I Predict a Riot

by Bateman, Colin

  Mr Kawolski opened his desk drawer and contemplated his weapons. There was a truncheon. There was a pointed Ninja star. There was a replica pistol. There was half a brick. There was a set of handcuffs. There was a Stanley knife. All of these had at one time or another been taken from kids brought up to his office for shoplifting or setting fire to things. He lifted the truncheon and slipped it into his left jacket pocket. He took the pistol and placed it in his right. He was tempted by the Ninja star, but knew himself well enough to know that if he threw it, an old lady would surely lose an eye.

  Thus Mr Kawolski set out to save the woman he really, really fancied.

  If he had spent just a few moments longer studying the security camera pictures, he would also have deduced that not only was Maeve O’Boyle being followed by a tall man with luxuriant black hair, but the tall man himself was being followed by a similarly tall man, but much thinner, and with a baseball cap pulled down low masking his face.

  Mr Kawolski stepped smartly out of his office. The small radio on his breast crackled, one of his staff guarding the front door wanting five minutes to use the toilet. Mr Kawolski told him to go ahead. He could have pulled his troops in around him, just to be safe. But he didn’t need back-up. He wanted to do this alone. There was no glory in an army defeating a single enemy. There was glory in a small round Pole saving a damsel in distress.

  When he emerged onto the sales floor Mr Kawolski urgently surveyed the terrain, starting at the exact point where he’d last observed Maeve and her stalker on camera, then, using his in-depth knowledge of her patrolling habits, he scanned along her probable line of progress to the left of the T-shirts, across Men’s Canvas Jeans and then through the columns of stacked, piss-poor trainers towards the changing rooms that divided the men’s section on the left from the much larger range of women’s clothing to the right. There she was, lifting a silky top, holding it up against herself; and there he was, on the other side of the counter, staring at her. Seemingly unaware, Maeve disappeared into the changing rooms. A moment later the man followed.

  Mr Kawolski hurried towards the changing rooms, his heart pounding, his sweaty hand already easing the truncheon out of his pocket. He wouldn’t use the replica gun, not yet. He wanted to inflict actual damage. This deviant, this media predator, this misguided patriot, would suffer for daring to attack this defenceless young-ish woman.

  Primark looks after its own!

  Mr Kawolski paused at the entrance. There was supposed to be a shop assistant on duty here to check the garments in and out and to make sure that people didn’t emerge wearing four pullovers and three pairs of trousers, but typically, she was nowhere to be seen. There were four unisex cubicles on either side, each with calf-length doors. All of them appeared to be in use. One door, at the bottom left, was just closing, and he caught the merest glimpse of a tall, emaciated man dressed in black. Not that one, then. That left him with a simple process of elimination. Six would contain innocent shoppers or guilty shoplifters; one a silent killer and his victim.

  Mr Kawolski ducked down and scurried along the floor like an arthritic Cossack, peering beneath the cubicle doors, looking for two pairs of feet where there should be only one. No … no … no … There! At the end on the right; one big pair of black Oxford brogues, and squashed between them, for all he knew lifeless already, a woman’s daintier feet clad in the familiar pale blue stockings of the Primark security uniform.

  Mr Kawolski pulled himself up to his full height. He raised the truncheon. He tapped lightly on the door. ‘Only one person in a cubicle at a time,’ he said. This was a late flash of inspiration. Just in case he had got it very, very wrong.

  It was polite, but at the same time heavy with menace. It was the Primark equivalent of the police shouting a warning before shooting. He, like them, was obliged to do it. It would sound better in court. Failure to comply was a licence to unleash hell.

  There was an immediate and apparently panicked response from within. The feet moved, straightened, separated. Maeve, clearly being forced to speak against her will, cried breathlessly: ‘It’s okay, I’m staff security.’

  ‘You bet you are!’

  Mr Kawolski exploded into action. He grabbed the handle and yanked it hard, busting the flimsy interior lock and flinging the door open. He surged forward, truncheon raised and swinging, determined to inflict major brain trauma on Maeve’s assailant.

