White Riot (44 page)

Shepherd was on him, kneeing him in the stomach, bending him double. Whitman fell to the floor, clutching his groin. The gun was snatched from his grasp. He hit the floor, curling up in a foetal ball. Shepherd kicked him hard. Once. Twice.

‘Here. That kicking I’ve always promised you.’ He laughed.

From outside the room came screams, the sound of running. Shepherd looked at the door. The screaming continued out on to the street. He looked back at the TV. Whatever was happening to the few stragglers in the front office, watching the results, chugging back lager, he didn’t care. Nothing was going to stop him savouring his moment of triumph.

Footsteps came running up the stairs towards the room.

Shepherd ignored them.

Mary Evans kept her eyes on the van, holding her breath, waiting for him to appear. A shadow moved round the corner of the building. She sat up straight, squinted through the binoculars. Stroked the button.

‘Yes.’ Her words hissed out through clenched teeth. ‘Yes …’

The figure drew nearer. Her finger hovered over the button.

‘What?’

She looked at the figure, refocused the binoculars. Looked again. It wasn’t Whitman. Nothing like him. It was a teenager, a light-skinned black youth. He checked a piece of paper in his hand. She recognized it. The map she had left for Whitman. He checked again, walked towards the van.

She looked at the button beneath her finger, looked again at the black youth. He was opening the back doors of the van …

‘No …’

The returning officer opened his mouth to speak. Behind him, Rick Oaten adjusted his tie. Shepherd thought he looked ashen, drained. Like the fight had been knocked out of him. Or he was no longer fighting for what he believed in.

Shepherd smiled. Purely academic. In a few minutes it wouldn’t matter at all.

At his feet Whitman stirred, sat up.

‘Should watch this, Trevor. This is where I win. The final countdown, you might say.’

Whitman groaned, tried to pull himself up. Shepherd watched the TV.

The returning officer opened his mouth to speak, started speaking, but a commotion in the crowd distracted him. He looked down to the floor of the packed hall where someone was making their way towards him. A woman, dressed in a business suit, followed by a similarly dressed younger man made their way on to the stage. Shepherd didn’t know who they were, but from the cut of their clothes he knew what they were. Cops.

The female detective introduced herself over the mic. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Diane Nattrass,’ she said, holding up her warrant card, ‘and I am arresting Rick Oaten on charges of abduction, conspiracy, attempting to pervert the course of justice and murder.’

The crowd gasped.

‘What the fuck?’ Shepherd’s face turned scarlet.

On the floor, Whitman laughed.

‘Shut up! Fucking shut up!’ Shepherd began kicking him,
hard. Whitman took the blows, felt at least one rib break with each kick he took.

On the screen, they were cuffing Rick Oaten and leading him away.

‘Bastard!’ Shepherd kept kicking.

The door was flung open. Shepherd looked up. He just had time to recognize who was standing there and what it meant before Kev shouted something about love and hate and the whole world turned a blinding white, then to nothing.

The building went up.

Not with a whimper, but with a bang.

Mary Evans put down the binoculars, confused. Angry. She didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t the plan, this wasn’t how it was supposed to work out.

The black youth was opening the van doors.

‘No …’

She grabbed for the phone, made to press the button. The car door was pulled open and the phone was snatched out of her hand. She looked up.

‘This what you want?’

An out-of-breath man was standing there, wearing a superhero T-shirt and an angry but triumphant expression. She reached out, made to grab it off him.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’

She jumped out of the car, screaming like a wounded animal, hurt and rage in her eyes, trying to claw at his face, grab the phone back from him. He punched her square in the face. She fell backwards, blood springing from her nostrils.

He punched her again.

She saw stars, then blackness.

*

Joe Donovan looked down at the prone body of Mary Evans, then at the phone. Then at his sore hand. He flexed his knuckles. It would hurt in the morning.

Punching her had been completely instinctive. He had no qualms about hitting a woman. Not this one, anyway. He turned the phone off so it could do no damage, hauled her body into the boot of her car and locked it.

Then walked across the car park to where Jamal was helping Peta out of the back of the van. A voice came on in his ear.

‘Joe? Joe? What’s happening? Are you OK?’

