by Dan Laughey
Not me. He means George.
And that was it.
All you had left was stamped on your retina. An image you swore would never die – if you didn’t. But ever since, that image has been dead, wiped from your tattered consciousness.
…FROM THE BOTTOM…
The image of the man who shot you.
A man you respected; a man you knew.
A policeman no less. A public servant.
…OF MY HEART.
Flat Cap… the image is reborn.
This was no ordinary Saturday, reflected Detective Constable Brad Capstick. Weekend work usually involved cautioning shoplifters or parading football supporters to Elland Road. But this particular Saturday was even more demanding than a United match against one of the local rivals. Not only were preparations in progress for the following day’s remembrance service, but there was also the small matter of an English Defence League demonstration against paedophiles.
No prizes for guessing who the EDL held to be the alleged aggressors.
Pakistanis.
Fortunately, representatives of the Pakistani community had agreed not to counter-protest. This was despite their deep-seated resentment over the forced cancellation, on police advice, of a festival organised at a nearby mosque.
Capstick tailed Oliver Mosley’s taxi to the Victoria in Great George Street and illegally parked his Punto before hurrying through the double doors of ‘the Vic’ in search of his quarry. The pub had seen better days, the lead frames of its stained-glass windows peeling, its Victorian charm dampened by the stench of stale beer. Once it had been more of a hotel than a pub; a well-to-do inn catering for city gents, ladies of fashion, and witnesses called to attend the Assizes Court at Leeds Town Hall. But grander hotels backed by enterprising speculators soon captured its cosmopolitan clientele.
Capstick inconspicuously ordered a lager shandy at the long lounge bar before venturing to the tap room. Though not yet noon the room at the back was heaving with drinkers. Good, he thought. I can observe without standing out.
He caught a glimpse of Mosley sat at a table with a group of four men and two women. Three guitarists tuning their instruments at the adjacent table were accompanied by a troupe of overweight ballet dancers sporting rainbow frocks and playing with giant yellow balloons. Not the normal student binge-drinking throng, that much was certain.
Capstick returned to the lounge bar and asked the bartender if there was a private function booked in. She blew out bubblegum and carried on serving.
‘Loony lefties,’ announced an old bloke leaning on the end of the bar. He sank his pint in one gulp before belching out loud. ‘Bad as them fuckin’ Hitler lovers.’
Capstick pretended not to hear as he ambled back to the tap room, but he didn’t get far. A conga of party people were on their way out, Mosley in the middle of it laughing at the ballerina skipping behind him.
Capstick gulped a mouthful of shandy, left the glass half full and joined the line as it streamed out of the Vic. No turning back from here. His car would have to take the parking fine.
He prayed it wouldn’t be clamped.
By the banners they carried – UNITY IS STRENGTH, RACISM DIVIDES – Capstick realised who these people were and where they were heading: Leeds Unite Against Fascism campaigners en route to City Square to confront the EDL. Jesus, he thought. This means trouble – big trouble. Yes, a counter-demonstration of sorts had been anticipated, which justified the heavy policing of the EDL demo. But would enough uniforms be on hand to manage potential clashes between the EDL and UAF?
Keeping a safe distance from the fifty-strong UAF mob, he tracked them down Calverley Street, then left along the Headrow past the war memorial in Victoria Gardens – the poppy-wreath rehearsal was under way – before they snaked down Park Row to the pit of City Square.
As the square came into view over the backdrop of the Romanesque pillars fronting the old post office, Capstick took in a sight resembling the Last Night of the Proms. St George’s flags were being unfurled everywhere, their bearers cheering and chanting the national anthem. Handwritten placards dotted here and there propagated slogans filled with warmth and diplomacy like WOGS OUT and PUNISH PAKI PAEDOS and KEEP ENGLAND WHITE and CLOSE THE BORDERS FOR ARE CHILDRENS SAKE. Capstick noted the erroneous ‘ARE’ and missing apostrophe, though flagging up the glaring errors with the brick shithouse who’d penned them didn’t appeal.
