Acid Row

by Minette Walters

  Barry said he didn’t remember Amy receiving any calls at the house, but agreed that, as he and Kimberley slept till midday, they might have come through in the mornings before she left the house. He said she’d made at least three calls from a public telephone box in town during the first week of the holidays.

  ‘It was before she started disappearing,’ he said. ‘The three of us went down the centre a couple of times. She made one the first day and two the next.’

  ‘How did she pay for them?’

  ‘Reversed the charges.’

  ‘Did you listen to what she said? Hear the name of the person?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Where were you standing?’

  ‘Close the first time. Miles away the second.’

  ‘Then you’ll have heard the first call. Try and remember, Barry.’

  He shrugged. ‘I wasn’t interested. You don’t listen when you’re not interested. She was crying, anyway, so it was embarrassing.’ He quailed before the inspector’s irritated frown. ‘It might have been someone whose name began with “M”, ’cos Kim said afterwards it was fucking rude to call someone by their intial.’

  Tyler went upstairs to check with Kimberley, then returned to the kitchen. ‘What does Amy call her father?’ he asked Laura.

  ‘Daddy.’

  ‘Not “M” for Martin?’

  ‘No,’ she said, rather shocked. ‘He’d never have let her.’

  Tyler had guessed that. ‘Does “M” mean anything to you? Barry and Kimberley both say she phoned someone from a public box and called them “M”. She reversed the charges so she must know them well. At the moment I can only think of Em . . . short for Emma. Did she have a schoolfriend in Southampton or Bournemouth with that name?’

  The final vestiges of colour drained from Laura’s face. ‘She swallows her Ds,’ she whispered. ‘She was saying Ed.’

  Eighteen

  Saturday 28 July 2001

  Inside 23 Humbert Street

  SOPHIE HAD LOST TRACK of time because her watch had stopped. Whenever she looked at it, it read the same as when she’d been trying to work out how long she’d been a prisoner. There was so much silence in the room she felt as if she’d been there for days. The beat of the helicopter blades came and went. The screams from the street rose and fell like a Mexican wave. She strained to pick up anything that would give a hint as to what was going on.

  ‘It wasn’t the police,’ she murmured at last. ‘They’d have broken in by now.’

  ‘They’ll have to clear the street first,’ said Nicholas.

  It was true, she told herself determinedly. These things did take time. How long was a piece of string? How many policemen were needed to quell a riot? Nicholas returned to staring at the wall in front of him, with only the odd flicker of his eyes towards the door betraying any kind of concern. Franek appeared to be asleep.

  She couldn’t understand Nicholas’s composure. Was his habit of submission so ingrained that he accepted everything without question? Did he lack imagination? Or was hers too active? She made an effort to clamp down on the endless hypotheses that took it in turns to bedevil her brain, but it was like trying to stop a runaway horse. There was nothing to do in the oppressive silence inside that room except replay her fears.

  Why was the response so delayed when she’d told Jenny she was afraid of being raped? Was something worse happening somewhere else? Supposing the police couldn’t get through? What would happen? How long would they have to remain like this? What if men from the crowd banged on the door and claimed to be officers? How would Nicholas and Franek know the difference? How would she know? Should she call out? Should she stay quiet? What if the room was stormed? What did the people outside want? To frighten? To kill?

  She had to talk to remain sane. ‘Do you have a job?’ she asked Nicholas.

  Reluctantly, he shifted his attention back to her. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘What was it when you had it?’

  ‘Teaching,’ he said flatly.

  ‘What kind of teaching?’

  ‘Music.’

  ‘What made you give up?’

  ‘I was sacked.’

  It signalled the end of the conversation unless Sophie was prepared to ask him why he’d been sacked. Which she wasn’t. It was an area that she’d rather leave unexplored. She had no idea if Fay had had any real knowledge about a paedophile in the street, or whether it was rumour that had spiralled out of control, but she had to assume there was a connection between what Melanie had told her and what was happening outside.

