Revenger (8 page)

Outside the arena a
Sky News
reporter called Bob Hunter was standing in front of the police line at the point where the skinheads, whose numbers had swelled to well over fifty, were still engaged in a running battle of chants, insults and the occasional thrown bottle with the anti-fascist protesters on the other side. Hunter was holding a hand to one ear, as if to help him hear questions amidst the pandemonium.

He set his voice to ‘battlefield reporter’ mode. ‘The atmosphere here is as bad as ever. In fact, it may be getting worse. I’ve just heard from police sources that a number of officers have been hit by missiles thrown from both sides. There are now very real fears that the situation is close to spiralling out of control. Meanwhile—’

His words were interrupted by the sound of smashing glass, followed by an explosion and a brief burst of flame just a couple of metres behind him as an amateurish, homemade attempt at a Molotov cocktail went off. ‘Whoa!’ Hunter exclaimed, throwing up a hand to shield his face. ‘We’re going to have to move. Things are really heating up. Back to the studio . . .’

‘Who do you think put those yobbos there?’ asked Cameron Young, the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff. He was watching the broadcast from his office in Downing Street. Young was the sort of man who looked as though he’d been born wearing a suit and tie. His appearance was an exact definition of ‘blandness’: mousey hair, nondescript eyes hidden behind unexceptional glasses. Yet many Westminster insiders said he was the second most important man in the country. Those that disagreed only did so because they were certain that he was actually the first.

Young frowned pensively. ‘It must be good for Adams to have a certain amount of disorder about the place – helps persuade the masses that they need a short, sharp shock. On the other hand, if he really wants to persuade the rest of us that he’s basically a decent, reasonable chap, he hardly wants to be associated with louts and skinheads.’ He turned back to the rest of the room with raised, inquisitive eyebrows. ‘You didn’t plant them, did you, Grantham?’

‘If I did, would you really want me to tell you?’

Strictly speaking, Jack Grantham had no professional interest in events on UK soil. Those were the preserve of the police and MI5. That was the very reason Young had approached him for, as he put it, ‘A special consultative role, reporting solely to me and thus to the Prime Minister.’

Young was determined to use any methods necessary to stamp out Mark Adams and his new party before they became an even more serious threat to the established political order. That task required someone who had no direct ties to domestic law-enforcement; someone who understood that there were times when a problem was so serious that unconventional methods were required – the kind of methods that could never and would never be discussed in public. Grantham fitted the bill perfectly.

For his part, Grantham’s unrelenting ambition would be satisfied by even closer access to Number 10 and the promise of an accelerated knighthood. His greed, a relatively minor vice in his case, was covered by the assurance of a significant performance bonus on
completion
of his task. Meanwhile – and this was an essential consideration for a man who loved intrigue, but was very easily bored – his interest and curiosity were piqued by the lengths to which the government was prepared to go to discredit and destroy a political opponent.

With Grantham already in the bag, Young just had his traditional enemies to worry about.

‘Anything you’d like to add, Brian?’ Young asked.

Brian Smallbone, Young’s opposite number as political advisor to the Leader of the Opposition, shook his head. ‘Not at the moment, no. It all seems to be going well enough. Let’s just enjoy the show.’

13

THERE WERE TIMES
when Paula Miklosko wondered why she’d ever bothered getting married or working for a living. It wasn’t that she regretted committing herself to her husband Marek. True, they couldn’t have come from much more different backgrounds: she was a half-Ghanaian, half-Welsh Baptist; he was a Czech Catholic. But they loved each other as much now as the day they’d met six years ago, and that was all Paula cared about. She wanted him, and was longing for the day when they could afford to start a family together.

In the meantime, she had something she’d always dreamed of: a little hairdressing salon of her own. She’d saved up since she left college to put down the deposit. Marek and his pals had done a great job gutting the old interior and giving it a whole new look. If she was given even half a chance, she knew she had the talent, the energy and the determination to make a real go of it.

