by J. S. Monroe
THE RIOT ACT
J.S. Monroe
writing as Jon Stock
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About this Book
About the Author
Table of Contents
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About The Riot Act
A millenial thriller set in a terror-struck London on the edge of collapse. Class war meets Le Carré in JS Monroe's ferocious debut.
‘Dutchie’ is a dreadlocked street-fighting anarchist, living with his New Age girlfriend on a houseboat in London. When Annalese is killed in a bomb blast on Oxford Street, Dutchie vows revenge. But things take an unexpected turn when Dutchie is approached by the MI5 to track down the terrorists responsible, taking Duchie into the dealing rooms of the City, which trades in its own brand of mayhem… Moving between London and Cornwall, The Riot Act is a millenial thriller set in a terror-struck London on the edge of collapse. Class war meets Le Carré in JS Monroe's ferocious debut. Taut, dark, and an original take on the thriller genre, The Riot Act is crime fiction from way out on the cutting edge.
Content
Welcome Page
About The Riot Act
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Acknowledgements
About J.S. Monroe
Also by J.S. Monroe
J.S. Monroe writing as Jon Stock
An Invitation from the Publisher
Copyright
For Hilary
“What, he does not blow his nose on
his fingers? He has a handkerchief!
He is an aristocrat! Hang him on a lamp-post!”
Danton’s Death, Georg Buchner
1
Annalese was the only woman I have ever loved, the first person to betray me. I have been let down often enough, but never betrayed. Betrayal is about surprise. You expect the state to mess you about, it goes with the turf, and my family – we have held mutually low expectations of each other since the day I was born (kicking and shouting, I like to think). But Annalese? She caught me off guard, napping. I never suspected a thing.
*
It was a raw Christmas Eve and a fog had settled on the Thames, shifting restlessly just above the surface. The tide was high and beginning to turn, the water trapped in indecision, running both ways around the rotting jetty posts alongside our barge. It made a clean trickling sound, quite distinct from the low hum of the nearby refinery. We were moored close to the Blackwall Tunnel, in a derelict wharf used mainly as a graveyard for knackered pleasure boats. Annalese had chosen the place for its concentration of ley lines and because our boat was directly below the mother of them all, the Meridian, marked by a laser shining out from the Royal Observatory.
Despite the cold I was sitting outside in the cockpit. Above me the green beam was struggling to reach across to Docklands. (On clear nights we thought we could see it on the other side of Greenwich Park, faint after its journey around the globe.) Every few seconds a light on top of Canary Wharf brightened the dense fog, popping like a distant flashbulb. Annalese was already in bed attempting to stay warm. Quietly, I raised the wooden seat opposite, pushed a bundle of icy rope to one side and felt around in the dark. My fingers touched something smooth and cold. I had almost forgotten about the shotgun, stolen from my dad years ago. It was draped in an oil-stained muslin cloth, which snagged on the burrs at the end of the barrels as I carefully unwrapped it. (I had stumped it myself, badly, using a blunt hacksaw.) I looked briefly down the sights, towards Docklands, and cracked it open. Both chambers were loaded. Snapping it shut again, I searched under the seat until I found what I was looking for, a blue camping stove.
I set the stove up on the floor of the cockpit, out of the wind, and struck a few matches. The cylinder was almost empty and it took several attempts to light. When they finally came, the flames were pale and timid, barely enough to cast shadows. The gas roared hoarsely.
On paper, making Cat – Methcathinone if you’re from the Home Office – is easier than baking bread. Take some Epsom salts, a couple of aspirin, a pinch of ephedrine, available from all good chemists if you are an asthmatic (conveniently, Annalese had suffered since a child), add some car battery acid, preferably fresh, and heat gently on a silver crucible.
I tinned to my left and picked up a sheet of Kit Kat foil. The ingredients had formed into a soggy heap in the middle, making the foil sag. Resting it on the stove, I cupped my hands closely around the flames, careful not to singe the wool on my fingerless gloves. After a few minutes something appeared in the gloom, more grey than my recipe had promised. I licked my fingers, quickly removed the foil from the stove and dropped it on the seat beside me. I then turned off the gas, the tread on the tiny black handle cutting into my numb fingers. It was the coldest it had been all year and there was no more wood for the burner down below. I put my head by the closed hatch and listened guiltily.
“You awake?” I called.
“Sssshhhh. You’ll wake Leafe.”
Leafe was Annalese’s three-year-old kid. I got on fine with him, there was no problem, except when he needed to be shopped for. All her life, as far as I could tell, Annalese had objected to certain products on moral and environmental grounds. Then Leafe came along and she changed her mind and began ordering truck-loads of dodgy baby wipes and disposable nappies. She would do anything for him. It wasn’t that I cared about the environment, far from it, I just wanted her to admit that she had ditched her principles, to accept that life was easier without them.
