Cleaning Up (25 page)

The order was to go in hard, nip it in the bud and the mob had scattered when they’d charged at them with their batons drawn. But they were up for the fight and there had been a steady return of the mob to both flanks of the assembled coppers. A few of the crowd had grabbed the wheelie bin from behind the estate’s much-loved off-licence, had tipped all the bottles out and then missiled them at the police cordon. Darrin was close to the middle of the line with Johno on his left and big Chev to his right. Most of the bottles fell short and, in the lull, Sergeant Proctor gave them the word to steam in to the bottle throwers. The Barrington lads scattered again and fell back towards the little park in front of the twin high rises. This time Proctor gave them the word to hold their position, they put the vans at both ends of the tatty shopping strip and that was pretty much that for the next three or so hours. Three hours of tension and curdled adrenaline listening to the baying profanities and threats echoing out from the park. The pricks had taken time out to mindlessly set the park’s swings on fire. A couple of community leaders and a church Minister were called up to the estate to try and calm it down. Sonny was also brought in as he had the Barrington as part of his patch as well as the Coleshaw.

Darrin clocked Sonny in action - well and truly earning his money was our Sunil, he was up there at the playground trying
to talk some reason into the young fellas. By two o’clock it had all died down, the mob had retreated into the shadows and Sonny and the responsible few had wearily beaten a track to wherever their cars were parked up. He watched the colours of the fire engine’s lights sweep and arc around the tower blocks as the fire boys did a precautionary dousing down of the melted, smouldering set of swings. It was just what the place needed - less facilities.

Saturday and Darrin was back in for the afternoon shift, the station was busy, absolutely broiling with activity and tension. As a precaution extra bodies had been pulled in, just in case they had to deal with any more flare-ups.

It wasn’t good news on the kid, he was still out of it and it looked like he might even lose the leg. There had been a couple of roaming packs on both of the big estates during the late morning and the early shift had already moved on groups of bad intentioned young lads from the High Street area and the Mall. Throughout the day various pillars of the community had been coming in and out of the station and the brass had had a meeting with a group of them round about noon. Sonny and his crew were out there again, trying to douse it all down but it was tense and everybody’s fingers were tightly crossed hoping that it would eventually prove to be the storm that would not find landfall.

Within ten minutes of arriving at the station, he was back out on the streets teamed up with Johno, no time for a brew a catch up or a bull shit with his crew. They were on patrol on the High Street and before they left the station Sarge Thomas told them that, once they were out they were out. Riot teams were on stand by and it was all hands on deck.
Sarge Thomas was out on the pavement too, involved in the coordination, busily keeping in contact with the teams assigned to the Coleshaw, the Barrington and the Mall. They were keeping an eye on Leeside too just in case a race element crept into it. There were still a few grudges to be settled down there.

They had cleared away a little would be mob in the late afternoon and, according to the Sarge, it was still fairly quiet on both the Coleshaw and the Barrington. Plenty of the community were knocking about on Leeside, being seen in order to keep the peace - so nothing up there yet either. By the late afternoon, the tension had begun ratcheting down slightly. Maybe the pricks had got it out of their systems the night before.

Then the news came through about six - the kid had died. Sarge Thomas taking the call and relaying it on, the Sarge as grim as fuck, the implications etched on his face. The kid had never woken up, internal injuries too much bleeding - and gone.

Within an hour the crowds up on the Coleshaw and the Barrington had re-gathered. A few burning bins and the usual goading - the lads stationed up there were holding back this time, they were worried that they didn’t have the numbers to take them front on.

The centre seemed OK, though they had taken the precaution of getting the riot gear on, but the mob they’d cleared away hadn’t returned and it was now just the usual Friday night piss up crowd. Families, shoppers, business owners and their staff were all out of there as per usual by teatime. Then, in the blink of an eye, there they were. Darrin scoped fifty or so of the fuckers coming south from the top end of the
by-pass. They were holding back, animatedly gathered at the top of end of the High Street, malevolently marking time about three hundreds yards away from their positions.

