nutty as he liked it. What he wouldn’t do for a cup, so much so that his imagination must have conjured up its scent.

‘Coffee?’

He turned to find Frances standing in the doorway.

She’d insisted on coming with him to the office. When he’d told her he’d be tied up, she’d said she’d be sure to find some way of making herself useful. He’d been vaguely conscious of her bustling about in the background but had been too preoccupied by the ghastly news filtering in to worry about what she was up to. Now, seeing her holding a tray that contained not only a steaming cafetiere and some cups but also sandwiches, he realised that the huge bag she had carried into the car must have been stuffed with goodies.

How magnificent she was, especially in a crisis.

‘Darling!’ He was about to go over and kiss her when he saw her gaze concentrated on the members of his staff. ‘The Minister could do with a break,’ she said.

That’s all it took for them obediently to rise.

‘I’ve laid coffee and sandwiches for you on the table outside,’ she said. ‘Do help yourselves. And let me know if there’s anything else you’d like.’

By the enthusiastic chorus of thanks and the speed with which they made a beeline for the door, he wasn’t the only one who’d been desperate for something decent to eat and drink.

Patricia had also got up and was leaving with the others, but as she came abreast of Frances, Frances said, ‘I’ve got three cups. Why don’t you stay here with us?’

So fleeting was the uncertainty that crossed Patricia’s expression, only somebody who knew her as well as he did would have noticed it. ‘Thank you, Mrs Whiteley.’

‘Please, call me Frances.’ Frances threw a quick glance back at the three men who were piling sandwiches onto plates: ‘Napoleon was only able to say that it was an army that marches on its stomach,’ she kicked the door shut with her foot, ‘because he’d never come across our civil service.’ She then laid down her tray. ‘We need to work out how you’re going to play things with the PM.’

3.35 a.m.

They were almost home.

Almost home and dry is how Cathy thought of it. She wanted so much to be inside the flat with all the doors and windows locked. Which is how they would remain despite the heat.

The estate was hushed, especially when compared to the pandemonium they had just passed through. They walked in silence. As they drew abreast of the community centre, they stopped — again without a word — and stood silently in front of the bank of flowers badly wilted by the heat.

A lonely sight. It made Cathy realise afresh that she would never see Ruben shambling across the road or be warmed by one of the smiles that were so much more rewarding for being so rare. She swallowed, overcome by a legion of feelings distant from the ructions in the High Street.

When eventually Pius broke the silence to say, ‘His parents will be terribly upset,’ they knew he wasn’t talking about the dead flowers. ‘They wanted answers,’ he said. ‘Not this.’ He waved his hand in the direction of the High Street from which the sound of police sirens, swelling and dying away, was intercut by shouting. ‘And look what they’ve done there.’ He meant the abandoned building beside the community centre whose brick walls, formerly clear, were now covered in ugly black scrawls. ‘How could Rockham do this to itself?’

Lyndall, who had moved over to look more closely at the graffiti, said, ‘It’s not Rockham. These are the tags of the Zed7s whose base is two miles away. Wouldn’t usually risk being in Lovelace territory.’

‘So this is what we’ve come to,’ Pius said. ‘A lawless free-for-all bringing the gangs together.’ He blinked away a tear that was not provoked by smoke. ‘It’s a travesty of everything we ever hoped for.’

3.39 a.m.

Joshua hoped that Billy’s opinion, backed by the heat survey, that the Lovelace was peaceful and likely to remain so, was correct. Because if it wasn’t, and the Lovelace went up, the casualties would be horrific. But Billy was one of the best, and he had prior knowledge of the area, so they had taken his word for it and diverted India 95 towards the solvent factory — what idiot had given permission for that? — and beyond, following the trail of spreading trouble.

It had swept across the river and was moving north, and as it did, the incoming reports grew ever more diverse: of a rave raided, for example, not in order to steal from the ravers but to recruit them into the looting from nearby shops; or of the burning of another police car — what the fuck had they been thinking of to leave it unattended? — which had forced the evacuation of an apartment block in St John’s Wood; or of the sprinklers set off in a major department store after some rioters decided to have a barbecue in the food hall. Meanwhile, word from outside London was just as bad. The phones requesting aid were ringing off their hooks.

