White Riot

by Martyn Waites

  Martyn Waites was born and raised in Newcastle Upon Tyne. He has written nine novels under his own name and five under the name Tania Carver alongside his wife, Linda. His work has been selected as Guardian book of the year, he’s been nominated for every major British crime fiction award and is an international bestseller.

  Praise for Martyn Waites:

  ‘The leading light of a new generation of hard-hitting contemporary crime novelists’ – Daily Mirror

  ‘Grips, and squeezes, and won’t let go. Waites’ lean, exhilarating prose is from the heart and from the guts, and that’s exactly where it hits you’ – Mark Billingham

  ‘Brutal, mesmerising stuff’ – Ian Rankin

  ‘An ambitious, tautly-plotted thriller which offers a stark antidote to PD James’ cosy world of middle-class murder’ – Time Out

  ‘If you like your tales dark, brutal, realistic, with a pinch of Northern humour – don’t wait any longer – Waites is your man’ – Shots

  ‘Breathless, contemporary and credible, a thriller with a dark heart and guts to spare’ – Guardian

  ‘The book houses an audacious energy and if you’re in any way a fan of Ian Rankin or Stephen Booth, this mesmerising thriller will be right up your street’ – Accent

  ‘If you like gritty crime noir in the style of Ian Rankin, this is the book for you … Waites brings his characters to life with skill and verve, with more than a few nasty surprises. A riveting whodunit you really won’t be able to put down’ – Lifestyle

  ‘A reckless energy which demands attention and respect’ – Literary Review

  Also by Martyn Waites

  The Joe Donovan Series

  The Mercy Seat

  Bone Machine

  White Riot

  Speak No Evil

  The Stephen Larkin Series

  Mary’s Prayer

  Little Triggers

  Candleland

  Born Under Punches

  The White Room

  Also by Tania Carver

  The Surrogate

  The Creeper

  Cage of Bones

  Choked

  The Doll’s House

  Copyright

  Published by Sphere

  ISBN: 978-0-75155-438-0

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Martyn Waites

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  Sphere

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.littlebrown.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  About the Author

  Praise for Martyn Waites:

  Also by Martyn Waites

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Part One: Angry Communiqués

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Two: Days of Rage

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part Three: King Mob

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Part Four: The Democratic Circus

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  For Linda again

  PROLOGUE

  A BETTER WORLD

  Night.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, unmoving. An anonymous chain hotel room. With the bed, a desk, a wardrobe. In-built and functional. Characterless. Could have been anywhere in the world.

  The lights were off, the TV black. City sound drifted in through the open window. Only other noise in the room his breathing. The air pressed down, hot and heavy. Unrelenting.

  He stared at the wall, face closed, mind unreadable. Hands in his lap, fingers moving against each other. The minibar had been raided.

  Next to him, his mobile trilled.

  He jumped, stretched out a hand, held it to his ear.

  Waited.

  ‘It’s starting,’ a voice said.

  He listened, said nothing.

  ‘It’s not too late, you know. You can still change your mind. Join us.’

  He sighed, shook his head. Opened his mouth to speak. Closed it again. The caller laughed.

  ‘Nearly. Was that going to be a yes?’

  He kept his mouth tight shut.

  ‘It’s going ahead. Whether you want it to or not. Whether you’re part of it or not. So speak now or for ever, you know.’

  He found the courage, opened his mouth. ‘No. I’ll … I’ll stop you. You can’t … can’t …’

  ‘Really?’ A laugh. ‘You won’t. The hope only of empty men. Because this is the way the world ends. Or begins.’

  Another laugh and the line went dead. The phone felt hot, heavier than lead. He tossed it on the bed beside him.

  Kept staring at the wall.

  Earlier.

  They drove round all day looking for the right victim. Someone who fitted the profile. Someone who would be missed.

  The car was a Rover 75, a few years old, with extended axle space giving as much room in the back as in the front. Stolen to order from out of town. Licence plates switched. Confident it wouldn’t be traced. They drove slowly, carefully, no loud music, no revving engine. Nothing eyecatching. Nothing memorable.

  Six of them. Four men, two girls. The girls curled up on the floor of the back seat, unseen from the street. No one joked, asked them for oral sex while they were down there. No one said much beyond what was necessary, talk so small as to be infinitesimal.

  The men wore sunglasses, hoodies zipped up, hoods down. Windows up, air con on. It was a hot day.

  Driving, concentrating.

  Looking.

  And then they found him.

  Sooliman had never known terror. Real life-about-to-end terror. Until now.

  His body hit panic attack after panic attack, blood pounding faster than a John Bonham drum solo. I’m too young to have a heart attack, he thought, not knowing if it was a feeble joke or a true statement.

