by Ted Tayler
This should be fun, she thought, Mummy and Daddy, haven’t seen the weather forecast.
“If we’re in agreement, then let’s go,” said Athena.
Storm clouds gathered before three o’clock, and Hope and her parents were driven indoors by thunderstorms before teatime. It was fun while it lasted.
The Tuesday morning meeting got underway as usual at nine o’clock.
Athena heard reports from Henry and Giles on life in the ice-house. There was no shortage of crime across the country. The Grid was still active in every quarter. Police in Scotland ticked the necessary boxes before any real action could take place on the fallout from work carried out by Phoenix and Rusty.
“The wheels of justice grind exceedingly slow,” sighed Phoenix, “we gave them enough of a head start. The whole sordid network could have been broken up and behind bars by now.”
“Maybe, we should have eliminated more than we did?” asked Rusty. “They seem to be wary of accepting gifts. The police think walking in to find half a dozen criminals after an anonymous phone-call is too easy. There must be a catch somehow. So, they check and double-check everything in case the whole thing turns out to be a prank, and they look foolish.”
“They don’t need help on that score,” said Alastor.
“Anything we can do, Giles?” asked Athena.
“We sprinkled a fair amount of misinformation in the forty-eight hours after the mission, Athena,” he replied. “I don’t believe there’s much to gain from distributing anything further.”
“Fair enough, we have a new search for you to undertake. This must take priority.”
Athena ran through the highlights of their meeting yesterday with Ambrosia and allocated tasks to the ice-house crew, and Minos and Alastor.
“That should keep everyone busy for the rest of the week,” said Athena. “Any questions?”
“You remember my request for the weekend off, Athena?” asked Henry. “I want to leave soon after lunch on Friday.”
“Don’t worry, Henry,” said Athena, “we haven’t forgotten. Give our love to Sarah and have a lovely weekend.”
“Jolly good,” replied Henry, breathing easier.
“Let’s hope the weather is better than today’s,” said Giles. “There are more thunderclouds out there.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist, Giles,” said Athena, “did anyone have any other business?”
“There’s been a disturbing increase in a different type of crime over the past weeks,” said Artemis. “Most of it has occurred in the north of England. Some of it in Ambrosia’s town of Leeds. I don’t know whether she’s been affected.”
“It didn’t crop up in conversation yesterday,” said Phoenix. “What type of crime?”
“Hate crimes,” said Giles. “We’re recording increasing amounts of attacks on immigrants in general, and Muslims in particular. It’s not always clear whether the perpetrators are part of a wider organisation, or just idiots acting alone.”
“The Grid is in no way responsible for orchestrating these attacks I take it?” said Phoenix.
“No, there are no links with organised crime.”
“There’s been an increasing presence of right-wing groups strengthened by the ongoing effects of the government’s austerity policies,” said Minos. “The English Defence League grew from the football supporters’ scene and have voiced opposition to militant Islam for the past five years. It was easy for them to gather support from marginalized and disadvantaged white working-class communities.”
“The marches they’ve held have caused short-term trouble,” said Rusty, “but the numbers they attract aren’t great, are they? In fact, the trouble flares because of an equal number of anti-fascist supporters turning up in the same place, at the same time. Typical football fan mentality. It’s Saturday afternoon, so and so are in town, let’s break a few heads.”
“The EDL and its off-shoots claim to be fighting for race and nation, and want to stop immigration, and start repatriation,” added Phoenix. “Most acts of race and religious hatred are committed by individuals, aren’t they?”
“What form do these attacks take?” asked Athena.
“Nasty verbal, physical, and emotional attacks against Muslims occur on a regular basis,” said Alastor. “In some areas, this has escalated from spitting, and abusive language to arson, serious assaults, and even murder.”
“We must monitor this situation closely, Giles,” said Athena. “We cannot allow this to fester and grow in strength while our attentions are focussed on the Grid. Keep an eye on the Government’s response and bring this matter to the forefront of your future reports if matters deteriorate.”
Giles and Artemis nodded. Their hands were full recording the activities of the Grid. Now Athena added two more tricky problems to the list to tackle. Within the hour they were below ground in the ice-house. The intelligence-gathering duties were assigned to the crews, and the fun began.
*****
Wednesday, 9th July 2014
Solomon Hussain was a seventeen-year-old law student. His classmates missed him. He was always smiling, and happy. Solomon didn’t arrive at college this morning. His close friends tried to contact him on their mobile phones. Their attempts went straight to voicemail.
The police in Newcastle knew why. They held his phone and other personal items at their city centre headquarters. The owner of a kebab shop dialled 999 late last night. Solomon had been attacked by a group of young men outside on the pavement. He suffered severe head injuries and died early this morning at the Royal Victoria Infirmary.
When the police arrived on the scene, the paramedics were working on Solomon. The pavements were deserted. A handful of concerned people gathered nearby. There was no sign of the attackers.
