Ten Days (28 page)

And there was the added headache of a maverick cop on the loose. If that got out, all kinds of hell would land on his head. If only, he couldn't help thinking, Detective Constable Julius Jibola would go chuck himself off the nearest available cliff – after having sent a postcard to say that this is what he was planning to do.

His gaze again on his shoes. He sighed. Although Jibola's ex-wife had been childish in her vengefulness, there was a lot of truth in what she'd had to say. Men like Jibola had been used by the old Met as cannon fodder and without regard for their well-being. And she was right as well in that many of these same officers hailed from ethnic minorities.

The Met had badly needed a new broom. Trouble was the past and too many young people in the city with nothing to lose were threatening to overwhelm his ever-thinning blue line. Never mind the unrelenting heat.

They'd had to switch off the air conditioning to help prevent an electrical blackout being created by a combination of the condition-ocracy (those lucky, or rich, enough to have air conditioning) and the boiling of kettles as people all over the capital settled down to watch the made-for-TV horror fest of the riots.

A knock. ‘Come.' He turned to get his jacket from behind his chair. But seeing who it was who had poked his head around the door, he said, ‘Oh, it's you, Blackstone, do come in,' while letting the jacket lie.

‘Excuse me, sir.' Blackstone was still peering through a crack in the door. ‘I'm after Deputy Commissioner Chahda. I thought he might be in here with you?'

‘He had to go out.' Which, when Chahda had told him that there was someone he had to see, and that he was leaving his assistant in charge, had come as some surprise given the rising disorder. ‘Can I be of assistance?'

‘No . . .' A hesitation and then, ‘Well, perhaps, sir. Something odd that I, something . . .'

‘Come on in. Take a seat. Tell me what's bothering you.'

‘Thank you, sir.' As Blackstone made his way over to the desk, Joshua saw how damp his shirt was, the heat being an added burden for the weightier officers. ‘I don't know if it's important, sir.'

‘Why not let me be the judge of that?'

‘Yes, sir. Thank you sir.' A pause and then, ‘I did talk to some of the officers, sir, who were known to have associated with Detective Constable Jibola.'

‘Yes, the Deputy Commissioner informed me that you had. I gather none of them had much to offer in the way of assistance.'

‘Afraid not, sir. They all told the same story that Jibola had dropped out of circulation. None of them had seen him for quite a while – years in some cases.'

A pause.

‘But?'

‘But the thing is, sir, something odd happened just now when I was talking to the last of them. You know how, given the pressure on the Rockham force, we have been pitching in to supply the IPCC with the relevant documentation for their inquiry into the death?'

‘Yes, I know.'

‘Well, the thing is, sir, while I was talking to the officer who knew Jibola, one of my colleagues was checking the quality of the 999 call that triggered the police visit to the community centre.'

‘The one the community leaders say would not have been made?'

‘That's the one, sir. They're wrong. The call was made, logged and recorded. And I have heard it. I heard a male voice expressing concern about a male IC3 behaving in an erratic manner on the Lovelace. The caller asked the police to attend in case the man needed assistance.'

‘Why is that of concern?'

‘Because, sir. Because the thing is, the officer I was talking to, the one who knew Julius Jibola, also heard the recording, and he recognised the voice. I questioned him carefully and got him to listen a couple of times: he was insistent that the caller was DC Julius Jibola.'

Wednesday

STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL

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

Submission OB/MPS/CC/29

To: The Office of the Inquiry into Operation Bedrock

From: The Office of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service

At the request of the chairman of the Inquiry Panel into Operation Bedrock, the Office of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service has subjected a telephone call made to the emergency services on
                              
to further scrutiny.

The call logged at 20:45:35 was to report a man behaving erratically in the area of the Lovelace estate in Rockham.

The IPCC, which is ongoing with its inquiry into the death in Rockham, agreed to release a copy of the recording to the Office of the Commissioner on the condition that no details of the call should be made public until the conclusion of the IPCC investigation.

