The Quorum (31 page)

Dolar hammered on the door of Neil’s house. Then he was talking with the Asian man who was overseeing the glazier. A minibus ground its way into Cranley Gardens, stuffed with football fans. There was a plastic soccer ball on the roof like an ice-cream van’s luminous lolly. Michael found a position by the low wall that boundaried the Gregory front garden and slumped. Neil opened his front door and stood on the doorstep, looking out at Dolar. The football van got in the way and stalled. Mark couldn’t see anything.

* * *

Kick-off would have been at 2.30. The football supporters must be late and lost. The bus was between Michael and Neil’s house, but he still heard incoherent ranting.

Dolar, who might have done well to smoke a calming joint, was angry in a mellow sort of way, and unable to tell Neil about the note wrapped around the rock tossed through his shopfront.

By peering through the driver’s-side window of the bus and focusing on the far-side window, ignoring the fuzzy bulk of the driver and his mate, who had themselves swivelled their heads to look, Michael could still see Neil’s open, puzzled face.

‘Are you homeless?’ a clear voice asked.

A little girl, her face a lot like Jonathan Gregory
sans
spots, stood by her brother’s abandoned BMX, looking over the wall at him.

‘We’re doing a project on the homeless,’ she announced. ‘Once being a tramp wasn’t so bad. They were called Gentlemen of the Road.’

He dredged the girl’s name from memory: Ellen.

‘Nowadays, Miss Young says being homeless is a social problem.’

The driver’s-side door of the bus wrenched back, and the driver clambered out. He wore a green combat jacket, a football scarf and a black balaclava. Like a jousting knight carrying a lady’s favour, he had a Union Jack tied around his upper arm.

‘Are you alcoholic as well as homeless? That’s very common, Miss Young says.’

‘Didn’t zhour mother ever tell ye not to talk with strange men?’

More football fans piled out into the street. One wore a white bedsheet tabard like a waistcoat over his jacket, a red crusader’s cross emblazoned on his chest. His ski-mask looked like chain mail.

‘Excuse me,’ the driver asked Dolar and Neil, in a distinctly non-proletarian accent, ‘but would one of you be a Mr Neil Martin?’

* * *

A moment later, Mark was startled as Sally walked by. Intent on craning to see what was going on in Cranley Gardens, he hadn’t been watching his back. She wore a bottle-green coat and check trousers, a beret and flat heels. He recognised her at once but she didn’t notice him. From her straight back and swift stride, he saw she was determined. The intelligent thing would be to walk away now. But that might mean never knowing what happened next.

* * *

Again, the man in the black balaclava asked, ‘Would one of you be a Mr Neil Martin?’

Neil was wary. But Dolar, pausing in mid-harangue, pointed at him and said, ‘He’s Neil.’

The back of the bus opened and Balaclava’s friends gathered around to pull things out like workmen picking their tools. Neil saw an axe-handle, a baseball bat, a length of chain.

‘Any rate, Neil,’ Dolar resumed, ‘this is too heavy for me, man. This window gig, you know. There’s insurance, but...

‘Need windows done, mate?’ interrupted the glazier, who was packing up. ‘I’ll give you a card.’

‘Neil Martin,’ Balaclava called, issuing a challenge. He stood in the middle of the road, hefting a foot-long screwdriver from hand to hand. Its point twinkled sharp.

‘You’ll have to shift that bus if I’m to get out,’ the glazier said to Balaclava. ‘You’re blocking the way.’

Balaclava slashed. His eyes were fixed on Neil. The glazier cried out more in surprise than pain. Blood dripped onto his overalls from his open cheek.

‘Bloody Nora.’

‘Neil Martin, I am Retribution,’ Balaclava said, stepping forwards. ‘Fear me.’

‘Heavy,’ Dolar commented.

Neil should have stepped back and barricaded the door but stood frozen on the steps.

Balaclava’s boys unleashed a fusillade. New windows burst, imploding glass into the house. A missile dug a chunk out of the wood of the front door and fell onto the step. It was a solid metal bolt, a couple of inches across.

The glazier looked at his ruined work and climbed into his van, locking the door. He sat, watching, holding a wool glove to his gashed face.

Neil was fascinated by the shining point of Balaclava’s sharpened screwdriver. He imagined he’d feel almost nothing as it slid in; the pain would come when it was pulled out.

