Now that the police had been vanquished, the mob surged and spun and seemed to hang motionless, the way I’d seen a tornado pause in one of those videos taken by kamikaze stormchasers…and I remembered that when the vortex appears to be standing still, that means it’s headed right for you.
This one exploded all around me.
seven
Abruptly rain started coming down in hot torrents, soaking everyone, and to the crowd it was as refreshing and exhilarating as sprinklers going off at a rave. Windows shattered all along the street—the first targets were the shops selling booze—and the air quickly filled with shrieking sirens and clattering bells of burglar alarms, mingling with screaming and shouting and mad laughter and the roar of car engines as drivers trapped in the middle of the maelstrom tried to pull out of the stalled lines of traffic and somehow get out of there. One or two succeeded, bumping over traffic islands and even up along the pavement in their haste, while other drivers simply abandoned their cars in the street and ran.
The mob—blokes of any and every race, most of them in their twenties, plus a scattering of women, plus scores of kids barely into their teens—swirled and clustered and scattered again, seeking targets, egging each other on, swarming over the abandoned cars, dancing on their roofs, raking the interiors for anything stealable—GPS units, sunglasses, CD players—only to dump their loot in the street and run on to their next target. One big shiny four-by-four, brand-new by the looks of it, the looters didn’t even bother to ransack—they just ripped off its wipers, snapped and smashed its wing mirrors and crazed its windows and hacked at its bodywork with rocks and bricks and broken bottles and anything hard that came to hand. It was one of those huge ostentatious expensive cars whose only purpose in London was to inspire envy, and it was working all too well on this crowd.
The Dumpster truck too had been abandoned, with both its doors hanging open, but now black smoke was drifting from the cab, and I could see an orange flicker from the footwell refracted in its windows. Someone had set it on fire. Other rioters were clearing its load of poles and rocks to use as ammunition. All of them were soaked and none of them gave a damn; even the fire seemed to blaze away more brightly in the rain.
I held back, fighting down the feelings of sickness at the chaos I’d unleashed, trying instead to focus on how much time I had before the cops tooled up with riot gear and returned in force to drive us off the street. Last time it had taken them days; this time they might well decide to come back hard and fast, to snuff the riot out before it spread.
I had an hour maybe, at most.
All along the street shopkeepers were abandoning their premises, the braver ones risking the wrath of the rioters to haul down steel shutters in front of their windows; others—like the staff of the café I’d been sitting in earlier—merely bolting their doors, switching off all their lights, and retreating into the gloom at the back, presumably to escape through the service exits.
I was counting on the Turk’s crew to panic too. Nothing could have prepared them for being stranded in a sea of burning vehicles and looted shops and flying rocks, and there was only so much they could find out by peering through their net curtains. Keeping the pole in my hand low and inconspicuous, I ran across the street, treading carefully among the lumps of rubble the size of my fist that already dotted the tarmac, and stationed myself in the doorway next to the one leading up to the Turk’s apartment. Pressing myself back against the door, I waited.
I’d barely got into position when the door next to me rattled—at least two locks by the sound of it, heavy ones—and opened, and Dean emerged, looking around in amazement as if he’d stepped into a nightmare. I waited a beat to see who else came out, but he reached back and pulled the door shut behind him.
He was wearing an anorak with a hood pulled up against the rain. It restricted his peripheral vision, so although he had turned in my direction he still hadn’t seen me before I stepped forward and drove the end of the pole hard into his belly. He doubled over with a gasping yell and I swung the pole up and over and down, hard on the back of his head—not hard enough to kill him, but enough to lay him out.
He dropped in a soggy heap of arms and legs, and in the chaos and the racket and the driving rain and the drifting acrid smoke nobody noticed us and nobody came to help, even when I bent over and started going through his pockets. A smartphone, a bunch of keys, a wallet thick with twenties, no gun. Those had to be the keys for that front door…but how much good would that do me? There were still five men inside, whose nerves would by now be strung as taut as piano wire, with their eyes locked on the front door while they waited for Dean to report back.
