Riot Act

Twenty-six

Just for a moment there was silence. Not that any of the people who thronged the car park stopped talking or crying. Not that the distant sirens stopped blaring. But for the six of us there was utter silence, nonetheless.

It was Sean who broke it.

“What’s the charge?” he said, with that slight lift of his chin I knew so well. The one that issued a challenge you’d be foolish to ignore.

“Murder.”

“Whose murder?”

“Harvey Langford’s – for now,” MacMillan said, composed, “but I’m sure we can add to that later, if need be.”

One of the coppers standing behind him reached for his cuffs, shook them loose, and took a step towards Sean.

Without clearly recalling doing it, I found I’d shifted my feet halfway into a stance. When I looked, I found we all had. Even the Superintendent looked poised and Friday was standing motionless but alert.

Sean turned his head slightly, stared straight into the approaching policeman’s eyes. “Come near me with those now, and I’ll break both your arms,” he said. His voice was light, pleasant, but I’d never heard anyone mean a threat more.

He looked back to the Superintendent. “Give me until tomorrow morning,” he said, “and I’ll turn myself in.”

“What happens tomorrow morning?”

“Because by then I’ll either have found you the real killer, or my brother will be dead,” Sean said evenly. “Either way, it won’t matter much any more.”

The copper with the cuffs took another step. His mate unhooked the baton from his belt. Madeleine and I closed in on either side of Sean, and I slipped Friday’s lead.

The Ridgeback moved smoothly in front of us, showing every incisor in his considerable array and making noise in his chest like the continuous droning of a light aircraft engine. It was enough to stop all three policemen in their tracks.

I took advantage of the breathing space. “Don’t you want to know what’s going on round here?” I asked MacMillan quickly, trying to keep the note of desperation out of my voice. “Don’t you want to find out not just who really did kill Langford, but why he died? Don’t you want to know who’s been organising the crimewave, masterminding the burglaries, fencing the gear?”

The Superintendent tore his eyes away from the dog’s teeth.

“What makes you think that we don’t know already?”

“Because if you could prove it you wouldn’t be here, going through the motions of arresting a man you know isn’t the one you really want.”

MacMillan eyed me without speaking for a long moment. I could almost hear the gears in that calculating mind engaging. I don’t know what conclusions he came to, but maybe he remembered back to another time when we hadn’t trusted each other, and someone had died because of it.

“Come on, MacMillan,” I said, unable to stand the waiting any longer. “I got you the proof you needed last time. Don’t do this again.”

Eventually, he sighed and his hand went out, stilling the advance of his men. “OK,” he said cautiously. “Tell me what you know and maybe we can talk about this. Just don’t let me down, Charlie, or we’ll both swing for it.”

I acknowledged the enormity of the concession he’d just made. “So,” I said, “you don’t have anything solid to go on, then?”

“Nothing that would stand up in court, no,” he admitted at last.

The balance shifted. I felt the tension began to unwind out of my shoulders. I glanced at the others, but their faces didn’t give me any encouragement to collaborate with the enemy. “We think the person who’s been running the burglary ring on the local estates is your Community Juvenile man, Eric O’Bryan,” I began.

“Why?” MacMillan rapped out, but there was no real surprise there.

“Because he’s got the perfect access to all the local teenage criminals,” I said. “We think he and Garton-Jones’s mob have had a deal going where O’Bryan revs up the crime rate, and then takes a cut when the private security men are called in.”

“You think, or you know?” MacMillan asked sharply now. “We’ve suspected the same for a while. O’Bryan’s got expensive tastes in classic cars that he couldn’t finance from his official earnings, but he’s been clever, and it’s been extremely difficult to prove it. He tells a good story about buying them as wrecks and doing them up himself, and witnesses have been singularly reluctant to come forwards.”

“Your proof’s in there,” Sean said tightly, indicating Lavender Gardens. “O’Bryan’s arranged for my brother to be killed in there tonight, because of what he knows. Unless you get to him first.”

