12
T he sense of being invisible grew in Kathy during the following days. As she had anticipated, a new major inquiry team was rapidly established to take over both the Max Springer and Abu Khadra murder investigations, but, although Kathy remained in London in case she was needed, she was not interviewed or contacted by them, presumably because neither Brock nor Bren mentioned her participation. In any case, it was soon clear that the new team would be so inundated by information and advice that its problem would be focusing on the material issues. Abu’s murder had occurred just in time on the Tuesday night to make the first editions of the Wednesday morning papers, and the morning radio and TV news bulletins were dominated by the ‘Shadwell Road Riot’ and its fatal outcome. National and international news services headlined the story for days afterwards, and by the weekend, when interest might have begun to wane, the arrest of half a dozen members of a right-wing white supremacist group brought it back to the front pages.
Throughout these days Kathy was in touch with the unfolding developments, and even pursued some inquiries of her own, yet she felt curiously distanced from them, neither touched nor noticed by the storm of legal, media and political activity, flitting almost like a ghost across the scene, or an unseen shadow in the wake of the new investigation team.
She saw Brock regularly, acting as a kind of domestic help in his first days of incapacity. Apart from a host of relatively superficial wounds to his upper body, arms, head and pride, his knee was badly bruised and had suffered a fracture, probably as a result of a blow from the same thug with the pickaxe handle that he had subsequently felled. Although Suzanne tried to persuade him to come and stay with her in Battle for a while, he had refused on the grounds that he could be needed at short notice in London, which wasn’t true. Kathy had interpreted this as a kind of pride, or perhaps vanity, not wanting to be seen in his battered state, like some veteran boxer staggering from the ring. She could sympathise, especially in view of Brock’s uncertain relations with Suzanne’s two resident grandchildren, but his stubbornness was inconvenient, for whereas he might have had a ground floor room at Battle, in his own house the main rooms were at the top of a winding stair up from the front door, with his bedroom another floor above. Although he wasn’t completely immobile, being able to stomp around on a crutch, in practice he came to rely on Kathy bringing him daily supplies and generally making life more tolerable. She made up a bed for him on the sofa in the living room, and rearranged his key possessions so that he could survive in that room, the kitchen and the bathroom.
He told her that the new team was headed up by a Superintendent by the name of Russell, an experienced, sound detective, he said approvingly, then added, with less enthusiasm, that he was unlikely to be distracted by divergent evidence. Russell had interviewed Brock early on the morning after Abu’s murder and was already fully conversant with both cases. He seemed convinced that forensic evidence would prove decisive in the end.
‘He’s riding Leon hard,’ Brock had said. ‘And who knows, he may be right.’
Kathy just nodded dumbly, feeling even more disconnected from events.
It wasn’t the possibility of bumping into Leon that took her back to Shadwell Road on the late afternoon of that Wednesday, or at least that’s what she told herself. Rather, it was Bren’s perplexity, repeated by Brock, over how the skinheads had known Abu’s name.
After all the media attention she had expected the street to be alive with activity, but instead it was eerily deserted, as if people were ashamed or embarrassed to be seen there. Police barriers had been erected at each end to stop vehicles entering, and many of the shops were closed, some freshly boarded with plywood sheets, the owners apparently afraid of some new outbreak of trouble. Kathy walked to the front of the police station, then retraced the route diagonally across Shadwell Road that Brock and Bren and their prisoner had followed. The road surface and gutters seemed unnaturally clean, and Kathy guessed that the whole area had been vacuumed and scraped by scene of crime teams, though their barriers and screens and tapes had been removed.
The Three Crowns too was deserted. Stan, the same hefty barman who had served her and Brock when they had been there the previous evening, complained that he had only just been allowed to reopen the pub. All day the street had been teeming with thirsty coppers and reporters, and he hadn’t been able to sell a single drink.
‘I suppose they were interested in where the skinheads were sitting, were they?’ Kathy asked, ordering a glass of wine.
‘Yeah. They were over there by the games machine most of the evening, and hanging around the door.’
‘It was a bit cold to have the door open, wasn’t it?’
Stan nodded. ‘They came and went, not all together. I had to ask them at one point to close the door, they were letting all the heat out.’
‘Do you mean they looked organised?’
‘Not organised, exactly. More like they were on the lookout for trouble. And it made me nervous, I tell you. We don’t usually get types like that coming down Shadwell Road unless they’re looking for trouble, and like I told your guvnor yesterday, we’ve had groups of them drop in the last couple of nights, getting bolder, talking louder, drinking more.’
‘When there was the trouble last night, some of the lads reckoned that the skinheads knew the name of the bloke we’d arrested-Abu. Did it look like that to you?’
‘The other coppers asked me that. What I think is that they picked it up from the Pakis out there in the street. See, what happened was that we all began to realise something was going on about ten fifteen or thereabouts. The bovver boys left the machine and gathered round the front window there, looking out to the street where a crowd was building up. Then one of them, a little bloke with a furry parka hood, came running in through the front door, all excited like, and they went into a huddle, and then the bloke went out again. I wanted to see what was going on, so I went after him to the door and looked outside. There was quite a crowd milling around in the street there, some looking down the lane, and I saw the skinhead talking to them.’
‘Talking to the local people?’
‘Yes. Most didn’t like the look of him and turned away, but others spoke to him. That old busybody across the street, Mr Manzoor, he was one. Then the bloke came running back and I got behind the bar again. It was soon after that that they all started to hang around the doorway, and then the trouble started. I gave their descriptions to the other coppers. And I’ll tell you what, they had a mobile phone.’
‘You saw them using it?’
Stan nodded. ‘Several times.’
Kathy finished her drink and went back out into the street. Across the way an illuminated sign advertised Yasmin’s Finest Asian Sweetmeats, next to the deserted window of Bhaskar Gents Hairstylist. V amp; K International Discount Travel on its other side gave Kathy a small squirm of guilt. She should have spoken to Tina to tell her how her interview had gone, and to Suzanne, too. She had avoided telling Suzanne what her plans were for returning to Battle, simply because she’d avoided making any. She knew she must get in touch. Tonight, for sure.