When I realized what I had to do next I cursed, wishing I’d thought of it earlier. It’s hard to lift a full-grown man who’s out cold and lying slumped on top of his own folded legs. Setting the pole aside, I stooped, grabbed Dean by his armpits and heaved, straightening my legs so they’d take the load instead of my back. More teenagers in hoodies, caps and scarves raced past me to join the riot, cackling and yelling, and jostled me so hard I nearly dropped him. But I gritted my teeth and kept going, and Dean slowly unfolded, leaving a shoe behind as I hauled him down the curb and out into the road, among the abandoned cars.
When I was far enough out to be seen from the Turk’s apartment, I let him fall, facedown onto the soaked tarmac. I wasn’t worried about being recognized by the crew upstairs; only Dean knew me, and I doubted he’d given them my description. In fact, I hoped one of them would see me—that was kind of the point—but I didn’t glance up to check.
I simply stood back, took a deep breath and thought about how Dean had helped to wreck my life and hurt my friends, and about Zoe tied to that bed, writhing, while he and his greasy-fingered friends felt her up, and raw fury flared up inside me. I raised my foot and brought it down hard, once, twice, three times on Dean’s right kneecap, driving it down with all my weight and strength until I felt the joint crunch and the ligaments tear under my foot. Then I stood back. Dean would walk again without a stick, someday. Not soon. I turned and ran up the road, a mugger done with his victim.
Come and get him.
Further along someone had rammed the front window of a phone shop with a stolen van, stoving in the steel grid shutter and ripping through the laminated glass beyond. The shelves inside had already been stripped, the locked cupboards forced open and emptied, and now the last of the looters were squeezing out under the wrecked grille, wading through glass fragments and discarded dummy handsets. I veered towards the mêlée as if to join in, then doubled back along the pavement, staying tight against the shopfronts so that no one watching from the flat would see me return.
I’d seen this tactic in a war movie: a German sniper injured an Allied soldier, leaving him lying out in the open yelling for help, waiting for his colleagues to come to his rescue so he could pick them off. It was sick and sadistic, but in the movie at least it worked. Dean was lying crippled and unconscious in the street—it would take at least two of the Turk’s crew to drag him back inside. I retrieved the scaffolding pole from where I’d hidden it, took up my former position next to the apartment entrance and waited.
And waited. The rain was easing off; the riot was intensifying.
No one came out. They must have seen him lying there, but it looked like the Turk wasn’t paying his men enough to risk their lives on a rescue, and they didn’t care enough about Dean to do it for nothing. They might have tried to dial 999, but that wouldn’t have done them much good—all the emergency phone lines would be jammed by now, and even if they got through to the ambulance service the paramedics would take their time coming. In a riot nobody is safe and nothing is sacred. Paramedics, firefighters, news crews, all of them risked being beaten and robbed and pelted with bricks. The mob was a rabid animal, unpredictable and merciless.
Two more guys jogging towards the riot stopped by Dean and stooped over him. One was twenty-something, the other a teenager, both mixed-race, one with bi
g Afro hair, the other with dreadlocks. I half expected them to rifle Dean’s pockets and lift his wallet and phone; instead, the dreadlocked one pressed a finger to Dean’s neck and said something to his mate, who turned and ran back the way they’d both come. What the hell were they up to? I wasn’t going to have to rescue Dean from them, was I?
Only when the younger guy reappeared, dragging a door that had been ripped off its hinges, did I grasp what they were planning, and all I could do was stand and watch. I knew mobs could be unpredictable, but…As all around us more windows shattered and more wrecked cars burst aflame and more shops got looted—in one spot the pavement was strewn with musty old blouses and wrinkled shoes from a charity shop—these two rolled the unconscious Dean onto the splintered door, took a firm grip of each end, counted to three, lifted, and carried him off the way they had come, vanishing into the pall of greasy black smoke that billowed from the burning Dumpster truck. I was stuffed, and Zoe was stuffed, thanks to those two noble, compassionate, interfering assholes. Now what?
