Ten Days (40 page)

‘What you're getting is more than a constable's usual pension.'

‘Yeah.' A quick bark of hollow laughter as she turned her head to look around the room, at its dowdy walls and sparse furniture. ‘I'm living the life of a multimillionaire.' Her gaze was now on him and hard. ‘I want our arrangement formalised.'

He reached up to straighten his cap, which, he realised at the last minute, he wasn't wearing. ‘All right,' he dropped his hand back down. ‘I'll ask somebody in the Federation to prepare the paperwork. They'll send it to you to approve and sign.'

‘Thank you.' Swallowed. Looked away. Swallowed again.

‘Is there something else?'

‘No,' she wouldn't look at him. ‘Nothing.'

‘Well then.' He had to squeeze himself against the wall to pass her. Once out, he made his way to the front door.

And heard her saying, ‘I saw them.'

He stopped. ‘Saw who?'

‘That fat white woman and her daughter. They paid for a rose bush in the crematorium and they go there every week. Make sure it's watered.'

‘That's good of them.' He made to leave once more but she stopped him again with a question.

‘The girl. Is she his?'

He shrugged.

‘She is his, isn't she?'

No point in lying: it was clear she knew. ‘Yes, she is.'

She nodded. ‘Julius wanted children, you know. More than anything, but I couldn't have them. That's what made him turn away from me in the first place.'

‘I'm sorry.' And he was. This was a decent woman hardened by what her husband had done and by what had been done to her husband.

‘She looks nice,' she said. ‘The girl, I mean. He must have been gutted not to get to know her.'

Something in her tone. ‘You do understand, don't you, that if you were to approach her, or her mother, that would void our agreement?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I know that. But that's not why I wouldn't tell. Enough harm's been done without me adding to it.' A pause and then, ‘The name – Banji – the one you said he used with them, it kind of suits him.'

‘It should. He chose it.' He opened the door. Stepped out.

Her voice pursuing him down the path. ‘It's dishonest, though, them not knowing. Don't you think?'

Cathy

Six months after the Lovelace had closed and they were back.

It felt nothing like going home: whole sections of the estate had been torn down and the rest was so heavily boarded there was no longer any home to go back to.

Only the community centre had been preserved and, for this occasion, given a fresh lick of paint. But to get to it they had first to pass through a checkpoint where private security officers employed by the Lovelace Development Project rifled through their bags. Once through this checkpoint they were met by the sight of two lines of police standing opposite each other and creating a corridor that was so narrow they had to walk down it in single file.

With Lyndall leading and Jayden (who was now living with them) behind, Cathy concentrated on putting one foot down and then the next, over and over again, and that way trying to control the urge to turn on her heels and run away.

It's the police, she thought, they're giving me claustrophobia. And said, ‘Do they really think we're about to start throwing stones at a building site?'

‘Nah,' came Lyndall's reply. ‘They're here to stop us refugees making for a country which we don't belong to.'

Her words had the ring of truth: although the Lovelace looked worse than it ever had, with rubble everywhere and its walkways blocked, most of the flats in the blocks that were due to be constructed had already been bought off-plan. And although final completion was at least two years off, the High Street was already abuzz with changes, with burnt-out shops taken over and refurbished to sell the kind of goods – French baby wear, handmade frozen meals – that the old residents of the Lovelace could never have afforded.

Why couldn't she summon up the energy to feel angry about that? It would help her if she could, damning the future being so much easier than mulling over the past. And yet, while Lyndall kept muttering about the filthy rich, Cathy couldn't stop herself from remembering.

She looked up to where they once had lived and, although it was all boarded up, she seemed to see herself and Lyndall standing on the landing and looking down. She knew what they were looking at: they were watching Banji tracking Ruben along this self-same route.

That's when it began to go wrong, she thought, as memory dragged her on to that next moment: Banji handcuffed on the floor of the community centre and Ruben lying still. She saw Banji struggling to get to Ruben. As if he were trying to hold back Ruben's death, she thought. As if the thread that had joined the two men's lives had doomed them both.

She couldn't shake the feeling that it was her fault: that Banji had only been trying to protect Ruben because she expected him to.

Stop it, she told herself: too fanciful. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing back the tears that had begun to pool.

When she opened them again, she was surprised to see how dull and grey was the sky; then, it had been blue, she remembered, and hotter than she could now imagine.

