Gillian Slovo - Ten Days

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 take 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.