‘His master’s voice, eh?’ St Clair asked rhetorically.
‘Nothing wrong with the production values.’
‘It’s their value system we’ve got to worry about. The DVDs were interesting too.’
Kemp examined the box, holding the sleeve and its leaflet up for inspection. ‘What do the experts say?’
‘Couldn’t get a better bootleg. Perfect in every detail.’
‘Bar the change in lyrics.’ He peered closer. ‘Clever way to penetrate the youth market.’
‘Name me a major recording artist and I’ll give you their Nazi makeover. The trawler was loaded to the gunwales.’
‘Do we know the source?’
‘No. But routed through Europe.’
‘Distribution network?’
‘Street markets, backs of lorries, direct selling to urban hotspots. And before you ask, the crew thought they were carrying legitimate contraband – if that’s not an oxymoron.’
Kemp threw the box across. ‘It’s an oxymoron.’
‘Aside from the obvious, notice anything odd in the message?’
‘Rather too polished for your average skinhead politico.’
‘And no anti-Semitism.’
St Clair was right. International Jewry, the Zionist-capitalist conspiracy, Holocaust denial – the staples of continental extremism – were absent. In their place was one target, one group. Afarensis, Africanus. The black population.
‘Directed aggression. Certainly breaks the mould,’ Kemp mused aloud.
‘Certainly conforms to the Duncan Pitt take on life.’
A long silence. It was the taking of life that was so concerning. The score was climbing, the pressure with it. Seeing patterns was part of paranoia; paranoia was part of national security. It was why Kemp had once earned a salary. And why MI5 was asking for him, wanted him back – because he was there. He would accept – because they were there. A relationship based on convenience. It had always been too convenient. Race-hate groups, the lunatic fringe, were his territory – the boat was his territory – and there was never any peace on either. Not everything’s quite so black and white. Yes, it was. Yes, it damn well was. He glared at St Clair, elation at the prospect of work tempered by despondency at how easily he was manipulated, bought. Most people moved on. He simply retraced old paths, confronted old dangers. St Clair affected not to notice, but saw everything.
‘Three Met police officers down,’ the visitor in the sleek wool coat said eventually, turning the disk box in his fingers. ‘Law and order lobby baying for action, and the Home Secretary’s going to make a statement to the House this afternoon.’
‘A crackdown?’
‘I have no doubt. Governments hate appearing soft or stupid.’
They should learn to live with it, Kemp thought. Ministers were cowards by nature. ‘Cue quick-fixes and Class-A fuck-ups.’
‘Tension in the tenements is climbing, raids by New Scotland Yard are anticipated, no quarter will be given. The black community in particular is going to feel a little besieged.’
Kemp extracted the CD. ‘Fascist karaoke won’t help.’
‘It might be an element of the game-plan.’ St Clair’s eyelids lowered. Depending on the angle, the light, the circumstance, they lent an image either of prayer or concealment. He kept them shut. ‘Hidden agendas, secret recipes. I think it’s time you paid a visit to the Colonel.’
Kemp was in.
* * *
Rear-view. He lowered the newspaper when she was ten yards on, leaning over to see. She had the fuckability factor of a sassy dissolute, a sluttish swing to her hips, walking the high-gait walk of a part-time hooker with attitude, conviction, confidence. Sensual in a trashy kind of way. Must have picked it up from the Jamaicans. One pint, she’d be yours; two, she’d be anyone’s. Pulling beer, pulling men, it was all the same. Unfortunately, her judgement had lapsed – then deserted – from an early age. He could read it in her body language, had seen it when she kissed her partner. Quite a mouth on her. A mouth for probing, sucking, inhaling, for reading out prices at a check-out till, a mouth for shouting abuse from an open concrete landing, a mouth for mouthing, for displaying stupidity, a mouth for screaming. Femme fatale. He would add the fatality to the equation, to the police log-book. She continued along the street, a shopping bag in one hand, fake crocodile in the other, striding by on three-inch heels, designer jeans pig-trotter tight where it mattered. Nice lines, fine ass, good statistics. At some stage she would become another statistic, another white trophy whore who chose black and never looked back, who opted for the seedy spliff-indolence of the ghetto, made the wrong choice. He studied her in the vehicle mirror, admired her shape, pondered the configuration in which he would leave her. The eye of the beholder. Beauty was so fragile, life so dependent on those everyday decisions. She would never understand the error, never learn. Too late for a sense of responsibility, too late for reprieve. She had picked men up and would be picked off – for her sins. He adjusted the leather cap on his head and removed the shades. She was far behind, pausing to search for keys or a cigarette, brushing her long hair to the side with an irritable flick of a jewellery-heavy hand. Small gestures. They were what made a person, facilitated recognition, gave definition to a memory. Memories could fade. She moved away. Snow White. Hi ho, hi ho. To work.
* * *
It was an atmosphere that had given it away, a calm that presaged action, a stillness which communicated the imminence of a raid. Both sides were prepared, the law with its dogs, snatch squads, firearms units and riot teams; the lawless with their cash and narcotics stowed in safety, their spotters, scanners, two-way radios, their anti-invasion devices and irregular volunteer army. The Normandy beaches before invasion. There had to be a grand gesture; the public, the tabloids, belatedly parliament, demanded it. No Prime Minister, no Home Secretary, could let it pass. The initiative had to be seized, the city reclaimed for ordinary decent citizens – ordinary decent citizens whose bags were snatched, elderly neighbours robbed, whose children had knives held to their throats for their pocket-money and cellphones. It was not a moment for doubt, for tiptoeing around the sensitivities of community leaders who craved air-time and dialogue. Three police officers were down, a new level of urban anarchy and warfare had been reached. Things had been allowed to drift. But no longer – the tolerance threshold had been breached. Election promises would be met.
