The Happier Dead (23 page)

Oates spent some time getting to know the threat that had been made. He had no doubt of the spook’s sincerity. No one was powerful enough to invent a crime from nothing to frame a senior officer, but Oates could make out the ambiguities of the incident into which a hostile investigator could poke his fingers, the angles of his vulnerability. Why had he shot the boy in the back? Why had he escalated a situation in a crowded shopping mall which led to an exchange of gunfire?

Had he been drinking? There was the pint in the pub (had it been a couple?) and the glass in Prudence Egwu’s house. Why had he not waited for the internal investigators? Why had he disobeyed a direct order from John? Why had he allowed the situation to disintegrate at the Great Spa to the point where John had to step in? Had not his whole conduct that day been a chain of erratic decisions and criminally negligent actions, leading inevitability to the tragic death of a promising young man? Anyone shot by the police turned out to have shown promise, even if their actual achievements up to the point of their death were mostly in the field of violent crime. He could see himself conducting the questioning of the hypothetical perpetrator of such a sequence of calamities, and it would not go well for them.

For himself, he would not have cared. But he could imagine how things would be for Lori and the boys, being the family of a man partly blamed for inciting the city to burn itself down. Then there was suspension, the possibility of prison. They wouldn’t get by for long without his salary, such as it was, and then there would be the hostel like the one in which he had found Hector, and Lori would be the woman standing in her dressing gown in the cold doorway with nothing to defend herself against the city but the strength of her bitterness and a steaming wooden spoon.

His mind drifted back to the nights in the barracks at Camp Fortitude, waiting with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling between patrols. Some of his squad had photographs of their families pinned above their beds, but Oates had a picture of his motorbike, and had been grateful for it. Some soldiers only made it through because of their families, but for Oates it had been the other way around. He had only made it through the desert because there was no one waiting for him back home. Every risk he took, every decision he made, he made for himself alone. If Lori and the kids had been back home then, he would have felt them clinging to his feet as he ran, slowing down the decisions which, in battle, are made immediately or not at all.

Now here he was in battle once again, only this time the photographs hemmed him in. In the end, loving shows weakness of character, because it means you can’t get by on your own. A real soldier, a real policeman, must be able to get by on their own.

Grape was the proof of it – he hadn’t been betrayed by someone else, he had betrayed himself. After all the middle-aged women he had seen diddled out of their savings by nothing more than a photograph on a dating site and some voice modulation software, he had fallen for the idea of someone he wanted to believe in. He remembered how proud he had been at identifying her accent, and pinpointing her in his imagination to one of a couple of Hackney estates. He found it hard to admit, but he had even daydreamed about meeting her. Of pulling over to help out some girl in distress on the midnight pavements, and recognising the voice in the thank you. His motives had proved as transparent as that of a dog staring at food on a table.

The image of himself and his suffering being discussed dispassionately in a room full of professional men and women, their faces green with the verdigris of a screen glowing in the dark, came to him with extraordinary clarity. He was not special or unpredictable, he was not a creature with independent agency, he was nothing but a bundle of emotional needs awaiting manipulation. He had loved his daughter, and that love had exposed him. He felt an intense hatred for Grape, for the person he knew did not exist, and then another wave of grief washed over him.

Darkness proper was in the city streets now, the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral illuminated on the skyline. Lines of riot police stood shield-locked in front of the Old Bailey. Groups of men and women with hoods up and bandanas over their mouths jeered at the evening commuters and tripped at their heels. The city was changing hands. The diners in the restaurants at the top of the skyscrapers would be able to watch the pitched battle in the streets beneath like Roman aristocracy cheering on the clash of gladiators. But when dinner was over, they would have to pass through the battle on their way home. Masked figures and uniformed figures wandered in the traffic. Oates headed west to the address that Eustace Morrison had given him.

H
IS EARPIECE STARTED
to sound. “
Number unknown, number unknown
.” He didn’t want to speak to anyone, but he was aware of the possibility that Bhupinder might try to call.

“Answer.”

“Hello, have I got Detective Chief Inspector Oates there?”

“Who’s this?”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry to bother you. It’s Mr Prendegast. You know, from Michael’s school.”

