‘And who the hell is Viccy Elliot?’
A sudden roar of sound erupted from behind them. The residents of Needham Road surged forwards and abruptly broke ranks. Like water flowing through a ruptured dam, they came flooding out, a vanguard of young men, all armed with stones and baseball bats and behind them...
‘Petrol bombs,’ Phillips shouted.
Alec whirled and grabbed Phillips’ arm. They might be behind the shield line, but he had been in riot situations before. He knew how far and how fast the flames could spread. ‘Sir, get back behind the cars!’
Another roar went up from the crowd. The shield line rammed forwards towards them. Glass smashed on the tarmac and flames spread outwards. Someone screamed and an officer staggered backward, breaking formation, flames shooting upward from his calves as he fell back.
Alec pushed Phillips back towards the main police lines and then he ran.
Twenty-Four
Alec ran to where the officer had fallen. The ranks had closed behind him. He was rolling on the ground and beating at his legs with gloved hands trying to put out the flames. By the time Alec reached him he had nearly succeeded.
‘You all right?’
‘Yes sir, flame proofing. Buggers topped the petrol with old engine oil, didn’t they? Sticks better. Gave me a few nasty moments there.’
His voice was raised over the shouts from both sides and the drumming of batons on shields as the second rank moved up, breaking around Alec and the fallen officer as if they had been stones in a river. Two paramedics followed on behind, taking advantage of the extra cover they had offered.
‘I’m all right,’ the officer repeated, shouting to make himself heard above the din, at the same time struggling back on to his feet. He bent to recover his shield but Alec had him by the arm. ‘No, you’re not,’ Alec shouted back. He ducked involuntarily as some lighted missile he could not identify hurtled over their heads and smashed against a police car. ‘Frigging hell! Look, you’ll get yourself checked out first. Now go.’
He was a young man, Alec noted, as the paramedics led him away, eager to be as far from the action as their duty allowed. ‘Too bloody young,’ Alec muttered. ‘I was never that bloody young.’ He took off at a smart jog to where he had spotted Travers crouched behind the open door of a marked car.
‘He all right?’
‘Yeah. He will be. I don’t know which of us was shaking most.’ Alec paused, looking back towards the lines and the ensuing chaos. ‘Where’s Phillips?’
‘Back in the van. It’s a while since he’s been at the sharp end.’
Alec nodded, crouched lower behind the shelter of the car as another missile crashed only feet away from them.
‘Sensible man,’ he commented. ‘I had a chat with Viccy Elliot. You know her?’
‘Of course I do. She the ringleader, Alec?’
More like the ringmaster, Alec thought, but he shook his head. ‘Couldn’t say. At the heart of things certainly, but I’m not sure anyone has overall control here.’
‘She say anything about our men? Last I heard they were holed up behind the barricades.’
‘She implied that they’d be safe so long as they stayed put,’ Alec told him.
‘You believe her?’
‘Far as it goes, yes, but as I just said, that implies someone is in overall control of this mess and I’m not taking bets.’
Travers nodded. Alec watched as a third line of riot police pulled up from the rear, jogging forward before splitting into two wings that started to push down the sides of the street. Their aim, Alec saw, was to confine the crowd, filter down through the front gardens and come around behind. He didn’t give them a cat’s chance. Travers’ radio spluttered. Alec leaned in close to hear. Through the mix of noise and static he picked out that the officers holed up in the flat were getting panicky. Bricks were being hurled in at the windows. Alec could hear the breaking glass and the thumps as they hit the floor. He frowned, trying to recall the exact layout of the estate, of the flats. Trying to think of another way to get the men down.
‘Alec, can they get out on to the roof? Is there access?’
Alec frowned. ‘You’re thinking helicopter.’
Travers nodded.
‘The police chopper’s not equipped for rescue.’
‘No, but we’ve got the coastguard not ten miles from here.’
‘Great if they can get out, but Dick, I don’t see how. There’s no access as far as I know and bugger all to climb.’
