Office workers and commuters gathered in the rain by a huge pile of flowers on the corner of Borough High Street and London Bridge at 11am on Tuesday to hold a minute’s silence in honour of the victims of the attack.
A line of unarmed police in hi-vis jackets stood with their hands behind their backs; there had been no sign of armed police in the area all morning. One woman stood at the front of the crowd, overcome by tears. The friend with her said she knew one of the victims but neither of those there wanted to speak to the media.
Layla Begum, 34, a finance assistant from Barking, east London, who works in an office block overlooking the Barrowboy & Banker pub, laid a bunch of flowers on the pile. “I wanted to show my love to all the victims. It makes me feel very emotional to speak about it. It happened so close to where I work – it feels very strange and scary,” she said.
Begum said she had been disconcerted to hear about raids that took place near her home in Barking. “I’m close to it both at work and just 10 minutes from my home. It’s just so disgusting, particularly that this was done in the name of Allah. They shouldn’t have done it.”
She said she hoped it didn’t prompt a rise in Islamophobia. “I hope most people are more sensible than that.”
Friends of the missing French chef Sébastien Bélanger had stuck a poster on the bus stop at the south end of London Bridge, appealing for help in finding him. “Our friend Sébastien is missing since the attack in London Bridge. Please contact us if you have any useful information,” it read, above a picture of Bélanger, who works at the Coq d’Argent in the City.
Chris Jones, who was in the Black & Blue restaurant on Saturday night and witnessed the attack, had returned yesterday to collect his mobile phone and his girlfriend’s coat, which were abandoned when they fled, and pay his restaurant bill. Police took his details but were not allowing anyone back to the market area, and told him to wait in a cafe until there were further instructions about how he could get his belongings back.
He said he was struggling to process what happened. Originally from Kent but now living in Singapore, where he works as a business development manager, he said he was in London on holiday with his girlfriend, and had wanted to show her Borough Market. Ex-military, he had spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan and said he was used to high-stress situations but this one had taken him by surprise. “In Iraq, you know these things are going to happen, people are trying to kill you, but here it is just shocking.”
To begin with he thought it was the start of a pub brawl. “There was a commotion, lots of heads turned. I thought it was a bar fight – I saw a few things being thrown. I thought it was football hooligans but then people were getting panicked.” He saw two of the attackers through the window of the restaurant, and saw one person come running into the restaurant, with a slashed ear and what may have been a cut to his neck, shouting: “Someone fucking help me.”
Reading about the attackers in the papers yesterday morning, Jones said he found it hard to understand their motivation. “These are family guys, with children, wives – they are not loners, living on fringes of society, they have people who love them. It’s hard to understand.”
He wasn’t interested in the political debate about who was to blame. “People are looking for someone to blame – but the only people to blame are the three arseholes who did this, and maybe the people who radicalised them online.”
