Acid Row

by Minette Walters

  Gardens between Humbert Street and Bassett Road

  With Jimmy cajoling and threatening all intruders to join the exodus towards Forest Road, the gardens between it and Mrs Carthew’s house began to clear. Some of the elderly householders, emboldened by his authority, emerged to lend a hand. One old boy, sporting a tin helmet and a fearsome-looking machete – relics of his war service in the Far East – stood guard over the broken fence between number 9 and number 11 while Jimmy pursued a gang of boys who were making their way to the back of 23.

  They weren’t much over ten or eleven years old, and he caught up with them as they started throwing stones at the windows of a house with a climbing frame in the garden. He waded in, cursing them. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he roared. ‘You can’t count, you stupid little bastards! This isn’t 23! What does the climbing frame tell you?’ He jabbed a finger at the house. ‘There are kids in there. You don’t even know who you’re looking for, do you?’ He rounded them up and herded them back the way they’d come, thumping them on their shoulders when they didn’t move quickly enough for his liking.

  ‘I’ll have my dad on you,’ said one. ‘You’re not allowed to hit kids.’

  ‘Tell me where you live and I’ll save you the trouble,’ snarled Jimmy, giving him a shove towards the gap where the old soldier was standing. ‘Your dad can pay for the damage you’ve done to my neighbour’s windows. In fact, you can all give me your names and addresses. Someone’s gonna pay for these broken fences, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be the people who live here.’

  They took to their heels and ran for the exit.

  He touched the old man on the arm. ‘Will you be all right, mate? I need to get through to the front. My lady and her babes are caught up in the middle of this and I wanna make sure they’re safe.’

  ‘You can’t go through Dolly Carthew’s house,’ he warned. ‘The traffic’s flowing the wrong way.’ He was a dyed-in-the-wool racist with strong views about polluting his Anglo-Saxon heritage and he eyed the big black man suspiciously. ‘That looks like blood on your jacket.’

  ‘It is.’ Jimmy took note of the wariness. ‘There’s people being badly injured and no way to get ambulances to them. Do you know Eileen Hinkley? Glebe Tower . . . used to be a nurse . . . runs “Friendship Calling”? We’re using her flat as a first-aid centre.’

  He must have used the magic words – ‘Open Sesame’ – because the old soldier nodded. ‘I’d let you through my house if I lived on Humbert Street, but I’m over there in Bassett.’ He nodded towards the garden backing on to Mrs Carthew’s, which had been laid waste by trampling feet. ‘You’d better let me have a word with young Karen at number 5. She won’t open her back door if you go knocking, but she’ll listen to me.’ He beetled his brows into a fierce line. ‘You’ll have to swear you won’t let thugs barge in when you go out the front, though. She’s disabled . . . Can’t have her knocked over by louts.’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘I understand.’

  The man handed him his machete. ‘Stay here. I’ll see what I can do.’

  Jimmy propped the weapon against a fence post, then flipped open his mobile, hoping the battery had had time to consolidate a small charge. He assumed at least an hour had passed since he left Glebe Tower, but when he checked his watch he was amazed to find it was barely thirty minutes. There wasn’t a flicker of life in the phone and he tucked it back in his pocket while he considered his options.

  There’d been no time to work out a plan but, judging by the fear on the faces of the people running out of Mrs Carthew’s back door, all hell had broken loose in Humbert Street and the sensible course was to take themselves as far away as possible. How easy would it be to extract Melanie and the kids? And what about Gaynor? If it was true that she was working Mrs Carthew’s front door, then he and Mel could hardly abandon her to take off in the other direction.

  The simplest course would be for them all to find a way into the gardens and meet up there. They could head for Gaynor’s house and safely lie low there until the rioting died down. But there was no rear exit out of Melanie’s maisonette unless he broke through the breeze-block wall into Granny Howard’s sitting-room . . . and the miserable old bitch would probably be waiting for him on the other side with a meat cleaver . . .

  A woman with a toddler in her arms sank to the grass at his feet, tears streaming down her deathly white face. ‘I’ve l-lost my l-little Anna,’ she stammered before her eyes rolled up and she toppled sideways, smothering the baby beneath her.

