Riot Act

RIOT ACT

One

Phone calls that come out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, rarely herald good news as far as I’m concerned. This one arrived somewhere between midnight and one am. It yanked me forcibly out of the warm leisures of sleep, and proved no exception to the rule.

Right from the outset, in that fraction between dreaming and waking, I was overwhelmed by an instinctive dread.

By the second ring, I’d jerked upright in bed, fumbling for the bedside light and swinging my legs out from under the blankets before I’d really kicked my brain into gear.

It took a moment or two to work out that I wasn’t safe in my own bed. Instead, I recognised a small, oppressively-wallpapered room, made smaller still by the pair of dark oak wardrobes that loomed over me from both sides.

Pauline’s place.

I’d been house-sitting for Pauline Jamieson for three weeks at that point. Ever since she’d flown to Canada to visit her son. Waking up in her bed still brought a feeling of disorientation.

The phone noise ran on, shrill and imperious. I groped for the receiver and tried to rub the grittiness out of my eyes.

“Yeah, hello?” It was a relief to stop the damned phone ringing at last, but that feeling didn’t hold.

“Oh, Charlie, please come quickly, and bring the dog!” A woman’s voice, scratchy with alarm and close to weeping. “They are in the garden and Fariman has gone out after them. I am afraid they will kill him!”

The last vestiges of sleep evaporated. “Shahida?” I said, suddenly recognising one of Pauline’s neighbours. One of my neighbours for the moment. “Calm down. Now tell me who? Who has Fariman gone after in the garden?”

“The thieves!” she cried, as though it was obvious, the pitch of her voice rising like a banshee spirit. “They are trying to steal his equipment. Please, come now.”

I started to ask if she’d called the police, but the phone was already dead in my hand.

With a muttered curse, I dialled the local cop shop myself, giving them the bare bones and demanding that they come at once. While I was speaking, I clambered into my clothes. By the time I hit the narrow staircase I was dressed and fully alert.

Well, almost alert. In the darkened hallway I nearly went sprawling over Pauline’s Rhodesian Ridgeback, Friday. The dog had been sleeping with his back against the bottom riser, and he bounced up with a startled yelp.

I grabbed his lead from the hall table and snapped it onto the thick leather collar. Just for a second I hesitated over the wisdom of taking him with me, then dismissed my doubts. He might be a handful, but there were times when a big dog like Friday comes in very useful.

Now, he barely gave me time to lock the front door before he was towing me along the short driveway to the road. Fariman and Shahida’s house was on the other side of Kirby Street from Pauline’s, and further down the row of mainly dilapidated semis. I headed quickly in that direction.

I’d only met the elderly couple a few times, but I knew Fariman had been a cabinetmaker. Since he’d retired recently he’d kitted out the shed in his back garden with enough tools to keep his hand in. Trouble was, he’d turned it into your average burglar’s car boot sale gold mine. By the sound of it, it hadn’t taken them long to cotton on to the fact.

I was surprised now to see one or two other figures emerging from doorways, pulling on coats over their pyjamas. Some carried torches.

It startled me, the reaction. Lavender Gardens was a notoriously crime-ridden estate and I would have expected a far more apathetic response to any cry for help. Maybe there was hope for the area after all.

My sense of complacency lasted until I reached the far crumbling kerb and we threaded our way through the line of close-packed empty vehicles.

Friday lurched to a halt so abruptly that I ran into his rump and nearly stumbled. It only took a second before I realised the reason for his sudden check. For me to register a bulky figure rising behind a parked van.

Shock made me gasp, sent me reeling backwards. Fear convulsed my hands, so that I tightened my grip on Friday’s lead.

A harsh laugh greeted my recoil, as though that was the effect its owner always hoped his appearance would have, and had yet to be disappointed. “A tad late to be walking the dog, isn’t it, Fox?”

The man swaggered forwards into the glow of a streetlight, sending a spent cigarette butt sizzling carelessly into the gloom. Three other shadows solidified behind him, keeping station. All of them were dressed in military surplus urban cam fatigues, and carrying an assortment of makeshift weaponry that would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so deadly serious.