The Friday night crowd were now glancing nervously up the street - that mob looked like nobody’s idea of a good time. Darrin saw the owners of Piccolos approaching Sergeant Thomas for a quick word, both men looking anxious. After a briefing from the Sarge they quickly headed off to their bar and a minute later they were pulling the shutters down over the bar windows and shooing out their compliant early bird customers.

Reports were coming in that the Coleshaw and the Barrington were both quiet, nothing doing at all, which seemed a little strange. Within the next half-hour it became obvious why that was the case. The gang of fifty that had gathered at the top of the end of the street had suddenly swollen in the space of twenty minutes to become the gang of a few hundred. It looked like this was where it was going to go down. Reinforcements were called in and Darrin and the boys had taken up position near the two vans that were parked nose to nose across the High Street, strategically placed between the precinct and the mob.

A few more minutes of the stand off and then the gang broke. A dozen or so lads came through the middle of the throng pushing two big wheelie bins. They had probably corralled them from the back of the shopping mall, which was a half a mile or so back up the by-pass. The bins were ablaze and being pushed with a reasonable velocity down towards their line. Darrin felt the blast of adrenalin, the muscles in his legs, arms and shoulders beginning to twitch, the sweat cooling as it ran down from his face to his collar.
Then it was on, fettered anticipation boiling over into action - bottles and pieces of masonry arcing through the air towards them, a few of the missiles hitting the side of the vans with crashing blows. A minute of that passed, their line was kept tight pretty much shoulder-to-shoulder and the shields were kept up for maximum protection. Through his helmet he could hear the muted, heavy thuds of the bricks and the cracking explosions of the glass. He was ready to go now, aching to fucking move. DI Kendrick raised his arm and signalled the first charge - up they went, six abreast. Darrin was in the second row running hard, not feeling the weight of his gear, oblivious to the sweat that was coursing down his back.

The mob scattered and headed back towards the by-pass, some of them breaking off into the High Street’s side streets, one little fucker falling over as he turned to get away. As he ran past him Darrin wacked the kid hard across the top of his back bringing out a scream of pain. He knew that the kid would be swept up by the snatch team and he kept on running right at the heart of the fuckers. There was a demolition site at the top left end of the High Street and about fifty of them were waiting for them there, primed with rubble, masonry and bottles. Their charging lines came to a stuttering halt and they quickly raised their shields as the volley of missiles came down upon them. He was hit on the left shoulder and big Chev went down with his visor shattered, his lower face a mask of blood. Another bottle smashed just behind them, exploding into flames and, as it did so, Darrin heard the fuckers on the demolition site hoot and holler, delighted at the sight of the coppers hurriedly dancing away from the fire. He grabbed the still prone and now targetted Chev and he held his shield over him. With the help of Barnesy, they 
got him back onto his feet and made a slow, clumsy retreat back to the wagons, Chev sandwiched between him and Barnesy, Darrin walking backwards his left arm gripping Chev’s waistband, his right keeping his battered shield aloft. The mob had flowed back into the vacuum, emboldened by the coppers’ retreat and Kendrick ordered them back to the second line down near the pedestrian mall. They had the shops covered there, both ends of the mall were sealed up and they had the numbers to protect it.

The High Street belonged to the rioters now and they quickly turned their pitiless attention to ransacking the shops; an electrical store that had been there since he was a kid; an Asian mini-market, a florist, a pound shop, Ridgeleys menswear, Footlocker - all of them smashed, trashed and burned. Scores of the little fuckers making off with various goods - shopping trolleys commandeered from the mall to help them haul it away. News crews and media were now in the thick of it marking it all down for posterity and wider consumption. Some of the fuckers had filmed themselves on their mobiles and Blackberries and mugged for the cameras - their YouTube moment.