  She recalled Nicholas’s discomfort when she’d asked him if he’d known Amy Biddulph in Portisfield and Franek’s remark about the police causing trouble for them ‘by banging on the door and making interviews about the missing girl’. The fear that the child’s body was somewhere in the house kept trying to intrude, but she blotted it out to avoid panic overload. The police would have searched for Amy, she told herself, and they certainly wouldn’t have left the men unchaperoned if there was any suspicion that one or both of them were involved in her disappearance.

  But which of them had been interviewed? That question could not be blotted out so easily. She wanted it to be Franek, but reason told her it was Nicholas, and she had no wish to hear him confirm it. It could only make the situation worse – once secrets were out they lost their shame – and she would rather keep Nicholas as an ally, however imperfect, than force him to reveal that he was as bad as his father.

  Again, the silence drifted. Again, she found herself concentrating on the sounds from outside. The direction had shifted. Some of it seemed to be coming from the gardens. ‘There are people shouting at the back now!’ she exclaimed fearfully.

  Nicholas heard it, too, because he glanced nervously towards the window.

  ‘You said they couldn’t get round without breaking the fences,’ she accused him.

  ‘I expect that’s what they’ve done.’

  His refusal to understand implications enraged her. ‘Then where are the police?’ she hissed. ‘You keep saying they’re out there . . . but where? They wouldn’t let the crowd run riot in the gardens. That’s not how it works. It’s all about containment and controlled channels of escape. They seal roads, designate safe exits. I’ve done courses on this . . . it was part of my training in hospital emergencies.’

  ‘What difference does it make?’ he said quietly. ‘There’s nothing we can do except wait.’

  She stared at him in disbelief. ‘Is that it? We hide our heads in the sand and hope the problem goes away?’

  He smiled slightly. ‘Nothing’s ever as bad as you think it’s going to be,’ he murmured.

  ‘No,’ she snapped, stress getting the better of her. ‘It’s usually worse. Do you know what the pain of cancer’s like? Do you know how brave a person has to be to suffer the agonies of having their organs eaten away by tumours?’ She jabbed a finger at him. ‘Do you know how many of them want to kill themselves? All of them. Do you know how many of them stick it out for the sake of their families?’ Another ferocious jab. ‘All of them. So never . . . never . . . never . . . say to me again that nothing’s as bad as you think it’s going to be.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t keep apologizing,’ she stormed. ‘Do something!’

  He hadn’t intended it as an apology. He had spoken with genuine sympathy. Her fear was a physical thing that needed constant expression, and there was nothing he could say that would allay it. She hadn’t experienced real terror before, didn’t know that the mental torture of anticipation was a thousand times worse than the brief pain of reality. But it wasn’t something he could teach her. She had to learn it for herself. ‘We could board up the window in case they start throwing stones again,’ he suggested.

  She glanced around the room. ‘What with? How would we attach it anyway? We need nails . . . a hammer. It’s a stupid idea.’ She paused to gather her thoughts. ‘We need to know what’s going on,’ she said desperate
ly, ‘and that means we’d be better off in one of the front bedrooms. At least we’d be able see if there are any police out there. We’re going to be in danger from broken glass wherever we are.’

  He must have agreed, because he eased his father into a sitting position and half rose with an indecisive move towards the wardrobe. ‘It’s a trick,’ Franek muttered, gripping him by the arm to hold him back. ‘Don’t listen to her. She confuses you with lies so she can escape.’ His face was streaked with blood where the vase had scored a cut across his forehead, but there was nothing wrong with his eyes, which fastened again on Sophie.

  Nicholas spoke sharply in Polish.

  Franek answered him, then tightened his grip on his son’s arm so that his knuckles stood out sharply. ‘We do as I say. We wait here, where it’s safe.’

  There was no more argument. The old man’s authority was too strong. Nicholas settled back beside him, rubbing his arm vigorously when Franek released him. ‘We’ll be all right,’ he reassured Sophie. ‘This is England. The police will come.’

  Glebe Road, Bassindale Estate

  When Aunt Zuzi had asked Jimmy at fourteen years old, following his first police caution for shoplifting, who was the most important person in his life, he had answered: ‘Me.’ Her response had been tart. ‘Trust you to admire a fool,’ she had said.