Friday settled for giving out a low growl. It was difficult to tell if his hackles were up, because Ridgebacks have a line of opposite-growing hair down their spines anyway, but the sight and sound of him was enough to stop the men in their tracks.

I unwound slowly, trying to steady my heartbeat. “What are you doing here, Langford?” I asked sharply. “Bit outside your territory, isn’t it?”

With one eye on the dog, he treated me to a humourless smile, glancing round at the men behind him for back-up. “We go where we’re needed,” he said piously.

“Well, you’re not needed here.”

“No?”

“No,” I snapped. “These people have got enough problems with law and order without your bunch of bloody vigilantes joining in. Get back to Copthorne. There’s plenty for you to do over there.”

“Oh, don’t you worry,” he said, voice sly, “we’ve got Copthorne all sewn up.”

“Well, that’ll be a first,” I threw back at him, starting forwards again. The one nearest to Friday moved back quickly, but the other two made sure I had to shift course to step round them. The cheap little power play brought grins to their faces.

Langford, self-styled leader of the local vigilante group, shared the same basic mental genotype with playground bullies and third world secret policemen. I’d recognised it the first time I’d met him and his cronies, and I’d gone out of my way to avoid contact ever since.

Commotion broke out further up the street. I turned and started to run again, Friday loping alongside me, ignoring the heavy footsteps pounding along behind.

Shahida was standing in her nightdress in the middle of her driveway, wailing. She had nothing on her feet, and her normally neatly-plaited greying hair was a wild halo around her head.

Several of her neighbours clustered round, trying to soothe her. Their efforts only served to enrage her further. “Of course everything is not all right!” she shrieked at them, half demented.

I skidded to a halt and pushed my way through. “Shahida,” I said urgently. “Where are they?”

“In the garden.” She waved towards a gate that led round to the side of the house. Then, having passed on the baton of responsibility, her face crumpled into tears. “Please, Charlie, don’t let him do anything stupid.”

Langford’s men shoved past me, making it to the gloomy back garden first. Where the lawn had once been was now a square of gravel and artistically-placed rocks, leading down to the box hedge at the bottom.

The shed where Fariman kept his tools was a squat wooden building that stood over by the hedge on a raft of concrete slabs. It was a dingy corner, despite the orange glare of streetlights reflected by the low cloud overhead, and the light spilling out from the open kitchen doorway.

Even so, I could see that the lock that had once secured the shed had been ripped out, leaving a jagged scar, pale against the dark wood that surrounded it. It should have left the shed totally exposed, but the door was firmly closed, all the same.

Shahida’s husband was thrusting his not inconsiderable bodyweight against the timber frame to wedge it shut as though his life depended on it. His bare feet were digging in to the edge of the gravel to give him extra purchase. Fariman wasn’t a tall man, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in girth.

He looked up, proud and sweating, as the group of us burst into view round the corner of the house.

“I have them! I have them!” he shouted.

Something hit the inside of the door with tremendous force. It bucked outwards, opening by maybe three or four inches, before Fariman’s sheer bulk slammed it shut again. His thick, black-framed glasses bounced down his nose, and almost fell.

The fear leapt in my throat. “Fariman, for God’s sake come away from there,” I called. “They can’t take anything now. Let them go.”

Langford treated me to a look of utter disgust and strode forwards. On the way past, he swung a provocative fist at Friday’s head.

The dog made a solid attempt at dislocating my shoulder as he leapt for the bait and the lead brought him up short. Goaded, he let out half a dozen rapid, raucous barks before I could quieten him. The deep-chested sound of a big dog with its blood up, raising the stakes for whoever was sweating inside the shed.

Langford flashed me an evilly triumphant grin. “Keep the little bastards pinned down,” he bellowed, breaking into a run. “We’ll take care of them. Come on lads!”

