She saw James, at the mouth of the yard, nearly in the street.
Toshiko leapt up, ignoring the tramp’s hands as they closed on her back, and yanked the glove off her left hand. She dropped the Amok into it — thankful at least that the retinal pattern of blue lights went away — and launched the wrapped object down the yard towards James.
He caught it as neatly as Shane Warne at the gas-holder end. Turning, he ran out into the street towards the SUV. The mob followed him. Some of them kicked or even stood on Toshiko in their urge to pursue him. She curled up in a ball to protect herself.
The South Wales Police Unit, a flash-marked Vauxhall Vectra, had been responding to a call concerning a disturbance in the West Moors area. It was doing just under thirty miles an hour as it pulled in along the terrace by the pub. It caught James on its front bumper, hoicked him up over the bonnet in a thumping tumble, and bounced him off the windscreen. The windscreen crazed. The police car squealed to a halt. James rolled off the other side of the bonnet and fell on the road.
‘Jesus bugger it!’ said one of the officers as he leapt out. ‘Where’d he come from?’
The officer ran over to James and bent down. ‘Call it in, for Christ’s sake!’ he yelled at his oppo. ‘Get a bloody ambulance!’
He knelt beside James. ‘S’all right, mister, it’s all right,’ he said. The man they’d run down was in his early thirties, blond, clean cut. He was wearing black jeans, a white shirt, and a black leather coat. Good quality, all of it. The officer, who was twenty-two years old and whose name was Peter Picknall, had a feeling it was a bit odd someone so well dressed should be running out of a derelict lot. Running out of a trendy club, maybe.
‘Is it coming?’ he yelled.
‘It’s coming!’ his oppo, Timmy Beal, yelled back. Squawks on the radio. The rain hissing.
‘What the hell is this?’ Timmy Beal called.
Peter Picknall didn’t look up. The man they’d run down had been holding a black leather glove. When Peter picked it up, he realised there was something heavy inside it. The something heavy fell out and bounced on the road surface in the back-splashing rain.
It was something metal. Something oddly shaped.
Peter picked it up. Immediately, he knew it was the best thing he’d ever done. He felt like he’d won the lottery. Twice. During sex.
There were people all around him. There were people milling around the unit, people knocking Timmy Beal down and kicking him out of the way.
Peter heard Timmy Beal cry out in pain. He hardly cared. He stood up. He looked at the people closing in around him.
‘Big big big,’ he agreed. ‘Now piss off, it’s my go.’
Shiznay brought Mr Dine his shashlik, along with a side of shredded iceberg lettuce and a wedge of lemon.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
She shrugged.
‘Shiznay?’
‘What?’
Mr Dine studied her face. ‘I have a feeling I’ve upset you somehow. Or let you down. I’m not very good at reading facial expressions where your kind is concerned.’
‘My kind?’ she asked, astonished that he could be so openly racist.
He considered her response. ‘I feel I may have put that badly. I meant-’
‘What? What did you mean?’
‘What did I do to upset you?’ he asked.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said.
‘Whatever it was, I’m sorry,’ he replied. ‘I never intended any slight or prejudicial slur. Really not. The cultural briefing, it’s so vague really, when you get down to it. So many useful things they don’t tell you.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I like you, Shiznay. I really do. I like you, and I like the spiced meat and the animal fats. And the alcohol.’
She shook her head sadly. ‘I don’t get you.’
He shrugged. ‘No, I suppose you don’t. But I do like you. You are kind. You have a physical aspect that is-’
‘Oh, so you are a breast man, are you?’ Shiznay sneered, and turned away.
‘I was intending a compliment! Did it not come out right either?’
‘Not so much,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘Shiznay, all I want to say is that I’d hate to do anything to upset you. That was never my intention. You’ve been kind to me. I…’
‘You what?’
Mr Dine sat upright suddenly, his back straight. His bright, wide eyes switched back and forth in his head. With his flock hair, he reminded Shiznay of the Eagle-Eyed Action Man her brother had once played with.
He stood up, bumping the table.
‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘What?’
‘Something’s happened. I have to go.’
‘But,’ Shiznay protested, ‘you’ve ordered.’
‘I have to go.’
‘You have to pay first.’
‘Next time.’
‘You have to pay. You’ve ordered food.’
‘Next time,’ he insisted, striding towards the door.
‘Mr Dine!’
‘The Principal,’ mumbled Dine. ‘The Principal is under threat. I must go.’
Shiznay ran after him. ‘Waitaminute!’
Her father was blocking the door of the Mughal Dynasty. ‘You have to pay, sir. Do you hear me, sir? You have to pay before you leave.’
Mr Dine raised his right hand, as if he was brushing away a fly. There was nothing in it, no force. It was a gesture. Nevertheless, Shiznay’s father was suddenly sitting on the carpet and Mr Dine was gone.
Shiznay ran out into the street.
The lights of passing cars were blurred by the heavy rain. There was no sign of Mr Dine.
She looked around, baffled at how he could have disappeared so rapidly. Out of the corner of her eye, Shiznay had a fleeting impression of something leaving the pavement in a fluid leap that took it up onto a two-storey roof fifty yards away.
But that could only have been her imagination.
FOUR
The chain link bit into her fingers. Gwen wailed in pain and fear as the drape of fencing she was swinging from began to tear out from its moorings.
‘Got you,’ said Jack, and he had. He held her by the wrists. With a grunt of effort, he pulled her up onto the path.
‘Oh shit,’ she murmured. She had to lay where she was for a moment, her heart pounding. She rubbed at her throbbing fingers.
‘I thought I was gonna-’
‘But you didn’t,’ said Jack.
‘But I thought I was-’
‘But you didn’t,’ said Jack.
