Ten Days

by Gillian Slovo

  ‘A small group of gang leaders are known to carry them, sir. We’ve picked them up as a precaution.’

  More doors kicked in. In this case necessary, but still: ‘We’re going to have to pour full resources into the Lovelace tonight,’ which meant that the rest of London would then be starved of them. ‘Contact the TFC with a view to having some armed officers in reserve. Just in case.’

  ‘Already set in motion, sir.’

  There was something menacing in this man despite his efficiency.

  As soon as this emergency was over, Joshua was going to seriously consider getting rid of him. ‘If this latest hits the Twitter-sphere, we’ll be in for a rocky night. Issue an order city-wide and make sure it is properly distributed. Our aim is, and must be, to contain the trouble and not to stoke it up. No water cannon, no tear gas. Not without my express permission.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Anything else?’

  ‘Not at this moment. The Home Secretary asked to be kept in touch with developments. I’ll ring and let him know about this.’

  And after that, he thought, I had better go and see a man about a Molotov.

  8 p.m.

  ‘I see, Commissioner.’ Peter glanced at Patricia, who was listening on another receiver and writing down every word. ‘What happened to provoke it?’

  As Commissioner Yares tediously went into the details behind this latest Rockham flare-up, Peter heard his mobile ringing. It was Frances’s ringtone.

  She had, he now remembered, previously called the office and asked that he call her back. ‘Get that, will you,’ he mouthed at Patricia, who, bless her, stretched out for his mobile and spoke softly into it while continuing to note down what Joshua Yares was saying. Which at long last came to an end.

  ‘Thank you for keeping me informed, Commissioner. I trust your news, when we next speak, will be more positive.’ Peter hung up. ‘The man’s a peacock. All that glamour display of his about policing by consent just hides that he is too lily-livered to stop trouble in its tracks. And now his men provoke a riot before it’s even dark – and all for no reason that I can comprehend. He yawned and thought, if he had his way, Yares would soon be gone. ‘What did Frances want?’

  ‘All she would say was that it was urgent and that you need to come home.’

  Could something have happened to Charlie? ‘You sure she didn’t say anything else?’

  ‘Only that you should come home.’

  Couldn’t be Charlie, then.

  ‘Do you want me to call her and tell her when you’ll be able to?’

  ‘Yes.’ And then, ‘No. On second thoughts, I better make the call myself. Hand me my mobile, will you?’

  She gave it to him and, saying ‘I’ll fetch some more ice’, left the room.

  For which he was grateful, it being easier to talk to Frances when he was on his own.

  He dialled her phone. Engaged. He tried the home number. It rang and rang but nobody picked up. She must be busy on the mobile.

  He’d try again in a few minutes; in the meantime, preparing for the impending interview had taken so much time, he now had an enormous amount to get through.

  8.50 p.m.

  The estate was quiet. Much quieter than she had ever heard it, especially so early in the night. Not that it was empty. If she stood on the balcony and looked down, she could see, through the fading light, knots of people gathered all around.

  They weren’t Lovelace residents; they were the police.

  A group of them were guarding the community centre: as if it was the people of Rockham, rather than their own colleagues, who had broken into it. Another group was watching as a workman bricked up the building next door. And there were more as well, strolling about, not in the usual twos but in groups of five or six. Which didn’t count the ones who were sitting, she’d heard, in the vans around the corner. Waiting. For something that, by the sounds of a burst of laughter that reached her ears, they might quite enjoy.

  9 p.m.

  Head down, knowing that it would soon be time to leave, Peter kept ploughing through his piles of paperwork.

  He had tried Frances three or four times, but each time it had gone straight to answerphone. Couldn’t be that urgent or else she would have found a way to get in touch. When she switched her phone back on, she would see how many times he’d tried to reach her. Still, a vague worry lurked, and it prompted him to bring to the surface other odd things he’d recently observed. The way he’d caught her frowning, for example, just the other morning, when she thought he wasn’t looking, or the uncharacteristic recent lapses in her concentration. Not like her – she was usually so on the ball.

