White Riot (8 page)

He had tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep for long periods. The windows had been open to counteract the heat, but it probably had more to do with his guest. He reckoned Jason would still be asleep if he had had as rough
a time as he claimed. Donovan would know how to deal with him when he returned.

He felt wide awake, couldn’t get back to sleep. He threw back the covers, got up. He needed the toilet. He would try to go quietly so as not to wake Jason.

He crept out on to the landing, tiptoed over to the top of the stairs, expecting to see the youth fast asleep below him.

But he didn’t.

The sheet was thrown off, the sofa empty.

Jamal went downstairs, looked around the front room. Jason was nowhere to be seen. He went into the kitchen. The washing machine had been opened, his dried clothes taken. He went back into the front room, looked at the shelves.

His iPod was gone.

‘Shit …’

He searched the room. Other things were missing too. CDs, ornaments. Small objects. Things that could be sold or fenced. One of the pillowcases was gone. He looked round again. Saw a note left on the mantelpiece. He picked it up, saw the semi-formed letters, the childish scrawl. Read it.

Jamal threw the note on the floor. He felt worse than angry. He felt betrayed, cheated. By one of his own. He would never have been taken in a few years ago; he must be getting soft. A trusting idiot, like the kind he used to rip off when he was desperate.

He looked round the room again, tried to calm down. Just wait until he told Joe …

Shit.

Joe. He didn’t want him to know what had happened. Didn’t want him to know how he had been taken in. He picked up the duvet, ready to carry it upstairs, then stopped.

Better have a look round, see what else Jason had taken.

Hands shaking, he got his notepad and pen, started making an inventory.

He waited for the fire to engulf him. It never came.

Before him bodies were burning, twisting in pain, mouths open, screams drowned out by the noise of the flames. Flesh bubbling and hissing first to jumping, liquid red then unmoving, charcoal black.

No longer a pub, now just a scene from Dante’s
Inferno
. And in the middle of this hell, he stood.

Untouched by it.

Life burnt out before him. Faces implored him for help.

He couldn’t save them. And if he couldn’t save them, he wanted to burn along with them. It was only right. He stuck his arm into the flames. They danced around him, away from him. He tried again. The same thing. He walked towards the fire, ignoring the charred crunching underfoot. It parted, gave him space to move.

‘You can’t!’ he screamed, his words only heard inside his head. ‘It isn’t fair. Don’t leave me behind. Don’t take them and leave me …’

One of the burning bodies turned, faced him. Skin and muscle gone, now just a flaming skull. ‘Let me be no nearer in death’s dream kingdom,’ it said.

‘I didn’t do it …’

‘Let me also wear such deliberate disguises …’

‘Listen to me …
I didn’t do it
…’

‘’Til that final meeting in the twilight kingdom …’

The burning body loomed. He screamed again.

And it stopped.

Trevor Whitman awoke, tangled up in his bedding, sweat sticking him to the bed.

He sat up, heart racing, looked around. Saw the hotel room, flopped back on the bed, breathing heavily.

‘I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t do it …’

He stared at the ceiling, unmoving.

Joe Donovan sat in the car and stared at the house.

They had stayed the night in London. He had left Amar at the hotel.

Fresh morning sunlight, warm air. The leafy, affluent, North London suburb of Crouch End seemed alive with possibilities, new chances even.

The house looked the same as he had last seen it. Big, Edwardian. Permanent and solid, lasted for years, would last for more years to come. Safe. A proper house for a proper family.

His old house.

He watched the front door, heart beating fast, breathing heavily like a prizefighter about to step into the ring, focusing himself for the task ahead.

Talk to his wife, daughter. Tell Annie she would have a son again. Abigail a brother.

They barely spoke now. Donovan’s obsession with finding their missing son and his subsequent breakdown had strained the marriage past breaking point. Running, he had ended up in a semi-derelict cottage back in his native north-east, staring into the abyss, ready to jump. Only the arrival of Jamal into his life and the creation of Albion had pulled him back. Now he no longer looked into the abyss but was still near the edge. And he knew: one good shove and he would stumble and be lost. Possibly for ever.

Like the boy in the house in Hertfordshire. He could pull Donovan away from the abyss. Or shove him into it.