* * *

For the middle of a Saturday afternoon, Cranley Gardens was overpopulated. Surplus vehicles blocked the road to motor traffic. Sally saw Neil on his doorstep, paused like a panicked public speaker. Expectant people - she recognised only Dolar -gathered around the gate and the short concrete path to the steps. She coasted on anger, slipping through a crowd of wide white youths in combat gear, nodding a hello to Dolar. Neil, intent on the big man a few steps below him, didn’t see her for a moment.

‘Neil, I want to talk with you,’ she said. ‘I want answers.’

She sounded like an outraged wife. In a sense, she did feel she’d been cheated on. She’d wasted half a night looking after a man who paid to have himself beaten up.

An arm yanked her out of determination, grabbing her around the waist, pulling her tight. She smelled beer breath. An ice sliver came to the corner of her eye.

‘Come out, Neil Martin,’ a loud voice said.

Remembering a long-ago self-defence course, she let her body relax completely, not resisting. She was close to someone, her whole body held to his side. With disgust and indignation, she realised the lump stuck in her hip was an erection. She couldn’t turn her head to see the man. She recalled a broad green back. A black balaclava. A flag was tied around one arm. Heavy boots edged with metal. He’d been holding something sharp, something now too near her eye. She blinked reflex tears.

Neil’s face was empty of all expression.

‘Step down or the lady wears a patch,’ the man said.

Neil extended his arms, showing he had nothing up his sleeves.

‘Hold on,’ he said, gulping, ‘don’t do anything you’ll regret...’

A nasty laugh caught in her ear. The sharp point shivered.

* * *

‘Look at the man and the lady,’ Ellen said.

Michael was already looking. His guess was the big man holding Sally Rhodes hostage was the Tottenham Enforcer of the ELF. This was his move. He was entitled to watch. A shame about Ms Rhodes, but you couldn’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.

* * *

It was as if Neil had got his wish. For almost everyone, time stopped cold. Dolar, Sally, Balaclava’s Boys: all stood like wax figures, open-mouthed in surprise. Zafir and Pel were behind him, in the hall, also frozen.

Only Neil could move. And Balaclava.

And Hendrix: the Unknown Guitar picked out a first recognisable tune, ‘Istanbul, Not Constantinople’. Each note was a jolt to a dental nerve.

For a calm moment, Neil felt he had command of his life.

‘You stand accused of treachery to your British blood, Neil Martin. You have collaborated with the urine-skinned oppressor.’

Balaclava’s screwdriver was aimed at Sally’s temple, as if she were an android with a fliptop cranium. An angry tear shone on her cheek.

Balaclava said, ‘I’ve always wanted to screw a gash’s brains out.’

He angled the screwdriver and held it horizontal to Sally’s head, pressing.

* * *

Mark was out of his alcove, drawn towards Neil’s house. He still couldn’t make out what was happening. The road was blocked by the bus and a crowd. A car was next to him, idling. Its way was barred but the driver didn’t hit the horn.

Michael’s Guitar Man serenaded the Damned.

One foot in front of the other, Mark was tugged along the road. He saw Michael, standing with a little girl, watching. Sally was in the crush on the doorsteps.

He missed his footing on the kerb and leaned, knowing the idling car would break his fall. His wrist jarred. His palm stickily froze, as if he’d pressed it to the inside of a deep freeze. A shock shot up his arm. Turning and cringing away from the car, he recognised its midnight black window. He had no feeling at all in his arm, as if bones had dissolved the instant he touched the Shadowshark. He found himself on his knees in the gutter, gripping his floppy wrist. As he clambered to his feet, there was a hiss of expelled air and an almost-damped electrical whine. A tinted window opened a crack.

He looked away, afraid the car was stuffed with fissionable anti-matter, sucking all light into its black-hole interior. If he was drawn to the window, he’d be stretched out of reality and vacuumed into eternal night. His shoulder numbed.

* * *

What would Amazon Queen do in a situation like this? Nothing: she didn’t exist, not even in the comics. So, what would S
ally Rhodes
do in a situation like this? Turn into Jellyfish Girl, usually.

Why don’t you have two eyes like all the other Mummies!

The textbook first move - she’d used it 100 years ago in Sainsbury’s - was to stamp on the assailant’s foot. This hulk wore boots she probably couldn’t dent with her heel. She had to find somewhere soft and stick something hard into it.

‘Neil,’ she said, evenly, ‘there are some questions about your life I’d like you to answer...’

