Rivers of London (Rivers of London #1)(89)

The back exit of the Royal Opera House emerges under the colonnade in the north-east corner of the Piazza. The Paperchase on the left had been gutted, and shreds of coloured paper were blowing across the stone flags and into the square. On the right the Disney Store was being enthusiastically looted, but the Build-a-Bear shop was bizarrely untouched – an oasis of brightly coloured twee and peace. Most of the actual fighting seemed to be down by the church on the west side – that’s where I reckoned Lesley would be. I headed for the covered market, reckoning that I could use it as cover to get close to the church. I was halfway there when somebody wolf-whistled at me. It was a proper two-fingers-in-the mouth whistle and cut right through the noise of the riot.

I zeroed in on the second whistle. It was Beverley, staring down at me from the pub balcony on the first floor – she waved when she saw me looking and ran for the stairs. I met her at the bottom.

‘They burned out my car,’ she said.

‘I know,’ I said.

‘My lovely brand new car,’ she said.

‘I know,’ I said, and grabbed her arm. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’ I tried to drag her back towards the Opera House.

‘We can’t go back that way,’ she said.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘Because I think there’s some people following you,’ she said.

I turned. The principal cast were back, followed by what I recognised as the orchestra and some people dressed mostly in t-shirts and jeans who I took to be the backstage crew. The Royal Opera Company is a world-class institution dedicated to staging some of the biggest operas on an epic scale – they have a very large backstage crew.

‘Oh my God,’ said Beverley. ‘Is that Lesley?’

Lesley had pushed to the front of the crowd, still wearing her Punch face. She held up her hand and the company paused.

‘Run,’ I said to Beverley.

‘Good idea,’ she said and, grabbing my arm, pulled me backwards so hard I almost fell over. Beverley darted down one of the dim brick corridors that led into the heart of the covered market. With evening drawing in, most of the actual shops were closed but stalls serving drinks and generic ethnic food should have been doing a roaring trade fleecing tourists. But there was nobody in sight, and I was hoping this meant punters and stall holders had already run for safety.

Behind us I heard the company give a great howl, in good harmony, and above that, the high-pitched squeaking laugh of the avatar of riot and rebellion. There was a sudden ominous silence, and then the first of the firebombs hit the roof. Lesley had said she didn’t want me dead, but I was beginning to suspect that she may have been lying.

Beverley swung us round a corridor and into one of the covered courtyards, which is where we found the German family. There were five of them, a stolid dark-haired father, a sharp-faced blonde mother and three children aged between seven and twelve. They must have taken shelter behind a food stall when the riot broke out, and were just emerging when they looked up to find Beverley and me barrelling towards them. The mother gave a terrified yelp, the eldest daughter screamed and the man squared up. The father didn’t want to fight but by God he was ready to defend his family from dangerous stereotypes, whatever the odds. I showed him my warrant card and he deflated in relieved surprise.

‘Polizei,’ he told his wife and then, very politely, asked whether we might help them.

I told them that we’d love to help them, starting by proceeding to the nearest exit and evacuating the area. I was sweating suddenly, and I realised that it was from the heat of a fire on my back. The whole rear of the covered market was on fire – I put one hand on the father’s back and the other on his eldest son and pushed them in the other direction. ‘Raus, raus!’ I yelled, hoping it really did mean ‘get out’.

Beverley led the way towards the so far untouched south-west corner of the market, but we’d barely cleared the second row of stalls when she skidded to a halt and the German family and I slammed into her back. Ahead, a group of rioters were using the western fa?ade of the market to engage in a running battle with police reinforcements.

‘We’re trapped,’ said Beverley.

The rioters had their backs to us, but it was only a matter of time before one of them turned round.

One of the nearby shops looked surprisingly unlooted, and while running into a building during a fire is generally considered a retrograde step I didn’t see that we had much choice. It wasn’t until we’d bundled inside and I found myself crouching behind a manikin wearing nothing but two wisps of silk that I realised we were in a branch of Seraglio. I persuaded the family to sit down behind the counter so they wouldn’t be visible from outside.

‘Please,’ asked the mother. ‘What is happening here?’

‘Beats me, sister,’ said Beverley. ‘I just work here.’

The covered market at Covent Garden has four parallel rows of shops under its iron and glass roof. Originally built to house open-fronted fruit and vegetable stalls, they’d been retrofitted with windows and power but they were still less than three metres across. Into them were shoehorned specialist craft shops, cafés and bijou versions of high-street chain boutiques, which weren’t going to let a little thing like inadequate floor space get in the way of gleaning some of that high-spending tourist action. As a result, our haven was crowded with manikins of the tastefully abstract silver and black kind, wearing distractingly skimpy bits of satin. I hoped the manikins would make us less obvious to anybody who glanced inside.