Riot Act

by Zoe Sharp

  Eventually the door was opened by a girl not yet completely out of her teens, with a baby balanced on her right hip. She had a lank blonde ponytail, and the remains of a hare lip. At the sight of Sean her eyes widened and her mouth formed into a soundless oh.

  She tried to slam the door shut on us, but Sean had his shoulder against it before she had half a chance. The flimsy hardboard rebounded off him and he kept right on coming, as unstoppable as a truck, and about as compassionate. The girl retreated backwards down the tiny hallway, clutching at the child.

  I stepped across the threshold after them, closing the door firmly behind me.

  “You can’t come barging in here like this, Sean,” the girl protested, her voice high with panic.

  “Give it up, Leanne,” Sean said now. His voice was tired rather than angry, which somehow made it all the more threatening. “You know why we’re here. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Leanne snapped. The baby took its cue from her. It’s little face crumpled around the dummy in its mouth, then it turned a healthy shade of puce, and started screeching.

  Leanne jiggled the child by way of comfort. It didn’t seem to help much. She lowered her voice, but it lost none of its venom. “Get out before I call the cops.”

  Sean laughed, and it wasn’t a happy sound. “Go ahead,” he invited. He stepped to the phone on the hall table, lifted the receiver and held it out to her. “Your phone was cut off six months ago. You could always try a letter.”

  “It’s OK, Leanne, you may as well let him in,” said a dull voice from the sitting room doorway. “Once he sets his mind to something there’s not much can stop my brother.”

  Sean turned to face her. “Hello Ursula,” he said quietly.

  Leanne tried to smother the baby’s cries against the stained shoulder of her T-shirt, then whisked the infant off into the kitchen. The thin plywood door she slammed behind her did little to muffle its wailing.

  “You’d better come through,” Ursula said. “Don’t take it out on Leanne, she’s only trying to help.”

  Sean’s sister led us into the cramped living room and sank down into the single armchair by the gas fire. He sat on one end of the sofa nearest to her, and was so close their knees almost touched. I stayed on my feet, trying not to look like I was hovering.

  Roger didn’t look like either of them, but Ursula was almost as tall as Sean, with thick dark hair cut short and feathered in to her pale face. The facial structure was the same, high wide cheekbones and a good jawline. Arresting, rather than conventionally pretty.

  “Mum’s worried about you,” Sean said gently. “You should get in touch with her, at least. Let her know you’re all right.”

  “But I’m not, am I?” Ursula said. She sat up, and for the first time I could see the curve of her belly beneath the baggy jumper she wore. Four, possibly five months gone, if I was any judge.

  She looked her brother in the eye and demanded bitterly, “What do you want me to say to her, Sean? ‘Hi, Mum, I’m pregnant to an eighteen-year-old Paki, but don’t worry, there’s not going to be any mixed marriage, because he’s just been shot dead.’ How do I tell her that?”

  It was a fine defiant speech, only let down by the way her chin trembled at the end of it.

  “She already knows,” Sean said, keeping his tone quiet and measured. “And what she doesn’t know, she’s guessed. Anything you tell her now isn’t going to be as bad as her sitting at home worrying about where you are, and what’s happening to you. Mum doesn’t give a stuff who the father is, not really. You should know that.”

  He reached for her hands, took them in both of his, smoothing his thumbs over her bones. “This is her first grandchild, for God’s sake. It could well be the only one she ever gets. Don’t take that away from her.”

  Ursula sat motionless for a moment, then jerked her hands out of his grasp, but only to wipe them quickly across her rapidly filling eyes. Sean waited half a beat, then folded her into his arms and held her there, listening to the sobbing.

  Our eyes met over the top of his sister’s head. It was strange to watch him offering such tender comfort with his body, while his face was so utterly cold.

  I continued to stand and say nothing. There was nothing I could say.

  It was a little while before Ursula moved again. She sat up, dug down a sleeve for a handkerchief, blew her nose and got herself together. She threw Sean a shaky smile. Not much of one, but better than nothing.

  “So, do I tell Mum you’ll come home and let her fuss over you?” he asked.

  “I can’t,” she said, anxious again. “I-I don’t think it’s safe for me to be where anyone can find me at the moment.”

  To his credit, Sean didn’t point out that we’d traced her here without vast effort. Instead he said, “Why? Why isn’t it safe at home?”

  She shrugged. “Nas was – he was scared. Last week, he told me to get out and find somewhere safe to stay for a while. Told me not to go home until he said it was OK. He didn’t say what was wrong, and now he’s dead.” She looked up at him with overflowing eyes. “And I’m too scared to go back.”

  Sean stood up. “I’ve got friends down south,” he said. “We’ll get you right out of here until this is all sorted out. Go pack your stuff.”

  She sniffed again, nodded. “OK,” she said, sounding subdued, but eager, all at the same time. She made it as far as the doorway before Sean called her back.

  “Just one thing,” he said. He always did know when to apply pressure. He’d been so good at that in the army. “Where was Nas getting his money from?”

