The Riot Act

by J. S. Monroe

  “Are you awake?” Charlotte asked. I looked across at her. She was lying on her back, eyes closed. “What time is it?”

  “Two, maybe later,” I said, surprised to hear her voice.

  “Dutchie, do you think they died today? In the car?”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Someone had to die. You must have killed people in Northern Ireland?”

  “No. That was different anyway. It was a war.”

  “Against terrorists. Those people in the car were as bad as terrorists. They had blood on their hands. Over fifty people.”

  She was silent for a while. “I don’t understand you.”

  That was a relief, I thought.

  “Don’t you feel anything, for them, for Martin?”

  I managed not to flinch at the name.

  “I don’t think he died,” I announced after a pause, wondering why I had chosen to say the words now. It was a gamble. She had recovered too quickly, hadn’t mourned enough. And then there was the overheard telephone conversation.

  “What makes you think that?” she asked.

  “Nothing in the papers.”

  “There won’t be if we die.”

  “It was just more blackmail, wasn’t it?” She didn’t answer. “But no, in answer to your question, I wouldn’t have felt anything if he had died.”

  She turned away. I felt relieved, vindicated.

  “If we do die,” I said after a long pause, long enough for her to have fallen asleep, “will anyone miss you?” She didn’t answer. “Because if there is, ring them tomorrow.” I paused again, confident she had gone. “I thought about phoning my old man, but…” I let the sentence die away into the night. I was tired.

  “… but what?” she whispered, barely keeping the conversation alive.

  “I thought I should tell him about Walter.”

  She turned and put an arm across my chest, moved a warm leg closer to mine. “No one else will,” I said.

  *

  I slept intermittently, troubled by practical thoughts of the next day, whether it was all worth it. Why didn’t I just disappear to Cornwall, leave Charlotte to the state? But the desire for revenge kicked back at me, made my legs warm, sweaty. I turned to look at Charlotte. Her arm was still draped across my chest. She was sleeping on her front now, her right leg bent, linked over mine. The contact was comforting. I remembered the strength of her grip when I had lunged at Walter, how strangely reassuring it had felt, how uninhibited. Her confidence intrigued me; it led her into situations which tested her precious middle-class values. Like the accident on the motorway. It had been executed with visceral bravura, skill, and yet it had created nothing but moral dilemmas for her ever since, dilemmas which I enjoyed watching, untroubled by them myself. It was the same prompt that had made her stride into the bathroom. She had to keep going once she was in the room, cough her way through a spliff.

  And then those comments about sex. She would be adept, no question, a player. It was a natural extension of her physical prowess, her lithe easiness. But would she wrestle with the consequences?

  Slowly I ran my hand along the back of her thigh, watching her face for the slightest reaction. I looked closer at her earlobe, the tiny earring indents, as if the skin had been sucked through from the other side. At one time she had worn four. Somehow I couldn’t see Stella approving. I traced the curve under her buttock, taut and full, until I touched her other leg. Moving upwards I encountered material, silk. I tried not to laugh. I thought of her undoing the wrapping, sliding on stolen goods, succumbing. Gently I began to massage both buttocks, letting my fingers slide in between. Imperceptibly I felt her legs part, no more than a fractional readjustment. I slowed, watched her face. Her eyes were closed but she let out the faintest murmur, more of a hum. It could mean anything, stop, go on, untypically ambiguous. A second later, maybe two, she moved her left leg slowly away, as if she was swimming breast stroke in slow motion, and raised her hips. I slid my hand underneath and began to massage her inner thigh, one side, the other, firmly, in between, rubbing against the moistening silk, pressing.

  Her thighs stirred to my rhythm. She moved her hand from my chest downwards, first outside my shorts, kneading, then clamp-gripped. She slid across the bed, sat on her knees above me, pulled off her T-shirt, began kissing my stomach. I lay back, wondering what I had unleashed, savouring her imminent guilt. The light on the tow path made her flesh glow, effervesce. She pulled my shorts away. I responded, loosening, feeling her hotness again. “We should go shopping more often,” she whispered, and drew me slowly into her.