  Except she was sitting on his lap, in her bra. She looked shocked, and horrified. As did the man with the lipstick stains smeared across his cheek.

  ‘Mr Kawolski! Don’t!’

  The man ducked down, but almost too late. A second later, and he most certainly would have lost a lot of blood. As it was, Mr Kawolski’s truncheon swung just above the man’s head and cracked harmlessly into the cubicle wall.

  Mr Kawolski glared down at her, breathing hard. ‘Maeve? What on earth are you doing?!’

  Her fingers went to her lips to stop them trembling. ‘I’m so sorry!’

  ‘You - your bra!’

  ‘I’m really, really sorry. We wanted to join the Mile High Club, except … you know … like in work instead of you know … Mr Kawolski, it’s not what you think. I mean, it is what you think, but it’s not like we’re complete strangers. This is Jack. Jack, this is Mr Kawolski, my boss.’

  ‘Hello, Mr Kawolski.’

  Mr Kawolski just stared at them.

  ‘And we’ve moved in together …’

  ‘In fact, we’re getting married,’ said Jack Finucane, the King of Carrot Cake.

  Maeve’s head shot to one side. ‘We are?’

  Jack nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  From somewhere close by there came a strangled kind of a sound, like a sob in a mangle. Mr Kawolski, recovering the powers of reasoned thinking, but damaged to his very soul, pocketed his truncheon and barked, ‘My office, Maeve - now!’ Then he turned on his heel and stormed out of the cubicle, slamming the door closed behind him. It rocked back on its hinges, then opened again.

  Less than a minute later, Maeve was clip-clopping after Mr Kawolski while still battling to re-button her shirt. It was a losing battle. Jack’s masterful hands had ripped it open with one swipe. She was mortified at being discovered, but as she pursued her boss across the shopfloor it also came to her that Jack Finucane had, in his lovably direct way, asked her to marry him. She’d only known him for a week, and been a widow for less than that. Marrying him, even considering it, was wild and reckless, and it filled her with tremendously warm and melty feelings. If it came to it, Mr Kawolski could stick his job up his hole.

  As Mr Kawolski crashed through the doors leading to the security offices, Jack Finucane sauntered out of the changing rooms and made his way out of the store onto Royal Avenue. He had no more expected to ask Maeve to marry him than she had expected to hear it. But now that he had, and she had tacitly accepted, he felt on top of the world.

  On top of the world was not what Redmond O’Boyle felt, trailing this bastard from shop to street. He might have been dressed as a priest, but he had the heart of a killer.

  99

  Necessary Evil

  Mark, in his political thinking, had begun to use the phrase necessary evil. He couldn’t remember precisely how he came by it, but he thought it was exactly right for the situation he now found himself in. He had been repelled initially by the physical excesses he had witnessed on the streets of East Belfast, but now that the monthly collections were over, and he was somewhat removed from the beatings Pink Harrison’s men had threatened to inflict on tardy payers, he recognised that they might indeed have been a necessary evil. Most of these people failed to vote, it was a well-known fact. And yet they expected their politicians to jump through hoops for them. Most of these people didn’t have jobs. Yet they expected the Government to provide for them. Most of these people yakked on about God and Protestantism, yet hardly believed in one and could hardly explain the other.

  It wasn’t an ideal world. Mark was beginning to appreciat
e that corrupt politicians, whether morally or financially or indeed both, were not the devils the media portrayed them to be, but courageous souls struggling to hold onto their ideals in a world which quite simply did not work according to ideals. Was it wrong if back-scratching resulted in improved housing conditions? Was it a catastrophe if a suitcase full of cash secured a thousand jobs? And if a broken leg inspired a hundred other people to come out and support the Party, wasn’t it worth a bit of a limp you’d get compensation for anyway? The next time he watched All the President’s Men, Mark rooted for Nixon. When he played Trivial Pursuit with his mother and the question came up about who said, All it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing, Mark went into a long diatribe about necessary evil, to which his mother responded, ‘Just answer the question, Adolf.’

