Then – 11th November
‘Burn, Brighams, burn!’
The rallying call rang out across the high street, fifty voices now, up from the twenty they started with just before nine o’clock, striking up their chant as the manager arrived. He’d braked when bodies spilled off the pavement and blocked the road in front of the estate agent’s, swung the car into reverse and took another road in. Luckily for him, the shop had a rear entrance and he’d got inside.
But they wouldn’t be doing any business today.
Ella could feel him glowering at them through the plate-glass window. There were two other men with him and a woman who’d got off a bus at the stop across the road and visibly steeled herself, patting her fat, high bun and straightening her quilted handbag on her shoulder, before she marched up to the front door and forced her way through the protest.
They made it easy for her. Had no option with a dozen uniformed police officers looking on. But Ella knew it would have been a different matter if one of the men had tried it.
‘You should be out here with us, sister,’ Carol had said, as the woman reached for the door.
‘I made fifty grand last year, I’m not your fucking sister.’
Carol had grabbed the door handle, stopping her momentarily. ‘To paraphrase your darling Maggie – a woman who, beyond the age of twenty-six, finds herself on a bus can count herself a failure.’
Ella had laughed and Carol winked at her, went back to chanting with renewed vigour.
Now, three hours later, she was looking less inclined towards throwing quotes and more ready for throwing rocks, pumped up on Red Bull and adrenaline, snarling at the police officers who had arrived mere minutes after the protest started but who had, so far, failed to live down to her expectations of them.
That wouldn’t last, Ella thought.
When the crowd was mostly women and reedy boys in glasses the police cordon had been calm, but the group had swollen throughout the morning, calls to arms on social media and private messaging bringing out the late risers. These were the kind of people coppers bent on trouble loved to see arrive. Big guys in balaclavas and kaffiyeh, women wearing Anonymous masks, all in heavy boots made for smashing things up. They kept their faces and hands hidden, no identifying marks or tattoos on display. They chanted louder and harder, stamped the ground and banged their drums, all of them at the front of the crowd, nearest the police, wanting to force them into giving territory.
A rangy guy turned away and started towards Carol. All Ella could see of him was his eyes. They were too wide, hyper-alert, and the remnants of a bruise was visible under the right one.
‘You got any papers?’ he asked.
Carol dug into her pocket and handed him a pack. He started to roll a skinny cigarette, looking Ella over while he did it.
‘You kids met before?’ Carol asked.
‘I know who she is,’ the man said.
‘This is Quinn,’ Carol told her, leaning in to whisper his name, like it was something dangerous or sacred. ‘You’ve got a lot in common. You should get together after this.’
Subtlety was never her strong suit, Ella thought. Quinn seemed dismissive of the idea. But Ella had heard of him, that he’d come out of the anti-capitalist movement and had started getting involved with anti-gentrification protests, targeting the offices of architects working on major regeneration projects, the contractors who made them physical realities and even members of the local councils suspected of corrupting the planning processes.
Nothing concrete. No evidence that anything claimed about him had actually happened. But companies like that rarely reported break-ins or criminal damage. It tarnished their reputations, created a stink around them, which didn’t sit well alongside their glossy brochures and aspirational branding strategies.
If he was serious, rather than just another loudmouth looking to play the big man, then maybe he was someone she should get to know. She knew she couldn’t keep her hands clean for ever. Not if she really wanted to make a difference.
But finding people who were prepared to back up their boasts was proving more challenging than she’d expected.
Quinn unwound the scarf covering his mouth so he could smoke, but kept his back to the police, shifting slightly so the crowd would block him from their view. The plainclothes officer with the camera had spotted him, though, and was moving around to try and capture his face.
The fact that they wanted it piqued her interest even more. That and watching how he tracked the cameraman’s movements reflected in the window, waiting until he was seconds away from a clear shot to hide himself again.
‘Let me give you my number,’ Ella said.
His eyes crinkled and she could hear the sneer in his voice. ‘I can find you whenever I want to. Not like you’re shunning the spotlight, is it?’
He ground the cigarette butt out against the window and tucked it into his pocket as he returned to the front of the crowd. Another good sign, she thought. Never leave anything behind that could be used to retrieve DNA or fingerprints. His caution suggested he didn’t have a criminal record yet and was trying to stay out of the system. Which meant he was the kind of smart she was interested in.
Carol was talking about the officer with the camera, commenting on how his own face was covered up, but Ella was only half listening. She was still thinking about Quinn, watching him carefully now, seeing how he whipped the others up around him, but always held slightly back. If you were looking for it, you’d see his orchestration, but to a casual observer the mood was turning spontaneously.
He changed the chant and the rest of the crowd took it up immediately.
‘Woolwich for workers!’
The words were calmer but the tone was darker and harder, the drumbeats thumping, whistles sounding in ear-splitting bursts. Shoppers were no longer slowing to watch and take photos; now they were crossing the road rather than stopping to ask questions and take fliers, hurrying along their curious children.
‘Woolwich for workers!’
Ella looked at the faces of the people inside Brighams, saw the men had been infected by the rising rage outside. Conferring in a huddle, they stood hands on hips, stabbing fingers at the window. The woman had left at some point. Ella wondered if she’d chosen to or was sent home. They looked like the type to try and protect the little lady, even though she’d displayed more spine than any of them when she arrived.