  25

  I woke in fits and starts, hounded into the daylight by turbulent dreams. Charlotte was lying peacefully next to me, murmuring only when I disentangled myself from her warm limbs. It was just gone ten. We should have been at the dealing room by now. I stood on the cold lino floor, leant across the bed and circled a hole in the condensation on the window. It was a clear day and I could see Canary Wharf, two-dimensional against the bright blue sky. I glanced down at Charlotte, spread diagonally across the bed. Her arms were cradling the only pillow. There was a patterned patch on her cheekbone, where it had been pressed against the rough mattress. Then I noticed something else, half hidden under her T-shirt. I looked closer, gently pulling up the cotton on her buttock, and saw a small rose etched neatly into her skin. It looked fresh, a recent job.

  Outside I walked around on the jetty, filling up the water tank, checking ropes, shaking off the intimacy of the night. I glanced at some anemones on the side of the barge. Annalese had painted them on our first day aboard, to remind her of Cornwall. I thought of her sitting there, patiently watched by Leafe who had paint all over his hands. A part of me had hoped her death would be emancipating, take me back to the heady days before I had met her. But it hadn’t. I had tried. Christ, no one could accuse me of not trying. I had marched with the lowest, held my head high in The George. But what had happened? I had ended up feeling bad about a dead copper (who wasn’t even dead). And now I had just got myself laid, sweetly as it happened, and I was feeling guilty. Annalese had left me a different person; there was nothing I could do about it.

  I came back inside and changed into my suit. Charlotte was sitting on the edge of the bed watching me. She smiled and stretched a hand through her hair. Perhaps she would feel regret later. Somehow I doubted it. I would need her knowledge of computers today, but she was going to be a liability, I could tell. She had too much faith in the State, too many blindspots.

  Something else was worrying me, too, a thought that had been chasing its tail, incessantly, through the night. What if Samantha West had been operating entirely on her own that day? If the only person who had killed Annalese was already dead? Where did that leave me? Walter had been sure the bombers worked in twos, one to handle the semtex, the other to be on hand in case anything went wrong. I had to believe that, otherwise I was wasting my time. The thought made me feel sick. Visiting my dad, living in my godfather’s house in Clapham, working in the City, sleeping with a woman called Charlotte – these hadn’t been public-spirited gestures. They were for Annalese.

  *

  “What are you staring at?” I asked, adjusting my tie in the mirror. Charlotte had been scrutinising my face for clues.

  “Are you feeling okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you got a camera?”

  “A camera? Somewhere, why?”

  I watched as her reflection felt around under the blankets and retrieved a pair of knickers. Businesslike she threaded her feet through them and stood up. They were a good fit, an inspired choice. Then she removed her T-shirt, picked up her bra from the table and put it on, brazenly. No remorse, not even a hint.

  “We might need one today,” she said, tucking a breast into its cup.

  “What do you want a fucking camera for?”

  I walked out to the cockpit, bent down and pulled open the engine hatch, letting it bang noisily against the side. She was winning the game I had
started. She had been since the day we met. I looked at my hands. They were covered in grease and I searched for somewhere to wipe them, contemplating my suit trousers. I hated wearing suits.

  “I need evidence, Dutchie.” She was standing in the cabin door, holding out a cloth. “Here, use this. They won’t believe me if I don’t have any evidence.”

  I took the cloth without looking at her, wiped the worst of the grease off, and removed my jacket, placing it carelessly on the seat.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, picking up the jacket. I rolled up my sleeves, and put my hand down into the hatch, careful not to touch the sides.

  “The camera’s in the bottom cupboard, by the bed,” I said, stretching down further into the hole and feeling around in the darkness.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked again. I could sense her standing closer, peering down over my shoulder.

  “You do it your way and I’ll do it mine,” I said, and carefully lifted out the shotgun.

  *

  I walked briskly along the tow path, swinging my heavy briefcase in one hand. It had been a tight squeeze, but I felt insuperably stronger with a gun by my side. Charlotte had also told me to pack a book called How the City Works, one of her teaching manuals. She had salvaged it from the house in Clapham when she had gone back there to pick up her belongings.

