‘He doesn’t trust you like he trusts me.’
‘That’s as may be but, bottom line, I don’t care how many times you ask me, I will not let you out in it. But I can go. If you’d like me to?’
Lyndall gave an almost imperceptible nod.
‘Okay, but only if you promise to stay put.’
Another, slightly more emphatic, nod.
‘You also need to promise that you will not come looking for either of us. Do you promise that?’
And a third.
‘I want to hear you say it.’
‘Yes, Mum, I promise.’ Such a small voice – it told Cathy that, despite her bravado, Lyndall might be relieved not to have to head back out onto the streets. Hardly surprising. It had been scary enough when they pushed their way out of the melee; it was bound to be even scarier now.
‘Okay. I’ll go and see if I can find him. Meanwhile, you need to get inside and stay inside. Any trouble, any at all, even if you think it may just be your imagination, ring me. If I don’t answer – it’ll probably be too noisy for me to hear my mobile – ring Pius. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Mum. I understand. And,’ when Lyndall kissed her on the cheek, Cathy realised that her daughter was almost as tall as her, ‘thanks, Mum. Please be careful.’ She went into the flat and closed the door.
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL FOR INQUIRY USE ONLY
Submission to the internal inquiry of the Metropolitan Police into Operation Bedrock
Submission 601/b/1: written submission by Chief Inspector William (Billy) Ridgerton
I was the cadre trained in public order critical incidence on call on the weekend of the Rockham disturbances.
I arrived at the scene at 2235 hours. There were two cordons, one with unprotected police officers and no disorder whatsoever to the south. To the north was a large barricade with members of the public throwing missiles, including petrol bombs. The crowd numbered in the region of three hundred, with a nucleus of the crowd causing problems and a high proportion of onlookers.
I located a chief inspector based in Rockham who filled me in as to the outbreak of the disturbances. I then contacted Silver in Littleworth and informed them that I was faced with three immediate tasks: protection and security of the station; the creation of a reactionary gap in which my officers could work to alleviate the pressure to the north and, if possible, arrest troublemakers; and the creation of a sterile corridor for the LFB and LAS to advance, since by this point fires were being set.
We were light on resources, especially protected officers. Initially I had at my command a coterie of TSG officers and some Level 2 trained officers seconded for aid. I had urgent need of more shield-trained officers and I informed Silver of this. I also informed Silver that I had two to three PSUs who had been in the front line for three hours and who needed to be relieved.
By 2300 hours, having taken stock of the situation, I and my men pushed forwards.
11.05 p.m.
They had set up Gold Command on the fourth floor.
A line of seated officers was monitoring the bank of screens, their computers providing the sound, as they communicated with Silver in Littleworth and Bronze on the ground. In the middle of the room there was a projected map of Rockham complete with the position of rioters, onlookers and emergency services. It was such a rapidly changing scenario it soon took on the look of a fast-forwarded weather map except that reports coming in made it clear that the clouds hanging over Rockham would soon be the smoke of burning buildings rather than that morning’s mysterious promise of rain.
Joshua stood to one side as Anil Chahda took charge. As he watched his deputy calmly issuing orders, his respect for Chahda increased. Having previously seemed stolid, Chahda was now showing how fast, and how effectively, he could move when he had to. Which is more than could be said for those in charge of Rockham police station.
‘What on earth did they think they were doing leaving a patrol car and a bus exposed?’
‘I expect it’s down to inexperience on the ground, sir,’ Chahda said. ‘Gaby Wright was unfortunately away. She’s on her way back and her task, and ours, is to take control. You agree that arrests are not an immediate priority?’
‘Yes. Not enough men on the ground. They can always organise CCTV grabs afterwards. For the moment, let’s just concentrate on making sure that nobody gets killed.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Anil smiled, which was not a sight Joshua had ever seen before.
