Luc: A Spy Thriller (13 page)

I saw one officer stagger back and drop to the ground. Some of his colleagues rushed over and tried to put the fire out that had taken hold on his uniform.

We couldn’t stand and watch. It had been the wrong decision to come up this way. I gripped Lucia’s hand tighter.

‘We have to go back,’ I said, the smell of smoke and sulphur now reaching us. ‘We can’t get out this way.’

We turned and started heading back down the street.

‘Where have all these people come from?’ I asked. The street was now seething with angry protesters. We were being jostled, and Lucia held tightly to me, gripping my arm. I shielded her as best as I could, while still manoeuvring us down the street. The mob had got into the food shop now and we began to see an orange glow from inside and another cheer went up. They were setting the place on fire.

‘What if there are people upstairs?’ Lucia asked.

If there were, this was not going to be good. What was their choice? Stay hiding upstairs with the fire coming to get them, or come down and face the mob?

‘We have to help them,’ Lucia said.

She was right, of course, but a couple of the protesters heard her and turned.

‘You sticking up for these scum?’ one of them demanded, advancing aggressively towards her. ‘You want to help them?’

‘You can’t murder them,’ Lucia shouted at him. ‘They just own a shop.’

I held a hand up to placate the two of them. ‘We’re good. We’re good. Let’s go, Lucia.’

Lucia tried to stand her ground. ‘We have to help them,’ she said.

‘We can’t help them by getting ourselves killed.’ I pushed her forwards.

‘Hey, yo,’ the protester shouted. ‘Don’t walk away.’

I could tell by the tone of his voice that this man wanted to make something of it.

‘Keep walking, Lucia,’ I said.

‘Hey.
Hey
.’ He wasn’t giving up. This could turn very nasty, very quickly.

‘Keep going,’ I said. ‘Don’t look back.’

I briefly let go of Lucia’s hand. I swung round and drove a single punch into the protester’s stomach. He doubled up and let out an almost silent cry as his knees began to buckle. I turned back, side stepping people, jostling the crowd. I barged my way through and grabbed Lucia’s hand again and she held me tighter. ‘Keep going,’ I told her. We pushed our way through the crowd. There was the sound of more vehicles. Now screeching to a halt. Riot police swarmed out and took up position in two lines, blocking the exit
this
end too.

The crowd had now seen the arriving police and surged forward. We kept pushing through the crowd and were one of the first to confront the two lines.

A policeman with helmet and shield and dark, staring eyes blocked our way, standing shoulder to shoulder with his colleagues.

‘We’re not part of this,’ I shouted out to him. ‘Let us through.’

I stepped forward and tried to gently push Lucia through the line of police. The policeman pushed her back with his hand. Then he pushed me back with his shield, the reinforced plastic slamming into my chest and face, sending me sprawling back into the oncoming crowd. Thankfully, somehow I managed to stay on my feet. If I’d fallen to the ground with all these stamping feet, I might never have got up again. It sent a chill through me just thinking about it.

‘What are you doing?’ I shouted to the policeman. ‘We’re not part of this. We got caught up in it.’ He made a motion with his hand as if to say, ‘Stay back.’

I took Lucia’s hand.

‘What are we going to do?’ Her eyes were wide and her voice was urgent.

‘I don’t know. They’re kettling us.’

I pulled Lucia along the front of the line, to the side of the street, where the buildings were. There seemed to be slightly more room there.

The mob were taunting the lines of police. Shouting stuff, hurling abuse.

The noise was incredible now. So was the animosity. The smell of uncontrolled violence was in the air. You could almost taste it.

I could see two men trying to break a slab of concrete. Presumably to use as missiles. A flash of orange to my left and I looked around and saw a Molotov cocktail explode into the police lines. A guttural roar went up from the mob.

Then I saw her.

As I turned back to Lucia I glimpsed a figure at the first floor window of the burning shop. I stopped and focused amid the maelstrom all around us. I could see her clearly now. See her elderly face, tight with fear. It was as if she was too scared to open the window and call for help for fear of the mob. But the fire would be creeping inexorably closer.

Lucia had now seen her too.

‘We have to help her,’ she insisted. And this time I knew she was right.

I swung round and shouted to the nearest policeman. ‘There’s a woman trapped in that - .’

‘Get back,’ he shouted, punching his shield into my face.

‘
Philip
,’ Lucia shouted, as I was hurled backwards. I tried to catch myself, but it was a sickening feeling as I lost all balance and sunk backwards, nothing to hold on to, and landed on my back with a thump on the chalky limestone of the road.

Immediately someone had stepped back and toppled over me, swearing, and sending a cloud of chalk into my face. Vicious boots and shoes stamped all around me, inches from my head and body.

‘Philip, get up,’ Lucia shouted.

The man who had toppled and fallen over me was not happy either as he was lashing out at me with his feet. This was not at all good. People were turning, seeing me,
kicking
me now, telling me to get out of the way. My hands were up, shielding my head. Someone else toppled over me and I took a kick in the face.

I put my left palm onto the ground. It immediately got stamped on and I had to ignore that and I used my hand and my heels to twist round. My head was smacked and bumped and barged but I was now on my knees and I got onto one knee and grabbed up at someone above me and pulled myself up using his shirt. Someone grabbed my right hand and I was pulled backwards. I turned and Lucia pulled me towards her. We pushed through the crowd to the side, up onto the pavement, away from the yobs who had kicked at me. They were now shouting abuse at the police, they’d forgotten all about me. We made it to the side, where the buildings were.

‘Thank you, Lucia,’ I said, meaning it.

‘The woman,’ Lucia said.

I nodded. The police weren’t going to help, or maybe they just hadn’t heard me. But time was leaking away. We had to act now. We couldn’t get into the woman’s apartment from the shop below her because the fire had now taken hold.

