Chapter 1: On Suspicion Of Common Assault

Fame looked to be about as appealing as being punched repetitively in the face.

Squawking and destitute, the flock of scavengers had arrived about five minutes before the car containing their unassuming prey had. Prepared with their cameras and their microphones, they waited with eager, restless anticipation. There was absolutely no subtlety in their objective.

Seagulls, perhaps, hungry and squabbling amongst themselves. Or something more carnivorous. Something darker and dangerous that could wait patiently on the fringes of a hunt, only to attack when their target least expected. A malevolent sense of enjoyment in the trap. We got you. You didn't see us, and we got you.

Clara could taste the disgust in her throat as she watched them, observing their behaviour with a sense of nausea. She swallowed it down, wishing she wasn't about to become witness to the spectacle. She would have assumed they might have been bored, or at least disinterested with their own tedious cycle. But then again, no one was bored in a hunt.

The car pulled up, a shiny black sedan, probably with a hired driver; and she was granted a fleeting glimpse of the back passenger door opening before the flock descended and it was covered under flashes and bodies.

If it had been her, she wouldn't have gotten out of the car. A call to the building and a request for directions to another entrance. That seemed a logical solution to the literal obstacle of the clawing, desperate mob that had congregated to greet the man still contained inside the vehicle.

Maybe that was the problem though; that if you didn't ignore it, you'd be constantly thinking about it, bending your actions to suit a scenario you didn't ask for in the first place.

I want to walk in the front door like everybody else has this morning.

So it was odd, when she thought about it, the look that flashed across his face when he stepped out of the car. So odd in fact, she thought she must have imagined it. As abhorrent as the frenzy around him was, she assumed he would have been used to it. Why wouldn't he be? Years and years of the same treatment, the same repetitive cycle of attention and scrutiny and surveillance.

In her moment of confusion, she'd even glanced to the vapid faces of his own assailants to confirm if they'd seen it too. But they weren't looking at him, she knew that, and promptly chastised herself for thinking it possible they could also have witnessed the fleeting expression. They were looking at an entity, a vessel for profit and gain. A recognisable face that would sell their empty stories for another day in the world where there was no room for subtlety of emotion, because they'd already decided—before he had even arrived—what they needed from him.

And so when it happened that the passing of fear came to outweigh a reaction of frustration or dismay, or even weary acceptance to his immediate predicament, it threw her a little. That tiny instant of transparency before the barriers rose, before his mouth set in a hard line and he ducked his head, fated to be swallowed under the wave of bodies and the flash of too many cameras.

The shouting uproar began and the voices became too indistinct for her to decipher anything legible. Clara tried to drone them out and draw back to her own reality, listing an internalised string of choice profanities at the man who was causing the silence and the moment of peace she'd been craving for to be ruined. Selfish, yes, but she didn't care. Twenty minutes was all she was going to get before her own form of attention returned and she was needed for questions and requests and problems. Different of course, she reasoned, but perhaps there was a flicker of crossover.

From the pocket of her shirt came the vibrating interruption of her phone. Irritated, she thumbed the screen without bothering to look at the caller. "Yeah?"

A warm laugh filtered into her ear. "Your phone etiquette needs some work, Oswald," came the familiar accent of her best friend, and as always on a Thursday—colleague.

Jack. Always Jack.

"Don't care," she replied. "It's my lunch break. Anyone calling me now deserves it."

"Seen the crowd outside?" Jack asked, impressed.

"Seen it?" she growled, eyeing the moving swarm. "I'm in it. I'm having sushi at the concrete beach with the fucking seagulls."

"Aren't vultures the preferred metaphor?"

Vultures. There was the feathered species she'd been looking for. "If I throw some of my lunch in their direction, I think it would still be the same effect."

"Ah, I can see you."

Clara raised an acknowledging chopstick in the air toward the high set of windows on the fourth floor. The seat she occupied was wedged into the side of the narrow courtyard below. She cringed as she tasted the coffee one of the interns had passed her as she'd left. Far too much sugar.

"Know who I can see?" she continued down the phone. "Our favourite bitch from the Mail."

"What—Sharon?"

"Yeah," she muttered, pinpointing the woman with a detestable gaze. "Red coat. First one here, too. Still, I suppose she didn't have to travel far. Just crawled out from the gutter."

Jack snorted.

"Why's there so many of them?" she asked, curious. "Seems excessive. It's not like he's that kid—" She struggled to settle on a name. "Oh, you know."

"Who?"

"That kid," she stressed, name evading her if she ever knew it in the first place. "Light hair. Looks like he could benefit from a wash. Thinks he's the new Bowie but writes like he's never been outside."

"You could be describing any of them," Jack chuckled, amused.

She smiled. "Yeah. Well. It's not like that kid is showing up. What's he done?"