One call, though, was conspicuous by its absence. The PM’s call, which Joshua had long expected to receive.

And all the while Rockham continued to burn.

3.40 a.m.

‘Yes, Prime Minister. Of course I will. Goodnight.’ Peter put down the receiver.

‘Not coming?’ Frances was smiling widely.

‘He thinks it would be better not to break off negotiations if it can be avoided. I am to chair the first COBRA meeting.’

‘Good.’

‘Is it, though?’ Peter had been thrown by how readily the PM had agreed to his strategy. Had he, he wondered, been outmanoeuvred? ‘The country’s going up in flames, and he’s not flying back? What’s he playing at?’

‘At politics, my dear.’ Frances smiled. ‘He’s done a risk analysis — just as we did — but come to a different conclusion. He thinks that if you’re in the hot seat and you calm things down, he can spin it as never having been as bad as you’ve said it is. That’s the risk he’s taking. But if things go pear-shaped, he reckons he can come riding in on his white charger to sort the country out. That’s the risk we’re taking. I’m going to keep betting on us, especially given the PM’s tin ear for what’s really going on.’

Patricia nodded enthusiastically at Frances’s every word.

His two women working together. Interesting, if a little disconcerting. But not something he had time to worry about. They could advise him, and they could examine and develop each other’s theories to their hearts’ content, but he was the one who had to prepare himself to chair COBRA.

3.50 a.m.

Pius left them at the bottom of the walkway. Pressed by them, he promised to go directly home, thus provoking Lyndall to remark, as he walked off, that ‘Even pastors sometimes lie.’

The barriers that lined the walkway had also been newly covered in graffiti. And would remain so, Cathy thought, until the Lovelace was no more. She reached out for Lyndall’s hand.

The walkway was quiet. Eerily so. Now and then she caught a glimpse of a face in one or other of the darkened windows, but either she was imagining these or else the occupants of the flats shrank out of sight as soon as she as much as glanced in their direction. They’re as afraid as I am, she thought, forcing herself to say, and in a cheerful voice, ‘Almost there.’

Only one more ramp to go. Up they went and rounded the last bend. Already imagining herself in that shower, Cathy was just feeling the tension drain away when the people who must have been watching them from the shadows stepped out.

They had handkerchiefs obscuring their faces so that the only visible sign that they were human was their glinting eyes. They were young men — that’s all she could tell. They stood unmoving, and they stood in the way.

She acted instinctively, pushing Lyndall behind her: ‘What do you want?’

‘Mum.’ This from Lyndall.

Cathy raised her voice. ‘I don’t have much money,’ she told the trio of highwaymen, ‘but you can have what there is.’

‘Mum!’

She tightened her grip on Lyndall’s wrist, half twisting her away so that if it came to running, Lyndall would have a head start. The other hand she pushed into her pocket. No money. Only her blackened phone.

‘Here,’ she offered it to the leader of the threesome.

He backed off, saying, ‘We don’t want your phone, Mrs Mason,’ and untied his handkerchief to reveal a familiar face. ‘Or your money. The Zed7s are about. We’re making sure they don’t cause no more trouble on our turf.’

‘I told you, Mum.’ In the half-light of the landing Cathy could see that Lyndall had turned beet-red.

‘Oh.’ She felt so foolish.

‘Come on.’ Lyndall put her arm around Cathy. ‘Let’s go in.’

10 a.m.

The streets of central London were quiet. Not unusual for a Sunday. And yet as Joshua’s Range Rover, its lights flashing but its siren off, raced to Whitehall, there was something about the quality of the silence that seemed to speak of breaths in-held.

Last night’s disturbances had petered out around dawn, but from what they’d gleaned via BBM chatter and the Twitter-sphere there was every likelihood of the disorder returning — and country-wide — once darkness fell. Thus the COBRA meeting to be chaired, in the PM’s absence, by the Home Secretary.