So far, trade was holding up all right. Even in times of hardship, women still wanted their hair to look nice. But they couldn’t pay as much for it as they’d done a few years ago, and the tips were pitiful.
Meanwhile
, prices and taxes just kept rising all the time, and even when Marek and his crew charged rock-bottom rates they still found it hard getting building or decorating work.

After years of apparent immunity from the general decline of the British property market, London prices had collapsed in recent months. All the wealthy foreigners were leaving town, and banks had finally stopped paying bonuses. Without all that silly money the price-bubble had burst. Nobody was moving house. Nobody could afford to tart up the houses they’d got. Even if they could, what was the point? Areas that had once been promoted as up-and-coming were now little better than warzones. Even the respectable, desirable parts of the city were overrun with muggers, beggars and crazies. Any middle-class families that had country houses had fled. The rest were trying to find a way out. And those who had no choice but to stay, who were trying to live the right way, were being spat on by the system as much as those who sought to destroy it.

‘I don’t understand this crazy country!’ Marek liked to say. ‘If you work, they pay you less and less. If you just sit on your ass, then every year the benefits go up and up. No wonder the English are so lazy. Is a waste of time to work here. And having family is impossible! Maybe I should give you baby then leave. You get more money that way.’

Paula tried to explain that people on benefits weren’t living in luxury, whatever people said. She had enough friends trying to raise two or three kids by themselves in a council flat to know it wasn’t easy. But she also knew that none of those friends even tried to get jobs because they’d never earn enough to make it worthwhile. Plenty of them came from families where no one had worked for years and years. No one stayed married; no one even tried to get a decent education. Paula was desperate to avoid becoming another welfare statistic – and even if she hadn’t been, her mother would never have let her. She’d always taken the same view as Marek: lazy white folk could waste their lives away if they liked, but her children were going to make something of themselves.

That was what Paula planned to do. All she asked for was just a little help, a little recognition that she and Marek should be rewarded for at least trying to lead a productive life that would actually contribute to society.

As she cleaned up the salon after the last customer had left, Paula had the radio on. They were talking about that big rally Mark Adams was having at the O2. Paula didn’t quite know what to make of Adams. Marek often said, ‘Every other politician in this country full of bullshit – but this Adams I like.’

Paula had told him, ‘You wouldn’t think that if you were black.’ But she didn’t make a big issue of it. There were a lot of good reasons to have a fight with her husband, but politics wasn’t one of them.

She turned the radio off, closed up the salon, pulled down the security shutters and walked off to her car. It was only a little Suzuki Swift, eight years old with over a hundred thousand miles on the clock. But it was Paula Miklosko’s little luxury. She’d paid for it. And she loved it.

14

STANDING BEHIND HIS
shop counter, Maninder Panu watched Ajay put fresh produce into the clear plastic bowls of fruit and vegetables arrayed on a table outside. Each bowl cost one pound. Ajay had to lift up the clear plastic sheet that kept the rain off the bowls in order to refill them.

A man had stopped to watch the whole procedure as though this was something new to him. He was a white man, somewhat shorter than Ajay and less heavily built, but there was something about the way he stood that gave Panu the impression that he knew how to look after himself. He had none of the fearful nervousness that afflicted so many people these days. Nor was there any of the bullying aggression of the criminals and gang-members who wallowed in their ability to intimidate. Instead he seemed relaxed, self-confident, as though he felt certain he could handle whatever the streets might throw at him. He might, Panu thought, be an off-duty soldier or policeman. The man asked Ajay a question, nodded with interest at the answer, looked at his watch, then came into the store.

Sam Carver walked up to the counter, scuffing a hand through his short, dark-brown hair – that now had a few faint streaks of grey – to get rid of some of the rainwater. He’d never seen groceries sold by the bowl before. It made him feel like a stranger in his own country to admit that, but he liked the idea anyway. Inside, the Lion Market looked a cut above your average urban corner shop. It was air-conditioned and the goods on the shelves were an odd mix of bargain-basement offers and surprisingly upmarket brands. But then, this was a corner of London where great swathes of council flats mixed with terraces where four-bed family houses went for a million quid – or had done until a few years ago, at any rate. The families that lived in places like that wanted to eat sun-dried tomatoes, ciabatta bread and organic avocados. The Lion Market was obviously happy to supply them.

