The Crime Tsar (8 page)

He paused, taking in the effect of his words. The majority seemed to be listening but he had spotted a group on the edge of the room, spilling into the street, who would not be mollified. As he was speaking another part of his brain logged where they were and what they were wearing. He was sure they were outsiders.

‘I have here the preliminary autopsy report on Mohammed. If you would like me to I will read it out.'

There was a shuffling. An old middle-aged woman in a dull dun-coloured shalwar kameez came forward; over it she wore a polyester cardigan that had lost all shape, like the woman herself. Holding her arm was a Sudanese woman equally discoloured by life in Britain. The young men parted for them.

Mr Qureishi said, ‘Mohammed's mother. Sammi's auntie.'

The Pakistani woman was awkward and let go of the other woman reluctantly. Shackleton and Carter stood, gravely polite. The chief constables in their uniforms dwarfed the two sepia women. Carter, without touching Mohammed's mother, guided her to his chair. She sat down reluctantly. Sammi's aunt stood by Grandfather Joseph, her face an unlined version of his own. Shackleton took out the report and unfolded it. The incomers, seeing aggression slipping away, began to jeer.

‘It's a load of crap.'

‘Don't listen to him.'

‘He'll say anything.'

But they were shushed down. Shackleton started to read:

Some bruising to side of head and face consistent with the face and head coming into violent contact with a hard surface. Skull fractured above right ear with rounded indentation. Right cheekbone fractured. Cause of death: massive brain haemorrhage caused by blows or blow to the head with a blunt instrument, possibly a rounders or baseball bat.

There was a heavy silence.

Shackleton continued in his quietest, most compelling voice.

‘I believe Mohammed died needlessly and will do everything in my power to find if any of my officers were responsible for his or Sammi's injuries. I believe Mohammed was hurt during the fight and not by my men. That the bruising mentioned was not serious enough to indicate the gravity of the underlying fractures and so was missed by them. I do not believe – as I know some of you do –'

He paused and looked round the room: every dark eye was on him, unblinking. He turned his head and spoke directly and gently to Mohammed's mother.

‘I really do not believe he died after being thrown against a wall or struck by my officers.'

The leader of the youths interrupted.

‘Just a minute – rounders bat or baseball bat – why not a baton? Eh? A side-handled baton?'

Shackleton looked at him steadily.

‘Because there was a sliver of wood left in the skin. It was painted. Police batons were made of mahogany, which does not splinter, and they were also coated in a rubberised varnish. The side-handled batons which we now use are made of polycarbonate. Not wood. It is impossible for a polycarbonate baton to leave a wood splinter in a wound. However, I will not rest until the exact circumstances of both boys' injuries are established.'

He paused. His reasonable tone almost too quiet so his audience had to lean forward to hear him. Now most were listening.

Carter stood up and began to speak, very gently, with appealing humility. He spoke fluently and persuasively about the dangers of allowing internecine fighting to distract from the real problem of
racism. He pleaded with the youths to put aside their enmity and not allow the canker of hatred to contaminate their community.

‘There is enough hatred from blacks to whites and whites to blacks, blacks to Asians and whites to Asians for there ever to be any good to be gained from perpetuating prejudice on this one small estate, and worse, to allow religious prejudice to ruin young lives is madness. Many of you have come here because of religious persecution and had to leave many things behind to do so. Surely intolerance should be one of those things.'

The older people nodded, the young made no response.

‘This evening you found a common cause against the police. Your hatred has brought you together – is it not possible to use this as a basis for future understanding that might, with patience and dialogue, include the police?'

Carter spoke because he fervently believed in what he said. This was why he had joined the police service. There was none of Shackleton's detatched calculation behind his words. Carter really cared and that made him vulnerable.

Shackleton watched the crowd as Carter spoke. He wasn't listening or thinking: his state of mind was still that animal readiness which admits no abstract thought or distraction. Instinctively he knew the immediate danger of the crowd becoming a murderous mob was over. He was aware that Carter had sat down and the old man was speaking. This was the voice that would swing them one way or the other.

