She aimed and fired. The darts flew out on their lines and struck him. He screamed as the Taser rattled like a sidewinder snake and the electrical charge coursed through him. Bang-Bang laughed hysterically. He howled. She laughed and pressed the trigger again. ‘Diiieeee!’
‘Holly, for Chrissake!’ I knocked at the lines and the barbs fell out of him. Little tags fluttered down the landing in the breeze. I made for the nearest ones in a forlorn attempt to scoop them up. Behind me, Bang-Bang yanked the Taser barbs out of him and dragged him back to the balcony. He flapped, flailed, gripped my trouser leg as she pulled him away, and straight away lost his grip. I followed to see what madness would ensue.
Bang-Bang hauled him over the brickwork. He was coming round, limbs moving like a boy roused from a great sleep. Below us in the street, Slooky looked up and waved, a small, doll-like figure. Bang-Bang slapped Yaqub's face and he focused downwards and saw.
Bang-Bang had reloaded the Taser with another cartridge and was screwing it into the kid’s nose, forcing his head over the balcony at an awkward angle. ‘See her? I’m gonna throw you to her. That is the result of your useless, bullshit Stepney Saudi ideology, Yaqub.’ Far below, Slooky gazed up with those dead, black button shark eyes.
Bang-Bang leant in with her own vacant wall-eyed stare and that slack look and grabbed a fistful of his shirt. ‘The money. You’re gonna tell me, or –’
Yaqub cracked and burst into great racking sobs. ‘OK! OK... it was the Curry King! He paid me! It’s his money!’
She looked back at me and mouthed ‘Curry King?’
I didn’t know. God only knew. Was that what it all was? ‘Paid you to what??? Are you from Team Poison as well as Islam4UK?’
He nodded. He looked like he was crumbling inside. I kept the pressure up. ‘Do you know Trevor?’
He shook his head. ‘No. I don’t know Trevor.’
Bang-Bang ran forward and smacked his head off the railing. ‘You absolute fucking liar. He lives over there. In this same estate. Don’t lie to me!’
‘I swear! I don’t know him!’
Bang-Bang stepped back, drew her pistol from her waist holster, cocked it, and aimed it at the boy’s head. ‘You’re two seconds from death, akhiiiiiiii… one…’
He broke down in tears. ‘Alright! Alright. I swear I don’t know Trevor. I see him, but I don’t know him.’
‘Keep going.’
‘He paid me.’
‘Who paid you?’
‘Mr Begum paid me… to hack the police station. And the Council centre.’
‘That all?’
‘That’s all.’
Mr Begum. The Curry King. Holy shit. I walked around in a circle and came back. I didn’t know how to process this.
The parents had appeared in their smashed front door, pleading in Bengali. Bang-Bang started yelling at them in Urdu and then aimed her pistol at them and they eventually got the message and vanished back inside.
Below us in Bancroft Road, outside the MOT station, the gang had reconvened around Slooky. They were whistling up at us. Something had got their attention and they wanted us to know. Slooky looked about her and shrugged.
I regained my composure and looked down at our captive. ‘OK Yaqub, here’s how it’s gonna go. You’re now suspect number one in a murder enquiry.’ He started gulping air.
‘Tell us about your mate who put the stickers up. He’s part of your mob too, isn’t he?’
‘I don’t know!’
Bang-Bang gripped his hair and hauled his face to the sunlight. ‘Babe. Does he look like a ripper?’
He was only about five feet tall. Couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old. I thought about it. ‘Nah. He’s not the Ripper.’ I took a set of plasticuffs out of my jacket pocket and secured Yaqub to the balcony railing. Bang-Bang was shouting down to Slooky and the local youths. I leant into the kid’s ear and spoke, softly, as he slumped there like a wet rag. ‘You listen, bro. I’m securing you here. The feds will be here in several minutes. Cooperate. If you don’t, you’ll be seeing my wife again. You got me?’
He nodded through tears. He got me, alright. Bang-Bang kicked out at him. ‘You will see me again. I’ll throw you in the canal, you two-bob cunt.’
I rang Lennie. ‘Hello Lennie. Yeah. Flat 80 Harpley Square it is. Hacker kid and a pile of cash from the Curry King. Who has been confirmed as out of the country for good few days. Why’s that.’
