“Stop!” I shouted. “Stop it!” earning only a brief over- the-shoulder check on me from one of the policemen. I wasn’t worth a second glance. I saw Kamara’s frightened face as he was bent back against the railing, then saw him jerk forward from a punch. I’d never seen Kamara helpless and it was horrifying to see it now.
“Stop it,” I shouted. “I can see what you are doing. He’s not doing anything to you.”
“Do something, Marcella. They’re hurting me.”
I looked around me. The platforms below held only a few scared tourists. Behind me the entrance to the station was dark with spectators who were not venturing beyond the threshold. “Help us,” I shouted, my voice never thinner. A few people warily edged a step or two closer. Stupidly, I nearly asked them to call the police.
“My glasses!” called out Kamara. “They are breaking my glasses.” The two policemen had him on the ground and Kamara’s hand stretched out to me holding his broken glasses. I took the glasses, then held on to his hand.
“Leave the scene,” instructed one breathless policeman with a thick accent, “or we’ll arrest you too.”
I tugged at Kamara’s free arm while he screamed out in pain at what they were doing with his other. There was blood on his face and his raincoat was ripped along its seam. “I was just going about my business,” he managed between agonised shouts. “I was just going about my business.”
“We know all about your sort of business,” answered one of the policemen who had time and taste for repartee.
There were heavy running footsteps behind me and the shorter, older policeman, the one with the thick accent that turned out to be Welsh, said, “Get the bitch. She bit me,” though I had not touched him.
I found myself lifted, turned and slammed against the wall, my surprise caught between the pain in my back, the odd, distant clunk of my skull on brick and the closeness of the blank, hate-filled face of the newly arrived policeman who had propelled me. I thought, suddenly finding it remarkable: In all my adult life no one has ever hit me. I had no idea I was so light and portable, so utterly fragile. For all these years I had been walking around under the illusion that I was in some way protected, that when the worst came to the worst I would find the means, the wit, to protect myself. In travelling the foot or so between the policeman’s hands and the wall I discovered that all the thousands of days of not being hit were only because no one had chosen to hit me.
None of this seemed possible. I was in my neighbourhood. I was smartly dressed. Policemen said hello to me. I had influential friends. Lord Cramp, for example. The police were assaulting me in public, in Bayswater Tube Station for no reason. I took a fraction of a second to scan the audience, suddenly embarrassed at the idea of a client seeing me.
The moment ended when the policeman took my arm and twisted it, making me yelp and fling my other arm towards his head, breaking my nail on his ear, but not deterring the completion of his movement that had me bent double, my head between my legs and pain shooting up my arm. He held me there with one hand and put the other to his ear. “Blood,” he announced. “'You’ve just made the biggest mistake of your life, Paki bitch.”
“Maybe you’re the one who’s made a mistake,” I said bravely from between my legs.
They put us in separate vans to take us to their Porta- kabin offices. I learned something new about London. These police were not the regular police, but Transport Police who looked just the same but were of lower quality and exercised greater power. They made me empty my bag and took away my shoes and belt. The policeman who arrested me went through my belongings while a woman officer stood at the door. He dwelled on the cash and went through the notes with progressive slowness, waiting for my reaction. A bribe, I thought, he wants me to offer him a bribe. Either for the money or so he can charge me with bribery, or both. Eventually, as he slowly rubbed the final ten-pound note between his thumb and fingers, and I found myself unable to decide between bribing or not bribing, I settled on offering him a simple explanation. “It’s money,” I confided.
“Don’t get smart with me.” He slapped the notes into a plastic bag.
They had us well fitted-up and framed by the time they handed us over to the regular police. I listened with sickened horror while the Transport Policemen expounded their case to a sergeant. “We were observing the suspect on suspicion of drug dealing. When he passed the ticket barrier without purchasing a ticket we challenged him and he subsequently assaulted us. He tried to pass the drugs to his accomplice who also assaulted us when we attempted to detain her. We called up support and both were arrested. We found packages of heroin on both and the man was also carrying a knife.”
“It’s not true,” I broke in. “None of it is true.”
“You don’t want to say anything now,” the sergeant advised, as if he were on my side. “You don’t want to give away your defence.”
There was a scuffle across the room and a wrecked and wild Kamara, nothing of the African revolutionary left of him, made it to my side, policemen in pursuit. “Marcella, they are saying I did not have a ticket. Look, here is my ticket.” I took it, looked at it. “I’ve seen it,” I announced helpfully, as a policeman snatched it away from me and Kamara was dragged back across the room.
Ironic, wasn’t it, after the great global crime we’d hatched, that my undoing should be for the spontaneous
