Riot Act

by Zoe Sharp

  RIOT ACT

  Charlie Fox book two

  by

  Zoë Sharp

  For Andy, who encouraged me to write in the first place. See, this is all your fault . . .

  This book was dragged kicking and screaming into the digital domain by the book-loving geeks at

  www.ZACE-eBookConversion.com

  Cover design by www.NuDesign.co

  www.ZoeSharp.com

  RIOT ACT is the second in Zoë Sharp’s highly acclaimed Charlotte ‘Charlie’ Fox crime thriller series, now available in e-format for the first time, complete with author’s notes, excerpt from the next Charlie Fox – HARD KNOCKS – and a bonus excerpt from Timothy Hallinan’s second Junior Bender novel, LITTLE ELVISES.

  “I am a violent man, Miss Fox,” Garton-Jones said, without bravado or inflection. “I can – and will – do whatever is necessary to control this estate. Remember that.”

  A self-defence expert with a motorbike and an attitude, Charlie Fox doesn’t need to go looking for trouble. It generally finds her. House-sitting for a friend seems like an easy favour at first but the house in question is in the Lavender Gardens estate. Teenage gangs are running riot and Charlie’s desperate neighbours have been forced to employ an expensive – and ruthless – security firm to apply rough justice where the legal kind has failed. The situation gets even uglier when a young Asian boy is fatally wounded in what appears to be a racially motivated shooting.

  Caught in the middle of an urban battlefield, Charlie’s more than able to take care of herself but then she comes face to face with a spectre from her army past. As the tensions rise, lives will depend on Charlie working out just who she can really trust . . .

  ‘Sharp’s first novel, Killer Instinct was a good read, but within the first few pages of Riot Act she surpasses herself. She succeeds in bringing the characters alive and Charlie Fox makes a powerful and attractive heroine. Equally, her other characters work well and she succeeds in creating snappy dialogue and mixing it well with action.

  ‘At times, Riot Act feels slightly reminiscent of Minette Walters’ ‘Acid Row’ . . . (Sharp) takes her Lancashire setting, throws in a great deal of action and creates a fast-paced novel that is guaranteed to build on the reputation created by her debut novel and make her known as an up-and-coming talent in the crime world.’ Luke Croll, Murder & Mayhem Book Club

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Epilogue

  From the Author’s notebook

  Acknowledgements

  Bonus Material

  Don’t miss the bonus material at the end of RIOT ACT:

  The other Charlie Fox novels and short stories

  Excerpt from HARD KNOCKS: Charlie Fox book three

  Meet Zoë Sharp

  Meet Charlie Fox

  Excerpt from the second Junior Bender novel from Timothy Hallinan – LITTLE ELVISES

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  RIOT ACT

  One

  Phone calls that come out of nowhere, in the middle of the night, rarely herald good news as far as I’m concerned. This one arrived somewhere between midnight and one am. It yanked me forcibly out of the warm leisures of sleep, and proved no exception to the rule.

  Right from the outset, in that fraction between dreaming and waking, I was overwhelmed by an instinctive dread.

  By the second ring, I’d jerked upright in bed, fumbling for the bedside light and swinging my legs out from under the blankets before I’d really kicked my brain into gear.

  It took a moment or two to work out that I wasn’t safe in my own bed. Instead, I recognised a small, oppressively-wallpapered room, made smaller still by the pair of dark oak wardrobes that loomed over me from both sides.

  Pauline’s place.

  I’d been house-sitting for Pauline Jamieson for three weeks at that point. Ever since she’d flown to Canada to visit her son. Waking up in her bed still brought a feeling of disorientation.

  The phone noise ran on, shrill and imperious. I groped for the receiver and tried to rub the grittiness out of my eyes.

  “Yeah, hello?” It was a relief to stop the damned phone ringing at last, but that feeling didn’t hold.

  “Oh, Charlie, please come quickly, and bring the dog!” A woman’s voice, scratchy with alarm and close to weeping. “They are in the garden and Fariman has gone out after them. I am afraid they will kill him!”

  The last vestiges of sleep evaporated. “Shahida?” I said, suddenly recognising one of Pauline’s neighbours. One of my neighbours for the moment. “Calm down. Now tell me who? Who has Fariman gone after in the garden?”

  “The thieves!” she cried, as though it was obvious, the pitch of her voice rising like a banshee spirit. “They are trying to steal his equipment. Please, come now.”

  I started to ask if she’d called the police, but the phone was already dead in my hand.