The trapped thieves must have heard Langford’s voice, and if they didn’t know the man himself, they could recognise the violent intent. Behind the small barred shed window, I could see movement against torchlight. It grew more frantic, and the hammering on the door increased in ferocity.

“Don’t worry, Charlie,” Fariman cried, the old man’s voice squeaky with excitement. “I have them. I ha—”

There was another assault on the shed door. This time, though, it wasn’t the dull thud of a shoulder or boot hitting the inside of the panel. It was the ominous crack of metal slicing straight through the flimsy softwood.

Fariman’s body seemed to give a giant juddering twitch. His eyes grew bulbous behind the lenses of his glasses, and he looked down towards his torso with a breathless giggle. Then his legs folded under him and he slowly toppled sideways onto the gravel.

Behind him, sticking out a full six inches through the shed door he’d been leaning into so heavily, were the four vicious stiletto prongs of a garden fork. Where the exposed steel should have glinted brightly under the glare of the lights, instead it gleamed dark with blood.

For a moment, the wicked tines paused there, then were withdrawn with a sharp tug, like a stiffly re-setting trap. Even Langford’s brigade hesitated at the sight. The blood lust that had lit their initial charge faltering in the face of an enemy that hit back.

Before they had time to assimilate this new threat, the shed door was kicked open. Three figures emerged, furtive, moving fast. They were dressed in loose dark clothes, with woolly hats pulled down hard and scarves tied over the lower half of their faces like cattle rustlers from the Old West. Despite the disguises, it was clear at once that they were just boys.

Langford and his men had a renewed spasm of bravery. Then they wavered for a second time, coming to a full stop halfway across the back garden. When I realised what the boys were holding, I understood the vigilantes’ sudden reluctance to continue the attack.

Fariman’s shed was crammed with odds and ends, like any other. Old pop bottles that he’d never quite got round to returning; a bag of rags for cleaning brushes and mopping up; and plastic cans of stale fuel for some long-discarded petrol-driven mower.

All the ingredients, in fact, for the perfect Molotov cocktail.

The leader of the boys edged forwards. He was holding a disposable cigarette lighter ready under the wick. His hand shook perilously.

“Get back or I’ll do it!” he screamed, voice muffled by the scarf. He sounded as though he was about to burst into tears. “All of you, get right back!”

“Give it up,” Langford warned, teeth bared. “This doesn’t have to happen.” He held up both hands as though to placate, but he didn’t retreat as ordered, wouldn’t concede ground.

The two sides faced off, tension crackling between them like an overhead power line in the rain. They yelled the same words at each other, over and over, the pitch gradually rising to a frenzied level.

Behind the boys, close up to the shed doorway, Fariman’s body lay still and bleeding on the ground.

Finally, Langford broke the cycle. “Give it up,” he snarled, “or I’ll send the dog in.”

I knew I should have left Friday at home.

Before I could react to contradict this outrageous bluff, Shahida and a group of her neighbours appeared en masse round the corner of the house. They had the air of a mob, racking the boys’ nerves another notch towards breaking point.

Then Shahida caught sight of Fariman’s inert body and she started screaming. It was the kind of scream that nightmares are made of. A full-blooded howling roar with the sort of breath-control an opera singer would have killed for. It didn’t do me much good, so it must have struck utter terror into her husband’s attackers.

And, having accomplished that, Shahida broke free of her supporters, and bolted across the garden to avenge him.

“Shahida, no!” I’d failed Fariman, I couldn’t let her down as well.

As she rushed past me I let go of Friday’s straining leash and grabbed hold of her with both hands. Such was her momentum that she swung me round before I could stop her. She struggled briefly, then collapsed in my arms, weeping.

Suddenly unrestricted, Friday leapt forwards, eager to be in the thick of it. He bounded through the ranks of Langford’s men and into plain view on the gravel, moving at speed. With the idea of an attack from the dog firmly planted in his mind, the boy with the cigarette lighter must have thought he could already feel the jaws around his throat.

He panicked.

