The Crime Tsar Read online

  ‘Cold?’ he asked solicitously.

  ‘Just someone walking over my grave. Now … let’s see, what were we talking about? Oh yes … you. How nice.’

  By seven o’clock bulletins from the Flamborough Estate were arriving at Tom Shackleton’s office every fifteen minutes. One of his best superintendents, Don Cork, was coordinating officer in command, codename Gold. Running the show on the front line was Ron Randall, codename Silver. Not a GCSE between them but sixty years’ experience of everything from male organs trapped in reluctant retrievers to civil unrest on a grand scale. The reports indicated that petrol bombs and weapons of all sorts, possibly firearms, were being brought into the area. Several cars had been set alight and shops looted.

  The big white vans full of edgy young police officers spoiling for a fight were parked around the estate and on the front line, the main access to the estate. It was marked with police tape. Blue-and-white, fluttering in the light breeze. On one side of this fragile barrier the eerily silent blocks of flats, at every window a pair of eyes watching the two lines of uniformed officers who stood, unmoving, on the other side.

  The front rank were without weapons or defence, the rear in riot gear, black greaves on dark overalls, helmets with prospect visors, long-handled batons and round Roman shields.

  On Shackleton’s instructions the police had not responded to any calls since four o’clock. Hysterical residents were dialling 999, screaming they’d been abandoned, threatening to sue, knowing their rights. The telephone operators didn’t point out that, in law, neither police nor fire service had any obligation to respond to emergency calls from the public.

  The media were gathering, ensuring by their presence a display of testosterone-fuelled aggression from both sides.

  On the east of the estate, Carter’s territory, there was another line of police, more vans, more tape.

  Tom stood looking out of the window – the sky was alight with the red streaks of a shepherd’s delight. He knew the real trouble wouldn’t start until dark – and until all the television crews had arrived. The audience in place and the theatre ready.

  Janet knocked discreetly and came in.

  ‘BBC and ITV, Sky and local and national newspapers have arrived on the estate, sir. Mr Vernon thinks they were called by the youths themselves.’

  No doubt about it.

  ‘Thank you, Janet. Oh, and I want to go down there. At nine o’clock. Not in my car.’

  The sleek black Jaguar sweeping on to the estate would be bound to cause trouble. And be bad for the image of the Caring Chief Constable.

  ‘Send round a patrol car. But I want Gordon to drive.’

  Janet nodded and left. Of course he wanted Gordon. Weasly, unimaginative Gordon. He had only one quality to recommend him to Shackleton. He was armed.

  Shackleton went to the phone and dialled Geoffrey Carter’s direct line.

  He answered quickly.

  ‘Carter.’

  ‘Geoffrey, I’m on my way to the Flamborough – want to join me?’

  ‘What’s your plan?’

  ‘Oh … I think you and I can talk our way out of this one … don’t you?’

  Carter laughed. ‘I think we could talk our way into and out of a Trappist nunnery.’

  Shackleton smiled. ‘I’ll meet you at nine-thirty outside the Crown pub by the station. It’ll be just dark by then.’

  ‘Uniforms?’

  Shackleton paused for a moment. He was wearing a suit, well cut, grey silk tie, white shirt, good shoes. He weighed up the forthcoming situation. The youths, inflamed against the police, would be taken off-guard by civilian clothes and give them a more sympathetic hearing.

  But his own men would expect him to wear the uniform, not to make concessions to these yobs. And the uniform represented authority, an authority not to be intimidated by any section of society. Finally, the impact in the media would be greater if they wore the crowns and insignia of their rank.

  ‘Uniforms,’ he said. ‘Swagger sticks and gloves.’

  ‘And hats off asap. Yes. Good. Forty minutes then.’ Carter rang off.

  What on earth was he doing? He felt like a lad who’d just agreed to go joy-riding with the local tearaway. Why had he said yes? Was he trying to prove he was as macho as Tom Shackleton? It wasn’t what chief constables did. It was stupid, it was risky and it wasn’t by the book. But it was typical Shackleton. And it made the adrenalin run.

