Riot Act

Twenty-five

I thanked Attila and Wayne again for their help when we dropped them off back at the gym, then I retrieved the Patrol, and Madeleine followed me up to Caton.

The rain was still falling, glazing on the windscreen in the oncoming headlights. The day had already started to weaken into evening, the light levels dropping fast. God I hate the winter.

The boys had returned by the time we arrived at Jacob and Clare’s. Sean was sitting propped in one of the kitchen chairs, very much at home, with his left arm in a very professional-looking sling, and Beezer asleep on his lap.

Jacob had broken out a bottle of wine, which I wasn’t sure was a wise move, in view of the amount of morphine Sean had had over the last twenty-four hours, but it wasn’t up to me to tell him that. In any case, Madeleine jumped straight down that track as soon as we walked in, so I was glad I hadn’t opened my mouth.

“So tell me what happened with Jav,” Sean interrupted the other girl’s flow, calmly stroking the terrier’s ears.

Madeleine stopped talking abruptly, realised that she was onto a loser if she pursued things any further, and let it lie.

Clare smiled at her sympathetically. I got the impression she’d already voiced her objections before we’d arrived, and had met with the same outright disregard.

Clare was bustling round making us all some food, a giant native American sweetcorn soup, reinforced with celery and onions. Madeleine was overcome with enough of an attack of good manners to lend a hand.

Weariness was settling down over me like a leaden fog. I can function on around four hours’ sleep a night if I work up to it, but it’s not a combination that works well with high levels of stress.

I dropped into a chair opposite Jacob and Sean, and helped myself to a glass of the dark, almost metallic red. I gave them the bare facts about what had happened that morning, trying to mask the annoyance I’d felt at Madeleine’s actions. It wasn’t easy.

Sean grinned at my carefully worded account, but his amusement faded when we got to the substance of what Jav had told us.

“So, how do we find out when Roger’s likely to be moved into one of the houses?” he wondered.

“Do you even know where he’ll be?” Jacob put in.

I nodded as I sipped my wine, twirling the short fat stem of the glass in my fingers. “I think so,” I said. “Most of the houses were built in the fifties, but there’s half a street of stone Victorian stuff left, right in the middle of No Man’s Land. They’re the only ones old enough to have cellars.”

“That should narrow the search down a bit,” Sean said, frowning in concentration. He eased his shoulder in its sling, flexing his hand. Would he be ready, if it came to a fight?

“As for when,” I said, “I thought I’d see about moving back in with Pauline for a few days so I can keep an eye out from there. I’d be happier being with her at the moment, in any case. Did I tell you someone threw a brick at her?”

This, of course, was news to Jacob and Clare, and the time between then and the arrival of the food was largely taken up with recounting my last visit to Lavender Gardens.

“That dog of hers is worth its weight in gold,” Jacob said. “You don’t think she’d ever want to part with him, do you?”

I remembered at this point that I also hadn’t told Sean about my latest run-in with Garton-Jones. He listened in silence to the sly hints the security man had dropped about him, his face giving nothing away.

“I really will have to do something about that man,” he said at last, and the calm in his voice was chilling.

We none of us talked much once the food was in front of us, and I realised just how hungry I was. The Succotash was so thick you could have eaten it with a fork rather than a spoon. There was Caesar salad, too. We mopped up everything with chunks of fresh bread torn rather than sliced from a crusty loaf.

Afterwards I think it was Clare who suggested we listen to the local radio station, to see if there was anything mentioned on the early evening news about Langford’s murder. There wasn’t, but what we did hear had us abandoning the dirty crockery where it lay, and heading for the door.

“Police aren’t naming the Asian teenager whose badly beaten body was thrown from a moving car in the Lavender Gardens area of the city earlier today,” the announcer said, “but he’s known to be local to the area. His condition is described as critical. Police officials are calling for calm, but gangs of youths are already forming between there and the neighbouring Copthorne estate.

“Reports are coming in that missiles and some petrol bombs have been thrown, although as yet there are no confirmed injuries. The exact situation is unknown as even fire and ambulance crews are having difficulty gaining access. Police are advising everyone to stay clear of the area until matters have been brought under control . . .”

