‘Thank you so much for coming,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve all been concerned about this… this business. So I have invited our local bobbies to talk to us, and they’ve gone right to the top, so that Chief Superintendent Pollard, the divisional commander, has come to fill us in on the situation as it stands, and he’s brought Detective Inspector Mill. And then afterwards they will take questions. So without further ado, Chief Superintendent Pollard.’
The policeman was one of those men it was difficult to imagine without his uniform: he seemed to wear it on the inside as well as on the outside. He had a rough London accent.
‘I’m Chief Superintendent Pollard,’ he said. He found it hard not to sound menacing, so even stating his own name came across, faintly but perceptibly, as a threat. ‘I’m here about these occurrences. You’ve been getting postcards. You’ve been getting DVDs. There’s stuff on the internet. Abuse. Vandalism. Harassment. Graffiti. Criminal damage. I don’t need to tell you, that’s why you’re here. What’s it all add up to? Who’s behind it all? My colleague Detective Inspector Mill will fill you in on the details. He is going to be in charge of the inquiry, with me’ – and here the older man made no attempt to restrain his air of threat – ‘keeping an eye on him.’
The other policeman stood up at the lectern. He was a well-groomed young man and as soon as he began speaking it was clear that there was some strange class reversal taking place, since while the Chief Superintendent spoke in broad cockney, the Detective Inspector was impeccably middle-class, verging on outright posh. It was as if the enlisted man had mistakenly been put in charge of the officer. The impression of the Detective Inspector’s poshness was enhanced by a gesture he made just before he began talking, when he brushed the hair off his forehead, as if he were worried it was going to get into his eyes. His hair wasn’t in fact long enough to get in his eyes, but this gesture was like an atavistic survival of a period during which he had a long, floppy fringe. So for a moment everyone in the room glimpsed him with that languid public-school hair.
‘Thank you, sir. Thank you all too, ladies and gentlemen. The question to which we’d all like an answer is, who is doing this? I imagine some of you at least will be thinking that the simplest way of finding out would be to trace the owners of the blog. We’re going to get it taken down, but that’s not the same thing as finding out who the person or persons responsible are.’
The inspector talked a little bit more about how clever they were going to have to be to find out who was behind the ‘campaign’ – that was his word. When he finished he asked if anyone had any questions. There was a little muttering and murmuring, and then Usman put his hand up. Beside him Ahmed went rigid with irritation and embarrassment. The senior policeman pointed at him. His extended finger looked as if it was making an accusation.
‘The gentleman there.’
Usman, putting on his sweetest and most reasonable voice, the one he most liked to use when being deliberately irritating during family arguments, said, ‘How do you know the damage to the cars was done by the same person who did the other stuff?’
From the stillness with which the Chief Superintendent and the Detective Inspector greeted Usman’s query, and their failure to look at each other to decide who was to answer it, it was clear that they considered it an awkward question. The younger man spoke first.
‘Yes. I see where you’re coming from. The short answer is, there are indications which we can’t go into here. These… incidents fit into a pattern and therefore our advice, our judgement, is that they are the work of the same person or persons.’
The way the policeman finished, his body language and the intonation, did not solicit a follow-up question, but Usman gave him one anyway.
‘And harassment, that’s just something in the head, isn’t it? So it’s just in the mind of the person who feels harassed? Like, if I feel harassed by you, that counts as harassment?’
Ahmed sat next to his brother in motionless horror. I wonder, Ahmed thought, if I killed Usman right now, just struck him down dead, I wonder a. if Allah would forgive me and b. if a British jury of my peers would acquit me.
‘I think we’re straying from the point,’ the policeman said, smoothly. ‘The majority of the people in this room are here because they feel upset and distressed by these things that have happened. It isn’t fair to call it just “something in their heads”. People feel stalked by the individual or individuals who are doing this. So we’re going to find them and punish them, but we need your help.’ Then the Detective Inspector talked for a while about how everyone in the street could be the police’s eyes and ears, and how they wouldn’t be able to solve the crimes without everybody’s assistance. Ahmed could tell that his brother wasn’t quite finished, so he pinched his leg, hard, to get him to shut up. Usman looked at him, annoyed, and Ahmed looked even more annoyed back.
