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The call comes in as I’m concluding a spat between a landlord and his tenant at a property in Stow Park Crescent. The tenant disputed the right of the property owner to turn up without warning whenever he fancied. The landlord disputed the rights of the occupant to house several unreported guests and a Great Dane, none of which is stipulated as permissible in the tenancy agreement. After much negotiation, Mr Tamblin agreed not to allow his brother to bring Beyoncé the dog around any more, and to seek alternative housing at the end of the contract in two months’ time, while Mr Chopra agreed to provide at least twenty-four hours’ advance notice of his visits. Despite the harmonious resolution, I wait for the proprietor to drive off before I do so myself, for fear of any further reprisals. No further action needed, other than a log of my attendance and the outcome. That won’t be the case on this next call, though. Officer assistance required urgently. Suspect male armed with approximate ten-inch blade outside a factory unit on the Langland Way Industrial Estate.
With blue light, it won’t take me long to get across town even as the evening rush hour picks up. I catch the updates as I drive, of those in attendance and what’s happening on the scene, anything that will help me form a picture of what I’ll be met with when I arrive. There are several officers there already. The suspect is volatile, shouting abuse and unapproachable. It’s not clear what his demands are, but I can make a few guesses. Armed response have been deployed and are on route. But until they get there, the only thing between my colleagues and the blade is an extendable baton and a can of pepper spray.
I pull up behind a bank of other squad cars and register my arrival on scene. In the distance are the black outlines of the officers, and as I run down the road towards them, I absorb as much detail as I can. They stand in a half ring about fifteen feet away from the man who I can hear from here. I don’t catch what he’s saying, but his voice is coming from somewhere deep in the centre of him. He’s backed up to a six-foot metal spiked fence, behind which is the Piece By Piece sewing factory. Faces fill the windows of the office, the best seats for today’s performance. I look to my colleagues, noticing PC John Russell first, his hands up, palms to the suspect, his voice tempered.
Peghead’s here too, right hand behind his back where he holds his baton in his palm, concealed. There are two female officers and another male I recognise from other wards. Their faces are expressionless as they watch the suspect, not taking their eyes off him, but the adrenaline will be pumping through their bodies as much as the man holding centre stage. As much as mine is right now.
I join the semi-circle, careful not to disrupt the calm energy my colleagues are trying to control the situation with. But our suspect – and I don’t need a reminder of his mugshot to identify him as Maxime Boucher – isn’t concerned by a growing audience. He’s too busy for that. He has a point to make. He has something he wants.
‘It’s because you’re not fucking listening. If you’d just fucking listen.’
His voice flies out of him. The knife in his hand is by his side but the fingers gripping it tight have blood on them – his own or someone else’s, it’s not clear. I can’t see from here if he’s cut, because he keeps moving. Side to side. One way then the other. But he wears a khaki long-sleeved top and cargo pants, neither of which are bloody.
‘How many times? I need to talk to her, that’s all. That’s it. For fuck’s sake.’
The blade comes up and there’s a collective bracing from the six of us, but he waves it behind him towards the sewing factory.
‘I only wanted to talk, just for a fucking minute. But you lot, you’ve got to make everything more than it is.’
‘So why bring the knife, mate?’ Russell says, and I’m guessing he was either first on scene or positioned himself as negotiator. ‘You’ll only frighten her with that, won’t you?’
‘Because I know what you’re like. Three years you’ve been yanking on my fucking strings. I knew this would happen. I knew you’d try and stop me. So fucking come on then. Do your worst.’
He thumps his chest with his free hand, taking a step forward and bouncing on the balls of his feet like a boxer warming up for a round. Pumped is the word that comes to mind. Boucher is pumped. Though pumped with what is hard to say, but I’m guessing it’s not a natural high.
‘Come on, pretty boy, you fucking first?’
‘Sorry, fella. Wouldn’t be a fair fight. Not with that thing.’