“Oh yeah. Hi.”

“I just wanted to know if you and your wife were free the Thursday after next. Sheila and I are organising some Christmas drinks. I was hoping you might be able to come.”

Mr Prendegast cleared his throat. Oates pulled over to the side of the road, and sat in the bus lane with his emergency lights blinking. He rubbed his eyes with his gloved hand. Something in the teacher’s voice kept him from hanging up.

“I’m don’t know, Mr Prendegast. Lori has our diary.”

A fire engine screamed past, extending an invisble hand to rock his car gently on its suspension.

“Oh, that’s quite alright. I understand, it’s just the same with me and Sheila. Where would we be without our better halves, eh?”

“We’ll call you about it tomorrow.”

“That would be ideal.”

“Goodbye.”

“Oh, there was one more thing, while I’ve got you.”

“What is it?”

“Well, there’s a man in our garden. In the back garden of our house.”

It was then Oates knew what was strange about Mr Prendegast’s voice. He was almost whispering.

“What?”

“There’s a man in the back garden.”

“What’s he doing?”

“He’s smoking and looking over the back wall into the street. Only I’ve tried ringing 999, and our local police station, and the number our community officer gave us for noise complaints when number 39 started throwing parties. Only none of them seem to be available at the moment. And you very kindly gave me your card.”

Mr Prendegast cleared his throat. Oates heard another voice, querulous in the background, and the teacher said: “Alright, alright Sheila. And we can hear chanting. Coming from the High Street.”

“Are you in the ground floor, basement, or first floor flat?”

“First floor. We don’t know the people in the basement, there’s a lovely Asian couple on the ground floor.”

“Get your family together in one room. It’s too late to leave the city, you’ll attract more attention in your car. You need to stay away from the windows.”

“There’s bars on the basement windows. I remember the agent making a point…”

“Good. Can you jam your letterbox shut?”

“I think so.”

“Jam it shut, and gather your family and your neighbours in the flats above and below in one ground floor room. Get yourself and your family dressed in warm clothes and get together everything you might need if you have to leave the house. I mean insulin shots and inhalers, not photo albums. If you have packing or insulation tape, place it over your windows in a cross. If you have a fire extinguisher or blankets in the house, bring them with you. Keep a radio with you and listen out for instructions. The disturbances last night were limited to looting and arson. Remember that, there’s no reason why anyone should try to hurt you unless you give them a reason. Keep the lights on in the room and if anyone approaches, all of you make a lot of noise. Bang your sticks and shout. If they keep coming, don’t try to fight back, just get out. Agree on your exit routes back and front, and arrange a place to meet if you get split up. Mr Prendegast, it’s important to realise you’re on your own. No one will come until tomorrow. Mr Prendegast?”

“I’m here.”

“Remember, they’re just kids with masks. If you can handle Harry five days a week, you can deal with this.”

Mr Prendegast let out a burst of laughter, brought up short by embarrassment. Oates heard his wife say, “What is it, what does he say?”

“Thank you, Detective Chief Inspector. Good luck tonight.”

“And you, Mr Prendegast. I’ll see you in school on Monday.”

“Quite right. See you in school.”

“End call.”

A man in a suit ran past the window of Oates’s car, heading for the Embankment tube station. Oates sat in his car and watched the traffic. He thought of Mr Prendegast, alone with his wife and his neighbours, frightened but ready to stick by the people he loved. All over London he knew there would be little scenes like that. Oates was a father and a husband too. He wasn’t going to leave the city again tonight without his family.

T
HE END OF
Fleet Street was closed off with police barriers. He took the right up Kingsway, and cut back down through Covent Garden, working his way along the narrow streets until he reached Trafalgar Square. The evening air was hazy with condensation, and the lighted globe at the top of the Coliseum hovered like a ghost on the shoulders of the white marble statues bearing it above the rooftops of London. The roads around the West End were full of cars that had reached their destination. Young men and women filled the front and back seats, and shouted from the windows, rolled down despite the cold. It was as if all of London supported the same football team, and that football team had won the treble.

