by Jem Tugwell
Lance started smiling again.
‘A team? Good idea, Jordan. That idiot Lussac likes Cardiff.’
‘The dream team,’ someone shouted. ‘The junior and the dinosaur.’
The laughter made Zoe’s face glow like a red traffic light on a dark night.
Chapter 61
Tatsuko had forgotten all about the pain in her foot. The simple act of correcting her posture had eased the excess strain she had been putting on the muscles and restored her balance.
Her step seemed to lighten as she walked along the riverside path in Nine Elms. She didn’t really need the A–Z now – if she followed the river, she would reach Lambeth Bridge and then the finish point. Her mood was buoyed up by each glimpse of Big Ben as the river twisted and gaps between the buildings opened up.
The walk from Southampton had challenged her, but her mother was always at her side when she slowed – Lazy girl, how can you win if you don’t walk?
She’d expected the physical and mental strain. She’d prepared for it, but what she hadn’t expected was how easy it was to walk around and be nearly invisible. It was like every person knew they were tracked and therefore they assumed she was as well. No need for a citizen to pay any attention to her.
People were complacent, no that was the wrong word. More like secure. Safe.
Even the few uniformed police she had seen and been careful to pass at a distance were fixated on the eco-protesters. Relying on the technology to do their job. Now even they had gone and Tatsuko attached herself to the back of some protesters walking along the river. She tried to blend into the crowd. They had banners and placards demanding action on the climate. Adults held the hands of little children. Songs alternated with frustrated chanting. It almost had the feel of a festival.
As she got to the road at the mouth of Vauxhall Bridge, she looked left to check for traffic, then remembered that cars came from the opposite direction here. There was a gap in the traffic, but she had to stop herself from crossing and instead joined the queue of protesters waiting at the pedestrian crossing. Her UK Border Control briefing had included the severe fines she would get for ‘endangering herself and other road users’ by crossing the road outside of a designated crossing point. She could have crossed with no fine now she didn’t have the iTourist, but she didn’t want to stand out.
Finally, the lights indicated that it was clear for her to cross, and she followed the stream of protesters who kept religiously inside the alternating black and white painted stripes that marked the crossing. Halfway across, she glanced left again. More blue lights flashed at the opposite side, all heading towards the finish line. So were the protesters.
Were the police all rushing and congregating at her target? How could they have discovered where she was heading? Or were they heading there to corral the protesters?
The crowd continued towards Lambeth Bridge.
Tatsuko followed for a while, then stopped and leant on the wall, both elbows touching the wall and her palms facing in towards her body, hands touching. She still wasn’t really used to the feel of the controller. No soft, warmth of flesh, only a hard, cold edge. She pretended to do a tourist long, slow take of the view. Her head was up, but her eyes were on the palm of her controller. Her fingers moved and the game controller’s display said: ‘Game position – first’.
Her pulse quickened and she had to trap a scream of excitement from escaping her lips. She kept calm and completed the head turning movement with only the smallest pause. She gazed into the distance.
First place meant everything.
First meant she had overtaken someone. Or had they been caught? Did that explain all the blue lights heading north?
Whichever it is, nothing’s going to stop me now, she said to herself.
Lambeth Bridge was very close.
Chapter 62
The fields to the west of Swindon flashed by the window of the high-speed train. Zoe faced forwards and, as always, Clive sat heading backwards. It was like a metaphor for their careers. A metaphor for Clive’s life.
She couldn’t ignore what was happening to him, but she couldn’t put Clive ahead of Mum. She’d shut that down as soon as Clive had said, ‘Look, Zoe. About your mum.’
Now she had to get Clive to understand that antagonising Lance wasn’t going to help him at work. It was all he had left.
The train’s table and glasses of water separated them, as well as age and outlook on most subjects, but she liked Clive. She owed him her life, but there was more to it than that. He was a friend. She needed to give him a talking to about how to get on in the modern police force. Or at least, how not to get sacked.
‘Bloody diversity,’ Clive moaned. ‘It’s treating me like a charity case.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Zoe sighed, wishing he would drop the topic. He’d been muttering on about it since leaving Slough.
‘There are two big problems with diversity: meritocracy and equality.’
‘But diversity brings equality.’
‘No. The opposite.’ Clive sat up and his eyes came alive as he took Zoe’s comments as an invitation to launch into lecture mode again. ‘In a truly equal police force, you don’t need labels. Each person is just that. A person. With strengths and weaknesses. Chosen on merit. Using the best person for each specific job, and that improves the quality of the police force.’
Zoe looked out of the window again, trying not to encourage him.
‘But with diversity, you need labels. Male, female, young, old, black, white, short, tall, and so on. Without labels, you can’t separate people into different boxes. You can’t measure how many of each type you have, and you can’t prove to the liberals that you have diversity in the police force. These labels force us to recognise our differences and not focus on the things we have in common. It drives us apart, and the more labels you have, the more fragmented the people become.’
Zoe looked back at Clive. ‘Diversity has broken down the barriers and prejudices that affected woman, different races, the disabled. All the minorities. It broke the chain of conscious and subconscious bias in the selection process.’