  With a muttered curse, I dialled the local cop shop myself, giving them the bare bones and demanding that they come at once. While I was speaking, I clambered into my clothes. By the time I hit the narrow staircase I was dressed and fully alert.

  Well, almost alert. In the darkened hallway I nearly went sprawling over Pauline’s Rhodesian Ridgeback, Friday. The dog had been sleeping with his back against the bottom riser, and he bounced up with a startled yelp.

  I grabbed his lead from the hall table and snapped it onto the thick leather collar. Just for a second I hesitated over the wisdom of taking him with me, then dismissed my doubts. He might be a handful, but there were times when a big dog like Friday comes in very useful.

  Now, he barely gave me time to lock the front door before he was towing me along the short driveway to the road. Fariman and Shahida’s house was on the other side of Kirby Street from Pauline’s, and further down the row of mainly dilapidated semis. I headed quickly in that direction.

  I’d only met the elderly couple a few times, but I knew Fariman had been a cabinetmaker. Since he’d retired recently he’d kitted out the shed in his back garden with enough tools to keep his hand in. Trouble was, he’d turned it into your average burglar’s car boot sale gold mine. By the sound of it, it hadn’t taken them long to cotton on to the fact.

  I was surprised now to see one or two other figures emerging from doorways, pulling on coats over their pyjamas. Some carried torches.

  It startled me, the reaction. Lavender Gardens was a notoriously crime-ridden estate and I would have expected a far more apathetic response to any cry for help. Maybe there was hope for the area after all.

  My sense of complacency lasted until I reached the far crumbling kerb and we threaded our way through the line of close-packed empty vehicles.

  Friday lurched to a halt so abruptly that I ran into his rump and nearly stumbled. It only took a second before I
realised the reason for his sudden check. For me to register a bulky figure rising behind a parked van.

  Shock made me gasp, sent me reeling backwards. Fear convulsed my hands, so that I tightened my grip on Friday’s lead.

  A harsh laugh greeted my recoil, as though that was the effect its owner always hoped his appearance would have, and had yet to be disappointed. “A tad late to be walking the dog, isn’t it, Fox?”

  The man swaggered forwards into the glow of a streetlight, sending a spent cigarette butt sizzling carelessly into the gloom. Three other shadows solidified behind him, keeping station. All of them were dressed in military surplus urban cam fatigues, and carrying an assortment of makeshift weaponry that would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so deadly serious.

  Friday settled for giving out a low growl. It was difficult to tell if his hackles were up, because Ridgebacks have a line of opposite-growing hair down their spines anyway, but the sight and sound of him was enough to stop the men in their tracks.

  I unwound slowly, trying to steady my heartbeat. “What are you doing here, Langford?” I asked sharply. “Bit outside your territory, isn’t it?”

  With one eye on the dog, he treated me to a humourless smile, glancing round at the men behind him for back-up. “We go where we’re needed,” he said piously.

  “Well, you’re not needed here.”

  “No?”

  “No,” I snapped. “These people have got enough problems with law and order without your bunch of bloody vigilantes joining in. Get back to Copthorne. There’s plenty for you to do over there.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry,” he said, voice sly, “we’ve got Copthorne all sewn up.”

  “Well, that’ll be a first,” I threw back at him, starting forwards again. The one nearest to Friday moved back quickly, but the other two made sure I had to shift course to step round them. The cheap little power play brought grins to their faces.

  Langford, self-styled leader of the local vigilante group, shared the same basic mental genotype with playground bullies and third world secret policemen. I’d recognised it the first time I’d met him and his cronies, and I’d gone out of my way to avoid contact ever since.

  Commotion broke out further up the street. I turned and started to run again, Friday loping alongside me, ignoring the heavy footsteps pounding along behind.

  Shahida was standing in her nightdress in the middle of her driveway, wailing. She had nothing on her feet, and her normally neatly-plaited greying hair was a wild halo around her head.

  Several of her neighbours clustered round, trying to soothe her. Their efforts only served to enrage her further. “Of course everything is not all right!” she shrieked at them, half demented.

  I skidded to a halt and pushed my way through. “Shahida,” I said urgently. “Where are they?”

  “In the garden.” She waved towards a gate that led round to the side of the house. Then, having passed on the baton of responsibility, her face crumpled into tears. “Please, Charlie, don’t let him do anything stupid.”

  Langford’s men shoved past me, making it to the gloomy back garden first. Where the lawn had once been was now a square of gravel and artistically-placed rocks, leading down to the box hedge at the bottom.