A clink of bottles. Doorstep delivery. It was a crate of Molotovs being pre-positioned on a concrete walkway. There was the faint sound of hammering, the abrupt whine of hand-drills, as walls were knocked through and defences prepared. The directed assault would be blunted, turned, the units in body-armour and SWAT caps channelled, fragmented and ambushed. They just loved their kit and machismo and would hate to come off worst. They’d be lucky to come away at all. Their presence was not requested, never welcome. This was the inner city, an inner world where police sight was blind, intelligence limited, tactics observed, counter-measures refined. Gangsta land. The Yardies knew how to enforce, how to execute, and accounted for almost every gun-related death in London. Not a single officer in the Met could boast that experience, that expertise. Law-abiding folk expected a fire engine to get through to a fire, an ambulance to proceed to an emergency. They were unimaginative, could barely conceive of the chaos, the psychological impact, sown by a trapped crew or a melting blue-light. It was their choice, their decision. They could, and should, have stayed away, let others mind their own businesses. Politicians and the police had brought matters to a head, brought this on themselves. It was best to leave street life alone. Drug money could buy loyalty or silence, ensure control; drug money had introduced gun culture to black culture. Fingers, and more, would be burned. Yes, they were ready – so ready. Another crate was stacked.
Go! Go! Go! The squeal and slammed brakes of thirty converging white vans, the crash of doors, running of rubber-tread feet, and the operation was underway. They came in force, crouching, rushing forward to take up position and aim-points. Military precision for a paramilitary mission. There were shouts, the rising wail of sirens, the heavy thud of pneumatic rams striking steel plate, the sharper crack of flash-bangs. It was the police commissioner making a point, achieving momentum, staking his reputation; it was his men centre-stage. They might not find the cop-killer in a single sweep, but they would put their feelers out, the frighteners on and mount a full-scale offensive against the perpetrators of the offence. This was what taxpayers wanted, this was where their money went. A big affair for big headlines, a dragnet which dredged the swamp for deadbeats and petty criminals, for weapons and illegal substances. Everyone could sleep easier the press conference would claim, everyone should be reassured by the display of captured butterfly-knives, rice-flails and samurai swords, the tally of handcuffed low-life. The courts and prison system were ready to receive, the civil liberties lobby could wring its hands. Ethnicity was no longer a defence. Out there, the police were clamping down.
Out there, the police were vulnerable. A crowd had formed, ready-made, streaming in to confront and attack. It was sport, a chance to defend turf, to win scalps or show off scars. Free drugs were on offer for the most committed. Everything to play for, everything to lose if the dealers were run out. They came from the flanks, appearing from nowhere, yelling, charging close, splitting away to divert and confuse. A young officer was picked out, cut from the herd and beaten with a metal pipe. Concussed, he sank to his knees, blood flowing from a deep face wound. Five colleagues fought through to drag him back – for hours afterwards, the communications net crackled with taunts and obscenities broadcast on the man’s vanished radio set. Arrests were made, forays and retreats delaying then diverting the original thrust. Standstill. Practice and coordination had evaporated into improvisation and a hundred separate incidents, units pushed back and thrown on the defence. A television set crashed onto the roof of a van, firebombs sent crawling fingers of ignited fuel into the ranks of boiler-suited support cadres. Emboldened, men in balaclavas and clutching trophy riot-shields hurled sharpened scaffolding poles and scattered when their adversaries grouped to respond. Surprise lost, their momentum slowed, the police inched into the estate. It was where the opposition wanted them. A megaphone shrieked, its terse orders drowned out by speakers set high on a rooftop. Few would bother to listen anyway. Most were preoccupied. Two buildings went up, their windows blown outwards. In front, a police vehicle backed erratically, its driver traumatized by a hole punched through its side by a crossbow bolt. Reversal of fortune. The infantry mounted a rearguard action before withdrawing to cover.
The barricade, its tyre ramparts ablaze, collapsed beneath the weight of a police clearance plough. Officers surged through, a couple halting to douse a colleague in extinguisher-foam. A small victory in a wider campaign. Behind them, the wounded limped or were carried to ambulances, medics pushing past jeering and heckling tragedy-tourists, picking their way across hose-lines reeled out by firefighters in respirators. The glittering surgical strike had been dulled. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The dealers understood. Push up the attrition, ramp the destruction, ensure the authorities paid in blood, and they would think twice, three times, before returning to assign their heavy-metal elite to such publicity stunts. Make it an issue of race, of rights, of keeping the decomposing fabric of their living space intact, and the locals would flock to obstruct and injure the figures in blue. Basic psychology. And the ringleaders knew all about basic psychology. They could not have guessed that they too had been manipulated, their mood and moves anticipated, that their plans were part of a broader strategy and a greater ambition.
A mushroom of multicoloured flame belched explosively from the entrance of an underground garage, its diesel-petroleum pool combusting as a police squad disappeared inside. Screams, burnt-oil vapour rolling across the surrounding balconies, and then the sound of gunfire. Respect. The cloud was spreading, darkening.
CHAPTER 5
The USA
‘Right out of the screws. Two-fifty yards. Not bad. Not bad at all.’
An unconventional swing, the arc flat, hands kept low on the shaft. But effective. Solid contact with the ball, a long drive. Coaching, practice and determination had ensured consistency, gave an edge, allowed for bragging and running commentary. The police captain sipped from his cup of iced water and watched. Damn it, every time he played PGA West, Palm Springs, he lost to this guy, the man who was two up after three, who boasted of the courses he had played, cheated with impunity, who fazed rivals into duffing and dunching shots and never let them forget it. He drained the cup and crushed it for disposal. Stress-relief. Pleasure and business rarely combined during meetings with Ted Bell. The white supremacist even drove the caddy cart competitively.
