Only then would he have a chance to get out of there without a fight. He took a deep breath and slid the door along its rail. He did not need to look at their laces to know where he had ended up. The walls were tagged with red swastikas. Nazi symbols were daubed alongside pictures of concentration camps and blow-ups of tortured Algerian POWS. Beneath them, a gang of cropped-hair kids in green jackets was observing him. Their steel-capped Docs gleamed in the darkness. Extreme right-wing, militant tendency. Karim knew that all these characters had the word "SKIN" tattooed on the inside of their lower lips.
Karim concentrated on his own movements and looked round for their weapons. He knew what sort of arsenal these crazies usually had: American knuckledusters, baseball bats and pocket revolvers with a double magazine of buckshot. The bastards probably also had some pump-action shotguns stashed away somewhere, loaded with rubber bullets.
What he then saw looked even worse.
Girls. Female Skins, with shaved heads, except for tufts sticking up over their foreheads and locks dangling down over their cheeks. Fattened up bitches, dowsed in booze and probably even more violent than their men. Karim swallowed hard. He now realised that what he was up against was no group of bored street kids, but a genuine gang which was presumably hiding out there while waiting for some new contract to go and beat someone up. He reckoned his chances of getting out in one piece were diminishing rapidly. One of the girls had a swig from her beer, then opened her mouth to burp. For Karim's benefit. The others burst out laughing. They were all as big as the cop.
The Arab forced himself to speak loudly and clearly:
"All right you lot, I'm a cop. I'm just here to ask you a few questions."
They came over toward him. Cop or not, Karim was first and foremost an Arab. And an Arab's hide was not worth shit in a warehouse full of these bastards. Nor even, perhaps, as far as Crozier and the rest of his fellow officers were concerned. The young lieutenant trembled. For a split second, the earth seemed to fall away from under his feet. It felt as if he was up against an entire town, a country, even the 'world.
Karim took out his automatic and pointed it toward the ceiling. This gesture stopped his attackers in their tracks.
"I repeat: I'm a cop and I want to play this fair and square with you."
He slowly placed his gun down on a rusty barrel. The skins watched him.
"I'll leave my piece here. And no one'll touch it while we all have a nice little chat."
Karim's automatic was a Glock 21 – one of the newest ultra-light models, made of 70% polymer. It had fifteen rounds in its magazine, plus one in the barrel, and a phosphorescent sight. He was sure that they'd never seen one before. He had got them.
"Who's the boss round here?"
Silence for an answer. Karim took a few steps forward and repeated: "Who's the frigging boss? We're wasting time here."
The biggest one came forward, his entire body pent up ready to launch into the attack. He spoke in the rocky regional accent. "What does this little runt want with us, then?"
"I'll forget you said that. Now, let's talk."
Nodding, the skin walked over to him. He was taller and broader than Karim.
The Arab thought of his dreadlocks and what a handicap they were. In a fight, they made for a perfect handhold. The skin kept coming, his hands open, like metallic wrenches. Karim did not budge an inch. A glance to his right: the others were approaching his gun.
"So what does our little Arab want…"
The head-butt shot out like a missile. The skin's nose was flattened into his face. As he doubled up, Karim span round and kicked him in the throat. The hooligan took off and landed again six feet away, rolling in agony. One of the skins grabbed the gun and pressed the trigger. Nothing. Just a click. He tried to load the breech, but the charger was empty. Karim took out a second automatic, a Beretta, from a holster behind his back. With one foot on his victim, he aimed his gun at the gang and yelled:
"Did you really think I was going to leave a loaded gun lying around with little fuckers like you?"
The skins were petrified. The man on the ground gave a strangled groan:
"Fair and square, eh? You cunt."
Karim kicked him in the groin. He screamed. The cop knelt down and twisted his ear. The cartilage cracked between his fingers.
"Fair and square? With shitheads like you?" Karim laughed nervously. "You gotta be joking…Now, you bunch of cunts, turn round! Hands against the wall! The bitches too!"
He shot out the neon lights. They went up in a blue flash, the metal casing ricocheted against the ceiling before crashing down onto the ground in an explosion of firecrackers. The hoodlums were now running round left, right and center. Pathetic. Karim yelled fit to bust a gut:
"Empty your pockets! One move, and I'll knee-cap you!"
The room was now a vibrant darkness. Karim stuck his gun into the leader's ribs and quietly asked him:
"What are you lot on?"
The man was spitting blood.
"Wh…what?"
Karim dug deeper with his gun.
"What junk are you getting off on?"
"Speed…glue…"
"What sort of glue?"
"Di…Dissoplastine."
"What? For bicycle punctures?"
The skin nodded dumbly.
"Where is it?" Karim went on.
The hooligan rolled his bloodshot eyes.
"In the trash bag…over there by the fridge…"
"One move, and I'll kill you."
Karim backed off, staring round the room as he went, pointing his gun at the wounded skin, then at the motionless figures facing the wall. With his left hand, he tipped over the bag: thousands of tablets spilled out, as well as some tubes of glue. He picked up the tubes, opened them and walked across the room. He squeezed out gluey snail trails onto the floor, just behind the cornered skins. As he went, he kicked them in the legs and the kidneys while pushing away their knives and other implements to a safe distance.
"Turn round."
Their Docs shuffled uneasily.
"Now, you're all going to show me how many press-ups you can do. The bitches as well. Right on the glue."
Their hands squelched down into the Dissoplastine, which oozed up between their clenched fingers. After three pushes, their palms were stuck firmly. The skins slumped down, chests on the floor, twisting their wrists as they hit the concrete.
Karim went back to his initial attacker. He sat down, cross-legged in the lotus position and breathed deeply to get his calm back. His voice became more relaxed:
"Where were you last night?"
"It…it wasn't us."
Karim's ears pricked up. He had humiliated these skins as a challenge and was now asking them questions as a matter of form. He was sure that these shitheads had had nothing to do with desecrating the cemetery. But now this skin seemed to know what he was after. The Arab bent down.
"What are you talking about?"
The leader leant on his elbow.
"The cemetery…it wasn't us."
"How do you know about it then?"
"We…we were over that way…"
Karim suddenly caught on. Crozier had a witness. That morning, somebody had tipped him off that the skinheads had been seen round the cemetery the previous night. The superintendent had then packed him off without saying a word. Karim would settle that score later.
"Go on."
"We was hanging round there…"
"What time?"
"I dunno…about two o'clock, maybe…"