Closer Still, page 16
part #8 of A Brodie Farrell Mystery Series
The people phoning Battle Alley were desperate to know what they should do. They needed information and guidance. They turned to a bunch of mostly middle-aged men in blue serge because, say what you like about them when you’ve had a window broken, in a real emergency most people feel they can count on the police.
But they didn’t want to hear that they should carry on as normal. They remembered the pictures and thought they were on the brink of an apocalypse. And though they listened attentively to what Sergeant McKinney and his colleagues told them, after they put the phone down and thought for a bit, and discussed it with their other halves, they all came to the same conclusion. They were getting the hell out of Dimmock. They packed clothes, dogs and – incomprehensibly – bottled water into their cars, locked their houses and hit the road.
A properly organised evacuation proceeds at walking pace. The roads are full of cars with top speeds of a hundred miles an hour; but when the roads are that full the cars bump into one another and the drivers get out to argue. Quarter of a mile further back someone’s engine overheats; and because they can’t move, no one behind them can move either. Three miles an hour is about as fast as you can shift a big body of people, however urgent the need.
If it had been a proper evacuation, people would have been told which roads to take. In the absense of a plan, people living in the Woodgreen estate on the east side of Dimmock decided to visit relatives living in the West Country, and people living in the leafy suburbs on the west side of Dimmock thought they’d try their luck in Dover. They passed one another in the middle of town. But by lunchtime on Thursday it was taking anything up to an hour for two cars heading in opposite directions to get out of one another’s sight.
By eight o’clock that morning Brodie had decided against taking Paddy to school. By nine she’d decided against going to her office. Daniel arrived at Chiffney Road at ten past: the chaos in town was such that even walking had taken him twice as long as usual.
‘What do they think’s going to happen?’ demanded Brodie, watching the cars filling Chiffney Road in a doomed attempt to find a short cut out of town. ‘The tallest structure in Dimmock is the monument in the park. I suppose you could fly a hang-glider into it, but it wouldn’t make much of a bang if you did. It’s crazy! All these people would be much safer in their own houses than out on the roads, jammed in and at the mercy of idiots.’
‘They’re frightened,’ said Daniel simply. ‘They’re afraid that if they stay something terrible will happen to them. Of course they want to leave.’
‘Something terrible will happen,’ agreed Brodie tersely. ‘They’ll make it happen.’
‘This stupid town!’ fumed Deacon. ‘This stupid, stupid, ignorant, stupid town!’
He had no need to be so emphatic. No one was arguing.
‘Now we’ve got an emergency! Before, we didn’t have an emergency. We had a threat – which was probably contained, because two of the only three guys we know about are in custody and the other’s dead. There’s every chance that any real danger ended when Daoud hit the lino.
‘But do people heave a sigh of relief, congratulate us on a job well done and get on with their lives? Do they hell! First they blame us for not being psychic. Then they decide that some town where the police haven’t thwarted a bomb plot is safer than one where they have. They all pile in their cars and play dodgems till the roads seize solid – and we can’t get through, and the fire engines can’t get through, and neither can the ambulances to treat all the heart attacks they’ve given themselves! They’re stupid, all of them. They deserve to die.’
He didn’t mean it. The last bit – he’d meant all the rest. But everyone in the Battle Alley conference room knew, and when he wasn’t this angry Deacon knew too, that if he had to he’d put his life on the line to save any one of those stupid little people whose names he neither knew nor wanted to, and to whom he found it difficult to be polite on Community Policing evenings.
‘No, they don’t,’ said the Assistant Chief Constable calmly. ‘They deserve to be looked after by those of us whose wages they pay. And they need looking after more when they’re scared than when they’ve got all their wits about them.’
Deacon muttered rebelliously. He wasn’t muttering anything in particular, just muttering on principle. He didn’t react well to authority.
‘So how do we handle it?’ asked Superintendent Fuller. ‘I imagine a decision has been taken higher up?’