The foil had cooled quickly and I cut the powder with a small kitchen knife. It had been a while since I’d prepared my own Cat and there was always a risk with DIY of getting the measurements wrong. Too much acid and you had a flat battery for life. A little voice was telling me that I had got them wrong, but I wasn’t expecting to hear voices until I had taken the gear so I ignored it. A pity, really. I removed one of Leafe’s spiral striped straws from my pocket, folded and sliced it in half, gently inserted one up each nostril, bent forward and hoovered both lines simultaneously.
Cat is an acquired taste. There is not much money in it (yet), no one deals big time in the stuff, but it has a certain homely appeal for the enthusiast, like kit beer or Blue Peter models – never as good as the ready-made version, but somehow more satisfying. It also ruins your appetite for a few days, a useful bonus when you’re out of food. The authorities haven’t even bothered to classify it as a controlled substance. (Those of us reduced to getting our acid from car batteries need the occasional break.) I shuddered and looked around. My head was beginning to feel draughty, ajar, as if a gale was passing through one ear and out the other, missing my brain by several yards.
I couldn’t be certain, but the fog appeared to be moving towards me, slowly, as if someone was shifting a scenery wall. I looked up river and saw a pleasure boat emerging from the gloom. It was passing from left to right, like a radio-controlled model, its coloured deck lights bright and crucified. The hull was too sharply focused. It must have been thirty yards away, but it suddenly see
med like three. At the stem a large paddle wheel was scooping up glistening water into the night sky and dropping it like tinsel. People were dancing awkwardly on the deck, visible through large plate glass windows. The music sounded strangely intimate, coming and going in waves, separate from the other sounds of people laughing and talking. Their voices were disturbingly clear, each one standing out on its own, uninterrupted, upper class…
*
Curled up in the bottom of the cockpit, I took in the morning at a slant. It wasn’t the ideal start to Christmas Day. My face lay soldered against a row of wooden slats. Below them a pool of oily water glistened darkly, barely an inch away, rainbow colours smudged across its surface. My neck was tight and aching, and my clothes were wet down one side. I decided to give Cat a miss for a while.
I rolled over on to my knees and stayed there for a few moments, head held low like a baying cow. The veins in my forearms were swollen. It was weird but all I could think of was a McDonald’s toilet. They had recently introduced blue lighting in their Glasgow branches to make it harder for junkies to find their veins. My right shoulder was bruised and sore. I climbed to my feet, trying to slide out from under the hangover without it noticing. It must have been early because the sun was still low, a red ball somewhere above the Canning Town flyover. There was no traffic, no noise, just the refinery’s incessant hum – as close to silence as the river ever got.
The tide was out and had left the mud rippled like mousse. I looked across at the row of gravel conveyor belts, stretching out into the main channel, and stepped up on to the cockpit seat. As I did so, I heard a dull thud against the side of the hull. I ignored it at first, thinking it must be a piece of driftwood, and stretched gingerly on to the shore. But I glanced down and something black caught my eye in the water, wedged in the gap between the boat and the posts running along one side of the jetty. I knew immediately that it was a body, swollen and waterlogged, the back arching limply like an exhausted seal. The head was face down but it was obviously a man, still wearing peach-soled brogues and what looked like a dinner jacket and trousers. One of the feet was pointing awkwardly sideways, broken at the ankle. I thought back to the previous night, the turning wheel, the music. I tried to recall some more but my head hurt with the effort.
Then I remembered the gun. My stomach tightened momentarily. I stepped back on to the boat, rocking it gently, and looked around. Lifting the seat, I saw the gun lying next to the rope, its barrel wrapped neatly in the muslin. I picked it up, and unfolded the material. Faint the night before, the smell of oil now seemed overpowering. Both barrels were still loaded. I smiled, and then felt a pang of disappointment. It was coming back to me now, the dancing, the voices. The boat had been a long way off, but I could have tried at least, holed her midships.
I glanced up and down the river, and bent to pick up the aluminium tender lying along the boat roof. I then lay flat on the narrow deck beside the cockpit, reached down and hooked one end of the tender under the body, by his armpit. I tried to turn him over but he wouldn’t budge, bobbing instead below the surface. I pulled harder. Suddenly the tender slipped and banged against the hollow side of the boat. I froze, waiting for Annalese to call out. After ten seconds or so, I leant down and tried again, this time catching the hook under his face. It lodged in his mouth, pulling against a cheek, and the head revolved slowly.
The man had black hair, lightly curled, and the edges floated on the surface, blurred like a barber shop photo. He can’t have been more than twenty. A jagged strand of wet hair stuck to his skin, breaking up the whiteness like party paint. His eyes were closed. The tender hook was distorting his mouth into a sneer. I returned the compliment, let the body turn, and sat up. There were no obvious wounds, no chunks missing. He must have fallen overboard.
I watched as he began to slide slowly down the side of the barge, disturbed from his quiet corner. The current took him past the lattice of decaying posts underneath the jetty, to the far end, where he snagged himself briefly on a solitary green post. Then he drifted out towards the centre of the river and disappeared without even a wave goodbye. Toffs had no manners anymore, no class.