He praised Shackleton and Carter and their efforts to build bridges in the past. Shackleton looked down at his shoes – the old man was admonishing the police and humility seemed the correct attitude. He nodded to each point Mr Qureishi made. He knew they'd won when he saw a few of the young men take off their masks and slip away. There was a feeling of relief in the room.

He stood up, ready to leave after a few words of reconciliation and humble apology; the television camera was pointed directly at him, there was no glimmer of triumphalism in his face. The outsiders by the door seemed irritated by the threat of peace breaking out. One of them, a ringleted individual with sunglasses wrapped over the bandanna obscuring his face, casually took out a cigarette and lit it. Shackleton watched him.

Then, after taking a deep drag, as if in slow motion, he took the
lighted cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and flicked it towards Geoffrey Carter, who was leaning over to shake hands with Grandfather Joseph. It described an arc and connected with Carter's petrol-sodden trousers.

Immediately, with an audible sound, like a dog's half-bark, Carter was in flames. As quickly as this happened, in uncanny silence, Shackleton grabbed him in a weird caricature of a hug, trying to cover his burning clothes with pressure from his own body. Both men fell to the ground attempting to put out the flames. After the stunned stillness of the first seconds of the drama people started to shout and throw jackets, shawls and even a rug from the floor on to the two burning men. The television crew filmed it all.

From beneath the comical pile of clothes seeped smoke and a muffled moaning. Gordon pulled the coverings off the two men. Shackleton was wrapped closely, tightly, round Carter in a parody of a sexual embrace. The stink of burned skin and hair rose from them. Gordon thought of roast pork.

‘We'll have to call an ambulance in,' he said in his flat Yorkshire voice.

‘No.' Shackleton's tone was still quiet. ‘I don't think that will be necessary, do you, Geoffrey?'

Carter, in obvious pain, tried to sit up.

‘No … No.'

Shackleton grasped Carter under one arm, Gordon took the other. They pulled him to his feet.

‘I think,' said Shackleton looking round the room, defying them to stop him, ‘it's time we left. And it's time you all went home. Quietly. Peacefully.'

There was a silence, so solid with renewed hatred they couldn't move. For the first time Shackleton was unsure, close to fear. He had calculated that their injuries and vulnerability would be their passport out, the natural defusing of the situation. He knew that two burned but brave policemen walking out of a now peaceful estate would be a coup. He knew these things not with calculation and objectivity but in the way an animal knows there's rain coming after heavy heat. But the weather wasn't breaking. The atmosphere seemed heavier.

Sammi's mother, silent and immobile until now, broke the tension.

‘Go. Please go.'

Carter murmured, ‘Thank you.'

But her biblical face offered no comfort.

‘Go and don't come back. We will deal with our young men. You go and deal with yours.'

Dismissed.

The two men, their fine uniforms torn and burned, led the way out of the community centre. Gordon and the television crew followed. They walked back towards the blue-and-white tape.

Bright spotlights were blindingly trained on them. Shackleton knew his snipers would be watching. They saw the lines of riot police, more now than when they arrived. The news teams and fearful senior officers.

Randall, unable to act while the chiefs were inside, was seething with anger at what might have been: two dead police chiefs and an entire estate out of control. Then a nation out of control. Race riots in every town and lynchings of rural newsagents. He couldn't blame these kids for their expressions of unhappiness and frustration but he could and did blame these two arrogant buffoons for the worst few hours of his life. If it was cretins like these who were in charge of policing in the twenty-first century then he'd be gone by the year's end. Better to be a security guard than answerable to such self-obsessed egomaniacs.

Shackleton and Carter walked steadily, calmly, not looking back. Behind them what had so recently been a murderous mob broke up into dribs and drabs of shamefaced young men skulking into the shadows. Feeling foolish, most had taken off their scarves. Their mothers and sisters stood in groups, only their dark eyes showing.

As the chiefs and their group reached the fluttering tape one of the Sudanese women started a strange, high yodelling sound. Like a scream caught in the wind it was taken up by other mothers. The breeze caught their clothes as they stood on the balconies and in the doorways of a sixties urban estate, and the sound they made was the hopelessness of their futures in this cold unwelcoming country.

