In the Shadow of the Glacier (34 page)

She clenched her teeth. He’d been in the constables’ room when she arrived for the start of her shift. Barely able to control his smirk at seeing her returned to the beat.

“You’ve got to try not to be so emotional, Molly.” He turned into Front Street, barely managing to keep two wheels on the road. “This is a tough job. It needs tough players. No one else need apply.”

She looked out the window. The stores and restaurants of downtown turned into late-nineteenth-century houses, then, as they climbed the hill, the big old houses changed into compact Fifties bungalows, larger Eighties homes, and finally twenty-first-century edifices of brick and glass. They might have been traveling in a time machine rather than a police car. By “tough players,” Smith knew that Evans meant men. “No one else” was, of course, women.

“You would’ve punched his lights out, eh?” she said.

“If he insulted my mother like he did yours, count on it.”

She had a moment of silent satisfaction thinking about Evans being kicked off the force for beating up a journalist.

They could hear the disturbance before they saw it. A low murmur, growing as they drew closer. An RCMP car blocked the road. Evans slammed his foot onto the brake pedal and avoided a collision by inches.

Macho idiot, Smith thought, getting out of the vehicle.

There were about a hundred people on the sidewalk in front of the park. And maybe three times that across the street. A single Trafalgar City cop stood between them. It was Dawn Solway, and her face lit up at the sight of reinforcements.

Two Mounties got out of their car. Streetlights reflected on the yellow stripe running down their trouser legs, the source of their nickname. “We just got here,” one of them said. “I’m Tocek and this is Chen.”

“Evans and Smith.”

“Looks like there might be trouble,” Tocek said.

Solway came over. “I’m so glad to see you. The mood’s getting ugly.” It must, Smith thought, have been terrifying being the lone cop standing in the middle of the street between the two factions, listening to the murmuring discontent grow.

Lucky Smith was beside the park gates. Her hand tucked into the right arm of her friend Barry, his left arm an empty sleeve. Faces Smith recognized from around her kitchen table stood behind them. Michael Rockwell held Lucky’s other arm. He said something into her ear. Lucky looked into her daughter’s eyes.

Smith returned the look.
Strength,
she thought,
Mom’s sending me strength
.

As if orchestrated by an invisible conductor, the crowd across the street began to chant. “Cowards” and “traitors” were some of the words Smith caught. She turned away from her mother. “We need more people,” she said to Tocek.

“Yeah, you do, but right now we’re it. You handled a riot before?”

“No.”

“You?” he asked Evans.

“No.”

“I have, so until help arrives I’m in charge.” He didn’t look to be much older than Smith or Evans, and he was only a constable, like them. She didn’t know what Evans thought, this guy barging onto their patch and taking over, but she was glad that someone was.

The five officers fanned out across the middle of the street. Smith’s heart was beating so hard she feared it might burst out of her chest, like the alien in
Alien
. She touched her nightstick, just to feel its solid weight under her fingers. She felt her mother watching her.

“I saw her on TV,” someone screamed. “That cop. The blond one in the middle. She said she’d do whatever was necessary to see the garden built.”

It took Smith a moment to realize he was talking about her.

“You’re crazy,” a voice shouted from the garden side, “if you think the cops are with us.”

Something broke on the pavement beside Smith’s feet. She looked down to see thick brown glass. A beer bottle.
What the hell am I doing here
?

The line of protesters edged forward.

“Do you think they’d laugh if I held your hand, Molly?” Solway said in a small voice.

“Not as much as if I ran for my mommy. Who, unfortunately, is standing right behind us.”

Tocek stepped forward. “Why don’t you folks all go home.”

“Go home. Go home.” The garden side began to chant. Smith thought that she could hear her mother’s voice, but she couldn’t be sure. What would she do, if it broke into a riot? Save her mother and abandon the other citizens of Trafalgar? This couldn’t be happening. She saw Rich Ashcroft’s cameraman at the edges of the crowd. The red light in the front of his camera glowed. Ashcroft himself was nowhere to be seen, but she didn’t doubt he was moving through the crowd, whispering agitation, rustling up good footage.