The air was filled with shouts and whistles, and the music of car stereos. He saw a four by four parked in the stationary traffic with two girls sitting on the edge of the open sunroof, passing a bottle of sparkling wine between their smoking lips. As he pushed back south the street seized up like a long muscle in the cold, and he mounted the pavement. He nosed slowly through the throng of pedestrians, and whilst some of them shouted and slapped the bonnet, others cheered, and one girl exposed her breasts to him. At the police barriers at the entrance to Trafalgar Square he held out his warrant card.

“I need to get through. It’s an emergency.”

“Sorry, sir. We’ve closed down the square and no one’s to come through, not them lot or us.”

“Who’s in charge?”

She shook her head.

“You won’t be coming through here.”

He spun the wheel away from her, and gunned the engine. The officers scattered, and Oates had a few clear metres before he hit the milling crowd of protestors already in the square. One of the policemen drew his gun, and the female bobby who had stopped him slapped the pistol down with her hand. Oates saw her in the wing mirror as she began to speak ominously into her radio. He jammed his hand on the horn, and the crowd made way for his beat up car. The atmosphere was friendly, the presumptious friendliness of a drunk at the bar, with the same sense of incipient violence.

Some of the men and women were wearing hoods, or had scarves tied over their faces. Someone had spilled fuel over the water in the fountain, and had set it alight, so that a low liquid fire blossomed in the stone tub. Advertising lights from the nightclubs lanced the sky, projected with huge rooftop spotlights on the underside of the clouds. With their strange symbols and garish colours, they looked like beacons calling on competing superheroes to come and save the city.

An enterprising group of communists had set up a makeshift stall, and were selling face masks and hammer and sickle t-shirts by the bus stop. And t-shirts with something else printed on them, something which made his heart lurch… Oates strained to look, but the gap through which he had seen them closed as swiftly as it had opened up.

A boy was spraypainting a Mortal Reform symbol on the flank of the bronze lion at the base of Nelson’s Column. Oates imagined the great green beast shaking its mane, stepping off the stone pedestal and catching the hooligan’s head in its mighty metal jaws.

The vividness of the vision startled him, and it raised a sense of déjà-vu. It was kin to the feeling he had had in St Margaret’s, when the summer evening had seduced him into suspending his disbelief in the charade of a river. It was the feeling that fantasy and reality could swap places whilst your thoughts were elsewhere. The protests were transfiguring the city in the way of a deep and sudden snowfall, making the familiar strange.

As he pushed deeper into the square, he came into the midst of a group dressed in identical t-shirts. As if he had summoned the image from his own mental recesses, the face of Dwayne Jeffries suddenly surrounded him, pressing in on his windows. The ghost of the boy he had killed was there on every side, smiling in a school photo. Oates almost screamed before he realised that this was not a horde of avenging spirits, but a picture printed on the bellies of the people in the crowd. Another symbol of protest for the disaffected people of London, mounted on a t-shirt. They were chanting his name. Oates was willing to bet there wasn’t a soul in all that riot who felt the boy’s death as much as he did himself. He gripped his sanity with both hands as the car inched past the many faces of his victim.

On the other side of the square, the police just waved him through. The cordon here was not so tight, and although the policemen Oates had nearly run over were less than a hundred metres away, with the chaos in the square they might as well have been on the other side of the world. Consequence was slow to make its way through the packed streets. Oates actually found himself gasping for breath as the grip of the crowd relaxed, and he came through onto the empty road.

Oates left the car down one of the side streets leading off the Strand to the Embankment. With the Trafalgar exit shut down and the blockade at Aldwych, the Strand itself was relatively quiet. The tubes were still running, and office workers were heading down towards Charing Cross Station. A family were arguing with a policeman about tickets they had got to see
Cats
, and how were they supposed to get to the theatre with the streets all shut off they would like to know? He saw a group of Japanese tourists with their guide standing on the station drive, deep in discussion. They looked to be deciding whether to observe this fascinating collective expression of the English culture at first hand. One of the more intrepid husbands in a green raincoat had gone over to stand on a transformer box, and, steadying himself with one hand on a lamppost, held his camera above his head to take aerial shots of the interior of the square.