Revenger (14 page)

The fire from the bottle-bomb had died down. Now the mob was advancing again. A couple of shots rang out, and one of them punched a hole in the shutters. A bottle of wine at the back of the shop shattered as the bullet hit it.

There was a low line of brickwork, about 50cm high, beneath the window. Carver got down on his belly and, wriggling on his elbows and knees, used this as the cover he needed to get to the far side
of
the window. There he took up a shooting position, kneeling by the window frame, his body partly sheltered by the narrow vertical strip of solid wall at the very edge of the shopfront. He smashed away a few shards of glass that were still attached to the lower line of bricks, and then used that as a solid base on which to rest his left elbow. Then he looked along the barrel and slowly traversed the crowd, searching for his first target.

Another rain of bricks and bottles clanged against the shutters. One of the bottles hit right at the bottom of the perforated metal. The rioters had started thinking. They were aiming for the gap. It was time Carver made them think about something else. A Mossberg’s magazine held nine cartridges. Carver had to make every one of them count.

Then he heard a voice in the crowd shouting, ‘That’s right – aim low! Aim low!’ and recognized it at once as belonging to the skinny, grey-haired figure who seemed to be masterminding the riot. If Carver could take him out there was every chance that the attack would soon peter out. These weren’t professional soldiers he was up against. They were civilians without training or discipline, still less a proper command structure. He swivelled the gun in the direction of the voice. And then, for a fraction of a second, the crowd parted, Carver saw that familiar bespectacled skull of a face and pulled the trigger. But at the precise moment he did so, another rioter ran across the line of his shot, waving a gun in the air, only to have his head almost blown from his shoulders as it was hit by a fist-sized load of buckshot.

Carver’s gun-barrel kept sweeping round the crowd. He saw the big man, Curtis, running towards them, and fired again, hitting him in the right shoulder, aiming to wound, rather than kill. Curtis had twice tried to keep him out of this nightmare and Carver owed him that much at least in return. He traversed again until his sights came to rest on a rioter in a black leather jacket and with a Mohawk haircut. He had his right arm cocked behind his shoulder, ready to throw a bottle-bomb. The rag in the neck of the bottle was alight. Before the Mohawk could move a muscle, Carver put another shell
smack
into the centre of his chest. The force of the impact knocked him off his feet and flung him at least a metre back through the air. As his body hit the ground, so did the bottle-bomb, igniting right in the midst of the crowd, which broke and ran for cover, dispersing as fast as a startled flock of pigeons. Curtis staggered away after them, screaming in agony, with his one good arm wrapped around a mate’s shoulder. Within a few seconds the road in front of the Lion Market was deserted, just the two dead bodies lying amidst the debris of the riot.

‘Now!’ shouted Carver. ‘Get that table sorted.’

Maninder Panu pressed the control of the shutter, raising it up off the table. Ajay dashed across to the centre of the shattered window, lifted up the near end of the table and heaved it out of the way. Maninder hit another button and the shutters came clattering down until the whole window was covered in a sheet of metal from ceiling to floor.

‘We did it!’ shouted Maninder. ‘Oh, praise God, we survived!’

‘We’ve survived for now,’ Carver corrected him. ‘But they’ll be coming back. And when they do, we’d better be ready for anything they throw at us.’

32

DONNY BAKUNIN WAS
covered in blood. Carver’s first shot had showered him with another man’s blood and brain matter, and peppered the exposed skin of his hands and face with needle-sharp skull-fragments that stung like an assault by a swarm of bees. None of this had bothered him in the slightest. On the contrary, the more bloody the fight had become, the more he had exulted in it. He was a veteran of civil disobedience, from the Brixton riots of 1981, through all the campaigns against American cruise missiles, Rupert Murdoch’s Wapping print plant, Thatcher’s poll tax, G20 summits, globalization, GM crops and wars in the Middle East. He had charged countless police shield-walls and faced their batons, tear gas and water cannons. But absolutely nothing had excited him like the sheer murderous frenzy that had been unleashed in Netherton Street that night.

His rational mind had been aware that he had been given specific orders to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, and he had obeyed those orders for as long as he could. But then all calm calculation had ended, overwhelmed by the primal berserker
battle
fever that had infected him as powerfully as everyone else.