The tiny flame expanded at an exponential rate as it raced up the rag wick towards the neck of the bottle. He threw the Molotov in a raging arc across the garden, onto the stony ground. The glass shattered on impact, and sent an explosive flare of burning petrol reaching for the night sky with a whoosh like a fast-approaching subway train.

Langford and his men ducked back, cursing. I dragged Shahida’s incoherent form to safety, yelling for Friday as I did so.

He appeared almost at once through the smoke and confusion, ears and tail tucked down, looking sheepish.

Voices were shouting all around us. Langford’s crew had skirted the flames and redoubled their efforts to get to the boys. Christ, would they never give up?

Another Molotov was lit, but it was thrown in the other direction. Away from the vigilantes.

And into the shed.

This time, there was more than the contents of the bottle to fuel the fire. With bitumen sheeting on the roof, and years of creosote on the walls, they couldn’t have asked for a more promising point of ignition.

The flames caught immediately, sparkling behind the window, washing at the doorway. The speed with which they took hold, and the heat they generated, was astounding.

Fariman!

“Get the fire brigade,” I yelled, jerking one of the neighbours out of their stupor. “And an ambulance.” Where the hell were the police when you needed them?

I shouted to the dog to stay with Shahida, but didn’t wait around to find out if he obeyed me. I ran forwards, shielding my eyes with my hand against the intensity of the fire. The old man was still lying where he’d fallen by the shed door. The flames were already licking at the framework nearest to him. I grabbed hold of a handful of his paisley dressing gown and heaved.

For all the difference it made, I might as well have been trying to roll a whale back into the sea.

I shouted for help, but nobody heard in the brawl that was fast developing all around me. The smoke hit in gusts, roasting my lungs, making my eyes stream. I tugged at Fariman’s stocky shoulders again, with little result.

In the mêlée, somebody tripped over my legs and went head-first onto the gravel, landing heavily. I lunged for the back of their jacket, keeping them on the ground.

“Wait,” I said sharply as they began to struggle. “Help me get him out of here.”

The boy stared back at me with wide, terrified eyes over the scarf that had slipped down to his chin. He tried again to rise, but desperation lent me an iron grip.

Something exploded inside the shed, and shards of glass came bursting out of the doorway. I spun my head away, but still I kept hold of the boy. I turned back to him.

“If you don’t help me, he’ll burn to death,” I said, going for the emotional jugular. “Is that what you want?”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then he shook his head. Taking a leap of faith, I let go of his jacket and fisted my hands into Fariman’s dressing gown again. To my utter relief, the boy did the same at the other shoulder.

He was little more than a kid, but between us, a few feet at a time, we managed to drag the old man clear.

We got him onto the crazy paving by the back door of the house. It wasn’t as far away from the inferno as I would have liked, but it was better than nothing. The effort exhausted the pair of us.

I searched for the pulse at the base of Fariman’s his neck. It throbbed erratically under my fingers. I heaved him over onto his stomach and pulled up the dressing gown. Underneath, he wore pale blue pyjamas. The back of the jacket was now covered with blood, which was pumping jerkily out of the row of small holes in the cloth.

I glanced up at the boy, found him transfixed.

“Give me your scarf.” My words twitched him out of his trance. For a moment he looked ready to argue, then he unwound the scarf from his neck and handed it over without a word.

I balled the thin material and padded it against the back of Fariman’s ribcage. “Hold it there,” I ordered. When he didn’t move I grabbed one of his hands and forced it to the substitute dressing.

The boy tried to pull back, didn’t want to touch the old man. If you didn’t want his blood on your hands, sonny, you should have thought of that earlier. With my forefinger and thumb I circled his skinny wrist, and dug cruelly deep into the pressure points on the inside of his arm, ignoring his yelp of pain. “Press hard until I tell you to let go.” My voice was cold.

He did as he was ordered.

I checked down Fariman’s body. When I got to his legs I found the skin on one shin bubbled and blistered where it had been against the burning shed door. It looked evil. I carefully peeled the charred pieces of his clothing away from the worst of it, and left it well alone.