What a mess, and before Joshua had even completed a week in post. By the looks of it even Billy Ridgerton, as capable as he undoubtedly was, would have to work a miracle to stop the trouble with the scarce resources available to him. Wouldn’t be easy, either, to give him more, what with it being Saturday and so many of the men having opted to take their annual leave during this hot spell.
‘Don’t let me get in your way, Anil. Carry on.’
‘Thanks, sir.’ Anil Chahda half turned away but then froze. ‘Uh oh. What’s he doing here?’
‘He’ was Home Secretary Peter Whiteley, who was just then coming through the door.
Damn. They had rioting in Rockham and every indication that it was about to spread. All they needed now was a Home Secretary who, knowing him, was trying to steal a march on his PM and the Mayor by acting the strong man.
‘We need to deal with this. Come with me.’ Joshua made his way over to the door, with Chahda at his heels. ‘Home Secretary, this is a surprise.’ To Peter Whiteley’s bodyguards who were standing to attention, he added, ‘That’s fine, men, relax,’ and then, ‘How can I help you, Home Secretary?’
‘I’ve come to see how I can help you.’ Peter Whiteley lurched forward.
Was he drunk? ‘Thank you, Home Secretary, but as I’m sure you can see,’ Joshua’s gesture embraced all the officers working quietly at their desks, ‘we’re on it.’
‘Anything you need.’ Another lurch: he must be drunk. ‘Permission to use Section 44 for example.’
Oh great. In a situation when they didn’t even have enough officers on the ground to contain the trouble, never mind arrest any of the troublemakers, this idiot was suggesting that they use the blanket provisions of the Terrorism Act. And with the Rockham nick under siege, where did he think they were going to put the people they arrested?
Smile, Joshua told himself, and speak. ‘Thank you for that, Home Secretary, but our immediate priority must be to stop the disruption at the same time as we make sure to keep our officers and the public safe.’
‘Well, how about I get on to the networks? Tell them to apply ACCOLC? Call gapping?’
‘Thank you again, but at this moment there are no reports that the networks are overloaded.’ With great effort, Joshua kept calm. Not for much longer, though. If Peter Whiteley did not take the hint, Joshua would have to tell him, and in no uncertain terms, that political interference in operational policing – albeit under the guise of offering help – would not be tolerated.
‘We cannot have anarchy on our streets,’ Peter Whiteley said. ‘Anything you need. Anything.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Joshua watched one of the officers handing Chahda a piece of paper: must be important or the officer wouldn’t have come over, not with Whiteley there, this thought confirmed by the sight of Chahda blanching.
‘Problem?’
Chahda nodded and said softly in Joshua’s ear, ‘The disturbance is now within two miles of a highly flammable solvent recycling facility. We’ll have to redistribute our men.’
‘What’s that?’ As Peter Whiteley raised his voice, he couldn’t stop himself from doing another little lurch forward. ‘What’s that?’ Not just drunk but a hysteric. And a dangerous one. Now was the time to evict him.
‘We should brief you, Home Secretary, and thoroughly. Anil, if you wouldn’t mind taking the Home Secretary to our spill-out operations room where he will be more comfortable.’ He pointed to the door with such authority that Peter Whiteley obediently turned towards it. ‘I’ll tak
e over temporary command while you’re gone.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Chahda didn’t like it, but he must have realised that if he didn’t get this bloody politician out of Joshua’s hair he’d be having to cope with the consequences of the Metropolitan Commissioner of Police tearing a strip off his Home Secretary in front of the whole of Gold Command. The Mayor would love that. So would the PM. And the tabloids would have a field day when it leaked out, which these things always did.
As the Home Secretary’s embarrassed protection squad followed Whiteley and Chahda, Joshua made his way to the communications officer. ‘Transmit to Silver and Bronze the following communication as an instruction,’ he said, handing over the note on which he’d scrawled some sentences. ‘Send this first. Then contact India 95 and tell them we need thermal imaging and fast. We’ve got to work out how many people are in the area in case we have to evacuate.’ As the officer set to, he added, ‘Put it on loudspeaker, will you?’
