Acid Row (36 page)

Jimmy had used one earlier to materialize at her side. This was no different.

A quick glance through the window of the back room as she passed showed it to be unoccupied, as was the kitchen. She stepped through water on the floor and paused in the doorway to call out.

"Hello! Is anyone here? I'm trying to get through to Humbert Street.

I'm looking for my kids."

She sensed only stillness in the house. If anyone was there, they were keeping their heads well down.

She tested the door of the back room but it was locked the empty one looked up the stairs, then paused by the open door of the lounge. She took in everything at a single glance. The shattered window. The blowing curtains. Broken furniture. Lamps knocked over like coconut shies. Bricks and stones, littering the floor. The damp, acrid smell of a fire extinguished with water. . she was in the paedophiles' house .. .

Her instinctive reaction was to retreat but, through the window, she saw the tall, unmistakable figure of her daughter, standing with her back to the house. Next to her was Colin. As she watched, the shouts of the crowd resolved themselves into individual taunts. Gaynor recognized the first voice, but couldn't place it.

“We ain't gonna wait much longer, bitch!”

“What your man doing, Mel? Getting his self jocked by perverts?”

"Maybe he don't fancy girls wiv' big bellies! You wanna cross your legs next time!"

The same voice, louder and wilder. A black voice. "He'd better not be helping 'em, bitch, or we'll fucking 'ave you and your bruwer. You talked right hard when you wos making bombs, Col, but you never said you wos too yellow to use 'em."

Wesley Barber, thought Gaynor in alarm. The idiot on crystal meth .. .

and hyped to the eyeballs by the sound of it. Oh, God! What to do? Go and stand with Melanie and Colin? Tell the crowd Jimmy wasn't there any more? They wouldn't believe her. Where had he gone anyway? What was he doing? Who were the people with him? Her mind grasped for answers. Were they paedophiles? But who was the girl? And what would the crowd do to Mel and Col if they thought Jimmy had helped the perverts escape?

She reined her thoughts in with determination. A solution was all she was interested in. There was no sense in Mel and Col guarding an empty house. Better to slip through the window and tell them to move aside and let Wesley enter. The smell of burning didn't register as a threat. The fire was out, and the consequences to the rest of the road if number 23 went up in flames were so far outside Gaynor's priority at that moment that she never even considered it. With hurried tread, she ran upstairs to check the bedrooms.

She thought she was used to shock till she saw the blood in the back one. The smell of body odour hot, rancid, disgusting brought the bile surging up her throat and she clamped her hand to her mouth and fled down the stairs, weeping in fear. Like her son earlier, she was physically unable to absorb any more adrenalin without her body protesting. She supported herself against the wall and bent forward retching violently.

“Who are you?” asked a querulous voice.

Her head snapped up. A man with a machete was standing at the sitting-room door. She tried to say something .. . give her name .. .

but all that came out was a scream .. .

Everyone outside heard it.

Jimmy accelerated his pace across the garden at the back.

Melanie turned a white face to Colin.

Wesley let loose his dogs of war and charged.

“Bitch!” he snarled as he landed a punch in Melanie's stomach.

He stood over her as she fell, twirling his knife in his other hand. He was Wesley Snipes in Blade. Killer of vampire perverts. White ones.

It was his destiny. He was Wesley Snipes .. . had been Wesley Snipes since he first saw New Jack City. A mean, black bastard who could rule the world. There had to be a reason for his name. Not his dad (Wesley Barber Snr). His dad was a loser. A two-bit thief who wandered in and out of prison like he was in a revolving door.

Somewhere in Wesley's confused, meth-shot mind, his mother's Christian voice resounded. "Youse no good, boy. Youse your father's son. Only Jesus love you. Only Jesus make you worthy. Take the Lord to your heart and make your mamma proud."

“NO-OO!” He whipped his knife in a backhand slash across Colin's cheek, straddling his legs and bringing his arms back into cruciform pattern in front of him. MOTHER PUCKER I am BLADE!"

He vaulted the windowsill and padded across the sitting-room.