Burns were nasty, but unless they were serious they were low on the priority list when it came to first aid. Besides, without even a basic field medical kit, there was little else I could do.

“Where the hell’s that ambulance?” I growled.

Shahida reappeared at that point, with Friday trotting anxiously by her side. I braced myself for another bout of hysterics, but she seemed to have run out of steam. She slumped by her husband’s side and clutched at his limp hand, with silent tears running down her face.

I put my hand on her shoulder and shot a hard glance to the boy, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

The neighbours had swelled in number and organised themselves with buckets of water and a hosepipe. Where the first petrol bomb had landed there was now a soggy, blackened patch on the sandy-coloured stones.

Then the whole of the roof of the shed went up. A rejuvenated blast of flame kept the people back to a respectful distance. Burning embers came drifting down on the still night air like glitter, dying as they fell.

“Well, we lost the little bastards.” Langford’s voice was thick with anger as he came stamping up. He lit a cigarette, cupping his hands round the match and dropping it on the paving. His cold gaze lingered briefly on Shahida, but he made no moves to try and help. The boy kept his head down.

The first wail of sirens started up in the distance. We all paused, trying to work out if the sound was growing louder.

When it became clear that it was, the boy’s nerve finally broke. He jumped to his feet, abandoning his nursing duties, and ran like a rabbit. Langford suddenly realised that he’d had his prey right under his nose. He gave a bellow of outrage and took off after him.

The kid might have been built for lightness and speed, but gravel is murder to sprint on, and he didn’t get the opportunity to open out much of a lead. Before they hit the hedge at the bottom of the garden, Langford had brought him down.

And once the boy was on the ground, the vigilante waded in with his feet and his fists. His methods were unrefined, but brutally effective, for all that.

I was up and running before I’d worked out quite what I intended to do. I only knew I had to stop Langford before he killed the kid. No matter what he’d done.

“Langford, for God’s sake leave him alone,” I said. “Let the police deal with him.”

Langford whirled round. In the light from the blazing shed, his eyes seemed to flash with excitement. This was what took him and his men out patrolling the streets night after night. Not some altruistic vision. It all came down to the age-old thrill of the chase, the heat of the kill.

“Get lost, Fox,” he snarled. “I’m sick to death of all this passive resistance crap. Take a look around you. It doesn’t work.” He held up a bloodied fist. “This is all these bastards understand.”

“Leave him,” I said again, my voice quiet and flat.

He laughed derisively. “Or what?” he said, turning his back on me. The boy had half-risen in the lull, and Langford punched him viciously in the ribs, watched with grim delight as he dropped again.

Though I tried to hold it back, I felt my temper rise up at me like a slap in the face. My eyes locked on to a target. I didn’t need to concentrate on the mechanics. All the right moves unfurled automatically inside my head.

“Langford!” I called sharply.

And as he twisted to face me again, I hit him.

I’d like to think it was simply a clinically positioned and delivered blow, carefully weighted to disable, calculated to take him quickly and cleanly out of the fight.

The reality was dirtier than that. I hit him in a flash of pure anger, harder and faster than was strictly necessary, not caring for the consequences. It was stupid, and it could have been deadly.

For a moment I thought he was going to keep coming, then he swayed, and I realised that his legs had gone. He just didn’t know it yet.

There was a mildly puzzled expression on his face as he struggled to focus on me. Then his knees gave out, his eyes rolled back, and he flopped gracelessly backwards onto the stony ground.

I started forwards on a reflex, but he didn’t move. I stood there for a moment or two, breathing hard, my fists still clenched ready for a second blow I never had to launch. Then I slumped, defeated by my own anger. It slipped away quietly, leaving me with a fading madness, and a roaring in my ears.

I turned slowly, and found what seemed to be half the population of Kirby Street standing and watching me in shocked and silent condemnation.

Oh God, I thought, not again . . .

Somewhere beyond them, the first of the night’s procession of police cars braked to a fast halt in the road outside.