Her radio crackled. Dispatch was asking every officer to report in immediately to the station and pick up control gear. The Mounties’ Emergency Response Team was being called. That unit was too far away to be of much immediate help, but some Mounties lived in Trafalgar; they’d come. Just knowing that all available resources were on the way helped to quell some of the panic churning through Smith’s stomach.

“Disperse,” Tocek said, in a voice so calm he might have been instructing a toddlers’ swimming class. “There’s nothing more to be gained here.” He turned and faced the group at the park entrance. “And you too. Go home. Nothing can be settled tonight.”

Smith was facing the anti-park group. They shifted and muttered amongst themselves. People at the back began to slide away, trying to look as if they hadn’t really been part of all this. The pro-park people, including her own mother, for heaven’s sake, were behind her. She heard similar mutterings, people suggesting that they just leave.

Tocek’s shoulders relaxed. Chen let out a healthy breath.

“Stay in your place!” Brian Harris stepped to the front of the line. His right hand was buried deep in his pocket, ball cap low over his eyes. “You heard that pig bitch on TV. The cops are on the side of the appeasers’ park.” He grabbed the shoulder of a man who was retreating back into the crowd. “Are you running away? Like they did?”

The man looked at the line of police—all five of them, young, inexperienced, terrified, trying hard not to show it—then he looked at Harris. “No way,” he said. He spat in the general direction of Solway’s feet.

“Peace now!” someone yelled. It might have been Barry Stevens, Lucky’s friend. “Come on,” he said, “show us. Are you on the side of peace or war? Only one way will get us all killed.”

“Killed. I’ll kill you, you traitor.”

A rock flew over Smith’s head. A woman cried out.

A stone, about the size of a pea, hit Chen in the chest. He watched it bounce off and fall into the street. A brief shower of pebbles fell on them. Smith lifted her hands to shield her face. Somewhere behind her, glass broke.

The front line was swaying, moving from one foot to the other. All they needed was a reason to rush forward.

She turned to look at the line in front of the park. Robyn Goodhaugh, who’d protested at the Grizzly Resort in a wolf mask, jumped up and down, like a baby confined to a Jolly Jumper, throwing torrents of verbal abuse across the street.

“Mom,” Smith yelled. She looked at the row of faces. Most scared, some exhilarated. “Mom?”

“I’m here.” Lucky stepped out from behind a bush. Michael was holding her arm.

“Please, Mom,” Smith said. “Go home. I do not want to have to worry about you.”

Lucky’s eyes moved.

“Mom?”

“She’s right, Lucky,” Michael said. “We’ve made our point.”

“Barry, Jane, everyone,” Lucky called to the people surrounding her. “This is out of our control. Let’s go.”

“Retreat is not always a dishonorable action,” Barry said. Michael tugged on Lucky’s arm, and she turned to follow him.

Now all Smith had to worry about was protecting the citizens of this town and herself.

“See that guy,” Tocek said. “In the blue cap. He’s inciting them. Follow me, Solway. Hey, you,” he called, walking forward. “Let’s talk, buddy. Time to calm this down.”

“Talk is appeasement,” Harris shouted. He waved his left hand toward the people behind him. His right was still in his pocket.

Smith heard sirens coming from all directions. Vehicles pulled up and doors slammed, men shouted and dark shapes were all around them. Cops with helmets, riot shields, tear gas.

Smith ran her eyes over the crowd. Fucking Ashcroft’s fucking cameraman was filming everything.

She turned back to the mêlée. People, those with a sliver of common sense, were running in all directions. A good number of the anti-park crowd held their line. Rich Ashcroft came into sight: he said something to his cameraman, and the red light of the camera turned toward her. All Smith could do was to ignore it.

Robyn ran across the street, straight toward the camera. She threw something. The cameraman ducked, pulling his equipment with him, and a brown beer bottle shattered at his feet. A couple of demonstrators from her side followed her, and people who’d been standing in Ashcroft’s vicinity surged forward to meet them.

