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  Last out of the sack were the old shoes, and he slipped them on.

  He locked the door behind him and went off along the walkway, paused for a moment at the top of the stairs, ground his nails into his palms, as if that would strengthen him, and joined the night's shadows moving on the Amersham.

  Chapter Four

  On another morning, the sirens would have woken Malachy.

  Dawn was breaking over the estate. He slept until full daylight. There was no reason for him to rouse himself, get up and wash, decide whether to shave with the blunt blade and dress in the charity-shop clothes. He had not been asleep when the sirens started, vague and distant at first, then clearer as they came closer. He had not slept because he had waited for the sirens, had lain in his bed, ears keen, through the long hours of darkness. When the sirens approached, coming up the Old Kent Road, then swinging into the Amersham, he could have pushed himself off the bed, gone to the window and looked out over the plaza towards the flat roof of block eleven, but he did not. He knew what the ambulance-men, the fire brigade and the police would find.

  It had rained in the night but with the dawn came a low sunshine that spilled through the window. He had not drawn the curtains. If he had slipped off the bed and looked out on to the far side of the plaza, the sun's weak light would have fastened on his work.

  He had no need to see it.

  The clothes from his work were now back in the bin-liner, with his shoes, the penknife, the remaining tape on the roll and the plastic toy. He did not know yet whether he felt satisfaction at what he had done.

  He rubbed his cheek, and could feel the thin scratches from fingernails that had penetrated the woollen hat.

  There was a bruise on his right shin where one had kicked him but it was only with a trainer and the bruise was little more than an irritant; nothing in comparison to those on the face of Millie Johnson.

  He rolled over, turned his face to the wall and his eyes were locked shut. Others would come to stand and gawp, but Malachy had no need to.

  A crowd gathered on the worn grass beside the kids' swings and roundabouts in the plaza.

  That morning, Dawn would be late for the ministry.

  It was too good to miss: her supervisor always said that a watch could be set on Dawn's punctuality at work – even when she had had the flu she had been there with the mop and bucket and the vacuum cleaner. Not that early morning. She positioned herself at the edge of the crowd, did not reckon to use her bony elbows to force a way to the front. At the back she was closer to the parked fire engines, the two ambulances, the police cars and wagon. It was the best show she had seen in many years on the estate, better than any of the Christmas cabarets at the Pensioners'

  Association or at the annual parties for the Tenants' Association. Two of them had been hoisted up on to the flat roof of block eleven and one still hung suspended from the rope. Where she was, Dawn could hear the conversations among the firemen, the ambulance teams and police officers, and it was good listening.

  A fireman said to his senior, who had just reached the plaza, 'Never known anything like it, Chief, not on the Amersham. I suppose it's a feud between the low-lifes, what the army would call "blue on blue". Done a proper job, though. They're all taped up, ankles together and wrists behind their backs and they've gags in their mouths. Then rope was tied round the ankles and they were hung out over the edge of the roof with the rope fastened to the block's communal TV aerial. Been there half the night and they couldn't shout because of the gags in their mouths, and they wouldn't have wriggled around, would they? Bloody sure I wouldn't, not with more than a sixty-foot drop under me and my life depending on whether the rope's knot held. I'd have done what they did, stayed damn still. The word is that they're the kingpins of the local horror story, call themselves the High Fly Boys. Tell you what, Chief, they were that. They were high and they were flying, except for the rope. Must have been there for hours, and nobody saw them till the light came up. What I'm getting, they're right nasty scallys. They're the gang that push the class-A stuff round the estate. Last night, if you'd asked me, I'd have said – and sworn on it – that they were frightened of nothing. Different story now. Don't quote me, Chief, but this call-out's been a real pleasure.'

  In front of Dawn the crowd parted. Few of the residents who lived in the flats overlooking the plaza dared to look direct into the faces of the two youths who were escorted by the ambulance crew and police officers through the opening that the residents made.

  Dawn recognized Leroy Gates and Wilbur Sansom – everybody on that part of the Amersham knew them.

  They sold; the vagrants bought. It went through her mind fast: because they sold and the vagrants bought, her best friend, the closest, was in hospital with an operation scheduled for that evening – the swelling would be down enough – to pin or plate a broken arm, and her face was a bright mass of bruises. The thought of Leroy Gates and Wilbur Sansom swinging upside down through half the night, and no help coming, was sufficient to bring a smile to Dawn's face, the first time she had allowed herself that little luxury since the call had come and she had rushed out – no night buses – to tramp all the way to the hospital by the river. She did what none of the others in the split crowd did: she fastened her eye on them. But they didn't meet her gaze: they shivered. If the ambulance crew had not held them up by the arms, they would have collapsed. She spat in front of them – had never done anything as crude in her life before. They came past her and she looked away from them and up towards the roof of block eleven. The third was being pulled up by firemen towards the angled edge of the flat roof. She heard what was said.

  An ambulance girl spoke to her boss: 'First signs are, and it's extraordinary, there's not a mark on them.