Sweets and chocolate bars were on display by the checkout, presumably to tempt shoppers into last-second impulse purchases. Carver scanned the racks until he found what he was looking for: two bars of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut. Geneva was filled with fancy confectioners selling the finest Swiss chocolate, but he missed the taste of home. As he paid for the bars he noticed that the man behind the counter looked a little jumpy. There were signs by the door as he came in warning that the shop had full CCTV coverage, never kept more than fifty pounds in the till and was protected by (this handwritten in large black capital letters) ‘FAST-RESPONSE ARMED SECURITY’.

Carver didn’t blame the owners for being nervous. A place like this was a magnet for crime, from spotty little shoplifters to armed burglars. Still, the average urban lowlife was as cowardly as he was stupid. The lad out front looked big and mean enough to make most would-be perpetrators think twice. Carver thanked the shopkeeper for his change and walked out. Spotting the sign for the Dutchman’s Head fifty metres down the road he licked his lips. Snoopy Schultz should be getting the drinks in any second now, and he could practically taste that first pint.

15

IN ROW A
of Block A2 – the front, centre section of the arena’s ground-floor seating – Kieron Sproles was sitting by himself, surrounded by an expectant buzz of chatter. His hands were in his jacket pocket. His right hand was gripped around the handle of the Glock. Not long now, and all his years of obscurity – that solitary insignificance that had marked his existence since his first day at primary school – would be over. By the end of the evening, everyone would know who he was, and what he had done.

And then, without warning, the lights began to dim.

As intense, doom-laden music boomed out from the speakers suspended above the stage a video screen came to life. A helicopter camera panned across a desolate wasteland of derelict buildings, boarded-up shops, abandoned tower blocks and open spaces – once intended for cheerful recreation, now given over to bare earth, weeds and dogshit. A single man was walking down a street of semi-detached houses, now all abandoned. Each had once had front and back gardens, though these were now overgrown. The
camera
zoomed in to reveal Mark Adams, and a huge cheer went up around the arena as he began to speak.

‘This used to be my street. These were all council houses . . . And this was the house where I grew up: 37 Cambrai Road.’

Adams stopped by a wooden gate, hanging half off its hinges. Beyond it, a path could just about be seen under a carpet of dandelions and bindweed. It led to a house with scorch marks round the windows, and bare patches on the walls where all the rendering had fallen off.

He began walking down the road again, speaking to the camera with the practised fluency of a man who had first become known to the public as the presenter of documentaries on military history; a war-hero-turned-TV-star. With a sweep of his arm, Adams encompassed all the houses around him: ‘The people who lived here were working-class, but they were proud of who they were and where they came from. Proud of Leeds, proud of Yorkshire, proud of England, proud to be British.

‘No one had much money to spare. Yet all the front gardens were immaculate: no weeds in the flower beds, paths and front doorsteps swept clean.’

Now Adams was walking down a row of empty shops.

‘I was brought up to behave myself properly – and expect a clip round the ear if I didn’t. Just because we weren’t posh didn’t mean we couldn’t have manners, or treat each other with respect. Then, when I was eleven, my whole life was transformed.’

The image on the screen cut from the devastation of the old estate to an image of a very different world. Now Adams was walking across a school campus of clean, modern buildings grouped around a lawn on which pupils sat and talked in the shade of leafy, well-tended trees.

‘Without Leeds Grammar I’d be nothing. My parents were so proud. No one in my family had ever been anywhere near a place like this before – not unless they were a cleaner or a tea-lady . . . But you’ve heard enough from me. Time for the people who know me to say their piece.’

A grandfatherly, silver-haired man appeared on screen. A caption read, ‘Edward Trower: former housemaster.’