by HRF Keating
‘Thank you for being as frank as you have,’ she said to her contact. ‘And, all right, I accept your utterly foolish thing to do. But there are considerations involved which I cannot tell you about. Absolutely cannot. So, well, I’m going to have to risk coming down to London. No way round it.’
A sigh, loud down the line.
‘Your decision, Superintendent. No, wait. Wait. Yes, let me at least give you a mobile number that’ll get you our central control tomorrow. You’ve got such a thing as a simple pencil?’
‘Ballpoint in my hand.’
She finished scribbling and put the phone down, unable not to feel she had been right in insisting on making the arrest. But full of apprehension.
*
So it was a very disgruntled Bolshy Bill who, at 6 a.m. next morning, settled himself in Harriet’s own car, her newish Honda Jazz. No point in risking that Drummond might spot from high up in his eyrie a vehicle marked Birchester Police.
‘Haven’t had an early start at a god-damn hour like this since I was a PC,’ he complained. ‘Can’t see why you say we’ve got to be there arresting the feller this early. Be wrapped up cosy in bed till gone ten, toff like him.’
‘Not this morning he won’t be, DS. He’ll be the one making an early start if, as I suspect, he’s just about ready to go off to a place called Transabistan to lead a bunch of mercenaries to start a revolution.’
‘First I heard of that. Nobody tells me nothing.’
‘Well, you’ve heard now. And put your foot down, for heaven’s sake. I want to get there.’
*
But they reached the neighbourhood of Parliament Square much later than Harriet had hoped. Her calculations had not allowed for the huge number of protesters making their way along the London streets, eventually fully in the roadway.
‘God’s sake, look at ’em,’ Bolshy muttered. ‘What the hell do they think they’re doing? An’, look at all the wooden tops called out to keep ’em in order. Poor sods.’
‘They’re objecting, the protesters — I took a look at News 24 before I went to bed last night — to what they see as an unjust law that’s about to be put on the statute books. Though whether any law passed by a democratically elected House of Commons can really be described as unjust is something that could be argued over till doomsday.’
‘Law’s the law,’ DS Woodcock, firm upholder of the British constitution, complacently agreed. Simultaneously priding himself on ignoring all the rules.
The British constitution, Harriet found herself dreamily thinking as they slowly pushed their way through the crowds — Bolshy jab-jabbing at the horn — that’s a wonderful concept for you. Not a word of it ever written down, but people swearing by it year upon year. Look at Dickens’ Mr Podsnap teaching his French visitor that the Constitution Britannique was Bestowed Upon Us By Providence. One of John’s favourites among all his quotations. And how when he produces it he bops out each of those capital letters.
‘God knows where I can put the vehicle.’
Bolshy’s grumble brought her back to reality.
We’ve arrived. At last. Parliament Square just in front of us. And, goodness, everybody who warned me was right. There’s a solid mass of protesters here even as early as this, well before the time I’d thought we might bring off the arrest.
Better get in contact with Maria before she does what Drummond told her to do and keeps out of bloody way. Should find out if she’s prepared for all this.
She pulled out her mobile.
Her buzz was answered immediately.
‘Maria?’
‘Yes, is OK. He busy, bedroom.’
‘And are you ready to leave?’
‘Ten minute.’
‘Good. Now, Maria, have you seen the crowds down here below? Will you be able to get through them?’
‘Yes-yes. Ev’body can.’
All right, if she thinks so.
‘Now, Maria, listen. Can you leave the flat’s door on the snib? You know what I mean by that? The little knob on the lock that you push down so that the tongue of the bolt stays where you put it, either in or out?’
‘Yes, yes. Very good knowing. Push down little knob. But when I do, how I get out?’
Why the hell can’t Drummond have taught her to use reasonable English while he’s had her here? No, I suppose the less she understood the better, considering the sort of visitors he’s been having recently.
She turned back to the mobile.