ACC (Crime) nodded, a shade ruefully. ‘With all the publicity, we couldn’t keep it tactical. We couldn’t even keep it strategic. It’s gone political.’
‘That’ll help,’ Deacon muttered savagely.
‘So what do you want us to do?’ asked Fuller patiently. ‘We can shut the town down if we have to. That doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea.’
Emily Blake blew out her cheeks unhappily. She knew as well as any of them that whatever counter-terrorism measures they took would hammer at the wedges splitting Dimmock’s communities, and that schism was now the greatest danger facing the town. But people were demanding that Something must be done, and the difference between policemen and politicians is that politicians need re-electing. Doing nothing isn’t always an option, even when it’s the right choice.
‘We’re instituting a no-fly zone,’ she said. ‘Fifteen miles’ radius of Dimmock. There are no airports in that circle, so it’ll provide a lot of comfort for not much inconvenience. We want to stop vehicles parking outside any public buildings, or anywhere large numbers of people gather. We want you to divert all vehicles away from the town centre and keep them out until further notice. And we want …’ She had the grace to hesitate.
‘A curfew? Checkpoints? Photographic ID?’ hazarded Superintendent Fuller; and Deacon suggested, ‘We should nuke the bastards?’ in a hopeful sotto voce.
‘You’re not helping, Jack,’ said ACC with a kind of weary severity. ‘House-to-house searches, starting at Romney Road.’
That was it. That was where the harmless blue touch-paper met the innocuous match. What Higher Up had decided was that the ninety per cent of Dimmock’s population who went red in the sun wouldn’t feel safe until someone had looked under the beds of the ten per cent who didn’t.
‘You want me to round up some foreigners to appease a bunch of mindless idiots?’ asked Deacon baldly.
Blake’s lips pursed tight. ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that, Jack, no. I’d say, we know that some of those foreigners were involved in a plot to inflict death and destruction on this town, and it’s in everyone’s interests – including all the foreigners who weren’t involved – to make sure none of the conspirators escaped. I’d talk about regrettable necessities, and apologise like crazy to those we’ve disturbed for no good reason. And I’d hope like hell to find someone in one of those Romney Road houses who’s been up to something we can arrest him for, whether he knows anything about bomb plots or not.’
Superintendent Fuller wanted to say she was wrong, terribly wrong, but he couldn’t. He didn’t like what he was being asked to do, but he knew that in a crude way it would help. It would reassure those currently fleeing Dimmock that it was safe to return. It would prove to anyone who needed proof that those left in their Romney Road homes had nothing to hide. And if young Hussein from number 23 was still growing birdseed in his grandma’s windowbox in the hope that some of it might be worth smoking, they could take him in for questioning in a squad car with the blues-and-twos going and call off the whole ignorant charade. By the time anyone realised the boy had been freed on bail and the worst he faced was his granny’s wrath, nerves would be calmer all round.
But that wouldn’t be the end of anything. ‘We’ll be accused of racism.’
‘Undoubtedly,’ agreed the ACC. ‘We’ll defend ourselves. The grim reality is that there are people out there right now who pose a significant threat to public safety, and by and large they look different to those they’re threatening. Those are the facts – we can regret them as much as we like but we can’t change them. You can’t call it racism when it’s caused by someone twirling a bloody great scimitar!’
‘A lot of people live in and around Romney Road because it’s handy for their mosque,’ said Fuller quietly. ‘If we do as you suggest we’re going to cause distress and anger in a lot of people who’ve never done anything to deserve it. We may not intend this as a racial or religious slur, but that’s how it’s going to feel.’
‘I agree with everything you say,’ said Blake. ‘Except that it isn’t a suggestion.’
Deacon was thinking it through. It was like watching the business end of a watermill: you could see the corn pouring in from above, the stones turning and the flour coming out underneath. You could see every cog moving, every gear changing. And there was a kind of magic to it, because none of those around him felt they could stop the process even though they didn’t want it to continue to its natural conclusion.