A huge fat Indian guy in a sodden T-shirt and baggy tracksuit trousers suddenly jogged past me, hefting a fire extinguisher. I thought it might be another vigilante until he stopped in front of the electrical shop, planted his feet wide, pulled the extinguisher back and slammed it into the window. The first time it bounced off; the second time the plate glass shattered with an earsplitting crash, sending razor-sharp shards falling like guillotine blades. Dropping his extinguisher, the fat Indian guy danced back, dodging the fragments—the idiot was wearing flip-flops—and before he even had time to regain his balance the looters were stampeding past him, grabbing everything vaguely valuable in sight—toasters, microwaves, cordless vacuum cleaners—whooping and shrieking in excitement like contestants on some TV game show where you got to keep anything you could carry.
And I piled right in there amongst them.
I pushed past two girls fighting over a hair dryer—one of them was the face-pierced waitress from the café up the road—headed past the counter to the door leading to the back room, and tried the handle. Locked. I stepped back, preparing to kick it in, praying the shop owners weren’t hiding in there, and wouldn’t have a go at the looters if they were. I’d try to protect them if I had to, but even wielding a steel pole I would be as much use against a mob as a tinfoil hat.
The door flew open with one kick, and the room beyond was empty. Half a dozen looters followed me in, only to curse in disappointment; there was nothing in the little back office but a kettle, some mugs and a desk where an old video camera was lying in bits, awaiting repair. The rioters retreated in disgust—the rest of the shop had been stripped bare by now—but I headed for the rear exit.
The flat upstairs had two floors, which meant by law it had to have a fire escape, and that fire escape probably led down into the backyard. The door that led to the yard outside was huge and solid, reinforced with steel bars, but it had been designed to stop robbers from getting in, not rioters from getting out, and when I turned its two heavy latches and pushed, it swung open so readily I nearly fell face-first out into the backyard.
I’d been right—a black metal staircase zigzagged up the back of the building to a balcony that ran along the rear of the first floor. I wished some of the rioters had come with me—it would have helped to intimidate the crew upstairs—but the mob wouldn’t bother with private homes, especially when there were still plenty of shops to pillage. I took the stairs as quietly as I could; if I couldn’t bring a crowd along, better to let the guys inside think all the danger was still out front.
The apartment’s back door was a flimsy plywood number with a frosted-glass window and a tarnished silver handle. It opened inwards, so it would be easier to kick in, especially as it had just the one lock—the one built into the handle. It might be bolted on the inside…but then again, if there was normally no access to this door, would anyone bother? Sad gray net curtains drooped behind every window along the balcony, and that was a problem. The storm clouds were soaking up the sunlight but it was still plenty bright enough out here for me to be easily seen from inside, while the men inside the flat remained invisible. The windows were double-glazed, with modern PVC frames—hard to jimmy and nigh impossible to break. It would have to be the door. Should I stand back and kick it? No—stealth first. Find out if it’s even locked…
I moved quickly, stepping past the door’s rippled windowpane and flattening myself against the redbrick wall beside it. The gutter overhead was overflowing, sending a steady trickle of muddy rainwater onto my head. That was bad—the water had been rattling loudly onto the steel balcony, and now it was splashing quietly, soaking into my hair. Anyone listening closely would have heard the change. I reached out, grasped the aluminum handle and turned it slowly.
The gunshot wasn’t loud but it made me jump all the same. It was a short, muffled crack that punched a hole through the woodwork and sent a shower of splinters flying outwards. I snatched my hand back and froze; I’d been spotted. I waited an instant for a second shot, or for someone to open the door, but heard nothing, and I made a dash for it, my feet a blur on the stairs as I fled. If the guys inside were using live rounds, that meant they were as strung out as I’d hoped they’d be. It also meant that unless that nearby charity shop stocked secondhand Kevlar vests, I wasn’t getting into that flat alive.
