Stevie flattened her body against the wall of the pub and edged her way along the side of the building. When she reached the corner she broke cover and ran, bracing herself for the electronic sting of a Taser. Her limp had returned but she could see the Mini, parked where she had left it, on the other side of the road. Stevie took the key fob from her pocket and unlocked the car, still running. She threw herself into the driver’s seat, slammed the door and turned the key in the ignition. The daylight dimmed, as if the engine’s grumbling start had leached power from the rising sun. She looked up and saw a policeman at her window. The policeman grabbed the handle of the driver’s door and pulled, but Stevie had already clicked the lock home and it held tight. She crunched the gearstick into first, swearing under her breath. Her foot hit the clutch too hard. The car bucked and stalled, dead.
The policeman banged against the window with a gloved hand. Stevie turned the key in the ignition again, slid through the gears and pressed her foot to the floor. The Mini accelerated forward, just as the policeman brought his baton down hard, against the glass. Stevie had queered his aim, but he caught the side window a glancing blow that cracked the glass like ice beneath a stone.
Stevie looked in her mirror as she sped away. The policeman had tumbled to the ground, but he was already getting to his feet and she hoped that only his pride was hurt. She wondered if it mattered that he had probably got her registration number, or if things had gone beyond that.
Somewhere deep in her bag her mobile phone started to ring. Stevie unzipped it and felt blindly inside, keeping her other hand on the wheel and her eyes trained on the road. The phone wasn’t in the side pocket where she normally stowed it, and her fingers scrabbled against her water bottle, hairbrush and make-up bag, things recognised and unrecognised, until eventually it stopped its jaunty tune and Stevie abandoned her search. She turned the car radio on, unsure of where she was going but determined to put as many miles as possible between her and the Nell Gwynne.
Classical music was playing, soft and sombre, on the radio. Stevie wondered if it indicated a new phase in the crisis, or if it was the kind of thing that always filled the airwaves in the early hours. She shifted through the stations until she found a news broadcast. The sweats had slipped from headline position and the news was dominated by riots that had spread across Britain’s southern cities and into the north as far as Newcastle.
She was back in suburbia. The houses scrolling past were neat-edged, the pavements beyond them punctuated by overflowing dustbins and piled with rubbish. The car’s windows were closed, but the smell of something rotten slipped inside, the scent of a fruit-market gutter at the end of a long hot day.
Shops had been looted, the radio announcer said in a distant voice, as if making clear that it was nothing to do with him; cars and buildings set on fire, people driven from their homes. Police resources had been stretched, he warned, but with the help of the Army, the authorities were re-establishing order.
The streets beyond the car windows were empty, the only movement the wind ruffling the trees and trembling the tops of privet hedges in need of a trim.
‘Re-establishing order,’ Stevie repeated under her breath. The impact of the policeman’s baton had shaken the whole car. Even if she managed to discover who had murdered Simon, Stevie wasn’t sure what she would do with the information. Save it, she supposed. Collect the evidence and store it until things returned to normal.
‘At least it was the police and not the Army,’ she said out loud to comfort herself.
Her words might have conjured the soldiers. Stevie turned the corner and saw four of them, standing in front of a barrier blocking the road. She considered turning back, but they were cradling machine guns and though Stevie couldn’t quite believe they would shoot her, she slowed the Mini to a halt and rolled down the window, hoping the shattered glass would hold.
Twenty-Eight
The soldier who approached was young and dressed in desert fatigues.
‘There’s a curfew.’
He was Scottish, with an accent that made her think of slums and razor gangs; his eyes were framed by wire-rimmed glasses, his chin speckled with acne. The combination made him look like an intelligent schoolboy who had been pressed into service.
‘I’m sorry.’ Stevie glanced at the clock on the dashboard: 6.30 a.m. ‘Doesn’t it end when the sun comes up?’
‘You’re thinking about vampires.’ The soldier’s expression was serious. ‘They knock off at sun-up. The curfew ends at 7 a.m.’
‘I’m heading home.’ In the past few days, lying had become second nature. ‘I spent the night at a friend’s.’
Someone said something into the soldier’s headpiece and he looked away, towards the lightening dawn, as if the instructions were coming from above. The tinny voice stopped and the soldier bent towards her window, still keeping his distance.
‘Is it more than three miles away?’
‘No.’
It was another lie, as smooth and automatic as the previous one.
‘Okay, turn off the engine and step out of the car.’
The gun was still resting in the soldier’s arms. It was turned away from Stevie, towards the empty street, but now that she could see it up close, it was all too easy to imagine him putting his finger on the trigger and aiming it towards her.
‘Why?’
‘I need to check your boot.’
‘What for?’
‘Okay?’ one of the soldiers by the barrier shouted and the boy by the car called back, ‘Aye fine, just the usual twenty bloody questions.’ He squatted down on his haunches and looked at her. ‘You can get into big trouble for breaking the curfew. Did you know that?’
‘No.’
‘You should do, it’s all over the news. Now stop making me look like a plonker and get out of the car.’
Stevie turned off the ignition. Her hands were still trembling, but she didn’t shift from the driver’s seat.
‘I’m not moving until you tell me why I should.’
‘For fuck’s sake,’ the soldier said. ‘Do you see what I’m wearing?’
‘Yes.’
He tapped the barrel of his machine gun.
‘And do you know what this is?’
‘Of course.’ Stevie kept eye contact with the soldier. There were lines and shadows on his skin at odds with his youth. ‘I’m not trying to be awkward. I just feel safer inside the car.’
Some of the defensiveness went from the soldier’s face and for a second he looked frail. It was like glimpsing the interior of a house from the window of a train. A sudden intimate view, gone before you had time to register the details. He glanced at the barrier where his comrades were waiting and when he turned his attention back to Stevie, his toughness was restored.
‘No one’s going to hurt you. I just need to make sure you’ve not been looting, and then you can go on your way.’
‘You promise?’
The soldier drew a finger diagonally, one way and then another, across his chest.
‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’ He made a face and looked upwards to where high command or God was watching. ‘I take that second part back.’
Stevie opened the door and stepped on to the road. The sky was flushed rosy pink, and there was a scent of bonfires in the air, as if summer had vanished and autumn arrived early.
The soldier asked, ‘What happened to your window?’
‘Someone threw something at it.’
He nodded, as if it was only to be expected, and walked round to the back of the car. Stevie followed him and opened the boot. There was nothing inside except for a half-empty bottle of screen wash, a travelling rug and a bundle of newspapers destined for recycling. She shoved the lot into a corner and rolled back the bottom of the boot to reveal the spare tyre and jack stored beneath.