Inside 23 Humbert Street Jimmy came to a dead halt in the kitchen doorway. Ahead of him, Gaynor was cowering against the wall, trying to ward off his soldier friend who was bending down to help her up. The old man's tin hat sat lopsidedly on his head and his legs protruded like knobbly twigs from his Empire shorts. He looked what he was. A daft old idiot in Borneo fatigues.

It was the machete that was frightening. He was swinging it at his side like a counterbalance. It swiffed through the air, backwards and forwards, a blade so old and unused it was red with rust. Or blood?

Even Jimmy wondered, and he'd spoken to the man. He called out reassuringly.

"It's OK, Gaynor, I know this geezer. Hey, mate! Do me a favour! Put the machete down. You're frightening her."

The soldier straightened. “Oh, it's you,” he said. "I followed you.

You came in here to steal."

Jimmy held out his hands in surrender. "You've got me bang to rights sir. That's me. Jimmy James the thief. Always have been. Always will be. Do you wanna leave the lady and take me in?" He crossed his heart. “God's honour, I won't give you no trouble.”

The old man took another puzzled look at Gaynor. "This woman needs help."

"No, she don't, mate. She's got kids outside. Show him you're OK Gaynor. Get off your arse and open the door. Go tell Mel and Col to shift themselves into the house. I'll get to you soon as I can. OK darling'?"

Gaynor nodded and scrabbled along the floor towards the door.

Jimmy turned his hands palms up and beckoned to the soldier with spread fingers. "Move yourself, my friend. This ain't healthy. There's guys out there on crystal meth gonna come through that door like Exocet missiles. I might be a nigger, but I know what I'm talking about.

Trust me. You don't wanna be around when it happens."

The old eyes stared into his. Confused. Frightened. But trusting..

.

He took a step forward.

Too late .. .

Wesley came out of the sitting-room.

"GO, GAY NOR Jimmy roared.

Command centre police helicopter footage The police camera recorded the front door opening and the woman they believed to be Gaynor Patterson come tumbling out. She struggled to her feet and waved her arms in desperation, but her voice and gestures were lost against the trampling mob of youths who were climbing through the window to her left.

Did she hear something? See something she recognized on the ground?

She made a sudden dart into the fray and began hitting and kicking like a street fighter. They saw the black woman who had stood beside Melanie wade in from the edge, plucking boys aside with her large hands, boxing their ears and shoving them away. She must have been calling for help because a handful of people separated from the watching crowd and ran towards her.

Perhaps twenty youths made it through the window before a semicircle opened up to show Gaynor's son and daughter sprawled in tangled union on the grass in front of it. Even to the cold, unemotional eye of the camera lens, the attempt Colin had made to protect his sister was clear and heartbreaking. He lay half across her, his thin immature arms wrapped about her shoulders, his cheek pressed against hers.

Were they alive? Every head bent towards the monitors, willing praying, urging, as Gaynor flung herself to her knees to lift their hands, stroke their faces, call them back. But there was no response.

Just the awful relaxation of death.

Inside 23 Humbert Street Wesley herded the old soldier in front of him, allowing the youths behind him to enter the corridor. One of his friends kicked the front door shut to block out some of the noise. Others set off up the stairs. Wesley was more interested in his prize. He pricked the old soldier in the arm with his flick knife and giggled when he squeaked in terror.

“This the pervert?” he asked Jimmy, swinging the old man against the wall and thrusting his head forward to examine him.

Jimmy stayed where he was in the kitchen doorway, afraid that any movement would cause Wesley to use his knife again. "No. This guy lives in Bassett Road."

“So what's he doing here?”

The only answer Jimmy could think of was the truth. "He thought I was nicking .. . came in to stop me."

“Wos you?”

“Yeah, why not? There's no one here, Wesley. The house is empty.” He nodded towards the door of the back room.

"There's a whole studio in there if you're interested. One of the perverts is a musician."

Wesley reached down to yank the machete from the man's grip. "What's he got this for?"

“I guess he didn't fancy tackling me without a weapon.” Jimmy took a cautious step forward. "Let him go, Wesley. He's a harmless old geezer who was trying to stop kids being trampled at the other end of the street. I'll do a swap. I've got the key to the back room in my pocket. I was planning to come back and empty it before anyone else got a chance." He unzipped his pocket and took out the key, placing it on his palm, where Wesley could see it. "I'll give it you for the old guy. There's a fortune in sound equipment in there."