I walked down to the end of the jetty and had a smoke. Beside the cement factory I could see huge steel silos lying on their sides like spent rockets. Beyond them, the Woolwich ferries were slipping past one another, momentarily hidden behind the steel sentinels of the Barrier. I turned to the old pleasure craft listing in the mud next to me. It was time for presents. Christmas had been a close call this year. I usually gave it a miss, but Annalese had talked me into it, said it was a time for lovers. Her present was sentimental, not exactly me, a compromise.
Treading carefully, I stepped on to the gunwhale of the pleasure boat and dropped down on to the deck. The wood was shot through with rot and a plank split as I climbed up into the wheelhouse. The cardboard box was still there, miaowing at me as I approached. Annalese had always wanted a kitten. I had bought it from a bloke who lived on an estate near The Cutty Sark. (He hired out puppies for a living, leasing me his Alsatian whenever I went begging in the Greenwich foot tunnel.) I opened the lid to check he was alright. The box was lined with a couple of Annalese’s old woollen hats and the kitten, ten weeks old and the runt of the litter, was shivering in one corner. At least it hadn’t frozen to death.
I made my way back along the jetty, casually checking the water for more bodies. The toff might be back again when the tide turned, become a regular visitor. We could do with the company. The other boats were all sealed up for winter and people rarely strayed off the towpath.
Annalese stirred as I slid down the cabin hatch, which threw me slightly. I had some vague, embarrassing notion of placing the thing on the pillow next to her as she slept, letting it nuzzle her awake.
“What time is it?” she asked, her eyes still shut.
“Time for presents,” I said, putting the box down quietly on the floor, out of sight. My breath was condensing in the cold.
“Presents?” The tone in her voice made me edgy.
“Yeah, presents.” I glanced at her. She looked beautiful when she was asleep, her big eyes swollen under the skin. “It’s Christmas, remember? Your idea.”
There was a pause. “It’s only the twenty-second, Dutchie.”
“Is it?” I looked down at the box on the floor and almost kicked it. “I got you a present anyway.”
She yawned and sat up, swinging her feet to the floor. It was all going wrong. She was meant to stay in bed.
“You’re very sweet, Dutchie,” she said sleepily, hugging herself in the cold and reaching for a jumper. “I’m touched. But can it wait? I’m a bit old-fashioned when it comes to dates.”
“No. It can’t wait. Do you want it or not?”
She looked up at me, sensing the change in my voice.
“When did you come to bed?” she asked quietly. “I didn’t hear you.”
I bent down to pick up the box.
“I got you a kitten. It’s called Lamorna.”
I didn’t want to talk about last night. Annalese wasn’t bothered if I stayed out, that was never a problem. It was the shame of it, the ignominy of revealing that I hadn’t even made it off the boat.
*
Our barge was thirty feet long and consisted of one main room and a tiny bathroom. We had only been living in it for a couple of months and were still discovering cupboards and hatches. As you came in from the cockpit, there was a small cooker, a Fifties cream-coloured fridge and a plastic sink on the left, and a shelf on the right with a few empty jars, green ones recycled in Spain (Annalese’s choice). Beyond them was a formica fold-out table, which she had painted with purple flowers. There was a bench on one side and two chairs on the other, covered in mauve and black velvet cushions sent by a friend of hers from Salem. Dark, star-patterned drapes lined the walls and windows, for privacy and warmth. Leafe was asleep on the bench, wrapped up in a blanket. At the far end was our bed which sagged dramatically down the middle.
Annalese loved Lamorna and went back to bed with her, while I tried to fix some breakfast – difficult without any food. I turned on the cooker out of habit, remembered we were out of gas and went outside to retrieve the camping stove.
“Leafe will be hungry when he wakes,” Annalese said, as I returned. She was propped up on a pillow, dragging a piece of thread across the blanket in front of Lamorna’s pouncing paws. I said nothing. Holding the kettle under the tap, I pumped out some brown water with my foot. The tank was almost empty.
“You said…” she began.
“… I forgot.”
“I don’t mind doing the shopping. You offered so I assumed…”
“… I know what you assumed. We’re out of water.”
I struck a match, lit the camping stove and rested the half-full kettle on top of it. We both stayed silent for a while, listening to the faint roar of the flame. Neither of us had the energy for an argument. I turned around and looked along the shelf. We were out of everything and it was freezing. All I could find was one vegetable Oxo cube, fallen down behind the clay jar we used for garlic.
“Last night,” Annalese began.
“What about last night?” I snapped. She paused for a moment, genuinely taken aback. I felt stupid. She was going to talk about something else.
“Sorry,” I said, leaning forward on the sink.
“Last night,” she continued, “I had nightmares. Like I had the night Tom died.”
Tom, her twin, had been killed in a road accident when she was twenty. Her words left me cold, then annoyed. She knew I couldn’t pass over it lightly, but I managed. There was a distance between us this morning.
“I woke up and you weren’t around,” she continued.
“I slept out. It was a beautiful night.”
We were silent for a while. “You’re far away today,” she said.