Anna checked with central control before setting off. Camberwell was only about two miles away, but she wanted advice on the safest route to take.
She felt a shiver grab hold of her spine when she was told that rioting had broken out around Vauxhall tube station and along South Lambeth Road, both within walking distance of the house.
She sent this information to Tom in a text and urged him to take care. He responded instantly:
I won’t bother going home. Will go straight there xx
Anna let out a breath. She didn’t want Chloe to be alone in the house for too long. That wouldn’t be fair, or sensible bearing in mind what Nash had said.
Control’s advice was to approach Camberwell from the north, but to nevertheless expect some trouble along the way.
She drove with the radio on and listened to continuous news coverage. But at times it was a struggle to hear what was being said because of the urgent screams of police sirens and the roar of helicopters circling overhead.
The rush hour was already well underway and the roads were busy. It seemed incongruous to Anna that life carried on as normal in those parts of the city that hadn’t so far been affected by the rioting.
The impression she got from the news was that some neighbourhoods were effectively lawless. There were reports of several buildings being razed to the ground in Peckham, police officers being attacked in Deptford, and a Sainsbury’s supermarket being looted in Clapham. And a mob of masked youths was now gathering outside MIT headquarters in Wandsworth where Anna and her team were based. The unrest had also reignited racial tensions in the city with white and black gangs fighting each other, and a black shopkeeper had been beaten up in Lewisham in what was being described as a racist attack.
The more Anna heard the more her heart rate increased and her breathing deepened. Something in her gut told her that these riots were going to be more widespread and destructive than those of 2011. There weren’t enough police officers to cope, and social media would almost certainly play a more effective role in fanning the flames of anarchy.
Only one death had so far been confirmed – the boy in the cellar. But Anna found it impossible to believe there wouldn’t be more over the coming hours and days. The media hadn’t yet been told about this first fatality, but the news would soon be out there, and Anna would have to do her best to hold back the details until the parents had been informed.
If DI Walker was right about the identity of the lad – and she had no reason to doubt him – then they would later be heading over to Bromley and the home of Mark Rossi and his wife. Anna had never met Rossi, but like millions of other people she knew quite a lot about him from his appearances on the television.
The man was a Celebrity with a capital C, one of the most popular and versatile TV presenters in the UK. He’d hosted game shows, a travel series and a number of one-off light entertainment programmes on various channels. His last screen appearance had been on Tuesday morning when Anna had watched him make an emotional appeal on BBC news for information on the whereabouts of his ten-year-old son, Jacob.
The boy had disappeared on the Monday while walking home from school. It was feared he’d been abducted because his mobile phone had been switched off and he had never given his parents cause for concern before.
Anna would have to talk to the team who were on the case to find out how far they’d got. But she strongly suspected that the investigation would have been hampered by the riots. After all, there was only so much the Met could cope with at any one time.
The closer Anna got to Camberwell the more uncomfortable the journey became. She saw groups of hooded youths who were clearly roaming around looking for trouble. Roads and pavements were littered with rocks, broken glass, shopping trolleys and wheelie bins, and she counted no less than four fire-damaged cars, one of which was still smouldering.
She got her first glimpse of actual rioting as she passed through Kennington. Traffic came to a sudden standstill because a building was ablaze up ahead, flames and smoke billowing into the sky.
Two squad cars were blocking the road and vehicles were being directed down a side street. As Anna followed the traffic she looked to her left and saw a mob clashing with police in front of the burning building. The officers, who looked to be greatly outnumbered, were using their shields to protect themselves against a barrage of missiles.
Anna got the impression that the rioters were relishing the thrill while at the same time showing a breathtaking sense of impunity. It was scary to think that such havoc was being unleashed all over the capital. On the radio they were now saying that it had spread across the river into East and North London. Shops were being ransacked in Tottenham, which was where the riots of 2011 began.
Anna suppressed a shudder and told herself that however bad it got on the streets she must not lose sight of the fact that she had been given a specific task: to find the bastard – or bastards – who had imprisoned a young boy in a derelict pub cellar where he met a cruel death.