‘What are you saying?’ Balaclava asked. Neil could tell he was puzzled by Sally’s question.

The Nazi might have relaxed his grip. Sally bent forward from the waist, angling her right shoulder out, then jabbed back with her elbow. She caught Balaclava at the belt buckle, jamming a large tin eagle into his rubbery gut.

The screwdriver stabbed but her head wasn’t next to it.

She bent down and sprang up, sinking her shoulder into Balaclava’s crotch, lifting him off the step. He shouted, arms and legs flailing, and over-balanced, tumbling on his back. Balaclava’s head smacked concrete.

The screwdriver rolled between dustbins.

Neil was amazed. He hadn’t thought of Sally as the Emma Peel type.

Sally, face tight with pain, shoved Neil through the door and followed inside the house. Pel was standing, appalled, by the hall table. Zafir was on the phone, gabbling in a foreign language.

Sally slammed the door and the lock caught. There were painted-over bolts. She wrestled the bottom one home and shouted for help. Pel used his hands as hammer and chisel to thump the top bolt into place. The front door jarred as someone heavy rammed it. Through glass side-panels, Neil saw Balaclava’s Boyos streaming up the steps.

They were shouting wordlessly, emitting a tribal battle cry. ‘Oi oi oi...’

‘Where’s the back way out?’ Sally asked.

‘There isn’t one,’ Neil said.

The side-panels were smashed in. Hands twisted through, scrabbling for the lock. Sally thumped away any that got close, squashing flesh against the jagged edges of the broken panels. Battle cries mixed with pain cries.

‘Haven’t you heard of fire regulations?’ she asked.

Neil and Pel looked at their landlord’s son. Zafir, calmer now, was speaking a mix of Pakistani and English.

‘Yes, right, Dadiji,’ he said, and hung up.

‘Well?’ Pel asked.

‘Dadiji says we should throw them Neil.’

* * *

He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t lift his head. Half his field of vision was occupied by asphalt. Road grit bit his cheek. Painfully turning, he saw the bottom curve of the Rolls-Royce tyre, shining silver wheelspokes. A bottle-top near his face was a huge pop art object, detailed and clear; the noisy people by Neil’s house were blurry distant toys. His cap lay upturned in the gutter, faded lining exposed.

He shivered; not with cold but as if struck by an allergic reaction. Limbs he couldn’t feel twitched and kicked. Lack of sensation spread through his chest and head, tendrils of dead nothing reaching for his heart and brain. This wasn’t in the Deal. They wouldn’t die: it had been
promised
.

A shadow passed over his face and he heard the non-squeak of a metal door smoothly opening. If he could raise his head, it’d bump on the underside of the car door jibing across him. More cold cascaded from the Shadowshark’s interior and pooled like invisible mist. His sinuses clogged with soft ice, his chilled eyeballs shocked his eyelids. Getting out of the car, the driver stepped over him. A trailing curtain dragged, briefly covering his face, then whipping away. A cloak.

A polished boot was close by his face. In the black leather curve, his stricken face reflected. From this angle, his bald patch was disturbingly blatant. There was slush in his throat. He coughed it out. It was an effort to keep breathing. The driver stood by his car, watching. Mark tried to roll over to look up, but his body was useless. His mind prowled, trapped.

* * *

The Tottenham
Fascisti
battered Neil’s house with axe-handles, chanting ‘Oi oi of. Karl Garr provided counterpoint cacophony. Michael sat and watched with Ellen. Being a vagrant rendered you invisible to anyone of wage-earning age.

The stormtrooper Sally Rhodes had tossed off the steps was by the bus, feeling his back for broken bones. His comrades kept up the attack. People had come out of nearby houses to watch or join in. Michael was aware of more standees on the Gregory front lawn. Turning, he smiled at Jonathan Gregory, who didn’t notice him.

The glazier, wounded early, emerged from his van with a blowtorch. Its tiny blue flame was wind-whisped. He tapped the stormtrooper on the shoulder with Oliver Hardy daintiness. The rip on his cheek still oozed. The ELF man turned and the glazier stubbed the torch against his chest like a cigarette. The stormtrooper yelled, a smouldering circle on his sternum.

Michael wondered if Mark had retreated. He looked to check and saw only that freak Roller parked at the end of the street. Nearer was Dolar, stunned and dazed by the pace of events. The shop owner had been demoted to onlooker by the White Knights of Tottenham. He looked around, eyes sharp, and seemed to stare directly at Michael.