‘Will there be any compensation?’ somebody asked. ‘Are we eligible for anything?’
‘I fear that isn’t a police matter,’ said the Detective Inspector. He really was terribly smooth. There were a few more questions, and then the woman in charge of the Neighbourhood Watch stood up again, thanked the two policemen, and declared the meeting over. There was some more chat, people coming up to him and the Chief Superintendent and, basically, wittering on, and then he and his boss were able to get out into the fresh air on the Common for a quiet word between themselves.
‘OK,’ said the Chief Superintendent, lighting a cigarette as the two policemen headed back together across the open space. The rain and wind were such that he had to stoop over to do it. As a side effect of the weather, everyone around them was scuttling, heads down. A few yards away, two crows stood face to face, their luminous blackness seeming to absorb and reflect light. Mill thought, in his shiny uniform, the boss looks a little bit like a crow. ‘That’s the PR bullshit finished with. Keep checking the postmarks and the DVDs. See if forensics have anything on the cars. Then if something more happens, at least our arse isn’t hanging out the back of our trousers.’
Detective Inspector Mill unwillingly found himself thinking about his superior officer’s exposed behind. The image made him want to smile.
‘Maybe that stroppy Asian guy was right,’ said Mill. ‘I’m not sure that we need harassment now that we’ve got criminal damage to the cars.’
‘Yeah, well, let’s just keep everything we have in the tool kit. We don’t know what we might need.’
With that, and without a farewell, the Chief Superintendent was off in the other direction, trailing smoke – to a meeting? To the pub? To the bookies? To a mistress? He was the kind of man whom you couldn’t ask. Mill was amused by his senior officer, and tried not to let it show, out of an intuition that he would dislike being thought of as a source of private entertainment.
‘Can I trouble you for a moment?’ said a voice. A sharp-featured middle-aged man in a light summer suit had come up to the DI while he was watching the Chief Superintendent disappear across the Common. Mill assessed the new arrival rapidly: good citizen, well-off, something he wants to confide or complain about. That was one thing he was still unsure about, in his job: the view of your fellow Britons it gave you, from the sheer amount of whining and complaining and lying you heard.
‘Of course,’ said Mill.
‘Michael Lipton-Miller,’ said Mickey Lipton-Miller, his manner confidential and blokey, that of a man well used to having a sidebar with the police. ‘Just came out of that meeting you were in. Wanted to have a quiet word.’ He had come close enough to the DI to cover him with his umbrella.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Detective Inspector Mill.
‘I’ve got a theory about who might be responsible for this,’ said Mickey. Oh, sweet Mary and Jesus and all the saints, he’s a nutter after all, thought Mill. He said:
‘How interesting.’
As he said this Mickey took out his wallet and took a card out and handed it to the DI, not easy to do while holding the umbrella above both their heads. DI Mill looked at the card, saw that Mickey was a solicitor, and became aware of the need to be professionally careful.
‘I know what you’re thinking. I’m not a nutter,’ said Mickey. ‘It’s only this. Whoever’s doing this knows the street well, yes? Has gone up and down Pepys Road lots of times. Practically lives there, if he or she doesn’t actually live there. A fixture. Someone who fits in, part of the landscape. Not someone you notice. Comes and goes without a trace. Fits in. Yes? Like one of those detective stories, nobody notices the postman. Who does that sound like? Not the postman, obviously. You’d notice him going around with a bloody great camera filming everything. So, another angle. Who’s got a camera? Comes and goes, nobody notices, has a camera. No idea, fine. Add something else. Comes and goes, one. Camera, two. Three, whoever it is has a grudge. Yes? Right? It’s obvious. This isn’t the work of Norman Normal, this is someone with a major beef. With society, with the world, with Pepys Road. Angry.