"Wife had a rendezvous with his"—Jack began reading from something—"'best friend and manager.' Papers got it this morning."

"Fuck," she offered through a second attempt at the coffee. Just as bad as the first. Worse, even.

"Mmm, poor bastard," Jack sympathised. "There's some pretty incriminating pictures."

"Who's his wife?"

This woman's name was more familiar. It lingered somewhere in her mind, scattered letters from distant pages, hazy images from afar.

"River Song. How do you not know that? She just got a Globe for that film, actually."

"What film?"

"Oh, you know. That film."

Clara exhaled amusement at her friend's quip and then nodded absently, recalling the woman as she watched the surging pestilence reach the entrance to the building.

"Wait, Jack, what do you mean 'there's pictures'?" she frowned, sliding from her fixed hypnosis. "What are you looking at?"

Jack laughed, a culpable sound of admission.

"Tell me you're not," she groaned.

"Where I source my news from on my own lunch break is none of your business."

"Sure, sure. So much for quality journalism. Give it a few days and you'll be pestering me to give Katie fucking Hopkins a contract."

"Balanced and impartial here on Radio 2," they both managed to drawl together with mock formality. Another laugh echoed into her ear and she drew the phone away slightly, wincing. Jack did this at the microphone too and she'd formed a habit of pushing back his chair so their listeners wouldn't be rendered completely deaf.

"She'd be great for our ratings," he mused, teasing.

"I'd rather shoot myself in the head."

"Drastic."

"What's this call about, Harkness," Clara sighed, wanting him to get to the point so at least there'd be one less talking mouth in the elusive silence she was craving. "I want to finish this awful fucking coffee before I inform Sharon you're looking for a new job."

"Courtesy call," he continued, quite rightly avoiding the empty threat of termination.

"Ah, I get it. This my five-minutes-beforehand producer warning."

"You're the boss. It's only polite."

She could hear him grinning down the phone. That contagious, Californian, white-toothed smile. "You're treading a fine line if you think bringing up fresh infidelity during a live interview is going to go well. The man already has a volatile reputation."

"Yeah, but this is me we're talking about. Not some amatuer from the hospital broadcast."

She scrubbed a weary hand over her eyes. A distant twinge in her temples told her the headache she'd scheduled to have later in the day was going to happen now.

"Jesus. Why the hell didn't he cancel on us this morning?"

Jack was silent, choosing the rhetorical over delving into the mindset of a man who had just had his private life exposed to the world. Why guess when he could get it straight from the source? She sighed again, knowing he was now just waiting for her approval. The obscure yells from the entrance of the building continued drifting into her ears.

"You know you've got free reign, Jack. It's your show—ask what you want. Just please try and keep it in mind that I'm the one who'll be at the centre of the fallout if he ends up diving across the desk to smash your face into the mic."

"The ratings we'd get," he sighed dramatically.

"Forget the goddamn ratings," she chastised, really more amused than anything else. "You should be more concerned our Gods upstairs will take you off the air."

"Highly unlikely, darling," he emphasised in just the way he knew would annoy her. "I keep this station on the air."

She bit her lip to hold back the returning smile, not wanting to give him the satisfaction even though he couldn't see it. They both knew the higher powers thought he was the greatest decision they'd made for the station in years.

"So, Doctor." Her drawl came out in a perfectly practiced imitation of Jack's American accent. "I know it's only been a minute, but please let our listeners know, what does it feel like to know your wife has been fucking not just another man, but your best friend and—Ah, shit!"

Clara jumped to her feet as she suddenly understood what was happening in the scene unfolding before her. She ended the call without a thought, already running towards the swarming, seething mass of bodies.

She realised in that moment, why the frantic persistence of reporters and photographers hadn't ceased at the entranceway.

Harry, Harry, Harry, she cycled in her head like a curse on repeat as she began pushing past the edges. He wasn't here, their man on the door. Young Harry, who she insisted on referring to as Henry and would usually bow to on her way out, calling across her sworn allegiance and reminding him of her loyal pledge to his majesty's broadcasting company; enjoying watching him blush at her teasing attentions. She searched for his red hair and sturdy figure, cursing his moment of carelessness when she didn't find him.

Locked out of the destination's safe confines and cornered like prey against the wolves—no, vultures. She couldn't think of a worse fate. He should have been her responsibility the moment he had stepped out of the car.

Barging through the crowd was difficult, but she wasn't exactly going about it in a polite manner. Should have been wearing heels, she considered darkly as she shoved aside a burly man to her right and trod over the feet of another faceless reporter. Pushing past the rows of cameras, she broke into the small circumference of remaining space. Polite of them to leave half a metre of room.