“Where?” MacMillan asked.

I told him about the derelict houses with cellars, omitting to mention how we’d obtained the information.

Once he’d pinpointed the exact location, MacMillan gave a frustrated grimace and shook his head. “We can’t do it,” he said.

“What the fuck do you mean, you can’t do it?” Sean flared. “We’re talking about saving the life of a fourteen-year-old boy. Don’t you give a damn about that?”

“Yes, but there’s no way I can get my men in there,” the Superintendent said, keeping his own anger in check. “It’s the middle of a war zone, the way the gangs are fighting. They’ll treat it as an invasion. I haven’t got the manpower to cope as it is. The best we can do at the moment is contain the trouble within the estates. Let them slug it out and pick up the pieces afterwards.”

He cocked an eye upwards. “The only thing you can do now is pray for rain. Nothing quells a riot like a good downpour.”

“So let us go in and get him,” I said urgently. “If you can’t, then for God’s sake let us do it.”

MacMillan’s gaze was even as he considered the implications and the consequences. “No,” he said. “I don’t want your deaths on my conscience, Charlie. I can’t allow it.”

Sean gave him a thin smile. “What makes you think you’re going to get the opportunity to stop us?”

And suddenly we were back to a stand-off again, half a beat away from violence.

It was Madeleine who spoke then. “Look, Superintendent,” she said, calm and reasonable as though breaking up squabbling children, “you’ve just said you haven’t got men to waste. Why waste these two trying to arrest us?”

MacMillan did his best to hold back a smile, but it escaped across the corner of his mouth, even so. He glanced back at me, and in that brief connection I saw the struggle, the tightrope he was walking between the result he so badly wanted to obtain, and utter, bleak disaster. He sighed again, more heavily this time, and gave in.

“What do you need?” he said.

Beside me, I felt Sean loosen. “Body armour would be good,” he said. “It’ll have to be covert stuff, though, or they’ll think we’re with your lot.” He cracked a tired smile of his own. “And I wouldn’t say no to a couple of MP5s.”

MacMillan threw him an old-fashioned look. “Body armour I can manage,” he said grimly. “Firearms are quite another matter.”

I thought of the Glock, still in the glovebox of the Patrol.

“We’ll manage,” I said.

MacMillan jerked his head back towards one of the Sherpa vans on the other side of the car park. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll get you kitted out.” As we started to follow him across the wet tarmac, he added, “Are you sure you realise the dangers of what you’re doing?”

Sean paused at that, met the Superintendent’s eyes and said simply, “I realise the dangers of doing nothing. Roger’s my little brother. What else can I do?”

***

In the back of the Sherpa was a pile of spare body armour like thin black nylon life jackets. MacMillan’s sidekicks started sorting through it and dragging out appropriate sizes for the three of us.

Sean looked at the one he was handed, clearly unimpressed.

“Where are the plates?” he demanded.

MacMillan favoured him with a pointed stare. “This is all I can supply at short notice,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”

“What plates?” Madeleine wanted to know, as Sean helped her strap on her vest.

“Thick ceramic plates that fit into these pockets on the front and back,” he explained. “As they are, these wouldn’t stop anything heavy.”

Madeleine looked down at the vest as she shrugged her jumper back over the top of it. “You mean that without them they’re not bullet-proof?” she asked faintly.

Sean gave her a savage grin. “Nothing’s ever bullet-proof,” he said. “It’s just bullet-resistant. It’s like a rain jacket. Even if it’s supposed to be waterproof, if you stand out in the rain for long enough, you will get wet.”

There was a short, pregnant silence.

“Thank you,” I said tartly, “That’s very reassuring . . .”

We quickly discovered, though, that Sean couldn’t stand having the straps of the armour anywhere near his injured shoulder. Trying to work round the wound just exacerbated the problem.