  If Carter had a weakness it was being human. When he was a DC he had discovered the pleasure of masculine closeness after his team had got ‘a result’. The drinking, the physicality, the emotional memory of shared danger and, most importantly, the equality.

  As he’d hurtled through the ranks he’d never stopped searching out that camaraderie. Geoffrey Carter was famous for always remembering the secretaries’ birthdays, for making sure his driver got proper breaks and was fed on jobs. For caring even when there was no camera or microphone to record his good deeds. It was part of the legend that, when the son of an old sergeant based in the middle of nowhere died in a car crash, Carter visited him and supported the family through their bereavement.

  Although not naturally ‘one of the lads’, wherever he’d served he’d been popular and he’d gained a reputation for having a soft spot for the unconventional, if it got results.

  Shackleton, whose natural constituency was the canteen rather than the restaurant, whose background had featured contact sports rather than ballet or opera, disliked the loud bonhomie of the changing room, the physical closeness of the triumphal piss-up. He was a loner whose occasional spectacular acts of daring or bravery were motivated solely by an instinct for self-challenge and self-promotion. He avoided at all costs getting involved. If gifts were given it was Jenni who bought and gave them, out of expediency.

  Once, after a meeting, during which Gordon had been kept waiting in the car, the female councillor Shackleton had been lunching with asked if Gordon had been fed and watered. Shackleton looked blank and shook his head, not knowing why Gordon should have been. The woman had stood in the street and said, loud enough for any passer-by to hear, ‘You mean bastard!’ Gordon was shocked and secretly pleased. Shackleton thought her a fool and did not learn the lesson. He took no responsibility for anyone other than himself.

  Shackleton opened the door beside his desk and went into his changing room. Immaculately ironed shirts and uniforms hung on wooden hangers. He didn’t know it was Lucy who had pressed each piece, breathing in the steam as if he was in it. If he’d known it would have caused him embarrassment.

  He put on his uniform with the care of a priest robing for Mass. He caught sight of himself in the mirror. Not a trace of the excitement he felt showed on his face. He felt aroused as other men did when anticipating an evening with a desirable woman. Alive at the possibilities.

  Carter hadn’t arrived when Gordon stopped the patrol car outside the dingy pub on the edge of the Flamborough Estate. Shackleton got out. It was dark now and the bleakness of the road was softened by the orange street lights.

  Shackleton had chosen the Crown because it was a Caribbean and Irish pub. Its regulars were no fans of the police, but even less keen on the Africans and Asians who were comparative newcomers, accusing them of throwing their rubbish into the front gardens and of being responsible for most of the crime on the estate.

  Most of the men and all of the few women customers were older people, the men working on building sites or in the alternative economy, paving and tiling the front gardens of suburbia. Church on Sunday and a good punch-up after closing on Friday. As usual the oldest men were playing dominoes in the saloon bar.

  Shackleton stood outside, looking into the estate. It was uncannily quiet, no Bangra or drumming blaring out of flats and cars. No loud, uncontrolled adolescent voices. Nothing. In the distance he saw a flash of light followed immediately by a loud bang.

  ‘Car going up,’ observed Gordon. He wasn’t frightened but he quivered like a whippet. Fight or
flight. With Gordon it was always fight.

  Shackleton became aware of three black women sitting outside a flat opposite the pub. It was an extraordinary sight. The occupants had marked out an area on the scrubby grass as theirs. It was bordered with pots containing a riot of flowers, ivies and shrubs. All plastic.

  Against the wall of the flat were oil cans, sinks, and even an old lavatory pan filled with more plastic blooms in vivid colours undreamt of in nature. One of the women was carefully dusting them and spraying room freshener on those she felt had lost their scent. The two other women sat in fold-down picnic chairs, a five-litre bottle of sarsaparilla between them.

  ‘Hello there, Mr Shackleton. You keepin’ well?’

  He was surprised to be greeted by name; he was sure he didn’t know these women but stepped closer to be sure. The woman who spoke was the heaviest of the three. She sat, her knees parted by the flesh of her thighs, watching the evening with a great smile on her round, shining face.

