The Riot Act

by J. S. Monroe

  “Who’s they?” I asked, nettled.

  “The Security Services.”

  “I thought that was you.”

  “Me? No,” he said, laughing at the suggestion. “I just make up the numbers.”

  He began to blink. I wished I hadn’t come. He always blinked a lot when he told crap jokes after Christmas lunch. He was a show-off, a frustrated performer. His blinking had turned into a kind of circus drum roll. Unsettling if the joke wasn’t obvious. He was blinking a lot now.

  “What are you doing here, then?” I asked aggressively.

  “I told you. Making up the numbers. Codes.”

  So there it was. This year’s crap Christmas joke.

  “I lost someone once,” he started, tilting his head back as he dredged the remains of his cappuccino. “We were engaged. She was run over in LA, crossing the road with some groceries. I couldn’t understand why the whole world didn’t stop. The goddam truck didn’t even stop.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Do? I made a lot of noise. Wailed my arse off and dialled the police.”

  It was hard to imagine him making a lot of noise. It was harder still imagining him with a woman. He seemed sexless somehow, as if bloated by castration.

  “I want you to find the people who killed Annalese,” I continued.

  “Sure you do. The whole country does. But it’s not so easy. These guys are pretty smart, smarter than us.”

  “You must know something.”

  “Sure, we know something.”

  I paused and found myself swallowing.

  “If I gave you information, would you let me help?”

  “Help?”

  “I want to be there, when they’re brought in.”

  Walter looked at me for a moment then got up and walked to the edge of the terrace, staring down the river towards Westminster.

  “Do you have any idea how these things work?” he asked, turning. “It’s not like running around the countryside with a large butterfly net in one hand and a book of mugshots in the other. Heck, if it was that easy I’d be out there, doing it myself, believe me. It takes months of work finding these people, sometimes years.”

  “I know.”

  I managed a grin, but my mouth was drying. In the moment I had heard myself asking him, I knew it was all for real. The muscles at the side of my mouth tightened.

  “It’s tough when you lose someone,” Walter continued. “You feel all kinds of things, love, guilt, anger, a lot of anger. Perhaps you should take a break some place, where it’s hot. Get away from all this…”

  “… I’m not registered with the Social. The only people who know I exist are M15.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  I looked out on to the river for inspiration. It was time to play my only card.

  “How many people were killed in the Oxford Street bomb?” I asked.

  “Oxford Street? Eight, wasn’t it. I would need to look it up.”

  “The papers all said eight. Everyone said eight, the news, politicians, the cops.”

  “Okay, so it was eight. Eight too many.”

  “I was at the morgue. To identify Annalese. There were nine bodies, not eight.”

  Walter looked at me for a moment, then pushed his lower lip out and his chin up, dimpling it like a peach stone.

  “You serious?”

  “Yeah. I’m serious.”

  6

  It was late and I was heading west towards places pregnant with memories. Annalese’s funeral was tomorrow and I was trying to order my thoughts. Whether it was a cover-up, or just a mistake by the hospital, I wasn’t sure. The ninth body could have been an MP, anyone whose death would have lowered national morale. (A dead MP would have raised my morale, but no one was consulting me.) In truth, I didn’t expect to hear from Walter again, unless he turned me over.

  I pulled in for a coffee at a service station. A teenager was playing on a car game in the deserted foyer, rattling the loose steering wheel backwards and forwards. Behind him a plant was dying. The restaurant was empty except for a young, ginger-haired waiter who was standing by the coffee machine, one hand tapping to Abba, his ring clicking against the stainless steel. He glanced up at me as I came in and moved towards the food counter, his eyes avoiding mine.

  I looked around the restaurant as he made me a coffee. There was a children’s area in one corner, cheerful and plastic, and a mop propped up against the door of the ladies’ lavatory.

  “What time do you close?” I asked.

  “We don’t,” he said, pushing the coffee towards me. He had a faint Somerset accent.