Eventually, he gave it up, threw the armour back on the pile in frustration. “I’ll just have to risk it,” he said, sweat standing out on his forehead. “But I’ll take a spare one for Roger. The smallest you’ve got.”

MacMillan had eyed him in stony silence while he struggled. “I won’t ask what happened to that shoulder,” he said quietly, “but you’re going to have to give me the full story tomorrow. And it had better be good.”

***

Twenty minutes later, we climbed into the Nissan and Madeleine cranked up the engine. A thin drizzle had started to fall. MacMillan put his head in through the open window.

“I’ll try and pull my men back from the area so you don’t get any interference,” he said. “I can’t warn them you’re on your way. We think half this lot are listening in on police scanners and I don’t want to tip anyone off.”

“Thank you,” Sean said, and meant it.

MacMillan nodded shortly, rapped his hand on the top of the door briskly as he stepped back. “Don’t forget,” he warned, in more like his old clipped tone, waving a finger. “I want both you and your brother in my office tomorrow morning. First thing.”

“Don’t worry,” Sean said. “If we make it, we’ll be there.”

***

Getting into the estate without first tangling with the police lines was the easy part. MacMillan had opened up a small gap for us in the perimeter, and we shot through it without stopping.

To begin with, the outward demeanour of Lavender looked normal. Quiet, maybe, but normal. Except for the total lack of population. The first houses we passed were unnervingly still, as if the empty properties were watching us blankly under the streetlights. There didn’t even seem to be any cats.

Madeleine made another turn. This time there was more evidence of haste, and fear. Windows had been left open, letting the net curtains behind them flutter at the end of their tethers, as though they were trying to get away, too. The odd front door was ajar. The Patrol’s headlights picked out a child’s red plastic pedal tractor, lying on its side in the gutter.

We nearly got as far as Kirby Street, when we turned a corner to find the road completely blocked from one hedge to another by a pair of burning vehicles. One of them had once been a police patrol car. The road was covered in debris, a pavement tree lay uprooted, and a road sign had been pulled up and bent double, its concrete footing still attached.

Madeleine braked to a halt about twenty metres away just as the tyres burst on one of the cars. They went off like pistol shots, echoing from the brickwork on either side of us, making us jump.

“What do we do now?” she asked, shaky but holding. “Is there another way round?”

“We’ll look,” Sean said. I gestured to the glovebox. He reached in and came out with the Glock, which he checked briefly and shoved into the back of his belt. “Stay here and keep the motor running,” he told Madeleine. “If there’s any sign of trouble fall back two streets and we’ll meet you there.”

She nodded whitely and I jumped out with him, slamming the door on an indignant Friday. The stench of the smoke instantly clogged my nostrils. I held my breath as we slipped into the nearest ginnel.

The raucous noise grew louder as we approached the next street, and our pace slowed to a cautious tiptoe in the darkness. It was impossible to see what was under your feet, in any case. I stayed a pace or so behind Sean, my eyes constantly straining to cover the ground behind us.

At the end of the ginnel we crouched low to the fence and peered around the corner of it.

A white kid who couldn’t have been more than twelve ran out of the nearest house doorway and down the short path away from our position, with a flat square box clutched to his chest that was probably a video recorder.

He was followed by a blonde-haired girl, perhaps a year or so younger. In one hand she was carrying a ghetto-blaster, running so the plug bounced along on the end of its lead behind her like a toy dog. In the other she had a cordless electric drill.

The next person out of the house was older, but that still didn’t mean he was out of his teens. He came out walking backwards, emptying the last of a green plastic fuel can over the hall carpet as he emerged. Once the can was empty he threw it aside, pulled a box of matches out of his pocket, and struck one.

As we watched, he flicked the match into the house and darted back out of reach of the blaze that clawed instantly at the doorway. The fire seemed to burst into the world fully grown by the accelerated nature of its birth, and ravenous.

