L-2011 Read online

  L-2011

  The Future of London #1

  Mark Gillespie

  Contents

  L-2011

  Phase One: Riots

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Phase Two: Civil Disobedience

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Piccadilly

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  The End

  Afterword

  Also by Mark Gillespie

  L-2011

  This is a work of speculative fiction, some of it inspired by real people. All of the events and dialogue depicted within are a product of the author’s overactive imagination. None of this stuff happened. Except maybe in a parallel universe.

  * * *

  Copyright © 2016 by Mark Gillespie

  www.markgillespieauthor.com

  * * *

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  For Íde, who always believes.

  PHASE ONE: RIOTS

  Chapter 1

  6th August 2011

  London, England.

  * * *

  These people weren’t his people. Mack Walker knew this much. He certainly didn’t know the dead man whose death had brought all these faces – mostly black ones – outside Tottenham Police Station to protest on a Saturday night.

  Not for the first time that evening, his shoulder bumped into a young woman standing behind him. Mack glanced over his shoulder, intending to apologise, but the woman didn’t bat an eyelid.

  The lanky black teenager standing next to him giggled.

  “It’s no’ that funny, eh?” Mack said. His Scottish accent – so mild and inoffensive back in Edinburgh - sounded so alien in London.

  “That’s four times I’ve seen you bump into her mate,” said the teenager, dressed in a plain black hoodie and baggy navy jeans. “Just ask her for her number, why don’t ya? Maybe she likes pasty-faced Scottish lads.”

  The lanky teenager tipped the visor of his black baseball cap upwards. He turned around and was about to say something to the woman, but Mack forcefully turned him back around with a deft push.

  “Aye right Sumo,” Mack said. “Don’t be a dick, eh?”

  Sumo Dave - the only name that Mack had for the lanky teenager - turned back to the front, still giggling away to himself.

  “Is that why you asked me to come here anyway?” Mack asked. “To be the half-time entertainment?”

  Sumo Dave shrugged. He kept his eyes on the door of the police station as he spoke.

  “Felt sorry for you, didn’t I?” he said. “You being the new boy in London and all that.”

  At that moment, a male voice - a booming baritone - yelled out from the front of the crowd:

  “We want answers!”

  Other voices scattered throughout the crowd, followed his lead.

  “We want answers!”

  Scattered voices quickly grew into a collective chant. Sumo Dave joined in. Mack stood beside him, mumbling the words only because he felt he had to.

  But the door to the police station remained closed.

  “Must be at least four hundred people out here, eh?” Sumo Dave said, glancing around. “What’d ya think?”

  “Aye,” Mack said. “At least.”

  The light was fading on Tottenham High Road, but Sumo Dave’s eyes remained defiantly bright and alert. Of course he was excited. He came from that Broadwater Farm Estate shithole like most of the other people gathered here. Sumo Dave might have even known the dead man, Mark Duggan, or at least spoke to him at some point in passing. If he had, he hadn’t mentioned it to Mack so far, but then why would he? They’d only met a couple of days ago in McDonalds – the same day that Mark Duggan had been shot dead by the police. The same day that Mack and his family had arrived in London.

  “We want answers. Somebody come out and speak to us!”

  The two lads standing on the other side of Sumo Dave made a valiant - but unsuccessful - effort to start their own chant.

  “Get out here you bastards! Get out here you bastards!”

  Sumo Dave had introduced Mack to these two teenagers earlier that evening. They were Sumo’s best mates from the estate - Tegz and Hatchet. They were both sixteen, the same age as Mack and Sumo Dave. Tegz was the little one, dressed in baggy jeans and a red t-shirt that was at least two sizes too big. He also wore a matching red baseball cap, which he kept pointed to the side, reminding Mack of Flavor Flav, that old rapper from Public Enemy.

  Hatchet - dressed in camouflage jeans and a grey hoodie - was short too, but with massive Herculean shoulders that were somehow unnatural to see on such a young lad. Indeed, Hatchet already possessed the thick, muscular build of a grown man despite his lack of height. And with his short hair, shaved completely at the sides, Hatchet resembled a young Mike Tyson, back when the boxer was at his most vicious and intimidating, when he could win a fight just by looking at the other man.

  “Oh fuck this,” Tegz said, giving up the chant. He kept turning back and forth, to see if something – anything – was going to happen.

  From the front line of protestors, a banner was held aloft.

  BLACK LIVES MATTER TOO.