Light equalization was used to enhance the recording by removing background interference. The call was then subjected to audio forensic analysis.

The report is attached.

In summary of its conclusions:

The 999 recording was compared with a sample of DC Julius Jibola speaking into a tape recorder during his training.

On the IAFPA consistent/distinctiveness scale, the two recordings scored a 4: i.e. that they were highly distinctive. Had not enhancement been used to isolate the voice in the 999 call, they would most likely have scored a 5: i.e. exceptionally distinctive with the possibility of these features being shared by two different speakers as remote.

It is therefore our conclusion that DC Julius Jibola did place the 999 call.

A transcript of the call is appended.

In summary:

The caller informed the emergency service operator of the erratic behaviour of a male IC3 on the Lovelace estate in Rockham. The caller was calm and provided details of location and time clearly and with patience. In his words, ‘the man, IC3, is waving a stick about and officers should attend as soon as possible to stop him hurting himself'.

The caller, who added, ‘I am currently following him to try and keep him safe,' would not give the operator his name.

The mobile phone number of the caller was shortly thereafter rendered non-operational.

We can confirm that the mobile telephone had been supplied by SC&O10 for use by DC Julius Jibola in pursuance of his undercover activities.

This document is for the internal inquiry only and on no account should be released to the public.

5 a.m.

‘There has to be a connection if only in Jibola's mind,' Joshua said, ‘between his witnessing the death in the Lovelace and his taking part in the criminality. I interviewed the officer who knew him. His description matched the psychologist's – i.e. that Jibola had been emotionally unstable for some time and that his particular sore point was what he perceived as a bias within the force against ethnic minorities.'

This statement was met, initially, by silence. Taking his eyes off his two companions, he looked around. After eighty hours of riding the tempest, energy levels tended to peak at night, with first light bringing a fall off in numbers in the streets and a corresponding decline in officers in the room. Five a.m. then became the time when least was done and the army of cleaners moved in. They were usually deployed throughout the building but these days they gave first priority to the clearing away of stained tea cups, wastepaper baskets overflowing with the detritus of fast food, and papers to be shredded in this room. Seeing both the Commissioner and his deputy present, the cleaners now quietly swept past the legs of men whose heads had slumped on their desks, before hauling the rubbish out. Soon officers of the day shift would start filtering in, along with the Bronze Commanders come to deliver their reports, re-stoking the urgency that would subside again after orders had been given to be carried out elsewhere in the Met.

For now, however, there was quiet, which Gaby Wright eventually broke. ‘If you don't mind me saying, sir' – despite that she must have been working round the clock, she was as tidy and as well turned out as ever – ‘we have no way of knowing what is going on in Jibola's mind.'

‘That's right. We don't.' Anil Chahda's uniform was in contrast crumpled, as if he'd slept in it, and this despite him having taken half the night off.

‘You may both be correct. But the fact remains that if people were to find out that Jibola is one of ours – and that he was a witness at the community centre – they'd leap to the conclusion that his participation in the riots had something to do with what he witnessed. Matters are finely enough balanced without one of our officers seeming to accuse his fellows of murder. We have to neutralise Jibola before the media get their claws into him.' Out of the corner of his eye, Joshua saw Anil Chahda yawning – what, he wondered, was the matter with the man? He concentrated his gaze on CS Wright: ‘You've done what you can with the resources available. What we now must do,' seeing his deputy still yawning he raised his voice, ‘with your agreement of course, Anil, is step up officer numbers in Rockham. We've got to search every inch of the borough.'

One further enormous yawn before Chahda said, ‘That's all very well, sir, but where are we going to get the men from?'

‘From here.' Joshua used a pointer to indicate the boroughs surrounding Rockham, ‘and from here. As well as aid coming from elsewhere.'

‘That is going to leave us dangerously exposed throughout the rest of London.'