Relieved that, for once, her mother’d seen reason and was hopefully well out of the way, Smith gathered what scrap of courage she could find and gripped the handle of her truncheon. Before she could make a move to try and separate the warring packs, her radio crackled. Police not wearing riot control gear were being called back. She couldn’t see the two Mounties nor Solway. Evans was slightly behind her, telling park supporters to go home. A line of police in black riot uniform moved toward the protesters, banging batons on shields, trying to be as intimidating as possible.

Streetlamps and lights from police vehicles lit up the protesters’ faces. A man threw a punch at Robyn Goodhaugh. Blood streamed from a cut on his forehead, and his face was contorted with rage. She staggered back, but didn’t fall, and a man dodged in around her to deliver an uppercut to the bleeding man’s jaw. They clashed and twisted and turned, pulling at each other’s clothes, scratching at faces, like dancers gone mad. Goodhaugh charged toward the TV camera.

On the radio, Sergeant Peterson was yelling for Smith and Evans to state their location. She didn’t know what to say.
In the street
?

She began to back away. Leave this to the people with the right equipment. “There’s the cop bitch,” someone yelled. “Get her.”

Were they talking about her? Smith saw people she knew. People she passed on the street every day, who shopped at the Safeway or Alphonse’s Bakery, and greeted her with a smile. But most of them were strangers, outside agitators. Like Brian Harris.

As if she’d conjured him up by the force of her own thoughts, he was there, standing behind a fat man in a sleeveless T-shirt. The fat man screamed at her. But Harris just stared. Through eyes as blank as the bottom of the Kootenay River.

She spoke into her radio. “I’ve got the leader in sight.”

“Describe him.”

“Blue shirt, blue ball cap. Standing no more then ten feet from me.”

“Someone’s coming your way. Point him out and then retreat, Smith. You’re not wearing control gear.”

Harris lifted his right hand and curled his index finger, moving it back and forth, beckoning her.

Screw him; she wasn’t looking for a fight. She turned. Time to retreat.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Jane Reynolds had been a pacifist and anti-war activist all her adult life. One of the first women in North America to make full professor of physics, she’d raised three children while mentoring hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young people. She’d joined the ban-the-bomb movement in the ’50s, and traveled throughout the States in the ’60s protesting the Vietnam War. In the ’80s the family lived in England for a few years while Jane was a visiting professor at Cambridge. She went to Greenham Common as much as possible, in support of the women protesting the nuclear weapons based there. She was comfortably retired now, her husband long dead, her children scattered across the continent. Her health was poor, and not getting any better. But her passion for the peace movement still ignited her life.

Someone knocked into her; she stumbled on the worse of her two bad knees and her glasses fell off. She didn’t dare try to lower herself to the ground to feel around for them. She peered myopically into a blur of sound and movement. She’d heard Lucky’s voice a few moments ago telling everyone to retreat. “Lucky?” Jane cried. “Barry, Michael, where are you?”

People were screaming in anger or yelling in fear. A steady
thump, thump
came from the left; a bullhorn called everyone to disperse. A body bumped into her from the right; she would have fallen had not someone been in her way and inadvertently kept her upright. She didn’t know which way led to safety, or to her side of the fracas. If there were sides any more. She was turned around, confused. People were running in all directions. She realized, to her horror, that she was crying. She cursed under her breath—but only at herself. For getting old. Feeble and helpless. This wasn’t the first demonstration she’d been in that had turned violent. She’d been in far worse situations. But back then she could see what was going on, and she could count on her strong, quick body to take her out of the way of danger. Embarrassed, humiliated, angry, in pain, she cried even harder. She fumbled in her pocket for a tissue and wiped at her face. It came away streaked with blood.

A deep voice reached her out of the wall of noise, and a large hand touched her arm, pulling her out of her circle of chaos. She blinked up at him. It was young constable Evans.

“Come with me, ma’am, please.”

“Never thought I’d have to be escorted away from a protest.” She allowed him to take her arm.