‘You mean,’ he growled at length, ‘you want us to turn over Dimmock’s Moslems not because you think it’ll make the town any safer but because it’ll make the rest of the population feel safer. And you want us to arrest someone – anyone, for anything – because you hope that will be seen as justifying an unnecessary and inflammatory operation.’
Fuller winced. ‘Jack …’
But the Assistant Chief Constable interrupted him. ‘That’s right, Jack,’ she said plainly. ‘That’s exactly what I want you to do. I want you to do it because it’ll cause the maximum amount of distress to a vulnerable section of the community, result in letters to the Press and questions in Parliament, and – oh yes – it just might save some lives.’
They regarded one another over the conference table. It occurred to those sitting either side of them that ACC (Crime) Emily Blake and Detective Superintendent Jack Deacon were more alike than probably either of them would care to acknowledge. Essentially, what they were doing was waiting to see who’d blink first.
It was Deacon. ‘You’d better be right.’
‘Jack – every week I take decisions I have to be right about. This is just another.’
‘Except that it isn’t, is it?’ he said quietly. ‘Your decision.’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘The decision wasn’t mine. The job of carrying it out is. And it’s your job to help.’
She could have appealed to his better nature, except she wasn’t sure he had one. Instead she played the one card he could never trump. The job. Serving and protecting. Jack Deacon had no reservations about serving The People. It was the people who made up The People that he didn’t like.
‘And if we make things worse?’
‘We’ll just have to try to make them as little worse as we possibly can.’
Deacon shook his head in despair. ‘Can I have that on my gravestone? He tried to make things as little worse as he possibly could.’
‘Superintendent Deacon,’ said ACC briskly, ‘you can have anything you like on your gravestone. And if I don’t see a bit of cooperation soon, you’d better get it ordered.’
The Assistant Chief Constable had been given her orders, and she’d given Deacon his. But giving Deacon orders was a bit like feeding racehorse cubes to a mule – he’d take them all right, they just might not have the desired effect.
He understood Higher Up’s dilemma well enough. But he couldn’t see that the wrong decision would do anything but make matters worse. Until now the dangerous chaos that had enveloped Dimmock had been the responsibility of a few bad men and a lot of foolish ones. From now on it would rest with the men and women who’d sat in a room and decided that today expediency was more important than justice. That a small number of hurt and angry people could be managed more easily than a large number of frightened ones.
And he understood that the object of the exercise was not to achieve anything worth having so much as to be seen trying. That a visible success mattered more than a significant one. But he wanted someone to come straight out and say it.
‘Let me get this right. You’re looking for something we can call a result so when we call off the searches it’s because they were successful, not because they were stupid in the first place, and a much relieved citizenry can slink back into its pubs and armchairs. We make an arrest and the pin slides back in the grenade. But it needs to be the right kind of arrest. Today the Kray twins would be safe, because they’re not the right colour.’
ACC (Crime) was regarding him with no affection whatever. ‘This situation is not of our making. But it is up to us to get it under control. Yes, Jack, you’re absolutely right. I’m asking you to put on a show. I’m asking you to prostitute your craft for the sake of public safety. Find me a credible suspect, arrest him in a blaze of publicity, apologise for the disturbance to some elderly lady in a headscarf and pull out before there’s time for anyone to lose their temper. That way everyone sleeps safe in their beds tonight.’
‘Except the guy we’ve framed!’
‘I’m not suggesting you frame anyone! Are you telling me all the crime in Dimmock is committed by white people? That you can’t find one Arab, Afghan or Pakistani who shouldn’t be helping you with your inquiries into something? Find him, arrest him and the panic’s over. Tomorrow or the day after I’ll go on TV to explain how actually people had misunderstood – that the arrested man wasn’t a terrorist, he was involved in nothing more sinister than a credit card scam. People aren’t going to rush out to their cars and hit the road again. We’ll have got through twenty-four hours that could have set this town on fire, and if the worst damage is to my reputation it’ll have been worth it.’