Clara grabbed his arm and he turned into her immediately. Their eyes met—a flash of trepidation passing through her as she realised he needed to understand instantly she wasn't one of them—and then she saw it again, the undiluted fear, completely indisputable now in this proximity. The rest of his face was like stone, blank and devoid of any emotion, mouth still set in a hard line. Only his eyes gave him away and for a moment she was transfixed in them, feeling a rush of pure comprehension. She knew this look—I'm afraid, I don't know what to do, help me—

Ineffable, but familiar. And intimate, as if she had just stumbled into taking something from him she wasn't supposed to have because of a tiny, aleatory moment in time. The keycard in her hand dug a cutting edge into her palm. She tried to move towards the door but it was as if her ears had finally registered the volume of encircling noise, and a wall of sound and light pressed her back from the escape. The words she had just spoken into the phone were somehow being repeated back to her. Confused, she singled out a source to focus on, connecting to a photographer. Aggressive, provoking—she wondered if that was how Jack had perceived the words from her lips.

"Your wife's been with another man, mate. Weren't you enough for her? Why's she been fucking your friend?"

—fucking your friend fucking your friend fucking your—

There was no decision. No weighing of options, or consequence of actions. She spun around without giving it any thought. It was just—

Her fist connected with the man's face. The knuckles ground hard into his jaw, bone sliding into bone and then away into air as her target stumbled backwards. It felt good. Slivers of satisfaction flashed alongside the bursts of light from the surrounding cameras.

A thousand quid worth of plastic and glass hitting the concrete became the deciding factor for the photographer's following response. She sympathized with him, understanding the reaction because she'd just done the exact same thing. That breath he needed, the important moment of time to allow for the rational to come through and counter the instinctual retaliation didn't happen. Already looking for a fight and too deep into the hunt to give himself time, it became almost inevitable.

She felt nothing as he lurched towards her; no fear or panic, quite willing to accept whatever was about to happen next. She supposed he'd grab her. Then, after that was anyone's guess. She didn't have a clue. Comfortably numb against the impending fate she'd set herself up for, she watched his altering face—set like she had just crushed every single one of his favourite toys and then laughed about it. He managed to sink his fingers hard into her left shoulder before he was slammed against the glass door.

The man who had caused all this, the man with the famous face, the man whose wife was fucking his best friend, drew back one long arm and then extended his fist to meet a shocked and dazed expression.

The photographer crumpled, blood pouring from his nose, pitching forward to meet the waiting indifference of concrete.

One down… quite a few to go.

The keycard in her hand was suddenly pressing against the access point and she was dragged over the fallen body, passing through the door. The raucous shouts muffled. The thick glass did a rather sufficient job. The empty foyer, which had been empty precisely for the most inconveniently of timed minutes, began refilling, populating with another more confounded, albeit less hostile, crowd. A disarray of bodies. Confusion and then questions, and then more confusion as questions were answered with a silence contrasting the commotion outside the glass. There was young Harry, one hand clutching a cup of coffee, the other at his side, bright eyes staring in bewilderment.

Clara glanced up to the man beside her. He was looking at her, frowning with an expression she couldn't quite place. She turned her gaze away, ignoring him as they stood together patiently in the centre of mayhem, waiting.

The police arrived in only a few minutes. She took a moment to admire the response time before weighing it against the fact that they were in central London on a weekday, and subsequently took back her appreciation.

Two officers first, and then four, and then more as someone finally decided the growing crowd outside was perhaps a cause for concern.

Just procedure though, when she thought about it while they began talking in her direction. Arrest, charges, court, bail, court, jail. That was the way the system worked. Hundreds, thousands of years of evolved civilisation. A fine system.

...on suspicion of common assault...

Anne Boleyn didn't really get a fair trial though, she mused, contemplating the inevitable failures in democracy. The jurors were selected by the prosecution.

...you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if…

She could see that-bitch-Sharon frantically talking into her phone, a look of pure glee spread across her ferret-like features. She'd just been handed all of her Christmas presents early. One clawed hand pushed on the back of her own photographer to continue capturing the scene.

...anything you do say will be given in evidence. Do you understand?

This was a real fucking inconvenience. It all seemed incredibly excessive, just like the ridiculous size the mob had grown into barely twenty minutes earlier. On the other hand, she barely felt any of it. Not really. She viewed the unfolding event with only hazy, mild interest.

...Miss Oswald? Miss Oswald, do you understand?

"Yeah. Yes. Got it, thanks."

Thanks. She wished Jack had heard that and was having a good laugh. A true Briton, he would say. She would have smiled if she could remember how to summon the expression. She wanted to care she'd just fucked up her own live broadcast, that she'd put Jack in a difficult position, that right now somebody was on the phone to the higher powers informing them that one of their producers was being arrested with one of the guests.

Mostly though, in the wake of what little emotion did manage to filter through her desensitised condition, she was regretting she had just ruined her chances of having a properly silent lunch break.