His shoulder was hurting like fuck but he was told to wait and watch - Kendrick said they didn’t have the numbers to engage again with the looters, so the local businesses had to be sacrificed on the altar of expediency. As he watched the looters his stomach churned with anger and a sense of futility and helplessness. It felt like surrender, a capitulation to the scumbags.

It was six a.m before the fire brigade could get in to douse what was left of the High Street. Word had come through via Sarge Thomas that the Community Centre on Barker
Street had been torched too.

Darrin was stood down at eight as reinforcements from neighbouring forces had allowed them to completely cordon the centre off. Before he turned to leave he took in the vista for one last time and Sergeant Thomas, who now looked at least a decade older in the bright morning light after the long night before, tapped him on his sore shoulder and told him to shake a leg. Thomas saw him wince at the touch and the Sarge quickly called over the medics and organised a ride down to A and E for him. Two hours later and he was being patched up by a pretty nurse. There was nothing broken, just deep bruising and he was given painkillers to take the edge off.

Darrin rang the station and told them about the shoulder, he was told to stand down and to take a couple of days off. They now had the numbers to cover. He went to his mum’s for his lunch, she clucked and fussed over him and, for once, he was grateful for it.

He was knackered in body and in mind and he went for a lie down in his old room and slept through until almost midnight.

When he returned downstairs his old man was still up listening to the radio, which was always Doug’s preference whenever he was alone. It was tuned into a local station with only one topic being discussed.

His dad looked at him with a rare show of concern.

‘You alright then son?’

Darrin nodded and tried to mask a wince, it was definitely time for more painkillers. His dad offered him a brew and he listened to the radio as his dad busied himself in the kitchen. According to the radio it was all quiet tonight - too fucking
late that, he thought.

Pasquale had heard about the agro from Junior who had been hanging out up on the Coleshaw when it was all kicking off and Kat and Jess had also received texts about what was going down in the centre - sounded like arma-fuckin’-geddon. They had a lockdown, nobody was allowed out of the refuge and Wendy had popped around mid evening to nervously check on her charges and to offer Rod a bit of moral support.

He went to bed early, which raised a few comments from the others. He lay on his bed for an hour or so then got up and slipped out through the bedroom window. He made his way to the back shed putting enough distance between himself and the back door of the refuge to ensure that he didn’t trip the sensor light and quietly slid open the lightweight corrugated door. He grabbed the petrol can that held the juice for the lawnmower and poured a pint or so of fuel into one of the lidded glass jars that housed some screws and nails. Satisfied that he had enough, he put the jar, along with a cleanish rag, into his backpack and then grabbed the bicycle.

Junior was waiting for him at the Centre, stepping out of the shadows at the sound of his whistle from around the side of the long part of the T-shaped building. It was a moonless night and there were only a few lights around the front of the Centre - nice and dark for their purpose. Pasquale led Junior around to the back office window. He grabbed the hammer from him and smashed in the window as completely as he could. The alarm was immediately triggered, grating and dramatically insistent but it barely pierced his grim intent. He stuffed the rag in the jar of petrol leaving just a few inches of it dry. He lit the rag then he threw the bottle at the far wall
of the office where it smashed and spectacularly exploded into flames - arma-fuckin’-geddon.

They cycled a quarter a mile or so away to a little park from where they had a clear view of the Centre. Junior had rolled them a couple of joints and they smoked and waited. After a few minutes they could smell the smoke and after five more they could see the flames rolling up the back of the Centre, dramatically eating away at the large part of the building that held the basketball court where they held the monthly raves.

It took half an hour before they heard the siren. According to Junior’s phone there was mega-mayhem in the Centre and bins and a few cars were still ablaze on both the Coleshaw and the Barrington. There was a ‘copter buzzing the High Street and plenty of flame coming from over that way too. They hung around for another hour and then took off, splitting up immediately as they did so. When he climbed back in the window his room was still empty, Liam was still up watching the late movie probably with Rob and night bird Kat.

Pasquale went through to the bathroom, cleaned himself up and stashed his clothes in the wash basket.