there.
“No,” I repeated, more reasonably this time. “There’s no need for them to come with us.”
“Why not, Charlie?” he murmured. “We might be glad of their help.”
I shook my head. “They’ve done enough,” I said, dogged. “More than enough. I won’t have you risking their safety.”
Jacob appeared at my elbow. “It’s all right, Charlie,” he said gently. “We know what we’re getting into this time, and we want to do what we can.” He put his arm round my shoulders. “You don’t have to keep protecting us forever.”
“I know that,” I said, swallowing, and wished that I believed it, too.
Jacob seemed to take that as agreement. He released me with a reassuring squeeze, and he and Clare climbed into the Range Rover. The rest of us piled into the Patrol, with me in the back seat. Madeleine led the way, our headlights bouncing wildly in tune to the rutted drive.
It wasn’t until we’d almost reached the edge of town that I realised how quiet she’d gone since we’d heard the news report.
“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” she asked finally, not taking her eyes off the road ahead.
Sean, busy in the process of squirming out of his sling, twisted in his seat to face her. “What is?”
“Well, that was Jav, wasn’t it, who was beaten and dumped?” She flicked her gaze briefly to mine in the rear-view mirror. “Did you know something like this was going to happen?” she wanted to know. “That was why you wanted to handle things more quietly this morning, wasn’t it? I didn’t realise . . .”
Her voice trailed off and for a few moments there was no more noise inside the cabin than the roar of the Patrol’s tyres, and the rumble of the engine. It was a measure of her error, I thought, that even Sean hadn’t leapt straight to her defence.
“I don’t think it would have made any difference however we’d tackled him,” I said slowly, almost surprised to find myself giving her a way out.
My thought processes creaked laboriously into action. “We know that Garton-Jones doesn’t like leaving loose ends, or witnesses. I think this was probably what he had in mind all along. It’s so neat, isn’t it? He needed the right trigger to grenade the estate, and this way he not only achieves that, but he also gets rid of Jav now his usefulness is exhausted.”
Madeleine stopped as the set of traffic lights across Parliament Street turned red against us. “But why did they want to cause a riot in the first place?”
“I don’t think they did, not originally,” I said. “I think it just mushroomed until all they could do was go with the flow.” I remembered that conversation – more like a confrontation, really – I’d had with Nasir over the garden fence.
I repeated his words to Sean and Madeleine now. “The only thing I can’t understand is why he thought I was tied in with Garton-Jones in the first place,” I said.
“Maybe it was just because you both arrived on the estate at more or less the same time,” Sean suggested. “Who knows how their minds were working.”
“But if that’s the case, then the gangs may well hold you partly responsible for Nasir, and for what’s happened to Jav,” Madeleine pointed out with apprehension clear in her voice. “Getting in there to get to Roger is going to be that much more difficult.”
Sean gave us both a tired smile that didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “I never thought it was going to be easy,” he said.
***
Once we’d got over Greyhound Bridge we realised that the orange glow we could see in the distance didn’t come from the streetlights. Smoke and flames billowed up into the darkened sky, scattering burning embers which were caught and carried by the wind.
“Oh God,” Madeleine said, “it’s started already.”
“Either that,” I muttered, “or Heysham Power Station’s finally done a Chernobyl.”
A fire engine came screaming past us then. Madeleine stuck two wheels into the gutter as he overtook, giving him room. A police Sherpa was close behind, with the riot shield flipped up above the windscreen like a visor.
We slowed to a crawl by the entrance to Lavender Gardens. Where the panda cars had been parked earlier in the day was now a crush of different police vehicles. The Sherpa pulled up in the midst of them and began to disgorge men in full protective gear, carrying four-foot clear polycarbonate shields.
A dark blue horsebox was ignoring the double-yellow lines on the main road, under the streetlights, but I don’t think the driver was likely to get a ticket. The ramp was down and four big well-muscled police horses were being hurriedly led out. They had riot gear on, too.
Madeleine was abruptly waved on by one of the fluoro-jacketed coppers directing traffic.
“Move it on,” he shouted. “Now!”
Madeleine wound down her window. “What’s happened to the residents?” she demanded. It would have taken a more determined man to have ignored her.
The copper jerked his head. “The ones that aren’t still in there are down at the Black Lion,” he said, grudgingly. “Now get this thing shifted!”
We moved away, heading for the pub where I’d attended the Residents’ Committee meeting. This time, though, there’d be no Langford sneering at me from a corner of the bar.
Most of the residents of Lavender Gardens seemed to be crowded together in the car park outside the pub. They milled around with the kind of shell-shocked lethargy that overwhelms disaster victims the world over.
We pulled up by the entrance, and Jacob slotted the Range Rover in behind us. We all jumped down onto the tarmac.
As soon as I was out, I’d started moving. “Look for Pauline,” I called back.
“But what about Roger?” Madeleine asked.
I turned briefly. “If we’re going to have to go in there we only want to do it once,” I said. “If Pauline hasn’t got out yet, we may as well get two for the price of one, don’t you think?”
Nobody argued and we pressed on. It wasn’t easy to pick out one specific person in the darkened mass, but eventually it was the flash of the white dressings on Pauline’s face that led me to her. That and Friday standing rigidly at her feet.
When I got closer I discovered that Pauline was also holding Mrs Gadatra’s youngest, Gin, wrapped in a blanket and fast asleep. Mrs Gadatra herself was sitting on part of the low car park wall a few feet away, her arms wrapped round her body, weeping loudly.
Aqueel was standing stiff and scared next to his mother, with one hand clutching at her shoulder. He was staring at her as if she’d suddenly grown another head. I called his name, and the look of utter relief that passed across his features when he recognised a friendly face was heartbreaking.
Pauline threw a shaky smile towards us as we approached. She was dry-eyed, but very pink around the lids to show what that was costing her.
“They burned the houses,” she said, trying unsuccessfully to stop her chin from wobbling. “We only just got out in what we’re standing up in.”
The simple statement sent Mrs Gadatra off into a fresh spasm of grief. Her words were partially obscured by the frenzied chop of the police helicopter as it swung low overhead, heading back towards the estate. The searchlight mounted under the front stabbed into the darkness.
“You can’t stay here,” Clare said with a decisive edge. “Come on, Pauline and you, too, Mrs G. You can all come back to the house with us.”
When there were signs of objection from both women, Clare went straight for the emotional jugular. “You can’t leave the children standing around all night in this cold,” she said briskly. “Besides, it feels like it’s going to pour down again at any minute.”
Mention of the impending weather seemed to be the deciding factor. Mrs Gadatra and Pauline allowed
