Ten Days (11 page)

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL FOR INQUIRY USE ONLY

Submission to the internal inquiry of the Metropolitan Police into Operation Bedrock

Submission 573/A/3: photographic evidence gathered by ASU 27AWZ, call sign India 95, pertaining to the incident involving police vehicle IRV 02 PFD

location: Rockham High Street south of Rockham police station

subject: demonstration

Camera still 0578/19508

time stamp: 17:44:59

Incident Response Vehicle number 02 PFD, travels down Rockham High Street, heading north.

(Note to Inquiry. At 17:52:00 Air Support Unit 27AWZ radioed base to warn that the IRV appears to be heading straight towards the demonstration. Subsequent inquiry ascertained that IRV 02 PFD was responding to a report of a TWOC incident.)

Camera still 0578/19509

time stamp: 17:45:16

location: Rockham High Street south of Rockham police station

subject: demonstration

IRV number 02 PFD mounts the pavement to pass the roadblock.

5.45 p.m.

They heard the siren long before they saw the car. It was background noise that everybody assumed would fade. But instead the noise increased in intensity and duration until:

‘What the fuck?'

Someone on the southern edge of the crowd pointed to the police car that, unable to press forward because of the roadblock, had mounted the pavement and was heading straight for the demonstrators.

‘Stop.'

The car kept coming.

‘Stop.'

The car blasted out a series of warning siren bursts as if expecting that the people in its path could somehow disappear. A child's buggy, complete with screaming infant, was carried overhead to safety as others scrambled out of the way.

The pressure of people still around the car had forced it to slow down, but it did not stop even when one of the policemen from the northern end of the roadblock starting running towards it. A demonstrator, who had been standing outside the fruit and veg shop, picked up a tomato and threw it at the patrol car. ‘Stop. You're going to hurt somebody.'

The tomato struck the windscreen and burst, as the cry ‘Stop!' was taken up by many voices. And still the car kept going.

‘Stop!' People closest to the shop reached into boxes that lined the pavement, grabbing anything to hand, so that tomatoes and carrots and purple plums and avocados went flying through the air, some of them landing on the car and others splattering in the road. And then at last, the car, its driver possibly having spotted his fellow officer running towards him, applied his brakes so that by the time the policeman had arrived and banged on a side window, the car had come to a complete halt. The driver's side window slid down allowing the out-of-breath policeman to speak, briefly, to his fellows inside.

The window closed. The policeman stepped away. The car got moving again, backing up the way it had come, and although it clipped the side of the ice-cream van as it went, it did not stop but instead, siren wailing, reversed down the pavement until it could turn and speed away.

PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL FOR INQUIRY USE ONLY

Submission to the internal inquiry of the Metropolitan Police into Operation Bedrock

Submission 573/A/4: further photographic evidence gathered by Air Support Unit 27AWZ, call sign India 95, pertaining to the incident involving IRV 02 PFD

Camera stills 0578/19510

time stamp: 17:48:31

location: perimeter of southern roadblock

subject: collision

IRV 02 PFD clips the front side driver's bumper of a parked van.

Camera stills 0578/19511

time stamp: 17:49:56

location: perimeter of southern roadblock

subject: collision

IRV 02 PFD reversing away as the van driver steps out.

Submission 573/A/5: photographic evidence gathered by Air Support Unit 27AWZ, call sign India 95, between 18:29 and 18:46 hours on
                              
, pertaining to the appearance of Chief Inspector Raj Privadi

Camera still 0578/19536

time stamp: 18:29:33

location: 200 yards south of Rockham police station

subject: arrival of senior officer

Newly arrived police vehicle IRV 01 HDR is stopped by northern roadblock. A uniformed police officer who has come out of the car is walking through the block towards the demonstration. The crowd is now estimated at approximately one hundred and fifty persons.

Camera stills 0578/19537–41

time stamp: 18:30:51–18:40:12

location: 200 yards south of Rockham police station

subject: communication between senior officer and representatives of the demonstrators

Officer attempts to address the demonstrators but appears to be rebuffed. Officer walks back behind the roadblock and into Rockham police station.

Submission 573/A/6: photographic evidence gathered by Air Support Unit 27AWZ, call sign India 95, between 18:40 and 18:46 hours on
                              
pertaining to the appearance of the bus ARL VLW 96 on the scene

Camera still 0578/19627

time stamp: 18:40:03

location: northerly roadblock

subject: movement of traffic

Bus ARL VLW 96 stationary at the northern roadblock. The driver is out of his cab and talking to one of the police officers whose hand is in the air and twisted to one side as if describing to the driver the process by which he can turn round in the road. Beyond the roadblock the line of traffic is blocking the bus's exit.