  His eyes were open but he couldn’t see anything. His wrists and ankles bound with plastic ties; his body jackknifed and crammed into the cramped space. Exhaust fumes stung his nose and eyes. Lack of air made him light-headed. Tears and snot covered his face. The
gag in his mouth made it hard to breathe.

  His body bounced, was banged around. He repeatedly hit sharp metal, felt wet warmth on the skin of his bare arms and face. He tried to focus, breath deep; will himself away from his present, find a happy memory, anything that would give him strength to cope. Impossible. His mind held only confusion and fear.

  Thoughts of sudden death.

  Through the gag, he cried.

  They had taken him in the park. Out playing with his friends, enjoying a game of cricket on the Town Moor after getting home from college, taking advantage of the early-summer heatwave that was as unexpected as it was welcome. Laughing, play fighting as they approached the moor. Five of them, friends since school, all from the same area. Coke and Fanta from the newsagent, cricket equipment communally supplied. They had set up and started playing, two teams of two with Sooliman out fielding, knowing his chance to bat would come eventually.

  Because that was the way Sooliman was. He concentrated on college, on his clubs. Chess. Science fiction reading group. Things he felt comfortable with but not geeky. He still went out with his mates, pubbing, clubbing, sticking to the soft drinks. Not because he was a Muslim. He just didn’t like the taste. And no girlfriend. Too shy to ask anyone out. Much safer to go to his clubs or stay in his room, listen to his classic rock. Be the person he wanted to be behind a closed door. A bedroom Bowie. A curtained-off Cobain. A pretend Plant. Act out his lonely dreams while in his heart he secretly, deeply yearned for love.

  So when two girls came along and stopped to talk on the moor, he didn’t know what was happening. They were flirty, all bare arms and midriffs. And incredibly good looking. The kind of girls he didn’t even dare dream about. One blonde, one brunette, both about eighteen or nineteen, with lightly tanned skin smelling clean and wonderful. So much so he took his eye off the ball and missed a glorious catch that his friends immediately started ragging him about. He didn’t listen. He didn’t care.

  At first he had thought they were asking directions, but it was soon clear that wasn’t what they were after. They talked to him. Smiled. Giggled. He tried talking back but became tongue-tied. They laughed along with him, encouraged him. Listened to what he had to say in response. No girl had ever done that before. Sooliman’s heart felt as big and as full as St James’s Park on a Saturday afternoon. He was a rock god. A sci-fi hero. He tried not to stare too obviously at the flesh on display, not to respond too readily to the arm strokes and supposedly accidental body brushes, the teasing and flirting. Tried, red-faced, to hide his growing erection.

  His friends looked over, lost interest in the game, switched their attention. Started walking over slowly, hip gunslinger gaits. The girls noticed, made it clear they were interested only in Sooliman. He didn’t want his friends over either; they would take the girls away. Sweep them off with exaggerated stories and promises of rides in their fathers’ BMWs. It always happened. So when the blonde wandered off to a wooded area, the brunette in tow, and beckoned him over, he didn’t need to be asked twice. Heaven was unfolding on earth. He didn’t even look back.

  And that was when they grabbed him. Four of them in long-sleeved hoodies with gloved hands and bandanas tied around their faces, sunglasses hiding their eyes. Standing before a car hidden on an access road behind a thick hedge. Heaven disappeared before him. He tried to run, but his legs wouldn’t move. Then they were on him. Gagged and trussed, he was thrown into the car boot. Not even time to scream.

  He heard angrily spat insults through muffled metal – ‘Paki cunt’, ‘suicide bomber scum’ – then vicious laughter, the giggles of the girls running quickly away. The suspension creaked as bodies got swiftly into seats and the car was engaged, revved and driven off, the sound like the roar of the devil in Sooliman’s ears.

  Time passed. How long, Sooliman didn’t know.

  Then a violent jarring: the car had turned off a main road, was now on an unmade one. Eventually it slowed, stopped.

  He waited, breath coming in snotty, ragged gasps. Heard doors slam, footsteps. Voices, words inaudible through the metal, above the thump of his heart. But no mistaking the sense of anticipation.

  The boot was opened. Sooliman held his breath.

  He screwed his eyes up tight, desperately willed whatever awaited him away, willed his life back to how it had been when he had woken up that morning. He tried to visualize his mother standing there, his friends, his ordinary life that he had taken for granted but nevertheless loved. He made frantic deals with an Allah he had believed in only to please his parents. He would never criticize his father’s strictness again, would turn his music down when asked, never claim his business studies degree was boring. Never be mean to his little brother. Never look at a Western girl again. He closed his eyes hard, told himself it was all a dream. A horrible dream.

  Opened them again. It was no dream.

