“Good man.” Caffola patted his shoulder.
Young men and older boys swelled the mob. Fegan knew the cops would hold back, hoping the drama would fizzle out. Most times it would, leaving nothing more than a blackened mess for the road sweepers to clean up in the morning. Not tonight, though. Fegan could feel it like thunder in the air. The atmosphere crackled with it.
He looked up at the sky. Things had developed too quickly to get a helicopter in the air. In the old days, the Brits would have scrambled two or three of them from their bases in Holywood or Lisburn, and would’ve had the area covered in minutes. They’d be out for the funeral tomorrow, hovering high above the crowds, but the sky stayed clear this evening.
A boy, red-haired and wiry, twelve at most, pulled a lump of burning wood from the mound. He half ran, half hopped six paces and hurled the blackened timber with every bit of his strength. It clattered to the ground, throwing up red sparks, midway between the smoldering mound and the waiting policemen. The other boys gave a triumphant cheer.
“For fuck’s sake,” Caffola said. “Hey!”
He waited a moment then shouted again. “Hey! You!”
The red-haired boy turned.
“Yeah, you,” Caffola called. “C’mere!”
The boy approached slowly.
“What are you at?” Caffola asked. “Are you stupid?”
“No,” the boy said.
“Well, for fuck’s sake quit acting like it. Cover your face with something so the cameras don’t get you.”
“Okay,” the boy said. He pulled a wrinkled handkerchief from his pocket and returned to his comrades at the burning mound, tying the square of soiled material into a mask over his nose and mouth.
“Kids know nothing these days.” Caffola shook his head. “When we were kids we’d have had this place wrecked by now. Petrol bombs, concrete slabs, catapults with ball-bearings.” He grinned and pointed down the street to the Land Rovers. “And them cunts, they’d have been firing plastic bullets at us. Changed times, Gerry.”
“Yeah,” Fegan said. “Changed times.”
These streets had seen more riots than just about anywhere in the world. From the civil rights protests of the late Sixties, when Fegan was too small to know what it meant, to the groundswell of anger at internment in the early Seventies, when young men were imprisoned without trial. Journalists gave kids five-pound notes to throw stones and bottles at the Brits, hoping to set off another battle for the cameras. Then the anguish of the hunger strikes in the early Eighties when ten men starved themselves to death in the Maze, fanning the embers on the streets. No payment was needed then; rage seethed in the city, and anything could ignite the flames. Mob violence, children as weapons: those were the tactics of the time. A photograph of a bleeding child, no matter how they got injured, packed more power than a dozen bombs. Political animals like Paul McGinty learned that early on and acted accordingly. Fegan had seen it so many times before, this wasteful anger bubbling over into violence. It tired and excited him all at once.
More men wandered out of the bar and onto the street. Some remained inside, preferring to drink in peace rather than get involved.
Patsy Toner snapped his phone closed.
“Well?” Caffola asked.
“He says go ahead,” Toner said. “Just don’t let it get out of hand. Don’t touch any property. Don’t fight anyone but the peelers. There’s lots of press about for the funeral so they’ll all come over here once it gets going. McGinty’s going to turn up in an hour or so. Make sure everyone knows to settle down then so the press sees he calmed the situation.”
“He always was the smart one,” Caffola said. He slapped his palms together and smiled. “Right, let’s go.”
10
A riot is like a fire. It has a life of its own, and does as it will. But it can be fanned or quelled. Fegan knew that as well as anybody. The police and the kids were the kindling, paper and dry wood. Men like Caffola were the naked flame, ready to set them alight. Others, like Father Coulter, were water to douse the burning. But Father Coulter wasn’t here this evening, so Caffola sparked and blazed unabated. Morbidly fascinated, Fegan watched him work.
Caffola moved between groups of boys and young men, slapping backs and issuing commands. They obeyed without question.
Within minutes older boys were off fetching ammunition. They returned quickly, wheeling it in plastic bins. Their missiles were gathered from the nearby derelict houses and patches of waste ground. Bricks, bottles, concrete fragments, scrap metal. Everything they needed. Two boys in their mid-teens appeared at the corner pushing the bar’s bottle bin, its innards clanging and clattering as the wheels juddered across the tarmac. They stopped out of view of the cops.
The peelers huddled and passed orders back and forth. Their stance changed. They knew this one wasn’t blowing over. Some strapped body armor across their torsos and donned helmets.
Within ten minutes Caffola got a phone call telling him there were six containers of petrol in a back alley two streets away. He instructed the boys to wheel the bottle bin over there. “And grab whatever you can off washing lines for rags,” he said. He pulled a ten-pound note from his pocket and pressed it into one of the boys’ hands. “And here, get some sugar. Remember to mix it in the petrol so it’ll stick, right? And get some crates off Tom for carrying the bottles back.”
“Right,” the boy said. He and his friend wheeled the jangling bin back around the corner.
Soon masonry began to fly. Sporadically at first, but the bombardment gathered pace. The peelers stayed behind their Land Rovers for now, content to let things simmer until they had enough officers to deal with the situation.