Which is how he was able to hear Billy Ridgerton responding to the news with a loud ‘You’ve got to be fucking joking.’
11.15 p.m.
A solvent recycling centre in a built-up area: what muppet had thought that wouldn’t be a problem? And how come it hadn’t been on any of the maps Billy had checked, just in case, earlier that day? Must be a recent act of moronic incompetence and one that had been shuffled out of sight by some pen-pusher.
No time to give vent to his fury. He had instead now to tell men who were already exhausted by the pressure on them and the heat that he was going to further deplete their numbers by dispatching some of them to a factory some peaceful two miles away. They weren’t going to like it.
‘Shift, sir.’ Tony, Billy’s minder, pushed him to one side at the same time as he lifted his short shield over Billy’s head. A piece of something hard, clearly aimed at Billy, bounced off the shield and hit Tony on the cheek. It was a bit of paving stone, sharp at one end. Blood trickled down Tony’s cheek.
‘You okay?’
‘Fine and dandy, sir.’ Tony wiped the blood clear of his eye. It was the third hit he had taken for Billy that evening, and it wasn’t going to be the last.
Four paces ahead, a line of officers was trying to claim ground so as to push on to the junction at Rockhall Park and clear a route for the LFB and LAS, who were champing at the bit behind them.
‘This is diabolical,’ Tony said. They had policed some bad disturbances together – not least the recent G8 where all hell had broken loose – but this was no anti-capitalist riot like G8. It was a full-blown attack on the police, with burning and pillaging as a side order to this main event. That much had been clear from the moment they’d pitched up to be met by a hail of bottles, broken paving stones and even petrol bombs. No wonder some of his men were only too eager to lash out. He’d had to stop a few so far, and he knew he’d have to stop more before the night was out.
He couldn’t really blame them. They all shared the same frustration. They couldn’t push forward fast enough because some of the rioters had had the bright idea of copycatting the G8 maniacs by chaining shopping trolleys together to form a barricade and, would you believe it, the clippers strong enough to cut through were missing from the inventory. Added to that was the heat: although their arm and leg guards offered much-needed protection, they also dramatically increased the wearer’s body temperature. And should they manage to push close enough to the fires to do any good, he would have to worry about their body armour melting, and the nightmare injuries that could arise. He’d already lost one officer. She’d started to fit – badly – and had to be bodily passed back along the police lines until they could get her to an ambulance.
Not a pretty sight to see one of his officers manhandled, even by her own, but this was another thing he couldn’t afford to dwell on. There were so many other people to be fearful for: the members of the public who were caught up in the middle of the disturbance and, even worse, those who might soon be trapped in burning premises; or the likelihood that where petrol bombs and paving stones led, firearms might follow; or that omnipresent terror that one of his men could be separated from the main group and torn to pieces by the mob, something that he was in no doubt could happen if he didn’t manage to keep them all together. Plus there was the worry about the finger-wagging and worse that would follow should one of his hard-pressed men hurt one of the rioters. And while he was weighing up all these possibilities, he had Silver, and now Gold, shouting instructions through his earpiece, along with an urgent need to come up with tactics that would take them in the right direction of a desirable endgame. If all this wasn’t bad enough, India 95 was relaying sightings of the build-up of disturbance in nearby boroughs, which raised the nerve-wracking possibility that one riot might join up with another. And now he had orders to send men two miles away. Not just any men: his bravest and his best.
‘Run over to that shop there.’ Although he was so dry it felt as if he’d been knifed in the throat, he could only make himself heard by bellowing in his runner’s ear. ‘Fetch water for the men. Tell them we’ll pay later: sign a chit for whatever they ask, but don’t come back without water.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Good man, he was off in a trice.
‘Come on.’ This to Tony. ‘We’re going forward.’ With Tony’s shield covering him, they ran together to the lines ahead and pushed through to the front. ‘You four.’ He had to wallop them on the back in quick succession in order to get their attention. ‘Step out.’