  He plucked the child out from under her and cradled it in his arms, casting around for a little girl. ‘ANNA!’ he yelled. ‘MUMMY’S HERE! AN-NN-A! AN-NN-A!’

  He didn’t want to be here . . . he’d planned to get Melanie out and start again . . . he was supposed to be on his way to London with merchandise! Who had appointed him his brother’s keeper?

  ‘AN-NN-A! I’M LOOKING FOR A LITTLE GIRL CALLED ANNA! HAS ANYONE SEEN HER?’

  ‘Here,’ said a boy with a tear-stained face, pushing a filthy little girl in front of him. ‘She fell over.’ His lower lip trembled. ‘I don’t know where my mum is neither, mister.’ A big tear rolled down his cheek.

  With a sigh, Jimmy stretched out a large palm and drew them both into his side. ‘You’re safe now,’ he told them.

  Five minutes later, his friend, the soldier, was surprisingly amenable to taking the pathetic little flock under his wing. It had swelled by three more grubby urchins who had become detached from friends or parents and were too frightened to wander alone in the crowd. ‘As soon as it calms down, I’ll take them to my kitchen and give them a cuppa,’ he said gruffly. ‘You get on now. Young Karen’s waiting for you. Just remember to close the front door after you. She’s frightened enough as it is.’

  ‘Will do.’ Jimmy stuck out his hand. ‘Thanks, mate, I owe you one.’

  The old man took it. ‘It’s like the war,’ he said wistfully. ‘Adversity brings out the best in people.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jimmy with gentle irony, ‘that’s kinda what Eileen Hinkley said.’

  ‘Young’ Karen was sixty, give or take ten years, and suffering from Parkinson’s disease. She was in a wheelchair and couldn’t speak, but she smiled and nodded when Jimmy thanked her and said he’d make sure the front door was firmly closed behind him. He wanted to ask her if she was frightened . . . ? Who looked after her . . . ? Was she lonely . . . ?

  But there wasn’t time. And she wouldn’t have been able to tell him, anyway.

  People were beginning to lie like lead weights on his heart. Money debts he could understand. Emotional ones were a killer. It was the six degrees of separation syndrome. Invisible threads linking him to the whole damn world. Policewomen . . . paramedics . . . feisty old ladies . . . disabled ladies . . . mad soldiers . . . kids . . . babies . . . He preferred anonymity.

  Gaynor threw another silken loop around his neck by bursting into tears when he appeared at her side. ‘Oh, Christ, Jimmy,’ she wept, clinging to him. ‘Thank God . . . Thank God. I prayed for a miracle.’

  The crush had slackened after the first onslaught because the breathing space created in the street by the sudden exodus of two or three hundred had persuaded the others to remain where they were. It couldn’t last. There was too much traffic pressing in relentlessly from Forest Road for claustrophobia not to strike again, and Jimmy, a head taller than Gaynor, could see it coming.

  ‘Time to go,’ he told her, nodding towards the corridor. ‘Make your way home and I’ll bring Mel and the kids as soon as I find them.’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said stubbornly. ‘Someone’s gotta stay here, and it has to be me because it’s my fault it ever started.’ She showed him her mobile. ‘I’ve got a copper on the other end. He says we need to keep this exit open . . . get more to operate if possible . . . either that or stop people coming into Humbert.’ She thrust the phone at him. ‘You talk to him, Jimmy,’ she begged. ‘Please. Maybe he can tell you how
to stop it before anyone gets killed.’

  ‘What about Mel?’

  Gaynor’s eyes clouded with anxiety. ‘I don’t know. We got separated. I just keep telling myself to have faith in her. Your lady’s not a fool, darlin’, and she’d never let anything happen to the bairns.’ Tears began to well. ‘To be honest, I’m more worried about our Col.’ She laid a hand on her breast where the pain was. ‘He’s such an idiot when he’s lagered up . . . but I do love him something chronic, Jimmy.’

  Outside 23 Humbert Street

  Colin had never been more sober. Or afraid. His skin was beginning to scorch through his T-shirt and he knew the fire had to be put out or the heat would force them to abandon their stand and the house would go up anyway. He kept glancing round to see how fast the wood was being consumed. He had a clearer idea of how combustion worked than his sister, recognizing that the flames would need to burn through the door before they could take hold of carpets, skirting boards and furniture inside, but he couldn’t see how to prevent that happening.

