The Fall of Night

Chapter Twelve: Cry Havoc, and Let Slip the Dogs of War, Take Three

Manchester, United Kingdom

Darren Cooper hated Pakistanis.

It was all the more curious that Cooper had never spent much time with any Pakistani — or Indian, or Bangladesh, or indeed any Asian at all — before developing this hatred. Like many British, he had rarely socialised with any outside school, but his history with them had already been set in stone. Darren Cooper had lost his father to one.

He remembered it as he drove though the streets, looking for their target. His father had been a policeman, back when that had been a respected profession; the young Darren had idealised his father. He had only vague memories of him now; a tall man who had had a beard and a smile and loved his only son. When Cooper had been seven years old, and preparing to go to school, his father had gone into an Asian household with his partner. It hadn’t been anything, but routine; no one had expected trouble.

There had been different accounts of what had actually happened, but Cooper knew which one he believed. As Cooper Senior asked questions, his partner had stumbled over something, evidence of terrorist or small-scale criminal activity. Even then, a drug smuggler would be very unlucky to get more than a few years in prison; terrorists had been sucking money in from the Social Services while plotting the downfall of British civilisation. One of the inhabitants of the house had leapt at him and stabbed him; Cooper Senior had tried to restrain him, sending the attacker reeling to the floor, where he bashed his head against the ground. It had killed him.

Cooper had been too young to understand just what had happened then. The incident had shocked the area; Cooper Senior had become the scapegoat for the charge of police brutality, cut loose from all of the backing he had had a right to expect from his superiors. They had wanted to appease the Asian vote and so Cooper Senior had been stripped of rank, hauled before a kangaroo court and convicted of manslaughter. He hadn’t lasted a month in jail before one of the other inmates had cut his throat in a gruesome revenge killing; Cooper Senior had taken his job seriously.

“Yes, this is the place,” he muttered, as the seven of them reached their target. He glanced at his watch; like all of the members of ‘rent-a-mob,’ insofar as it had members, he had synchronised it with the other watches. “Get ready.”

Cooper had grown up a marked man. Already predisposed to hate Asians — although his first girlfriend had been as black as the night — he had swiftly converted that hatred into an all-encompassing hatred of Islam. It was easy for him to see how Islam was devoted to taking over the world; it never occurred to him that young Muslim men had similarly deluded views about the western world. With poor grades in school, only the determination of the Labour Government that every child had a university education had ensured him a place in Manchester University; there, he had seen more signs of infiltration and the subversion of British values, as defined by his father, who had done his duty, by Muslims. He was literally incapable of seeing the world though a clear lens.

He remembered, as they checked their weapons, his father-in-law. The man had been all glitz and nonsense at first sight, but he had learned quickly; his mother’s husband — it was impossible to think of him as ‘dad’ — was one of the leading lights of the National Front. Cooper had gravitated towards the National Front with glee; he had few prospects and fewer skills, apart from cracking heads. He might have a university degree that was almost worthless — degrees had become more and more worthless every year — but his taste for violence was almost insatiable. Only the belief that the Army, too, had been perverted by Islam had prevented him from signing up; as it was, by twenty years of age, he had a string of assault charges to his name, mainly racist attacks.

His father-in-law had beaten him, then; the first time in his life that anyone had dared to raise a hand to him. The ease of his defeat when he had tried to fight had shocked him, as had the cold precise lecture; random violence helped no one and only gave the police, who were no longer the shining paragons they had been when his father was alive, an excuse to clamp down on the National Front. Instead, Cooper had been assured that he would have a chance to shine; once he had been introduced to Baz Falkland, he had seen that day coming soon.

He glanced down at his watch again. No one was quite sure who had come up with the idea of ‘rent-a-mob,’ but the idea was simple and almost impossible to prevent. At a given time, people who wanted to earn some easy cash — and with unemployment running higher than ever, there were plenty of them — would riot in a given area. The organisers would send them along to their targets, be it a protest march, a football match, or even a police station holding a prisoner who needed sprung… and any fines would be paid afterwards. The police hated it, of course, but between the Internet and mobile phones, it had been almost impossible to shut down. Falkland had told him that it was quite possible that the original originators of the idea were already behind bars, but as a network, someone else had merely taken over the reins. Some of the non-BNP members would have fairly simple jobs; rioting in front of every police station in Manchester. By the time the police clamped down, it would be too late.

