Riot Act

by Zoe Sharp

  We turned to see Sean step off the far kerb, and cross the road towards us. He had that familiar head-down stance, moving with deceptive speed. I don’t know how long he’d been there. Neither of us had noticed his arrival.

  Sean came to a halt just behind my shoulder, which was an interesting stand to take, and I was grateful for it. He was offering me back-up, rather than just taking over as though I couldn’t handle Langford by myself. I threw him a brief, searching glance, then turned back to the man in front of me.

  The vigilante suddenly seemed less solid by comparison. He took in Sean’s quiet easy movements, the suggestion of hard-packed muscle, and recognised the underlying steel. For a few moments the two of them stared each other out, before Langford gave in.

  He straightened up again, like a tomcat puffing up its fur when faced with a larger, fiercer rival. “You’ll be hearing from me,” he promised sourly, then turned and stamped away.

  Sean put a hand on my shoulder, but when I turned to face him, I found him watching Langford’s retreat with a frown. He brought his attention back to me with an effort. “Are you OK?”

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said, feeling slightly limp and light-headed. “No sign of Roger?”

  Sean shook his head. “My dear brother seems to have developed quite a talent for the rapid disappearing act,” he said dryly. “I thought he was heading this way, but I lost him, and I don’t know the area like I used to.” He still sounded distracted, eyes drifting over my shoulder in the direction Langford had taken. “I’m sure I know that face,” he muttered, almost to himself.

  “What, Langford’s?” I asked. It shouldn’t have come as a shock. After all, the two of them did used to live only a few streets away from each other.

  “That’s Harvey Langford?” Sean demanded. He whirled round, took a few strides, but the street was empty. “Goddamn it, of course! How do you know him?”

  I shrugged, reluctant to answer his sharp questions, even though he’d just come to my rescue. Again. It was starting to become a bad habit. “He’s leading the vigilante mob round here,” I said, grudgingly. “They were there the night Fariman was stabbed.”

  A bleakness crept over Sean’s features that went so deep it seemed to freeze the skin to his bones as any animation faded. “He’s the one you stopped from beating up Roger?” he asked, although he didn’t really need a reply. Under his breath he added, “Next time we meet I think it’s probably time Mr Langford and I had a quiet chat.”

  I shivered at the ice lacing his tone. For the first time, when I thought of Langford, I could almost feel sorry for the man.

  ***

  By the time we got back to Mrs Meyer’s place, O’Bryan and Madeleine were waiting for us by the front gate. The expressions on their faces told us all we needed to know. They hadn’t found Roger either.

  We went inside, with O’Bryan wringing his hands and clucking anxiously about trying to keep the boy out of trouble, to the point where even Sean’s mother was trying to comfort him.

  There wasn’t much more I could do, so I grabbed my gear and made my exit while I had the chance. Sean came out with me.

  He watched silently while I unlocked the bike, hands dug deep into the pockets of his jeans. I didn’t look at him while I went through the routine of turning the fuel tap on, and kicking the Suzuki into life, but having his eyes on me was making my neck itch. Before I could ram my helmet on, he touched my arm.

  “We still haven’t had that talk, have we, Charlie?” he said.

  “No,” I agreed shortly, and couldn’t help a certain feeling of relief at the fact.

  “We need to,” he said. “Now I’ve got your current number I’ll call you tomorrow. Perhaps we could have a drink or something later on in the week?” He sounded hesitant, uncertain even.

  Surprised, I felt my eyes slide to the living room window behind him. I could see Madeleine standing there, watching the pair of us through the glass. I cocked an eyebrow. “Is that a good idea?”

  He smiled, rueful, and knew what I’d seen without having to turn round himself. “She trusts me,” he said. “And it is just a drink.”

  But I don’t trust you, my mind shouted. And more than that, I don’t trust myself.

  “OK,” my mouth formed the word without consulting my brain first. I jammed my Arai lid on quickly, just in case it was thinking of saying anything else, and nudged the bike into gear.

  I set off along the street with more gusto than the cold engine would have liked. When I reached the end I stopped at the junction, scanning my mirrors automatically, and found that Sean was still standing on the pavement where I’d left him, staring after me.

  ***

  I spent the early part of the evening back at Pauline’s watching some mindless film on the TV, with Friday stretched out on the sofa next to me. He snored gently with his head in my lap, limbs twitching to the dance of some doggy dream. I stroked the silky ears absently while my brain zigzagged backwards and forwards fruitlessly over the subject of Sean Meyer.

  Our affair proper had only lasted a matter of a few months before he was sent overseas, even though there seemed to have been a long slow build-up to it.

  To begin with I hadn’t even liked Sean much, but I wasn’t expecting to. Even among the other army instructors he had the reputation of being a real bastard. Right from the start he’d pushed me harder than I’d thought was fair, seeming to go out of his way to expose my weaknesses.

  He told me later, while we were in bed as I remember it, that he was trying to hide just how hard and how fast he’d fallen for me.