Laid out at the far end of the square was a makeshift stage propped up by a dozen soapboxes, a loudhailer perched on a stand at its centre. Capstick was reminded of the reclaim-the-streets parties of his raving youth, but the memory was quickly quashed by the sight of two elderly gentlemen in pressed military attire climbing onto the dais and settling into throne-like chairs either side of the loudhailer. Superstar DJs they were not.
Above the stage was a large banner proclaiming ENGLISH DEFENCE LEAGUE LEST WE FORGET HELPING HEROES NOT THUGS. It was underscored with a declaration to DEFEND FREE SPEECH and bottomed off with the somewhat contradictory statement BAN THE ANL.
The square was small for the numbers of protestors packed into it, the fifty UAF forcibly segregated from the hundred or more EDL folks by a combination of steel barriers and baton-carrying officers in visibility vests linking arms in a human daisy chain. And these teeming ranks were making Capstick’s task of keeping tabs on Mosley more awkward than he’d expected. Consciously making an effort not to look too alone, he eventually saw the young punk exchanging insults with a pair of skinheads straddling the Black Prince Statue, Swastika tattoos scrawled over their arms and shoulders matching the ones branded on the napes of their necks.
The strange way Mosley appeared, on the outside, the same as the nemesis he despised could at last be explained. Capstick knew now why the man dressed like he did. Just like the punk generation before him, Mosley was appropriating the insignia of Nazism for subversive ends, infiltrating the bigots and reclaiming their fascist styles so as to castrate the fears those boots-and-suits got their kicks out of cultivating.
‘TWAT PAKIS!’ cried out a brute somewhere behind the police line. He was greeted by a round of applause. The prelude to the afternoon’s entertainment, Capstick mused, or maybe that was the entertainment; the Saturday matinee cut short to make way for a bloody great punch up.
The two veterans on the stage eventually stood up and saluted to the applauding crowd, the war medals attached to their chests shining brightly not in the sunlight (there wasn’t any) but in the overhead lighting required to illuminate the square at this bleak time of the year. One of the veterans – a short man with a limp – picked up the loudhailer uncertainly and spat out a soft monotone, the sound of which blew a hole in the meticulously prepared content of his meticulously rehearsed speech:
‘Today we Englishmen and women are standing up for our rights.’
Loud cheers.
‘All of us are victims of state multiculturalism and multiracialism. The political clowns in Westminster tell us what to do and where to go, at the same time as blacks and Asians take our jobs and our homes and our hospital beds, and try to take over our country whilst they’re at it.’
More cheers were this time met with scornful jeers from the anti-fascists.
‘And what do these migrants bring with them to our cherished shores? Nothing but drugs and AIDS and the revolting stink of their food. Enough is enough. What the Zionist Tories who embrace foreigners with open arms and blank cheques don’t realise is this: they’re endangering the indigenous white species which has populated this country since time immemorial. We in the EDL must do everything in our power to protect our endangered species.’
Chants of ‘E-E-EDL, E-E-EDL!’ easily drowned out the UAF jeers. Capstick felt an urge to cover his ears, but this was hardly the time or place.
‘In twenty years from now more blacks than whites will roam this green and pleasant land. And why? Because the birth-rate among Muslims and blacks is three times higher. These animals are producing th
eir HIV-infected offspring faster than Usain Bolt can run the hundred-metre sprint, which means more dirty Punjabi- and Gujarati-speaking scroungers fishing for benefits instead of getting off their backsides and learning to speak English.’
‘PAK – IS – OUT! PAK – IS – OUT!’ barked the EDL.
‘Even worse than Asians multiplying every minute of the day is the wicked sin of inter-racial breeding. As members of the white race we must fight against those renegades among us responsible for half-castes. We must fight to keep the white gene pool healthy and unblemished by infection and imbecility.’
‘HEAR! HEAR!’
‘And it’s not just the foreign birth-rate. Immigrants cause other problems. Take the issue of law and order, or more to the point, crime and disorder.’
‘HEAR! HEAR!’