  They were traumatized when the fire guys lifted them up on to the roof, but we did quick checks on their bodies and we didn't find anything. They weren't beaten, nothing like that. They can't speak, in a state of terror. I've been here before, when there's been war between the High Fly Boys and the Rough Track Boys, and there's been blood. Not this time. I hope they've put them on plastic, because they've wet themselves and shat themselves – God, do they stink! My opinion, they should go to hospital for a check-over, maybe stay for a day's observation, but it's not medical help they need. They're in shock. I doubt anything in their charming little lives has been like this. Don't know how I'd be if I'd been hung out to dry like a bloody piece of washing – makes you think, doesn't it? – and wondering whether the rope would hold. Different, isn't it? Not that I'm complaining, but it's not what usually happens when these dysfunctional creatures scrap. Just different.'

  The last group came through the crowd and headed for the cluster of vehicles. Dawn saw Danny Morris.

  His face was pale grey and she could see where tears had streamed from his eyes and had run up by the bridge of his nose and over his forehead. He was carried. His Nike suit had been pure white but the crotch was stained and the fabric over his buttocks.

  She rejoiced. The barricades on doors such as Millie had, the fear of old people about going out into the night, the need to clasp at a handbag and try to keep it safe from being snatched were because of the likes of Danny Morris. If it had been the day before, if she had seen him and the others walking on the pavement towards her, she would have backed away into a recess and hoped she wasn't noticed. She did not look into his eyes but, with purpose, stared at the groin stain, and hoped he would see. It was a pity if it was what the fireman had called 'blue on blue': it would have been better if those on the Amersham had set aside their fear and struck back… Not possible. If the Rough Track Boys had done this there was still cause to rejoice. Behind Danny Morris, a policewoman carried the plastic evidence bags: small ones contained wraps, the larger ones lengths of rope and cut sections of heavy masking tape. Dawn saw that Danny Morris, who was hardly capable of walking and whose arms were held, was handcuffed.

  A policeman briefed his sergeant: 'It's bizarre and it leaves me confused.
Doesn't seem right for us to put this down to the other gangs. Any sort of fight and there would be blood, mayhem, noise, chaos. None of that. Not a word, not a call. And not a sound…

  Somehow somebody got them up on the roof having broken down the entry door up there, trussed them like bloody chickens, fastened the ropes to the TV aerial stanchion, lowered them over the edge and walked away. That's not the Rough Track Boys or the Young Walworth Boys. They haven't the wit for it. For them it would have been knives and, perhaps, a shooter, if there was that much aggravation between them. It's sort of vigilante stuff, but we've never had that all the time I've been on the Amersham. There aren't the sort of people here who're up for i t… I just don't understand. Looking on the bright side, and there's reason for that, they each had a wrap – and I guarantee it'll be a wrap of heroin – in their pocket. At the least we can do them for possession of a class-A drug. If the sun shines on us we can probably add

  "intention to trade". They were so scared… That little rat Morris, he clung to my legs when we got him up and safe, like I was his guardian angel. It's made my day. Only one cloud. If the High Fly Boys are out of business, lost too much face, and there's a hole, then more scumbags'll be lining up to fill it. Still, someone did the business and did it well, if you know what I mean.'

  The ambulances drove away, then the fire engines and the police numbers scaled down. As the crowd thinned, Dawn glanced down at her watch and started to run. She needed to be lucky and get a bus quick on the Walworth Road. As she puffed out of the estate, she thought of the excuses to be concocted for her supervisor, and what she would tell Millie later.

  She would be at the hospital straight after work, be there when they took Millie down to theatre and be in the ward for when she came back from the operation.

  She ran well, happy.

  They should have gone at midnight, but the assault had been delayed till five in the morning. Then more delay.

  It was now past eight and Polly saw Ludvik stride along the pavement towards her. He was grinning, hand lifted, thumb raised. About damn time too.

  Behind him, at the end of the alley, the storm squad, backs flat against the wall, edged towards the outer door – big men, black overalls, helmeted, and enough fire power in their fists to start a war. The first postponement had been about the other occupants on the staircase leading to the top-floor apartment under the roof: should they be moved to safety, and how much noise would that make – how much warning would it give? There had been a debate, and at two in the morning, as she had shivered under her coat, a minister had come to add his opinion, and Justin Braithwaite – her station chief – had pitched up to add his pennyworth, but by five o'clock it had been agreed that the other occupants would be left to their beauty sleep. Then the second postponement: did they need a probe, audio or visual, drilled up from the floor underneath into the apartment, and how much noise would that make and how would they get into that apartment without waking the dead throughout the building? With his second pennyworth, Braithwaite had been succinct: 'For fuck's sake, just get on with it.'

  Then there had been interference on the radio links between the storm squad and their control.

  Braithwaite had gone back to his bed, a second minister had come and there was the question of what would happen to the building – historic, part of the city's heritage, dating back to the fifteenth-century rule of Wenceslas the Fourth – when the top-floor apartment was stormed. They had waited for more fire-tenders to reach Kostecna. Then other occupants had started to leave for work and had had to be grabbed and silenced at gunpoint – more arguments.

  Now they were going.