  Against my will, I’d found him physically attractive from the outset, but that wasn’t so hard to resist when I’d convinced myself that he was mentally and emotionally such a cold fish. I’d got my first inkling that I was wrong during the Resistance to Interrogation training about halfway through the course.

  The idea of the R-to-I exercise was to avoid capture, but they knew we’d all be hunted down, sooner or later. And when we were, then we had to withstand a prolonged interrogation that was as frighteningly realistic as they could make it. Another unit was tasked with interrogating us, and it was a matter of pride that they broke us before the time allowed was up.

  It had been tough. Along with another batch of trainees I’d been stripped and beaten, humiliated, deprived of sleep, fed white noise until my teeth ached from it, and left blindfolded and handcuffed for hours at a time in the most painful positions they could devise. And the questions, the same things over and over, screaming abuse to push you to the edge.

  It was after more than twenty hours or so of this that I’d heard one of the observers who monitored us all during the exercise come into the room where they’d been holding me, to check I still had circulation in my bound hands and feet. “Don’t worry, Charlie, you’re doing fine,” a familiar voice had whispered in my ear. “Only another two hours to go. Don’t give up now. You’ve nearly made it.”

  His was the first face that greeted me when they took the sack off my head at the end of the exercise. Despite the state I was in, he’d seen from my face that I was OK, and he’d smiled. It had dazzled me.

  Starting a relationship with him had been an act of madness. For both of us. We knew it would cost us our careers if anyone found out, but we couldn’t help ourselves. It was a strange but wonderful time, fearful and ecstatic, all bound up together. And then Sean had been posted.

  It was a sudden posting, unexpected, and unwelcome. Looking back with a cool mind, I tried to work out if the top brass had suspected us, even then, and that was why they’d chosen Sean for that particular job. He hadn’t said where he was going, and I’d known better than to ask, but the prospect of being apart from him for some unknown period of time had terrified me.

  I was right to be scared. A week later, on the way back to camp from one of the local pubs, I’d encountered a group of my fellow trainees who were just drunk enough to be dangerous, and my whole world had come crashing down around my ears.
Sean wasn’t there to save me that time. In the aftermath I tried to get messages through to him, but I never received any response to my increasingly frantic calls.

  At my lowest ebb, it wasn’t hard to convince myself he’d abandoned me. That my first impression of him had been the right one.

  I never saw him again until he and Madeleine had swooped into that alleyway to pluck me and Roger out of the dirt. Even then, it seemed his first instinct was to reject me. Too much had happened. How could I even begin to trust him now?

  I sat up, aware of a dull ache in my temples. The light had faded, the film had ended, and some inane game show was playing out to squawks of canned laughter.

  The dog jerked awake at my movement. He scrambled off the sofa, shook himself so vigorously that his ears flapped together, and padded through into the kitchen.

  I heaved myself to my feet. My head was muzzy, as though packed with cotton wool. Perhaps I just needed some fresh air. “Come on, Friday,” I called, collecting his lead, “walk time.”

  ***

  It was bitterly cold outside, with the hint of frost in the gathering night, so I decided to give the Ridgeback little more than a quick turn round the block. He didn’t seem too upset by the lack of distance. We were out for such a short time that I realised afterwards they must have been watching the house, and waiting for their opportunity.

  As soon as I unlocked the front door again and pushed it open, I knew there was something wrong. The draught that met me could only mean the back door was open and the cold air was suddenly being sucked through the intervening rooms like a wind tunnel. I knew full well I’d locked it before we’d gone out.

  Friday got as far as the hallway, then went from semi-dormant to almost rabid instantaneously, like a shape-shifter. He gave a strangled whimper and bolted through my legs heading for the kitchen.

  I ran after him, not bothering with the lights, but by the time I arrived, he’d already got the situation under control.

  There was a figure hunched up on top of Pauline’s draining board, trying desperately to keep his legs out of range of Friday’s snapping jaws. The deep growls the dog was giving out were enough to bring the hairs up on the back of my neck. In the darkness they swelled until they were out of all proportion to his real size.

  Much as I was reluctant to shatter my unwanted visitor’s illusions about the mammoth hound that had him cornered, I reached out and flicked on the kitchen light.

  “Well, well,” I said, surprised. “Would it be pointless to ask what the fuck you’re doing in here?”

  Jav, the blond-haired Asian teenager lifted his feet out of the sink and glared at me. His expensive white trainers were now smeared with a film of scummy washing-up water. He seemed more upset about that than the prospect of being ripped limb from limb by an increasingly agitated dog.

  Then the boy reached up onto a shelf above him and grabbed hold of one of Pauline’s ornamental teapots. He held it over Friday’s head and glanced at me questioningly. “Either you call him off, or I crack his skull,” he said, his lisp more pronounced than I’d remembered.

  I clicked my fingers and Friday moved grudgingly to my side. I complied more because I knew how attached Pauline was to her pottery, rather than any fears for the Ridgeback’s safety.