Annie would be pleased when he told her. Could imagine her wanting to share his hope. Join him in taking the first steps towards being a proper family again. Movement at the front door of the house pulled him back from his reverie.

Out stepped a figure. A girl with long, dark hair pulled back, tied in a loose knot at the back, wearing school uniform. His daughter, Abigail. So grown up he almost didn’t recognize her.

His heart was pumping like he was losing blood. She hated him and he didn’t really blame her. Why had he gone looking for David? Thought it must be something she had done wrong. What had happened was awful, a nightmare, and going on with life was difficult, but why couldn’t her dad be content with her? Just her?

He was, he wanted to tell her. He still loved her and her mother with all his heart. And he wanted them all to be together. The four of them. A full family. A proper family. So he kept looking.

And Annie and Abigail had never been able to accept that. But that was OK. Because he wasn’t sure he could accept it himself.

She walked down the path to the gate. Tall and confident. He gave a choked-sob smile, pride and guilt inextricably linked.

He had the car door open, heart in mouth, legs shaking and ready to get out, when another figure appeared. A man, late thirties. Casually dressed with short hair, glasses and designer stubble. Michael, he presumed. Annie’s new partner. Donovan closed the car door, sat back.

Michael pointed his keys at the Fiat Multipla in front of the house. It responded, unlocking to allow Abigail in. Michael walked to the driver’s side, said something to
Abigail that made her laugh, got in too. The front door closed. Annie was double locking it. She put her keys in her bag and walked towards the car, flicking her dark hair out of her eyes. Just like she used to do.

Donovan felt a knife stab his heart. He wanted to rush out, grab hold of Annie, tell her he was here, tell her who he’d found.

The knife twisted. His hand was on the door handle, ready to fling it open, run into the street, jump in front of that stupid fucking car …

And twisted, thrust in deeper. Tell Abigail he loved her, she didn’t have to hate him any more, he’d found him, they were a family, a real family …

The Multipla drove past him. None of them even glanced in his direction.

Thoughts of Annie and hope disappeared like a half-remembered dream exposed to daylight. His face was wet. He didn’t know he had been crying. He felt a weight on his chest, like hands shoving him.

Backwards.

He sat in the street, head on his steering wheel, openly sobbing, hands held as fists to his forehead. His tears eventually dried up. But not their cause. He waited until his hands had stopped shaking. Drove away.

Stuck a CD into the player, the first one that came to hand – Richmond Fontaine:
Post to Wire
– to drown out the noise in his head. Listened to Willy Vlautin tell him that not everyone lived their life alone, not everyone gave up.

But knew from the sadness in his voice and the funereal tune that he didn’t mean it.

Rick Oaten walked through the hospital like a Hollywood star on a red-carpet premiere. Waving hello to this one, blowing kisses at that one, smilingly ignoring another one who spat angry words at him. Basking in the fame of being the NUP leader. Two slabs of awkwardly suited, shaven-headed muscle lumbering in his wake just added to the effect. Medium height, balding and getting jowly and paunchy, in his mind he was a six-foot-plus well-thatched Adonis. He stopped outside a closed door, greeted two young men who were waiting there, one with a notebook, one a camera.

‘Now here, Mr Coulson,’ he said to the one carrying the notebook, ‘you will see the reality of the situation without the spin of political correctness. What we’re really up against.’

Coulson the reporter nodded, stifled a yawn. Tried not to let his distaste of Oaten show. Too much.

‘And you, Mr McKean, can get some excellent pictures to show to your readers. Bring the horror into the homes.’

McKean ignored him, pretended to be fiddling with his aperture.

Oaten flicked his thinning floppy fringe back from his forehead, hoping it covered his bald spot, turned and opened the door with a flourish. Kev Bright lay in the bed, propped up on pillows, drip attached to his arm, pyjamas covering his torso, eyes open, watching. A heavy-set woman in her mid-thirties was sitting in an armchair reading
Take a Break
. Hearing the door, she threw the magazine aside, jumped up
and almost ran to the bedside, where she began stroking Kev’s hand, heels clacking on the floor like horses’ hooves. Her ample body had been squeezed into the clothes of an eighteen-year-old on a Friday night out down the Bigg Market. She sat down, her miniskirt riding all the way up her thighs. She left it there.

