Broken Homes

too big to beat, I was no longer living at home so I couldn’t be worn down.
    ‘Well we go raise some of de money by selling de records but you go get for fend some of de money too ,’ she said.
    I almost asked whether she’d tried Kickstarter but knowing mum she probably would have. Instead, I made the usual squirmy excuses and promises of the fully grown man faced with his mum’s uncanny ability to knock ten years off his age at will.
    ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I said and we returned to the tent to find that Lesley had indeed acquired a pint of beer, in a straight glass no less, and was cheerfully drinking it with the straw she carries for just such emergencies.
    ‘Where’d you get that?’ I asked.
    Lesley gave me a sly look. ‘I seem to remember you lecturing me about the scientific method,’ she said. ‘And for this experiment to be valid one of us has to stay off the booze – as a control. Right?’
    I nodded sagely. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘We need a control.’
    ‘Seriously?’ she asked.
    ‘Otherwise, how do you know the variable you’ve changed is the one having the effect?’ I said.
    Lesley retrieved another pint from the top of one of the amps behind her. ‘So you don’t get this?’
    ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘In fact you should drink both of them because we’re going to need your blood alcohol levels to be sufficiently elevated if we’re going to get a measurable result.’
    Lesley stared at me. Her mask is a horrible shade of off-pink that can be barely called skin toned even by white people’s standards and it pretty much conceals Lesley’s expressions. But I’d learnt to read the shape of her eyes and the way her jaw moves under the hypoallergenic plastic. For just a moment she’d totally bought it. Then she relaxed and passed me the pint.
    ‘Funny,’ she said.
    ‘I thought so,’ I said.
    ‘Drink your bloody pint.’
    So I did, and had a chat with my dad although this close to a gig he never takes in anything you say. But he seemed pretty pleased to see me, and asked if I was going to watch the set.
    ‘As much as I can,’ I said.
    Beer finished, we left the tent. It was beginning to get crowded as what I took to be more tourists and curious locals wandered in. A couple of years patrolling the West End and Soho and you get used to crowds, but the mist muted the voices and made it seem unnaturally quiet. A quiet crowd is a bit of a worry to a copper, since a noisy crowd is one that’s telegraphing what it’s going to do next. A quiet crowd means that people are watching and thinking. And that’s always dangerous, on the off chance that what they’re thinking is, I wonder what would happen if I lobbed this half brick at that particularly handsome young police officer over there.
    ‘We might want to break that up,’ said Lesley nodding at the police booth.
    There Abigail had been cornered by a slim white guy dressed in a red hunting jacket, camouflage trousers and Dr Marten boots. He was looming over her in the classic school disco manner and while she had her arms folded and her face turned away from his, Abigail’s expression was tolerant and craftily self-contained. She saw me coming before he did, and her smile became ever so smug.
    ‘Oi you,’ I said. ‘Sling your hook.’
    The man spun around fast enough to make me take an automatic step back and check my stance. He was small, barely ten centimetres taller than Abigail but definitely at least ten years older. His face was triangular underneath a brush of rust-coloured hair, his eyes hazel flecked with gold, and when he smiled his teeth were white and sharp.
    ‘Oh, you startled me, Officer,’ he said in the kind of posh voice posh people use when they’re doing an impression of someone with a posh voice. ‘Is there something wrong?’
    Underneath the open jacket he was wearing a white T-shirt with what looked like a medieval woodcut of a man being torn apart by hounds. Printed above the picture, in a modern font, were the words But they hardly suffer at all . I seriously doubted his name was going to be something like Mr Badger.
    ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s called the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Which in this case would mean life imprisonment for you, but only if her father didn’t catch up with you first.’
    ‘I assure you, Officer,’ said the man. ‘My intentions were entirely honourable.’
    ‘Parked around the corner I’ve got a van full of very bored officers,’ I said. ‘Who,