Camera still 0578/19628

time stamp: 18:45:12

location: northerly roadblock

subject: movement of traffic

In trying to turn, the bus has mounted the pavement and is facing a wall. Passengers disgorge from the stationary bus while those who have already descended are being ushered through the roadblock. Several of them have turned towards the crowd.

Note: This is the last of the series. At 18:46:15 27AWZ returned to base to refuel.

8.15 p.m.

They had been waiting for almost five hours, and they were still waiting. And as they waited, the demonstration had grown.

Half an hour previously, a patrol car, blues and twos flashing, had stopped by the southern roadblock to disgorge a chief inspector. Here, it appeared, was the promised senior officer. But he only had to show his face and he was met by derision. ‘They're using you for your black face,' someone shouted, while someone else demanded to know why the policeman would do the white man's dirty work, and soon the cry ‘House nigger! House nigger!' drove him into the police station.

And still they stood and still they waited.

As the sun dipped it also dazzled, turning the northern sky yellow. The day's last hurrah and the crowd grew. Threads of pinks and oranges began to trail through the sky and intensified as the sun slipped down. By 8.20, the police station was washed in crimson.

Such a glorious sight and yet it felt menacing, reminding Cathy of the recent sunrise and the foreboding which had then possessed her. That was the day that Ruben had been killed. And now?

She looked around her, registering how the crowd had changed. Whereas most of the early demonstrators had been Lovelace residents or members of Ruben's extended family, the new arrivals were not so easily recognisable. They were younger and more energetic and, she thought, and hoped she was mistaken in this, spoiling for a fight.

‘They are not going to send anybody to speak to us,' Ruben's mother said. ‘There is nothing to be gained by staying.'

Pius and Marcus agreed. They had made their point. They must now regroup.

‘Let's see the family safe indoors,' Pius said.

It had been a while since Lyndall had been around. ‘You go ahead,' Cathy said. ‘I need to find Lyndall.'

The crowd was much more densely packed; she looked this way and that.

‘Would you like us to wait for you?'

She took in the exhaustion on Ruben's mother's face and the anger on his father's. ‘No. Don't wait.'

She'd find Lyndall and then they'd both get out of there.

She started at the southern border of the enclosure. No Lyndall, nor Jayden either, just curious people heading down the High Street to check out what was going on. More of them were coming: the whole area would soon be densely packed.

A drum began to beat.

The sound seemed to pass right through her, intensifying her awareness of her thumping heart. The fear that she had tried to tell herself was only her imagination reared up, and once it came it would not go. She felt it hammering at her throat, taking away her breath as she walked. Faster and faster she went until she was almost running.

She called out ‘Lyndall?' as she darted in and out of the knots of people who had gathered together: ‘Lyndall?'

She pushed on, heading for the northern roadblock: ‘Lyndall?' Lyndall would never hear her mobile in this crowd. ‘Lyndall?'

Someone she passed heard her cry and took it up: ‘Lyndall!' Others joined in so that soon the air was vibrating with the calling of her daughter's name: ‘Lyndall! Lyndall! Lyndall!' the drum now also pounding out the syllables: ‘Lyn-dall! Lyn-dall! Lyn-dall!'

She told herself that she had felt like this before when Lyndall had been late. Nothing had happened then. Nothing was going to happen now.

‘Lyn-dall! Lyn-dall! Lyn-dall!'

Someone grasped hold of her. She turned to face them.

‘What the hell's wrong with you?' Lyndall was so red with mortification that her face almost matched the colour of the setting sun. ‘I was here. I've been here all the time. You're such a panicker.'

‘Come on. We're off.'

‘I'm not going. It's fine. He'll look after me.' She indicated the man beside her.

So caught up had Cathy been in the relief of finding Lyndall, she hadn't noticed Banji there. Although perhaps she hadn't noticed him because he looked nothing like himself. The distress she had seen in him that previous day seemed now to have pulled down his brow and pinched in his face. The irises of his eyes that were yesterday pink had darkened to a bloodshot red; below them the skin had blackened with fatigue.

She had seen how upset he was and yet had failed to seek him out. Cruel of her. She reached out to touch him.

Without even looking at her, he shifted out of reach. His focus was on the northern roadblock. ‘Where did they go?'

They? She looked to the point where the two policeman had been turning the traffic back and saw that, although the patrol car was still in the side street and beside it the abandoned bus, the two officers had vanished.

‘Maybe they've gone to move the roadblock back.'

It was as if she wasn't there.

‘There's enough of them.' He was talking to himself.

She looked again, this time beyond the roadblock. She saw that where there had recently been three officers in the vicinity of the police station there were now at least twenty. No casual collection this: they were standing in lines as still as sentries.

‘Has someone turned them to stone?' Lyndall's joke foundered under the uneasy crack of her voice.

