Broken Homes

gaps between the stalls. A wash of exultation, another roar from the crowd and a crashing disappointment that we hadn’t been there to see it. It was impossible to separate what was real from what was glamour. I heard a trumpet fanfare that would have reduced my dad to tears, and then saw white flashes and heard the whoosh-crack of antique flashbulbs. The crowd roared one last time and I could see from the shifting position of the lights that the procession had left the embankment and was heading into the park.
    The gold gradually seeped out of the lights over the stalls until they were bog standard tungsten area lamps. Out to our left a diesel coughed into life, a woman laughed and a propane stove ignited. If I listened carefully I could once again hear the comforting thrum of traffic on the Blackfriars Road.
    Lesley gave a little bark of a laugh.
    ‘I’ll never call anyone else emotionally manipulative again,’ she said. ‘That was world class.’
    ‘Ha,’ said Abigail. ‘That was nothing. You should meet my brother.’
    ‘Every time I think I know what I’m dealing with . . .’ I said.
    ‘More fool you,’ said Lesley. ‘Come on, this perimeter’s not going to check itself.’
    Since we were out there anyway, we took a couple of minutes to check that our three Sprinter vans’ worth of up-for-anything riot gear and tasers on standby TSG officers were fed and watered. Because the only thing worse than putting up with a bored and testy bunch of TSG is finding they’re all out looking for food when the wheels come off.
    Stamford Street, which marked the southern end of our area of operations, was strangely hushed with the traffic closed down. The trucks of the stallholders and showmen were washed-out shapes in the mist. We checked that the PSCOs on road detail had had a smooth shift change and that the skipper in charge was happy.
    ‘Easiest overtime I’ve ever had,’ said one of the PCSOs. He seemed strangely serene, in a way that I found vaguely disturbing.
    The mist was noticeably thicker on the other side of the red brick wall that marked the end of the park. Looking through the entrance I could just make out a swirl of colour that might have been the merry-go-round, and hear the muffled mechanical cheer of its organ.
    I was just about to ask Lesley whether she thought we should go back in, when a white European family, obvious tourists by their matching blue Swiss Air backpacks, strolled past us and, before we could stop them, vanished inside the park.
    ‘Shit,’ said Lesley in surprise. ‘We’d better get back in there before something weird happens to them.’
    ‘Might be a little bit too late for that,’ I said, but we followed them in all the same.

8
The Pissing Contest
    B ernie Spain Park was neatly bisected by Upper Ground Road. South of this line the showmen had placed their carousel. The mist was thick enough that you practically had to be riding on the thing to make out the expressions on the faces of the horses. But the coloured lights pulsed and illuminated the faces of the kids who waited their turn. I made a point of watching the ride for at least ten minutes, just to make sure nobody was aging backwards.
    Nearby was a stall where I bought a toffee apple for Abigail in the hope it might glue her teeth together for a while, and worked our way through the narrow shadowy gaps between the stalls until we’d reached the jazz tent and the Metropolitan Police stall where Nightingale was waiting.
    ‘So, what was all that?’ asked Lesley.
    ‘That was the joint Court of the Thames in session for the first time since 1857,’ said Nightingale. ‘I fear they may have got a touch carried away in their enthusiasm.’
    I looked over at the northern half of the park where the court was arrayed. In the mist it was just shadows and lights and looked exactly the same as the southern end. But I could feel it calling to me. A nagging little temptation, like a bad habit on a long dull day. I looked back at Lesley, who winked when she saw me looking.
    ‘We could rope ourselves together like mountaineers,’ she said.
    The operational plan was that one of us would remain with Abigail at the police stall while the other two proceeded about the fair and, by dint of being clothed in the awesome majesty of the law, head off any high spirits before they got out of hand.
    Me and Lesley decided to start with the jazz tent on the basis that, being jazzmen, the Irregulars might have some beer. And I