There was a commotion on the line. It sounded like Lennie was conferring with people. ‘Riz. We don’t know. The Home Office has been working on it all day. Apparently there’s no extradition treaty with Bangladesh, and that’s where he is, hiding. Below us in the street, some more gang kids had cycled in and were waving frantically up at us. I tapped Bang-Bang’s arm. ‘Looks like they’ve found something.’
We went down to the street, leaving Yaqub plasticuffed to the railings. I spread my arms. ‘Lads. What you got?’ The leader, who I recognised as the screwdriver kid from earlier, pointed left. ‘Follow me.’
We followed him left and then right, onto Cephas Street. And on the first parking meter, there they were. Two 5.56 NATO cartridges, glinting sharply. I knew snipers, and I knew what this was saying. ‘He’s here. He’s saying he’s here, this is the start of his hunting ground, and he’s about to go to work.’
Bang-Bang took out her phone. ‘That’s it then. I’ll call the girls and we’ll start the sniper hunt.’
44.
6pm. We rendezvoused at the Blind Beggar to plan the sweep north up Cambridge Heath Road. It was early evening. We had about two hours of light remaining.
The camper van was parked with the market vehicles, with our kit inside in army surplus holdalls and the sniper rifles wrapped in burlap sacking. Roadrunner was parking another wagon behind it, and getting up the noses of the market traders, who were trying to pack up for the day. She beeped the wagon’s horn and waved at us.
We met Fuzz and Calamity outside, formed up and walked past a BBC TV crew. I stopped and stared curiously. Kirsty Young was introducing a Crimewatch live special. Here? Great. Bang-Bang tapped my shoulder. ‘That’s Kirsty –’
‘I know, babe. This doesn’t make our job easier.’ I hit the main door of the pub. Lennie was here. He came towards us making brushing motions with his arms. ‘Oh no. No, not you lot, not tonight, not here –’
Too late. We swept past him. It was karaoke night, at the back in front of the large ornate mirror. Worse still, the English Defence League were already in here. ‘Fuck’s sake.’
The gang piled up to the bar around and ahead of me, and Tara Khani barrelled through the throng and jumped into the karaoke area. She took the mic from the football lad strangling Simply the Best and looked at the DJ. She tapped the mic. ‘Salaaaaaam, Aleeaykum.’
The crowd mutter stuttered and stopped. And then a lone voice. ‘Oh fuck off!’ A pint glass hit a table by the DJ and shattered. Tara looked at the DJ and spoke into her mic. ‘Play Yellow Ribbon for us, babe.’
Christ. I shook my head and was propelled towards the bar by Calamity and Sunara. A sign read “Jagerbombs £10 for 4!” Calamity ignored that and shouted ‘Four sarsaparillas!’ and threw a twenty-pound note down onto the bar. The guy next to her’s head wobbled. He looked at Sunara. ‘Are you a Mus–’
The one next to him tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Nah, they’re not all like that. Not all –’ Guy number one grimaced and shook his head emphatically. ‘Don’t give me that. That’s a raghea–’
POW, Calamity smacked him over the skull with a half-pint glass and he staggered back. I was showered in glass splinters, cocktail and bits of useless paraphernalia. ‘For Christ’s sake Priya–’
I turned but the EDL guy had swung a punch. It missed, just grazed the side of my head. Bang-Bang hit him hard and everyone swarmed back. She glared at him. All around the guy, his mates had started to sing Coming Down the Road. They were bawling lustily but Tara had the PA and the mic and the Blackeyes were on point
. Fuzz stood on a table and began the battle song. ‘Around the block, she pushed the baby carriage…’
Our lot joined in. ‘She pushed it in the springtime, and in the month of MAY!!’
Oh great. They were singing Baby Carriage, the anthem of the Hur al-Ayn. Fuzz spread her arms and kicked at a hooligan trying to tackle her off the table. Tara kept it up, ‘And if you, ask, her, why the hell she pushed it–’
Lennie came storming back into the bar with the BBC producer in tow and made a beeline for me. ‘For fuck’s sake Riz, we’re trying to do a live Crimewatch outside and you lot are –’A casual hit him with a bottle. Lennie took the hit and boiled into action. ‘You’re fucking nicked!’
That was the catalyst. A great roar went up from the audience and as if on some unseen signal, everyone started punching everyone else. A tourist girl screamed. Fuzz threw a chair that hit the Coors sign behind the bar which exploded in a hundred pieces. A man grabbed me and said ‘you’ll do’ and hit me in the face. I punched him back and fell on him in a mad scramble of arms and legs. ‘Tenner on the Princess Faction!’ yelled Roadrunner and smacked Mishy’s legs out from under her. Oh Christ. Now they were fighting amongst themselves.