  “Just you tonight, then?” I asked.

  He looked at me nervously and managed a weak smile. “We stop serving hot food at ten.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to jump him. There wouldn’t be much in the till anyway. I picked up a waterproof menu from one of the tables. “It says here,” I began, “‘for the widest choice of food and drink on the roadside’.”

  “Where it belongs,” he said, smiling more confidently. “You didn’t miss much.”

  He gave me a stale donut on the house. I went over to the large plate-glass windows, and sat down on a seat bolted to the floor. The road was out of sight, but the tops of headlight beams lit up the embankment as cars passed below. On the far side I could see another service station, a mirror image of this one. The building’s harsh lights spilled out into the night, creating a pool of daylight in the darkness. A waiter was wiping down empty tables.

  No one here knew Annalese was dead. I wasn’t convinced that I knew. I wrote down on a paper napkin a chronological list of important dates in my life. Then I added “Annalese died” at the end. It looked so incongruous, like a piece of irrelevant graffiti. I didn’t feel sad, just angry. Then I felt guilty because somewhere inside me I knew there was a pang of relief.

  From the day I had met her, a year ago, my life had thickened, become more complicated. She had brought to the surface feelings which I thought were buried with my mother. She had made me discuss her, the effect her death had on me. I had felt nothing at the funeral; instead, in the months and years that followed, I had watched myself like a neutral observer. I had explored my own numbness, probed its limits. Detachment meant no guilt, no checks on behaviour. No regrets. Annalese reminded me of consequences.

  Life had been quieter, too. She believed in the struggle, she said, but something always seemed to stop her. Like a child standing too close to tire fire, she would suddenly step back, shocked by its heat. We had once tried to go on a march together, but she wanted to stay at the back, away from the bricks and the milk bottle Molotovs and the javelin poles. We had argued all the way home. I hadn’t been on a day out since, didn’t dare. My reputation was in tatters.

  As Penzance drew closer, the car slowed and stammered. It had broken down three times already. There was always a risk when siphoning petrol from other people’s cars that it was unleaded or, worse still, super unleaded. The last tankload, from a Honda in a lay-by near Stonehenge, had been far too green. I crawled into the town, passed Causeway Head, and parked on the promenade in time for dawn. The sea was grey and choppy. A fishing boat from Newlyn was pushing out to sea. On the horizon, an HM Customs boat was riding the tide, probably waiting for Charlie. I pushed the seat back with a jerk. I was too tired to sleep and decided to drive on. Rubbing my fists in my eyes, I yanked the chair forward again. It was only another four or five miles.

  Annalese was being cremated in a private ceremony at nine o’clock. At ten, everyone was meeting at the Merry Maiden stones to watch her ashes being thrown to the four winds. There were going to be a lot of people I hadn’t seen for a while, friends of Annalese who had never liked me.

  I drove up through Newlyn and on towards Lamorna. The circle of stones came into sight above the hedgerow. I had been here a few times and preferred the one lump of rock on its own at the far end of the field, banished from the rest. I parked the car in the muddy lay-by and tried
to sleep again. The light was so different from London: the sun bounced off the sea around the large, open skies. Annalese said it was the peninsula effect.

  I was just drifting off when there was a knock on the passenger door window. I thought I was dreaming, but there, standing in the field looking sceptically across at the stones, was Walter. The fat profile couldn’t belong to anyone else. Behind me a dark Daimler was ticking over, its driver looking impassively ahead. It was one of those moments when I knew my life would never be the same again. Walter turned around and came across. I slid down the window.

  “Get out the car, Dutchie,” he said coolly. “We’ve got to be back in London by noon.”

  *

  I sat silently in the back of the Daimler with Walter, relieved to be missing the ceremony. We were travelling fast along the dual carriageway. The sight of Walter standing in a remote Cornish field had shocked me, but I knew what it meant: I was being taken seriously. We were now destined for Clapham, that’s all I had been told. Curiosity and the suggestion that I might be able to do something about Annalese’s killers had subdued any desire to run, at least for the time being.

