Fragile Minds Page 0,71

had set fire to herself was dead, but no one else had been seriously injured.

Kenton arrived on Pall Mall around eleven. The whole area had been shut off to everyone except the emergency services. Drunk clubbers and frightened foreign tourists thronged the periphery of the area; camera crews and photographers were already collecting. Kenton pushed her way through the crowds and found her boss Malloy, shadowed by Craven, who was chewing on his plastic cigarette. A white tent had already been placed round the remains of the girl and a local constable with big ears and a sweaty, pallid face was explaining to his seniors what he had seen. Beside him two dark-haired students stood, terrified, hand in hand, clutching a camcorder.

‘We all thought it was some sort of joke,’ the bobby kept saying, over and over. ‘Like that – what do you call it? Performance art.’

‘Just tell me exactly what she said,’ Malloy was patient, but his blue eyes were scorching.

‘She kept shouting about the banks and nuclear power and the oil companies and – and corrupters. She kept saying—’ The bobby took his hat off and mopped his brow with a hanky. He had huge sweat patches under his arms. ‘She kept saying “the corrupters shall pay, they shall pay”. And then she was screaming “Get back, get back”, and pouring some sort of liquid over her head and the next minute – boom.’ He looked a little like he might throw up. ‘She went up like a bonfire. Christ.’

‘You’re in shock, mate,’ Kenton was surprised by Craven’s gentle tone. ‘Go and get a cuppa. We’ll talk to you later.’

Malloy beckoned the long-haired students over. They looked terrified.

‘Where are you from?’ he asked, kindly for him, and they looked at each other and then the girl said, ‘Tel Aviv.’

‘And you were filming, were you?’

She nodded. ‘Yes. I wanted to show to my mother the lions. And then this girl, she was here, and so I filmed her for a minute.’

‘We thought it was an – how do you call it. An act?’ the boy chipped in now. His hair was longer than his girlfriend’s, Kenton thought absently.

‘I wish to fucking Christ it had been,’ Malloy muttered. ‘You’ll have to give me that, I’m afraid.’ He held his hand out for the camera. The couple spoke to each other in Hebrew.

‘When can we – will we get it back?’

‘Look, love,’ Malloy feigned patience. ‘I wouldn’t want to ruin your holiday or anything, but a girl has just burnt herself to tiny little cinders, and we need to understand why – and who she was. OK?’

Kenton took their names and contact details, and the camera.

‘I’ll try and get it back to you as soon as I can,’ she murmured quietly. ‘Just bear with me.’

They sat in the car and watched the footage, all craning to see the tiny screen. The girl was dressed in a long skirt and coat buttoned to her neck, her hair tightly scraped back. She was white, average height, brown hair, snub-nosed, generously-bosomed. She became extremely agitated as she began to chant ‘Corrupters, corrupters.’ She worked herself up into a frenzy and then began to open her coat. She had some kind of canister tucked inside the coat, full of a liquid, which she tipped onto her head, before reaching into her pocket for a cigarette lighter. She appeared to pause for a moment, as if she wasn’t quite sure of what she was doing – and then she screamed ‘The world shall pay the price’ one final time. Her teeth clenched almost in a death mask, she ignited the lighter.

Malloy paused the film.

‘Recognise her?’ Malloy looked at his officers.

‘No, guv,’ Kenton shook her head, disappointed and horribly disturbed by the image. The severed hand hit her memory like a meteorite; she almost ducked.

‘We need to get her photo out there quickly and get her identified. Fuck.’ Malloy hit the dashboard with a fist. ‘This is fucking craziness. Put the picture out on the wire. Now.’

FRIDAY 21ST JULY CLAUDIE

Will was waiting outside the flat when I pulled up in the cab, his sandy hair all on end.

‘What are you doing here?’ I was exhausted. The last thing in the world I wanted to do now was chat to Will about – stuff.

‘I came to see you were all right,’ he muttered.

‘What, at midnight?’

We gazed at each other. He seemed shifty, and I was struck suddenly by my lack of feeling towards him. He wasn’t the man