proved? The whole event was charged with an atmosphere of adrenalized over-excitement. Kieron Sproles was by no means alone in that.
Once he was inside, he made his way to the nearest men’s room and locked himself in a cubicle. Then he pulled his shirt out of his waistband, ran his right hand up the small of his back, and found the edge of the tape that was fixed right across it, in a broad strip from his lower ribs to his hips. Sproles worked his hand down between the tape and his skin, grimacing as the hairs on his back were tweaked. Almost immediately his fingers came into contact with the edge of the Glock semi-automatic pistol that was wedged against his body.
Sproles gradually loosened the tape until the gun could be pulled free. He looked at it, checked the magazine for the umpteenth time and then placed it in one of the pockets of his jacket.
Sproles pulled the tape off his back and crumpled it into a tight ball. He tucked his shirt back in, left the cubicle and stood at a basin to wash his hands. The reflection that looked back at him from the mirror appeared no different than usual. He did not look like an assassin, whatever an assassin looked like. He put the ball of tape into the bin where the paper towels went. Moments later he was out of the men’s room and making his way to his seat. It was located in the front row of the crowd, less than ten metres from the edge of the stage.
10
MANINDER SINGH PANU had spent an hour that evening in a hospital ward, making his daily visit to his father Lakhbir’s hospital bed. Once an energetic, ambitious man, determined to improve his family’s place in the world, the older Panu now lay motionless and silent, still trapped in the coma that had held him since the night six months ago when he had been attacked by a gang of teenagers outside the Lion Market, the family’s twenty-four-hour store in Netherton Street. A flying brick had caught him on the side of his head. A fifteen-year-old boy called Jaden Crabbe had thrown it. Jaden had been coming to the shop since he was knee-high, buying sweets for himself or running errands for his mum. Now he was at one of the new high-security young offenders’ units the government had recently set up, the doctors were threatening to turn off Lakhbir Panu’s life support, and Maninder was ready to start fighting back.
He’d got together with some of the other local traders and restaurateurs to form the Netherton Street Self-Help Association. Since the law was no longer willing or able to guarantee their safety, they were going to have to do it themselves. They’d borrowed a motto from
The Three Musketeers
: ‘All for one and one for all.’ From now on, an attack on any one of their businesses would be treated like an attack on them all, and everyone would respond. The couple that ran the pub had a regular who knew some old-school villains who were no happier with the riots than anyone else. Proper professionals knocking off a posh jeweller’s shop or a Securicor van was one thing. Gobby little knobs going round wrecking local people’s lives, that was quite another. They’d handed out pump-action shotguns, guaranteed untraceable, to anyone that wanted them.
The idea of firing a gun at someone scared the hell out of Maninder Panu. But ending up a vegetable in a hospital bed scared him even more. He was a Sikh and thus a member of a proud warrior race. He told himself that if he had to fight to preserve the business his family had sweated for years to build, then that was what he was going to do. He was getting married in three months’ time. He didn’t want his wife-to-be thinking that her fiancé was a coward.
He was manning the Lion Market tonight with his cousin Ajay. Unlike Maninder, who was a short, slightly overweight man in his late thirties, Ajay was a decade younger, well over six feet tall, built like the proverbial brick outhouse and blessed with a magnificent, uncut beard that Long John Silver would have
Once he was inside, he made his way to the nearest men’s room and locked himself in a cubicle. Then he pulled his shirt out of his waistband, ran his right hand up the small of his back, and found the edge of the tape that was fixed right across it, in a broad strip from his lower ribs to his hips. Sproles worked his hand down between the tape and his skin, grimacing as the hairs on his back were tweaked. Almost immediately his fingers came into contact with the edge of the Glock semi-automatic pistol that was wedged against his body.
Sproles gradually loosened the tape until the gun could be pulled free. He looked at it, checked the magazine for the umpteenth time and then placed it in one of the pockets of his jacket.
Sproles pulled the tape off his back and crumpled it into a tight ball. He tucked his shirt back in, left the cubicle and stood at a basin to wash his hands. The reflection that looked back at him from the mirror appeared no different than usual. He did not look like an assassin, whatever an assassin looked like. He put the ball of tape into the bin where the paper towels went. Moments later he was out of the men’s room and making his way to his seat. It was located in the front row of the crowd, less than ten metres from the edge of the stage.
10
MANINDER SINGH PANU had spent an hour that evening in a hospital ward, making his daily visit to his father Lakhbir’s hospital bed. Once an energetic, ambitious man, determined to improve his family’s place in the world, the older Panu now lay motionless and silent, still trapped in the coma that had held him since the night six months ago when he had been attacked by a gang of teenagers outside the Lion Market, the family’s twenty-four-hour store in Netherton Street. A flying brick had caught him on the side of his head. A fifteen-year-old boy called Jaden Crabbe had thrown it. Jaden had been coming to the shop since he was knee-high, buying sweets for himself or running errands for his mum. Now he was at one of the new high-security young offenders’ units the government had recently set up, the doctors were threatening to turn off Lakhbir Panu’s life support, and Maninder was ready to start fighting back.
He’d got together with some of the other local traders and restaurateurs to form the Netherton Street Self-Help Association. Since the law was no longer willing or able to guarantee their safety, they were going to have to do it themselves. They’d borrowed a motto from
The Three Musketeers
: ‘All for one and one for all.’ From now on, an attack on any one of their businesses would be treated like an attack on them all, and everyone would respond. The couple that ran the pub had a regular who knew some old-school villains who were no happier with the riots than anyone else. Proper professionals knocking off a posh jeweller’s shop or a Securicor van was one thing. Gobby little knobs going round wrecking local people’s lives, that was quite another. They’d handed out pump-action shotguns, guaranteed untraceable, to anyone that wanted them.
The idea of firing a gun at someone scared the hell out of Maninder Panu. But ending up a vegetable in a hospital bed scared him even more. He was a Sikh and thus a member of a proud warrior race. He told himself that if he had to fight to preserve the business his family had sweated for years to build, then that was what he was going to do. He was getting married in three months’ time. He didn’t want his wife-to-be thinking that her fiancé was a coward.
He was manning the Lion Market tonight with his cousin Ajay. Unlike Maninder, who was a short, slightly overweight man in his late thirties, Ajay was a decade younger, well over six feet tall, built like the proverbial brick outhouse and blessed with a magnificent, uncut beard that Long John Silver would have
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