‘This thing?’ He waves the knife in front of him. ‘I can ditch this thing. But six against one? That wouldn’t be fucking fair either. And I know you lot, you’d need all of you to take me down.’ He points the tip of the blade at Russell, and with a gleam in his dark eyes says, ‘Just you and me. You up for that? I’m up for that. Skinny little runt like you. I’ve been busting up shits like you since you were in nappies. I could take you with one punch.’
‘I’m sure you could, mate. But I don’t want to fight you.’
‘Course you don’t. Course you don’t. ‘Cause you’re a fucking snowflake, right? All you coppers are these days.’
He laughs at his own summation, a high-pitched screech that stabs through my head, the scar above his eyebrow twisting and deepening so that half of his face loses all symmetry. How fitting he should look so much like a pantomime villain. No make-up required.
Behind me, sirens scream as more assistance arrives. Down the other end of the street, a van and several officers prevent anyone coming this way. But how long before armed response get here, because whatever is fuelling Boucher could last for hours yet. And much as I trust Russell as a cop, I’m not sure even he can sweet talk his way out of this one – Boucher is cornered and his freedom threatened once again, he’ll lash out to protect it. He’s desperate. And desperate means he could do anything, he has nothing to lose. Is there anything more dangerous than someone with nothing left to lose?
‘Mate, we’re not getting anywhere like this,’ Russell says, taking a step into the ring we’ve formed. ‘Tell me what it is you want? What do you need?’
Sunlight flashes off the knife as it comes up to point at Russell. It blinds me, so I can only make out half of the man in front of me. I glance around at my colleagues – there’s only half of them too. A sudden laugh cracks, another screech. It clenches my insides in a grip as firm and lethal as the blade being waved in the air only metres away from me.
‘Shall I tell you what I fucking need?’ Boucher spits out. ‘I need you to back the fuck off and stop calling me mate. Mate.’
‘Alright. Got it.’
Russell obliges. He looks remarkably calm for a man with a knife pointed at him by a drugged-up psycho and only a baton on his belt and a can of CS spray in his pocket. Next to him, Peghead is still, but his features more concentrated, his eyes unblinking and fixed ahead, ready to move at the slightest provocation, his hand behind his back in which I know his fingers will be clenching that baton tight. A thin sheen of sweat glistens across his forehead in the late afternoon sun, the only clue to his distress. Will he be hoping that baton’s enough if he has to use it? Will he be hoping, like I am, that armed response gets here sooner rather than later?
‘What else, Maxime?’ Russell is saying. ‘What else do you need?’
A grin is pinned across Boucher’s features, and his eyes dart around us all, seeing but not seeing. He’s still bouncing on his feet as if he’s got this all under control, but it’s the fingers of his free hand I’m watching. How they roll up and clench into a fist, then unroll again and straighten. And each time they do, there’s a tremor there that means his agitation is real. It’s the fact that he’s really not in control – of this, of us, of himself – that scares him. And fear’s another component that’s deadly. Right now, Maxime Boucher is an explosive primed to go off. But of more concern to the rest of us, is what the fallout will be.
‘Let’s do this properly, yeah, Maxime?’ Russell suggests. ‘One step at a time. You wanted me to back off, I’ve backed off. Okay, so what next?’
‘Got a cigarette?’ He smirks. But Russell reaches into the pouch of his vest.
‘I’ve got a few. You want one?’
Boucher snorts a laugh, eyes flicking around us all before landing on the female officer beside me. Jane or Jen, I think her name is, her features smooth and hair clipped into a bun at the back of her head, but an officer with more years in the job than she looks. Her neutral expression doesn’t falter under Boucher’s scrutiny, and unlike Peghead, there’s no sweat over her forehead.
‘She can bring it to me.’ Boucher flicks his chin in her direction.
‘Sorry, no can do,’ Russell says, the cigarette propped at one side of his mouth. He cups his hands to light it, before dropping the lighter back in his vest pocket and stepping into the ring. Peghead takes a couple of steps with him, but Russell flattens his palm at his side in a signal for him to stay where he is.