Deacon had no illusions about what she was saying. If public safety demanded a sacrifice, it wouldn’t be the guy with the recreational amounts of heroin or the unusual number of mobile phones – it would be her. If the questions in Parliament focused on her judgement, her competence, she’d quietly pick up the can and carry it, even if the price was her career.
So he’d go along with it. Somewhere in his files or his memory was someone in the Romney Road area who was overdue a visit from CID. Someone sufficiently disreputable that his neighbours would be glad to see the back of him. He’d get his due deserts, and Romney Road would get a bit of peace, and the rest of Dimmock would turn round at Guildford and be back in front of their tellies by teatime. It was a win/win situation.
And the fact that it wasn’t what Deacon thought of as policing was immaterial. Today the priorities were different. Today, this was the only way to go. It was the least worst option. He set his jaw. ‘When do we do this?’
‘Now.’
Chapter Twenty-Two
Just when you think things can’t get any worse …
Any road going anywhere, and some that went nowhere, seized solid. Residents of Dimmock desperate to be somewhere else, anywhere else, were now unable to leave due to (a) the throngs of their neighbours with the same idea, and (b) the national media coming the other way.
There was no Dimmock International Airport. There wasn’t even a Dimmock Regional Airport. There was a flying club strip twelve miles north of town, and for a couple of hours on Thursday morning it handled more traffic than it had in the previous nine months. There were helicopters. There were executive jets. One enterprising reporter hired a Tiger Moth and the half-crazed crop-sprayer pilot who came with it, on the basis that if he couldn’t get a landing slot at the airstrip he could put down in a field.
With the skies over the Three Downs host to the kind of aerial circus last seen in the 1930s, so that the possibility of a bomb plot paled beside the near-certainty of a plane crash, Higher Up rushed through the no-fly zone. After that the reporters either sat in traffic jams or walked into town. It is a curious feature of the news industry that reporters who will fight their way into a war zone will baulk at walking five miles.
As time passed and nothing much happened – or only the usual things that happen among large numbers of displaced persons: old people got older, children got sick, babies who weren’t due for another fortnight got born – the media people grew tired of filming one another getting tired and began to wonder if it was a damp squib. If the absence of black smoke over Dimmock meant that the local Keystones had been right and the situation was contained. If it was time to pick some other crisis off the wire and hope it would prove easier to get to.
Then the front desk at Battle Alley took a phone call from Crichton Construction.
‘Explosives,’ said Jack Deacon, deadpan.
Sergeant McKinney nodded.
‘What kind of explosives?’
The sergeant gave a grim Caledonian shrug. ‘As far as I can make out, every kind. Blasting explosives – they use different ones for different jobs. They’re allowed to keep up to two tonnes in a secure bunker on site.’
‘But they’ve got the guy who was stealing it cornered?’
‘Aye.’ Sergeant McKinney sounded less than enthusiastic. ‘That’s the good news.’
Deacon’s brow lowered suspiciously. ‘What’s the bad news?’
‘They’ve got him cornered in the bunker.’
When he got there Deacon found that there was in fact another bit of good news. The construction site was in open countryside, up on Menner Down six miles north of Dimmock. The main road had already been closed. Since it had been at a standstill since mid-morning this consisted of evacuating the travellers – using the word loosely – across the surrounding fields on foot. There were surprisingly few arguments. Even apart from this new peril, the mood of the evacuees had changed in the cold, boring hours on the road. Most were now content to abandon their flight, their cars and their role in the decision-making process.
Which left a construction site, ankle deep in mud as all construction sites are, with huge arcane machines standing guard like forgotten dinosaurs around the block-built bunker. The only people Deacon could see as he picked his way, swearing, through the mud were other police officers, surrounding the little building at what they fervently hoped to be a safe distance.
