In the Heart of the City

Cath Staincliffe
is the author of the acclaimed Sal Kilkenny mysteries as well as being the creator of ITV’s hit police series,
Blue Murder
, starring Caroline Quentin as DCI Janine Lewis. Cath was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library award in 2006. She lives in Manchester with her partner and three children.

Also by Cath Staincliffe

The Kindest Thing

Witness

T
hese streets are mine, that’s what I’m thinking. Unbelievable, bruv. We’re all here: Coxie and Jonny and Stella, all the crew from the estate. There’s this buzz – like massive. We go down Market Street and then along into St Ann’s Square. More people coming all the time. Waves of them, like they’re turning up for a rave or something. Yeah, like a sea of us, you know. Everyone hoods up, bandannas on. My heart’s booming, a pulse so sweet and fierce and the blood zipping round like it’s on fire. Totally alive. Like we’d all woken up and decided to do this thing, not taking no shit no more. So we took to the streets. Yeah. Our streets.

First I hear is a message from Coxie, saying meet in Piccadilly Gardens. I let Stella know, but she already does. We’re all going, everyone’s going to be there. Solid. We seen the news: Tottenham, Croydon, Birmingham, now it’s our turn. We take the baton.

The Dibble do nothing for long enough. We turn a corner and they’re there and they don’t even have shields. They’re statues, bruv. Can’t touch us. That feeling! Like the buzz from a game, GTA or COD, ambush or firefight and everything inside you jumps, but bigger. Real.

That feeling; together, on a roll, no one to stop us. Maybe once in a lifetime you get that. Guess if you’re in the army, got a gun, popping the Taliban, you get that sort of kick, but the rest of us? Seeing people get out of your way. Taking what you want.

There’re loads of little kids and some older people, but mainly it’s peeps our age from the shit parts of town, but it’s like we’re all on the same team, even though we’ve never met before. We get into T-Mobile while there’s still some shit left. Coxie’s crowing and Jonny’s hollering and I get myself a BlackBerry and another one for Stella. Sound, bruv. Round on King Street someone’s broken into Diesel and we go in and I grab a hoodie. Ditch mine and put it on there and then. Fresh.

Running back through to Market Street and this fire’s burning in Miss Selfridge and Stella goes, ‘No great loss there, then.’ She never shopped there, I reckon. I laugh and I think I’ll ask her out next time I get chance, cos she dumped Dale a while back and there ain’t been anyone else on the scene. She’s nice, Stella, she’s bright, she’s got attitude, smarts. Well fit n’ all. My old phone keeps going but half the messages are my mum wanting to know where I am, telling me to come home.

Like I’m going to miss this.

Round the side of Afflecks we run into this woman, she doesn’t move out of the way and she goes down with a right bang. Some of us stop. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at us. She looks right at me. I can see she’s scared. Maybe a bit angry, but mostly she looks like she wants to cry.

They knock me down. I’m trying to get back to my flat in the Northern Quarter. I’ve been seeing friends for a drink after work in the south of the city and heard there was trouble so left early; the buses and trams have stopped, but I got the train back in. My hand scrapes against the pavement and I feel the burn. There are words, shouts and someone tugging at my bag, which I would gladly give them but it’s caught on my arm and there is a tussle over it. They empty it on to the pavement and share out what’s worth keeping: my phone, money, cards. Now will they leave me be?

But they wait; it’s all gone quiet. Someone has stopped the frame and we are suspended. Frozen. It’s only a moment. A second long, maybe, a heartbeat. Except my heart isn’t beating, it has stopped and the possibilities hang there in the hiatus, each fringed with fear; that they will rape me, stab me, kill me.

Forty-five years old, and only a few times I’ve known that sort of terror. Once in a car, when the wheel came off and we were careering into the hard-shoulder, the noise terrific and the vehicle sliding along the Tarmac. Another time when a man cornered me upstairs at a party; he was drunk, nasty and much stronger than me. As he tore my dress and threw me on to the coats that layered the bed, I kicked out, smashing a lamp and a vase, making enough noise to frighten him off. A third time when I did a charity parachute jump for the drop-in centre. Ten thousand feet and terror had me screaming for every single one of them. Kissing death. Came away with my legs soft, my whole self shaken. Safe, but the thrill almost killed me.

I catch the eye of one of them, not that I am looking for eye contact. I know, after all my years of working with young people, that in a potentially violent situation prolonged eye contact translates as a challenge. He is not a big lad. Like the others he has masked his face, but his eyes are there; clear. And in them a look: hungry, elated. I am so frightened. My teeth are so tight they might shatter. There is a big gang of them and in that pause I think: is this how it goes? Is this how I die? Here, on this stupid day, with these raggedy-arsed kids?

The only sound is sirens looping round the city and I feel my belly twist. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I think maybe something bad is going to kick off cos she’s just sitting there and she’s not one of us. There’s maybe fifteen of us stopped. I got my pulse bumping in my throat.

Then the spell is broken. One of them moves; I see a blur, a trainer, trackie bottoms, hear the curse. His foot connects with my arm and a bolt of pain shoots up into my neck. Another kick to my ribs and I cry out. A third blow.

I feel Stella next to me, looking at me, like I’m supposed to know how to react. There’s this fizzing inside me, like the top of the roller coaster when you’re scared but it’s amazing too and I feel a bit sick with it. The woman yelps and another lad boots her.