“The thing about the system, any system, is that it relies upon the consent or the silence of the majority,” Falkland had said. “We are merely going to make the majority aware of just what has been happening under their noses.”

“Now,” he said. The seven young men got out of the van. They all looked violent, even though the most dangerous person Cooper had met looked soft and harmless; they would be counting on their appearance deterring interference until it was too late. The building that rose up in front of them was the rear of a Mosque, but a special Mosque; it had been built from donations from Manchester Muslims alone. They were proud of it; as far as Cooper was concerned, it was something alien in the fabric of British civilisation. The handful of people sitting outside saw them and drew away from them; three young Muslims stepped forward, carrying staves as if they had watched too many ninja movies in their youths.

“You can’t come in here,” the leader said. Cooper could see the nervousness in his voice, confronted with serious opposition for the first time; he knew what those young men did to people who they caught alone. A girl had been beaten to death for daring to sleep with a man outside marriage. He would have liked nothing better than to take the young man on and kick his arse, but there was no time. “The Police are being called…”

Cooper had been told that the telephone networks would go down, but he had also been told to move as quickly as possible. He lifted the small pistol out of his pocket, remembering how his stepfather had hammered weapons care and safety into his mind, and shot the young man through the head. Red blood stained a spotless white robe as Muslim women started to howl; the other two were shot down before they could react. It was the work of a moment to smash one of the Mosque’s windows and toss in the fuel; a second moment and the detonator was in as well, triggering the fuel into a fire that would be unstoppable unless it was stopped quickly… and one of the ‘rent-a-mob’ groups was blocking the nearest fire station. Flames started to roar upwards as Cooper fired a shot into the leg of a Muslim woman, and then jumped back in the van, charging away from the Mosque and back into the streets of Manchester.

He laughed aloud. For the first time since… well, ever, he felt in control of his life.

One of his friends leered at him. “Fancy a bite to eat?”

Cooper chuckled. “Yes, but none of that foreign muck,” he said. He was coming down off the high now; he wanted nothing more than to wisecrack until he felt more himself again, then go out and do it all over again. “Give me a pizza or a curry any day.”

They laughed again.

Her name was Khadijah, named for the first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, Khadijah bint Khuwailid. Like many other young Muslim girls, she walked the line between religion and society, even though it was harder to walk the line these days. Khadijah, like many others, knew the terrifying stories of womenfolk killed by men for being insufficiently Islamic; secretly, she knew that there would come a time when she would have to choose between her family and her planned career. She wanted to be an air hostess, something that would be sure to excite disapproval in the community. It just wasn't fair.

Khadijah was a believer, in her own way, although nothing short of perfect submission would have pleased some of the men in her family. She was also intelligent and knowledgeable; whenever they protested at her spending time learning as much as she could about Islam, she was able to ensure that she had a piece of learning on her lips that would justify her search for knowledge. Her father’s support was important, but she had that; he had been hoping that one of her brothers would become an imam, but they were all wastrels as far as Khadijah was concerned. They seemed to spend their time lounging around at home doing nothing; if they had been asked to do something, they would have agreed and then simply not bothered to do it at all. Her father had had to come to terms with the possibility that Khadijah might be the only one in the next generation with any Islamic knowledge at all.

And she loved the library in the Mosque. She could read nine different languages, mainly Asian ones, but she had taught herself some of the variants of Arabic just so that she could read some of the books and documents from Africa. The Mosque librarian, a man old enough to be her great-grandfather — and who looked old enough to be her great-great-grandfather — had been puzzled by the girl who came every day after noon prayers to read, but as no true Muslim would ever seek to put barriers in the way of anyone learning about Islam, he said nothing. If he disapproved, he kept it to himself; the handful of young men who tried to chat with her soon fell afoul of his cold stare and disapproving eyes.

It was almost as good as having a proper chaperone. The librarian didn’t make eyes at her and couldn’t have done anything even if she had acted shamelessly in front of him… not that she would have done such a thing, of course. She was a virgin and proud of it.

The noise of the van didn’t bother Khadijah at all, but the first shot had her jumping up in shock, her headscarf almost becoming tangled in the chair before she wrapped it back around her hair. There was an art to wearing a headscarf and Khadijah had never quite managed to master it. The windows were set high in the room, but she was able to see one of the bodies falling backwards, one of the young men who were appointed to guard the Mosque from criminals. She opened her mouth to scream, staring helplessly as a skinhead white youth smashed one of the windows and poured some clear liquid inside, and then dropped something in the liquid. The smell of fuel made her dizzy… and then she realised what was about to happen. The smell was petrol and it was about to catch fire; she had seen enough movies to know what would happen then…

“Get back,” the librarian snapped. A strong arm yanked her back as something sparked and the rear of the library burst into flame. Khadijah watched in horror as the fires spread throughout the library, burning books and pamphlets alike; microfilms, cassette tapes, videos and DVDs added their smells to the air as the fire consumed them faster than seemed possible. “You have to get out of here.”

