His father-in-law had beaten him, then; the first time in his life that anyone had dared to raise a hand to him. The ease of his defeat when he had tried to fight had shocked him, as had the cold precise lecture; random violence helped no one and only gave the police, who were no longer the shining paragons they had been when his father was alive, an excuse to clamp down on the National Front. Instead, Cooper had been assured that he would have a chance to shine; once he had been introduced to Baz Falkland, he had seen that day coming soon.
He glanced down at his watch again. No one was quite sure who had come up with the idea of ‘rent-a-mob,’ but the idea was simple and almost impossible to prevent. At a given time, people who wanted to earn some easy cash — and with unemployment running higher than ever, there were plenty of them — would riot in a given area. The organisers would send them along to their targets, be it a protest march, a football match, or even a police station holding a prisoner who needed sprung… and any fines would be paid afterwards. The police hated it, of course, but between the Internet and mobile phones, it had been almost impossible to shut down. Falkland had told him that it was quite possible that the original originators of the idea were already behind bars, but as a network, someone else had merely taken over the reins. Some of the non-BNP members would have fairly simple jobs; rioting in front of every police station in Manchester. By the time the police clamped down, it would be too late.
“The thing about the system, any system, is that it relies upon the consent or the silence of the majority,” Falkland had said. “We are merely going to make the majority aware of just what has been happening under their noses.”
“Now,” he said. The seven young men got out of the van. They all looked violent, even though the most dangerous person Cooper had met looked soft and harmless; they would be counting on their appearance deterring interference until it was too late. The building that rose up in front of them was the rear of a Mosque, but a special Mosque; it had been built from donations from Manchester Muslims alone. They were proud of it; as far as Cooper was concerned, it was something alien in the fabric of British civilisation. The handful of people sitting outside saw them and drew away from them; three young Muslims stepped forward, carrying staves as if they had watched too many ninja movies in their youths.
“You can’t come in here,” the leader said. Cooper could see the nervousness in his voice, confronted with serious opposition for the first time; he knew what those young men did to people who they caught alone. A girl had been beaten to death for daring to sleep with a man outside marriage. He would have liked nothing better than to take the young man on and kick his arse, but there was no time. “The Police are being called…”
Cooper had been told that the telephone networks would go down, but he had also been told to move as quickly as possible. He lifted the small pistol out of his pocket, remembering how his stepfather had hammered weapons care and safety into his mind, and shot the young man through the head. Red blood stained a spotless white robe as Muslim women started to howl; the other two were shot down before they could react. It was the work of a moment to smash one of the Mosque’s windows and toss in the fuel; a second moment and the detonator was in as well, triggering the fuel into a fire that would be unstoppable unless it was stopped quickly… and one of the ‘rent-a-mob’ groups was blocking the nearest fire station. Flames started to roar upwards as Cooper fired a shot into the leg of a Muslim woman, and then jumped back in the van, charging away from the Mosque and back into the streets of Manchester.
He laughed aloud. For the first time since… well, ever, he felt in control of his life.
One of his friends leered at him. “Fancy a bite to eat?”
Cooper chuckled. “Yes, but none of that foreign muck,” he said. He was coming down off the high now; he wanted nothing more than to wisecrack until he felt more himself again, then go out and do it all over again. “Give me a pizza or a curry any day.”
They laughed again.
Her name was Khadijah, named for the first wife of the Prophet Muhammad, Khadijah bint Khuwailid. Like many other young Muslim girls, she walked the line between religion and society, even though it was harder to walk the line these days. Khadijah, like many others, knew the terrifying stories of womenfolk killed by men for being insufficiently Islamic; secretly, she knew that there would come a time when she would have to choose between her family and her planned career. She wanted to be an air hostess, something that would be sure to excite disapproval in the community. It just wasn't fair.
Khadijah was a believer, in her own way, although nothing short of perfect submission would have pleased some of the men in her family. She was also intelligent and knowledgeable; whenever they protested at her spending time learning as much as she could about Islam, she was able to ensure that she had a piece of learning on her lips that would justify her search for knowledge. Her father’s support was important, but she had that; he had been hoping that one of her brothers would become an imam, but they were all wastrels as far as Khadijah was concerned. They seemed to spend their time lounging around at home doing nothing; if they had been asked to do something, they would have agreed and then simply not bothered to do it at all. Her father had had to come to terms with the possibility that Khadijah might be the only one in the next generation with any Islamic knowledge at all.
And she loved the library in the Mosque. She could read nine different languages, mainly Asian ones, but she had taught herself some of the variants of Arabic just so that she could read some of the books and documents from Africa. The Mosque librarian, a man old enough to be her great-grandfather — and who looked old enough to be her great-great-grandfather — had been puzzled by the girl who came every day after noon prayers to read, but as no true Muslim would ever seek to put barriers in the way of anyone learning about Islam, he said nothing. If he disapproved, he kept it to himself; the handful of young men who tried to chat with her soon fell afoul of his cold stare and disapproving eyes.
It was almost as good as having a proper chaperone. The librarian didn’t make eyes at her and couldn’t have done anything even if she had acted shamelessly in front of him… not that she would have done such a thing, of course. She was a virgin and proud of it.
The noise of the van didn’t bother Khadijah at all, but the first shot had her jumping up in shock, her headscarf almost becoming tangled in the chair before she wrapped it back around her hair. There was an art to wearing a headscarf and Khadijah had never quite managed to master it. The windows were set high in the room, but she was able to see one of the bodies falling backwards, one of the young men who were appointed to guard the Mosque from criminals. She opened her mouth to scream, staring helplessly as a skinhead white youth smashed one of the windows and poured some clear liquid inside, and then dropped something in the liquid. The smell of fuel made her dizzy… and then she realised what was about to happen. The smell was petrol and it was about to catch fire; she had seen enough movies to know what would happen then…
“Get back,” the librarian snapped. A strong arm yanked her back as something sparked and the rear of the library burst into flame. Khadijah watched in horror as the fires spread throughout the library, burning books and pamphlets alike; microfilms, cassette tapes, videos and DVDs added their smells to the air as the fire consumed them faster than seemed possible. “You have to get out of here.”