The boy, the little of his face I can see, flushes as another one kicks me. Excitement or discomfort? I see a flicker in his eyes, a flicker of shame I think, but he doesn’t say anything or make a move to diffuse the situation. I can hear myself babbling, tears in my throat: please, please don’t, please. I want to shout, ‘I am not the enemy.’

She’s trying not to cry, but her face is all shaky. Then there’s this new sound above us, sudden: wacca-wacca-wacca. The helicopter, out of nowhere, swinging low, the vibrations thumping right through me, in my guts. And we jib, running fast, legging it down the back of the bus station to Cross Street. There’s glass strewn everywhere, glittering like diamonds. Shop doors hanging off, shutters torn up, one place with windows peeled back in a single sheet. It’s a war zone and, for long enough, our side’s winning. Someone should’ve broken into the Big Wheel, got it cranked up. Imagine that, us all climbing high above the city, looking out at all we have taken.

Things get heavier after that. They’re on horses now, like at the football – I only went once; at ninety quid a pop they’re taking the mick. I’m on £51.85 a week and I have to give some of that to my mum cos they’ve messed up her claim, just stopped her disability, so she got a crisis loan after a load of argument but she’ll have to pay that back when it’s sorted. The housing are on her back too about arrears, so she’ll be fined for that and none of it’s her fault. She practically lives at Citizens Advice. I’d nick something for her, but she’d go all godly on me.

Later on, it gets dark and it’s still not raining and we’ve been running and ducking and diving. Everyone’s starving, too, but there’s a Tesco Express ripped open and that sorts us out. All the fags have long gone, and the booze. Jonny points out that someone’s skanked the alcohol-free lager as well and that cracks us up.

Coxie gets nicked. He’s being cocky – that’s how he got his name. The 5-0, there’s more of them now and they’re not shy any more. But he wants some drink and we’re racing down Deansgate and on and then we think we’re clear. Fighting for breath and people smiling and shaking their heads. Hot, bruv. And Coxie spies this deli, already looted. He dives in and that’s when this load of riot cops in the proper gear charge up the road in formation and I’m yelling for him but he doesn’t come out and we have to run. I take Stella’s hand to pull her along. Time to go, then. I don’t want it to end. Like the best night ever, you know?

From my window, with the lights off, I watch the streets. I wonder how much they will burn. This is my city, their city, and they want to tear it down. My heart aches for Manchester. For the destruction, the livelihoods lost, the sense of safety gone. Like back in ’96 when the bomb exploded and we saw the devastation. There are fires burning over the river in Salford. The moon rises above the town hall. I keep vigil. It’s all quiet by about two in the morning, but I sit up until dawn. Watch the sunrise. Weeping. Wonder if they’ll be back.

When I get home, mum’s going ape, yelling soon as I get in, but she can’t move that fast cos of her back so I take my new hoodie up and stash it under my bed before I see her. She knows. She always knows and she shouts and I watch her mouth and close my ears. Then she stops. She’s frowning and her eyes have this look. Like the woman on the floor did. Then she’s crying. I hate her bawling. She does it to peck head. Her nose all puffed up and she’s talking about how I’ve ruined my future and how can I be so thick. What future? The job that ain’t never gonna happen? The little gaff and the car and the kids and the holidays that come with it? I’d settle for that – I’d love that. I would fucking love that. But that’s not my future, never was. My future is the same every day – scraping by, never having enough of anything. It’s boredom so deep that sometimes I think I’ll go mental, mornings I wake up and wish I hadn’t. There is nothing on the horizon, no light at the end of the tunnel. Nothing. No change. Just more of the same on and on and on. She’s crying and I know I can’t make it right. So I go to bed.

People come in their hundreds to clear up, carrying brushes and dustpans, bin bags. The sense of camaraderie is palpable, but I haven’t the heart to join them. I don’t think I could hold it together and it hurts to move anyway.

I don’t report it to the police and when I hear the sentences they are handing out I am glad: with months inside for the theft of the most pathetic items, what would they hand down for assault? I despair as I watch the knee-jerk responses. Everyone on their high horses spouting sound bites and platitudes and abuse: scum, scrotes, chavs, thugs, hooligans, gangsters, yobs. Because slapping a label on someone means we no longer have to make any effort to comprehend them – to see them as human. To understand, to investigate, to interrogate. Just make an example of them, teach them a lesson: herd them into prison, mark them for life. Locked up, unsafe and facing an even bleaker existence on release than they had before. Storing up more trouble.

What they have done is despicable. But they are not the only ones. Iraq, the expenses scandal, Abu Ghraib, police corruption, Guantanamo, phone hacking, the bankers who have brought us to our knees with their legal larceny. Oh, this green and pleasant land.

They come for us early in the morning. Thumping and shouting downstairs. I think we’re being robbed. That some knobhead has got the address wrong and thinks we have something worth stealing. (Well – there is the hoodie and the BlackBerry.) But there’s half a dozen in full-body get-up, batons out, screaming, and a psycho dog on a leash barking. Mum’s crying and they arrest me and put handcuffs on and she’s shouting at them, ‘Where are you taking him? What’s he done? Please don’t hurt him.’ I tell her it’ll be all right, even though I’m shit scared.

In the days that follow I have the sensation of something hovering behind me, something just over my shoulder, breath on the back of my neck. I cannot sleep. I rear awake, sweaty and sick. In my dreams the city is burning. In my dreams rats and cockroaches spill from the shadows.

They had us on camera. They charge me with burglary and keep us at the police station and then the next morning the van takes us to court. This solicitor, I tell him what I’ve nicked and he advises me to plead guilty. From there they take us to prison. I get eight months.