***

Out on the forecourt, it was Madeleine who commandeered the keys to the Patrol, and I surrendered them without argument. At least the rain had eased, but the air was heavy with the promise that more was on its way.

“We’ll come, too,” Clare said, making for their Range Rover.

“No!”

All of them stopped, turned to look at me as I voiced my dissent. I registered uncomfortably that my tone had been just a touch too vehement, and a tad too loud.

Sean stepped in front of me, searched my set face and didn’t find the answers he was looking for written there.

“No,” I repeated, more reasonably this time. “There’s no need for them to come with us.”

“Why not, Charlie?” he murmured. “We might be glad of their help.”

I shook my head. “They’ve done enough,” I said, dogged. “More than enough. I won’t have you risking their safety.”

Jacob appeared at my elbow. “It’s all right, Charlie,” he said gently. “We know what we’re getting into this time, and we want to do what we can.” He put his arm round my shoulders. “You don’t have to keep protecting us forever.”

“I know that,” I said, swallowing, and wished that I believed it, too.

Jacob seemed to take that as agreement. He released me with a reassuring squeeze, and he and Clare climbed into the Range Rover. The rest of us piled into the Patrol, with me in the back seat. Madeleine led the way, our headlights bouncing wildly in tune to the rutted drive.

It wasn’t until we’d almost reached the edge of town that I realised how quiet she’d gone since we’d heard the news report.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” she asked finally, not taking her eyes off the road ahead.

Sean, busy in the process of squirming out of his sling, twisted in his seat to face her. “What is?”

“Well, that was Jav, wasn’t it, who was beaten and dumped?” She flicked her gaze briefly to mine in the rear-view mirror. “Did you know something like this was going to happen?” she wanted to know. “That was why you wanted to handle things more quietly this morning, wasn’t it? I didn’t realise . . .”

Her voice trailed off and for a few moments there was no more noise inside the cabin than the roar of the Patrol’s tyres, and the rumble of the engine. It was a measure of her error, I thought, that even Sean hadn’t leapt straight to her defence.

“I don’t think it would have made any difference however we’d tackled him,” I said slowly, almost surprised to find myself giving her a way out.

My thought processes creaked laboriously into action. “We know that Garton-Jones doesn’t like leaving loose ends, or witnesses. I think this was probably what he had in mind all along. It’s so neat, isn’t it? He needed the right trigger to grenade the estate, and this way he not only achieves that, but he also gets rid of Jav now his usefulness is exhausted.”

Madeleine stopped as the set of traffic lights across Parliament Street turned red against us. “But why did they want to cause a riot in the first place?”

“I don’t think they did, not originally,” I said. “I think it just mushroomed until all they could do was go with the flow.” I remembered that conversation – more like a confrontation, really – I’d had with Nasir over the garden fence.

“Violence – that’s all you people understand!” he’d spat. “Well, I hope you’re happy now with the trouble you’ve caused, spying on us. You and your fascist bully boys! But you make the most of it while it lasts, because I swear to you that we won’t lie down and be beaten for much longer!”

I repeated his words to Sean and Madeleine now. “The only thing I can’t understand is why he thought I was tied in with Garton-Jones in the first place,” I said.

“Maybe it was just because you both arrived on the estate at more or less the same time,” Sean suggested. “Who knows how their minds were working.”

“But if that’s the case, then the gangs may well hold you partly responsible for Nasir, and for what’s happened to Jav,” Madeleine pointed out with apprehension clear in her voice. “Getting in there to get to Roger is going to be that much more difficult.”

Sean gave us both a tired smile that didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “I never thought it was going to be easy,” he said.

***

Once we’d got over Greyhound Bridge we realised that the orange glow we could see in the distance didn’t come from the streetlights. Smoke and flames billowed up into the darkened sky, scattering burning embers which were caught and carried by the wind.

“Oh God,” Madeleine said, “it’s started already.”

“Either that,” I muttered, “or Heysham Power Station’s finally done a Chernobyl.”

A fire engine came screaming past us then. Madeleine stuck two wheels into the gutter as he overtook, giving him room. A police Sherpa was close behind, with the riot shield flipped up above the windscreen like a visor.

