Ken McClure - Deception

Steven ran back to his car and called up Brewer on the radio. ‘We’ve got big trouble,’ he said. ‘Three busloads of Yobs-R-Us have just arrived and there’s no sign of your lot.’

‘My lads are all over the place,’ said Brewer. ‘And do you know what?’

‘They’ve been attending hoax calls,’ said Steven, suddenly sensing what Brewer was about to say.

Brewer took it personally. ‘Christ, we can’t ignore it when some guy phones in to report a car accident with two dead and three children lying injured,’ said Brewer. ‘Any more than we can ignore a jammed level crossing or a tree lying across a main road or any of the other shit that’s being phoned in.’

‘Well Blackbridge is no hoax, I promise you,’ said Steven with a feeling of great foreboding.

‘There’s one patrol car already on its way and I’ll be with you shortly,’ said Brewer.

‘Over and out,’ said Steven quietly as the sound of angry voices was carried on the air from Main Street. Eve had already set off for Crawhill; he assumed that she’d bring her back here for the time being. That would help him too, knowing that there were no innocent bystanders between him and Childs and Leadbetter if things got nasty and the smart money was riding on that possibility. In the meantime, his prime objective was to find Eve’s father and extract him from the mob.

Ironically, he could see that the arrival of rent-a-mob was going to make that a bit easier than it might otherwise have been. He would no longer be the only non-local in the crowd. There would however, be a number on men in the crowd who would know him from his visits to the Castle Tavern so he’d have to be careful all the same.

The suit he was wearing would mark him out straight away so he went to the boot of his car and brought out the sweat shirt, tracksuit bottoms, training shoes and woolly hat he’d worn on his night expedition to Peat Ridge Farm. He changed in the back of the car, put on a pair of sunglasses then set out for Main Street, hoping to blend in with the crowd. Fortuitously, he arrived almost at the same time as a police panda car pulled up opposite the hotel. All eyes turned to look at the occupants as they got out.

Steven noticed the look of apprehension that flitted across the policemen’s faces as they took in the size of the crowd and sensed its hostility, but then professionalism took over and they adopted stony expressions of authority. They made their way through to the front where two hapless officials in their shirtsleeves had been arguing with the crowd. Men in authority always imagined they could identify with the common man by taking off their jackets. One of the officers climbed up on to the wall and appealed for quiet. Steven looked around for Eve’s father couldn’t see him. What he did notice however, was that many of the out-of-towners were carrying hold-alls. This was an added worry.

‘I must ask you all to return to your homes immediately,’ shouted the officer, whose appeal for quiet had fallen on deaf ears.

‘Disperse and go back to your homes immed...’ The officer did not complete the sentence. A bottle smashed into his face, breaking his nose and shattering his front teeth. He fell from the wall into the arms of his partner who collapsed to the ground under the weight. A flurry of feet made sure that both officers were now out of the reckoning. The Rubicon had been crossed: there was now no going back.

The two government men were next to be attacked. One fell to the ground under a hail of blows; the other made it to the door of the hotel but only to find it locked. He too succumbed to the anger of the crowd and fell to the ground, curled up in a foetal position and squealing in pain as blows rained in on him. The anxious faces at the hotel windows disappeared as stones and bottles sailed through them to let in the sounds of the street. The panda car was bounced on its springs until its own momentum could be used to help overturn it to loud cheers. The spreading fuel puddle from its tank only acted as an invitation to a mob that was now feeding on its own evil. A match was thrown and the vehicle erupted into a ball of orange flame to the accompaniment of more loud cheers.

Throughout it all, Steven kept looking for Eve’s father. He was beginning to think that perhaps he wasn’t in the crowd after all when he caught sight of him with two men he recognised as regulars from the Castle. He had started to make his way through the throng towards them when one of the out-of-towners jumped up on to the bonnet of one of the civil service cars and used an electric megaphone to address the rest.

‘These bastards don’t give a toss for ordinary working folk,’ he yelled. ‘They come to our villages, set up their experiments, kill our kids and then tell us there’s fuck-all to worry about. It’s all perfectly safe!’ Encouraged by the cheers he continued, ‘Let’s show the bastards that we can look after our own. And do you know what?... They’re dead right. When we’re finished with their GM shite, there will be fuck-all to worry about!’

As the cheering subsided, the sound of a camera film wind-on caught the crowd’s attention. Steven saw that it was the young cameraman with McColl. You son, are a few frames short of a cassette, he thought.

‘No cameras!’ yelled the man on the bonnet of the car as if he were Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia. The mob surrounded the hapless youth and his camera was taken from him, emptied, smashed and trampled underfoot. He and McColl were about to receive the same treatment when it was pointed out that the man with the photographer was from the Clarion. ‘He’s the one who broke the story!’ cried a voice. ‘He’s on our side!’ McColl and his sidekick were allowed to back away unharmed. They looked like pale, frightened rabbits, thought Steven.

The fired-up crowd started to move off up the hill leading to Peat Ridge Farm, an angry, amorphous amoeba, hell-bent on destroying anything in its path. Steven tried to keep his eye on Eve’s father but unfortunately he was walking near the front. It wasn’t going to be easy to cut him out of the herd from there.

He decided against trying to move up through the body of the mob and opted instead to fall back until there was enough room for him to move to the outside. He then ran up the flank and sidled in behind Ferguson. He sensed that it was the fact that he was carrying a gun that had put Ferguson up here in the vanguard. He didn’t strike Steven as being a natural trouble-seeker. If anything he seemed out of his depth but his grief and bitterness over the death of his son was being nurtured by the others. He clearly wasn’t a leader but had been adopted as a convenient figurehead.

Steven chose his moment and clicked Ferguson’s heels with his right foot, tripping him and sending him tumbling to the ground. He quickly stood over him, pretending to be helping him to his feet when in actual fact he had his thumb in a pressure point behind his ear, restricting blood supply to his brain and keeping him on the ground.

‘It’s his ankle,’ yelled Steven, without looking up. ‘On you go! We’ll catch up.’

Steven kept Ferguson on the ground, hiding his own face while the mob passed by on either side. When it seemed that it was all clear, he risked looking up. The two men from the Castle who had been flanking Ferguson were still standing there waiting for him. One of them recognised Steven immediately as they approached and said, ‘It’s that poncey civil servant bastard! He’s no wi’ us!’

Steven hit him once. It was a blow from his right fist that travelled barely eighteen inches but it caught the man just to the left of the point of his chin and jerked his head sharply up, causing him to lose consciousness and go down like a bag of cement. The other man, he hit twice; once in the solar plexus and once on the back of the neck as he doubled up. Steven left both of them lying in a heap and helped Ferguson to his feet to start frog marching him back to the village.