Khadijah couldn’t face it. “Help me move the books,” she screamed at him. There were copies of the Qur’an there; cheap ones, but still the holy words of Allah. They could not be destroyed. They must not be destroyed. Her rage gave her strength; she pulled at a bookcase and felt it shift, moving backwards and bringing the fire with it. She screamed again, in rage and hatred, as the fires danced towards her; the smell was making her faint and confused. She was trying to take books off the shelves, tearing off her scarf to carry them in; she expected to wake up any moment and discover that she had been studying too hard. Her eyes were starting to tear up as the heat rose still higher; she was finding it harder and harder to think…

A hand pulled at her and she went down. “Stay down,” the librarian hissed. She realised with a shock, almost with a giggle, that his beard was on fire. She reached out, greatly daring, and swatted at it; he snorted and pulled her forward on her hands and knees towards the door, forcing it open through sheer force of will. “Khadijah; you’re burning!”

She felt it then, just at the same time; a wave of burning pain on her thighs. Her eyes were still stinging, but she could see it now; her dress had caught on fire. She had once wanted to wear tight jeans; for the first time in her life, she thanked Allah for the Mosque’s strict dress code. Jeans would have had her own body ablaze instead of her dress; she tore at it, forgetting modesty, only to be surprised when the librarian grabbed her and forced her to roll on the ground, putting out the fires. The remainder of the fire was still blazing; it struck her suddenly that she couldn’t hear the fire alarm. She should have been able to hear it.

No one had come to help them, she realised; the librarian was puffing and gasping for air. It wouldn’t be long before the fire brought down the Mosque and they were still trapped inside the Mosque; they had to get out and the side doors were bound to be blocked. She pulled the librarian to his feet — she realised, for the first time, that he was an old man — and they staggered off towards the men’s section of the Mosque. It was the only way out… and it was locked. She banged at it, too tired and weak to scream again… and it opened, a worried dark face peering at her. Strong arms took her and the librarian and carefully carried her out of the Mosque; she wanted, desperately, to save the rest of the books. A pair of hands passed her a cup of water and she sipped it gratefully; she felt like collapsing as she stared at the Mosque.

It had been built by the resources of the community, trying to escape the flow of poison money from the Middle East. More and more people were boiling out of the houses… men only, she noticed; some of them were carrying makeshift weapons. They were all staring at the Mosque as the flames grew higher… and then the dome caved in, crashing down on the prayer rooms, crashing down on the washing rooms… and crashing down on the library, where she had enjoyed so many days.

A young man came over to her. She saw his eyes and his beard and just knew that he was going to be trouble. She almost mouthed his words along with him. It would be something insanely ridiculous in the face of the disaster that had just overtaken the community, something so banal as to almost be foolish.

She was right. “Where’s your headscarf?”

The librarian cut loose with a hideous torrent of Arabic, mixed with coughs and gasps for breath, including several words that her father would have beaten her brother for using. The young man, clearly an Arab himself, paled, muttered apologies too softly for her to hear most of the words, and fled to one of the groups of young men who had gathered with weapons. She could hear some of their conversation, calling for Jihad, calling for war… and reminding everyone that neither the Police nor the Fire Brigade had come to help them. Everyone knew some of the attackers, people known for hating them… and they had to pay.

“Khadijah,” a voice called. It was her father, coming running from their house, sweat running down his face. It was almost worth the pain in her chest to see the fear on his face at what had nearly happened to his daughter. The young man protested to him and he quelled him with a glare, all of his attention on Khadijah. “Are you all right?”

The young men were marching off now, heading towards one of the poorer parts of Manchester, carrying their weapons in hand. They would attack the whites themselves, or perhaps they would just attack a church or a Hindu Temple or something that would only make the violence worse. Khadijah had read enough extremist propaganda, even the fearsome Turner Diaries-like Aisha of Arabia, to know what would happen and what would result. People would die…

Lots of people would die.

Khadijah put her head in her hands and wept.