As Shackleton helped Carter to the tape the sound of eager journalists' voices took over. The warming reassurance of media attention drowned out the lonely ululations of the women. Microphones, cameras, tape recorders, lights, smiles, relief. The curtain call of a great performance.

Shackleton and Carter gave an impromptu press conference. The
media hacks were in a frenzy of excitement at the sight and sound of these brave officers who had talked down a riot. The tired smiles of these handsome men would be on every front page in the morning. Their civilised understanding of ethnic minorities' grievances a sign of the police's progress. Of society's progress.

Then Randall and Gordon were trying to force a way through the scrum for a couple of paramedics. Shackleton saw them coming and guided Carter away from them. It wouldn't do for the frontiersmen image to be seen being wrapped in a blanket and loaded into the back of an ambulance.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen … as far as Mr Carter and I are concerned this episode is closed. We have taken note of the grievances of the people on the Flamborough Estate and will do all we can to put things to rights. Starting tomorrow. But tonight, I think it's time we all went home. Thank you.'

The smile he gave them was his most heart-melting, his most vulnerable and appealing. They were blinded by the flashes of cameras. Beside him the delicate Carter, burned but forgiving. Every reptile and every monkey from every newspaper knew they had the picture story of the year.

Shackleton and Carter sat carefully in the back of the panda car. Gordon, stiff and formal, loaded himself into the front and drove them away, leaving others to clear up the mess. The stars sweeping out of the theatre after a triumphant, if bruising, first night.

The three men were silent during the drive back to the pub. As they got out of the car in the quiet darkness beside the closed building their pain began to make itself heard. Their burns were now raw and blistered black. Shackleton was afraid Carter would pass out. The blue-black serge of his uniform trousers was burned into the flesh of his legs. As the adrenalin dropped away the shock and pain flooded in its place.

Carter vomited holding the bonnet of his car. His driver caught him as he slid, groaning, to the ground. Gordon had ensured the ambulance followed them and Carter was quickly guided into the back of it. Now out of the cameras' range he collapsed, shivering with shock.

Shackleton looked up at him from outside the vehicle.

‘All right?'

Carter winced.

‘Fine. You coming too?'

‘No,' said Shackleton. ‘I think I'll go home.'

The paramedic tutted. ‘I'm sorry, sir, you need treatment for those burns. You should come with us.'

Shackleton wanted to punch him, to feel his nose smash and see the blood. He wanted to hurt someone and this green-jacketed fool would be the perfect candidate. The surge of violence, the need to hurt. He smiled.

‘Thank you. Yes. I'll take your advice and call the doctor when I get to my house. Goodnight. I'll talk to you tomorrow, Geoffrey – I think we did a fair job.'

The paramedic closed the doors, commenting what a sweet-natured man Tom Shackleton seemed. Carter didn't hear him; he had already passed out. His car slid away, following the ambulance.

Gordon sat in the panda car. His tight, athletic body still rigid, his brown animal eyes seeing everything. If he was thinking there was no sign of it.

He had not allowed his weapon to be taken by that bunch of niggers. Gordon was not a bigot or a racist – he had the same contempt and nomenclature for anyone on the wrong side of the law. Criminal women were all toms, convicted homosexuals were all shirt-lifters or nonces, depending on their crime, and anyone from Albania to Zimbabwe stopped on suspicion was a nigger.

But not his colleagues – they were ladies, nellies and darkies, terms of respect from the depth of his ignorance. Not possible yet to police the words used in thought.

The pain and tiredness hit Shackleton with a strong need for a drink. He turned to get into the car when the voice stopped him.

‘All right, Thomas? Did you get your fight?'

The three women were watching him. All three now sitting, fanning themselves, their tin-bath fire surrounded by flickering candles. Candles on saucers, candles in jam jars, big ones, coloured ones, huge Easter candles and ranks of tiny birthday candles. The sight was weird and compelling. He didn't want to but he walked towards them.