  He kept wondering why the perverts weren’t doing anything. Didn’t they realize what was going on? Smell the burning? If he was them he’d be pouring kettles of water through the letter box while the going was good. Surely they understood that this meagre line of people couldn’t protect the door indefinitely?

  Insidious thoughts wormed inside his head. Were the nonces even in there? Maybe they’d slipped out the back. Were he and Mel guarding an empty house?

  ‘I’m gonna climb through the window and put the fire out from inside,’ he shouted into Melanie’s ear. ‘But you’ve gotta make sure the line sticks it out while I do it ’cos I don’t want Wesley chucking a bomb in after me. D’you understand?’

  Perhaps she had come to a similar conclusion, because she nodded immediately. Her bare arms and shoulders were glowing red from the heat, and all she said was: ‘Just be quick, OK?’

  He dropped behind her and took off his shoe to knock the remaining teeth of the window panes from their frame. A frisson of curiosity ran through the crowd as he hopped across the sill. What was he doing? Protecting the perverts by siding with them? Or trying to make them surrender?

  Wesley Barber’s voice rose into the air. ‘Your bruvver gonna get fried if he don’t bring them nonces out, bitch.’

  Melanie forced saliva into her dry mouth. ‘It’s you gonna get fried, Wesley, if anything happens to our Col. I’ll pour the petrol over you and light the match myself.’

  Inside 23 Humbert Street

  Colin, who was no stranger to burglary, had to support himself against the doorjamb as he poked his head into the corridor. His knees were shaking so much he thought he was going to fall over. It was one thing to use a sledgehammer on a back door when you knew the owners were out, another to walk in on a couple of gay paedophiles when you were pretty sure they were waiting for you. He’d acted without thinking. Supposing they took him hostage? Supposing they buggered him?

  Shi-i-it!

  His ears strained to pick up any sound of voices but it was impossible to cut out the noises from outside. The smell of the burning door was strong, and he couldn’t believe they’d just leave it. Where the fuck were they? He crept past the door of the back downstairs room, listening acutely when he noticed it wasn’t fully closed, but if anyone was in there he couldn’t hear them. A quick glance up the stairs showed no one lurking at the top, but he wasn’t inclined to investigate. His head was full of movie images of vampires in coffins.

  The kitchen door was ajar and he tiptoed up to it. He could see the edge of a table protruding behind it and guessed correctly that the table had been used to jam it closed before someone decided to open it again. But why? Because they were still in there and wanted to know what was going on? Or because they weren’t?

  And if they weren’t . . . then the open door meant the fuckers were somewhere behind him . . .

  He swung round, his heart leaping around his body like a rat in a trap. He would have run away if he hadn’t seen smoke spilling through the letter box. He had to do something quickly or Wesley and his gang would torch the place the minute Mel was forced to abandon the door, but fear of perverts clashed with fear of fire inside his head and he stood in petrified indecision. Like his mother down the road, he started to pray. Oh, God, please don’t let the perverts be in the kitchen . . . Oh, God! Oh, God!

  In the back bedroom all three prisoners heard the water tank in the attic above them fill as Colin turned on both the taps in the kitchen sink and set the system running.

  ‘There’s someone in the house,’ said Sophie.

  Franek started to rise.

  ‘Don’t come near me,’ she warned, lifting the cricket bat. ‘I’m not going to be your shield. I’m not going to let you touch me again.’

  He took no notice, but pushed himself into a crouching position, gesturing to his son to widen the distance between them and make it harder for her to attack them both at the same time. There was a moment as Nicholas rose to his feet when Sophie thought he was going to obey, but instead he turned on his father, pressing his weight hard on the back of Franek’s neck to force his face down to his knees and squeeze the oxygen from his lungs. There was a brief struggle before the old man collapsed sideways on to the floor, sucking air noisily through his mouth.

  ‘He panics very easily,’ was all Nicholas said.