We slowed to a crawl by the entrance to Lavender Gardens. Where the panda cars had been parked earlier in the day was now a crush of different police vehicles. The Sherpa pulled up in the midst of them and began to disgorge men in full protective gear, carrying four-foot clear polycarbonate shields.

A dark blue horsebox was ignoring the double-yellow lines on the main road, under the streetlights, but I don’t think the driver was likely to get a ticket. The ramp was down and four big well-muscled police horses were being hurriedly led out. They had riot gear on, too.

Madeleine was abruptly waved on by one of the fluoro-jacketed coppers directing traffic.

“Move it on,” he shouted. “Now!”

Madeleine wound down her window. “What’s happened to the residents?” she demanded. It would have taken a more determined man to have ignored her.

The copper jerked his head. “The ones that aren’t still in there are down at the Black Lion,” he said, grudgingly. “Now get this thing shifted!”

We moved away, heading for the pub where I’d attended the Residents’ Committee meeting. This time, though, there’d be no Langford sneering at me from a corner of the bar.

Most of the residents of Lavender Gardens seemed to be crowded together in the car park outside the pub. They milled around with the kind of shell-shocked lethargy that overwhelms disaster victims the world over.

We pulled up by the entrance, and Jacob slotted the Range Rover in behind us. We all jumped down onto the tarmac.

As soon as I was out, I’d started moving. “Look for Pauline,” I called back.

“But what about Roger?” Madeleine asked.

I turned briefly. “If we’re going to have to go in there we only want to do it once,” I said. “If Pauline hasn’t got out yet, we may as well get two for the price of one, don’t you think?”

Nobody argued and we pressed on. It wasn’t easy to pick out one specific person in the darkened mass, but eventually it was the flash of the white dressings on Pauline’s face that led me to her. That and Friday standing rigidly at her feet.

When I got closer I discovered that Pauline was also holding Mrs Gadatra’s youngest, Gin, wrapped in a blanket and fast asleep. Mrs Gadatra herself was sitting on part of the low car park wall a few feet away, her arms wrapped round her body, weeping loudly.

Aqueel was standing stiff and scared next to his mother, with one hand clutching at her shoulder. He was staring at her as if she’d suddenly grown another head. I called his name, and the look of utter relief that passed across his features when he recognised a friendly face was heartbreaking.

Pauline threw a shaky smile towards us as we approached. She was dry-eyed, but very pink around the lids to show what that was costing her.

“They burned the houses,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to stop her chin from wobbling. “We only just got out in what we’re standing up in.”

The simple statement sent Mrs Gadatra off into a fresh spasm of grief. Her words were partially obscured by the frenzied chop of the police helicopter as it swung low overhead, heading back towards the estate. The searchlight mounted under the front stabbed into the darkness.

“You can’t stay here,” Clare said with a decisive edge. “Come on, Pauline and you, too, Mrs G. You can all come back to the house with us.”

When there were signs of objection from both women, Clare went straight for the emotional jugular. “You can’t leave the children standing around all night in this cold,” she said briskly. “Besides, it feels like it’s going to pour down again at any minute.”

Mention of the impending weather seemed to be the deciding factor. Mrs Gadatra and Pauline allowed themselves to be shepherded towards the Range Rover then. Madeleine had taken Gin from Pauline. The little girl had woken up as soon as she was moved, but she made no protest.

Clare dug in the glovebox and produced a tatty bag of chocolate limes, her emergency stash. Aqueel and Gin accepted this offering with some fervour, a symbol of normality in an otherwise blown-apart world.

“If we’re going to leave, I should tell that nice young girl from the Social Services,” Mrs Gadatra said, fussing. “They came round and took names, to try and find us temporary shelter,” she explained. “I will tell her they can give our place to some other poor family. Aqueel, look after your sister.”

Jacob and Clare said they’d go with her. The three of them hurried off through the crowd, and were soon gone from sight in the crush.

Pauline was standing staring back in the direction of Lavender Gardens, hugging her thin cardigan around her shivering body. Friday was glued to her leg. Sean retrieved a rug out of the back of the Patrol and draped it round Pauline’s shoulders, ignoring the warning growl from the dog.