‘And that’s good, but diversity hasn’t stopped. In fact, it’s getting worse. If you use enough labels, then everyone is a minority. Add even more labels and everyone is an island – a minority of one. It’s the ultimate way of destroying a community and making the world only about yourself.’
Clive paused to take a sip of water. ‘Think about me being chosen by Lance. It wasn’t because I was best, it was diversity. Think about all the other police officers. The system has discriminated in favour of me, and therefore discriminated against the others. Any system based on discrimination can’t deliver equality.’
‘But Lance had to choose you despite his prejudice against you – that proves diversity works,’ Zoe said, trying to break Clive’s flow. He was doomed if he continued to think this way about the police force.
Clive stared at the table but didn’t say anything.
She blew out her checks in relief at the silence. Now she could force the conversation back to work, she said, ‘It doesn’t mean that Cardiff isn’t right. I think Lilou is heading to Cardiff, not London.’
‘Me too.’
A passenger walked along the gap in the chairs, swaying in time with the train’s motion over a bumpy section of track. It set the water in Clive’s glass slopping from side to side. Some drops escaped over the top and Clive used his shirt sleeve to wipe the table dry.
Zoe rolled her eyes, reached across the table and slid Clive the tissue that was right next to his elbow. He ignored it.
‘We’ve still got to find her, and Lance refusing to support our request for drones and Uniform backup doesn’t help. What did he call it? “Minimal risk”,’ Clive said.
Zoe pursed her lips, ‘Yep, but I got one drone and a couple of Uniforms. There’s a lot of water around, but there are still too many approaches to protect.’
‘We’ll have to do tight patrol laps
around the building and hope we get lucky.’
Chapter 63
Ava pulled at the collar of her shirt, but she was still hot. Mercifully, not as hot as in the conference room, but the unmarked van she was in now wasn’t far off it.
The van was illegally parked on the pavement off the northern corner of Parliament Square. The statue of George Canning looked down on them. Any traffic wardens circling and ready to earn their commission on the next parking offence, were scared away when they approached the van. The signals of Anti-Terror officers inside the van, scattered them like crows hearing a gun.
Ava’s problem was airflow. The three tiny discs rotating on the van’s roof were meant to allow the hot air to escape, and the air con should be running lovely cool air inside. That was the theory, but Ava didn’t think the system had been designed for four people and the banks of display screens all contributing to the heat. Also, the van’s battery had a finite life. They couldn’t afford for the battery to run flat and all the monitoring screens to click off just as Tatsuko or Lilou attacked. So, the air con was off and the heat rose.
‘Can’t we open the doors, Sarge?’ Ava asked.
‘What and have all the eco-loonies staring in and filming us?’ Sergeant Evans said.
Ava looked back at the screens in front of her. She wanted to be outside, and not only to avoid the heat. She wanted the chance to arrest the attackers.
But Lance had assigned her to the van.
‘You’re too small to tackle anything other than a keyboard,’ he had said.
‘No way,’ she shouted. ‘I’m great at wrestling and I’ve done loads of extra unarmed combat.’
Lance stared at her outburst, mouth hanging open.
‘A fight is more about will and technique than size,’ she continued. Her will stood at least six foot four, compared to her actual five foot two.
But Lance had waved her protests away, she’d complied with his orders and watched the display from the drone on the north-west corner of the rectangle of the defensive boundary. Doesn’t mean I have to stay in here, she thought.
Ava had three camera drones to monitor: one looked straight up Birdcage Walk to St James’s Park, one looked right along Horse Guards Road and the southern edge of the park. The final drone’s camera looked left along the top line of the red rectangle and along Storey’s Gate.
The other three officers in the van had their own drones to monitor.
They all sat and stared at the screens. And sweltered.
The logic of the briefing said that the attackers wouldn’t be able to get into a self-drive car without an iTourist, so pedestrians were the priority. Ava’s central screen had the most pedestrian traffic, and every time the drone’s camera software detected motion, its positioning algorithm plotted the movement against the signal in the same location. The image of the motion and the ID of the signal flashed up in one corner of the display and was logged.
If the camera detected movement without a signal, it was meant to generate an alert. They should have been able to relax and wait for the alert, but the movement detection algorithm was too sensitive and generated alerts for squirrels, dogs, cats, and even the ‘I am 6’ balloon of a little girl holding her mum’s hand.
Ava’s eyes danced around the screen, hoping to be the one to spot an attacker.
Chapter 64
The Albert Embankment’s wide pavements provided a simple route for Tatsuko to follow even if the trees set into the path provided natural obstacles that the crowd had to flow around. Everyone seemed to be reading on their HUDs or typing frantically rather than looking where they were going. Something big must be going on, she thought as even the eco-protesters’ chants and songs had stopped.
If they were distracted by one of the other gamers getting caught, then she’d be more vulnerable. Her photo could be everywhere. They might be looking at it now.
Tatsuko pulled her baseball cap from her bag and tugged the peak low over her eyes. Lambeth Bridge was ahead, and Big Ben was much closer and bigger. Almost touching distance.