  Light, harsh and unexpected, made him squint. He closed his eyes, opened them again by degrees. Took in his surroundings. A garage of some kind with bright, artificial striplights overhead. Double doors firmly closed, but through a small high window he caught a glimpse of outside. Night had fallen. The moon stared in, full and high and surrounded by blackness like an unreachable light at the end of a tunnel fraught with monsters.

  He could make out the silhouettes of the four men who had kidnapped him, the harsh indoor light haloed around them. Their hoodies resembled cowls, their faces shadowed and empty like horror film monks. Anger and violence came off them in waves. The terror he had felt in the car increased. Arms grabbed him, pulled him out of the boot. He was thrown to the ground. The fall jarred his bones, stretched his joints, knocked the air from his lungs. The floor was gravel and packed dirt; it bit through his jeans, his T-shirt. Into his face.

  He opened his eyes, tried to look up.

  ‘Don’t move.’

  A boot kicked him in the jaw. He went down.

  Self-pity, fear and anger churned inside him. Tears welled again at the corners of his eyes. He sniffed them back in, scared to show weakness. Scared to show them anything.

  He waited.

  One of the four detached himself from the group, crossed the floor. Sooliman’s head was forcibly pulled up by the hair. The restraints on his wrists pinned his arms into the small of his back. Another one crossed, knelt down before him. Spoke.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ the voice said. ‘You’ll get your reward soon. In paradise.’

  Panic welled again inside Sooliman. He felt vomit build, unstoppable, in his stomach. Burst in his mouth. The speaking man jumped back as vomit exploded from Sooliman’s nose and around the gag.

  ‘Cut him loose!’ he shouted.

  The one holding up Sooliman’s head produced a long, heavy hunting knife, cut the bindings of the gag. Sooliman was dropped, retching, on the floor. Dry heaving until his stomach was empty. He finished, lay there in silence.

  ‘Get this cleaned up,’ the speaker said. ‘Get him cleaned up. And then get on with it. We haven’t got all night.’

  Sooliman was dragged to the back of the garage, dumped on the floor. His bonds were severed but still he didn’t dare move.

  ‘Stand up.’

  Sooliman did as he was told. Three of the men stood before him. Sooliman’s legs began to buckle when he saw what they were carrying. Cricket bats, baseball bats, clubs. All augmented with darkly glittering metal, razors, spikes, nails. The first speaker stood some distance away at the far end of the garage. The voice sounded almost sympathetic.

  ‘Sorry. But think of those virgins waiting to greet you.’

  They rushed him. Sooliman closed his eyes as pain, sharp and enormous, started at the back of his skull, shot down his neck and all round his body like he had been wrapped in electrified barbed wire. The force of the blow knocked him to the floor. He twisted his body, turned. Another blow. Another. Pain like he had never experienced before. More hurt than he had ever felt in his life.

  He couldn’t scream, couldn’t cry. He barely had the str
ength to just lie there.

  Another blow. Another.

  He thought of his mother, his family. Tried to imagine their lives without him. Their grief.

  More blows. Hard, cutting deep.

  Felt something unmendable sever inside.

  Felt himself being wrapped up in a thick, black comforting duvet.

  Made one last begging peace with a god he tried desperately to believe in.

  Willed the pain to stop.

  Felt nothing at all.

  Marion looked up at the sky. No clouds. A white moon. No sign of rain, just the oppressive, clammy night, like the sky was holding everyone down. The city needed a storm. A good storm. Make everything clean again. Let everyone breathe.

  She rounded the corner. Just one more street, then across the road, over the grass and up the lift to the eleventh floor and home. She was exhausted. The off-licence had been busier than usual tonight. Everyone wanting something cold to drink while they sat in their back yards or on their balconies. Too busy for her to have a break. Mr Patel had appreciated her work, said he would slip something extra into her wage packet. She had thanked him. He was usually good about things like that, a decent man to work for, Mr Patel. Didn’t matter that he was a Paki.

  She rounded the final corner, ready to cross the grass. Or what was left of it. Now just a dump for unwanted furniture and fridges. Some of it disappeared into other flats and houses, some of it was set alight, some of it was used as a makeshift playground until it became so fragmented it just disappeared.

  Before she could take another step a car came speeding up to the grass, putting its brakes on with a screech. Three men jumped out, took something out of the boot, threw it on the ground. One knelt beside it, did something that she couldn’t see, stood quickly back as the bundle caught on fire, went up in flames. Two of the men jumped back into the car. One stood, looking round. He saw her and, making an expansive gesture, threw out armfuls of leaflets, jumped inside the car and sped away.

  Marion stood there dumbfounded, too shocked to move. Her eyes tried to take in the scene before her, process it. She stared at the bundle, hoping it wasn’t what she feared it to be.

  It was. A body. A man’s body.