the Met, and by the end of that night more than two hundred of my colleagues were injured, and one, PC Keith Blakelock, was dead, having suffered multiple stab wounds at the hands of machete-wielding rioters. I swear that if the site had been more open-plan we would have brought the riot under control a lot quicker than we did, and with far fewer casualties.
At this time in the morning, the place was quiet: a couple of young mothers were pushing prams; a frail pensioner still in his dressing-gown was standing about on one of the balconies that ran round each block. Not much else.
I found Block D, and climbed the steps that led up the side of it until I came to the fourth floor. Delly lived at number 42 and the balcony that ran its entire length was empty. When I got to his door, I could hear the radio playing from inside and I knocked hard. There was no answer. The curtains were pulled and I couldn't hear anything above the radio. I knocked again, harder this time.
I'd come a long way this morning and was loath to go back to the hotel without seeing Jamie, so since there didn't appear to be anyone else around, I decided to resort to more radical measures than I would usually have considered. Taking a step backwards, I kicked the door as hard as I could just below the handle. It wobbled but held, so I kicked it again, and this time it flew inwards with a loud crack.
I stepped inside and shut the door behind me. The place smelled terrible. Fat; unwashed sweat; domestic rubbish; smoke. The only way I could have spent a night in there was if I'd been wearing a gas mask.
'Who the fuck are you?'
The voice belonged to a well-built, square-jawed white guy of about thirty, dressed in a black leather jacket and holding a foot-long cosh in his right hand. He was standing in a doorway on the other side of the room, and without waiting for an answer, he raised the cosh menacingly and advanced across the mess-strewn living room.
'I'm the man with the gun,' I answered, pulling the.45 out of the waistband of my jeans and pointing it directly at his chest. 'Drop that fucking thing. Now.'
He stopped dead, held his ground for a couple of seconds while he assessed the situation, then reluctantly dropped the cosh as I walked towards him, cocked the gun and pushed it against his chest.
'I don't think you know who you're dealing with here, mate,' he snarled.
'Well, why don't you enlighten me? Because you sure as hell aren't Jamie Delly, and that's who I'm here to see.'
He looked down at the gun, then at me, and could see that I wasn't messing about. When he spoke again, it was with another menacing growl. 'I'd advise you very strongly to turn round and walk away. Because I am here on behalf of someone who has a lot of clout round this neck of the woods, and who does not like people doing things that fuck up the smooth running of his business. You know what I mean?'
I took a step back, and raised the gun so it was a millimetre from the bridge of his nose. 'Where's Delly?'
Through the doorway came another voice, above the music. 'What's going on, Jer? Who you talking to out there?'
'Don't answer him,' I said, keeping the gun where it was. 'Go back in there.'
He started to tell me again that I was making a mistake, so I let him know that I'd count to three and if he hadn't moved by then, he wouldn't be moving anywhere again. He glared at me through slit-thin eyes until I made it to two, then slowly did as he'd been instructed.
I gave him a nudge and followed him through the door and into the flat's small interior hallway. The voice called out again, asking what Jer thought he was doing. It was coming from the first room on our right. The door was half open and I shoved Jer inside. At the same time, I used my foot to push it as far open as it would go, and was immediately confronted with a sight that I could have done without at that time in the morning.
A skinny, unkempt teenager who I recognized as Jamie Delly was hanging by one arm from the shower hook above the bathtub. He was wearing nothing but a pair of threadbare boxer shorts that had probably been white once but were now a murky grey, and he was staring at me, his eyes wide with fear and pain. Blood ran in rivulets from his nostrils down to his chest, but it wasn't this that caught my eye. It was the fact that the top third of his left ear was missing where it had been freshly sliced away. The bottom two-thirds and the area of the neck beneath it were just a red mess. In front of Jamie, and slightly to one side, stood another white man with a shiny bald head, a dark goatee beard and a smile like a gash. He was holding a pair of bloodied secateurs, the blades of which were now pressed against the little finger of Jamie's free hand, ready, by the looks of things, to lop it off.
When the guy with the secateurs saw me, the smile disappeared, to be replaced with a glare of annoyance much like the one Jer had just given me.
'Hello,' I said, pointing the gun in his general direction. 'Am I interrupting something?'
'Who the fuck are you?' he demanded.
'What is it with you two? Didn't anyone ever teach you manners? I'm this boy's guardian angel and I'm here to tell you both to get going while you're still in a position to do so.'
'I think he means it, Tom,' said Jer, staring at the gun.
'The fuck he does,' snarled Tom. He turned to me. 'You ain't gonna do nothing in here. Not with that fucking thing.'
I laughed. 'I think you could be in for a shock, but don't worry, I'm not going to kill you. Just make a mess of your kneecap.' I changed the angle of my gun arm to make my point. 'Now, I'm going to count to three. After that, if you're still standing here they're going to be calling you Pegleg until the day you die.'
'You don't know who you're messing with.'
'That's what Jer said. I wasn't interested then, I'm not interested now. One…'
They exchanged glances, then Tom slowly eased the secateurs away from Jamie's finger, cutting the skin as he did so. Jamie gasped, but said nothing.
I stood out of the way as they exited the bathroom and turned in the direction of the door, Tom leading.
'You'll regret this,' Tom told me as I followed them into the living room.
'Life's too short for regrets.'
'Yours is gonna be. You're a dead man, mate.'
'Can the threats and keep moving, baldie,' I said, realizing that I was beginning to enjoy myself. Detective work was infinitely more rewarding when you didn't have to play by any rules.
He glared at me, but opened the door and did as he was told. Jer also managed a glare, but his lacked conviction. I watched them as they walked along the balcony towards the steps, Tom already talking on his mobile phone, doubtless calling up reinforcements with guns.
I didn't have much time.
25
I shut the door again and put the chain across, then replaced the gun, before returning to the bathroom, where Delly was trying without much success to free his hand from the rope that bound it to the shower hook. The blood from his ear was running down onto his left shoulder. It was a messy injury.
He swivelled round as I came in, no sign of recognition in his eyes. 'Can you get me down from here?' he whined in a high-pitched voice that hadn't changed a great deal since he was thirteen years old. 'Please.'
'I need to ask you some questions. You answer me quickly and truthfully, I'll cut you down.'
'Come on, man, you can't-'
'What did those two want?'
He gave me a pleading look, but it didn't work. I stared him down and repeated the question.
'I dunno,' he answered. He pronounced it Adanoo, using the same harsh, ghetto-style pronunciations that seemed to be all the rage amongst the kids round here these days. 'There was this knock on the door. I opened it and one of them smacks me with an 'ammer. Doosh! Just like that. Then the bastards dragged me in here and strung me up like this. I tried asking them what the fuck they wanted, but they didn't say nothing. Not a word. And then the one with the goatee pulled out that chopper thing and sliced me ear with it. You seen it anywhere? The bit he took off?' He began scanning the filthy linoleum floor for his missing body part.