Only a few feet away from our armed convict, Russell pauses, the burning cigarette resting between his fingers. ‘Put the knife down, Maxime.’
‘Fuck off. What the fuck you take me for?’
Russell holds out the cigarette. ‘I’m not approaching you with that in your hand, fella. So here’s what we do. You put the knife down there. I pass you the cigarette. I back off again.’
‘I look like a fucking mug to you?’
‘You want me to answer that?’
This is Russell all over. He’s got balls the size of watermelons, but I wonder if he knows what he’s doing. I glance around at the others and imagine they’re all thinking the same thing. Still, not one of us will make a move unless our colleague does. Or the suspect.
Boucher’s dark eyes have narrowed. But his lips split into a grin, and suddenly I’m nervous. Not just adrenaline, that heightened sense of awareness preparing me for action, but honest-to-goodness, no-nonsense nervous. Throat dry, heart fluttering, blood draining from my face. If I hold up my hands now, they’ll be trembling. If I open my mouth to let out a breath, it’ll shake.
I see everything without looking at it – the too-blue sky above, the green patch of grass flattened beneath Boucher’s boots, the silver railings behind him, the dry road, the flashing lights in the distance, the black uniforms stoic beside me, yellow vests.
I hear everything – the silence in which everyone is still, and only the planes too high above, and the birds flitting from roof to roof, carry on as if nothing of note is happening.
I feel everything...
And nothing.
‘You have my word,’ Russell says.
I bring my focus back, realising he’s been speaking and I haven’t paid attention. There’s a man with a knife pointed at my colleague and I haven’t been paying attention.
Russell holds out the cigarette. It feels like an age in which Boucher weighs up the pros and cons of this exchange. With eyes remaining on the officer before him, he bends his knees to lower the knife to the ground. The cigarette is in Russell’s right hand, his left palm still outstretched at his side, still telling us not to move.
Sweat prickles on my forehead and a stifling heat burns around my collar as I concentrate. Another blinding ricochet of sunlight bounces off the blade. A flash of light off sequins, yellow and orange, burning up under my fingers, hands on my neck, whispered words in my ear, smooth and slick, dripping hot oil through my veins...
The knife’s on the ground. Russell holds his outstretched hand closer. Boucher reaches for the cigarette, neither taking their eyes off the other and none of us letting go of a breath. With the blade resting against his boot, if we rush him now, will we get there in time? Only one of us needs to move, and we all do. But Russell’s warning us not to, and once the exchange is made, he backs off. Boucher retrieves the knife, the slightest window of opportunity passed as quick as that. A gesture of trust. I picture later when I’ll clasp Russell’s palm in mine and tell him what an arrogant idiot he is, but we’ll both know what I mean is my admiration of him has gone through the roof.
I breathe again, my stomach muscles unclenching for the moment as the immediate danger recedes. And for the first time in a while, I long for that cigarette Boucher is drawing on right now like he can’t get the nicotine in quick enough. The lightest of breezes sends the smoke in my direction, and I suck it in, let it find my lungs, calm some of the unease. Boucher’s most of the way through the cigarette when he points it to his new pal and nods his thanks, receiving a mutual nod in response. Once he’s taken the last draw, he launches the cigarette end to the ground. A peel of smoke goes on rising from where it lands on the dry tarmac road.
Boucher still bounces side to side, his eyes signalling his brain is moving twice as fast as he can keep up with, but something’s different. An edge has gone. Or maybe it’s the way he looks at Russell now, a line drawn, one he understands.
‘Lydia,’ Boucher says, pointing the knife behind him at the factory, before it drops again to his side, the blade swiping against his cargoes. ‘I just wanted to see her. That’s it. Just once.’
‘Okay. I get it,’ Russell says. ‘Does she want to see you?’
The back of Boucher’s hand brushes over his mouth and I catch the quiver there again. ‘I need to talk to her. Before...’
‘Before what?’