The radio crackled again. This time the officer in the flat was on speakthrough. He sounded scared, rhythmic thudding behind the voice told Alec that someone was trying to break down the door even before his words confirmed it.
He reached into the car, grabbing one of the stab vests that had been left on the seat and struggled into it.
‘Alec? What the hell?’
Alec cut down behind the row of cars to the left-hand side of the road, closest to the flats. He didn’t have a hope of cutting through the lines either of police or rioters. Instead, he dodged through an entryway between two blocks of houses and came out in the rear gardens. The sound was lessened here, muffled by the walls. Lights were on in the house and he hoped that no one chose that moment to look out into the yard.
He hurled himself over the fence between gardens and then back up the next alleyway, coming out further up the street. The wall of noise rose up to meet him, blocking his path with its solidity.
Alec pressed himself against the wall. Before him was a melée of struggling bodies. Blue-clad police, hampered by their shields here in this close combat, with no room to use their batons. A group of three had been pinned against a garden wall. Others had been pushed back into the front gardens of the houses, their opponents falling with them over low walls and stumbling through broken gates.
Alec Friedman, you should have your head examined, he told himself, trying not to admit how truly terrified he really was.
He ducked back through the entryway, resisting the urge to go over the back fence and make his escape through the back gardens of the street beyond. Instead, he cleared the fences that separated the next two gardens and went back down the next alleyway towards the road.
It was better this time. He’d come out behind the worst of the fighting. He shoved his way through the stragglers and out into the road just a bit beyond Viccy Elliot’s house. She wouldn’t be in the street, he was almost certain of that. Having seen things set in motion, Viccy would be content to watch.
A moment later, he was hammering on her door.
‘Viccy! Get the fucking door open. Viccy!’
Heads turned his way. Eyes focusing upon him. A knot of young men and boys broke free from the main group and started to run towards him. Alec hammered louder, cursing himself for the fool he was.
Then the front door opened, Viccy Elliot stood upon the threshold. ‘You mad?’ she asked him.
Alec nodded, his mouth too dry for the words to come out. He swallowed hard and licked his lips with a tongue that seemed impossibly parched. ‘Viccy, you’ve got to call them off.’
She shook her head. ‘You’re touched,’ she said. ‘What the frigging hell you on about?’
‘The flat. Our men up in the flat. Breaking down the door, your lot are breaking down the door.’
He was surrounded now. The breakaway group standing in a tight circle. The one closest to him carried a baseball bat; he had a rag tied about the lower half of his face. Another held a claw hammer; he was bouncing the flat end softly against his palm. Alec could feel the closeness of the rest, their body heat seeping through his clothes, they were so close. He felt chilled, his legs giving way beneath him, his stomach dropping to a point somewhere between his knees.
‘Viccy. You don’t want this,’ he managed, hoping to hell that it was true.
For a long moment, an eternity of seconds, she just stared at him. Then she shook her head. ‘You lot, come with me,’ she said. ‘And you,’ this to Alec, ‘I
don’t want your frigging corpse on me conscience.’ She glanced backward over her shoulder and Alec was aware for the first time of the kids crowding behind her in the narrow hall. ‘You lot stay put,’ she told them. ‘Listen to Sharon and do like she tells you. If I find any of you went outside while I were gone, I’ll thrash your hides.’
There were ten in the motley group that Viccy Elliot led across the road towards the flats, picking their way through the rubble. The flats stood at right angles to the road, two long, three-storey interruptions to the flow of houses. There was no fighting here, the police lines not having pushed through that far. Instead, a straggling opposition made up of those torn between their instructions to trash what was left of Gary Williams and his neighbour’s flats and an eagerness to rush out and join the main fight.
And it was quieter here, silence compared to the pandemonium in the main street. Alec could hear the crash of glass and splinter of wood and other noises harder to identify but which spoke of people bent on absolute destruction.
A bigger group, rowdier and, Alec noted, mostly drunk, crowded the stairway of the second block. The two officers were on the top floor, this block a mirror image of the first, their position had been perfect for observing the Williams residence.