The older boy grabbed his fuel can, but was no more than four strides down the path when something small, dark, and blurred came raining out of the sky. We heard the sound effects of impact, a crack, a grunt, then falling.

“He’s been hit,” I whispered, starting to rise.

Sean grabbed my arm and yanked me back against the fencing, still far stronger than I’d ever be. I rebounded as I hit. It knocked the breath out of me.

“Keep down,” he hissed.

Seconds later, I picked up the sound of running feet. A group of Asian boys pounded into view, armed with lengths of timber and baseball bats. One of them even carried what looked like a sword. They pounced on the one who’d fallen, dragging his lifeless form out into the street so the pack could get at him.

They were onto him like jackals then, thrashing and tearing. I tried for my feet again, but as suddenly as it had started, the beating stopped. They abandoned their attack with a few last, heartfelt kicks and retreated. The firestarter was left washed up on the pavement behind them, bleeding into the gutter.

It only took a moment before the reason for the rapid withdrawal became apparent, even from our screened location.

A line of well-drilled bodies pressed forwards, hiding behind makeshift shields and plastic dustbin lids. Despite the cast of the streetlights, I could see they were all white, teenage at best.

Behind them, another wave were lighting Molotovs and throwing them casually towards the enemy. Those without a cigarette lighter were lobbing bricks or bottles instead. The cacophony was unbelievable. It was a devastating barrage to endure, and the Asian gangs fell back in disarray in the face of it.

The newcomers advanced until they’d moved over and round the firestarter, paused for a moment, then backed away. When the piece of pavement where he’d been lying reappeared, he’d been gathered up and taken from it as though he’d never existed.

I glanced at Sean, found his eyes narrowed. He jerked his head to indicate we should leave, and I followed him silently back down the ginnel.

Madeleine was still waiting for us beside the burning police car. We didn’t speak again until we’d climbed into the Patrol.

“What the hell was going on back there?” I demanded, fighting off Friday’s ecstatic reaction to our safe return.

“A very pro operation,” Sean said, twisting in his seat. “They’re clearing everything of value, burning the evidence, and carrying out their wounded. It’s slick, you have to give them that.”

“You mean the whole thing’s been planned?” Madeleine asked when he’d quickly run through what we’d just seen. The disbelief was plain in her voice. “I can’t believe O’Bryan would engineer a riot just so they could rob a few houses.”

“But it’s not just a few,” I said, catching on. “It’s the whole estate, if they can get away with it. This isn’t just a battle, it’s a campaign.”

“We need to tell MacMillan what’s going on in here,” Madeleine said, reaching for her mobile phone.

We didn’t have a direct number for the Superintendent, so the best we could do was dial the main police station in town. Half the population must have been doing the same, because we consistently failed to get a connection.

After half a dozen tries, we gave up. “MacMillan’s got a helicopter up there,” Sean said. “He probably doesn’t need us to tell him what’s happening. We’ve got more important things to focus on, and we’re probably going to have to take the long way round now, so let’s move.”

Even being circumspect, we caught a by-blow of the violence. Turning a corner we almost ran down a small gang of Asian boys who were trying to mount an untidy rearguard action against the interlopers. Both sides reacted immediately to our arrival, turning their missiles onto the Patrol as though by prior agreement.

Madeleine let out a shriek as a petrol bomb shattered on the front bull bars, blocking our forward view in a sheet of flame. Without needing to be told, she slammed the Nissan into reverse and shot backwards. She managed to largely ignore the lump of rockery stone that cartwheeled across the corner of the bonnet, striking the paint to the bone.

Suddenly, we seemed to be surrounded by running figures on all sides. A feral face appeared outside the side window opposite me, making me gasp. Friday hurled himself towards it, all teeth and hackles, and the face dropped away. There were slobber marks left behind on the glass, but I couldn’t tell who’d made them.