  “I’m sorry about the funeral, really I am,” Walter said quietly. “It was unavoidable.” He opened a briefcase and passed me a photograph of a man in a white coat. “Was that the doc at the mortuary?”

  The face was familiar.

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  “He died yesterday. A hit and run accident. Too bad.”

  I wondered what I was supposed to feel. I had only met the man once.

  “He was the one who told you, about the number of people killed?” Walter asked, anxiety creeping into his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “Did he tell anyone else?”

  “How do I know?”

  I could feel my pulse begin to pick up.

  “Did anyone hear him tell you? Was there anybody else around? It’s kind of important.”

  “No,” I said, my mind racing. It had just been a clerical cock-up, hadn’t it? Nine, eight, what did it matter? Over fifty had died in the past fortnight.

  “Was I right then?” I asked, failing to conceal my enthusiasm.

  “Let me put it this way,” he said. “You were told something you weren’t meant to hear.”

  “There was a cover-up.”

  “One of the corpses was removed from the mortuary before they began identifying them.”

  “Who took it?”

  “We certainly didn’t.”

  “How do you know it was taken, then?”

  “I checked out the mortuary after our conversation. He was a nice kid, shouldn’t have died. When I asked him to show me the deceased, he pulled out eight corpses and one empty box.”

  “Was he surprised?”

  “Speechless.”

  “Then he was run over.”

  “Correct.”

  “But not by you.”

  “Dutchie, a little respect, please.”

  “So who took the body?”

  “We’re not sure. Maybe the terrorists. Maybe not.”

  Walter looked at me directly for the first time. I turned away. I didn’t know what to think. It had never occurred to me that the missing body might have been one of the terrorists. I had assumed they were professional operators, cold and efficient. But they’d screwed up.

  “It’s not so easy to walk out of a mortuary with a body tucked under your arm and no one notice,” Walter continued.

  “No,” I replied vaguely. I had taken a step towards finding Annalese’s killers. Walter’s words sounded distant.

  “I’m going to come clean with you, Dutchie. We know more about these terrorists than we’re letting on. You probably figured that. We don’t know who they are exactly, but we know what they do when they’re not blowing people away.”

  “What?”

  He held up the white palm of his flabby hand, checking me.

  “We’ve got an idea what the ninth person looked like. There was a security camera in the street.”

  “Did you see Annalese?”

  “We did. That reminds me. She would have been arrested for shoplifting. I’m sorry. Two pairs of boots, some leather cleaner, a pair of espadrilles. I thought you should know.” Walter paused. He was beginning to blink. “Hey, what were you doing in High and Mighty anyway?”

  “Shopping.”

  “But it’s for big people, fatsos like me. You nearly lost your head in there.”

  I didn’t want to be reminded. The manager, one moment taut, the next limp and lifeless, the air so rudely let out of him. Walter passed me another photo, black and white this time. The date was printed in yellow over the bottom of the image. It was a still, the outside of Pied A Terre. Security cameras were built like black boxes these days. They had to be. A couple of people were looking at the window display; a third, circled in red ink, was walking briskly from right to left.

  “That’s her, the ninth victim.”

  “A woman?”

  “I hope so. Nicole Farhi dress. Gucci shoes. Smart babe.”

  The circled figure was in her late twenties, tall and slight. Her hair was close-cropped. The stride was confident, her face muscles relaxed. She looked in charge of her life. And she was attractive, Walter was right; fresh-faced, a rich bitch.

  “We’ve run a check on her, matched her face with company files and our own. Her name’s Samantha West. She worked for a firm in the City called Jensen Klein Abrahall, foreign exchange dealer, Deutsche Marks.”

  “Does she have a criminal record?” I asked, still looking at the photo.