Alec had gone beyond being scared now. He tagged along in Viccy’s wake, baseball bat and claw hammer behind him, though whether as escort or protection Alec didn’t want to think. His mobile rang, he heard it dimly beyond the sounds of shouting and raucous laughter and, even more dimly, he realized that it had rung before. He reached into his pocket and switched it off, feeling for what he hoped was the right button.
‘Hey, Greg, what the hell you lot doing?’ Viccy Elliot demanded.
The one called Greg leaned over the upper balcony and grinned down. ‘Viccy. Darling. Come on up and join the fun.’
He was obviously drunk. Very drunk.
‘It’s mam to you,’ Viccy told him tartly. ‘Now let me through.’
She disappeared into the flats, leaving Alec and his guard alone.
*
‘You wish you were there, don’t you?’ Patrick asked her.
‘I don’t know. I mean, not the situation. I’ve been there and it’s crap. It’s the lowest, Patrick, it really is. You wonder what the hell you’re in the force for. You know, facing that kind of blind hate and knowing that you’re no longer a person. You’re a uniform. An object. A target for them to hurl their stones and the spit and...’ she broke off and smiled self-consciously. ‘But yeah, being there would be better than sitting here trying to figure out what might be going on.’
‘Do you love Alec?’
‘Do I...’ she laughed. ‘Getting personal, aren’t we?’
She felt him shrug. He was sitting beside her on the sofa, Napoleon lying across their feet and snoring quietly.
‘My dad likes you a lot, you know that?’
Naomi didn’t know what to say. ‘I like him too,’ she said at last. ‘Harry, I hope, will he a good friend.’
She had the feeling, the strong feeling, that this was not what Patrick wanted to hear, but it was the best that she could offer. She liked Harry, yes, but she hadn’t really thought of him in that way. She couldn’t think of him the way she thought of Alec...the way she enjoyed thinking about Alec. She felt a slight touch of colour rising to her cheeks.
‘You’re blushing,’ Patrick said abruptly.
‘You notice too much, you know that?’
Patrick laughed. ‘So you do like him, I mean more than just as a friend.’
‘I never said that. I wasn’t thinking about him, honest.’
‘Look, you’re going even redder now.’
‘I am not!’ But Patrick was giggling now and she couldn’t help but join in. She grabbed the cushion from the end of the settee and whacked him with it, repeatedly, until he was laughing so hard he could hardly breathe.
Naomi put the cushion behind her. ‘That’ll learn you,’ she said.
‘Nan says that. It makes Dad cluck his tongue, you know the way he does. “That’ll teach you, Mam, not learn”,’ he mimicked, imitating Harry so perfectly that Naomi almost choked on her laughter.
Then she bit her lip. ‘Helen used to do that, too,’ she said softly. ‘Correct Mari like that and Mari would pretend to be annoyed and chase her down the yard.’
It was a minute or so before Patrick said anything more and when he spoke Naomi was shocked to hear him trying not to cry. ‘Is there anything Helen didn’t do?’ he asked.
He had wept then, silently and angrily, and Naomi had let him be, not knowing what to do. She felt the dog move, shifting himself to sit in front of the boy and then Patrick slid down on to the floor, putting his arms around the tough black neck as Naomi had done the night she last dreamed about Helen.
At last, when she felt that the sobs were past their worst, she shifted over and reached out towards where she thought Patrick must be. Her hand found a tangle of longish hair and the smoothness of Napoleon’s lush coat all tangled into one. She stroked them both, feeling tears pricking at her own eyes, sharply aware of just how lonely Patrick must be, trapped in this piece of history that didn’t seem about to let any of them go.
‘She didn’t draw,’ Naomi said at last. ‘She didn’t make worlds, create heroes or monsters or wonderful legends the way you do. She didn’t ask the kind of questions you ask or suffer from self-doubt. I did that, Patrick, not Helen. I did those things.’
‘You know what I wish sometimes,’ he whispered and she could feel the tension in his body, the tightness of holding this in, this thing that he was about to say. ‘I wish sometimes that there’d never been a Helen. If she hadn’t existed she couldn’t have gone away.’