  She was walking along a few yards behind me, occasionally breaking into a trot, telling me to slow down. There was a lot to do. We passed Wimpey Wharf, where a crane was scraping gravel from a boat’s bowels. Beyond it an avenue of limp derricks stood forlornly. They hadn’t been used for years and it was as if someone had left them there as an example, perched on rotting tripods for all to see, heads bowed in shame.

  I slowed up at The Trafalgar Tavern. A barman was just opening for business. I was past him before he had secured the front door to its catch. By the time Charlotte came in I was already sitting at the bar, nodding in her direction. She shook her head. She looked even more nervous than I was. There was a strong smell of beer in the air, a legacy of the previous night. The barman came back from the door, and flicked on a hi-fi stack beneath the till. The music was too loud and he rolled it down before pulling my pint. Charlotte was putting coins into a cigarette machine on the wall. The river behind her was reflecting a diffuse, neutral light through the bow windows, enough to pick out specks of dust swirling in the draught from the door.

  “It’s the City,” I said to the barman, after emptying my pint in one. “Gets to you after a while.”

  *

  Charlotte told me to relax in the foot tunnel, as I accelerated down the gentle slope to the river bed. According to a commemorative plaque at the entrance, there were over 200,000 enamel tiles lining the walls. Many were stained or missing, the gaps passing by us like punched holes in a computer tape. I used to bag a lot of money here, from people like me, breezing past in their suits and ties. There was a point in the middle of the tunnel where two security cameras had been placed back to back. Directly below them it was possible to sit undetected. A man in the know with a mongrel Alsatian puppy was playing his guitar, moaning gently.

  At Island Gardens we waited for a train to Bank. I touched Charlotte’s arm when it arrived and nodded down the platform. Grown men were pretending not to compete for seats at the glass front of the carriage. It soon became an unseemly scrum. Charlotte smiled. I was pleased she was here. We both seemed to note where the blue-uniformed guard was, and sat as far away as possible, at the back of the train, facing the wrong way, watching the masts of The Cutty Sark slip into the distance.

  *

  The dealing room was somewhere between Mudchute and Crossharbour. I remembered Dan telling Pete it was called Enterprise House. We got out at Mudchute, walked down to ground level and decided to follow the line of the track, suspended above us on smooth round pillars. Charlotte looked up nervously. Our train twisted away through the tall buildings like a toy, its windows flashing in the sunlight on a tight, grinding corner. I think we both felt it was just a matter of time before we were arrested.

  It took us fifteen minutes to find Enterprise House. Charlotte saw it first, a squat, mirrored block standing on its own. At the front it looked out across a small, worn playing-field. A man was standing in the middle of it throwing a ball for his dog. I pushed half-heartedly against the main entrance doors. They held firm. The foyer was bare except for a cheap formica table with a phone on it, next to a copy of Yellow Pages. In the corner there were some pots of paint and a pile of decorators’ stained dust sheets. On the wall above them a chrome sign indicated that JKA occupied the ground floor and Morgan Stanley the floor above; presumably they had a contingency dealing room, too.

  “Weird isn’t, it?” I said. “All these empty buildings. Just sitting here, waiting for a bomb to go off.”

  “Are we wasting our time?” Charlotte asked, a little vaguely. She was shielding her eyes from the sun and looking out across the playing-field. “Someone’s going to see us.”

  “Not if we’re careful,” I said, trying to sound bullish. But she was right. The place was exposed. There was a main road running down one side of the field, offices on the other. Our plan suddenly seemed rather desperate. I walked over to the narrow gravel path which bordered the building and followed it around to the back. It was more sheltered there. A large grass bank rose steeply, throwing the bottom half of the building into shadow. We could be seen from a school a hundred yards away, towards the main road, but otherwise we were out of sight.

  “I’ll break one of these windows,” I said, as Charlotte came around the corner. “There’s a chance they’re not alarmed, but I doubt it. More likely the police will be here in five minutes and take a look around.”