  She couldn’t know, could she?

  No, of course she couldn’t. Of course she didn’t.

  He picked up the mobile and tried again. Again without result.

  Time for him to go and do the first of what would probably turn out to be a round of interviews. He packed papers into his box – he’d have to read them in the car – and yawned. He wasn’t tired; he was nervous. Not about speaking to the press per se, but for this one interview that might turn out to be the most important of his life. He yawned again.

  His mobile vibrated. A text.

  From Frances and it read: ‘Come home.’

  He dialled her mobile.

  Straight to answerphone. Odd.

  Another buzz. Another text: ‘Come home.’

  What was she playing at?

  He texted – he hated the form, made him feel so clumsy: ‘Am on the ten. See you after.’

  To which he got an immediate response: ‘Come home. Now. Or else.’

  9.25 p.m.

  Or else what, he wondered, as they drew up outside the house.

  ‘Wait here,’ he said to Patricia. ‘I won’t be long.’

  She nodded. ‘You’re all right. We can reach the studio in fifteen.’

  Fifteen minutes should do it. Whatever it was. He stepped out of the car and stood a moment, looking around.

  Night had finally covered an outlandish dusk, and now his street was dark and quiet, with only an occasional glimmer of light peaking through drawn curtains. As he walked towards his house, the shadows of trees loomed large. Despite an absence of wind, they seemed to be leaning in on him. Something not right: he could feel it. He looked at his house. It was dark.

  As soon as he slipped his key into the lock, Patsy started barking and when he opened up, she kept on. ‘Out of my way.’ He pushed her with his foot. This stopped her noise, although she persisted in sniffing at him as if he were a stranger. He called out, ‘Darling?’

  No answer. He clicked on the hall light.

  The door to the living room was open. He switched on the light. The room, he saw, was empty. Perhaps the snug? He walked to the end of the hall and opened the door to her snug: ‘Darling?’ It too was quiet and dark. Through the window he could see the outline of unmoving shrubs. She wasn’t in the garden. Not that he could see.

  Upstairs then. He mounted the stairs. ‘Hello? Frances? Where have you got to, darling?’

  She wasn’t in the bedroom. Or in any of the other rooms. She couldn’t have gone out: if she had, one of their guards would have mentioned it. He had switched on every light he passed so that the house was now ablaze. He glanced at his watch. Seven minutes gone.

  The only room he hadn’t tried was the kitchen, because he had seen that it, too, was dark. Now he made his way back downstairs. She wasn’t in the kitchen – of course she wasn’t – but the door to the garden was open. He moved, in darkness, only to trip over something that turned out to be the dog. It yelped and got up. He could see its baleful yellow eyes staring up at him. ‘Why are you always in the way?’

  ‘She’s only ever in your way. She doesn’t like you.’

  He whirled round to find Frances seated at the table.

  ‘What are you doing in the dark?’

  ‘Thinking.’ She sounded eerily calm.

  ‘You didn’t fancy the garden?’

  �
�It’s no cooler there. And the air stinks of pollution.’

  Something in her tone. ‘Are you all right, darling?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘I’m due to be interviewed on the ten,’ he said. ‘In fact,’ a quick glance at his watch, ‘I need to go.’

  ‘If that’s what you want to do, then go.’ She sounded sweet. As sweet as toothache. ‘But if you do,’ she said, ‘don’t bother coming back.’

  She knows, he thought. ‘What’s this all about?’

  ‘About?’ Not only calm but almost serene as she picked up her phone and held it up. ‘It’s about this.’

  She made no move to bring it to him, so, heart hammering, he went to her. When he took the phone, his fingers brushed hers. After she let go, he saw her wipe those fingers down her skirt. She does know, he thought. He glanced at the phone.

  He was looking at a photo of him and Patricia.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘It was texted to my phone. Number Unknown. Signed “A Friend”. Clearly no friend of yours.’