‘No, Maria,’ she said, calmly as she could. ‘I want you to turn the big knob the way you do whenever you want to open the door, and then push the little knob down so that the door can’t be shut fast.’
‘Why you no say at start? Maria not damn idiot.’
‘No. No, of course you’re not. It’s Mr Drummond who sometimes calls you that, I suppose. So, now you know what it is I want. I want to find the flat’s door not locked when I come, so that I can go straight in. All right?’
‘Is all right.’
‘Hey, here’s a space,’ Bolshy broke in. ‘Nice double yellow line right up outside Drummond’s building. He’ll never see us there, not from any window at the top, and no one ain’t going to complain about yellow lines, day like this.’
He laughed then.
‘’Course, some of these protesters may turn the car upside-down or try an’ throw it over the railings into bloody Parliament. But who cares?’
Harriet, who did care about her Jazz, said nothing.
They sat there in silence. After only a few minutes Maria emerged from the building, big shopping-bag flapping at her side. Protected by the windscreen’s reflection, Harriet kept quite still, and Maria actually went hurrying straight past, peering anxiously at the noisily shouting crowd beyond.
Harriet, in her turn, began to look at them, though without any of Maria’s stranger-in-a-strange-land fears.
Groups of police were going marching by, clad in cumbersome yellow jackets, riot shields on their arms.
‘Could do with a bit of rain,’ Bolshy commented. ‘Cool down the wooden tops, poor buggers. But don’t suppose we’ll get any. Not when it’s wanted.’
‘Yes. And it won’t be only them who need cooling down,’ Harriet replied. ‘Look at that banner there. Kill Cops. All right, they may feel they’ve got grievances that need remedying, the protestors. But that’s just not on.’
‘Human nature,’ Bolshy said. ‘You got a chance to smash up some nice policemen, you’re going to take it.’
‘It may be a law of nature but it’s certainly not the law of any civilised country.’
‘An’ how many civilised countries are there? Lot of blacks slitting each others throats.’
‘That’s enough,’ Harriet said.
Bolshy contented himself with a smirk.
The crowd beside them was thickening by the minute. Banners were waving in violent, if unreadable, defiance. The shouting had become one unceasing tumult, with emerging every now and again a single continuous chant Unjust law — Unjust law — Unjust law. On and on. Against the far side windows of the car the mass of people had pushed a couple in full hunting regalia right up to them. Harriet found in a swirl of déja vu that the vibrant red of the man’s coat, only inches away from her face, had put into her mind Robert Roughouse outside Gralethorpe’s town hall. The hunting gentleman pounding out to the sullen faces in front of him his You cannot end four hundred years of history.
Shaking the vision out of her head, she leant towards Bolshy.
‘At this rate,’ she said into his ear, ‘we’re not even going to be able to get to that doorway just over there.’
‘You’re right. Gonna wait till tomorrow then?’
‘I certainly am not. I’ve no intention, either, of just sitting here in the car with those people butting up against us. Look, you should be able to get your door open. Nip out, go round and clear those two away.’
‘Want me to risk me life, is it?’
‘Nonsense. No one’s going to do
anything to you, however many Kill Cops banners there are. You’re in plain clothes, aren’t you? If you can call that horrible jacket plain clothes. Off you go.’
Bolshy, pleased perhaps with her acknowledgement that his appearance was a continuing act of defiance against the directive that officers should at all times dress with due respect for public standards, eased the door beside him open, and slid out.
Harriet, in the time it took him to work his way round to her side of the car, found a new source of anxiety. It was a ridiculous one she knew, yet she could do nothing but let it rip.
The real danger, she kept telling herself, is that, at any second, Drummond’s going to come out. What if he’s been looking down from one of his windows at the crowd along there in Parliament Square itself, heaving and thrusting a thousand times more violently than the miners in the square at Gralethorpe. He could decide he had to leave now before it gets impossible. If he comes out into the street just behind me, pushing and shoving with those broad shoulders of his, he could be out of my sight in minutes. And even if he’s not I could never arrest him here amid all the yelling and chanting.