  Ursula’s expression flashed over from gratitude to mistrust. “I don’t know,” she said carefully.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Sean said, his voice even. “Was he back up to his old tricks again?”

  “No!” she denied instantly, but couldn’t meet his gaze. “He knew if he got caught again he’d get put away for it, not just juvenile detention centres, the real deal this time, so he kept out of the action. He, well, he was doing a bit of scouting, that’s all. Passing on names, you know?”

  “Who to?”

  “I don’t know,” she repeated, and this time it had the ring of truth about it. “He didn’t say, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know.” She paused, memories hitting her like a bad dream. “He just wanted the best for the baby,” she said. “He was so pleased about it,” and her face started to dissolve again. She stumbled out of the room and across the hall, wrenching the door shut behind her as she went through it.

  We started after her, but Leanne appeared out of the kitchen at that point. She was minus the baby, which was manacled into a high chair behind her, and trying to chip its way to freedom with a plastic spoon. Leanne stood with her hands on her hips, as though daring Sean to follow his sister into her bedroom.

  He eyed the closed door for a moment, then turned that intense gaze onto Leanne instead. “Has Roger been here, too?” he demanded.

  Leanne tried to stand her ground, but quailed rapidly. “Yes, but we haven’t seen him since—” she glanced at the door and lowered her voice. “Since the night Nas was killed. Roger came to tell her he was dead.”

  “When?”

  She thought for a moment. “Late, close to midnight, I think. I’d been having trouble with the little one. She’s teething. I was still up with her.” She glanced back at the child, who was now attempting to redecorate the kitchen in something pale green and pureed out of the dish in front of her, and letting out shrieks of delight.

  “Roger was in a right state,” Leanne went on. “Covered in dirt, and crying like a little kid. Kept saying he was sorry over and over. Crazy with it, you know? Scary really. I’ve got some leftover diazepam in the cabinet. I tried to give him some to take the edge off it, but he just chucked it back at me and took off.”

  “Did you go after him?” Sean asked, tense.

  “What, at that time of night, round here?” Leanne’s voice was scornful. “No I
did not! Besides, by that time I’d got enough on my hands coping with Ursula. She was frantic.”

  The bedroom door opened then, and Ursula came out again, carrying a small canvas bag. We waited while she hugged Leanne, and promised to be in touch, then she allowed Sean to shepherd her out of the front door and along the open walkway to the stairs.

  We were down to the second floor before we heard the motorbike arriving. I registered the sound of a big four-stroke out of habit and, glancing over the slatted balcony rail on my way past, I saw the black and yellow Honda CBR 600 come wheeling off the street into the parking area below us.

  By the next half-landing, the rider had the side stand down, and the engine cut. The bike was too big for him, and although he was wearing a nice Shoei helmet, he had on just a denim jacket, and no gloves. I often wonder what makes these lads go out and buy machines that will do one-fifty plus, without bothering to get the proper gear to go with it.

  As we turned onto the final half-landing, Sean suddenly stopped dead. I pulled up short and followed his gaze. The CBR rider had removed his helmet, and was walking across the grass towards the stairwell, with his face clearly visible.

  This time, Sean didn’t make the mistake of yelling his brother’s name. He didn’t bother with the rest of the stairs, either. He just put both hands on the railing, and vaulted straight over it, coat flying. Ursula let out a strangled cry as he dropped out of sight.

  Roger had frozen at her cry. It was only when Sean started heading for him at speed that he sprang into action.

  He panicked completely then. He threw the helmet he was carrying at Sean, who swiped it to one side without breaking stride, as though it had no substance. The expensive lid smacked onto the rough ground of the parking area, bounced a couple of times, and finally rolled into the gutter, the gelcoat cracked and useless.

  Roger managed to get to the Honda first, but fumbled getting the key into the ignition. I almost thought Sean had him, when the boy managed to get his thumb on the starter and the motor fired up. He snatched the Honda off its stand and kicked it clumsily into gear with the throttle already halfway open.

  The effect was electric. The rear wheel ripped free of the road surface, spinning wildly, and churning up clouds of grey smoke as the transmission tried its best to bring the bike’s substantial horsepower into play.

  Sean leapt clear as the rear end started to crab towards him. Finally, it dug in and bit, launching the Honda forwards with a lethal shimmy. Roger must have gone fifty yards in the blink of an eye, before he backed off the throttle enough to stay upright.

  It was only a momentary ebb, then he was viciously back on the power. He laid down a haze of rubber right to the end of the street.

  I headed straight for the Cherokee, practically towing Ursula along behind me. By the time I got her there Sean already had the doors unlocked and was in the driver’s seat. I bundled her into the back with a short instruction for her to buckle up, and jumped for the front seat just as Sean twisted the key and slammed the gear lever into reverse.

  He set off out of the small car park and into the road with a squeal of protest from the tyres, and another from his sister.