Before, the Patrol had made me feel enclosed, protected, but now it was a small steel trap, airless and contracting. My heart seemed to be trying to trampoline its way out of my chest. I bore down hard on the sheer panic that gripped my gut. If they caught us there wasn’t any line of dustbin lid-wielding comrades to come and rescue us. They would hack us to pieces.

Madeleine kept going backwards for several hundred metres with her foot hard down, ignoring the screaming protests of the twin differentials. She steered with one hand, looking back over her shoulder as she swerved wildly down the obstacle-strewn street, jolting over debris and detritus.

I didn’t see anyone standing in our way, but if they were Madeleine didn’t alter course to avoid them. It was best not to look. I expected the tyres to burst at any moment, send us slithering out of control, but somehow they held.

“OK, OK,” Sean shouted. “We’re clear.”

She lifted her foot off the accelerator jerkily. In the low gear the engine braking effect was sharp and severe, throwing us back in our seats. The dog half-fell into my lap, and wasn’t careful which bits of me he trampled on to regain his footing.

Once we’d stopped, Madeleine slumped forwards over the wheel, her whole body shuddering. Sean reached out, stroked her hair. She sat up quickly then, scrubbing at her eyes with an angry fist. “I’m sorry,” she said, forcing out a tight, bright smile. “I’m letting you down.”

“You’re not,” he said, firm, but gentle. “You’re doing great, Mad. Don’t give up on us now.”

She flicked her eyes in my direction, as though expecting to see scorn, but I didn’t have any to give her. Although she’d had a terrifying situation thrown at her, she hadn’t frozen. You couldn’t ask for more than that from anyone.

“Courage isn’t about not being scared,” I said. “It’s about overcoming it.”

She looked surprised for a moment, then nodded and squared her shoulders.

“OK,” she said, back on level ground. “I’m OK. Let’s go.”

***

We detoured round the trouble-spot through one of the kiddies’ playgrounds, sideswiping a slide in the darkness and splintering the fragile glass fibre. I pushed away the pang of guilt.

The short cut brought us out close to our target, on the far side of Kirby Street and further out towards the darkened No Man’s Land between the estates. The lights of Copthorne blazed in the near distance.

Sean eyed the black outlines of the last remaining line of terraced houses in the centre with relief.

“At least they haven’t torched them yet,” he said.

The row in front of our destination had long since collapsed. The slate had gone to thieves, the glass to vandals. Then the rain had picked away at the mortar between the rubble-filled stone walls until, at last, the houses had simply tumbled into their own cellars.

The weeds and the brambles had whipped up to hold what was left fast to the ground, as if they were afraid it would be taken from them, if they let go.

We couldn’t get right up to the front of the row where we suspected Roger had been stashed. Madeleine nosed the Patrol to a careful halt as close as she could among the fallen masonry and dead timber, and cut the engine.

We all climbed out, feeling the bite of the night air. Sean handed Madeleine the body armour we’d brought for Roger, and picked up a big Maglite.

Friday jumped down and lifted his head, blinking as he sampled the breeze, as if overwhelmed by the barrage of scents that assaulted him. He circled aimlessly round the Patrol, seeming interested in everything. Pauline had said he was a good tracker, but it was difficult to know if he was onto something.

The fronts of the houses had been boarded up with sheets of de-laminating plywood, and although we walked quickly down the row with the torch, none of them looked to have been recently disturbed.

“We’ll try the back,” Sean said. “We’ll be here all night if we have to fight our way into every one from this side.”

The rear of the houses could be reached down what had once been an alleyway, with cobbles underfoot, and a gully drain down the centre. The mirror-image row that would have backed onto it was no more than a disconnected pile of stones.

The gates leading to the tiny back yards had mostly disintegrated, or were dangling by the rusted remnants of their hinges. One dislodged completely and clattered to the floor as we brushed past.

The back doors had been made of sterner stuff than the gates, but they’d been kicked in instead. Inside, the houses were very dark and reeked with a pungent blend of old urine like a neglected public lavatory. The beam of the torch picked out empty two-litre bottles of cheap cider, scrunched-up crisp packets, and blackened shards of silver foil. I didn’t see the needles, but I tried to curb Friday’s explorations with a hand slipped through his collar, just in case.