“I don’t suppose you’ve seen anything of Garton-Jones and his men since this all kicked off?” Sean asked her quietly.

Pauline shook her head. “I understand they’re still in there, though, doing what they can,” she said. She glanced across at me. “I know you didn’t think much to Ian – I didn’t, for that matter – but if it wasn’t for him, we probably wouldn’t have got out of there at all.”

Sean was looking at her, surprised. “Didn’t you know?” he said. “Good old Ian Garton-Jones is up to his non-existent bull neck in this whole thing.”

Pauline’s confusion and disbelief were plain. “But that’s ridiculous,” she said faintly. “He’s here to protect us.”

Sean tried to let her down gently, but there wasn’t an easy glide path open to him. “He was on to a winner either way, Mrs Jamieson,” he said. “You were all paying him to keep the estate clear of crime, but we now think he was probably behind the crimewave in the first place. Drumming up business.”

“Oh no, it was Mr O’Bryan who was doing that.”

We all of us froze, then turned very slowly to stare at Aqueel, sitting swinging his heels on the sill of the Range Rover. It was like our heads were suddenly made of steel and he had just become an eight-year-old electromagnet.

The boy himself appeared not to notice the sudden attention his words had gained. The clear cellophane sweet wrapping had ripped, and he was carefully making sure it was all peeled away before he gave the sticky lime to his sister.

It was only when Sean crouched alongside him, brought his eyes down to Aqueel’s level, that the boy tore his gaze away from his task.

“Aqueel, this is important,” he said gently. “Are you sure you mean Mr O’Bryan?”

Aqueel regarded him gravely while he chewed the remainder of his own sweet, mindful of his manners. We held our collective breath until he’d swallowed. Then he said, “Oh yes. My brother told me. Mr O’Bryan was trying to make Nasir do things for him that were wrong, stealing things for him.” His big liquid-dark eyes rested on each of us, serious. “Nasir didn’t want to do that any more. He was going to be a daddy.”

“Was that why you damaged Mr O’Bryan’s car?” I asked, thinking of the group of kids I’d seen running away from the Mercedes.

Aqueel looked a bit sheepish. “We found some things in the boot that had been stolen. Nasir was very pleased. He said he was going to show them to Mr O’Bryan. He said they would make Mr O’Bryan stop bothering him, and leave Ursula alone. I like her,” he admitted shyly, “She’s pretty.”

But Nasir’s amateur attempts at blackmail hadn’t stopped O’Bryan, I realised with a growing sense of horror, they’d made thing ten times worse.

They’d upped the stakes to murder.

I hadn’t considered for a moment that O’Bryan was a player in all this. In fact, I was the one who’d tipped him off at the beginning that Nasir had been making vague threats that day at Fariman and Shahida’s house.

Cold all over, I shut my eyes for a moment, unable to believe how stupid, how gullible I’d been. It wasn’t a surprise now that the CBR had been run off the road and Roger grabbed. After all, I’d told O’Bryan exactly what to look for.

Whatever else he was, the man was efficient. O’Bryan must have set Garton-Jones on the trail of the Honda as soon as he’d walked out of the gym after our last meeting.

Sean was staring at me with the same dismay reflected on his face. “That’s why Roger ran from us at the house,” he murmured. “It wasn’t us he was scared of at all, it was O’Bryan.”

“And it would explain why Nasir thought I was involved,” I said, “if he knew O’Bryan had been to see me.”

“So why was the man trying to get Roger off with a caution for injuring Fariman?” Madeleine wanted to know.

“The reason Roger and the others were in Fariman’s shed in the first place was because O’Bryan had sent them there to rob the place,” Sean told her. His mouth twisted into a mocking smile. “He was just looking after his own, wasn’t he?”

“Where is he now, your brother?” Pauline asked.

Sean jerked his head towards the estate, just as a traffic car came howling past. “They’ve dumped him somewhere in the middle of that lot and they’re going to make damned sure he burns,” he said bitterly.