“Solomon was one of our regulars,” the shop owner told the officers who attended, “he was friendly, he didn’t drink or smoke, but he enjoyed our food. As he chatted with my staff, half a dozen lads entered. Not much older than Solomon, eighteen or nineteen, and very drunk. These youths asked what he was doing here, was he an illegal, and then they began pushing him. They goaded him into a fight. The abuse got worse. Solomon tried to ignore them. My staff and I shouted at them to stop, to leave the boy alone. Then Solomon ran out into the street. They chased him and caught him. As soon as he was on the ground, I made the call. I could see he was in danger. One lad kept kicking and kicking him. It was horrible.”
“Did your staff try to help?”
“The boys warned us to stay out of it. They threatened to torch my shop. I’ve never seen these boys before. I was scared for my family. My wife and our four children live upstairs with me.”
“Do you have CCTV?”
“I have cameras, yes, but they are not working. I can’t afford it now. Takings have dropped. Customers don’t have the money to spend on takeaways these days.”
The police viewed CCTV images from cameras near the shop, but the closest was too far away to capture the incident itself. They only had grainy shots of groups of youths moving around the city centre. Positive identification of the attackers would be nigh on impossible.
The descriptions given by the shop owner and his staff could have fitted any teenager in the country. They wore trainers, jeans, a hooded jacket. They wore baseball caps, and most of them had tattoos.
Everything they heard convinced the police the attack was racially motivated. A male and female officer were dispatched to inform Solomon’s parents of his death before lunchtime. The press was informed of the murder at the same time and told that from tonight there would be a uniformed presence in the area to reassure the public.
Solomon’s college friends and his tutors heard the news as it filtered through during the afternoon. Tears were shed for the popular young man. On social media that evening, messages were posted. Many carried tributes to a promising student whose life had been tragically cut short.
Fingers pointed towards young men on the streets last night and who disappeared
when trouble broke out. Comments were mentioned of their affiliation with the English Defence League. The rumours spread. By midnight, names circulated online for those responsible, and the police personnel monitoring social media traffic took notes.
Earlier that afternoon, Jack Ferris left school in Bradford, at half-past three. He wandered home. There would be nobody in, so he could take as long as he wished. It hadn’t been a good day. It was a little over a week away from the summer holidays, and his tutors were disappointed with his work.
The headmaster asked him to consider whether staying on in the sixth form had been the right choice. Perhaps, his parents would come in for a chat? I don’t think so, thought Jack. They hardly talk to one another, and as for going somewhere together, you can forget it.
Everywhere he looked around the streets on his way home, Jack saw the evidence of deprivation. Places where he knew homeless men and women would sleep rough later. Boarded-up shops. The unemployed, standing on street corners yards from their homes, with despair etched in lines on their faces. Nothing to do, and nowhere to go.
Jack could see his own future, and it didn’t look bright. He was in the heart of the city. This was where the immigrants lived. While he headed further out, to the outskirts. White people were consigned to the suburbs. The city his grandfather grew up in had gone.
His namesake, Jack Ferris was wounded in North Africa, and never lost the limp in his left leg that shrapnel from the Panzer shell inflicted. His grandfather didn’t like the changes in the make-up of the population of the city since the war. He instilled his brand of mistrust and dislike of foreigners in his three sons. When he died ten years ago, Jack was seven years old.
His dad Gary, and his uncles were football fanatics. They followed their local team from their early teens, home and away. No game was complete without running fights before and after the match. Saturdays were more fun if the grounds were well-established and didn’t have the barriers and security systems of the newer stadiums. Running along the terraces, causing mayhem among the opposing set of fans became the highlight of their afternoon. It’s what they lived for from week to week.
Gary settled down later than his siblings. The fourteen-year age gap between him and Jack’s mum, Michelle was large when they married on her twentieth birthday. It was a chasm now.
On the avenue where Jack lived with his parents, there was no shortage of Union flags or the Cross of St George. They left you in no doubt which area of the city they represented. Dad joined his mates on the streets on the weekends.
He’d been priced out of going to football for years; that, and the police banned him from most of the nearby stadiums for violence. Dad didn’t want to sit, anyway; that was for wimps. He wanted to stand where he liked, chant the abuse he liked, and taste blood on his knuckles.
Last year, his Dad and his mates joined others on marches. They were putting Britain first and fighting back. Jack had trailed along behind them on one Saturday afternoon, to see what went on.
There seemed to be around a hundred hard-core individuals involved. Most of the chants were anti-Muslim. Jack remembered what his grandfather said about them. He decided this was something he wanted to be a part of, something to make his grandfather proud. It might help things improve around here for white youths like himself. Nobody else did a thing to help.
Last winter, one such march attracted opposition. The police were out in force; they had a helicopter circling overhead. Jack saw banners and placards calling the people his Dad marched with Fascists. Jack had studied that at school. He couldn’t see the link. Jack believed his Dad marched to argue that we wanted our country back. It was in danger of being overrun with foreigners. Areas in the centre of Bradford were already a no-go area for non-Muslims.
Today, as he turned the corner onto Manningham Lane, Jack passed the shops and restaurants that antagonised his family members. Every other shop front carried a foreign name. His grandfather called it League of Nations Lane. His Dad’s language was far worse.
Two women came out of a shop doorway in front of Jack. One carried a large shopping bag. An older woman pushed a buggy with a young child. Both women had their faces covered with a niqab. Their laughter told Jack they were happy and content with their lot.