  Mack looked around. For the first time, he noticed that the crowd gathered outside the police station consisted of predominantly black women. They were young women too, most of them, many who had brought their children with them to Tottenham High Road, where the police station was located.

  “Shame on you!” somebody shouted.

  “Fucking police,” Tegz said, throwing his hands up in frustration. “Where are they? Why don’t they show their faces? Eh?”

  “Hang on Tegz,” Sumo Dave said. He was standing on his tiptoes now, looking over the crowd and towards the entrance of the police station.

  “I think this could be it,” he said. “Somebody’s coming out.”

  At that moment, a chorus of jeers emanated from the crowd.

  “Can’t see fuck all,” Hatchet said, standing on his tiptoes, trying to find a chink in the crowd.

  “What’s happening Sumo?” Tegz asked. “Who is it? I’m too much of a short-arse for this standing about in a crowd shit.”

  Sumo Dave was too busy watchi
ng to answer.

  Mack jostled for position and managed to find a gap in between the heads of those standing in front of him. He looked down towards the police station, trying to keep up with the action.

  A tall, middle-aged man was making his way out of the police station and walking towards the crowd. He was wearing a uniform, but given the elaborate design of the outfit, he was clearly more than just an ordinary police officer. As he walked towards the front line, the policeman looked at the crowd apprehensively. Boos were still coming his way. With a cautious step, he approached a small group of people in the front line.

  “So who’s that then?” Tegz asked, jumping up and down, trying to keep up.

  “Big boss man, innit?” Hatchet said.

  “Fucking hope so,” Sumo Dave said. “They’re hardly gonna send out the cleaner, eh?”

  Mack wasn’t so sure.

  “The big boss man doesn’t work in Tottenham Police Station,” he said. Again, as he spoke out loud, he heard his accent and was aware of how different he sounded to North Londoners. “This is probably some poor bastard who drew the short straw.”

  Hatchet looked at Mack. Like he was a cockroach crawling over his Christmas dinner.

  “D’fuck do you know about it Scottish?”

  Mack didn’t answer.

  “That’s gotta be the big boss man,” Tegz said. “They’ve snuck him in the back door or something.”

  “Gotta be someone important,” Sumo Dave said. “This is going to be on the news, innit? The police don’t want to look like a bunch of cold-hearted tits.”

  Mack positioned himself a little to the right, in between the heads of another two people. He’d momentarily forgotten his own awkwardness. Now he wanted to see what was going to happen. Would this satisfy the crowd? Would they speak to the man and then walk back home, fall into their armchairs and catch up with Saturday night TV and a drink or two?

  The policeman and those in the front line, who Mack assumed were Mark Duggan’s family, were talking. But the signs weren’t good. The policeman kept shaking his head, apologetically and yet stubbornly. Mack heard raised voices coming from the front line. In turn, the Duggan family were shaking their heads and pointing back towards the police station.

  “What’s happening?” Hatchet said.

  “Looks like they’re having a barney,” Sumo Dave said, grinning. The lanky teenager had pulled out his iPhone and turned the video on. He raised it aloft, pointing it towards the action at the front.

  “You think it’s a sob story?” Tegz asked.

  “He’ll tell ‘em whatever it takes to make us piss off home,” Hatchet said. “Last thing he and his mates want are hundreds of black people hanging about outside the station all night, eh?”

  “I don’t think so,” Mack said.

  Hatchet didn’t look at him. “Fuck off white boy.”

  “His name’s Mack,” Sumo Dave said, looking at Hatchet. “And I invited him here, so don’t be a dick Hatch?”

  Hatchet shrugged. “Whatever mate.”

  Sumo Dave was checking out the clips he’d just recorded on his phone. “These are all shit,” he said. “It’s too dark.”

  Mack pointed to the front. “They’re sending him back. They’re sending the old boy back.”

  Sumo Dave looked up, instinctively thrusting his phone into the air, pointing it randomly to the front. “What? What’s going on?”

  “He’s going back into the station,” Mack said. “The family don’t look happy down there, do they? I don’t think he was important enough to satisfy them.”

  Sumo Dave grinned. “Big boss man, eh? Bollocks.”

  “Nice one,” Tegz said. “Be a shame if it all ended here, eh?”

  The crowd resumed the chanting, unsatisfied by the police response to their presence.

  “We want answers! We want answers!”

