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Proof of Life All around is smoke and mirrors. The grey whiteness opening and closing like mouths on shivered glass and shivered shattered people and slivers of glass that refract the boldness back at her. Bright flame and fluorescent light, in and out artificial light and daylight and primitive, angry, licking light that smells of petrol and withered flesh. They have dragged the man away, but a blood trail smears in accusatory fingers from the Landrover to the roadway, hauling over the kerb to the pavement to the speed bumps and then it disappears. As if by magic. But the burning car remains, and the surging, shell-shocked people, pushed back by the rows of cops and airport staff, their screams and their silences grown shrill in their relief. ‘Jesus, Jimmy – did you see that?’ A camera crew is trying to set up less than twenty feet from the simmering wreckage. A cop is dispatched to move them on. It could still go up, she wants to scream. It’s a giant bomb and it could still go up. Her hand moves across the front of her body, spine rounding. It is conditioned. Concave space like the mouth of a shell, her belly hanging over air, shoulder blades wings against the jostling. It is universal. In the face of unstoppable disaster, you would literally curl up and die. Expecting the comma of bone you form to shield you, like those twisted shapes who made themselves small, so small, in Pompeii. Or the beach-imprinted bowls of resignation when the tsunami came, or the simple submission of a dog being kicked. A superintendent comes over, says something to the reporter. Two superintendents, a chief super, escaped from Headquarters, from days off, from, there’s an ACC now. More engines arriving. Sirens. Chaos. Everyone and their granny, rushing from somewhere else to here, to the centre of the universe, which is an unassuming, one-and-a-wee-bit-which-is-really-a-Portakabin terminal airport in Abbotsinch. And she, Anna, is no different, was on her way to the shops at Braehead, heard it on the car radio. A terrorist attack? A terrorist attack? At Glasgow Airport? No way. Now the camera crew are comfy, over the road. Space has been made for them on the first floor of the car park. It has a vantage point, a vista with a background pall of smoke and other camera crews are joining them and the focus is shifting. More media arrive. Who saw it? Did you see it? Who laid hands on them? And the doughty Scottish maleness shakes itself down like a damp terrier, puffs up its chest as one and breenges over to confess. I just seen red Anna has no official detail, is just one of many superfluous cops who are ringing the locus and keeping folk back, or waving traffic away or holding tape. She gravitates to where the press have set up camp, there seems to be no-one in charge. A sullen Scottish summer, damp air warm as bathwater, bodies colliding like bubbles. Several men are being interviewed, a baggage handler, a guy in a track suit. A man who is clearly a cop in part-uniform, denim jacket over shiny-cheap black combats, the polish of his Docs scuffed. He is wisely hanging back, waiting to give his statement to the detectives when they are ready. He catches Anna’s eye, half-smiles, ashamed at all the fuss. His hands are red and burned, and that is his job. Damping fire with his hands and saving the life of a man who would kill thousands, that is his job, the one he’s paid to do every day. It is a reflex not to recoil. But the others are unaccustomed heroes, this was not their job, yet they did it. While others fled, they waded in. As a burning vehicle crashed into the sliding glass doors of Glasgow Airport, as two figures leapt out screaming, they tried to intervene. Men going their holidays or picking up their mums. Men driving taxis or shoving trolleys or shifting cars. Stunned men who are blinking before the assembled press, who will clam up or spout off to seal their place in history, no matter what it was they actually did. It will be the packaging of their braveness that matters, ultimately. THEY MADE A STAND FOR GLASGOW! As if their bravery had thwarted the attack. As if it was the collective, furious, irrepressible will of Glasgow that prevented the smoking oil drums from igniting, that blocked the path of the vehicle’s tyres, physically stopping the iron-solid rubber from ramming over pale, peeled legs of Scottish holidaymakers. But it was brave nonetheless. Someone has given Anna a yellow jacket marked Police. It sits uncomfortably atop her jumper and jeans, but keeps her in the inner circle. A reporter is turning towards the off-duty cop and the cop edges away but cannot escape. Too many people pressing. Anna intervenes. ‘I’m sorry. We can’t give any statements at present.’ Anna searches for the ACC. He was floating here a minute ago, all silver-braid and stiff back, ready for the telly. There will be hell to pay for that. And her not even media trained as well. |
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