Rafiq looked her up and down.
‘I will do what I can for the moment,’ he promised her lamely. She knew it was as good as she was going to get.
‘Thank you. I will personally keep you informed of all our progress, once a day at the minimum.’
‘Don’t take too long about things,’ Rafiq began, ‘because if you do, this estate will burn-’
There was a series of small explosions outside the shop. Pop-pop-pop. Roscoe knew exactly what had caused them. Petrol bombs. It was a sound embedded into her psyche, a sound she had heard for the first time in 1981 when, as a probationer PC, she had been part of one of the many police support units sent to assist Merseyside police when the Toxteth area of Liverpool blew up into a major riot. She had heard the noise in anger several times since.
A wall of flame blew up against the shop front, followed by a buffeting surge of hot air.
Rafiq growled, ‘It’s already started.’ To the girl on the till he shouted, ‘In the back, now,’ and jerked his thumb to emphasise the order.
He started toward the front door of the shop but halted after one stride when the door was kicked open and two youths with balaclavas pulled down over their faces burst in. Each carried a petrol bomb — a milk bottle half filled with fuel, oily burning rag stuffed down the neck. They only seemed to be bits of kids, Roscoe thought quickly. Couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen. But they looked evil, all in black. Terrifying. She could not help but draw a breath.
They raised the bottles. One screamed, ‘Have these, you black twats.’
‘Get down!’ Roscoe shouted. She threw herself at Rafiq and dragged him to the floor behind the counter. As she moved she saw the petrol bombs arc through the air, spinning slowly, almost in slow motion, flames whipping round like a Catherine wheel.
The bombers scarpered, screaming gleefully.
The bottles landed virtually simultaneously on the hard floor in front of the counter. Petrol and flames sprayed everywhere. Roscoe and Rafiq huddled down behind the counter. For a few moments the heat above them was intense. Tongues of orange flames licked across the counter top, then died back.
Roscoe could not stay down for long. Christ, she thought, what’s happened to Dave?
Another explosion, this time a massive one, boomed outside.
Dave Seymour’s eyes jumped open as the first three petrol bombs hit the wide paved area between where he sat in the car and the Khan’s shop front. All three ignited with a powerful whoosh. He saw two youths kick the shop door open and enter, each holding a lighted petrol bomb.
Before he could open the car door, the front windscreen was smashed by someone wielding an iron bar. The side window was broken by another person, sending pieces of glass into his face and his clothing. Then the rear window went. There must have been a dozen of them surrounding the car, all brandishing iron bars, bats or chunks of wood, all wearing black hoods or masks.
Seymour’s insides contracted and he knew he was in deep trouble.
One of them hurled a petrol bomb into the car through the hole in the windscreen. Seymour saw it coming and cowered away, but there was nowhere he could go, nothing he could do, it landed on his lap but did not smash.
Seymour had a moment of relief. Just a moment.
As he picked up the flaming bottle the lighted wick dropped out of the neck. Petrol gushed out over Seymour’s thighs and groin. It ignited.
‘Cop bastard! Cop bastard,’ the people surrounding his car chanted mercilessly. There was laughter and triumph in their voices. ‘Burn you bastard, burn!’
Seymour screamed horribly. He managed to open the door and fell out of the car onto his knees, desperately trying to bat out the flames with his bare hands. Where one flame went out, another came to life. Bigger. Hotter. Taking a better hold on his clothing, licking up his shirt front towards his face. ‘Help me, help me,’ he screamed.
No one did.
Somehow he got to his feet and staggered towards the shop.
‘Cop bastard, cop bastard,’ rang in his ears. ‘Burn! Burn! Burn!’
Behind him more bombs smashed around the CID car. It went up in flames.
Roscoe had had enough petrol bombs thrown at her during the days when she did riot training to know not to be afraid of them. ‘Petrol reception’ the classes had been mis-called. But unlike the majority of the training she had done in the police, the lessons learned about petrol bombs had stuck with her — because they had been about self-preservation. They had taught her that if you kept your eyes on the bombs as they came towards you and made sure they didn’t hit you on the head, they did not present too great a personal threat. They looked effective, frightened the living daylights out of people, made for good TV but, if treated with respect, they were not something to worry about too much.
Having walked through pools of blazing petrol during those training sessions — albeit kitted up with stout steel toe-capped boots, flame retardant overalls, protective masks and headgear — she knew it was quite feasible to walk through flames unscathed — if you were quick enough and didn’t admire the countryside along the way. Although not exactly dressed for the part, she knew she had somehow to get through the flames and see what was happening to Dave Seymour.
‘Call the fire brigade,’ she instructed Rafiq before turning towards the flames and smoke on the other side of the counter. Thick black smoke was hanging just below the ceiling, beginning to fill the shop with its deadly vapours. She put a hand over her nose and mouth, protected her eyes with the other, took a deep breath of clean air and ran.
The fire tried to catch her as she leapt through it. She could feel incredible heat beneath the soles of her shoes and the flames shooting up her legs, underneath her skirt. It was only momentary. In a split second she was through the flames, emerging from them like a phoenix. Unscathed.
Which could not be said for Dave Seymour as he hit the shop door, bursting it open and tumbling through, twisting and writhing. He was ablaze.
Seymour could not see anything that made any sense to him. His vision was a blur, an out-of-focus lens disorientating him. Neither could he hear anything. The chants behind him turned into an all-encompassing, rushing and booming noise, surrounding him completely, like being deep underwater. He could feel the fire. Burning him, frying him — from his belly to the underside of his chin.
He knew he was screaming, knew he was being burned alive.
Roscoe reacted without a second’s thought or moment’s hesitation. A surge of grade-A adrenaline sluiced into her system. She dived for Seymour instinctively thinking: Get him down, get him on the floor, smother the flames.
She grabbed one of his arms, but in his own blind panic he wrenched it away from her, lost his balance and crashed into a wire magazine display. He stayed on his feet and staggered down the main aisle of the shop, fresh produce on one side, tinned goods and hardware on the other. Still screaming, writhing, twisting.
‘Dave!’ Roscoe bellowed — to no effect. She lunged for him again and leapt onto his back, riding him, trying to over-balance him and take him down, put him to the floor. ‘Get the fuck down!’ she hissed through clenched teeth.
At the end of the aisle, he crashed into the chilled food display. Seymour fell over, but backwards, onto Roscoe who suddenly found herself trapped under his bulk.
The fire blazed up him. He screamed again.
Rafiq appeared from behind the counter, moving quickly through the last of the flames from the petrol bombs. He was holding a fire extinguisher which he directed at Seymour. Within seconds Seymour had been put out. Rafiq then turned what was left in the extinguisher onto the petrol bomb flames.
Roscoe heaved Seymour to one side and got shakily to her knees, looking down at the huge detective who lay there, semi-comatose, with severe burns all the way up his front. Her mouth sagged open with shock. The adrenaline left her system as quickly as it had entered. She felt sick, weak and dithery, needing a sugar boost.