Riot Act (43 page)

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.

For a moment I was totally stunned, made too stupid by it to act, but Sean snagged his foot under a shin as it rushed past him, sending the figure sprawling.

“For fuck’s sake, boy,” Sean roared, shining the torch on him. “Just for once in your life will you stop running away from me?”

Roger had been scrabbling away on his hands and knees and it took him a couple of seconds to register the sound of his brother’s voice. His desperation subsided, but the wariness didn’t leave him.

“We’re not with O’Bryan in this, Roger,” I said quickly, moving forwards. “We’ve never been with him.”

Roger recognised me and suddenly it was like something cracked open inside him. The tears overflowed to drip down his cheeks, leaving clear tracks through the dirt.

“I didn’t want to do it,” he said, desperate, anguished. “We had to. He made us.”

“We know, kid,” Sean knelt by the side of him, put his arms round the boy’s shoulders and hugged him fiercely. “We know all about O’Bryan.”

“He said, if we didn’t k-kill Charlie, he’d make sure Ursula went to p-prison,” Roger went on, the words spilling out of him in gulps, even though his face was buried in Sean’s chest, and his voice was muffled. I had to bend closer to hear what he was saying.

“He said they’d give her a rough time inside. He said—” he broke off as a fresh breaker of tears rolled over and smashed, “that he’d make sure she l-lost the baby.”