The strident, crashing sound of shattering glass rudely interrupted his daydreaming. He couldn’t see the front entrance from his aisle so he left his work and made his way to the front of the store where the tills were ranked. He was joined by the majority of the night staff, each drawn by idle curiosity.
Billy’s eyes widened in disbelief when he saw the seething black mass of a crowd of people gathered beyond the supermarket’s large windows. One of the panes sported a great gaping hole where a brick had been thrown through it. Loud, angry voices raged like a stormy sea. He saw Slimer up front, his finger on a large green button. The metal shutters were shivering their slow way down; he hadn’t bothered to shut them and was giving someone else an ear bashing for his own mistake.
It was too late. More bricks followed the first and a good length of the windows simply dissolved and showered the floor like ice crystals. Slimer jumped away from the button as a torrent of people — mostly youths but some of them were distinctly older — rolled through the rent into the store like an oil slick onto a beach. They wore hoodies to hide their heads, or scarves wrapped around their lower faces, and many of them brandished makeshift weapons like staves of two-by-one timber, or long pieces of iron and chains; some of them still had a brick in each hand.
The crowd charged belligerently, the sound that of an amplified wounded bear, the look in people’s eyes like that of a hungry snake staring at a blind mouse. Slimer, his staff for the first time right behind him, ran down towards the rear of the supermarket screaming: ‘It’s a bastard riot!’
For a moment Billy was rooted, as if his feet had been planted in concrete blocks. He glanced to his right; Beth was also standing motionless, pale-faced, a tin of something or other still clutched in her hands. She looked at him worriedly as the crowd surged towards them.
Stuff this, thought Billy, the instinct for self-preservation never more than a scratch below the surface. He abandoned her to find her own way out it. It was a case of every shelf-filler for himself.
People were hurling shopping trolleys through the opening in the window and they wasted no time in helping themselves to anything they could get their hands on, scooping stock off the shelves and sweeping it into the trolleys like queer kinds of consumer goods waterfalls. Some made directly for the small electrical section, another group for the spirits and wines; a couple of thoughtful fathers, perhaps, began to stock up on tinned baby milk and packets of disposable nappies; another small group, maybe harbouring thoughts of preventing the need for baby milk altogether, loaded up with condoms.
A large contingent simply had violence and destruction in mind and set about trashing all they could with homemade weapons. The sounds of shattering glass and tins hitting the floor added to the horrific din echoing around the supermarket aisles.
Over the tannoy, Englebert Humperdink was singing,
Billy found the way out blocked. He came up against Slimer and the rest of the staff, backing away from the rear doors that led to the warehouse yard; more people were spilling in this way and forcing them back into the store.
‘We’re all going to die!’ Slimer screamed, and Billy, looking at the rampaging crowd swarming like killer bees and settling all over the supermarket, shared similar gloomy thoughts.
He saw Beth briefly, barged out of the way and falling to the tiled floor, disappearing beneath a thicket of legs. If he felt the urge to rush to her aid it was quickly drowned by a cold wave of choking fear. Slimer ducked through the door that led to the upstairs office and everyone played follow-my-leader again. He allowed so many people inside the office before trying to shut out the remainder, saying there wouldn’t be enough oxygen for everyone. ‘Fuck you,’ said two of the weirdos in perfect harmony, and soon the small office was crammed to capacity. They could now look through a small window onto the madness swirling like a menacing whirlpool below them.
Slimer telephoned the police, who it seemed at first didn’t want to believe him. ‘We’re all going to be murdered here!’ he yelled almost incoherently. As if to give weight to his predictions he saw smoke begin to billow from one of the aisles. ‘Jesus, the bastards are using our own firelighters!’ he cried disbelievingly; how anyone could light anything with those crappy things he’d never know, but they’d certainly got a good blaze going now. He waved everyone out. ‘Back down the stairs! Back down the stairs! Get back, damn you! We’ll all be boiled alive!’
Billy would have liked to have corrected him — there was a distinct absence of water around — but he wasn’t going to hang around long enough to debate the matter. He pushed his way out and headed down the stairs. Others took his lead and abandoned their hysterical manager to his fate.
As the flames took hold the crowd shrank before them like cellophane in a fire, gradually retreating back to the front of the store and out through the broken windows, or back into the warehouse yard. There came the sound of a police siren and even the hardiest of hardcore rioters, who’d lingered to load up with a few more bottles of vodka, made a dash for the exits, some cursing the blasted trolley wheels for refusing to go straight.
The smoke started to choke Billy and his eyes began to stream. He coughed as he ran, keeping his head low. He came across Beth, sat on the floor, dazed, her leg bloodied. She looked up at him, her eyes cold. Well to hell with you, he thought, and stumbled towards the window. But something made him stop. As the last of the rioters tried desperately to lift their heavy trolleys out of the window Billy turned and went back to look for her. But when he reached the place where he’d last seen her she was no longer there.
Now the smoke was getting really thick and black as the blaze consumed plastic and rubber. He coughed so much he choked, and his chest was gripped by painful spasms he couldn’t do a thing to control. Ah fuck, he thought angrily. He staggered towards where the windows were supposed to be, pausing on the way to snatch a mobile phone from the shelf. ‘They’re cheap crap anyway,’ he said.
The fresh air outside was welcome. He stood bent over, his hands on his knees, retching and bringing up bitter bile. Blue flashing lights of police cars and fire engines lit up the front of the store like it was a nightclub.
He realised a tiny crowd of his colleagues had also gathered, drawn protectively to each other, and Beth was there, standing with them.
‘Is everyone accounted for?’ asked a fireman of one of the weirdos, who shook his head in shock. ‘Who’s your manager?’ he persisted. ‘Who is in charge here?’ Someone pointed at Slimer who sat on the concrete floor staring at the supermarket flames racing through the building. ‘Who is your fire officer?’ Slimer shook his head. ‘How many staff did you have in there? We need to do a quick count, see if anyone’s missing.’ But Slimer appeared not to understand a single word.
To Billy’s surprise there was a small TV crew and a photographer already on the scene, pointing a camera at Beth and the small group of employees. He noticed she quickly turned away. At that moment there was a series of small explosions as aerosols burst open in the heat and Billy’s attention was diverted.
‘They’ve been running wild through the city,’ explained a police officer when Billy questioned what was happening. ‘The riots just flared up without warning. Started with a guy being shot by police in Tottenham. Then rioting broke out all over London, spread to other cities. It’s happening everywhere,’ he said, his voice slightly panicky, which didn’t do much to reassure Billy. I mean, he thought, you’d expect the police to be in control, but obviously nobody was in control of anything anymore. It was as if the world had gone mad, all order broken down, normal rules ripped up and stamped upon.
The building was quickly turning into an inferno. More fire engines raced onto the scene and hoses were played upon the blaze. Someone put a friendly, reassuring arm around his shoulder and led him away. He heard the tinkling of glass at his back.
The staff of Speed Save — the ones who had not escaped by the rear exit — were herded meekly to a corner of the car park, a shivering, frightened group clearly shaken by their experience.
Billy noticed, however, that Beth Heaney wasn’t amongst them. He looked around and caught sight of her slim dark form, some distance away, hurrying from the scene.
12
‘Yes?’ he said, eyes squinting in the harsh light, speaking through a narrow crack as the door was still on its chain. His face clouded over when he saw the two young men, both wearing flashy suits in charcoal grey, white