  He had always been a disappointment to her – average at school; preferring white girls to black girls; bringing shame on the family with his tangles with the police; refusing to go to church – but it never occurred to Aunt Zuzi that she was partly to blame for his behaviour. She had taken the place of his dead mother in his father’s household, and had run a regime of disparagement from the day she moved in. Nothing her three nephews did was good enough.

  Jimmy’s two younger brothers had become withdrawn and compliant, struggling to conform to the Aunt Zuzi view of what men should be – hardworking, God-fearing nonentities who abnegated their authority to the women who ran their homes. It was a black thing. Which (abnegation) was precisely what Jimmy’s father did. Relieved to be shot of the responsibility of his growing family, he had tamely handed his wage packet to his sister each Friday, then vanished for the weekend with whatever he’d managed to steal from it without her noticing. She would belabour him viciously when he finally came home, smelling of women and booze, and only succeeded in confirming his view that the less time he spent with her and his children the better.

  It was a vicious circle from which neither of them could break free. Aunt Zuzi resented her unmarried state, for which she blamed men – either directly, because none had shown an interest in marrying her – or indirectly, because her brother and nephews cramped her style. Jimmy’s father resented her presence in his house but understood that it was a necessary evil if his children were to be looked after. It had led to unhappiness for everyone, particularly Jimmy, who was old enough to remember his mother and whose rebellion against her supplanter’s merciless belittlement had taken him inevitably to prison. As, of course, Aunt Zuzi had predicted it would.

  How different it was in Melanie’s family, where children were loved unconditionally and every transgression excused with ‘he/she didn’t mean to do it’. Jimmy had argued many times with Melanie and Gaynor that this kind of unthinking love was just as bad as no love at all. ‘Look at Colin,’ he would say. ‘He’s just as bad as I was at his age, but where I got beaten for it and told there was no way Aunt Zuzi would appear at the nick on my behalf, you both go piling off at the drop of a hat to berate the rozzers for arresting him. What kind of message are you giving him . . . that it’s OK to get himself in trouble?’

  ‘Being beaten didn’t stop you thieving, though, did it, darlin’?’ Melanie would say. ‘Just made you worse. So why d’you want my mam to beat our Col? Can’t you see it’s better to let him grow out of it naturally . . . knowing his mam will always be there for him?’

  ‘Col’s a rebel,’ was Gaynor’s response. ‘There’s no legislating for it. Some of us are . . . some of us aren’t. I’m one . . . Mel is . . . We don’t like being told how we’re supposed to live our lives. And if that kind of thinking is in your nature, then it don’t make a blind bit of difference whether you’re loved or hated . . . You’ll still be a rebel. The difference is, if you’re loved, there’ll always be a place where you’re welcome.’

  Jimmy remained convinced there was a middle way – something between the heavy-handed rod and liberal unconditional love – but the Patterson lifestyle was seductive. He hadn’t seen or spoken to his father or Aunt Zuzi for five years, although he kept in irregular touch with his brothers, but he couldn’t imagine a future without Melanie and her extended family.

  Which was why he was worrying about them now. He skirted the shopping precinct, where looters were ripping off every last item, and made his way towards the intersection of Glebe Road and Bassindale Row North. The smell of burning was heavy in the air and distant shouting seemed to be coming from Humbert Street, but he decided to take a quick detour up to the Bassindale entrance to see how close the police were to breaching the barricade.

  According to what Eileen Hinkley had told him, whose friend was watching through binoculars from her ninth-floor flat in Glebe Tower – ‘a bit dippy . . . lost her husband a year ago . . . thinks anyone who comes to her door wants to rob her . . . a bit like the senile old fool upstairs who throws his furniture about whenever he gets it into his head he’s been burgled’ – Armageddon, or something very like it, was being fought in broad daylight on Acid Row’s streets.