  “What will that achieve?” she asked.

  “They’ll have keys.”

  Charlotte looked at me for a moment. Her day had suddenly stopped being ordinary. The night had briefly halted events, checked our momentum, but we were back now to where we were before, hunted, running.

  “I thought you knew all about burglar alarms,” she said, leaning against the building’s glass corner.

  “I was bluffing.” I bent down, flicked the catches on my briefcase and pulled out the gun. “Stand back.”

  Just as I was about to crack the glass with the gun handle, we heard a van draw up at the front.

  “What’s that?” Charlotte asked.

  I put the gun back in the case and moved quickly round the side of the building, careful to avoid the noisy gravel. I reached the front corner just in time to see a man in white overalls disappear through the front doors. Perfect.

  “Who was it?” Charlotte whispered at my shoulder.

  “A decorator. Hear that?”

  We listened to the faint beep of an alarm system waiting to be disengaged. I turned to Charlotte, grinned and started walking round to the back of the building.

  “This is what we do,” I began. “I’ll go in there in a moment, once he’s switched everything off, show him my JKA card and tell him I’ve come to look at the dealing room screens.”

  “Don’t shoot him, Dutchie.”

  “I’m not going to shoot anyone. Unless the cops turn up.”

  *

  “Morning,” I said, surprising myself with my cheerfulness. “Looking good.” I nodded up at the half-painted ceiling.

  “Oh, we’re getting there,” the decorator said, setting up his step-ladder behind the desk. He seemed harmless enough.

  “Come to check the screens,” I said, nodding at the JKA door. I didn’t want to walk up to it. Presumably it was locked.

  “Right. Bloke came down last week to look at the phones.”

  “Yeah, Pete. He said he left the keys here. Did he leave them with you?”

  “With me? No. I’ve got my own set.” The man’s cheeks flinched imperceptibly just below his eyes.

  “Oh, thank God for that,” I said, putting my briefcase down on the ground. “For a moment I thought I�
�d come all this way for nothing.”

  The man hesitated a moment. “I’m sorry, I’m not authorised to open this place up. Not for anyone.”

  “I’ve got my pass,” I said, pulling it out of my pocket. I was trying to make light of the conversation but I could hear my own voice growing tense.

  “But no keys,” the decorator said.

  “No keys.” I smiled, holding my empty hands out.

  “I’ll have to ring security. What’s your name?”

  The man was already by the phone. I watched him for a moment. He glanced up at me then started to dial. As he looked down I opened my case and pulled out the gun.

  “I suggest you don’t do that,” I said, cracking the barrels shut and pointing the gun at him. “Put the phone down.” The man’s face blanched. His grip on the receiver went limp and he dropped it over the side of the table. I walked up to him, grabbed the swinging phone and put it back. Someone was talking on the other end.

  “Now unlock the doors, like I said. And nobody will get hurt.”

  The man fumbled with a bunch of keys, walked across the foyer and unlocked the door, his hand shaking. I glanced out across the playing-field – nobody had seen us – and then pushed him into the room. Another beep was sounding. I looked at a dark box on the wall to our right and nodded towards it. The man opened it up, taking his time.

  “Move it,” I said. “If the alarm goes I’ll shoot you.”

  The man silenced the system.

  The room was small and cramped; a musty smell mixed with new paint. Pale blue light was pouring in from the wall of windows. Unvarnished plywood desks were crammed into every available space, the banks of screens grey and lifeless. The atmosphere was disturbingly still, ghostlike, as if everyone had left in a hurry hundreds of years before. It was cold, too.

  “Kneel down in the corner and put your hands behind your back,” I said to the man.

  I brought out some twine which I had found on the boat and went over to him. He was looking straight ahead, his eyes glazed, in an advanced state of shock. I hadn’t even done anything to him yet. I bound his wrists tightly to his ankles, forcing him to lean backwards. He didn’t say a word. His skin was cold and clammy. When I had finished, I turned to get Charlotte and met her walking in.