*
‘I wish she never existed,’ Penny whispered. They were lying in her bed, moonlight streaming in through the open window and the branches from the apple tree tapping softly against the glass.
‘I wished and wished that she had never existed, that Naomi had never existed either. That those other people that he said always needed him would just go away forever. Vanish like they’d never ever been. I just wanted him here. And then I thought, after what my mother said, I thought, what if I were the one that was hurt or disappeared or caught up in some of the Joe Jackson kind of trouble that had nothing to do with bullying at school or not passing my spelling test or getting into trouble when I couldn’t understand my homework.’
‘He didn’t mean it,’ Bill told her gently, his hand softly tracing the line of her body, resting for a moment in the hollow of her waist before moving on. ‘He never meant to hurt you.’
‘I know,’ Penny said softly. ‘Really, I do know.’ But when it happened, she thought, her mind clouded with that dark place where she hid even from herself. When the bad thing came, the great Joe Jackson was still no more within her reach than he had ever been.
*
‘When I lived with Gerry and my mum,’ Patrick was saying, ‘I felt I was always kind of letting them down, you know what I mean?’
‘Not unless you tell me,’ Naomi said. She was sitting beside him now, the three of them, woman, boy and great black dog, wrapped in a tangled pile of arms and paws and soft dark hair. When Patrick spoke, she could feel his cheek moving against her shoulder.
‘It wasn’t like Dad thinks,’ he said. ‘That I didn’t like him, Gerry, I mean. I did like him and that kind of made it harder. He had two kids from his previous marriage and they used to stay a lot of the time and I liked them, too. We email each other all the time when I’m at home and talk on chat. But I don’t like to talk to Dad about it. I think he might be hurt, you know?’
‘I know.’ She wanted to tell him that Harry wouldn’t be hurt by this friendship, that he wanted what was best for his son, but she didn’t think this was the time.
‘It was just that Gerry and Paul and Adam, they were different to me. They were good at sports and they loved the sea...Naomi, are you scared of anything?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I could give you a whole long list of things I’m scared of.’
‘I hate to swim. I don’t do it very well. I can sort of manage a width if I try really hard, but I don’t like it. I’m pretty crap at it and they were really into all this scuba diving and...’
‘And you were different. That’s all it is, Patrick, you were just different.’
‘And I missed my dad,’ he admitted at last. ‘I miss my mum now, but she didn’t need me the same way Dad needs me. She was always doing stuff, you know, and I got all mixed up. It was like, she was never there anyway and all the time it was Gerry trying to help me fit in and Pauli and Adam...they phoned the other day, Gerry phoned, talked to my dad and said if I wanted to stay for a few weeks until this was all over then he’d arrange everything. Dad asked me and I talked to Gerry. I told him I’d like to come but not right now. I told him Dad needed me right now and I wanted to help him.’
A lot to take on at just fifteen, Naomi thought. ‘What did Gerry say?’ she asked.
Patrick was silent for a moment and she could feel him swallow convulsively to stop the tears, his jaw shifting against her arm, his face half buried in her sweater.
‘He said that he was proud of me,’ Patrick said quietly.
*
It seemed like forever. Alec dared not move, dared not even look at his watch. He felt like some trapped animal whose only hope of survival was in keeping still and concentrating only on his own silence.
Drifting up from the road, the noise and crash of battle continued. Sirens wailing through the night as reinforcements arrived. Neon blue bathing the landscape, lighting the night like summer.
Around him, the men said little. Some smoked, some shifted restlessly. Others drank, keeping topped up with both alcohol and anger.
‘Oi, you, come on up.’ Viccy’s voice. Viccy’s head poking over the balcony.
Baseball bat and claw hammer served as escort as Alec climbed the stairs. On the balcony a group of twenty or so stood around, all eyes fixed on Alec as he emerged from the stairway. The flat door was splintered and Alec could glimpse behind it the wardrobe the captives had used as a barricade.
Mourning the Little Dead Page 15