  On Friday, having packed up his files and personal effects in preparation for his move on Monday to Office 12, Mark grabbed a quick sandwich from the Mace close to his home, then drove out to Pink Harrison’s house in Holywood for a strategy and policy meeting. He was feeling decidedly up. He was learning things about the realities of political life that you could never, ever learn from a book. That it was okay to have doubts; it was okay to feel insecure; it was all right to ride roughshod over the laws of the land as long as you were discreet and your objectives were noble. Even Churchill, my God, the greatest Briton, had murdered thousands at Gallipoli. But without that disaster there might have been no triumph in Normandy. You learned by experience and by sacrificing anyone but yourself. Leaders lead from the rear, otherwise they are dead leaders.

  These, and other grand, self-deluded thoughts were flowing through Mark’s excited mind as he drove through the gates of Pink Harrison’s house - estate, really - but they were soon shunted sideways when a police officer stepped out from behind a tree and held up his hand. Mark stopped immediately. His eyes flitted to his mirror and he saw two others step out from hidden positions behind the massive gateposts, presumably to block any attempt to escape. As the police officer approached his window, Mark looked up to the house and was astonished to see half a dozen police vehicles parked there. As well as uniformed officers standing around the front door, there were several in white, hooded forensic boiler suits moving in and out of the house.

  Mark rapidly wound his window down. ‘My God,’ he said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘We’re conducting a murder investigation, sir,’ the cop said gravely.

  ‘My God! Is Councillor Harrison—?’

  ‘Councillor Harrison is not at home.’

  ‘Oh. Is that like a euphemism for he’s missing presumed dead?’

  ‘No, sir, he’s just not at home. Do you happen to know his whereabouts?’

  ‘God, no, I was due to meet him here.’

  ‘And you are?’

  Mark told him who he was; this information was radioed up to someone at the house. Mark was then directed to park in front of the building and talk to an Inspector McBride; he was warned not to attempt to enter the house. Mark proceeded slowly up the driveway. His mind was racing. A murder investigation. But Pink was alive. His immediate thought was that Bull had gone one step too far and killed a tardy contributor. But that would hardly have happened here, on Pink’s own doorstep.

  As he parked the car, Mark noted several other vaguely familiar faces - councillors and Party workers who had also turned up for the policy meeting. Each of them was being interviewed by a uniformed officer. Mark climbed out of the car and was immediately directed to Inspector McBride, a youngish-looking man in plain-clothes. He had the frustrated air of a man who’d planned a surprise party but the main guest hadn’t shown up.

  McBride took down his details - home address, work address and telephone numbers, his connection to Councillor Harrison, the last time he’d seen him, spoken to him, and if he knew where he was right now. Mark gave all this information politely and asked as many questions as he could, but McBride wasn’t giving anything away. The other Party members, having finished their own interviews, were now gathered in a small group to the right of the front door, earnestly conversing. Mark started to cross to them, then remembered something and turned back to the Inspector.

  ‘Just realised - I’m moving offices on Monday, in case you call up and I’m not there and you think I’ve done a runner and you issue an APB or something.’

  Inspector McBride blinked at him.

  ‘All Points Bulletin,’ explained Mark.

  ‘This isn’t The Streets of San Francisco,’ said McBride.

  ‘I appreciate that,’ said Mark. ‘Sorry. If you ask for Office Twelve, I’m not sure of the direct number yet.’

  McBride made a note of it. Mark quickly scurried across to join in the gossip. One of them was saying, ‘I heard someone got found drowned in his pool.’

  ‘Like Brian Jones,’ said another.

  ‘Who’s Brian Jones?’ asked one.

  ‘From the Rolling Stones.’

  ‘Pink knows The Rolling Stones?’ asked yet another.

  ‘Pink knows everyone,’ said the first councillor.

  ‘I knew he was trouble,’ said the man who hadn’t heard of Brian Jones. ‘Leopards and spots, leopards and spots.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ stated the man who knew about The Rolling Stones. ‘It may all be perfectly innocent.’