  He looked again. They were only standing together on a pavement. Side by side, yes, but they could have been talking business. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘And?’

  ‘Scroll on.’

  More of them, then. He swiped across the screen. It went black. ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Peter.’ She snatched the phone back. ‘Can’t you do anything for yourself?’ She pushed a few buttons and then, without yielding it to him, began to swipe through a series of photographs.

  It was like watching his own execution, these pictures flicking past at Frances’s command. He saw him and Patricia laughing. Him and Patricia, arms swinging as they walked through an entrance. The back of him and Patricia, his arm now going up as if to put it round her. The two of them standing close, his arm around hers as he said something in her ear.

  He couldn’t breathe. But had to.

  He breathed.

  He had imagined this, of course he had, but this was nothing like he had imagined it would be. That had involved his telling one or the other that it was over. When he had made up his mind. This fright was something other. A frozen thing that kept him from figuring out what he was going to say.

  Buy time, he told himself, buy time. ‘What is it that you think is going on here?’ Wondering, could she have more? More intimate than this?

  ‘What I know is going on here,’ Frances scrolled back to the first of the photos, ‘is . . .’ she separated her fingers to magnify the first of the images before moving it down so he could see the name of the hotel that he and Patricia had last been in ‘. . . you and your mistress strolling side by side into a posh fuck-pad.’

  The swear word was so out of place, coming as it did from her genteel mouth, he almost smiled. ‘She’s not my mistress.’ If she had more incriminating photos, she would surely have said so. ‘And it’s not a fuck-pad. It’s a respectable hotel.’

  ‘You haven’t forgotten, have you, Peter darling, that my father made me an expert at this sort of thing?’

  She wasn’t calm, he realised; she was enraged. He could feel it radiating off her as heat.

  Her fury that theoretically should frighten him was having the opposite effect of making her seem strangely attractive. He pushed that to one side to say, ‘I am not your father. And, yes, as you can see, we were walking into a hotel. And, yes, we were discussing something confidential. No reason to leap to a filthy conclusion.’

  ‘Just discussing? So where are your bodyguards?’

  Not the time to tell her how splendid she looked. But he had to say something. Lie, he told himself, while sticking closely to the truth. Or at least as close to the truth as was possible. ‘If you must know,’ he said, ‘I was meeting Chahda.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Anil Chahda. Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service. I was trying to get him to dish the dirt on his boss. That’s why I asked my protective officers to stay back. Couldn’t have them knowing what I was up to.’

  She blinked. A chink in her composure. He must capitalise on it.

  ‘I’m convinced that the PM’s great saint of a Commissioner has been a naughty boy,’ he said. ‘And that Chahda’s on the brink of spilling the beans.’

  At which point, and he didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry, the doorbell rang.

  He glanced at his watch. Shit. It would soon be ten. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’ The news would just have to push him back. ‘I must go and tell them . . .’ he was already on his way, striding down the corridor and wrenching open the door.

  Patricia. It would be her, wouldn’t it? Coming to get him. When he had expressly instructed her to wait for him in the car.

  ‘I’m busy,’ he said.

  ‘We just got a message from Number 10. The PM’s back. And he’s going to do the news.’

  All he needed.

  ‘Not now,’ he said. ‘I’m busy.’ And shut the door in her face.

  10.20 p.m.

  Wires snaked past Joshua’s polished shoes as he stood behind a hard-board panel that hid him from the cameras. From this place, even though he could clearly hear what was being said, his only vision was via a tiny monitor over which a man with earphones and a clipboard was coiled.

  He could have sat out the PM’s interview from the comfort of the Green Room. He had started there. But as word spread through the building, he was inundated by producers of increasing seniority, all of them trying to persuade him to appear on their programmes. Even here, inside the studio, someone had sidled up to whisper in his ear that he was the man of the hour and that the nation needed to hear what he had to say. Next time I come, he thought, as he tried to sugar his refusal with a smile, I’m going to bring a bodyguard.