‘Yeah, Amar, we’re fine, Peta’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’m just going to get her.’ He smiled. Felt tears prick the corners of his eyes. Saw his two best friends in front of him, heard the other one on the end of a phone line. ‘We’re all fine.’

HOME LAND SECURITY

The weather had broken. The heatwave was over. The rain was falling.

Donovan stood in David’s room and looked out of the window.

Three weeks. Since he and Jamal had pulled Peta out of the back of the van.

Three weeks. Since all the deaths.

Nattrass had phoned Donovan after election night. He thought she was going to thank him for his help but it was another reason entirely.

‘Paul Turnbull’s dead,’ she had said, voice beyond weary.

Donovan was too shocked to speak.

There was more. Much more.

Turnbull’s body had been discovered in Bishop’s Stortford and a murder investigation launched. Both Nattrass and Donovan cooperated. Donovan had brought in the lawyer, Sharkey, when it seemed the prime suspect was Matt Milsom.

But Matt Milsom had disappeared. Both he and his wife Celia and the boy they had called Jake were gone. The house they had lived in had been stripped, scrupulously cleaned, then torched. Forensic teams had launched a search for DNA, but their chances of recovering much that was usable was slim.

This had brought the focus of the investigation on to the Milsoms themselves. Which was where the surprises really
began. The couple who had bought that house were not Matt and Celia Milsom. The real Matt and Celia Milsom had emigrated to the United Arab Emirates. Matt Milsom had been a TV producer but had left several months before. He had never worked, as much as anyone knew, in Eastern Europe.

Donovan had been stunned at this news. He didn’t know what to think, how to feel. He had phoned Sharkey straight away.

‘Why wasn’t any of this picked up on the initial investigation? Why just now?’

‘Because they were very clever,’ said Sharkey. ‘They stole the Milsoms’ identity subtly and without raising suspicion.’

‘But surely—’

‘Joe, the watchword of this investigation was discretion. The Milsoms didn’t come to our attention until they turned up in Hertfordshire with the boy in tow. A full background check was undertaken. As far as was allowed. No one could storm into their workplace and demand to know whether Matt Milsom was who he said he was.’

‘So who were the couple who claimed to be the Milsoms?’

‘No idea.’

‘And what did they want? What did they hope to gain?’

‘Again, we don’t know.’

Donovan had taken a deep breath, asked his most important question. ‘Was the boy David? Was that my son?’

The school the boy known as Jake had attended had been contacted. They confirmed that he kept himself to himself, that he seemed distant. Did he have an accent? They didn’t know. But not Romanian, nothing like that. Somewhere in this country. HIV-positive? It was the first that they had heard. Did they have to test the rest of the school now? Because if word of that got out …

Sharkey had sighed. ‘We … I don’t know, Joe. I just don’t know.’

Sharkey had given him assurances that his team would keep looking, that no stone would be unturned, that they wouldn’t give up, but Donovan had just put the phone down.

Gone into David’s room. And talked to him until the tears stopped falling.

Turnbull’s funeral had taken place in his local church at Westerhope soon after that. Donovan had attended with Nattrass. Turnbull’s estranged widow kept her distance from them both. That suited Donovan just fine.

‘Lots of his old mates from the force,’ Donovan said afterwards. ‘He’d have been pleased with that.’

Nattrass had nodded. She looked shell-shocked.

‘I think you should take a few days off,’ he said. ‘Have a rest.’

She turned to him, about to let loose with some cutting remark, tell him to mind his own business, something like that. But she saw the look on his face, realized his concern was genuine. She sighed. ‘Maybe I should. Maybe I will.’

‘I feel like shit over this,’ said Donovan. ‘I asked him if he wanted to go. Gave him the job.’

‘It’s not your fault,’ she said. ‘You didn’t know what would happen. None of us did.’

‘No.’ Donovan left it like that. But he couldn’t shift the feeling of guilt so easily.

There had been a call for Donovan on his mobile. From a girl called Claire.

She had described herself as a friend of Turnbull’s and been given his number if Turnbull wasn’t around and she got into trouble and needed help. She hadn’t heard from
Turnbull in ages so Donovan would have to do. Could he meet her?

