“Sir, very, very sorry. I’m here. This situation, at the zoo, we’re trying to—”
“Yes, yes,” Omotoso said, interrupting her—something he rarely did in their usual banter. “I’ve had several other Opticalls. Speak—fast now. Astrid? Brief me—very briefly.” His usual good-natured paternalism was gone. She could hear another Opticall bleeping in the background, on his end.
“Honestly, I hadn’t, at first—sorry, sir—I hadn’t grasped the gravity of the problem within. I thought, ‘It’s the zoo, innit?’ But yeah. I cocked it. There’s an intruder—and another vulnerable person. And there are animals out. I’ve got Atwell here, but—sir. Sir, the media’s here, in force, so to speak. This is more than we can handle, clearly. We need more officers. Beauchamp seems to have called every outlet. In, like, Britain.” She cleared her throat. “I think I saw SkyNews just now.”
“Fucking hell.” Omotoso gasped. “The animals on the prowl—I heard that bit already. I’d hoped the reports were a load of cack. I thought it must be stray dogs.”
“I know, sir. It’s unheard of. But I doubt it’s cack. At least not pure cack.”
“Sod it all!” bellowed Omotoso. “How could this happen? You and Atwell are the only constables there, Inspector?”
“Yes. Sir, I wasn’t here until a short while ago. I was only on-call tonight. And when I got here, it . . . it was hard to tell what was going on. It all struck me as routine. Initially. The Watch had a frightcopter up—but they—”
“They always put their useless frightcopters up. I know. Never a help to us, mind you.”
“Yeah, guv. But still . . . it had seemed routine.” She felt like the night was a blur at that moment. “See, Atwell had Opticalled me earlier. I was in the Docklands. And we saw the head of a goat and chewed up and—”
“The fecking head of a goat? And you thought that was routine, Inspector, did you? You?”
A raw humiliation flushed Astrid’s cheeks, and she found herself almost unable to talk. She felt a strong desire to punch herself in the head.
“Sir, I’m sorry, sir. We’re trying to secure the perimeter,” she said. “Beauchamp’s idea. Does that sound wise?”
Omotoso sighed loudly on the phone. “Yes,” he said. “The parks minister wants the Met to declare a major incident. We’ll have the Met’s SO19* units coming—and that’s not all. This all looks bad—we—you should have declared it, Astrid.”
“Yes, sir, I know, sir. I know.” She felt grievous self-reproach. Why had she treated Atwell’s initial call with anything other than deadly seriousness? It was as if a Flōt relapse were already derailing her life before the drink touched her lips.
Omotoso made a long fricative noise with his teeth, an extended hissing that melted into the white noise of the Opticall line. There was silence. He finally said, “Look, I am a bit hacked off, but I’ve just been awakened in the middle of the night and told that there are chimpanzees in Baker Street and ITN or Sky are there and I’m the officer responsible for it all. Only I am not now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We just need to get on with it, right? I just hope no lives are lost.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “So, let’s see. You and Atwell—hold the position. Try to help Beauchamp get his people together, but keep that bastard in his place. And get the bloody autonewsmedia into their gliders for now. There are animals on the loose, aren’t there?”
“I believe so, sir,” said Astrid.
“Then now is not the time to lose your bottle, right—I mean—in a manner of speaking—sorry, bad choice of words. Sorry, Astrid. I respect your recovery. Deeply!”
“No worries,” Astrid said.
“And you’re officer in charge of the scene, at least for the next two seconds, right? You’re liable to see a huge crush of new personnel, and I’ve asked for all the parks constables to come in. For a little while, you’ll be in charge of the scene. Good luck.”
“Right. Sir.”
“That’s it then. Steady now. Bye-yee!” He signed off.
Indeed, far from “losing her bottle,” Astrid felt she was heading for one all too fast. A small part of her was beginning to worry that this whole night was nothing more than a phantasmagoric waking dream, an extended psychotic fugue brought on by insomnia and second withdrawal. Or perhaps she was already spiring, after eleven years clean? Had she already gulped an orb, and this was the ensuing nightmare in which she rode some feral bear into the shadowlands?
“No,” she said aloud, trying forcefully to steady herself, as if she were her own FA sponsor. She wanted frantically to feel the confidence that Omotoso still somehow placed in her. “I’m still sober. I can do this.”
automatic news no more