  “Nothing on our files. We’ve checked with everyone. She’s a clean-skin.”

  “There must have been cameras outside the hospital, in the mortuary.”

  “That’s the clever part. All switched off. They moved quickly, these guys. As soon as the bomb went off, they were looking for ways to get the body back. My guess is there was more than one bomber at the scene. Maybe watching.”

  “Are you sure she’s a terrorist?” I asked, passing the photo back. I couldn’t believe she had it in her.

  “No, we’re not sure. But she’s special enough not to die.”

  *

  I looked around at the fitted kitchen: a cream-coloured Aga, the beechwood sideboard, a slender bottle of olive oil, a stone sink, sunken halogen lamps, dried herbs in baskets, an RNLI calendar pinned to the farmhouse dresser. A Persian blue cat sat patiently on the terracotta-tiled floor, looking up at Walter, who was making a mess of opening a tin. Through the doorway I could see the warm glow of the sitting room, oriental rugs, an antique bureau, large paintings of horses, sashay curtains. I didn’t feel at home.

  “Dutchie, Saturday 31st March 1990, remember what you were doing?” Walter asked.

  I knew exactly what I was doing.

  “Take a look in the folder.”

  I leant across the pine table and opened it. It was full of photographs, black and white A4. I looked closer, smiling. Crowd shots in Trafalgar Square. The Poll Tax riot. Who could forget it? £6 million of damage, the most violent scenes of civil disorder this century. One photo showed me with my teeth bared, challenging a row of policemen in riot gear. It had been taken from behind the line and the green initials, MP, on the back of the helmets were clearly visible, their numbers below. A flash had been used and my forehead had a slight sheen to it, making me look sweaty. But I liked the expression, uncompromising, on fire. Others were of me hard at work, punching, gobbing, screaming.

  “Who took these? They’re good,” I said, proudly spreading them out on the table.

  “Hell, I don’t know. They’re just file shots. We probably seized them from the press. Our guys are useless unless they’re shooting round corners.”

  “It was a good crack that day.”

  “Hey, who needs terrorists when you’ve got Class War?”

  I ignored him and sifted through some more photos. Stop the City, 29th March 1986. That had been a laugh, too, gone lik
e a dream. Running down Fenchurch Street, I had come across a lorryload of bricks, behind the police lines. After posting them through various stockbrokers’ windows, I had legged it, somehow avoiding arrest.

  “The English get so uptight about class,” Walter continued. “Only in England would you get an organisation calling itself Class War.”

  “Brightling Sea,” I muttered. January 1995.

  “Can I keep one of these?” I asked.

  “We might need them.”

  I got up from the table. The pictures were making me restless, reminding me of my recent inactivity. “I’ve got to go,” I said.

  “Go? Where?”

  “Out, anywhere. I’m bored.”

  I leant against the table with my arms folded, knowing Walter still had something more to say. Sure enough, he stopped trying to open the cat food and turned to me, wiping his hands on a towel.

  “You came to me two days ago with a useful piece of information,” he began. “You took a risk, I appreciate that. You’re a wanted man. You also said you would like to find Annalese’s killers, ‘to help in some way’ – I think that’s how you put it.”

  “Yeah. So what’s with the pictures?”

  “Would you be prepared to turn your absurd, English hatred of the rich to some good?”

  “I doubt it. Good’s a bad word, it makes me nervous.”

  “If it helped find Annalese’s killers?”

  I remained silent.

  “There’s every indication that these terrorists have day jobs in the City. We think they are working as foreign exchange dealers, we don’t know for sure.”

  “There’s a surprise. Rich wanking bastards. What do you want me to do? Organise a riot and hope they get pole-axed?”

  “Not quite.” He paused. “I want you to work in the City.” I looked at him, my eyes slowly widening, waiting for him to blink. But he didn’t.

  “Did you have a particular job in mind?” I asked. “Chairman of the Bank of England? Chancellor of the fucking Exchequer?”