  Polly Wilkins had once spent a day with what Frederick Gaunt irreverently called 'The Hereford Gun Club'. She had been with three other recent Service incomers to the special forces on the edge of a country market town. There, she had stood under an old clock tower and read the inscription:

  We are the pilgrims, Master, we shall go Always a little further. It may be

  Beyond that last blue mountain buried with snow, Across that angry or glimmering sea.

  She'd thought it naff and self-indulgent, until she'd watched a training session in their Killing Room: she had been deafened and almost frightened to death by the explosions and ricocheting rounds, the smoke and the shouting, and she'd crept back to London in awe of the pace and ruthlessness of the simulated attack. Now men from the Prague police were going into a Killing Room, doing it for real. She wondered how good they were… from Hereford she remembered overwhelming power and speed. Were these men, young Czechs, good enough?

  Time to find out. Ludvik strode close to her.

  She recalled the last signal from Gaunt: 'Good on you, Wilco. From this distant end we anticipate the capture of a full-blown co-ordinator. We are all ears, Gaunt.' She had always been Wilco to Frederick Gaunt, his little joke. Old RAF slang for 'Will Comply' was 'Wilco'. It was a name that indicated his admiration for her – Polly Wilkins did as she was asked and, more, had the dedication. Other women at Vauxhall Bridge Cross thought it patronizing. She did not, and wore the name like a badge, with pride.

  Ludvik said, 'We are going now. As your Mr

  Braithwaite remarked, "For fuck's sake, just get on with it." We are, at last, to get on with it. Perhaps it will be spectacular. You have a seat in the best row of the theatre and-'

  'Please, Ludvik, shut up.'

  It was not meant to wound his enthusiasm. But Polly Wilkins thought it almost obscene that a storm – gun against gun, body against body, faith against commitment – should be treated as theatre by those who would not be a part of it. In the Killing Room at Hereford, as they had come in, she had sensed naked terror and had realized the acute danger created by the assault. The squad was out of her sight, had disappeared through the outer door. She imagined them creeping, soft-footed, up the worn stone steps of the staircase. Behind her, beyond the police cordon, the fire engines revved their engines and made ready, and the ambulances had the doors open and… the attack started.

  From the upper window, under the old roof tiles where the dishcloth still hung, came the sound of battering, fast, desperate blows, the strike against the apartment door's lock. Then the shooting. At first, one weapon recognizable by its sharp clatter on automatic.

  Then answering gunshots. A scream, shouting, competed with the firing.

  She knew, instinctively, that it had already failed.

  Half a minute after the first blows on the door high in the building, with a sledgehammer, Polly Wilkins knew it was screwed. By now, if the storm squad had succeeded, there should have been the thunderclap of the flash grenades in the room and the curl of the immobilizing gas swirling from the window. She thought that the bodyguard and the man reckoned by Gaunt to be a co-ordinator, had been ready for them and waiting. More volleys of shots, but not the flash grenades and not the gas canisters.

  Ludvik said, 'I think they will be inside very soon.'

  'Accept it.' Her voice was cold. 'They're not inside.

  Because of the bloody heritage you waited too long. It failed.'

  'You cannot call it failure, which is insulting. You cannot, yet, call it failure. They are closed in. They have nowhere to go.'

  She said, as if tiredness swept over her, 'What my boss would say. Dead they're hunks of meat, alive they're an intelligence dream. We wanted to talk to them.'

  He bridled. 'I suppose you will report we are incompetent.'

  'I will report that the heritage of the Old City dictated more fire engines were ordered up, that you had many fire engines but no explosives to blow the door off.'

  'They are inside, that is what is important.' He faced her, intense. 'Trapped. I tell you, Polly, I believe you give these people too great an admiration. They will shoot, and they will think. When they have thought of their position they will surrender. They are going nowhere. Give an enemy too much importance and he will dominate you.'

  She blinked as the pain of exhaustion caught her.
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br />   She looked up the alley. Two casualties were brought out. The one with the face wound had rich red blood dribbling from the mouth in his balaclava and she could hear the choke in his throat. The other was carried by two colleagues and his hands were across his lower stomach, down from the bottom edge of his bulletproof vest, and he howled as they struggled to run with him. She felt small, alone, so inadequate.

  And Ludvik, alerted by the beat of the boots and the howl, watched with her.

  Polly said quietly, 'I don't give them too much importance.'

  They went back to a cafe behind the cordon.

  He crawled across the floor towards the half-open window. It was slow going and the pain came in rivers. It was a big effort for him to crawl, and a bigger one for him to locate the grenade's pin and work his finger into it. He gasped, dragged out the pin, then propped himself up on an elbow and tossed it through the window. For a moment it seemed to bounce on the sill and he wondered if it would roll back and drop down beside him, but it did not. Far below he heard it bounce, men's yells, panic, and the explosion.

  Muhammad Iyad bought time. Not much time left to him, but time for the man he protected.

  The door was barricaded with the cooker and the refrigerator, and with the mattresses from the beds, all wedged between the door and the wall opposite by the table, chairs and the wardrobe from the bedroom.

  If they came close on the landing above the staircase, he fired sprays of bullets on automatic above the barricade, then slithered back to a corner where the answering shots could not find him. He was down now to his last grenade and to his last three magazines of bullets.