The Kill Call. Stephen Booth

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СКАЧАТЬ we should go back to the visitor centre,’ Claire had said. ‘The rain is getting a bit heavy.’

      ‘In a minute,’ said Matt. ‘Give me a minute.’

      Something in the tone of his voice had sounded wrong. Matt’s back was to them, and he hardly seemed aware of the rain falling on his shoulders.

      Ben turned and walked a few yards away towards the RAF memorial. Alongside it, he saw a smaller grove – two rows of hawthorns supported by wooden posts. They looked to be young trees, seven or eight years old, maybe. They were probably intended to form an arch eventually. Each tree carried a label bearing a curious logo, with a name and number. He saw 7 Group Bedford, and 8 Group Coventry next to it. Before he could look more closely, Matt called to him from the other side of The Beat.

      ‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘but in Dad’s day, we all believed the police were on our side. They kept us safe, protected us from criminals, all that stuff. We respected them for it. Everyone I know would have done their best to help the bobbies because of that. But now it’s changed. And I don’t know where it went wrong.’ He looked up at his brother. ‘Maybe you know, Ben.’

      Ben blinked. Where the heck had that suddenly come from? What switch had turned on the flow of his brother’s resentment so abruptly?

      He looked at Claire, but of course she’d been nodding as Matt spoke.

      ‘Well, I know exactly what you mean,’ she said. ‘It’s because the police seem to spend most of their time persecuting law-abiding people for petty infringements of the rules instead of going after the real criminals. They’re pursuing government targets and political correctness instead of chasing the bad guys.’

      ‘They do it because it’s easier, and it gets their detection rates up,’ said Matt. ‘A motorist who goes a few miles an hour over the speed limit is a nice soft target. Not to mention all those cases where people tackle yobs causing trouble. If they don’t get beaten up by the yobs –’

      ‘Or killed,’ said Claire.

      ‘Yes, or killed,’ agreed Matt, ‘then they get arrested themselves. And yet at the same time you hear stories of police officers standing around doing risk assessments while someone is dying. It’s ludicrous. I can tell you, Dad would never have done that. He would never have hung back if he thought he might save someone’s life.’

      ‘No.’ Claire was quiet for a moment. ‘I suppose you hear this all the time, Ben.’

      ‘Pretty much.’

      When it had come time to leave the arboretum, Claire insisted on taking a photograph of her two brothers on her digital camera. She posed them near the rain-streaked windows to get the best light, gesturing them to get closer together until their shoulders were touching. Ben tried to smile, but could sense that his brother was as stiff as he was. Not the best family portrait, probably. But Claire didn’t seem to notice, flashing off a few shots before pulling up her hood and leading them out into the rain.

      ‘All right,’ Matt said. ‘I suppose it’s just today, visiting this place. Thinking about Dad. About how much things have changed in those few years. He would never have been able to live with it.’

      ‘I know,’ said Ben. ‘I know.’

      Ben found he could listen to their comments without even being tempted to argue. There was nothing in them that he hadn’t heard before. Yes, it was hurtful that his own family should have these views, but he wasn’t surprised by them. Matt read the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph, after all. Stories like these were commonplace. There was some new incident in the media every week. A view of the police as the enemy was spreading rapidly among ordinary members of the public. Like a disease, it passed from one person to another by word of mouth.

      And this wasn’t the way it had been meant to be. Not in this country, anyway. In Britain, there was supposed to be policing by consent, a partnership between the police and the public. It was never imagined that police officers would be attacked on the street by members of the public just because they happened to be there.

      Though it upset him to hear what was said, it was difficult for Ben to summon the enthusiasm to put up any defence. He heard much the same concerns at work day after day, from the people caught in the middle of the trap.

      And the worst thing of all was that Matt had been right. Sergeant Joe Cooper would never have stood by while someone was dying. He would have torn up the risk assessment forms and thrown them in the face of anyone who tried to stop him.

      In the back yard of his flat in Welbeck Street, Ben Cooper let the rain run down his face freely, no longer caring whether he wiped it away or not.

       9

       Journal of 1968

      I can’t remember who first started to call it ‘the pit’. Jimmy, probably. But my memories of him are so twisted now, so bent with emotion and blackened with anger, that I don’t know what I’m remembering and what I’ve put in from my own imagination. In my mind, Jimmy is a tiny figure, his pale face turned up to the sky, glasses catching the light, flashing like a signal, until a huge shadow falls across and obliterates him.

      Les was a lot older than us, and such a big man. No, big isn’t the right word. He was fat, all right? He had double chins like a concertina, and rolls that spilled over the waistband of his trousers.

      Well, I realize none of us exactly resembled Errol Flynn in those uniforms, but Les always seemed as though he’d burst out of his battledress tunic at any moment, as if he’d send those little silver buttons popping all over the place. In winter, when he wore his greatcoat, the belt would slip up over the top of his stomach and pin itself across his chest, until he looked like a badly wrapped parcel. It was a miracle he ever fit in the shaft.

      We used to joke about it, Jimmy and me. We said that one day Les’s backside would get stuck in the hatch like a cork in a bottle. And that would be us well and truly trapped for the duration. Never mind what was going on outside, on the inside it would be hell.

      Oh, and he had these little piggy eyes, too, I remember. If you did anything wrong, Les would stare at you for ages without saying anything. But you knew he was making a note of it, in case he could use it against you some time. He was like that, Les. He talked all the time about us being a team, but he’d stick a knife in your back at the first opportunity.

      Jimmy was totally the opposite to look at. Such a scrawny lad; no kind of uniform was ever going to make him look good. He didn’t have the shoulders for it, if you know what I mean. His hair was best described as sandy, and he was growing it long at the sides, so it stuck out from under the elastic brim of his beret in ragged little clumps, which drove Les mad. It was the fashion of the time, of course. Jimmy was even trying for a little moustache, but it was patchy and so pale that you could hardly make it out in a bad light. He wore these wire-framed glasses that were probably supposed to make him look like John Lennon, but didn’t. He looked too studious, a proper skinny weed.

      But he was clever, Jimmy. Really clever. He understood the technical stuff better than any of us. Better than Les, for all his air of superiority.

      These days, I suppose people would have called Jimmy a geek. But I liked him, truly liked him. Jimmy was my best friend, you see. He was almost a brother.

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