‘Mum.' Lyndall's voice, summoning her back into the present. ‘Mum, are you okay?'

She nodded.

The police lines, she saw, had tapered off to let the crowd expand into the space in front of the community centre. So many people that she hadn't seen for months who had come back, on this anniversary of their first vigil, to remember Ruben and to protest the failure of the IPCC to finish its report and hold anybody to account.

As Lyndall and Jayden weaved their way through the crowd, high-fiving kids with whom they were no longer schooled, Cathy greeted her former neighbours, hugging some, nodding to others. Hard to smile and not to cry, and yet, seeing Ruben's parents by the entrance to the community centre, she told herself it wasn't her right to fall.

But when, soon afterwards, the commemoration began and Lyndall and Jayden were called to lay the flowers, her tears started to run.

Such a loss, she thought, not only for Ruben's family but for the wider family of the Lovelace. As if the wrecking ball that was demolishing their homes had first run through their lives, turning the estate, and Ruben and Banji along with it, into dust.

So little she had left of Banji. No photos to look at. No letters to read. It was as if the man she thought she once had known had never really existed.

‘Mum.' She felt Lyndall's arms going round her. ‘It's all right, Mum,' and then, as she turned to Lyndall and continued weeping on her shoulder, she realised that she did have something of Banji's.

She had the most precious thing of all.

Abbreviations and Police Terms

APW: All Ports Warning

BBM: BlackBerry Messenger

Bronze: responsible for the command of resources, and carrying out functional or geographical responsibilities related to the tactical plan

FME: Forensic Medical Examiner

FWIN: Force Wide Identification Number

Gold: assumes overall command

Gorget patches: insignia on the collar of a uniform

IAFPA consistent/distinctiveness scale: International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics scale that measures how consistent and distinctive is the match to any particular voice

IPCC: Independent Police Complaints Commission

LAS: London Ambulance Service

Level 2 trained officers: trained for two days every six months to deal with disorder; have access to full protective equipment

LFB: London Fire Brigade

NPCC: National Police Chiefs' Council

PCC: Police and Crime Commissioner

PSU: Police Support Unit

RIPA: Regulation of Investigatory Powers

SC&O10: specialist crime directorate responsible for covert policing SC&O19: armed response unit that includes tactical support and firearms officers

Section 60 of the Public Order Act: relates to stop and search

Silver: coordinates the tactical response

SO1: the specialist protection branch

TAU: Tactical Aid Unit (Manchester)

TFC: Tactical Firearms Commander

TSG: Territorial Support Group

Acknowledgements

The idea for
Ten Days
grew out of my verbatim play that, commissioned by London's Tricycle Theatre, was put on in October 2011, not long after the conclusion of the 2011 riots. A special thanks to Nicolas Kent for gifting me this project and for making it happen on stage.

I have used the deep background and some of the details that I had gathered for the play in the novel, but
Ten Days
remains a work of fiction whose plot and characters have sprung entirely from my imagination. Even so, I would like to thank Martin Sylvester Brown, Sergeant Paul Evans, Mohamed Hammoudan, Sadie King, Leroy Logan MBE, Pastor Nims Obunge, Stafford Scott, Chief Inspector Graham Dean and Sir Hugh Orde for generously sharing their experiences and so helping me understand how a riot can happen. Thanks also to Clifford Stott and Martin Scothern for taking the time to talk to me about the police force, to Helena Kennedy QC for putting me right on the structure of the Ministry of Justice, to David Winnick for guiding me round the House of Commons, to Ed Miliband and his office for further inducting me into the workings of Parliament, to Giles Fraser and John Turner for showing me round their stomping grounds, and to Kamila Shamsie for reading and commenting on the manuscript just when I needed her to.

My agent, Clare Alexander, not only helped me find the idea for
Ten Days
but also gave me the courage to write it: her thoughts, and her readings, were invaluable throughout. This novel also brought me the pleasure of working with a new editor, Louisa Joyner, whose thought processes are lightning fast and just as deadly effective. I thank them both, as well as the whole of the Canongate team: it has been a pleasure.

Thanks to Cassie Metcalf-Slovo, who helped me especially in the initial stages of the book. And finally, thanks to Duncan James, who read as I wrote and whose generous feedback and love sustained me during the writing of this book.

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