Rivers of London (Rivers of London #1)(88)
‘Grant,’ he said. ‘What the hell is going on?’
I scrambled over to where Folsom lay face down on the pavement. ‘There’s been an irretrievable breakdown in public order,’ I said, while tugging Folsom into the recovery position. My head was still ringing from his backhander, so I wasn’t that gentle.
‘But why?’ he asked. ‘There wasn’t anything scheduled.’
Riots are rarely spontaneous. Crowds usually have to be assembled and provoked, and a conscientious inspector keeps a weather eye out for problems. Especially when his patch contains a riot magnet like Trafalgar Square. The only half-convincing lie I could think of was that somebody had attacked the Royal Opera House with a psychotropic aerosol, but I figured that might raise more questions than it answered. Not to mention trigger an inappropriate military response. I was just about to risk the truth, that a kind of vampire ghost had put the influence on the entire audience, when Neblett twigged exactly who it was he’d just smacked in the head.
‘Oh my God,’ he said, squatting down for a closer look. ‘This is Deputy Assistant Commissioner Folsom.’
Our eyes met across the twitching form of our senior officer.
‘He didn’t see you, sir,’ I said. ‘If you call an ambulance we can have him off the scene before he regains consciousness. There was a riot, he was attacked, you rescued him.’
‘And your role in this?’
‘Reliable witness, sir,’ I said. ‘As to your timely intervention.’
Inspector Neblett gave me a hard look. ‘I was wrong about you, Grant,’ he said. ‘You do have the makings of a proper copper.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I said. I looked around. The riot had moved on – down Floral Street and into the Piazza, I reckoned.
‘Where’s the TSG?’ I asked.
The TSG are the Territorial Support Group. These are the guys that tool around in Mercedes Sprinter vans with equipment lockers stuffed with everything from riot helmets to tasers. Every borough command has a couple of these buzzing around their operational area, especially at closing time, and there’s a reserve force held on standby just in case of unexpected events. I suspected that current events counted as unexpected.
‘They’re staging on Longacre and Russell Street,’ said Neblett. ‘It looks like GT’s plan is to contain them around Covent Garden.’
There was a crash from the direction of the Piazza, followed by ragged cheering. ‘What now?’ asked Neblett.
‘I think they’re looting the market.’
‘Can you get the ambulance?’ he asked.
‘No sir, I’ve got orders to find the ringleader,’ I said.
A Molotov cocktail makes a very distinctive sound. A well-designed one goes crash, thud, whoosh – it’s the last, the petrol igniting, that’s going to kill you if you let it. I know this because before you graduate from Hendon you get to spend a fun-filled day having them thrown at you. Which was why Neblett and I both instinctively ducked when we heard them smashing into the tarmac less then fifteen metres down the road.
‘It’s kicking off,’ said Neblett.
Looking south, I could see a mob of rioters on the crossroads where Culverhay met Bow Street. Beyond them I saw flames reflected off blue riot helmets and grey shields.
I still had to get Lesley, subdue her and take her back to Walid at the UCH. Transport shouldn’t be a problem, since half the ambulances in London were probably converging on Covent Garden right at that moment. That just left finding her. I decided to assume that she was still looking for revenge on Macklin, who’d once had a gin shop on Henrietta Street and was buried at the Actors’ Church. That meant getting back into the Piazza, which unfortunately meant either passing through the exciting civil disturbance to the south or running up Floral Street, which contained God knew what in the way of rioters and really bad things.
Fortunately, when they rebuilt the Royal Opera House one thing they made sure of was that it had a lot of exits. Pausing only to wish Neblett good luck and give Folsom a surreptitious kick in the shins, I ran back inside. Then it was a simple matter to slip past the box office and the company shop and out the other side into the Piazza. At least it would have been, if someone hadn’t been looting the shop.
The glass display window was smashed, and fractured glass littered the displays of DVDs, holdalls embossed with the Royal Ballet School logo and souvenir pens. Somebody had torn the silver-and-ivory-coloured manikin out of the window and flung it across the corridor with enough force to break it against the marble wall opposite. I could hear sobbing coming from inside, punctuated by the occasional crash. Curiosity got the better of me as I was creeping past, and I paused at the broken entrance to peer cautiously inside.
A middle-aged man sat barefoot on the floor of the shop surrounded by hundreds of clear plastic wrappers. As I watched, he grabbed one of the wrappers and ripped it open to extract a pair of white ballet shoes. Carefully, the tip of his tongue emerging from the side of his mouth, the man tried to slip one of the shoes onto his big hairy foot. Unsurprisingly the shoe was too small to fit, no matter how hard the man pulled on the straps – until finally he ripped the seams open. The man held the ruined shoe in front of his face and burst into tears. When he flung them across the shop and reached for another pair, I left him to it – there are just some things that man is not meant to know.