  ‘There’s been a murder,’ said the man who hadn’t heard of Brian Jones, ‘and they’re searching his house - and I say there’s no smoke without fire.’

  ‘Someone might just have sneaked in to use the pool, then drowned,’ said Mark. ‘He mightn’t know anything about it.’

  ‘It’s bad for the Party,’ said one.

  ‘It doesn’t help,’ said another.

  ‘We should cut our losses,’ said one.

  ‘Some would argue that The Stones were a better band without Brian Jones,’ said the one who’d introduced Brian Jones into the equation in the first place.

  ‘It’s hardly the same,’ said another councillor, who had thus far kept his knowledge of The Rolling Stones under his hat, ‘because Brian Jones was a founder member of the band, but Pink wasn’t a founder member of the Party. He’s more like Ron Wood, a gun for hire. I don’t mean gun, of course, I mean guitarist. Ron Wood looks like a Stone, he sounds like a Stone, but ultimately he’s not really a Stone. He’s quite dispensable.’

  ‘We shouldn’t jump to any conclusions,’ said Mark.

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said the man who hadn’t heard of Brian Jones. ‘We have to give Pink the benefit of the doubt. We need more information before we expel him.’

  There were nods all around the group. They agreed to retire to Party Headquarters and await developments. They drove out of Pink’s driveway in a little convoy. As they emerged onto the main road, they were filmed by a BBC News crew. Mark phoned home to make sure his wife taped the late-night news in case there was a glimpse of him. He was filled with excitement. He had hardly been in the Party for more than a few days, and already there was a crisis, and it felt like he was at the very heart of it. And if Pink really was involved in a murder, or was felt to have compromised the Party by some connection to it, no matter how tenuous, who better to step into his shoes than Mark himself? Pink Harrison’s sole contribution to the Unionist cause might yet turn out to have been to serve as the necessary evil which elevated Mark to a position of power and influence.

  100

  White Riot

  The Chief Constable knew that beyond the bluff and bluster, Jimmy was right. It was difficult enough being a blow-in from the mainland. This was one of the few occasions when he could show the rank and file that he wouldn’t pander to the politicians all of the time, that when it really, really mattered he would stand with his men. They had, after all, been after Pink Harrison for years.

  So the warrants were duly presented for approval by the judiciary, and implemented. Co-ordinated raids took place on all of Pink Harrison’s properties, but there was no Pink Harrison to be found. It was hi
ghly likely that he had been tipped off. The old RUC had been a predominantly Protestant organisation that struggled with a misjudged reputation for being lenient on Protestant paramilitaries; since it had changed to the PSNI, and more convincingly encouraged Catholic recruitment, it had successfully reversed that reputation while in truth the growing paranoia of its officers, faced with a quasi-Republican influx, meant that it actually did go a little bit easier on the Protestant paramilitaries. Often they condoned the sentiment that the paramilitaries espoused rather than the reality, i.e. they supported an organisation which professed to protect the Unionist state and culture, but couldn’t work out how selling drugs and running protection rackets furthered that cause. That Pink Harrison knew they were coming for him was not therefore much of a surprise; but there were enough good cops like Jimmy Marsh Mallow to make the Chief Constable confident that he would soon be caught. He crossed his fingers that there would be enough evidence to charge him, because Belfast was already going mad.

  The trouble started within an hour of the raids taking place. Word quickly circulated through the local East Belfast schools, and by lunchtime many classrooms were empty. Kids returned home, changed into their riot clothes, and began making preparations. Walls were torn down and pavements torn up for missiles. Huge numbers of bottles for making petrol bombs were a little bit harder to come by than during the heyday of The Troubles, as milk was now largely distributed in plastic containers and Coke in cans, but enough were eventually gathered. These were slightly healthier than the old-fashioned devices, as they used unleaded petrol. Bull, being a veteran of many kinds of trouble, supervised the rapid assembly of blast bombs, pipe bombs and drogue bombs.