  Twenty

  Saturday 28 July 2001

  Nightingale Health Centre

  PC KEN HEWITT recognized the name as soon as Gaynor told him her daughter’s ‘fella’, Jimmy James, would be coming on the line in her place. Hewitt had been one of the arresting officers responsible for putting James behind bars for his most recent stretch, and he wasn’t optimistic that the man would want to deal with him. The arrest related to burglary offences in 1998 and was based on information received from James’s ex-girlfriend, who had been ditched, as Hewitt now realized, for Gaynor Patterson’s daughter. In typical woman-scorned fashion, the ex had set out to knife her lover.

  James had fought like a devil to resist arrest, flicking policemen off his arms like troublesome insects, claiming he’d been straight for twelve months and that his new lady was pregnant. None of which cut much ice with the law. He was lucky in his solicitor, who managed to keep the case in the magistrates’ court by persuading James to plead guilty to three charges in return for having five others, including assault on police officers, dropped; and lucky in the bench, who accepted flaky evidence that he had been in paid employment for twelve months, had settled down to start a family with his new girlfriend, and was making a genuine attempt to turn his life around. Even so he had still been sentenced to eight months, of which he would have to serve half, despite his brief’s optimism that community service was a more likely outcome.

  ‘Hi, Jimmy,’ said Ken now, squeezing his eyes ruefully at Jenny Monroe, ‘PC Ken Hewitt.’

  Jimmy’s voice came clearly over the loudspeaker. ‘I remember you. You’re one of the blokes who arrested me last time. Young geezer . . . dark hair.’

  ‘That’s me. You damn nearly broke my arm.’

  ‘Yeah, well, no hard feelings. Listen, it’s not that easy to hear you . . . there’s a hell of a racket going on around me . . . so speak loud and slow, OK? Tell me what you want. Gaynor talked about opening up some other exits.’

  ‘I need you on a landline, Jimmy. Can you go into Mrs Carthew’s house and find her upstairs? She’s in her bedroom. We’ll tell her you’re coming. Just don’t let anyone else follow you up. She’s not very strong. Understood?’

  ‘Sure. I’m getting pretty good at this stuff. But I reckon the frailer they look the tougher they are inside.’

  ‘What did he mean?’ asked Jenny as the mobile lost his voice to pick up the noise of the crowd.

  Hewitt shook his head. ‘Search me.’

  Inside 9 Humbert Street

  Mrs Carthew had rather vacant blue eyes and pinkly tinged cheeks. She was sitting in an armchair by her windo
w and smiled sweetly at Jimmy when he appeared in her bedroom doorway. She held out the telephone to him and gestured happily towards the scene outside. ‘Is everyone enjoying themselves?’ she asked, as if she were presiding over a street party.

  ‘Some of them are,’ he agreed, putting the receiver to his ear to tell Ken Hewitt he had arrived. He found himself thinking that here was another old lady who seemed to be living in poverty. Glimpses through the open doors on the landing when he was trying to find her had shown the extra rooms to be all but empty, so why she was living alone in a house that was big enough to house a family was inexplicable. Most of her possessions seemed to be packed into this one room, though there was nothing of value – Jimmy’s automatic assessment on entering someone else’s house – just utilitarian furniture, an old television and some ornaments and photographs.

  ‘Don’t mind Mrs Carthew,’ Ken Hewitt was saying. ‘She lost the plot about half an hour ago . . . thinks it’s the end of the war . . . VE Day. She obviously comes and goes because she was compos mentis at the beginning . . . but we think it’s better to agree with her so she doesn’t get frightened.’

  ‘She’s all on her own in here,’ said Jimmy, turning away slightly and masking his mouth with the large hand holding the receiver. ‘I’m not surprised if she comes and goes. There’s no furniture in any of the other rooms and it doesn’t look like she has many visitors. I guess memories are all she’s got . . . and that’s pretty sad.’

  ‘She told us her children emptied the house two years ago when she went on a waiting list for sheltered accommodation, and she hasn’t seen any of them since. But it’s best to keep off the subject. It was talking about her kids that made her regress.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Jimmy, giving Mrs Carthew an encouraging wink. ‘Like I say, I’m getting used to it. They’re all at it. I’ve got an old geezer out the back guarding the fence with a tin helmet on his head, yelling about the war and waving a machete around.’