He had gone to meet her at the specified time and date, but she didn’t show up. He waited for two hours. Eventually he went home.

She never called again.

Another election had been announced, the results of that one declared null and void. Rick Oaten had been arrested and was being held in police custody as he was considered a serious flight risk. The redevelopment plan had been shelved. Indefinitely. Money instead to be put into new community schemes to tackle integration. Mary Evans had been arrested. The last Donovan had heard, she was going to declare herself insane.

And Albion was going back into business. The office was being refurbished, all previous investigations would be dropped. While officially the city couldn’t condone the actions they had taken, they had to admit they had helped stop a vicious terrorist act.

‘But I’m still keeping my eye on you, cowboy,’ Nattrass had told Donovan.

‘Sure you are, sheriff,’ he had replied.

Whitman’s funeral had been next.

Lillian had requested the release of his body, wanted to see it buried properly after its untimely cremation. There was so little of him left and what there was had been fused with other artefacts in the explosion that it was more of a memorial service than a funeral. However, Lillian had insisted on a full-size coffin, wanting to honour the memory of the man as she remembered him, rather than his final state.

The crowd in the small parish church in Ryton, where Lillian lived, was also full-sized, swelled by journalists and
ghoulish rubberneckers; the church had never seen such activity.

A human storm of bodies, cameras, mics, cables, lights and vans was outside in the rain. Inside, at the eye of the storm, Peta had sat next to her mother, Donovan, Jamal and Amar, all black-suited, a discreet number of rows behind. The vicar talked of him in glowing but impersonal terms, obviously having never met the man. He told what a debt of gratitude the region owed to this man, who had selflessly sacrificed himself in order to save more lives.

Donovan and Amar tried hard not to exchange glances.

There were words from his work colleagues, and Lillian gave a Bible reading. He had not, it transpired, ever got seriously involved with another woman after her. She had held herself in check admirably during the service but afterwards, as the mourners filed out with Jimmy Cliff’s ‘Many Rivers to Cross’, Whitman’s funeral song of choice, playing over the speakers, she broke down. Peta supported her all the way to the graveside. Lillian had wanted him buried beside where she lived. Wanted him near her.

Standing away from the party around the grave, watching the vicar say his final few words, Amar whispered to Donovan. ‘I’ve still got that recording.’

Donovan nodded.

‘What should I do with it?’

Donovan looked at Lillian, barely holding herself together at the graveside, Peta with her arm firmly around her, hiding whatever conflicting emotions she was experiencing, being strong for the sake of her mother. Amar’s eyes followed Donovan’s.

‘Lose it,’ said Donovan.

Amar nodded.

After the service, Peta came up to them. ‘Thanks for coming, guys.’

Donovan smiled. ‘What are friends for?’

Peta nodded, gaze averted. She wiped the corners of her eyes, looked back at him. ‘You coming back to the house?’

‘D’you want us there?’

‘Of course.’

‘I have a feeling,’ said Donovan, looking over to Lillian, who looked lost without her daughter to lean on but nevertheless giving him an unpleasant look. ‘I have a feeling that your mother won’t make us all that welcome.’

‘She’s just a bit … She wants someone to blame. For what happened.’

‘And it can’t be Whitman.’

‘He’s not here,’ said Peta, her voice fracturing slightly.

‘I think we’ll be off,’ said Donovan.

Peta nodded. ‘Oh, Joe, guys. I think … I think I’m going to take a little time off. Go away somewhere with Lillian. Spend some time together. Things we need to talk about.’

‘Good idea,’ said Amar.

‘But I’m still one of the team,’ she said, trying to summon up a smile.

‘You’re damned right,’ said Donovan.

He pulled her to him, embracing her in a tight hug. She let her tears go. He held her until she had ridden them out. Then it was Amar’s turn, then Jamal’s. She pulled back, looked at the three of them.

‘Best friends I’ve ever had,’ she said, and went back to rejoin her mother.

Kev Bright’s funeral was different again. A run-down, soot-blackened old church in Scotswood, only three present including the vicar. Amar had paid. He felt it was the least he could do.