Not a meeting Joshua was looking forward to. His job was to keep a city and — given that where London went others often followed — a whole country calm. In contrast, Whiteley seemed to be using the riots to further his bid for power. This he had demonstrated in a series of early-morning interviews whose running thread had been his barely concealed criticisms of the police and therefore, by inference, of the PM’s choice of Commissioner. Having already claimed the scalp of one head of the Met, Whiteley was out for another. While he had no intention of providing his, Joshua’s first priority was to stop the riots, and for this he had to find a way of working with Whiteley.

There were so many factors that militated against success, not least the weather. A heat haze was already hovering over Whitehall, some of it brown smog. It was going to be even hotter today than yesterday; by nightfall, anybody who didn’t have a garden would be out in the streets.

So much to keep tabs on, although at least Chahda had relieved him by going ahead to the Cabinet Briefing Office room to set up communications in the suite in which they’d sometimes need to hunker down in the event that the area of upheaval kept expanding.

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.

On the High Street, security grilles had been levered off and windows punched out, the whirlwind of destruction leaving behind empty boxes, unwanted remains and dazed shopkeepers who were trying to bang in wood and steel to cover the breaches. Others lined up shovels and spades in case ‘those bastards come again’, as one of them shouted to his neighbour.

He thought of Mr Hashi. There wasn’t much of value in his shop that would have attracted any looter, but Mr Hashi and his mother always kept themselves quiet. They must have been terrified by the noise and the destruction. He’d drop by on his way home, check that they were okay.

When he got to the shop, he saw that it had been hit, its grilles levered off and glass shattered. And while the shop might not have been looted, it had been trashed. Where once had been shelves now were only holes in the wall, with pottery dogs and china pigs and crockery that no one ever bought broken amongst the plastic buckets and splintered brooms.

The place stank as well. He couldn’t tell of what, but it made him gag.

Mr Hashi was by the counter with his back to the door. He must have heard Jayden coming in, but he didn’t turn.

‘Mr Hashi.’

‘Go away.’ A voice that didn’t sound like Mr Hashi’s.

‘It’s me, Mr Hashi.’

Mr Hashi whirled round. ‘Get off my property.’

‘I came to see if I could help.’

‘You have done enough, Mr Jay Don. You and your kind. Look.’ Mr Hashi swept out a hand. ‘Everything broken. Not because it was desired but because what they wanted to do was break me. Look there.’ He was pointing at a wall on which somebody had painted ‘Go Home’. ‘The message is plain, is it not? And they passed their water on the wall. One of them, he did not stop there. Look again.’ Mr Hashi was now pointing at the floor. ‘Come on, Jay Don. If you are so brave, come and look.’

Even from where he was standing, he could see the sticky brown mess and he could tell what it was from the smell. He didn’t move.

‘Animals,’ Mr Hashi said. ‘To call them so is an affront to animals.’

‘I’m sorry, Mr Hashi. Let me help you clear it up.’

‘I saw you, Jay Don.’ Mr Hashi bent down to pick up one of the broken brooms. ‘I saw you with them.’

‘I wasn’t with them.’

‘I saw your face. I know what was going through your mind. You think this comfortable life is all the life that I have lived? You think I have not known how it is to be carried by a crowd? I saw that this had happened to you.’

Nothing Jayden could say to deny it. He shuffled his feet. Looked down at them moving in the mess.

‘I, in my own time,’ he heard Mr Hashi saying, ‘I resisted such a crowd. You did not. I saw you, and the dirt on your face is the mark of your guilt.’

‘I didn’t take anything. Honest, Mr Hashi, I didn’t.’

‘I didna.’ Mr Hashi jabbed the broom at him. ‘I didna… You do not even know how to speak your own language.’ He began to move towards Jayden. ‘It may be that you did not do your business on my floor, but you let them do it. That is all it takes: for people like you to stand to one side. Do so now. Get off my property. Or I will hurt you.’

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 had 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.