  On her head, she wasn’t so much wearing as had precariously perched a pink hat made of synthetic straw and in the style of old-fashioned girls’-school felt hats. A wide ribbon of deeper pink went round the brim to a tight, flat bow at the back.

  Shackleton wondered which would give first, the chair or the thin material of her dress, which struggled to encompass the vastness of her bosoms and belly. There was something so elementally sexual in the expanse of her; her cavernous cleavage was so unashamedly inviting he looked away, feeling inadequate and ridiculous and, above all, white.

  The woman sitting next to her was as thin and dry as she was voluptuous and moist. Her legs, also apart at the knee, had high calf muscles and long ankles finishing in large flat feet which pushed out the sides of larger flatter shoes.

  The feet were crossed, resting on their outers, her legs so thin they looked like crossbones and her fleshless face the skull. She said nothing but nodded amiably. Her long bony hands, the skin cracked through lack of care and sun, worked quickly at her crochet. A pile of doilies and anti-macassars lay on a newspaper by her feet.

  Shackleton looked at her and recognised in the sharpness of her eye sockets and the dullness of her skin the proximity of death. He glanced away, towards the fire they had made in a small tin bath. The third woman stopped her dusting to turn and look at him.

  The feelings the fat woman and death’s companion had stirred in him were replaced by something like fear when he saw her face. It was deep black, an African colour without the friendly warmth of the West Indies. A slate-blue-black with the cheeks deeply scarred by three slashes on either side.

  Her features were without a shadow of the Caucasian in size or position. She was shockingly alien, unexpected. But it was her eyes that repelled Shackleton though he was unable to look away. They were exactly like the cowrie shells used for eyes in African sculpture. As if the eyeball had been folded over and the edges crudely sewn together.

  For a second he wanted to get nearer to pull them out, to find the real eyes underneath. After a moment she turned her unsmiling ebony face and unsettling eyes away from him and continued dusting. She bent from the waist, legs straight, and as she did he realised she must be over two metres tall and as slender and supple as a young tree. He had never seen a human being so different, so disturbing.

  ‘You come for the riot, Mr Shackleton?’

  The fat woman was still smiling, her teeth perfect white tombstones.

  ‘I hope there won’t be one,’ he replied with his most self-deprecating dip of the head.

  ‘No, Thomas, No …’

  She was laughing now, laughing at him, joined soundlessly by the death’s head next to her.

  ‘You’re counting on one … counting on it, child.’

  And in that moment he felt like a child. Caught in a lie.

  Geoffrey Carter’s Rover arrived while the women were still chuckling affectionately. Back on safe ground Shackleton turned abruptly, glad to be rid of the women, and walked over to him.

  ‘I don’t think the Rover’s a good idea,’ he said as Carter got out.

  ‘No … you’re probably right. I’ll tell the driver to wait here. We’ll take your car, shall we?’

  As they walked to the patrol car Shackleton could feel the women watching him. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. With an irritated gesture he rubbed his hand over them and got into the front passenger seat next to Gordon. Carter sat in the back.

  They drove slowly towards the estate. As they got closer they saw police vans waiting around every corner, lads in uniforms, tense, ready, not so different from the lads in the flats. Dog handlers standing with their patient animals close by their legs. And then the black backs of the riot police, legs planted apart, unmoving.

  Shackleton signalled Gordon to stop. The three men got out. Inspector Ron Randall hurried towards them. His position Silver, number two in command when trouble kicked off. Both chiefs smiled as if this were a meeting in the social club. Carter shook his hand, bending slightly to speak to him. The same height as Shackleton, he had the wiry build of a marathon runner and looked almost delicate next to the other chief. Thin-faced and fine-boned, he had earned the name of Bambi from his force because of his leggy grace and long-lashed eyes.

  They told Randall it was their intention to go in, to try to defuse the situation. Randall was appalled – in his opinion these two clothes horses would only make things worse. He tried to dissuade them, then tried to persuade them to take armed officers with them.

  Their faces were grave, concentrating as though listening to him, but he knew the chance of a media coup was more to them than caution. That retiring with no mortgage and a good pension was not an ambition for either of them.

