Ten Days. Gillian Slovo

apparently decided that Patsy took Charles’s absences at school to mean that he was a discard and she the favoured child, which was why she kept trying to bite Charles when he came home. So now, apparently, they had to re-educate the dog into knowing her place in the family hierarchy, which meant never letting her lead the way.

      ‘Dog therapist!’ He might have said the words out loud, although the officers did not react.

      They were good, this current team of SO1, the specialist protection branch, adept at keeping a low profile. He could hear them, a few steps back, their regular padding a companionable sound in this soft, dark night while Patsy sniffed the ground.

      There was no light from any of the houses that stood back behind front gardens, just the shadows of the trees that lined this gracious street. Walking here he felt a sense of belonging and, yes, he was not ashamed to admit it, of comfort, especially when compared to the streets on which he had been dragged up.

      Despite his irritation about this enforced walk, he did enjoy the quiet of the empty mornings. To move for once unbothered by what other people saw and thought and said – this was insomnia’s reward. Not that it was the smoothest of walks. The dog, having been fed, reverted to her usual irritating habit of setting off at such a brisk pace that she pulled him along (lucky there was nobody about to see or, worse, sneak a picture of him) until he grew accustomed to her pace, at which point she slowed right down so she could sniff at each and every tree they passed. She must have sensed that he was in a hurry because now she really took her time; they were halfway down the next block before she made her choice.

      She stopped and squatted. He looked away (another of the bloody psychologist’s instructions) while she did her business and then, feeling a tug on the lead, reached into his pocket.

      Damn – he’d forgotten to bring a bag. He couldn’t leave the pavement fouled; he’d have to go back. He glanced in irritation at his watch.

      ‘Here you are, sir.’

      ‘Thank you.’ He took the outstretched bag, wondering as he did what Joshua Yares, such a stickler for the rules, would think of that.

      He scooped up the dog mess and, holding it at arm’s length, turned. ‘Your Commissioner’s first day.’

      The officers nodded, all three of them simultaneously, although none of them smiled. They didn’t like Yares any more than Peter did.

       5.15 a.m.

      Forty-five minutes to the second and the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner Joshua Yares was back at his front door. He was sweating hard and, better still, had run out of his mind the worries that beset him before the start of any task.

      No matter that he had landed the big one – chief of the Met – he was not going to expend energy worrying about the way they’d got rid of his predecessor or about the extent of the mess they were expecting him to clear up. Far better to begin with a clear head and an expectation that things would go right. And if they didn’t? Well, then he would deal with each problem strictly in the order in which it arose.

      He buffed his trainers against the doormat, watching the dust rise, and then he took them off and strode upstairs to shower, fast, as he did everything, while still taking care to systematically wash and dry himself.

      And now the moment that had been so long in its anticipation.

      He put on a gleaming pair of white briefs that he had removed from their packaging the night before. Then the socks, black and new as well, and a crisp white shirt – he’d ironed it twice to make sure – and after that the black trousers that he’d had specially fitted to suit his athletic frame. He knotted the black tie but, seeing it marginally off kilter, redid the knot before fitting it snugly, but not too tightly, under his collar. And finally two items that set the seal on his newfound status: his tunic and his cap.

      The black tunic – also especially fitted – with its gorget patches and ceremonial aiguillettes that passed from the pocket to the top button sat nicely across his broad shoulders. He fastened the buttons, starting from the bottom and ending at the point parallel with his jacket where the black and grey striped bar of his Queen’s Medal and the red, blue and white bars of the two Jubilees were lined up. Such a pleasure to see them there, especially since he had every expectation that, come the new year, they would be trumped by the yellow and brown of a K.

      He smoothed his jacket down. It looked clean and pressed and right.

      And finally, not that he needed it just then, his cap. This, with a crown above the Bath Star and its wreath-enclosed tipstaves, and the oak leaves that ran along both the inner and outer edges of the peak, would tell even the most casual onlooker that he was the most senior policeman in the land. He placed it carefully, using the mirror to ensure that the peak sat along the line of his forehead. He closed his eyes and felt along the cap, and then, with eyes still closed, took it off, breathed in and out, before replacing the cap. Eyes open. It was perfectly aligned. Now he’d be able to do it like this every time, even in a hurry.

      He took off the cap and was about to make his way downstairs when something else occurred. Yes, why not? He went over to the wall behind his bed and, leaning across, lifted off the framed photograph that, taken on the occasion of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, had him beside the Queen. It would go nicely in his new office. With photograph and cap in hand, he made his way downstairs.

      5.25: he clicked on the radio and remained standing as he ate his usual breakfast of two slices of wholemeal toast (both with marmalade) and a percolated coffee to which he added just the tiniest dash of milk.

      He was just putting his plate in the dishwasher when the item he’d been half expecting came on.

      ‘Today,’ he heard, ‘is the new Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Joshua Yares’s first day.’

      He straightened up and smiled.

       ‘To give the background to the appointment which saw the Prime Minister and Home Secretary involved in a public spat, we go to our home affairs correspondent . . .’

       5.35 a.m.

      As his Jaguar drifted through the deserted streets, in the wake of an unmarked Rover, Peter sat back and listened to the news.

      ‘Following reports of corruption at the heart of the Met,’ he heard, ‘and the unexpected resignation of the last Commissioner, the new man, Joshua Yares, whose nickname of “The Wall” is said to derive from his refusal to accept lower standards, was the Prime Minister’s choice.’

      Now the test of whether they were going to fall into the trap that he had set for them.

      ‘In a recent interview,’ he heard, ‘the Home Secretary, Peter Whiteley, suggested that Yares’s well-documented friendship with the Prime Minister might put the independence of the Met at risk. In expressing his disgruntlement, and in such a forthright manner, the Home Secretary gave grist to the rumours that there has been a rift between the two politicians and that he is about to launch a leadership challenge – something that many in the Party have long anticipated.’

      Yes – he smiled – they’d taken the bait.

      Clever Frances: it had been her idea for Peter to go public with his defeat over the new appointment. That the Prime Minister had overruled his Home Secretary had increased the Party faithful’s dissatisfaction with their leader’s rising control-freakery, which, according to the latest poll, was also beginning to annoy the electorate.

       ‘That’s the news this morning. Now let’s see what the weather has in store for us.’

      No prizes for guessing that what the weather had in store was hot, even hotter or the hottest day since records began. ‘Switch it off,’ he said.

      When his driver obeyed, he settled himself into the silence, ignoring the pile of red boxes and early editions beside him and blurring his vision so that the flashing past of dim street lights and the night buses carrying a cargo of workers on their