  “Sean,” I said, loud over the howl of the engine. “He’s on a CBR, with a head start. We don’t stand a hope in hell of catching him in this.”

  “I know.” Sean’s face was grim as he accelerated down the narrow street, swerving the Jeep into a gap between the parked cars to miss an oncoming delivery van by a less than I’d like to think about. “But I’ve got to try.”

  In fact, his pursuit lasted longer than I would have expected. Roger made a frenetic series of turns through the back streets. He was riding increasingly wildly, showing an obvious lack of skill and familiarity with the sheer bulk of the Honda.

  The boy tried to go far too fast into one junction, locked the rear wheel at the last moment, and couldn’t make the turn in. He over-shot, cannoning off a parked car on the far side of the road.

  Ursula let out a short scream, and I held my breath, waiting for the crash. He wasn’t even wearing a helmet now, so it was probably going to be messy, and it was definitely going to hurt, but the accident never happened. Just when I thought he’d lost it altogether, Roger somehow managed to cling on to control.

  How in the name of hell, I wondered as Sean sent the Grand Cherokee thundering after his brother, did a fourteen-year old get his hands on a sub-superbike?

  The answer didn’t so much form inside my head, as it just arrived, fully grown, as though it had always been there. I twisted in my seat to face Ursula.

  “Is that Nasir’s bike he’s on?” I demanded.

  She looked at me as though I’d gone out of my mind.

  “What are you talking about?” she said, distracted, trying to see over her brother’s shoulder. “Nas doesn’t have a motorbike.”

  I turned back, catching Sean’s eye as I did so. “Remember the reg number,” he said, “I’ll get Madeleine to check it.”

  But we both knew instinctively whose name would be spat out as the registered keeper when Madeleine finessed the DVLA computer.

  I realised briefly that Nasir’s age should have meant that the CBR’s power output had been restricted down to 33bhp for him to legally ride it. It soon became pretty obvious that it wasn’t.

  Now, Roger kept on riding as though his life depended on it. At first, I thought he was just fleeing in a blind panic, but it soon became apparent there was method to his seemingly chaotic flips and turns.

  “He’s heading for the escape road,” Sean said tightly as he drifted the four-by-four through another corner. “We won’t catch him if he makes it that far.”

  The escape road out of Heysham wasn’t dual carriageway, but it was so wide that it might as well have been. Roger would be able to give the CBR its head and that would be it.

  “What are you suggesting?” I demanded sharply, “that you run him off the road before he gets there?”

  Sean’s hands clenched on the wheel, and he said nothing, but I didn’t like the sound of his thoughts.

  In the end, we didn’t get the chance for drastic action. Sean hit congestion on the approach to a roundabout, and Roger nipped away from us up the inside of an artic, coming within a hair’s breadth of putting himself under the rear wheels of the trailer in the process.

  Then he was away, throwing the power on in great handfuls, rocketing straight down the white line. As soon as we were clear of the roundabout Sean swung out to overtake the truck, but the driver had clearly decided we were lunatics. He did his best to make his rig even wider and longer. It seemed to take a painfully extended few seconds before Sean managed to carve past him. We could still just about see the Honda up ahead.

  Sean planted the accelerator, and the jeep squatted down and ran under us. It had pace that amazed me for such a big, unwieldy vehicle, but with the best will in the world it wasn’t built for sheer speed.

  Besides, the escape road was raised above the marshy farm land around it, dreadfully exposed to the wind as I well knew from the bike. As we hit a hundred miles an hour a savage gust whipped under the body, almost seeming to lift the Grand Cherokee right off the surface of the road.

  We strayed over the white line as Sean fought with the steering. The inoffensive Peugeot coming the other way locked all its wheels up as the driver desperately attempted to avoid a head-on.

  Blenched white, Sean managed to rescue that one, and still he kept his foot hard in.

  Finally, it was Ursula, bracing herself into a corner of the back seat, whose nerve broke. “Stop, Sean, please! You’re going to kill us all,” she cried. “Why are you chasing him like this? What’s he running from?”

  It was a good question. After only a moment’s hesitation, with a muttered curse, Sean lifted off the throttle. We coasted down to a more legal speed while we watched the Honda’s rear numberplate grow ever smaller in the distance.

  He didn’t answer Ursula’s question, but he caught my eye again
, and the bleakness was back in his features. I knew then that he’d reached the same terrible conclusion as I had, back there listening to Leanne recounting her story in that dingy hallway.

  I couldn’t get around the fact there was no way Roger should have known that Nasir had been killed at midnight on the night the two of them had attacked me at the gym. According to the official line, Nas’s body wasn’t discovered until the following morning.

  Which begged the question, how did Roger know his friend was dead? And for what, exactly, was he so sorry?

  ***

  Sean dropped me off at my flat on St George’s Quay, helped a subdued Ursula into the front passenger seat, and left with a tight-lipped smile. I retrieved the Suzuki and headed back to Pauline’s, feeling guilty at having abandoned her so completely on her first day home.