Behind me there’s movement, boots on the ground. I’ve never been so relieved. Now this can end.
‘You know before what. Before you fuckers lock me up again.’ Boucher forces the words out, but some of the vehemence of earlier has gone. It’s as if he’s worn out or punch drunk. He’s flagging.
‘I’ll get a message to her,’ Russell tries. ‘How about that? You tell me what you want to say to her.’
The boots behind are coming closer. Boucher must hear them too. Maybe that’s why he’s shaking his head. ‘No, no. Tell her I need to see her.’
‘Okay.’
‘No. Not okay. Now. I need to see her now.’
Russell relays the request into the radio, but we all know it’s a perfunctory gesture. Maybe Boucher knows it too. His eyes slide in my direction and beyond, to what I know is there. Officers in full body protection and helmets, rifles clutched across their bodies.
‘Now,’ Boucher repeats, watching the approaching armed officers.
His fingers tighten around the handle. He takes a step back. Another, and another, until he bumps against the railings. But it’s the flicker in his eyes that tells me this isn’t over. He brings the knife up and grips the steel blade with his other hand, using both to hold its edge against his throat.
‘Maxime.’ Russell steps forward, his palms up. ‘Don’t, mate.’
‘Tell them to stay the fuck there,’ he spits, his gaze still over my shoulder. But the boots stopped advancing the second that knife came up, the guns got into position. But none of us move yet. Not until we’re given the order. And then it’ll be down, flat on the ground.
‘I need to think. I just need to fucking think a minute.’
Boucher’s breath is coming quick and his eyes are alert. The knife trembles in his fingers, but his knuckles are white and the blade dents his skin.
‘Alright, alright,’ Russell says, and I know him well enough to catch the edge of tension in his tone that means he’s afraid of making a wrong move. Afraid that someone might get hurt and it’s on him to stop it. He takes another few steps towards Boucher, his palms up, and this time when Peghead goes with him, he either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
‘You don’t need to do this, Maxime. They don’t want to hurt you, okay? They’re for safety only, so that no one gets injured.’
‘Fuck. Fuck.’ The quivering hands grip the handle tighter and Boucher squeezes his eyes shut, throat bobbing with a difficult swallow. A bead of blood balloons on his skin. He opens his mouth and roars, spit flying in every direction. ‘Lydia.’
‘Maxime. Put the knife down, mate. Please.’
The eyes open, their darkness lost to tears. And there’s something about the hopeless vacancy there that tells me what he’s going to do. And he does. With jaw clamped together and gaze fixed somewhere ahead of him at something none of us can see, he slides the knife in slow but forceful movements, back and forth, side to side, lips twisting into a grimace. A soft gasp comes from the officer beside me, one that’s so sad I feel it in the pit of my stomach.
Blood peels down Boucher’s neck to the collar of his shirt, wet gasps come from his mouth when he can hold it closed no more, but he goes on, sawing and sawing. And it might only have been a few seconds, but it feels like hours and that’s more than enough for Russell, whose words are falling on deaf ears. Less than a second after he rushes forward, the rest of us do the same. Russell’s there first, clamping his hands to Boucher’s right wrist and yanking at it. Peghead takes the left, and between them they struggle to pull the knife from his skin, knuckles sliding over the blood that coats the man’s throat.
I lunge for his feet, wrapping my arms around his ankles. Someone else is above me, beside me, and we descend into chaos. Because from the moment Russell moved, there was no going back. I’m bumped and jostled but I don’t relent my grip on him. Voices shout, orders for Boucher to let go of the knife, get down on the ground, his garbled, choking replies. The blade swishes the air beside my ear and I duck without knowing how close it is to me. Seconds later it clatters as it hits the ground, and a thump from a boot sends it skittering away. It’s the best sound I’ve ever heard, because now we have him.
There’s more movement above, enough that I can lift his feet and we bring him down. There are uniforms all over, but still a struggle as Russell tries to get the cuffs on him. The female officer, Jen or Jane, is beside me, folding her arms around his legs and freeing me up to help.