  As they turned away from Randall he radioed Gold, Superintendent Don Cork.

  ‘Mr Shackleton and Mr Carter are going in alone. They want to negotiate face to face. We are to keep back. I repeat, the Chief Constables wish us to keep back.’

  Unspoken but heard by Cork was the certainty that if it went wrong the resulting chaos would result in nationwide race riots. Randall remembered there’d been a chief constable of Essex who’d exchanged himself for a hostage during a pub siege once but this wasn’t about bravery. This was about self-promotion. Gold saw the repercussions for his own career clearly. If it all went pear-shaped and there was an inquiry he would be responsible.

  ‘Gold to Silver. Instruct Mr Shackleton and Mr Carter they are not, repeat not, to proceed.’

  ‘It’s too late,’ Randall replied.

  There was a pause. The radio crackled, then Gold’s voice, clear in the heavy silence.

  ‘What a pair of wankers.’

  The two chiefs with Gordon a pace behind walked in silence up to the tape. As they touched it a strange wailing sound echoed round the empty streets and the sound of metal pipes being beaten against concrete started up. Rhythmic, frightening.

  Out of the corner of his eye Shackleton saw a movement. Too late to be avoided, a flaming milk bottle filled with petrol landed close to their feet. The flames spread out across the road. A roar of approval from the unseen foe; and then they began to show themselves. On the roofs, the walkways and in the doorways young men appeared, all with their faces shrouded in handkerchiefs and scarves. A group of them started to bounce a car parked in their route. Like army ants they swarmed over it and in minutes it was on its back. Alight.

  Carter and Shackleton stood, watching, still. Behind them a camera crew, carrying a ludicrous microphone clad in a shaggy fur coat on a long pole.

  ‘BBC, sir,’ murmured Gordon.

  Shackleton nodded briefly. Unhurriedly he bent down and ducked under the tape. Carter followed, then Gordon. Two officers barred the way of the camera crew but Tom turned and beckoned them on.

  ‘Just them,’ he said.

  When the small group was under the tape Shackleton and Carter began to walk steadily towards the youths and the flaming car. Randall watched, torn between admiration and contempt. His mind
had already dealt with the deaths of the chiefs and the appalling aftermath. He would be the one to start the Armageddon. The air in his radio hissed, waiting for a command. The command to start a race war throughout Britain.

  A half-brick was thrown and skidded along in front of the chiefs. Another. Someone behind Shackleton yelped sharply. He glanced round; the sound man had been struck on the shin. Shackleton turned back, his careful pace uninterrupted. This was his element, the only time he could simply be. No fear and no thought, just a wave of adrenalin and total relaxation.

  Carter, beside him, was vibrating with the danger they were in, aware of every eye, every twitching hand. Where Shackleton was experiencing an athlete’s calm before the big race, Carter was shaking with stage fright.

  Three masked youths, carrying knives and baseball bats, started to walk towards them. Carter almost laughed. It was too High Noon. Too melodramatic.

  Behind the three masked youths came another six, then seven, ten. Twenty. All armed. Shackleton saw they were both Sudanese and Pakistani. The police had already united the warring factions. A thought went through his head so fast he almost didn’t hear it: he wondered how it felt to be liked.

  The crowd was jittery, unsure, dangerous. The police stopped with about five feet between them and the ring leaders. Immediately they were surrounded. The cameraman swivelled round, videoing every hidden face, then moved sideways to get the chief constables facing the rioters.

  Slowly Shackleton reached up and removed his gold-laden hat and tucked it, with his swagger stick, under his arm. A fraction later Carter followed suit. Then, just as deliberately, Shackleton removed his soft brown gloves. Carter did the same.

  With the ritual tension of samurai they handed their hats, sticks and gloves to Gordon without taking their eyes off the boys in front of them. It was as if they were handing in their weapons. Shackleton knew the psychological effect this disarming would have.

  The ring leader couldn’t stand Shackleton’s steady, unblinking look any more.

  ‘What the fuck do you want? Fucking pig.’