And suddenly we were back to a stand-off again, half a beat away from violence.
It was Madeleine who spoke then. “Look, Superintendent,” she said, calm and reasonable as though breaking up squabbling children, “you’ve just said you haven’t got men to waste. Why waste these two trying to arrest us?”
MacMillan did his best to hold back a smile, but it escaped across the corner of his mouth, even so. He glanced back at me, and in that brief connection I saw the struggle, the tightrope he was walking between the result he so badly wanted to obtain, and utter, bleak disaster. He sighed again, more heavily this time, and gave in.
“What do you need?” he said.
Beside me, I felt Sean loosen. “Body armour would be good,” he said. “It’ll have to be covert stuff, though, or they’ll think we’re with your lot.” He cracked a tired smile of his own. “And I wouldn’t say no to a couple of MP5s.”
MacMillan threw him an old-fashioned look. “Body armour I can manage,” he said grimly. “Firearms are quite another matter.”
I thought of the Glock, still in the glovebox of the Patrol.
“We’ll manage,” I said.
MacMillan jerked his head back towards one of the Sherpa vans on the other side of the car park. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll get you kitted out.” As we started to follow him across the wet tarmac, he added, “Are you sure you realise the dangers of what you’re doing?”
Sean paused at that, met the Superintendent’s eyes and said simply, “I realise the dangers of doing nothing. Roger’s my little brother. What else can I do?”
***
In the back of the Sherpa was a pile of spare body armour like thin black nylon life jackets. MacMillan’s sidekicks started sorting through it and dragging out appropriate sizes for the three of us.
Sean looked at the one he was handed, clearly unimpressed.
“Where are the plates?” he demanded.
MacMillan favoured him with a pointed stare. “This is all I can supply at short notice,” he said. “Take it or leave it.”
“What plates?” Madeleine wanted to know, as Sean helped her strap on her vest.
“Thick ceramic plates that fit into these pockets on the front and back,” he explained. “As they are, these wouldn’t stop anything heavy.”
Madeleine looked down at the vest as she shrugged her jumper back over the top of it. “You mean that without them they’re not bullet-proof?” she asked faintly.
Sean gave her a savage grin. “Nothing’s ever bullet-proof,” he said. “It’s just bullet-resistant. It’s like a rain jacket. Even if it’s supposed to be waterproof, if you stand out in the rain for long enough, you will get wet.”
There was a short, pregnant silence.
“Thank you,” I said tartly, “That’s very reassuring . . .”
We quickly discovered, though, that Sean couldn’t stand having the straps of the armour anywhere near his injured shoulder. Trying to work round the wound just exacerbated the problem.
Eventually, he gave it up, threw the armour back on the pile in frustration. “I’ll just have to risk it,” he said, sweat standing out on his forehead. “But I’ll take a spare one for Roger. The smallest you’ve got.”
MacMillan had eyed him in stony silence while he struggled. “I won’t ask what happened to that shoulder,” he said quietly, “but you’re going to have to give me the full story tomorrow. And it had better be good.”
***
Twenty minutes later, we climbed into the Nissan and Madeleine cranked up the engine. A thin drizzle had started to fall. MacMillan put his head in through the open window.
“I’ll try and pull my men back from the area so you don’t get any interference,” he said. “I can’t warn them you’re on your way. We think half this lot are listening in on police scanners and I don’t want to tip anyone off.”
“Thank you,” Sean said, and meant it.
MacMillan nodded shortly, rapped his hand on the top of the door briskly as he stepped back. “Don’t forget,” he warned, in more like his old clipped tone, waving a finger. “I want both you and your brother in my office tomorrow morning. First thing.”
“Don’t worry,” Sean said. “If we make it, we’ll be there.”
***
Getting into the estate without first tangling with the police lines was the easy part. MacMillan had opened up a small gap for us in the perimeter, and we shot through it without stopping.
To begin with, the outward demeanour of Lavender looked normal. Quiet, maybe, but normal. Except for the total lack of population. The first houses we passed were unnervingly still, as if the empty properties were watching us blankly under the streetlights. There didn’t even seem to be any cats.
Madeleine made another turn. This time there was more evidence of haste, and fear. Windows had been left open, letting the net curtains behind them flutter at the end of their tethers, as though they were trying to get away, too. The odd front door was ajar. The Patrol’s headlights picked out a child’s red plastic pedal tractor, lying on its side in the gutter.
We nearly got as far as Kirby Street, when we turned a corner to find the road completely blocked from one hedge to another by a pair of burning vehicles. One of them had once been a police patrol car. The road was covered in debris, a pavement tree lay uprooted, and a road sign had been pulled up and bent double, its concrete footing still attached.
Madeleine braked to a halt about twenty metres away just as the tyres burst on one of the cars. They went off like pistol shots, echoing from the brickwork on either side of us, making us jump.
“What do we do now?” she asked, shaky but holding. “Is there another way round?”
“We’ll look,” Sean said. I gestured to the glovebox. He reached in and came out with the Glock, which he checked briefly and shoved into the back of his belt. “Stay here and keep the motor running,” he told Madeleine. “If there’s any sign of trouble fall back two streets and we’ll meet you there.”
She nodded whitely and I jumped out with him, slamming the door on an indignant Friday. The stench of the smoke instantly clogged my nostrils. I held my breath as we slipped into the nearest ginnel.
The raucous noise grew louder as we approached the next street, and our pace slowed to a cautious tiptoe in the darkness. It was impossible to see what was under your feet, in any case. I stayed a pace or so behind Sean, my eyes constantly straining to cover the ground behind us.
At the end of the ginnel we crouched low to the fence and peered around the corner of it.
A white kid who couldn’t have been more than twelve ran out of the nearest house doorway and down the short path away from our position, with a flat square box clutched to his chest that was probably a video recorder.
He was followed by a blonde-haired girl, perhaps a year or so younger. In one hand she was carrying a ghetto-blaster, running so the plug bounced along on the end of its lead behind her like a toy dog. In the other she had a cordless electric drill.
The next person out of the house was older, but that still didn’t mean he was out of his teens. He came out walking backwards, emptying the last of a green plastic fuel can over the hall carpet as he emerged. Once the can was empty he threw it aside, pulled a box of matches out of his pocket, and struck one.
As we watched, he flicked the match into the house and darted back out of reach of the blaze that clawed instantly at the doorway. The fire seemed to burst into the world fully grown by the accelerated nature of its birth, and ravenous.
The older boy grabbed his fuel can, but was no more than four strides down the path when something small, dark, and blurred came raining out of the sky. We heard the sound effects of impact, a crack, a grunt, then falling.