That’s when I notice Peghead. He’s on the ground, his mouth open, features contorted, and his hand clutching his left bicep. An armed response officer hauls him away from the struggle.
‘Stop resisting. Stop resisting,’ Russell shouts, his knee in Boucher’s back, but his hands slick with blood so he can’t get him in the cuffs. I grip the man’s wrist firm enough for Russell to slip one cuff on. We do the same with the other, but the second they’re on, the fight goes out of him and he sags to the ground. We flip him over to see why. He’s passed out.
‘Shit, if he’d have just done that about half a minute ago,’ Russell says, sitting back on his heels, breathing heavily, the back of his hand wiping over his forehead and leaving a trail of Boucher’s blood all the way up to his hairline. He keys the mic on his radio. ‘Control. Suspect detained. Medical assistance required for self-inflicted laceration to the throat.’
Control issue confirmation that ambulances are on route.
‘That his?’ I ask, pointing at Russell’s blood-stained fingers. He looks at them, then at Boucher, and nods. There’s about a four-inch gash across Boucher’s throat, which is only seeping blood now. All the same, my colleague takes off his vest, then his polo shirt, which he presses against the cut.
Behind me, Peghead’s growling through gritted teeth. He’s surrounded by officers and they’ve got him sat upright. ‘Jesus fuck...’ he spits, fighting as they try to get his jacket off him so they can see what they’re dealing with.
‘It’s alright, mate,’ I say. ‘It’s just a scratch.’
He turns to me, eyes as hateful as I’ve ever seen them. More hatred than I knew he had in him. ‘Scratch, my fucking arse.’
‘Nah, you’re alright. I’d rather not, Peg, if it’s all the same with you.’
There are a few sniggers despite what’s happened, despite the slice on Peghead’s arm that runs from two inches below his shoulder almost down to his elbow and is pissing blood. It’s a strange relief from the tension of a minute ago. Relief that the danger’s over and no one else will get hurt now. The rest of us quietly pleased we weren’t the ones to take the hit.
Paramedics arrive to work on the two men and I retreat a few steps to examine the scene. The road is littered at either end with squad cars and vans, marked and unmarked, officers everywhere, paramedics, ambulances arriving from the hospital at the other side of the river. In the factory yard beyond, Piece by Piece, the reason for Boucher’s visit, a small crowd has come out to watch proceedings up close. One woman has her arm around another, the latter with her hands to her mouth, fair hair fluttering loose from an Alice band and tapping at her cheeks. I look at what she sees. The place is like the scene of a massacre. There are dark patches of spilled blood all over the pavement, and in the road, on officers’ hands, their clothes, my own hands, my own clothes. It’s the first blood since Anna’s. More blood that isn’t mine to be washed down my shower drain.
I drop my hands as Russell approaches, bare-chested beneath his utility vest.
‘Sodding hell, what’s this?’ I tease. ‘One short in the Village People, are they?’
But Russell’s not laughing. ‘You get hit?’
‘No, I’m good. You?’
‘You sure, mate?’
‘Course I’m sure.’
‘Turn around.’
I do, but only to humour him. His hands go to my head, turning it to one side, then the other. I snort a laugh. ‘You know, if you wanted to run your hands through my hair, John, you only had to ask.’
But again he ignores my joke, shouting past my ear, ‘Over here.’
‘John, what the hell are you—’
He holds his hand in front of my face, fresh blood glistening on his fingers. I reach for my head. And it’s as if someone has flicked a switch, because now I feel it. Not so much the cut, but I feel everything dissolving. Russell’s grip on my shoulder, the paramedic jogging towards me, another paramedic taking Peghead the other way, on his feet but his arm bandaged, Boucher still on the floor but coming round now and looking to the factory, tears on his cheek, the fair-haired woman turning, walking away, back inside. It all dissolves into silence, into nothing. The blood drains from my face for a second time, and I close my eyes.