‘Why are prisons so overcrowded? We all know why. Because half the inmates are blacks and Muslims. Drug dealers, looters, gunmen, muggers, rapists, and worst of all, perverted paedophiles.’
‘PAK – IS – OUT! PAK – IS – OUT!’
‘Why aren’t these child-grooming thugs chained up and forcefully deported back to their favelas and shanty towns? Because the lousy European Convention on Human Rights – imposed on us by the frogs because they’ve nothing better to do – won’t allow it. The sooner we get out of Europe and get out of the Union the better, because we English shouldn’t be answerable to anyone but ourselves.’
‘HEAR! HEAR!’
‘And then there’s the question of jobs. We in the EDL demand English jobs for English people, not for people who don’t belong here and don’t know the language and would rather fight for Islamic militants than join the British Army.’
The cheers were tailing off, the average attention span evidently being tested by this fogey.
‘The problem with Asians and Poles and Ukrainians is they take any job going, even below the minimum wage. We all know that because we all know white folk – joiners, brickies, sparkies, truckers, cabbies – who can’t find work because the wage they deserve is being undercut by some bogus asylum seeker who costs his employers half as much. And you might well ask: how can these coloured people live off the peanuts they receive? And the answer is simple: because this bent government hands out more welfare to them than to decent white folk like us. They get money for their housing, their kids, their income support, their business rates, their cars and vans, and what do us hard-working English get? A repossession notice and a county court judgement.’
Even fewer cheers. Even the UAF had lost interest in the old fart.
‘Each time you see a black man buying a suitcase in Marks and Sparks so they can smuggle drugs and bomb-making gear from back home in… Zulu-land; each time you see them with their fancy gear stinking of frigging curry, just think of yourselves. You decent Yorkshiremen and Yorkshirewomen sitting at your bare kitchen tables, deciding whether to put on the roast or turn on the gas fire…’
Capstick finessed a subtle parting from the throng, unable to bear another word of this nonsense. He guessed his uniformed colleagues had decided against arresting the orator for a racially aggravated public order offence – it would only stir up tension on both sides. It makes me sick to the stomach, he thought, to see this bigot getting away with his hate speech. But at the same time he felt an odd comfort in feeling so dispirited. Confirmation, if ever he needed it, that his view on the human race was foremost driven by trust, not treachery; affection, not hate.
At this point a designated posse of EDL roadies carrying floral tributes were escorted by police motorcyclists and mounted units up Park Row to the war memorial. Capstick had received prior notice of this orchestrated manoeuvre. The team coordinating the protest had agreed to it at the eleventh hour so as to be seen not to discriminate against those who wished to pay their respects to the war dead.
In theory it was the right thing to do, but in practice, the manoeuvre brought the EDL closer to their UAF rivals. It was on the return leg down Park Row that the trouble escalated. Provoked by the EDL, making barely disguised Nazi salutes and singing Rule Britannia, Capstick saw a couple of anti-fascists breaking through police flanks and hurling fireworks at the escort. Three unleashed police dogs shot out from nowhere and viciously attacked the firework-wielding culprits, but rather than nip things in the bud, the commotion amplified the edginess in the air.
Sensing an opportunity, a pocket of EDL skinheads sidestepped the police escort and raced at their counterparts, trading insults and wild punches at anyone or anything that moved. One of the skinheads, decked out in Ku Klux Klan costume bar the pointed headdress, landed a blow on a police horse before being hauled to the ground, dragged across the road and hoisted into the back of a waiting van.
Despite the swift and decisive police response, skirmishes and scuffles were erupting everywhere. Capstick felt an urge to break cover and help out the officers struggling to cope with the situation, but he breathed a sigh of relief as reinforcements arrived on the scene. Police in riot gear jumped out of three wailing riot vans, some of them brandishing camcorders to video the protestors, their pixelated facial profiles doomed to be stored for posterity on an arrest list. About a dozen UAF activists, including the ballerinas, were soon flanked by these riot officers and shepherded away from the EDL, the fattest of the ballerinas receiving four sharp whacks of a trudgeon to her hips for mouthing off. Remarkably, she was still standing afterwards.