Now, though, some of Bakunin’s troops were having second thoughts. Five of them had been killed so far, and of those, four had gone down in the last few minutes, three felled with single shots. Another had been very seriously wounded. For the first time they had encountered resistance from people who were not only armed, but obviously willing to use their weapons to deadly effect. Bakunin wondered who they were. Had the traders managed to hire mercenaries to defend them, or were these a new, armed cadre of the Adams fascist movement whose political wing was meeting at the O2? If so, that had to be taken into account when planning any future riots. The presence of armed opponents could prove troublesome. Then again, any escalation of violence would serve to amplify the destabilizing effect of any acts of subversion, only adding to its political efficacy.

That was a matter for consideration at a later date. For now Bakunin had a more pressing task on his hands. He could sense the energy on the street dissipating fast. He needed to impose his will on the core elements of the riot, the gang-leaders and community activists who could rally their followers, like shepherds herding sheep, leading them on to the next phase of the action. Bakunin wanted to take the Lion Market. Nothing and no one could be allowed to exhibit such defiance without crushing retribution. It was plain that a straightforward charge against armed defenders would not prevail – not, at least, without an unacceptably high level of casualties.

It was not that Bakunin gave a damn about the lives of those who died. The sacrificial deaths of a small number of martyrs to the cause could always be used very effectively to inspire new members, as insurgent groups from the Nazis to the IRA and al-Qaida could testify. A massacre by government forces was also a fine recruiting tool. But a straightforward defeat by another group of citizens was altogether less encouraging. People would not come looting if they thought they were likely to be blown away by shopkeepers. It was therefore too late to worry about squeamish
scruples
. Circumstances had changed. Now that war had broken out, it had to be won, and a very public, very bloody example had to be made of the occupants of the Lion Market.

Bakunin summoned his lieutenants. They were given their orders and the second phase of the attack began.

33

CARVER, TOO, WAS
using the lull in the fighting to make his preparations. He knew exactly what he would do if he was in the rioters’ shoes, and he had little doubt that they would soon come to the same conclusion that he had done.

He reckoned it would take several minutes for the rioters’ grey-haired leader to restore control, work out his strategy and put it in motion. So it was down to Carver to use that time better than his opponent. First he had to secure command and control of his own little band of defenders. Without waiting to be asked or allowing any doubt to creep in he said, ‘Right, I’m going to need the lights on. But let’s make it quick – I don’t want them on for long.’

As Maninder Panu reached for the switch, Carver was already asking Ajay: ‘Is there any other way out of here?’

The big man shook his head. ‘Not really. We’ve got a yard behind the shop we use for storage, but it backs on to someone’s garden and they’ve got a trellis above their side of the fence, with roses growing up it. They’ve got to be seven or eight feet high: big thick bushes. I don’t see the four of you getting over that in a hurry.’

‘What about to the sides?’ Carver asked.

‘More yards like ours for all the other shops and restaurants. And there’s only two ways you get out of them. One: climb into the next yard. Two: go out through the premises—’

Carver finished the thought, ‘And that takes you right back out on to the street.’

‘That’s why we didn’t do it already,’ said Ajay with a grim, humourless smile.

Behind the counter, Chrystal, acting on Schultz’s instructions, had poured vodka over both his entry and his exit wounds and improvised a bandage out of a roll of kitchen towel and some Sellotape. Schultz was reaching for the packets of ibuprofen and paracetamol racked next to the cigarettes behind the counter. ‘Do us a favour, love,’ he said. ‘Go and get us some cling film. A whole packet.’

As she walked off he caught Carver’s eye and gave a sideways jerk of the head, as if to say, ‘Come over here.’

Carver did as he was asked. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

Schultz leaned close and spoke below his breath: ‘Get out, boss. You can get over a few bloody rose bushes, no worries. We’re fucked here, you know we are. But there’s no sense you copping it if you don’t have to.’

‘Nice try,’ Carver replied, in an equally low voice. ‘But I’m not walking out on you, or the rest of them. Anyway, we can still make it.’

Carver went back to Ajay Panu. ‘Do you have a basement?’

‘Yeah. You get to it through the storeroom. That’s our only hope, I reckon. Just hide down there and pray no one finds us.’