By a bus stop, the pavement started to rise on the right-hand side to take pedestrians up to the bridge. The left side stayed lower and continued under the bridge. Tatsuko watched a red London bus roll over the bridge. It passed in front of her view of Big Ben, seeming to cross halfway up the famous landmark. When the bus reached the middle of the bridge, Tatsuko noticed a black drone hovering over the road.
Was it scanning for her? Would it have facial recognition? Would her hat hide her enough? Could she blend in with the protesters?
She didn’t know. She walked to the edge of the road and let the crowd flow past her onto the bridge. She couldn’t risk being detected.
Another bus pulled up at the bus stop and people jumped off. Tatsuko stepped up to the back of the queue of people waiting to get on. The bus might hide me from the drone, she thought, but as she got closer to the front of the queue, she saw that each person who got on touched a big pad and the bus rewarded them with a chirpy beep. Tatsuko spun away, trying to make it look like a last-minute change of mind.
Westminster Bridge was only a few minutes’ walk further on. Better to try there and see before deciding to risk walking under the drone.
***
The finish point was so close now, she could almost touch it. A simple walk across Westminster Bridge, and she would be there. Except that it wasn’t a simple walk when a big drone hovered over the road. It looked the same type as the one on Lambeth Bridge.
She was closer to this one and could see that although the drone was hovering over the same spot, it wasn’t still. It snapped left and right in small jerky movements. Tatsuko watched the drone for a few seconds. Each time the drone twitched, it was always towards a pedestrian or some other motion. It was hunting.
Too risky. Move, lazy girl, her mother demanded.
The next bridge to the north was closer than heading back to Vauxhall which was the last bridge she had seen without a drone.
Worth a try, she thought, and started jogging along the path. She kept her head down and the cap low, but even so, she looped wide around the lines of people waiting to get on the London Eye.
She was heading away from the finish point, and the doubt nagged at her, growing with each step in the wrong direction. Would someone overtake her? Did the police know where she was going?
At Hungerford Bridge, she leant her back against a tree and lifted her head far enough to see the sky. No drone.
She ran up the steps to the bridge, taking them two at a time. Each pump of her legs and arms drove the negativity out of her.
Whatever was happening didn’t matter. She needed to get to the finish. Anything blocking her path was a challenge, not a problem.
She would overcome.
Chapter 65
Clive and Zoe’s meeting with the head of security at the National Assembly building in Cardiff was short, but not sweet.
‘I can’t shut the Senedd, see, it’s a public building, and if I shut it for every threat level of “Minimal”, then we’d never be open.’
‘But there’s a possible terror threat,’ Zoe said.
‘If the threat level is “Minimal” they’ll never agree.’ The head of security crossed his arms. End of meeting.
Zoe and Clive weren’t impressed with their plan, but they didn’t have enough resources to do any better. They were going to protect the immediate vicinity of the National Assembly building. Most of the south side was protected by the water of Cardiff Bay and they’d sent one Uniform to cover the bridge on Harbour Drive. The east side was more water of Roath Basin and their only other Uniform was on the small bridge at Bute Place.
The two bridges were the only access from about three on a clock all the way round to about seven. That was the good news.
At eleven around to about two o’clock was the Millennium Centre that acted like a huge stone in the river. People had to flow one side or the other.
They’d set their drone to hover
and twitch at all the movement between two and three on a clock face. It was a wide spread and to minimise the risk of Lilou slipping through, the drone was hovering close to the Assembly. They wouldn’t get much warning.
But they could run.
And hope.
That left the west side to protect and Zoe and Clive stood guard, looking out across the open space of Roald Dahl Plass. The trouble was that people could walk around the Plass on the walkways next to the water. The walkways were lower than the pavement and their approach would be hidden.
It was impossible.
Zoe was in constant motion, tracking between the Plass and the walkways. Knowing that she was going to have to be lucky to spot Lilou.
She didn’t feel lucky.
The hours ticked by and Zoe’s legs and feet were starting to demand a rest.
Her next loop into the Plass coincided with a loop of Clive’s. They rested against the red brick mass of the Pierhead building. The horses of the carousel inched around and around, transporting smiling children. People strolled past eating zero-sugar ice creams. It all felt so normal.
‘Any sign?’ Clive asked.
Zoe shook her head. ‘It’s impossible. We’re too close to the building and there are so many people around.’
‘Nothing else we can do. If we’re further out, it’d be easier for Lilou to slip through a gap.’
‘Do you think any of the groups who have claimed responsibility for the Stormont attack were really behind it?’ Zoe asked.
‘I don’t know. Politics and religion have killed a massive amount of people over history. It could be the Ultras, but the Church preaches peace and a reduction in consumption. Bombs could frighten enough people, but then again, politicians love fear. Makes it easier to drive up their security budgets and pass tighter controls.’
‘Let’s focus on motive when we’ve got Lilou,’ Zoe said. She checked with the two Uniforms. Nothing. The drone. Nothing.
As Zoe resumed her patrol. The sun came out from behind a small cloud. She heard laughter and carousel music. Pleasure boats chugged away from the quay. A normal day.