Capstick averted his eyes. This was not his idea of police work and he wanted as little to do with it as he could get away with. He called Sant to update him on progress while standing as far away from the action as possible without losing sight of Mosley. As the trouble died down and the crowds dispersed Capstick glimpsed the punk beating a hasty retreat. Damn it! He tried to keep up. He couldn’t. The worst possible outcome… he felt sick again.
He’d lost his goddamn quarry!
Sant devoured several mugs of coffee in the police canteen as morning blurred into afternoon, the inspector racking his tired brain in the hope of finding some clarity in the confused mass of bodies piling up before his eyes. He tried to meditate, but all roads to mindfulness were beset with horrible visions of gnawed heads and bullet gashes and bodies bloated with canal water.
His musings returned to the present as he thought again of Chloe’s mother decomposing for weeks in a dank cellar with nothing but rats for company. Everyone had believed she was having the time of her life in some tropical retreat half the world away. The reality was entirely the reverse.
It was time to do a spot of international detection, and it didn’t take Sant long to make a discovery. After contacting a handful of major tourist hubs, he got a return call from a 31 number – the Netherlands. It was the left-baggage section of Schiphol Airport, and the manager there had found what Sant was looking for: a travel case tagged V. LEE. She’d never arrived in Amsterdam, but Sant could make a good guess how her luggage had.
Next in his train of thinking was Mosley. Should he bite the bullet and order Capstick to arrest him? Jake Downing’s revelations about Mosley and Chloe knowing about, and possibly perpetrating, the murder of Vanessa Lee presented a strong case. Given any other state of affairs Sant would have issued the order. But what he’d heard from Capstick about the city-centre rally intrigued him. It seemed the punk was no EDL fascist but quite the opposite, in which case there was more to be gleaned from Capstick continuing to shadow Mosley – rather than seize him and get the silent treatment in return.
Sant’s thoughts flitted to Mia; to the emerald eyes and curved shoulders and smooth legs he’d caressed. He called her number. She wasn’t available – again. He found himself worrying, tried to snap out of it. She was young enough to be his daughter, but she wasn’t his daughter, so why worry? Did he really rate his chances of making ties that bind with someone half his age?
His ponderings drifted to Chloe and Tony Gordon and Professor Rothwell. Sant was now convinced that Tony needed to be questioned formally over Rothwell’s
allegations about his twisted relations with the girl. The main stumbling block, however, was considerable: there was no proof of a crime with which to charge Tony. When push came to shove, it would be Rothwell’s word against his colleague’s.
It was amidst these wakeful ruminations that Sant felt a sudden stabbing pain in his chest. For a moment he couldn’t breathe. He concentrated on his diaphragm, feeling it gradually expand and contract. Then he closed his eyes and contemplated the pending nightmare. That idea buried in his consciousness; that something bothering him when he’d stared into those emerald orbs, was now coming home to roost.
Shit! He had been right to worry. He should have been petrified the whole time.
All along he’d failed to grasp how Mia could have known so much. Sure, she knew how to wind up microfiche and she knew psychology inside out, but she also knew a hell of a lot more about the 1984 Gray/Tanner shootings, as well as what went before and after, than any amateur could have possibly known.
Mia probably knew as much as Chloe, for heaven’s sake, which meant she was in danger. Grave danger.
He grabbed his phone, found Rothwell’s number, hit the call button. It took an eternity for the professor to answer, but he did. He was enjoying a pleasant Saturday afternoon round of golf. Sant would put an end to that.
‘Before you take another backswing, professor, I want Dr Gordon’s home address. Now!’
Rothwell was clearly unsettled by the interruption to his short game. ‘Inspector, I cannot possibly verify that information. All employee details are held with my secretary and – ’
‘Try again!’ Sant yelled down the line. ‘I need that address as of yesterday!’
Stay cool, he thought.
Be patient, he told himself.
He stayed on the line, imagining the professor traversing blushing green fairways to his pearl white Range Rover and the diary contained therein. It felt like forever, but finally Rothwell coughed out an address.