  The shed where Fariman kept his tools was a squat wooden building that stood over by the hedge on a raft of concrete slabs. It was a dingy corner, despite the orange glare of streetlights reflected by the low cloud overhead, and the light spilling out from the open kitchen doorway.

  Even so, I could see that the lock that had once secured the shed had been ripped out, leaving a jagged scar, pale against the dark wood that surrounded it. It should have left the shed totally exposed, but the door was firmly closed, all the same.

  Shahida’s husband was thrusting his not inconsiderable bodyweight against the timber frame to wedge it shut as though his life depended on it. His bare feet were digging in to the edge of the gravel to give him extra purchase. Fariman wasn’t a tall man, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in girth.

  He looked up, proud and sweating, as the group of us burst into view round the corner of the house.

  “I have them! I have them!” he shouted.

  Something hit the inside of the door with tremendous force. It bucked outwards, opening by maybe three or four inches, before Fariman’s sheer bulk slammed it shut again. His thick, black-framed glasses bounced down his nose, and almost fell.

  The fear leapt in my throat. “Fariman, for God’s sake come away from there,” I called. “They can’t take anything now. Let them go.”

  Langford treated me to a look of utter disgust and strode forwards. On the way past, he swung a provocative fist at Friday’s head.

  The dog made a solid attempt at dislocating my shoulder as he leapt for the bait and the lead brought him up short. Goaded, he let out half a dozen rapid, raucous barks before I could quieten him. The deep-chested sound of a big dog with its blood up, raising the stakes for whoever was sweating inside the shed.

  Langford flashed me an evilly triumphant grin. “Keep the little bastards pinned down,” he bellowed, breaking into a run. “We’ll take care of them. Come on lads!”

  The trapped thieves must have heard Langford’s voice, and if they didn’t know the man himself, they could recognise the violent intent. Behind the small barred shed window, I could see movement against torchlight. It grew more frantic, and the hammering on the door increased in ferocity.

  “Don’t worry, Charlie,” Fariman cried, the old man’s voice squeaky with excitement. “I have them. I ha—”

  There was another assault on the shed door. This time, though, it wasn’t the dull thud of a shoulder or boot hitting the inside of the panel. It was the ominous crack of metal slicing straight through the flimsy softwood.

  Fariman’s body seemed to give a giant juddering twitch. His eyes grew bulbous behind the lenses of his glasses, and he looked down towards his torso with a breathless giggle. Then his legs folded under him and he slowly toppled sideways onto the gravel.

  Behind him, sticking out a full six inches through the shed door he’d been leaning into so heavily, were the four vicious stiletto prongs of a garden fork. Where the exposed steel should have glinted brightly under the glare of the lights, instead it gleamed dark with blood.

  For a moment, the wicked tines paused there, then were withdrawn with a sharp tug, like a stiffly re-setting trap. Even Langford’s brigade hesitated at the sight. The blood lust that had lit their initial charge faltering in the face of an enemy that hit back.

  Before they had time to assimilate this new threat, the shed door was kicked open. Three figures emerged, furtive, moving fast. They were dressed in loose dark clothes, with woolly hats pulled down hard and scarves tied over the lower half of their faces like cattle rustlers from the Old West. Despite the disguises, it was clear at once that they were just boys.

  Langford and his men had a renewed spasm of bravery. Then they wavered for a second time, coming to a full stop halfway across the back garden. When I realised what the boys were holding, I understood the vigilantes’ sudden reluctance to continue the attack.

  Fariman’s shed was crammed with odds and ends, like any other. Old pop bottles that he’d never quite got round to returning; a bag of rags for cleaning brushes and mopping up; and plastic cans of stale fuel for some long-discarded petrol-driven mower.

  All the ingredients, in fact, for the perfect Molotov cocktail.

  The leader of the boys edged forwards. He was holding a disposable cigarette lighter ready under the wick. His hand shook perilously.

  “Get back or I’ll do it!” he screamed, voice muffled by the scarf. He sounded as though he was about to burst into tears. “All of you, get right back!”

  “Give it up,” Langford warned, teeth bared. “This doesn’t have to happen.” He held up both hands as though to placate, but he didn’t retreat as ordered, wouldn’t concede ground.

  The two sides faced off, ten
sion crackling between them like an overhead power line in the rain. They yelled the same words at each other, over and over, the pitch gradually rising to a frenzied level.

  Behind the boys, close up to the shed doorway, Fariman’s body lay still and bleeding on the ground.

  Finally, Langford broke the cycle. “Give it up,” he snarled, “or I’ll send the dog in.”