‘It's going to kick off,' Banji said. ‘They'll make sure of that.'

She wasn't sure whether the ‘they' he was referring to was the police or the group of young men who had also sidled into view. They were not luxuriating in the warm evening; they were moving with a serious intention that soon displayed itself. They went over to the unguarded panda car, stopping within ten yards of it.

‘They'll do something.' Banji was now clearly talking about the police. ‘Even if they don't have the right protective kit. They have to do something.'

The battering ram of young men seemed to agree. They looked expectantly at the police lines.

The police in the lines looked back. And did not move.

Later, when Cathy thought about how it had begun, it came to her as a series of freeze frames.

First off a fluid moment: one of the youths separated himself from his group and strolled over to the shop whose boxes were still laid out on the pavement. He picked up a box, returned to his starting point, put down the box, took out a cabbage, backed off a few yards and then began to run.

Freeze frame: the man in full stride, his arm stretched back behind him.

The cabbage arcs up on a high trajectory towards the car.

The cabbage hits the front windscreen, which cracks.

Those two sides – the group of youths and the police – face each other.

Freeze frame.

And then double time.

The box of cabbages became a focal point, a stopping place for grabbing arms that reached in, withdrew and threw, until the air was thick with flying cabbages. They hit the car and dented it as, attracted by the noise, more members of the crowd started running towards the commotion.

The police did not react.

The first of the group were already advancing on the dented car. Someone tried to pull open a front door. When that didn't work, someone else placed his elbow against the cracked glass on the driver's side and jerked it back. The glass caved in. He inserted his hand through the gap, pulled up the lock and opened the door. Someone pushed him aside and dived into the car, soon to re-emerge, triumphantly, with a trophy. A CS canister. The sight produced a long drawn-out cheer.

And still the police did not move.

We should go, Cathy thought, but somehow couldn't tear herself away.

More of the youths were in the car, ripping it to pieces. One of their number must have released the handbrake. A shout went up: ‘Roll it.' The men in the car scrambled out as a handful of other youths got behind it and, at the shout of ‘One, two, three, push', pushed. The car edged forward.

‘One, two, three push.'

This time, before the ‘push', Cathy was certain that she saw the young men stop and look at the police line, as if, she was later to decide, daring the police to react.

The police did not react.

‘One, two, three . . .' There must have been a slope in the road because this time on the third ‘push' the car rolled forward and did not stop until it hit the kerb. It mounted the kerb before slipping back. It was now directly in front of the vegetable shop.

A man, the owner, came out of his shop, his hands up as if to wave the car away. He shouted ‘Help!' at the watching lines of police. ‘Come help me.'

No reaction.

As the youths lined themselves up behind the car, readying themselves for a last push, the shopkeeper and his sons, who had also dashed out, planted themselves at the car's front end. They laid their hands on the battered bonnet and pushed. The car seesawed backwards and forwards for a moment in a contest that the shopkeeper was bound to lose save that several of the youths pushing at its rear voluntarily gave up, while a couple of the others were physically wrenched away by Banji.

‘One, two, three push.' The people at the car's front end were now in the majority, and the car rolled backwards, coming to a halt in the middle of the road.

Such an odd sight. A battered patrol car, isolated as a row of police just looked on. It was a trophy that the crowd began to circle. Round and round they went, banging hands against open mouths and whooping.

A voice yelling in Cathy's ear: ‘They're going to torch it.' Lyndall's voice. ‘Hurry up, Mum. We have to leave.'

Hand in hand they began to run, pushing against a tide of excited incomers. A ‘whoosh'. They stopped and turned. Just in time to see a thin jet of fire flare from the open petrol cap of the police car. And then, as the people around it stepped away, the car exploded.

A collective howl, exultation and rage mixed, rose up into the night and although some of the crowd now retreated from the burning car they were soon replaced by others who, drawn to the blaze, joined the whooping dance around the flames, while a small subgroup split off from this crowd to run over to the bus and around it until they had disappeared from sight.

The bus began to rock, imperceptibly at first, so that Cathy thought she might be imagining the movement, but then she realised that they were pushing it from the side, forwards and back, slowly at first but then gathering speed, a huge red pendulum whose main arc was forwards and towards the street, until, one more heave, and the bus tipped over. Spotlit by the burning car, it arced down, gathering speed as it neared the ground, and then it was down, splinters of broken glass flying out, to the sound of cheers and breaking metal, the bulk of the crowd racing for it.

‘Come on. Quick. Let's get out of here before they set the bus on fire.'

8.25 p.m.

The untidiness of the hedge was history. Or at least it would be once Billy had bagged up the last of the cuttings.

It had taken longer than he'd expected. Hours in fact, although he had had a break to watch the match and the post-match commentary, which he'd bookended with an extended snooze.