“He's conning you, Wcs,” jeered one of the other youths. "That key don't fit that door. He's got the hots for the nonce."

Jimmy's eyes narrowed immediately. "Do you wanna come closer and say that again, motherfucker?" he growled, bunching his fists and taking another step forward. He spread his lips as the boy retreated. "OK I'm gonna spell it out for you one more time. This guy ain't the one you want. The perverts legged it out the back. I've checked the house and the only room that's got anything worth nicking is this one.

There's about ten grand of gear in there. That's why I locked it." He raised the fist with the key. "If Wesley's too fucking stupid to make a deal, then I'm gonna throw this in the air and whichever one of you gets it takes the jackpot."

Wesley's eyes rolled as his slow brain tried to follow the argument. He relaxed his hold on the old man and turned to glare at his friends to warn them off. Now less than a couple of feet away, Jimmy folded the soldier's frail, marbled hand inside his huge black one, ready to pull him away, when feet thundered on the stairs and a frightened voice shouted: “He's killed Amy. There's blood everywhere.”

There was a brush of warm fingers, a glance of bafflement from faded eyes, before the machete sliced through the air and came down on Jimmy's head like a pile driver Command centre -police helicopter footage The footage of the old man's murder was too horrific to be shown in full, and only a few people outside the command centre ever saw it uncut. Twelve of those were the jury members at Wesley Barber's trial when the judge overruled his defence team's efforts to have it banned.

There was no mistaking Wesley's face. He raised it to the helicopter as he smeared the blood of his victim on his cheeks, before strutting and prancing at the upstairs window and raising his fist in a panther salute to the crowd.

The jury reached a guilty verdict in under half an hour. They, too were offered counselling.

Drugs were cited in mitigation. Lysergic acid diethylamide LSD or acid. Methedrine crystal meth the drug of choice of Gianni Versace's murderer Andrew Cunanan. Taken individually, each was a proven exaggerator of anxiety, aggression and paranoia. Taken together, it was axiomatic that anyone under their influence would lose touch with reality. Particularly someone as 'socially damaged' and 'educationally subnormal' as Wesley Barber. He was deprived. He was abused. He was black.

Blame the dealers. Blame his absent father. Blame his over-religious mother. Blame his school for allowing him to truant. Blame the climate of anger in Bassindale. Blame the crowd for inciting the mentally unstable to action. Blame the boy's accomplices for encouraging his madness before melting away into the hinterland of the gardens and never being identified.

The judge, unmoved, commended the jury on its decision before passing sentence. He reminded the court that Wesley Barber had been given numerous opportunities during that afternoon to reconsider his position. Various brave people had tried to reason with him, but he had chosen not to listen. Drugs may well have been a contributing factor to the appalling savagery he inflicted, but he could find no evidence that Wesley was any more 'socially damaged' than his victims.

“No civilized person can understand,” he said, 'what led a vicious young man like you to think you could pass judgement on other human beings. Yours is a flawed and dangerous character. In your short life you have contributed nothing to society, and have learnt nothing from it. It is my hope that a long period of incarceration will teach you wisdom."

It had been a lynching by strangulation. The body was lowered on a rope from an upstairs window, blood streaming down its legs where the genitals had been hacked off with a blunt machete. It danced for several minutes while the noose tightened round the old man's neck.

Down below the crowd laughed as Wesley strutted his stuff.

Hell.. . ! It wns funny .. . !

The black guy was gibbering like an ape .. .

The paedophile was wearing a hat which flopped from side to side as he jiggled in his noose .. .

Saturday 28 July 2001 Rose Cottage, Lower Burton, Devon

THE DOOR OPENED a crack in response to the policeman's loud knocking and repeated warnings that he would break the door down if it wasn't opened. He and his colleague had caught a glimpse of movement in the sitting-room window as the car pulled up. A flash of blonde hair as a head ducked out of sight.

“What do you want?” said a frightened voice.