Mrs Gadatra hurried up at that point saying she was good to go. We began squeezing them all into the Range Rover, piling up children on the back seat.

“We’ll put Friday in the back,” Jacob said, but Pauline shook her head.

“He’s staying,” she said. She handed me his lead. “I think you might need him.”

I opened my mouth to object, but she held up a finger.

“Friday’s a good guard dog,” she said, “but he’s a better tracker, and Rhodesian Ridgebacks were originally bred to fight lions. Take him.”

She glanced in Sean’s direction and lowered her voice. “I know you told me your young man didn’t have anything to do with Nasir’s death, dear,” she added, troubled, “and you’re probably right, but I’d watch him now, if I were you. He’s got blood in his eyes.”

I turned to skim mine over Sean where he stood talking quickly to Madeleine by the Patrol.

“Don’t worry,” I said, dragging up a smile. “I’ll keep a close eye on him. And on Friday, too.”

She gave us both a quick hug, although I didn’t try and lick her face by way of a thank you, then she turned and trotted back to the Range Rover. I watched the four-by-four rumble out of the car park with a sense of relief that they, at least, were out of harm’s way.

The road outside was a mass of vehicles with flashing lights. More police cars arrived in the Black Lion car park, but I didn’t pay much attention to them.

Instead, I walked back over to the Nissan with Friday, who had now transferred his attention firmly to me, treading on my feet all the way. His eyes were anxiously fixed on my face as if looking for some sign that I was going to abandon him, too. I scratched the back of his neck by way of reassurance, and he butted against my legs.

Madeleine glanced at me, her face fearful as her eyes slid to her boss. Sean had moved away to stand near the front of the Patrol and from the back his body was stiff with rage. At his sides, his hands spasmed briefly, once, as though he could already feel his fingers tightening round O’Bryan’s neck.

“Out of the mouths of babes, eh?” he said, not turning round as I closed in. “That little lad knew, all the time, and we never thought to ask him. He could have told us all about O’Bryan right at the start. Dammit!”

“Sean,” I said quietly. “Don’t do it. Leave O’Bryan alone.”

He still spoke without meeting my eyes. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill him?” he said, and it was his conversational tone that scared me most, as though he was discussing washing the car.

“Have you ever killed anyone, Sean?” I asked. He turned then, and as he started to make an impatient gesture I added quickly, “No, I mean really, actually killed someone? Deliberately? Face to face?”

There was a long pause, and I realised I wasn’t going to get an answer. I pressed on doggedly, anyway.

“If you haven’t then you have no idea what it will do to you,” I said, my voice low with feeling. “What it will take away from you. Even if you managed to get away with it, the consequences will stay with you forever. Think about that, Sean. You’re not in the army any more.”

He offered a half smile that gave up trying almost before it formed. “And here was I thinking you were going to give me a lecture about the moral rights and wrongs of it.”

I shook my head. “There was a time when I’d have been first in the queue to help you plan the hit,” I said. “The man’s a shit of the lowest order and he probably deserves to die, but not at your hands, Sean. Not if I can help it.”

“What really happened to you, Charlie?” he asked, and must have seen my face close up. He held up his hand. “OK, OK, you don’t want to tell me, and I think I can understand that, but one day I hope you’ll feel you can trust me enough to tell me about it, because that sounds like the voice of experience talking.”

With that, he moved past me, and for a moment I didn’t follow him. I did trust Sean, I realised, but I didn’t think I’d ever be ready to bare my soul to him.

I didn’t much like looking in there myself.

“So,” Madeleine said, pale and nervous, “what do we do now?”

“We have to get to Roger – if he isn’t dead already,” Sean said. “We’ll worry about how to deal with everything else later—”

“I would say,” said a measured voice behind us, “that you’ve got far more important things to worry about right now.”

We spun round, to find Superintendent MacMillan and a pair of uniforms large enough to have been Streetwise men themselves were looming behind us.

“Charlie,” MacMillan nodded sharply in my direction, then turned that flat gaze onto Sean’s suddenly tense figure. “And you must be Sean Meyer, whom I’ve heard so much about. Well, much as I hate to break up the party, I’m afraid you’re under arrest.”