The Ridgeback didn’t show any signs of involvement until the fourth house along. As we stepped through the doorway he suddenly went rigid, and jerked forwards out of my grasp.

He shot through the kitchen. We followed at a slightly slower pace, trying not to break our necks in the gloom by tripping over rotting furniture too shabby even for the house clearance gannets to cart away.

In the living room we found Friday scrabbling at the base of a mattress that was leaning up against the wall by the stairs.

I clicked my fingers and the dog reluctantly pulled back. Between the three of us we dragged the mattress into the centre of the room and dropped it onto the boards, raising musty clouds of dust that spiralled and spun in the beam of the torch.

Behind it, the door leading to the cellar had been secured with a shiny new galvanised bolt and padlock.

Sean gave the door an experimental nudge, but the house dated from the 1890s’, back when they built them strong. I tapped him on the arm and handed him my Swiss Army knife. The Philips screwdriver attachment was already unfolded.

“You always were the prepared one, Charlie,” he said with a grin that I heard in his voice rather than saw. “I think you must have been a Boy Scout in a previous life.”

“Didn’t you know?” I said, laconic. “I’m a member of the Anti-Woggle League.”

Madeleine shone the Maglite onto the door. It didn’t take Sean long to undo the two screws which held the catch onto the outer frame. The door swung outwards with the bolt and padlock still attached, without us having to bother forcing them. Sean gave me back the knife and took the torch from Madeleine.

Its narrow beam revealed a small dank stairwell that seemed to disappear much further than it should do in order to descend just one level into the cellar.

Something brown and furred scuttled across one of the lower treads and paused to stare red-eyed up into the flashlight, unconcerned. It was the size of a small rabbit, igniting a dread I hadn’t experienced since childhood. Friday growled deep in his throat, and Madeleine groaned.

“You stay here,” Sean told her. “I don’t like the idea of all of us being down there, anyway, just in case.”

She nodded gratefully, and I was forced to swallow my own fear, starting nervously down the stairs as though I was expecting the damned thing to leap out at me at any moment. All the hairs on my arms had stood bolt upright like I’d had a static charge.

“Are you OK?” Sean asked.

I forced a smile, managed through gritted teeth, “If there’s once thing I can’t stand, it’s fucking rats.”

Sean glanced at me, and when he spoke his voice was dry as the desert. “So don’t fuck them,” he said.

Friday wasn’t in the mood to miss out on the action, particularly with the prospect of an interesting snack in the offing. He was destined to be disappointed. The rat scarpered as soon as he put his first foot on the stairs, disappearing into a hole in the stonework from which it failed to re-emerge.

Sean edged downwards with more circumspection, holding the torch at shoulder height, just behind the bulb so he could use the other end as a club. Once we reached the rough floor we both stood silent for a few moments, scanning the corners of the cramped room.

The cellar was little more than ten feet square, the walls covered with crumbling plaster which had slipped to reveal large areas of mouldy stone underneath.

Sean cast about with the light, but the search pattern revealed the cellar to be almost empty, apart from the junk. Piled against the far wall were great stacks of mildewed newspapers, wilted slabs of cardboard, and rags, all mixed up together. It smelt of corruption, and festering decay.

For a minute we thought it was a false alarm, and I felt the sharp, sour tang of disappointment. Then Friday gave up inspecting the hole where the rat had made its exit, and came over to give us the benefit of his sensitive nostrils.

He padded casually across the uneven cobbles and thrust his face straight into the dross until he was buried up to the ears, like he’d put his head under water.

The result sent us both reeling back in shocked amazement.

The pile of rubbish exploded upwards and outwards with a wailing cry. A small, stinking apparition launched itself from the dregs and lunged for the gap between us and the freedom of the stairs.