Gillian Slovo - Ten Days

‘I lost my phone,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Are you deaf or what? I lost my fucking phone.’

Okay, she thought, so he lost his phone. She took hers out of her pocket. ‘You can use mine.’

‘No.’ He shook his head. Violently. ‘What if she rung back and you answered?’

She must be his wife — his ex-wife. That he’d had an acrimonious break-up was one of the few personal details he had let slip.

‘You could number guard it,’ she said.

He backed away even further. ‘You don’t understand.’ He’d raised his voice again — ‘Nobody does’ — and hardened as he glared at her. ‘I’m all alone.’

Such accusatory self-pity, as if he was so much worse off than everybody else. ‘Oh, for goodness sake,’ she heard herself saying. ‘Use my phone. Or don’t. Just do me a favour and stop whining.’

There: the end of tiptoeing around him in case something she did made him leave her. Let him go if he wanted to. It would be better if he did. She looked at him, straight, waiting for his bite-back.

He threw his head back and laughed. Long and hard, and he kept his balance while he was doing it. He isn’t drunk, she thought.

A memory of that previous night: Banji held down and unable to get the police to hear what he was telling them — that they were killing Ruben. It must have been unbearable. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.’

He took her by surprise again. He reached out and touched a gentle finger against her lips. ‘Don’t be sorry. Be feisty. It suits you, Cathy Mason.’

So many lightning changes of mood: a dance she couldn’t follow.

But then Banji was a man who never would be followed. ‘Catch you later,’ he said. ‘Something I have to do,’ and he walked away.

10 p.m.

‘It’s late,’ the Reverend Pius said. ‘And we’ve had a productive meeting. We are agreed. We’ll set off from the Lovelace tomorrow at three, and others will join us outside the police station. We’ll support the family while they seek an explanation from the police about their actions in relation to Ruben. Once they’ve been given that, we will disperse. Thanks, everybody, for attending and to Cathy for opening her home to us.’ He stretched and tried to conceal a yawn that anyway sounded out.

No wonder he was tired: he’d had to work hard to contain the rage that had at moments threatened to burst out.

‘That was well chaired,’ Marcus said.

Cathy nodded her agreement, although she was distracted. One final look around the room as the crowd that had packed her living room thinned confirmed it. ‘Banji wasn’t here,’ she said.

‘Were you expecting him?’

‘After last night? Yes, of course.’

‘Well, you know what Banji’s like.’ Marcus got to his feet and also yawned. ‘They seek him here, they seek him there, the Lovelace seeks him everywhere.’

He said it so sweetly it made her laugh, but still: ‘You’ve never liked him, have you?’

‘I don’t like him.’ Marcus shrugged. ‘I don’t dislike him. I don’t know him. Does anybody?’

Yes, she nearly said. I do. But then she thought back to the way Banji had behaved that afternoon, and then to their more distant past, and she realised that she never had been able to predict what he would do.

‘You better come.’ Pius, who had left the room, suddenly reappeared.

‘Why?’

‘It’s your daughter.’ Before she had time to press him, he was gone.

She went after him as fast as she could, weaving her way past knots of people still picking over what had been discussed. She had to stop herself from knocking some of them to the ground. It was a short distance to the hall, but it seemed to take an age to get there. Then she found her progress even more impeded. People were moving forward but so slowly. She could not understand it. She stood on her tiptoes and looked over their heads to see that the crowd, instead of dispersing, was standing just outside the door.

What had this to do with Lyndall? She’d been in and out during the meeting — bored, Cathy had assumed.

‘Excuse me.’ One last push and she was over the threshold.

‘Look.’

Pius was smiling, and when she looked to the place he was pointing at, she understood why.

The night was aglow. Not with a fire that burnt — that had been her first thought — but with a soft, shimmering light. It was like looking at a cluster of stars, except this light came not from the sky but from down below.

‘Your daughter and her friend did this.’

So that’s why Lyndall and Jayden had been out so early. They must have gone to the wholesalers to buy tealights, which, in their glass containers, they had placed at regular intervals across the Lovelace. Down one of the gangways the river of light went and up another, as if following a route. And, yes, that’s what they were doing. The kids had marked out Ruben’s last walk with light and, yes again, her eyes confirmed it because there, in front of the community centre, was a great cluster, so many of them that it was from here that the impression of burning had come. A great flowing mass of light.

She looked and she looked. Her vision seemed to blur.

‘Magnificent.’ Pius’s voice in her ear. ‘And to think they keep lecturing us that we have a problem with our youth.’

She nodded but could not speak.

Lyndall must be here somewhere. She had to find her. She scanned the crowd and sure enough there was her daughter standing next to Jayden.

She could not speak, but she could do something better. She clasped her hands together and she put them over her heart and lowered her head and held it there, not in prayer but in appreciation of the great gift that they had been given.

With his wife and daughters away for the weekend, Chief Inspector Billy Ridgerton, cadre-trained in public order critical incidents, had done a fellow officer a favour by agreeing to take his place on call.

Last time he’d volunteered, there’d been major and almost simultaneous ructions in four different locations. He couldn’t be that unlucky again. To reinforce this conviction he’d got up late — late for him, that is — and made himself a cup of instant coffee that he drank standing up.

The sun had yet to round the building, and for one glorious moment, as clouds swept across the sky, it looked as if the heatwave might be about to break. An illusion: the clouds soon dissolved, leaving a sky so blue it was clear they were in for another scorcher. He’d promised Angie he’d have a go at the unruly hedge that was strangely flourishing in the heat. Better start before it got too hot. But first he should check the available intel, just in case his services were going to be required.

There were the usual football fixtures, all of which looked to be, in policing terms, well under control. There were also a couple of fairs in London’s parks which, barring the spontaneous immolation of a bouncy castle, shouldn’t cause much trouble, and a vintage car race that might at worst lead to a bit of a traffic build-up. The only item of concern was the vigil that was due in Rockham.

Billy already knew of the death — an awful misfortune and one every copper dreaded — and he was familiar enough with Rockham to know that when things got hairy there, they really got hairy. Before he set to on the hedge, he decided to check if there were any issues by phoning the station and asking to speak to Rockham’s Commander, CS Gaby Wright.

‘She’s up north at a conference,’ he was told. ‘Policing for change or some such bollocks.’

‘Okay, so are there any issues?’