  ‘She’s a great believer in sinners being brought to book on the Day of Judgement,’ Eileen told Jimmy, ‘but that can only happen after the battle between good and evil.’ Mischievously, she tapped a claw against her temple. ‘She’s completely potty, of course, and very hazy about how it’s supposed to work. She keeps telling me she’s going to be saved because she’s booked her place among the righteous, and I keep telling her she’s living in cloud cuckoo land. It’s the nature of religion that we’re all damned – we’d have to worship every god to be sure of a place in heaven – but she won’t believe me.’

  Jimmy grinned. ‘So you might as well be an atheist and enjoy yourself?’

  ‘That’s my view,’ she said cheerfully. ‘You’re damned if you do . . . and damned if you don’t . . . so make the best of it while you can.’

  He tipped his finger to her. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  With sudden concern, she placed the claw on his arm. ‘Be careful, Jimmy. My friend said she wished it was night-time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the police are losing the battle . . . and she wouldn’t know that if she couldn’t see it. Apparently they’re camped on the main road, unable to enter the estate. The yobs are setting fire to everything in sight. She’s frightened out of her wits . . . thinks we’re all going to be murdered in our beds . . . and that despite her confidence in her own salvation.’

  ‘Are you frightened?’ he asked her.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said drily. ‘But at the moment I’ve only got her word for what’s happening . . . and she always exaggerates.’

  Not in this case, thought Jimmy in dismay, as he stared at the scene of devastation in front of him. Armageddon wasn’t a bad description. It only needed the four grim horsemen of the Apocalypse to spur their steeds through the driving smoke and fantasy would become a horrible reality.

  Overturned cars in the jaws of Bassindale Row were violently ablaze, sending an oily, choking, black pall into the air from the melting rubber tyres and the latex foam of the seats inside. It had started with a misdirected Molotov cocktail which had landed short of its target – a police vehicle – to spray the upturned bottom of an ancient Ford Cortina instead, exploding its leaking petrol tank. The wind blowing off the rolling fields behind the estate and down the concrete-lined draught of Bassindale Row had sent the dense fumes away from the youths on the barrier into the eyes of the police, and the idea of blanketing the ‘pig
s’ in blinding smoke was promptly adopted.

  Jimmy wasn’t the only one to recognize that it was a short-sighted policy. The barricaders had tied scarves across their noses and mouths, ready for when the wind changed direction and swung the advantage the other way. It wouldn’t help them – the smoke was too thick and cloying to be filtered by fabric – and the police would argue afterwards that the masks were employed to disguise and not to protect.

  There on the ground, Jimmy foresaw only that the arrest of anyone caught in the open when the barricade was breached was inevitable. A swirling gust punched a hole in the black pall of smoke, giving him a momentary glimpse of the police armoury and serried ranks of black-uniformed riot officers beyond. Jesus! he thought, sliding back into the shadow of a doorway. It was like something out of Star Wars.

  As he backed away, a small kid raced down the road towards the barricade and, to a crescendo of whooping and hollering, lobbed a flaring petrol bomb through the rent in the smoke. The flame flickered in its arc like a will-o’-the-wisp before igniting in a sheet of flame across the tarmac in front of the police. It had a tenth the beauty of a firework, but a thousand times the excitement.

  This was war.

  Outside 23 Humbert Street

  Wesley Barber’s Molotov had also found its target. A sheet of flame roared up the front door of the pervert’s house, feeding on the oil in the gloss paint and melting it in glowing strips from the door. To Melanie, who had seen fires only in the movies, this was a catastrophe. Such a blaze could never be contained. Once it took hold of number 23 it would pass within minutes to Granny Howard at 21a and Rosie and Ben at 21.

  ‘Oh, my God! Oh, my God!’ she screamed, running towards it. ‘Do something, Col! Do something!’

  He tried to hold her back, but she was too strong for him, and he watched in desperation as she stamped at the outer fringe of burning petrol on the path in a vain attempt to get closer to the door and kick the fire out. If she’d still had her jacket she’d have had some protection, or could have used it as a blanket to smother the flames. As it was, she was wearing only a T-shirt and shorts and the heat was too much for her.