  As time passed, the crowd seemed to be moving closer to the police station. And they continued to chant, calling over and over for a high-ranking officer to come out and speak to the Duggan family about the controversial shooting, which had taken place two nights earlier in nearby Ferry Lane.

  “Murderers!”

  Soon the last dregs of daylight faded. The police station, a massive red brick Georgian structure with elegant paned windows, became a towering black shadow framed within the dark. From inside the building, office lights poured through windows and onto the High Road, like eyes looking down from above.

  Mack took a deep breath. He was thinking about calling it a day. He’d done his bit, hadn’t he? Surely he wasn’t expected to stand out here all night with these people. After all, he hadn’t even known Mark Duggan - jeez, he’d only just moved here. Whatever this was, it wasn’t his fight. And then there were his parents to think about. Holy shit. They’d go loopy if they knew he was out here on the street protesting outside the local police station.

  His thoughts of leaving were interrupted when the crowd burst into a sudden frenzy of boos and jeers. Mack looked around, trying to see what was going on. Was this yet another low-ranking police officer walking onto the scene? At first, due to the growing darkness, he wasn’t sure what was going on.

  Then he saw them.

  It was the riot police. They were making their way down the High Road, positioning themselves in between the police station and the crowd.

  “Shit,” Mack said. “Who called them in?”

  There wasn’t that many of them – Mack guessed about twenty or thirty at first – but with their protective equipment on, the helmets, the shields, the batons, they looked as if they were expecting - or bringing - trouble.

  “This is a peaceful protest,” somebody shouted. “What are the riot police doing here?”

  “MURDERERS!”

  The chants resumed, turning the High Road into a football stadium on a Saturday afternoon.

  Sumo Dave tapped furiously at his iPhone. Once he’d found the video camera and pressed record, he hoisted it aloft, pointing it at the riot police.

  “I’m filming this,” he yelled above the din. “You’re going to be on the Internet first thing in the morning!”

  Mack watched as some of the crowd, particularly those with young children in tow, backed off, putting distance between themselves and the police station. At the same time, Tegz and Hatchet, like a lot of other young men in the vicinity, pushed their way forward through the crowd. Sumo Dave did likewise, his iPhone still raised over his head.

  But Mack held back. He didn’t want a better look at the riot police than the one he already had. The atmosphere had taken a nasty turn, which meant this was as good a time as any to do a runner.

  After all, these people weren’t his people.

  He turned around and squeezed past the protestors standing behind him. And behind those protestors were more people standing on the sidelines, those who had gathered for the sake of having something to do. Too many people, not enough air. Too loud, too much. For a second, Mack almost missed Edinburgh - a place that he couldn’t have gotten away from any faster. But at least there was something comforting in the old familiar, unlike the streets of Tottenham, which were at that moment as unfamiliar and as dangerous to him as the jungle.

  His thoughts turned to Princes Street Gardens on a Saturday afternoon. To standing in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle, near the Gothic Spire of the Scott Monument. The maroon and white buses, driving past The Old Waverley Hotel.

  Christ, you sound like a Tour Guide.

  Behind him, a furious roar erupted within the crowd. Mack’s heart was beating furiously as he turned around slowly, not sure he wanted to see what was going on behind him.

  What he saw was the riot police trying to push the crowd further back from the police station. In turn, the crowd were letting them know what they thought about their roughhouse tactics. There was furious hollering of obscenities and much posturing on the part of the younger males in particular. Others continued with the endless booing and jeering.

  Mack watch
ed from a distance. Real fucking riots, holy shit. He wanted out of there, but at the same time something kept him from running away. It was like nothing he’d ever seen before. Fascinating and horrifying all at once – the sudden loss of control, like looking through the gaps of civilisation.

  And so as the riot police pushed back the crowd, Mack stood perfectly still, feeling the hatred around him growing, as if fuelled by the aggression of the authorities.

  The first missile was a rock.

  It was hurled at police lines with tremendous force. And then came the second and the third in quick succession.

  A bloodcurdling scream pierced the night.

  The riot police thrust their shields out and pushed forwards, moving away from the police station and into the crowd. The protestors did their best to stand their ground, refusing to be pushed back.

  Mack watched as more people fled the scene, realising that the peaceful protest was now over. They grabbed hold of their children and held them close, pulling them away from the police station and further along Tottenham High Road.

  Mostly, it was crowds of young men facing off against the police now. More missiles were hurled, but these were no longer aimed solely at the riot police themselves. The police station itself had become a target, as were police cars that had the misfortune to be parked nearby.