We stumbled to the beer-soaked floor and I dimly registered a hooligan grabbing Calamity and tumbling over the bar. They fell into the back and Calamity grabbed a bottle of spirits on the way down and I heard a dull clunk. Calamity jumped to her feet on his prone body and howled in triumph, poured the spirits all over the bar top, and set fire to it with her lighter. We scattered like rats as the bar exploded in flames. To our left, Bang-Bang drew her Taser, switched it on and the LEDs cycled. She pointed it a man skidding to a halt in a puddle of beer. The chair he was about to throw clattered to the floor behind him as the laser dot settled on his head. ‘No– no, please n–’
Bang-Bang screamed and pulled the trigger. Sparks flew and he slammed to the floor. That side of the pub emptied into the beer garden in a scramble of dropped glasses and overturned furniture. The karaoke was now playing Disco Inferno. Fuzz ran past me muttering ‘Check the wagons, be sensible.’ What?
She looked back through the ruck. ‘The wagons, Riz! The weapons!’ I got it. Behind us, Tara was on a hooligan’s shoulders being swung round and round and decking everyone in sight. We piled back outside. The wagons. The weapons. Fuzz was in stitches laughing. There was a crash to our right and Calamity came smashing through a window. She brushed the glass off herself, smacked a kid in a tracksuit right in the face and then fell into a market stall. She stood up and carried on singing Baby Carriage as a hail of pint glasses rained down in the street. ‘She pushed it for a soldier who was far, far–’
A table parasol came sailing over the beer garden fence.
The Crimewatch presenter was in tears. The lights were on us. Bang-Bang shouldered her way to the front and the camera settled on her. Bang-Bang tried to look sensible. The soundman, obviously thinking this was meant to happen, pointed the fuzzy mic at her. She spoke. ‘Um… and there I was, raised by Comanche Indians. But it wouldn’t have been the same without the Temperance Society.’
A hooligan came flying out of the bar and sprawled to the pavement. Fuzz whooped and ran back in to the dust cloud.
Lennie appeared behind us in the frame of the door, dragging an unconscious body. He was livid. He pointed at me and Bang-Bang. ‘You two!...’ And then words failed him. He gave up and went back in to arrest stragglers.
Fuzz’s demeanour changed and she walked to the back of the first van. She opened the doors and began placing holdalls and burlap-wrapped weapons on the pavement. ‘OK, playtime’s over. Form up. Get your weapons, ammo, and comms here. We’re sweeping north up Cambridge Heath Road then west into the estates.’
Calamity sat up and brushed broken glass off herself and shook her head. ‘You’re no fun, Shaheen!’
‘Yeah, bill me. Come get your rifle.’
‘She’s no fun. She’s really not.’
Fuzz carried on. ‘Right. That’s it. We’re going on a sniper hunt.’
‘Yeah, but what about the rather massive serial murderer, Farzana?’
‘No. Sniper hunt. He’s on the balconies in those blocks up there. Let’s go.’ Fuzz was loading 12-gauge shells into the drum of a small, stubby automatic shotgun. The weapon was stained and pitted. It looked like a selection of badly-welded tubing. Fuzz looked back at us, and waited. And then left, jogging out. We followed. ‘OK. Stay low. Don’t skyline. Look for parked vans.’ Parked vans? There were loads of them. What on earth did she mean, I thought to myself.
Lennie joined us and showed us his phone. He seemed to have calmed down a bit. I made to apologise but he waved it away. ‘It gets better. Press conference, anytime now.’ The screen focused. The mayor was there, talking with Boris and the Met Chief. Christ.
My phone buzzed. It was the mayor. ‘Lovin’ your work!’ I cringed.
‘I’m going into the press conference now. It’s going to be a short one. Don’t worry Riz, I’ll keep the usuals off your backs. Let me handle the Bangla politics.’
‘Cheers mate, you’re a diamond.’
‘Yeah. Just keep your little band of lady warlords and child soldiers in check for the duration. I’ve got an election coming.’
‘OK. Hey, sorry about the Crimewatch broadcast.’
A distant laugh. ‘I thought it was funny. Boris didn’t. Keep it up.’ He rang off. My phone’s battery was getting perilously low. I wondered where I’d charge it at this time of night.
