"You want formal duel, motherfucker?"
There was blood on the attacker's face. Two neat slices: the youth was fast.
"N-no, mate. No trouble."
"You go hitting women again, mate, there'll be plenty of trouble. Know what I mean?"
"Yeah, sure. Sorry."
Josh stood, hands loose, while the attacker backed away, then stumbled into a broken jog.
"You need a hand?" One of the youths still held the woman's sleeve. "Or can you manage?"
"I'm just there." She pointed to a front door. "Thank you. You're very brave."
"Any time."
They watched her go in. Then they shrugged, went back to the corner, and resumed their leaning against the wall.
"Nice work, guys," called Josh.
Nods all round, then he walked on.
You watching this, Dad?
Police Sergeant Jeff Cumberland died at the boots of a teenage gang while a hundred shoppers watched and did not help. Times had changed in the decades since; not everything was worse.
Only the weather Lightning, silver-white, lit up the streets.
[SEVEN]
Tuesday lunchtime, and Suzanne sat opposite Carol Klugmann in a coffee shop, the remains of lunch on the table between them. Carol was from Austin, Texas, weighing in at double Suzanne's body weight, and still she had success with clients – using behavioural repatterning and hypnosis – who needed to get thin.
"If they look at me funny," she would tell her colleagues, "I say I'm fat cause I don't give a shit, and I don't mean constipation."
Her clothes were expensive, her presence imposing, every word and gesture a masterclass in effectiveness.
"You look terrific," Suzanne told her. "On the phone you said you needed cheering up."
"I lied, sugar. Just wanted your company. Plus… you know I'm on the Council complaint committee, right?"
"Merde."
"Exactly. We had some lawyers asking us about complaint procedures. A big City firm with an outlying office in Guildford. Philip Broomhall's solicitors, or I'll eat my Stetson."
"You don't have a Stetson. And you used to think solicitors were door-to-door salesfolk."
"And that barristers worked in coffee shops, not law courts, cause I'm a simple cowgirl."
Suzanne first saw her at a conference in York. Carol's voluminous pink sweatshirt had borne the slogan Keep Austin Weird. Surrounding her, a group of male therapists had been rocking with laughter. The next morning, the slimmest, best-looking of their number had shared a breakfast table with Carol, looking dazed.
"I played the mother figure," she'd said. "For someone with naughty Freudian desires."
Now, Suzanne squeezed the bridge of her nose. Tears were beginning to form, and there was no point in masking her expression, because Carol noticed everything.
"Maybe I don't deserve to hold a licence. A fourteen year-old has run away."
"You've not talked to Broomhall, the father?"
"I listened to him shout at me, then ended the call. It didn't help anyone, and I didn't handle it well."
"What do you know that he doesn't?"
"I don't understand."
"Come on, Suzanne. You spend a few minutes with anyone, you find out things they've kept to themselves for life. So what did you learn about young Richard?"
"Nothing besides…"
"Uh-huh?"
"Bullying at school. There was something specific there. We had four sessions booked, you see. I thought I could address it later."
"Shit."
"So maybe I did exactly what Philip Broomhall thinks I did. Gave the boy confidence enough to look at his situation and make a desperate move to change everything. Just enough of a boost to drop him into deep, deep trouble. Think how scared he must be."
"At least you gave him some confidence," said Carol. "Maybe more than you think."
"Which means you accept it's my fault?"
"Would it help you if I did?"
"Oh, sod off."
"You've lived in London too long, girlfriend. You and me both."
Suzanne rubbed her face, using her imagination to push troubling mental images – a frowning disciplinary board, a terse letter revoking her licence – off into the distance: in view but tractable.
"You ever going back?" she asked Carol.
"Not likely. You seen Brand's antics in Geneva?"
"Uh, no." Suzanne had not browsed the news. "What's he done now?"
"Refused to sit near the other two prime ministers. Least he didn't call 'em godless Commies this time."
Brand and the others were supposed to be a triumvirate, three prime ministers, one serving as president for the tripartite commonwealth of the US. But Brand was the voice of mid-America, his worldview myopic and threatening, so that Left and Right Coast commentators now called their country the Theoretically United States or worse.
"He's such a – oh." Suzanne's phone was sounding dit-dit-dit, dit-dit-dit. "Oh, no."
Other customers were glancing over, because this was the police ringtone, sounding only on receipt of an official call.
"Answer it, hon."
"Yes." She thumbed the phone. "Dr Suzanne Duchesne. Can I help you, officer?"
A lean-faced man, real not virtual, showed in the small screen.
"It would be better in person, Dr Duchesne. If you could accompany me to the station, please."
"Accompany you?"
"I'm outside the coffee shop, on the corner. It's more discreet that way."
Not with that ringtone, but never mind, because if she didn't obey she could be arrested on suspicion of being unhelpful to a police officer. The law had been passed after an online referendum – with knife-holders wielding four votes each – a hardline decision that was consistent with normal trends. Even before the Blade Acts, higher knife crime meant lower crime overall (perhaps for the same reason that American towns with 100% gun ownership suffered zero burglaries, an observation that continued to cause shudders), a fact whose implications came into focus when the blade generation grew up.
"I'll be right there, officer."
"And I'm coming with you," said Carol.
"There's no need."
"Sure there is. Have you any idea how dull my day was till now?"
"I'm scared."
"And it's OK because-" Carol clasped Suzanne's upper arm – "it will work out all right."
A small boost but that was fine, with Suzanne needing all the help she could get.
Inside the interrogation room, the armchair was comfortable. Suzanne sank back in it. With the big wallscreens all round, currently blank, it was like some corporate conference room. To get here, they had passed through the equally corporate-looking interior of Covent Garden Police Station, a contrast to the creamy Georgian exterior she had often walked past.
"If you could keep your palms on the arms, please." The nameless officer sat across from her. "It gives clearer readings that way."
"Readings? Oh."
There was a wallscreen directly behind her, set to display the scanner output, assuming this worked like the movies.
"You saw Richard Broomhall the day before yesterday, Doctor, is that right?"
"Yes. 11 o'clock. His father wanted him to lose the hoplophobic behaviours he'd been exhibiting."
"The son's afraid of knives?"
"Right," said Suzanne. "He was and probably still is, because we didn't get into specific behaviour change in that session."
"And what did take place during the session?"
"My phone has the full recording." She started to reach for it.
"Hands on the armrests, please."
"Sorry. Um… I questioned Richard about his life and goals."
"He's fourteen, is that right?"
"Yes. You could call it the age when the adult personality begins to emerge. It's a delicate time, so the final part of operant change is what we call an 'ecology check'. For example, if I cured someone of a fear of heights, I wouldn't want them dangling one-handed off a roof."