your toast long enough," before he returned to the front of the property.
NO MATTER HIS conversation with Barbara Havers and her reassurance on the subject, Winston Nkata didn't rest easily beneath the mantle of detective sergeant. He'd thought he would-that was the hell of it-but it wasn't happening, and the comfort he wanted in his employment hadn't materialised for most of his career.
He hadn't started out in police work feeling uneasy about his job. But it hadn't been long before the reality of being a black cop in a world dominated by white men had begun to sink in. He'd noticed it first in the canteen, in the way that glances sidled over to him and then slid onto someone else; then he felt it in the conversations, how they became ever so slightly more guarded when he joined his colleagues. After that it was in the manner that he was greeted: with just a shade more welcome than was given the white cops when he sat with a group at table. He hated that deliberate effort people made to appear tolerant when he was near. The very act of diligently treating him like one of the lads made him feel like the last thing he'd ever become was one of the lads.
At first he'd told himself he didn't want that anyway. It was rough enough round Loughborough Estate hearing himself called a fucking coconut. It would be that much worse if he actually ended up becoming part of the white establishment. Still, he hated being marked as phony by his own people. While he kept in mind his mother's admonition that "it doesn't make you a chair 'f some ignoramus calls you a chair," he found it increasingly difficult just to keep himself moving in the direction he wanted to go. On the estate, that meant to and from his parents' flat and nowhere else. Otherwise, it meant upward in his career.
"Jewel, luv," his mother had said when he phoned her with the news of his promotion. "Doesn't matter one bit why they promoted you. What matters is they did, and now the opening's there. You walk through it. And you don't look back."
But he couldn't do that. Instead, he continued to feel weighed down by AC Hillier's sudden notice of him when before he'd been nothing more to the man than a passing face to which the assistant commissioner could not have put a name if his continued existence had depended upon it.
Yet, there was still so much truth to what his mother had said. Just walk through the opening. He had to learn how to do it. And the entire subject of openings applied to more than one area of his life, which was what he was left thinking about once Barb Havers departed for the day.
He took a final look at the pictures of the dead boys before he too left the Yard. He did it to remind himself that they were young-terribly young-and as a consequence of their racial background, he had obligations that went beyond merely bringing their killer to justice.
Below, in the underground carpark, he sat for a moment in his Escort and thought about those obligations and what they called for: action in the face of fear. He wanted to slap himself stupid for even having that fear. He was twenty-nine years old, for God's sake. He was an officer of the police.
That alone should have counted for something, and it would have done in other instances. But it counted for nothing in this situation, when being a cop was the single profession in life least designed to impress. Yet...It couldn't be helped that he was a cop. He was also a man, and a man's presence was called for.
Nkata finally set off with a deep breath. He followed a route across the river to South London. But instead of heading home, he took a detour round the curved brick shell of the Oval and drove down Kennington Road in the direction of Kennington Station.
The tube itself marked his destination, and he found a place to park nearby. He bought an Evening Standard from a vendor on the pavement, using the activity to build up his courage for walking the length of Braganza Street.
At its bottom, Arnold House-part of Doddington Grove Estate-rose out of a lumpy carpark. Across from this building, a horticultural centre grew behind a chain-link fence, and it was against this fence that Nkata chose to lean, with his