Oh God, where’s Bolshy got to? He’s not going to desert me, is he? Skive off under pretence of not being able to get back here? It’d be all one with his general conduct.
There came a rapid tattoo on the window just beside her.
Bolshy. Purple-faced and sweaty. Pushing the pair in hunting gear vigorously out of the way.
Harriet swiftly leant over and released the door she had locked.
‘Cripes, worse than I thought,’ Bolshy shouted into her ear. ‘You should just see ’em in the square. They’re already trying to pull down those railings. The lads there going at it with their sticks ’ammer an’ tongs. Wouldn’t mind being there with ’em, matter o’ fact. Always liked having a bash at the great British public. ’Cept I think they’d get a better bash at me, way they are today. Talk about mad dogs. An’ they’ve got dogs too, some of ’em. Bloody what you call hounds, like in fox-hunting. Square’s full of that sort, all dressed up in their red coats and little black hats.’
‘Pink —’ Harriet began, correctively. And abandoned the attempt.
She allowed what Bolshy had told her, for all its exaggerations and digs at herself as the senior officer, to enter her consideration.
Yes, the huge protest was already going far beyond what the excited midnight reporter on News 24 had promised, as far or further than her contact in the Met had expected. Heaven knows, what’s got into these people. They’re meant to be from the so-called solid backbone of England, decent law-abiding folk. And look at them. Mad dogs, Bolshy’s not wrong. They’ve succumbed to some form of mass hysteria. God knows what’ll have happened before the day’s done.
So, what am I going to do?
Only one answer. Abandon my nice shiny almost new Jazz. And push our way as best we can over to that doorway, get in, climb those stairs — Bolshy won’t like that — and then at last quietly thrust open the flat’s front door. Unless …
Oh God, don’t let that have happened.
Unless Drummond, passing by that door for some reason or other, noticed it’s a bare quarter of an inch open and freed the tongue of the lock to click back into place.
‘Right,’ she said to Bolshy. ‘We’re going in. Now. Get in front of me and make for that doorway.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
As they neared the tall building they experienced one final delay. Pushing past the dozen or so protesters on the narrow pavement, Harriet had been unable to prevent herself jostling a jodhpurs-clad young woman.
‘Look what you’ve done,’ the girl screeched. ‘You bloody knocked my basket of eggs right out of my hand.’
Harriet looked back over her shoulder.
True enough, on the ground beside the angry young harridan there was a plastic fruit basket and spilling out from it a cluster of eggs, two or three of them smashed.
‘Sorry,’ she called back, intent on the doorway just within stepping distance.
‘Cow! Fucking cow!’ the young woman yelled at her. ‘Those were specially rottened eggs, you pig.’
Eggs ‘specially rottened’, brought for throwing, Harriet realised. And at any moment one of them may be hurled at me in place of any passing uniformed officer.
But Bolshy, now just beside her, gave her a sharp tug that sent her staggering into the protection of the doorway ahead. And, steadying herself there against the grimy wall, into her mind came, with sudden vividness, the recollection of the supermarket-fresh eggs that back in Gralethorpe she and John had watched being flung at Robert Roughouse. And then of the purple egg that had been shot from that deadly device.
Bolshy broke into her flashback recall.
‘Good job she didn’t get you with one of them eggs,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t never have done up at the top there, you spieling out I am arresting you on suspicion of murder and him reeling back from the stink.’
‘Thank you, DS,’ she said, ‘for keeping unblemished the majesty of the law.’
She began to climb the long haul of the stairs.
‘And now no talking, please. I want to take Mr Valentine Drummond totally by surprise.’
Bolshy pointedly put a finger to his lips as he thumped his way up behind her.
On and up they went, Harriet pausing near the top only to rebuke Bolshy, still clumping onwards, with a sharp look at the shoes on his feet.