  He concentrated on listening to the PM, who, without hesitation or the slightest raising of his voice, dismissed the suggestion that he had disappeared just as England started to burn, slapping his interviewer down pleasantly enough by outlining the success of the negotiations that would lead to the creation of a slew of new British jobs. Then to the riots, where he mixed grave concern at what had happened – and what was happening (they were playing the footage behind him) – with a vow to show no mercy to the malfeasants.

  It was a good performance. While Whiteley’s pugnaciousness seemed to hint at insecurity, the PM oozed unwavering self-assurance. A difference in class confidence, Joshua wondered, or was Whiteley just more duplicitous than your average politician?

  The interview was drawing to a close. On the monitor, Joshua could see that the pictures of people gathering that night had been replaced by one huge still of Molotov Man. Perhaps the PM had asked for this. Now he turned and pointed at the picture. ‘Make no mistake,’ he said. ‘We will find this man. And we will punish him.’

  10.25 p.m.

  ‘He did well,’ Peter said, as the newsreader moved on to describe the latest disturbances in a score of city streets. ‘Sounded convincing.’

  ‘It’s what he’s good at.’ Frances used the remote to kill the sound. ‘It’s how he got the top spot.’

  Was this a dig? He looked at her – a quick glance so she wouldn’t catch him looking.

  Despite that she’d said she believed him, she was still sitting at the other end of the sofa, as far away from him as she could get. But then, he thought, they often sat like this, and at this moment she was bound to be shaken up by the shock delivered to her by whatever bastard had sent those photographs. And listen to how calm she sounded as she said, ‘Easy enough to feign confidence when he’s only just come on the scene. But if they don’t stop the rioting, and by the looks of it they won’t, he’ll start seeming much less credible. Fortunate, really, for you that he decided to come back.’

  She couldn’t be so calm, could she, or have this conversation, if she thought he was lying?

  ‘We’re going to be all right,’ she said.

  The ‘we’ confirmed it. She did believe him.

  It was
over. And soon – and thinking that she had never looked as attractive as she did now – he’d make sure it was properly over.

  He shifted along the sofa, at the same time stretching one arm across its back.

  She rested her head on his arm, briefly, before yawning and straightening up. ‘I’m going to call it a day.’

  The dog, who’d been sleeping at her feet, also sprang to its feet. If he were to rise now, it was bound to bark at him.

  ‘Some things I need to work on,’ he said.

  ‘Of course.’ Another smile. ‘Come up when you’re done.’ Passing him, she reached out a hand and ruffled his hair. ‘Goodnight,’ she yawned again, and then, dog close at heel, she left.

  Leaving him alone to breathe out the relief he felt.

  10.27 p.m.

  ‘All quiet in Rockham,’ Billy heard over the radio that linked him to Silver.

  And, yes, he thought, bet it bloody well is quiet there, what with half of the Met having a knees-up on the streets. What they were doing there was not his to ask; he couldn’t help wondering, though, when, heading off to this front line, he saw a gang of them having a brew-up in lieu of anything more pressing to do. They’d offered him a cup and he’d been tempted, but then Silver had told him to hurry because all hell was breaking loose in an adjacent borough.

  ‘Duck.’

  He ducked without thinking, as he had been doing, he felt, for days, for weeks, for his whole life almost.

  That cry again: ‘Duck,’ and the thud of something soft landing on the line of shields.

  This lot they were facing were throwing sanitary towels covered in ketchup, both of which they’d probably just looted. Taking the piss. What had started in Rockham as a serious protest had turned into a vicious carnival of the unfunny. There’d even been racist attacks, he’d heard, under the guise of a reaction to the death of a man that most of the newcomers to the disturbances hadn’t known and didn’t care about.

  ‘Duck,’ he heard.

  What else could he do? He ducked.

  10.30 p.m.

  The PM plucked off his microphone and handed it over as he said, to Joshua, ‘What provoked the second Rockham incident?’