  “So,” I said, “what do you want, Jav?” I didn’t bother to ask how he’d got in. Lock-picking was a compulsory pre-school subject round this area.

  He swung his legs over the side of the kitchen unit and let his feet drip onto the lino. “I came to warn you,” he said sullenly, “but I can’t be seen warning you, right?”

  “Why do I need warning?”

  “Because you’ve been seen with the wrong people, lady.” He saw the scepticism in my face and hopped down from the draining board with an elaborate shrug that was only slightly spoiled by the faint squelch he made as his feet hit the floor. “It’s your neck, not mine,” he said, and took a step towards the back door.

  “Wait,” I said. He halted but more, I suspect, because Friday had started growling again. “OK, let’s start again. Excuse my natural cynicism, but what exactly are you warning me about?”

  “Like I said, you’ve been seen hanging around with the fascists, and that don’t do your rep round here no good at all.”

  The communication system was amazing. I’d had a brief chat with Langford that afternoon on Copthorne, and by early evening the gangs on Lavender Gardens had got to hear about it and sent the boys round. Well, the boy, anyway. “I hardly think that one conversation counts as associating with fascists, Jav.”

  “Oh yeah?” he threw back at me, stung by the obvious amusement in my tone. “What do you call going round to his house, then, and protecting his kid brother when that piece of shit’s tried to kill one of us?”

  I could feel my eyes growing wider. “Whoa, whoa,” I said quickly. “You’re not talking about Langford?”

  “Course not,” Jav said contemptuously. “Sean Meyer, that’s who. He was up to his neck with that National Front lot before this area got too hot for him and then he bailed. Army, I heard.”

  The information hung over me like a dark, wet cloud just before the thunder starts. I could hear it building up in the distance. I glanced at the boy, found him watching me, nervous, wary. “What else have you heard?”

  He shrugged again. “That Meyer hated Nas not just for leading his precious brother into trouble, but because he was a damned Paki,” he spat the word out. “And now Nas is dead. Shot dead,” he emphasised meaningfully. “It don’t take a genius to work out that Army Boy’s got to be involved somewhere along the line.”

  No, it didn’t. That was the trouble.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked, suddenly tired.

  “For your own good,” he said, looking disgusted with himself. He took another few steps, reaching the doorway before he turned back, shuffling his feet. “You didn’t rat on me to that bastard West,” he said, looking embarrassed, and defiant. “I owed you. Now we’re even. OK?”

  I nodded. “But Jav,” I added grimly, making him pause. “You ever break in here again, and next time I won’t call the dog off. OK?”

  He nodded, face grave, then disappeared out into the darkness of the back garden. He left me with a barrage of unanswered questions that meant a long and largely sleepless night.

  ***

  I got a few of them answered the next morning, but that didn’t make me feel any better, on the whole. I was due in at the gym at ten, but I hit town just after nine o’clock and was soon rolling into the car park of the Defender on Meeting House Lane.

  Clare was already at her desk in the busy Accounts office when the disapproving woman from reception showed me through. My friend looked up with a ready smile that faded when she saw my face.

  She swept a batch of files off the chair next to her desk and patted the cushion. “Come, sit, and tell me all about it,” she said. She was wearing a brown suit that would have been frumpy on me, but looked like a catwalk special on Clare’s willowy frame. She studied me with worry lines between her eyebrows. “Spill it, Charlie, you look like death.”

  “Thanks,” I said, dredging up a smile from some recess. She suggested coffee. I agreed, even though I’d had the dubious pleasure of the paper’s office coffee machine before. Her brief absence gave me a chance to marshal my tattered thoughts.

  “There you go,” she said, plonking down a plastic cup full of a sludgy dark grey liquid in front of me. “Now, come on, what’s happened?”

  I filled her in on the weekend’s events, mentioning Sean’s name for the first time, but only as Roger’s older brother. “The thing is,” I said, “I need to check what Jav’s told me about him. You said after that attack on the Asian boy a few years ago they arrested some of the National Front group. Were there any names mentioned other than Langford’s?”

  Clare leafed through the papers on her desk. “I’ll check,” she said. “You’re lucky. I haven’t had time to put the files away
again yet.”

  She handed over the clipping and I realised that I hadn’t bothered to look at it myself when I’d gone round to Jacob and Clare’s place. I hadn’t needed to, because she’d read the highlights out to me.

  If I had, then Sean Meyer’s name would have leapt out at me like it was printed in dayglo ink.

  My heart stuttered, then froze as I read on. Sean had been arrested, along with a number of other group members including Langford, on suspicion of the crime. I looked up at Clare unable to keep the grief out of my face. “What happened to them?”

  “Like I said, they were all released because of lack of evidence. Are you OK?” she went on, in a rush. “You’ve gone really white.”

  “What? Oh, don’t worry – I missed breakfast,” I muttered, which was nearly the truth. I stood up. I needed to get out of there, to find some space to think.