‘It might be our last hope, but it’s not our only hope,’ said Carver. He turned to Maninder. The older of the two cousins was close to tears. Carver felt no anger or contempt towards the shopkeeper’s helplessness. He’d seen trained soldiers fall apart amidst the chaos, the danger and the sheer, all-consuming terror of battle. He didn’t hold it against a civilian.

‘Do you have any more ammo for this shotgun?’ Carver asked.

‘No,’ said Maninder. ‘I was praying I would never even have to use it once.’

That was pretty much what Carver had expected to hear. ‘Then we’ll make do with what we’ve got,’ he said. ‘How you doing, Snoop?’ he asked, nice and loud, so everyone could hear.

Schultz took the hint: this one was for public consumption. He was standing with his right arm lifted up while Chrystal wound cling film round and round his torso, binding his wounded left arm tight to the side of his body. Now he forced a devil-may-care smile to his face and called out, ‘Just a through-and-through, boss. Hurts like a fucker, but don’t you worry about me.’

‘Right, you watch the rear of the property. We have to have control of that storeroom, so we can’t have anyone coming over those side fences into the yard and getting in the back door.’

Schultz nodded. ‘Yeah, boss.’

‘Call me on the mobile, use your earpiece and keep the line open. Then keep me posted if anything looks like kicking off.’

‘Got it.’ Schultz looked down at his shiny, shrink-wrapped body. ‘Christ.’ He sighed. ‘I look like a fuckin’ packed lunch.’

‘Is that all the thanks I get?’ asked Chrystal in mock-indignation.

Schultz laughed, winced at the pain that caused and said, ‘Nah, love, you did brilliant. Job done.’

‘Well, give us a kiss, then, before you go.’

Schultz leaned towards her, she tilted her face up to meet his and they kissed with fierce intensity, both knowing it might be the last, as well as the first, time it happened.

Carver cleared his throat and Schultz pulled away from Chrystal with a sheepish grin. ‘Right then, I’ll be off.’

Before the girl had time to miss him, Carver was handing out her instructions: ‘Can you keep an eye out the front? I want to know exactly what’s happening out there. OK?’

She nodded.

‘Good girl.’ As she took up her position, peering through the perforated shutters, Carver turned back to Ajay: ‘This place is air-conditioned, right?’

‘Yeah – Maninder insisted on it. He really wanted this place to be special.’

‘So where’s the vent?’

‘The unit just behind you, on the wall there.’

‘Good. Do you have a microwave?’

‘Of course, on a shelf behind the counter. We heat up food for customers to take away.’

‘Then get ready for a supermarket sweep because I need the following items, fast, starting with flour, 00-grade if you’ve got it.’

Ajay frowned. ‘You mean pizza flour? Yes, I know where that is.’ He hurried off towards one of the shelves.

‘And a spray can of deodorant,’ Carver continued. ‘Roll-on’s no good to me.’

‘I’ll get that for you,’ said Maninder, like a child wanting to make himself useful.

Carver watched the Panus dash to and fro across the store as he continued reciting his shopping list. ‘Good, and grab me some soap flakes – got to be flakes, not powder . . . And lighter fluid, while you’re at it – one of those plastic litre bottles people use for barbecues would be ideal . . . And an open bowl – like a mixing-bowl or something.’

Maninder came to a sudden halt and looked at Carver plaintively. ‘We haven’t any. Home goods you have to get from the hardware store, two doors down.’

Carver thought fast: ‘OK, then I need anything that comes in a tub, like an open plastic tub. I don’t know – ice cream maybe?’

‘Ariel Liquitabs!’ called out Chrystal, from her post by the shutters.

Carver hadn’t a clue what she was talking about, but Maninder’s face brightened at once. ‘Oh yes, yes, we have those, certainly.’

‘Then get them, whatever they are.’

He rushed off to get the last item Carver had requested. The rest had now been piled on the counter. Carver told Ajay, ‘I need a ladder and a screwdriver.’

‘In the storeroom. I’ll get them straightaway.’

‘Good man.’

As one Panu went off to the storeroom, the other arrived with a plastic tub filled with little purple pillows of liquid detergent. Carver took the tub from Maninder, opened it and emptied the contents on to the floor. Then he handed it back.