A moment afterwards she was able to see that the flat’s door was, after all, just a crack open. So the caged tiger inside had failed to notice what Maria had done.
Revenge for all the bullying she’d suffered. Good.
Taking in a breath, she held her hand out flat and gave the door in front of her a single push.
No sign of Drummond in the living room that was immediately revealed. But, beyond, as she knew from her previous visit, must lie the flat’s bedroom, with Maria’s box-room somewhere to the side.
Almost on tiptoe she walked towards the closed bedroom door, Bolshy a couple of paces behind her.
She reached for the knob, turned it and thrust the door wide.
Drummond, from where he had been stooping over an opened suitcase on the bed, rose to his full height.
‘What the hell …?’
‘Mr Drummond, you may remember me. Detective Superintendent Martens, Greater Birchester Police.’
‘What the devil do you mean, barging in here? There’s a buzzer at the door.’
Harriet ignored him.
‘Valentine Drummond,’ she said, beginning the spiel Bolshy had parodied just a few minutes earlier, ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Rob —’
But Drummond at the word murder had hurled himself forwards, right fist thrusting out.
Harriet felt as if some heavy lump of metal propelled by an explosion had struck her full on the point of the chin.
There was a moment when she was conscious of her whole body being lifted from the floor. Then she fell back, her head striking the doorpost behind her.
Was there a wild flurry of dark bodies somewhere above her? Not until much later did she know whether she had seen this or half-guessed it. Total obscurity had overcome her, the screen showing a smooth descent of blankness as the cursor had homed in on Exit.
*
It can have been only a few minutes, she worked out eventually, two, perhaps three, before she had regained consciousness. Into her mind then had come the incongruous thought It’s the unwritten rule: a man does not strike a woman. Almost at once, as her full senses came back, she added wryly and aloud, ‘Not that the rule isn’t flouted often enough.’
The sound of her own voice completed the process of her recovery. She realised she had been left slumped against the doorpost, half-upright. And, yes, isn’t that, coming through the wide-open front door, the sound of banging steps on the hard stairs below?
Bolshy, she thought. Good old Bolshy, he may have been thrust aside but he’s there now, in purs
uit.
Carefully she heaved herself to her feet, feeling a thumping pain at the back of her head as a wave of nausea overtook her.
But should I set off following Bolshy?
Pointless. It’d be utterly pointless. At any second they’ll both be out in the open. If Drummond hasn’t got there already.
For a groggy moment, she imagined him pounding away along Great George Street towards St James’s Park and the offer of freedom that lay in its wide spaces.
But, no, she thought. No, Drummond’ll be too cunning to try that. There’ve been police helicopters circling overhead almost ever since we arrived. In the open he’d be in full view. No, if he’s half as clever as I think he is, he’ll have gone the other way. Taken the unorthodox route. Into that huge mêlée of Parliament Square.
Among all those protesters, intent on pressing towards the Commons, he’ll be able to disappear like a fox weaving its way through a bushy covert.
Lost him. Lost the bugger, perhaps for ever.
She looked wildly round, as if to find written on Drummond’s walls some secret instructions that would lead a pursuit to find him. Across the sitting-room she saw the bright daylight coming through the window. The window that must look out, she realised, as clearly as if Drummond himself or Maria had told her, down on Parliament Square below.
Four or five staggering steps towards it. And then she was watching the turbulent shouting mob beneath.
For perhaps half a minute she just stood there, leaning over the sill. But then …
Then she made out — surely it’s that — a twisting little snake of blackness parting the multi-coloured mass of the crowd.
Yes, it is. It’s Drummond, pushing his way through the press of jumbled bodies, leaving that small black snake of emptiness behind him.
No, wait. The black snake wouldn’t be so visible if it was just Drummond carving his way through. No, it must be, long as it is, because there’s another person pushing against the mass of the crowd not far behind. Bolshy. Bolshy really is there in close pursuit.
She stared downwards, engrossed as if a TV showing breaking news was hypnotising her.