‘Well, then, we'll have to be quick about it, won't we? I want an observational cordon around Rockham, mobile CCTV, the lot. We have to clock anybody in and anybody out.'

‘It's going to cause trouble.'

‘If it does, so be it. If it means bringing out water cannon, if it means deploying baton rounds' – hearing himself say this, he thought how far he had travelled in such a short time, and then, putting steel into his voice – ‘well then, that's what we will have to do. We have to find this man.'

7 a.m.

At the sound of his Commons' door opening, Peter looked crossly up. First a call from Anil Chahda to warn of more trouble coming to Rockham and now somebody marching into his office without the courtesy of a knock. His irritation intensified when he saw that it was Patricia. What on earth did she think she was doing coming to his Commons room, and so early?

‘I've been missing you.' She gave a smile and a cute wrinkle of her nose but, seeing him frown, added, ‘Only kidding.'

‘Come on, Patricia.' He had no time for games. ‘We agreed to cool it.'

She raised her hand in a salute, ‘Yes, sir,' hitting her forehead so hard it jerked her head back. ‘I'm on board with that.'

Could she be drunk?

She certainly looked more tousled than usual, with her dark hair frizzed out as it only ever was in bed. Come to think of it, she was wearing the same clothes she'd had on yesterday: had she actually been to bed? ‘So what exactly,' he said, hardening his voice, ‘are you doing here?'

She took a step back. Pouted.

He dropped his gaze deliberately down to the papers on his desk. And heard her saying in that wheedling voice she also only ever used in bed, ‘Come on now, Petey-weetie, don't be such a cross patch.'

She must be drunk. All he needed. He looked behind her and at the door.

She turned and, he was thankful to see, made her way towards it. He picked up his pen.

He heard the key turning in the lock.

‘What are you doing?'

She came back to stand so close to his desk that he could smell that floral scent he knew so well, and some other strange musky smell that was underlaid by the stink of stale alcohol.

He sighed and got up, the better to tell her that she had to go.

She tilted up her head. Smiling.

In that moment he remembered the manner in which Frances had covered her mouth with a sheet that early morning when he had made to kiss her. Patricia lifted a hand and stroked his cheek.

He shouldn't. He couldn't.

But the door was locked.

To hell with it. He kissed her. For the longest time, feeling how she responded.

How different it would be, and he couldn't stop the thought from forming, to wake up beside her. If only, he thought, if only, and held her more tightly.

When finally he let go, and when he took a step back the better to look at her, he saw how her eyes had welled with tears. ‘What's wrong?'

She swallowed, opened her mouth and swallowed again. Something she wanted to say to him but couldn't quite. Something he wouldn't want to hear? In the silence that stretched between them, it occurred to him that she was about to tell him that she was pregnant, this thought striking a blow to his gut that made him want to unsay his question and unthink this thought.

‘Not enough sleep, that's all.' She gave a wan smile. ‘And it feels weird sneaking round like this.'

Relief made him reject his first response – that they'd been sneaking around for at least eighteen months – and choose instead a reassuring: ‘It won't be for long.'

‘Won't it?' She looked as if she were about to cry again.

He sighed. He had such a lot of work to get through, never mind that he must ready himself for the Chamber.

Her teeth were beginning to work at her bottom lip, a giveaway tell of her distress. He let out another sigh. ‘Come on, Patricia. You know what we agreed.'

‘What you made me agree to, you mean.'

Like that, was it?

Like Frances, actually. Well, bugger them both.

He opened his mouth to say so.

She got in first. ‘You asked me to do something,' she said. ‘And I did it. And what I found out is going to make your year.' Her brown gaze was afire. ‘I've had very little sleep, so if you don't want to hear what it is, I'd be just as happy to go back to bed.'

Was she teasing him so as to reel him back? His first impulse was to call her bluff. Tell her to go and sleep off whatever hangover she was clearly warming up to.