Riot Act (2 page)

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, tension 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.”

I knew I should have left Friday at home.

Before I could react to contradict this outrageous bluff, Shahida and a group of her neighbours appeared
en masse
round the corner of the house. They had the air of a mob, racking the boys’ nerves another notch towards breaking point.

Then Shahida caught sight of Fariman’s inert body and she started screaming. It was the kind of scream that nightmares are made of. A full-blooded howling roar with the sort of breath-control an opera singer would have killed for. It didn’t do me much good, so it must have struck utter terror into her husband’s attackers.

And, having accomplished that, Shahida broke free of her supporters, and bolted across the garden to avenge him.

“Shahida, no!” I’d failed Fariman, I couldn’t let her down as well.

As she rushed past me I let go of Friday’s straining leash and grabbed hold of her with both hands. Such was her momentum that she swung me round before I could stop her. She struggled briefly, then collapsed in my arms, weeping.

Suddenly unrestricted, Friday leapt forwards, eager to be in the thick of it. He bounded through the ranks of Langford’s men and into plain view on the gravel, moving at speed. With the idea of an attack from the dog firmly planted in his mind, the boy with the cigarette lighter must have thought he could already feel the jaws around his throat.

He panicked.

The tiny flame expanded at an exponential rate as it raced up the rag wick towards the neck of the bottle. He threw the Molotov in a raging arc across the garden, onto the stony ground. The glass shattered on impact, and sent an explosive flare of burning petrol reaching for the night sky with a whoosh like a fast-approaching subway train.

Langford and his men ducked back, cursing. I dragged Shahida’s incoherent form to safety, yelling for Friday as I did so.

He appeared almost at once through the smoke and confusion, ears and tail tucked down, looking sheepish.

Voices were shouting all around us. Langford’s crew had skirted the flames and redoubled their efforts to get to the boys. Christ, would they never give up?

Another Molotov was lit, but it was thrown in the other direction. Away from the vigilantes.

And into the shed.

This time, there was more than the contents of the bottle to fuel the fire. With bitumen sheeting on the roof, and years of creosote on the walls, they couldn’t have asked for a more promising point of ignition.

The flames caught immediately, sparkling behind the window, washing at the doorway. The speed with which they took hold, and the heat they generated, was astounding.

Fariman!

“Get the fire brigade,” I yelled, jerking one of the neighbours out of their stupor. “And an ambulance.” Where the hell were the police when you needed them?

I shouted to the dog to stay with Shahida, but didn’t wait around to find out if he obeyed me. I ran forwards, shielding my eyes with my hand against the intensity of the fire. The old man was still lying where he’d fallen by the shed door. The flames were already licking at the framework nearest to him. I grabbed hold of a handful of his paisley dressing gown and heaved.

For all the difference it made, I might as well have been trying to roll a whale back into the sea.

I shouted for help, but nobody heard in the brawl that was fast developing all around me. The smoke hit in gusts, roasting my lungs, making my eyes stream. I tugged at Fariman’s stocky shoulders again, with little result.

In the mêlée, somebody tripped over my legs and went head-first onto the gravel, landing heavily. I lunged for the back of their jacket, keeping them on the ground.

“Wait,” I said sharply as they began to struggle. “Help me get him out of here.”

The boy stared back at me with wide, terrified eyes over the scarf that had slipped down to his chin. He tried again to rise, but desperation lent me an iron grip.

Something exploded inside the shed, and shards of glass came bursting out of the doorway. I spun my head away, but still I kept hold of the boy. I turned back to him.

“If you don’t help me, he’ll burn to death,” I said, going for the emotional jugular. “Is that what you want?”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then he shook his head. Taking a leap of faith, I let go of his jacket and fisted my hands into Fariman’s dressing gown again. To my utter relief, the boy did the same at the other shoulder.

He was little more than a kid, but between us, a few feet at a time, we managed to drag the old man clear.

We got him onto the crazy paving by the back door of the house. It wasn’t as far away from the inferno as I would have liked, but it was better than nothing. The effort exhausted the pair of us.

I searched for the pulse at the base of Fariman’s his neck. It throbbed erratically under my fingers. I heaved him over onto his stomach and pulled up the dressing gown. Underneath, he wore pale blue pyjamas. The back of the jacket was now covered with blood, which was pumping jerkily out of the row of small holes in the cloth.

I glanced up at the boy, found him transfixed.

“Give me your scarf.” My words twitched him out of his trance. For a moment he looked ready to argue, then he unwound the scarf from his neck and handed it over without a word.

I balled the thin material and padded it against the back of Fariman’s ribcage. “Hold it there,” I ordered. When he didn’t move I grabbed one of his hands and forced it to the substitute dressing.

The boy tried to pull back, didn’t want to touch the old man.
If you didn’t want his blood on your hands, sonny, you should have thought of that earlier.
With my forefinger and thumb I circled his skinny wrist, and dug cruelly deep into the pressure points on the inside of his arm, ignoring his yelp of pain. “Press hard until I tell you to let go.” My voice was cold.

He did as he was ordered.

I checked down Fariman’s body. When I got to his legs I found the skin on one shin bubbled and blistered where it had been against the burning shed door. It looked evil. I carefully peeled the charred pieces of his clothing away from the worst of it, and left it well alone.

Burns were nasty, but unless they were serious they were low on the priority list when it came to first aid. Besides, without even a basic field medical kit, there was little else I could do.

“Where the hell’s that ambulance?” I growled.

Shahida reappeared at that point, with Friday trotting anxiously by her side. I braced myself for another bout of hysterics, but she seemed to have run out of steam. She slumped by her husband’s side and clutched at his limp hand, with silent tears running down her face.

I put my hand on her shoulder and shot a hard glance to the boy, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

The neighbours had swelled in number and organised themselves with buckets of water and a hosepipe. Where the first petrol bomb had landed there was now a soggy, blackened patch on the sandy-coloured stones.

Then the whole of the roof of the shed went up. A rejuvenated blast of flame kept the people back to a respectful distance. Burning embers came drifting down on the still night air like glitter, dying as they fell.