The mob were not vandalising the other buildings. They were interested only, it seemed, in the Guatemalan food shop and the police.

I looked up.

Maybe it could work.

The handle of the door nearest to us was locked.

‘Lucia. When I open this door, get inside straight away. I have to relock it as quick as I can.’ She knew what I meant: the mob. She nodded.

I pulled out my set of keys, my fingers chalky because of the limestone road, and, as far as I could tell, unobserved, I picked the lock and pushed the door open.

Lucia hurried inside and I swiftly followed her. I swung round and shut the door again. I double locked it.

We were okay. We hadn’t been seen.

A fist hammered on the door. I was wrong.

‘We have to hurry,’ I said, as the hammering intensified. ‘Up the stairs.’

We bolted up the staircase. We were in somebody’s house. I was sorry about that, but I hoped they would understand, would in fact want to help the stricken woman. I called out, but nobody answered. There was the smell of recent cooking, so maybe they’d gone out after having lunch.

‘What are we going to do?’ Lucia called out as we continued up the second flight of stairs.

‘We’re going to get on the roof.’

Lucia’s pounding footsteps stopped. I almost ploughed into the back of her.

‘Lucia. Come on.’

‘The roof,’ she said. ‘I don’t like heights.’

‘I’m sorry.’ I looked around. ‘I can’t leave you in here. That mob will break down that door eventually.’

‘Oh god.’

We continued up the staircase and reached the top floor, a small crucifix hung over the bannister post. There was a single small window at the back. I pushed open the wooden window and took the framed family photograph off the sill and placed it behind me on the lino floor. I looked out of the window and back up at the roof. It didn’t look overly difficult.

I pulled my head back in and faced a pale-looking Lucia. ‘Lucia. I’ll go first. Then I’ll pull you up. There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll be holding you.’

She nodded, her eyes wide.

I looked at my hands. I know climbers use chalk to dry out their hands for better grip, but I don’t know, my hands seemed to have more of a smooth sheen to them because of the chalk. I didn’t really have time to analyse it now. I rubbed my palms on my T-shirt. Placing both hands on the window ledge, I pushed myself up and got one foot onto the ledge.

I climbed out and stood on the outside window sill, my right palm lightly holding the upper side of the window frame. The sound of the mob was louder now and it seemed their intensity had not lessened. But I had to ignore them. I leaped up and grabbed the wooden overhang, and then swung my right leg up and got my foot onto the tiles. A warm breeze blew against my face and I pushed down on the tiles and with a final propulsion from my right foot, I was finally up on the roof and I turned and lay flat on my back and stared at a blue, almost cloudless sky. It was the typical pitched roof, two sides going up to a point. But thankfully the gradient was not a steep one. I was obviously on the rear side and I swung round on the tiles and lay on my belly and leaned down.

‘Lucia,’ I called. ‘Come on out.’

I leaned down as far as I thought I could go. My left arm was stretched out to the side and dug into the baking hot tiles. I tensed my stomach muscles. They were going to be taking most of the pressure. Lucia’s head appeared out of the window. She turned, looked upwards, her clearly-scared face, staring up at me. ‘Give me your hand,’ I said to her.

She tentatively reached out and I quickly grabbed her hand and yanked her upwards and she let out a shriek and I half got her onto the roof. I twisted my stomach round and pushed my hand up towards the ridge of the roof so her thighs now gently scraped the tiles. She did the rest, pulling her legs in and crawling up a little with her forearms.

After Lucia had got her breath back she nodded and said, ‘Was rather rapid.’

‘Yes. Best way.’

I think she tried a nod then.

‘Crawl like a cat,’ I said, and showed her by setting off across the tiles. I knew it was the fourth house along.

I kept low and padded across the coarse, hot tiles. Each house along had a roof that was at a different height. The second house along was slightly lower than the first and the roof was essentially flat. I jumped down onto it and to my left I could now see some of the mob down below. I looked back. Lucia hadn’t moved. She was curled up in a ball on her side where I’d left her. She’d frozen. Understandable.

I carried on, jogging across the flat concrete of the roof. I don’t think the mob had seen me and I climbed up onto the roof of the third house along. We were back to the pitched roof, and this one was wooden and painted light blue, and I carefully made my way across it until I got to the fourth house along. I had to jump up onto the roof of this one, pitched again, brown tiles, and I edged along until I got to the middle, where smoke was rising.

I peered down over the guttering and saw that a window was open, grey smoke drifting out. I lowered myself down and climbed inside, knocking a vase or something onto the floor.

I was in a small kitchen. The smoke was coming from under the door. I took a tea towel from a hook near the sink and ran it under the cold tap. I tied it around my nose and mouth. I found another tea towel in a drawer and soaked that under the tap. I braced myself, and then opened the kitchen door.

A wall of heat hit me. Thick black smoke poured in. I kept low and moved forward. I could make out thin wooden columns to my right and realised they were bannisters, so I was obviously on a landing. I kept moving. I’d seen the elderly lady from a front room, so I jogged forward, groping in front of me. My hands hit a wooden door and I searched for a handle and got inside and slammed the door behind me. Like the kitchen, there was much less smoke in here. Just a grey mist hanging in the air. A red sofa on my left and a TV in the corner took up a lot of the room. A rectangle of smoky light shone from the window we’d earlier seen the lady from. But I couldn’t see the lady now.

I called out. No response. She wasn’t in here.

I took a deep breath and backed out of the room, back into the thickly cloying smoke and heat. I could see the glinting of a metal door handle on my right and I turned it and hurried inside, slamming the door behind me. It was another small room. My heart suddenly sank as I saw, up against the far wall, with one of those colourful mobiles hanging above it, a small wooden cot. I rushed over to it.