Nick Oldham - Backlash

He was pretty whacked. The long day and the recently devoured kebab was having a somnolent effect on him. His eyelids drooped heavily. He drifted into a light sleep and his chin sagged heavily onto his chest. A loud snore jarred him awake for a brief moment before his eyes clicked shut again. This time his chin fell gently. He was gone. A grunting sound came from somewhere in his nose as his breathing became heavy.

So he did not see them coming. He had no chance.

Mo Khan’s eldest son was called Rafiq, almost thirty, now the head of the family and its various businesses. Roscoe managed to manoeuvre him away from his relatives, into the back of the shop behind the counter where she could speak to him alone.

The shop was quiet, only a couple of customers browsing. A young Asian girl was working the till and reading a magazine.

‘I know what you’re going to say,’ Rafiq said before Jane Roscoe had a chance to begin. ‘Don’t take the law into your own hands. Let the police sort it out. I know, I know.’ He dismissed her with a contemptuous wave. ‘I also know that you are institutionally racist and do not care one bit about us.’

‘That’s not true,’ Roscoe said defensively. ‘I care and I will do my very best for you. I won’t labour the point about the other things you said. You know full well there is a suspect for your father’s murder. We’re going to arrest him. So leave the justice to us, Rafiq. It’s our job, not yours or your family’s.’

‘I hear what you say, Mrs Copper, but I don’t know if I can hold my brothers back — or even if I want to. They are very angry. The Costains have been at our throats ever since we came here and you have done nothing to protect us — and now this has happened. You cannot be too critical if we do take the law into our own hands, can you, lady?’

From the research Roscoe had done very recently into the Khan/Costain situation, Rafiq’s version of the conflict between the two families was not entirely accurate. However, she didn’t want to argue the toss now.

‘We would be critical of anyone who takes the law into their own hands, under whatever circumstance, under whatever provocation. I’m asking you to give us enough time to sort this matter out. I don’t want to have to come and arrest you or any of your family at a time of grief. Understand?’

Rafiq looked her up and down.

‘I will do what I can for the moment,’ he promised her lamely. She knew it was as good as she was going to get.

‘Thank you. I will personally keep you informed of all our progress, once a day at the minimum.’

‘Don’t take too long about things,’ Rafiq began, ‘because if you do, this estate will burn-’

There was a series of small explosions outside the shop. Pop-pop-pop. Roscoe knew exactly what had caused them. Petrol bombs. It was a sound embedded into her psyche, a sound she had heard for the first time in 1981 when, as a probationer PC, she had been part of one of the many police support units sent to assist Merseyside police when the Toxteth area of Liverpool blew up into a major riot. She had heard the noise in anger several times since.

A wall of flame blew up against the shop front, followed by a buffeting surge of hot air.

Rafiq growled, ‘It’s already started.’ To the girl on the till he shouted, ‘In the back, now,’ and jerked his thumb to emphasise the order.

He started toward the front door of the shop but halted after one stride when the door was kicked open and two youths with balaclavas pulled down over their faces burst in. Each carried a petrol bomb — a milk bottle half filled with fuel, oily burning rag stuffed down the neck. They only seemed to be bits of kids, Roscoe thought quickly. Couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen. But they looked evil, all in black. Terrifying. She could not help but draw a breath.

They raised the bottles. One screamed, ‘Have these, you black twats.’

‘Get down!’ Roscoe shouted. She threw herself at Rafiq and dragged him to the floor behind the counter. As she moved she saw the petrol bombs arc through the air, spinning slowly, almost in slow motion, flames whipping round like a Catherine wheel.

The bombers scarpered, screaming gleefully.

The bottles landed virtually simultaneously on the hard floor in front of the counter. Petrol and flames sprayed everywhere. Roscoe and Rafiq huddled down behind the counter. For a few moments the heat above them was intense. Tongues of orange flames licked across the counter top, then died back.

Roscoe could not stay down for long. Christ, she thought, what’s happened to Dave?

Another explosion, this time a massive one, boomed outside.

Dave Seymour’s eyes jumped open as the first three petrol bombs hit the wide paved area between where he sat in the car and the Khan’s shop front. All three ignited with a powerful whoosh. He saw two youths kick the shop door open and enter, each holding a lighted petrol bomb.

Before he could open the car door, the front windscreen was smashed by someone wielding an iron bar. The side window was broken by another person, sending pieces of glass into his face and his clothing. Then the rear window went. There must have been a dozen of them surrounding the car, all brandishing iron bars, bats or chunks of wood, all wearing black hoods or masks.

Seymour’s insides contracted and he knew he was in deep trouble.

One of them hurled a petrol bomb into the car through the hole in the windscreen. Seymour saw it coming and cowered away, but there was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do, it landed on his lap but did not smash.

Seymour had a moment of relief. Just a moment.

As he picked up the flaming bottle the lighted wick dropped out of the neck. Petrol gushed out over Seymour’s thighs and groin. It ignited.

‘Cop bastard! Cop bastard,’ the people surrounding his car chanted mercilessly. There was laughter and triumph in their voices. ‘Burn you bastard, burn!’

Seymour screamed horribly. He managed to open the door and fell out of the car onto his knees, desperately trying to bat out the flames with his bare hands. Where one flame went out, another came to life. Bigger. Hotter. Taking a better hold on his clothing, licking up his shirt front towards his face. ‘Help me, help me,’ he screamed.

No one did.

Somehow he got to his feet and staggered towards the shop.

‘Cop bastard, cop bastard,’ rang in his ears. ‘Burn! Burn! Burn!’

Behind him more bombs smashed around the CID car. It went up in flames.

Roscoe had had enough petrol bombs thrown at her during the days when she did riot training to know not to be afraid of them. ‘Petrol reception’ the classes had been mis-called. But unlike the majority of the training she had done in the police, the lessons learned about petrol bombs had stuck with her — because they had been about self-preservation. They had taught her that if you kept your eyes on the bombs as they came towards you and made sure they didn’t hit you on the head, they did not present too great a personal threat. They looked effective, frightened the living daylights out of people, made for good TV but, if treated with respect, they were not something to worry about too much.

Having walked through pools of blazing petrol during those training sessions — albeit kitted up with stout steel toe-capped boots, flame retardant overalls, protective masks and headgear — she knew it was quite feasible to walk through flames unscathed — if you were quick enough and didn’t admire the countryside along the way. Although not exactly dressed for the part, she knew she had somehow to get through the flames and see what was happening to Dave Seymour.

‘Call the fire brigade,’ she instructed Rafiq before turning towards the flames and smoke on the other side of the counter. Thick black smoke was hanging just below the ceiling, beginning to fill the shop with its deadly vapours. She put a hand over her nose and mouth, protected her eyes with the other, took a deep breath of clean air and ran.