By the time they reached the back lines, the runner had returned with water. One of the men punched through the plastic to pull out a bottle, practically ripping off its top with his teeth to get to the liquid, and soon all the others were doing likewise.
‘Take water forward to the men and quickly. Not just this. Much more.’
‘No need, sir,’ the runner pointed ahead to where members of the public, bottles and crates of water in hand, were snaking through the barrage to reach his men and hand the water over.
‘See. Not everybody hates us,’ the runner yelled in Billy’s ear.
No, Billy thought, only the ones who really want to kill us.
Pushing the thought aside, he told the four men that Gold had ordered that they go and organise the possible defence of a solvent reprocessing plant.
‘Are they nuts?’ one of the men said. ‘There’s nowhere near enough of us as it is.’ Despite this statement, Billy caught the glimmer of relief crossing the man’s face. Understandable: if a senior officer was to come along and tell Billy to get the hell out of here, and that’s an order, he’d be gone like a shot. But that wasn’t going to happen. Instead, he must now make less-experienced officers, some of whom showed every sign of wanting to freeze under the onslaught, push forward.
‘Madness,’ he said.
But only to himself.
11.20 p.m.
‘Madness’ was the light-hearted descriptor that passed from mouth to mouth on the High Street as Cathy made her way along it: ‘Madness’.
Instead of the shortcut through the market, she had gone the long way round, approaching the police station from the south. When she saw what was happening, she was glad that she had.
They had blocked the road further up so that there was no longer any traffic. A good thing too. The pavement and street were crammed with people either escaping the trouble to the north, heading straight for it, or just loitering about swapping the stories they’d heard. ‘They ran over a baby in a buggy’ was one and ‘they beat up a teenage girl because she was slow to move’ another. Despite these apocryphal tales, the people in this part of the High Street seemed pretty relaxed. A troupe of drummers had settled at the pavement’s edge and were beating out a rhythm. Another group had laid blankets on the pavement and were sharing a picnic as a familiar figure who bore the nickname Alf-the-Armageddonist scattered his handwritten leaflets warning of the imminent end of world.
No sign of Jayden. As Cathy pushed northwards, she kept bumping into people she knew, some o
f whom she hadn’t seen for quite a while. All around her, other members of the crowd were exchanging greetings and catching up with each other. So much cheerful normality, it was like being at a carnival except without the usual police presence because the police were concentrated further down the road.
First off there was a queue of stationary fire engines and ambulances, waiting for she knew not what. Beyond them were the dark forms of police lines pushing against a barrier she couldn’t yet see except when something flared on its way down. Flaming bottles filled with petrol: were they, she wondered, the source of the smell that was stronger as she moved closer to the trouble?
‘Lyndall’s not still out in this, is she?’ Reverend Pius, who was pushing a young woman in a wheelchair, came up to Cathy.
‘No, she’s at home,’ Cathy said. ‘Did you get Ruben’s parents back safely?’
‘Yes. Poor things. They were terribly distressed at the way their vigil has been hijacked. None of this,’ he pointed back towards the police station, ‘is what they would have wanted. What any of us would have wanted. I don’t know what the police were thinking of, not containing what was a peaceful demonstration. And because they didn’t, we’ve now got anarchy. They’re breaking into shops further up. I even saw some of them in a McDonald’s cooking chips. Can you believe it? I mean, if you’re going to loot, loot; don’t stop and make yourself something to eat.’ He said this with a smile, which was almost immediately wiped off. ‘Seriously, though, this is the last thing we need. Marcus is out there trying to talk sense into them, but you know what an optimist Marcus is. It’s already gone too far for sense, and it hasn’t even peaked. I’d go home if I were you.’
‘I’m looking for Jayden. Have you seen him?’
‘At the demonstration, yes. Not since.’ Pius sighed. ‘I hope you find him soon. He should be indoors. We all should. I’m only out because Marsha here,’ he glanced down at the woman he was pushing, ‘has run out of some of her medication. I said I’d escort her to the all-night pharmacy. Otherwise I would come with you.’
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