I’d wedged open the rear door of the shop downstairs with a chair, and now the smoke from the cars and trucks burning in the street outside seemed to be blowing right through and billowing out in my face. The ceiling smoke alarms inside were screeching away, but no one was listening.
When I got inside I realized I was mistaken—the smoke wasn’t blowing in from outside, it was coming from a pile of cardboard boxes—some still full of unused appliances—heaped in the middle of the shop and set alight. Already wild orange flames were licking the ceiling, warping the tiles, and the laminate on the counter was blistering in the heat. I looked around for the fire extinguisher the Indian guy had used to smash the window, but it looked like he’d taken it with him when he headed for the next shop.
My gamble had failed, horribly. I’d thought the mob might smash the place up—it made no sense to torch it. But then I should have known that nothing rioters do makes any sense. They don’t set fire to shops and cars as a protest or as a tactic to block the streets—they do it for the fun of watching things burn. The five armed men upstairs were going to panic and clear out, and either they’d bring Zoe with them—meaning I’d have to take on all five at once—or they’d leave her behind, tied to the bed. It was one thing to escape from a burning building—I’d managed that a few weeks ago—it was another to get into one and get out again.
They weren’t going out the back, I was sure—the yard gates were still locked. That meant they’d come out the front door, and they’d do it quick, before the stairs caught fire. I skirted the bonfire, feeling the heat from the flames scorch my skin and singe the hair on my arms, and climbed out through the shattered window. There was a knot of rioters across the street, attacking a jeweler’s shop that had somehow resisted every attack so far, thanks to heavy steel shutters and pavement bollards designed to foil ram-raiders. I ran across to mingle with them, planning to hide in plain sight so the Turk’s men wouldn’t spot me the moment they emerged.
The door to the apartment opened, and the guys I’d nicknamed Popeye and Blue Shoes appeared. Flames were starting to gush from the ground-floor shop, lapping at the windows of the flat above, veiling the façade in black choking clouds. Gray smoke billowed out the door that led up to the flat—it looked like the stairs were already burning. The two men hung around the doorway, glancing up and down the street as if waiting; and when I followed their look I saw what they’d been waiting for.
The Merc with the tinted windows was back, cruising through the chaos, weaving among the stalled and burning traffic as coolly as a battle tank. It pulled up in the street between the mob and the apartment, and the rear passenger door op
ened, and Kemal got out. He beckoned to the men at the apartment door, who turned and yelled up the stairs. They were evacuating Zoe, and I had only seconds to stop them.
“Cops!” I yelled. “Cops!” The mob around me ducked as if they’d been shot at, and looked around in every direction. At any second, I knew, they might panic and scatter like birds, and I had no way of stopping that—all I could do was wade in and hope they’d follow. I dashed out into the road, swung the pole and slammed it into the tinted windscreen of the Merc. It bounced clean off—I hadn’t even chipped the glass. Kemal saw me, and his gaze narrowed in fury, and from the corner of my eye I saw the crowd around me watch, and tense, and I felt their collective mood seething and swirling like volatile chemicals mixing in a tank. “They’re undercover,” I yelled. “They got cameras!”
Kemal lumbered round the car towards me, and I braced myself and hefted the scaffolding pole. It wasn’t the cocky, macho Dean I was facing now: Kemal was one hundred and twenty kilos of cold flint, with fists like sledgehammers, and he was relentless.
He was halfway round the car when there was a single crack and everyone ducked. I glanced towards the flat’s doorway, and saw Blue Shoes with a revolver in his hand. He had fired a shot—in the air, or at me, who knows?—to drive the crowd back, and that was the catalyst. The crowd didn’t disperse, they boiled over. A hail of projectiles came flying down on the two guys at the apartment door, and a few were hurled at Kemal himself. He was still behind the Merc when a brick slammed into the side of his face, splitting the skin, and he barely had time to turn before two hoodies were onto him, hacking away with the crowbars they’d been using on the jeweler’s shop.
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