The two young journalists exchanged glances, raised eyebrows, tried not to smile, let alone laugh. There would be some serious payback going on when they got back to the newsroom.

The door slammed; the two bodyguards remained stationed outside.

‘What a beautiful picture,’ said Oaten. ‘How devoted. You can start snapping now.’

‘Can you ask her to put her tits away?’ said McKean. ‘We’re from the
Chronicle
, not
Razzle
.’

Oaten’s face flushed from anger and embarrassment. Another flick of the hair and he crossed to the woman. He tried keeping his voice low, but the reporters still heard his words, the anger behind them.

‘Diane, what did I tell you? No heels, no low-cut tops. Jesus Christ, what’s the matter with you?’

The woman looked scared, flinched at his words like they were accompanied by slaps.

‘Sorry, Rick. I’ll … I’ll go home an’ change, like …’

‘You fuckin’ stupid cow,’ he hissed. ‘There’s no time. Just, just make yourself decent.’

Diane began some detailed rearranging of her copious breasts. McKean looked tempted to start snapping. Coulson gave him a look of mock admonishment.

‘Right, lads,’ Oaten said, turning back to them with forced bonhomie, ‘this is Kevin Bright. Hard grafter, a proud working man. Salt of the earth. A true, yet unsung, working-class
hero. And a very good friend of mine. And his … girlfriend. And what happens two nights ago?’ Oaten thrust his head at the two reporters, eyes wide. ‘What happened? He gets knifed, that’s what. Knifed.’

Coulson and McKean waited. Oaten gestured to the notepad.

‘Write that down. Knifed.’

Coulson didn’t move.

‘Go on.’

Coulson sighed, scribbled something on the pad, looked up again. Oaten was walking round the room, building up to some dramatic announcement. While his back was turned, Coulson showed McKean what he had put on the pad: a cartoon of an erect penis spouting sperm. McKean tried not to laugh.

Oaten reached the bedside, turned back to them. ‘And who knifed him?’

They waited.

‘Will you tell them, Kevin, or shall I?’

‘You,’ said Kev, his voice sounding genuinely weak.

Oaten patted him on the arm, gave what he presumed was a smile. ‘I shall. Youths. A gang of them. How many, Kevin? Five?’

Kev nodded.

‘Five. Five pieces of scum against one honest, hard-working man. A totally unprovoked attack.’ Oaten began pacing the floor again. ‘And you know what else? They were Asian. Indian. Muslim, in fact. You see? That’s—’

‘How do you know?’ Coulson asked.

‘What?’ Oaten clearly wasn’t happy at being interrupted.

‘They said. You see—’

‘What did they say?’

Oaten hid his anger as well as glass hides sunlight. ‘Jihad. Something about a jihad.’

Coulson tried to speak again but Oaten ignored him. He declaimed his rehearsed speech, not stopping for any interruptions. ‘You see what we’re up against? You see? An unprovoked attack. You call us racist? I say we’re realist. You say we breed hate? I say we’re honest about the situation. You say we’re angry? You’re right there. We are. Angry. And defending our territory. Making our streets safe for honest, law-abiding citizens to walk down.’

Oaten stood back, looked victorious.

‘Any questions?’

Coulson turned over a page in his notebook. ‘Yeah,’ he said, lazily scratching his cheek with his pen. ‘I’d like to ask the honest hard-working etcetera whether he fought back.’

Oaten looked uneasy. ‘Why?’

Coulson shrugged. ‘I just thought someone who has two convictions for football hooliganism and a life ban from St James’s Park would have put up a fight. That’s all.’

Oaten looked like he was ready to explode. His upper lip slipped back over his teeth in a snarl, like a wild animal ready to attack. Struggling to control his temper.

Flash
.

The camera went off full in his face. And again.

The two journalists nodded to each other. Coulson flipped his notebook shut. McKean slung his camera over his shoulder.

‘Think we’ve got everything here, thanks,’ said Coulson. ‘We’ll be on our way.’

They turned and left, closing the door behind them.