45.
Calamity was telling a joke to no-one in particular as we walked slowly up Cambridge Heath Road. We stopped at the junction with Headlam Street and Calamity sauntered left, stopping to sweep her rifle’s sights over the looming estate houses. She looked back at us and spread her arms. Nothing.
Calamity carried on with the joke. ‘Two bee keepers in a pub. One says to the other, ‘How many bees have you got?’
And the second one says, ‘I’ve got 10,000 bees.’
So the first one says, ‘How many hives have you got?’
And he says, ‘I’ve got twenty hives.’
‘Twenty hives; 10,000 bees?’
He says, ‘Yeah. 500 bees to each hive and they're all climate-controlled and monitored by cameras connected to a computer. I've even got automatic feeders.’
‘Oh right.’
So they’re quiet for a bit and then the second one says to the first one, ‘So how may bees have you got?’
First one says, ‘I’ve got a million bees.’
‘A million bees?!’
He says, ‘Yeah.’
He says, ‘How many hives have you got?’
‘None.’
‘A million bees – no hive?’
‘‘No, I keep ‘em under the sink. Fuck ‘em!!’’ chorused Fuzz and Raggydoll. Calamity rolled her eyes in disgust. ‘My sophistication is lost on you lot.’
‘If you can’t take a laugh you shouldn’t have joined, Priya!’ Bang-Bang shouted from across the road, and got a middle finger in reply and a ‘Shut up you dozy smackhead.’
We’d formed a staggered line in the roadworks at the junction, and halted. We were waiting for the radio Mishy was carrying to bring confirmation from the MOD that we were clear to go. Hurry up and wait…
Mishy was wiping at her bloody nose and glaring back down the main drag towards the line of police vans and the commotion. I took her arm. ‘Leave it.’ Tara gave a little bow. ‘I’ve got to get back to ELM, placate the locals. Good hunting people.’ She left, traipsing back through the crowds heading away from the tube station.
Now that all the adrenalin had worn off, I took the time to look at my right hand. The knuckles were still swollen and bruised but nothing appeared fractured.
Raggydoll carefully unwrapped the hessian sacking from her rifle and slapped a magazine into its underside. She looked proud of it, as well she might be. It was an L1115A1 Long Range Rifle, chambered for the .338 Lapua Magnum cartridge.<
br />
‘You good to go?’ I called. She nodded and racked a round into the breech. She recited back to me. ‘Gather intel. Work slow and cautious. Identify the shooter, pop obscurant smoke, flank under suppressive fire…’
‘And do not return fire until you are absolutely certain of a kill!’ we both chorused. She grinned in the gloom and gave me a thumbs-up. OK we were all on the same playbook. Maybe. She draped the burlap sacking loosely over the rifle. We didn’t want to cause undue alarm. Already, our little patrol was getting curious glances. But no more than that. We looked like we meant business, and that gave you leeway in a big city.
Bang-Bang took a puff on her cigarette and passed it along the line. Then she took a white flower ornament out of her bag, and arranged it in her hair with a hairgrip. The cigarette got passed along. Calamity was last in the line to take a drag. Bang-Bang jogged over to her through the stalled traffic and proffered the cigarette. Calamity sucked on the smoke almost like it was petrol, with seeming distaste, flung it to the pavement and stamped on it. She called out. ‘Last one. Check gats and form up.’
They checked their pistols. I worked the orange armband onto my left arm. I made sure the words “Security Forces/MSSG” were clearly visible. I realised the armband was stained with dried blood. Must have been from the Birmingham battle. I idly wondered who’d been wearing it then, and if they’d lived or died.
Fuzz clicked her tongue in irritation. ‘We couldn’t find any body armour at your uncle’s that'd stop 5.56 NATO, so we're not bothering.’ She nodded at Roadrunner who marked Calamity’s blood group on her sleeve patch. ‘Me and Roadie remember all of our bloodgroups from last time.
‘Still,’ Fuzz grinned with a snaggy grin, ‘we’re not going to succumb to force protection mania. We’re here to kill and get killed.’
I noticed she’d attached some sort of canvas loop to her belt. It hung down like a fireman’s braces. ‘Yeah. That’s for when I get shot so you can all drag my corpse to cover. Good innit.’
Maryam and Daisy dragged at her belt. ‘When you die we wanna drag you Fuzz!’
Locked and Loaded: A Riz Sabir Thriller Omnibus Page 53