Maybe that was why they were puffing themselves up finally.
Three hours was a long time to hang around powerlessly in your office while protestors halted the flow of money.
‘Woolwich for workers!’
A masked woman with pastel-pink hair stepped up to the police cordon, raised both arms in a V, fists clenched. She kept chanting, strutting back and forth, until she stopped in front of the biggest guy there. He’d been flexing his fingers inside his gloves for the last half hour and Ella wondered if the woman had spotted that. If she wanted trouble.
He put his hand out. ‘Step back, miss.’
She didn’t move.
‘Someone pull her back in,’ Carol said.
Nobody did.
The drums slowed to an ominous tempo. One coordinated strike every five seconds. The woman was inches from the PC’s face, skinny arms still raised. She barked:
‘Burn, Brighams, burn.
‘Burn, Brighams, burn.
‘Burn, Brighams, burn.’
The drums kept striking. The silence in between punctured with the woman’s voice and then others joining her, peeling away from the body of the protest, crossing the clear channel of pavement that had separated them from the police all morning.
That cordon represented peaceful protest. Now it was breached, anything might happen.
Ella felt a nervous excitement stirring in her stomach, bounced up on her toes to check where Quinn was. Saw no sign of him.
When she looked back she saw the pink-haired woman had an air horn in her hand. She raised it into the face of the nearest PC and let it off. They were on her immediately, a flurry of bodies, and within seconds she lay unmasked on the ground, still shouting as she was cuffed. Two other officers pushed back a man who was trying to get to her. He yelled that he loved her as she was led away. The rest of the group was still chanting, but they’d moved back again now their temporary leader was gone.
‘Always one.’ Carol shook her head.
‘We need more than one, don’t we?’ Ella said.
‘We need more than this.’ Carol turned towards the estate agent’s window. ‘Look at them in there. Fucking raging but they don’t have the arsehole to come out here. What do you think they’d like to do to us?’
The men were jeering at them. One had his wallet open now, waving a black credit card in their direction.
Carol laughed scornfully. ‘Back in the day that would have been a wad of cash. Now the stupid bastard’s proud to be flaunting his debt.’
She reached into her coat pocket and brought out a paint can, shook it up vigorously.
‘They’re probably worse off than some of the people out here.’ She started to spray a metre-wide red circle on the plate glass. ‘One overblown mortgage payment from the streets.’
On the other side of the window the men were shouting. They looked like caged animals, Ella thought, silverbacks preparing to assert their dominance. She wondered if Carol realised how much anger she was provoking and if it made her feel as uneasy as Ella did. She’d finished the large circle and was spraying a second one inside that, forming a bullseye that framed the biggest man’s head.
He barked at them, his words dulled by the thickness of the glass, but Ella could lip-read his insults well enough as he slammed his palm against the window. The sheer intensity and immediacy of his anger forced her to take a step back.
‘See that,’ Carol said, putting the final dot at the centre of the target, blocking out the man’s face. ‘His sense of ownership’s getting pricked. Some disposable suit on fifteen grand a year basic, plus commission and a shite car. But he’s losing it because I’ve painted on his bosses’ window.’ She dropped the can into her pocket, nodded towards the door. ‘Here it comes.’
The door flew open and the man barrelled through the crowd towards her, fifteen stone of incoherent rage bearing down on her, and Ella saw his hand curl into a fist as Carol threw her chin up at him, ready to have her say. She didn’t even get a word out.
His fist crashed into her nose, so hard it snapped her head back with an audible crack, and Ella lunged to catch her under the arms. Carol yelped, blood running out of her nose, down her face and on to her T-shirt.
‘The fuck d’you think you are?’ the man shouted, looming over her, fist still clenched.
Carol climbed to her feet, but the police were coming, shoving people aside.
‘We’re going to have you,’ Carol told him, in a low voice clogged with the blood running down the back of her throat. ‘See how long that black card lasts when you’re jobless.’
Ella didn’t see the second shot coming. He caught Carol as she was stepping back, clipped the side of her head with enough force to send her into the window. This time she didn’t pick Carol up. Instead she grabbed a sign that had been lying against the shopfront and stamped on it to free the wooden handle. She felt adrenaline and fury tightening her muscles, didn’t think, didn’t hesitate, the noise of the crowd falling away, only her own heartbeat clear and fast and strong in her ears as she moved.
The man was elbowing his way towards the police now.
‘Why aren’t you arresting these people?’ he demanded.
Ella slowly followed him, holding the wood low by her side, focused on the path clearing ahead of him and the space he left behind. No matter what else had happened here today she would make sure this man understood that they weren’t people he could push around without consequences.
She was four metres away from him and his mates were already with the police, gesturing and shouting. He would be there within seconds. It was now or never.
As he was stopped by another protestor just as big as himself she swung the piece of wood – straight into Quinn’s outstretched hand. He’d stepped into her path from nowhere.
‘Not this,’ he said, gripping her makeshift weapon. ‘Not now. Get Carol to a walk-in or something and have her nose fixed up. She’ll say she’s fine, but she needs looking after. Okay? Can you do that for me?’
She nodded.
A smile lifted his eyes, the only part of his face visible, as he twisted the wood out of her hand and threw it to the ground.
‘I’ll be in touch, Ella.’