The stress of his school situation and prospects, his home life, and the racist language he was exposed to from an early age at his grandfather’s knee burst to the surface.
Jack Ferris snapped.
“Where the hell do you think this is? This is England. Why can’t you dress like normal people?”
Nilima Thakur, the young woman turned to face him. Her accent honed on the streets of a Yorkshire city.
“I was born in Bradford, mate. My mother has lived here for over thirty years.”
Parveen Chowdhury had pushed the buggy a few yards away. She stopped and called to her daughter in Bengali. The baby began to cry. Parveen didn’t want trouble.
“Yeah, right,” Jack Ferris seethed. “Thirty years and she ain’t bothered to learn the language.”
Staff from the shop now gathered by the door. Passers-by slowed their pace and stopped by the shop’s plate-glass window to stand and stare. Jack was fired-up and didn’t want to look foolish. This girl had a lot of nerve, facing up to him. Except she wasn’t facing up to him, with it hidden behind that bloody scarf.
“That can come off too,” shouted Jack, grabbing hold of the niqab. Nilima screamed as Jack caught hold of her hair. They struggled on the pavement, and Nilima fell to the ground. Jack’s right foot lashed out and landed on her stomach.
The small crowd was horrified. Two Indian shop workers rushed forwards to grapple with Jack.
“You’re going nowhere,” one said, “we called the police.”
Jack Ferris was strong and agile; he broke away and dashed up Manningham Lane. He glanced over his shoulder and could see the blue lights flashing. A police car was a hundred yards away. He darted into the next turning and escaped into the maze of side roads and back alleys with which he was familiar. Jack stopped running. Other students walked on the surrounding pavements, returning home after another boring school day. His breathing slowed.
He pushed his jacket hood off his head. Thank goodness, I don’t wear a school uniform now, he thought, they’ll struggle to identify me. Even if they had CCTV on the street. I can hear what they’ll be telling the cops now. They all look alike, officer.
Jack arrived home to an empty house, just as he anticipated.
As he lay on his bed listening to his music, he thought of what he had done. He had no remorse or shame. He was just putting us first and fighting back. These people have got the council and the law in their pockets, he thought. Ten years from now, there won’t be a white face in Bradford if we don’t fight back.
Jack hoped his grandfather would be proud of him.
Thursday, 10th July 2014
Before first light, Newcastle police teams raided addresses in Byker, Cowgate, and West End. They arrested five youths on suspicion of the murder of Solomon Hussain. The community rallied around and did the first part of the police’s work for them. The public now had to rely on them joining the dots, getting the case to court, and hope for the right result. It wasn’t guaranteed though, not with the slippery legal system in operation in this enlightened, modern world. There was always a chance they would escape justice.
In Bradford, the police studied CCTV images. The ugly incident on Manningham Lane had been captured on two cameras. The galling thing was neither gave a clear picture of the attacker. He was tall, well-built, and in his teens. They had little more to go on than that.
When officers arrived on the scene outside the carpet shop yesterday afternoon, they found one young woman in tears, with a torn niqab on the pavement beside her. She complained of a bruised midriff. The palms of her hands and her knees were scuffed and bleeding.
The officers called an ambulance. Nilima Thakur went home later that evening.
The older lady, who t
hey now knew was Nilima’s mother was agitated, but unable to communicate with the officers. Neither of the officers spoke Bengali. A toddler in a buggy was crying, and several women tried to pacify the infant. The shop owner offered to take Mrs Chowdhury, and the child to the hospital. The pedestrians and shop assistants were interviewed, and various descriptions of the attacker collected.
As the officers drove up Manningham Lane, they saw half a dozen youths who might have been responsible for the attack. None of them was spooked by seeing the car. Nobody ran away, inviting a chase. It looked a dead end. The car returned to base until assigned to its next callout.
This morning, the prospect of a result looked even more remote.
“I’ll get us a coffee,” said a young Detective Sergeant.
“Thanks, I’ll skip through these CCTV images once more,” said the female constable working with him. “If nothing turns up, we’ll have to leave this, and move on.”
The DS left the room. A phone rang. The constable answered. It was the desk sergeant. An elderly lady had arrived to help. Mrs Chowdhury waited at Reception.
“Do we have anyone in the station who speaks Bengali?” asked the constable.
“I’d be surprised if Deb Sengupta doesn’t,” said the desk sergeant, “one of the Community Support Officers. He’s in his late forties and moved here with his family ages ago. Deb’s your best bet. I’ll check if he’s at the station and get him to bring Mrs Chowdhury along to you.”
“That’s brilliant, thanks.”
The DS held the door open with his backside and tried to manoeuvre through the opening without spilling the coffees. He managed it with ease.
“Years of practice,” he said, as he sat on a chair, “any luck?”
“Maybe, the mother’s outside, and we may have an interpreter.”
Deb Sengupta arrived two minutes later with Nilima’s mother. Inside five minutes the old lady had given them a description of her daughter’s attacker that was as good as a photograph. She saw his face. The CCTV camera angles caught nothing, but a hooded jacket.