Chapter 6
‘Will you hurry up?’
He shook his head. ‘Nope.’
The town was nice. Genteel, in a sleepy sort of way. Lots of old-fashioned Scottish buildings in various shades of granite. The kind of place where the bus shelters weren’t covered in marker-pen genitals and spray-paint profanity.
But it should’ve been flashing by much quicker.
The lights changed at the crossing, outside the local Indian takeaway, and Tufty stopped. Waiting for a harassed-looking mother to drag her horrible screaming children across. Probably not going for an early-morning breakfast bhaji.
He gave Mummy a cheery wave and got a scowl in reply. ‘Can you imagine the headlines if we squished some poor member of the public, like her? Or her kids? Not to mention the damage it would do to your car.’ A low whistle. ‘And your insurance premiums.’
Urgh . . . ‘Suppose you’ve got a point.’
The lights turned green and off they pottered at thirty miles per hour, ambling through the town square – which was more of a lopsided triangle – then a hard left at the sign for Hatton of Fintray.
A dour kirk appeared on one side of the road: Kintore Parish Church.
It had the welcoming air of somewhere that might end up converting from Christianity to Carpet Warehouse – bless this underlay, for it has sinned – with an attached graveyard and no parking.
All enclosed behind a shoulder-high wall.
Campaign headquarters lay on the opposite side of the road.
An olde worlde granite bungalow that had two dormer windows and a small portico over the door, which combined to make the place look a little bit like a startled pig.
A yellow-and-black sign took up most of one window: ‘EMMA DORNOCH: BETTER FOR SCOTLAND!’
And in the middle of the road – halfway between politics and damnation – was a pretty lacklustre riot. If you could call five middle-aged men in chinos and pastel-coloured polo-shirts facing off against nine T-shirted ‘young adults’ a ‘riot’.
They’d only got as far as entry-level pushing and shoving. Some chest-to-chest glaring. A touch of placard-based tussling. No sign of any blows being traded.
But the morning was still young.
A couple of dog walkers looked on, while an auld mannie in the churchyard leaned on the cemetery wall – smoking his pipe and watching the scuffle. Because either he was freakishly tall, or the graveyard sat a good bit higher than the road. To accommodate all those dead people . . .
The youngsters were wearing ‘EMMA DORNOCH’ campaign T-shirts, in various cheery shades, holding hand-made placards with things like ‘SMASH WHITE SUPREMACY!’, ‘FAR RIGHT: AWA AND SHITE!’, and ‘NO MORE NAZIS!!!’ on them. None of the kids looked a day over twenty-four. Jammy sods.
There were a couple of proper hotties among their ranks too.
One had long, wavy rust-red hair and a cartoon tattoo on one arm.
Round glasses. Angry freckles. She wasn’t just girl-next-door pretty either, she was the kind of pretty that would make you suck in your stomach .
. . if you weren’t hungover and full of sausage-bacon-and-egg butty.
The other had long brown hair, cute nose, big eyes, and an in-and-out figure that set things tingling in your downstairs.
Something guaranteed to turn your downstairs dry as the Sahara Desert was the gammon-faced bunch of pricks they were shout, sneer, snarl, and scowling at.
Those pastel polo-shirts gave the middle-aged mob an air of soccer casuals who’d gone to seed. Lots of bald heads and double chins. Probably sold used Ford Cortinas and abused whippets when they weren’t demonstrating and making tits of themselves.
Their placards were all professionally printed: ‘brITAIN FOR THE brITISH!’, ‘THE UK IS NOT OK!’, ‘NO MORE LIBTARD LEFTIES!’, ‘NO SHARIA LAW!!!’, and the pièce de résistance: ‘EU FASHISTS! OUT! OUT! OUT!’
Because nothing said ‘well thought-out argument’ like being too thick to spell the thing you were protesting against.
And each one of their placards had the Anglo-Saxon Defence Group logo in the bottom left corner. Like an advert: if you enjoyed this dose of racism, bigotry, and ignorance, why not try our other repugnant views?
The only protester not wearing the polo-shirt-and-chinos uniform was a greasy frog-faced fuck in a waxed Barbour jacket, faux-farmer checked shirt, flat cap, and burgundy cords.
He was probably in charge, because he stood well back from the argy-bargy, bellowing away into a loudhailer.
Which was a bit overkill for a half-arsed tussle on a wee side street.
‘. . . IS TYPICAL OF COWARDLY LEFTIES! OUR COUNTRY IS OVERRUN WITH MIGRANT CRIMINALS, AND YOU’RE ON THEIR SIDE! ’
Tufty parked, and Roberta climbed out into the baking sun. Adjusted her hat. Squared her shoulders.
The wee loon scurried up beside her, fiddling with his Body Worn Video till the little red light came on to show it was recording.
Frog-Face chanted into his loudhailer: ‘TRAITORS! TRAITORS! TRAITORS!’
The gammony mob chanted back: ‘HOY! HOY! HOY!’
Tufty winced. ‘This is going to get horrible, isn’t it.’
Not to be outdone, the T-Shirts started up a chant of their own:
‘WHAT DO WE WANT?’
‘SOCIAL JUSTICE AND INCLUSION!’
‘WHEN DO WE WANT IT?’
‘NOW!’
Snappy . . .
‘Come on, then.’ Roberta hauled her trousers up and marched over there. Stuck her arms in the air. ‘All right, you bunch of idiots: I want everyone to take a step back!’
No one did.
But the campaign-office door opened and a snottery sniff of a man emerged.
He’d combed all his hair forward, in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that his forehead was already sneaking back past the top of his skull.
Trendy glasses and a Super Mario moustache, a rainbow tie, white shirt, and grey suit trousers.
‘GO AWAY, YOU . . . THUGS; I’VE CALLED THE POLICE! ’
‘We’re already here, you numpty!’
‘TRAITORS! TRAITORS! TRAITORS!’
‘HOY! HOY! HOY!’
The man forced his way into the scuffling. ‘GET BACK! YOU’RE NOT ALLOWED TO HARASS PEOPLE!’
Was she sodding invisible here?
The shoving got nastier. The chest-to-chest clashes: harder.
Then one of the Polo-Shirts yelped in pain.
This was getting out of hand.
Roberta had another go: ‘OK, I want everyone to—’
‘TRAITORS! TRAITORS! TRAITORS!’
‘HOY! HOY! HOY!’
In the middle of the push-and-shove, that sexy redhead dropped her placard.
‘Knife! He’s got a—’ A scream ripped free, then down she went.
Collapsing backwards. Clunk: the back of her head bounced off the kerb.
And she lay there, still as the graves in the churchyard opposite, with a knife handle sticking out of her stomach.
Deep dark red seeped through the cheery yellow fabric of her ‘EMMA DORNOCH’ T-shirt.
Everyone froze.
The man in the rainbow tie stared. ‘NO!’ And rushed over to help.
A chubby young man with a pubey beard clutched his placard tight. ‘Billie!’ Little pink eyes bulging. ‘YOU BASTARD!’ Swinging ‘SMASH SEXISM!!!’ like a headsman’s axe.
It clattered into one of the Polo-Shirts, catching him right in the face, sending him staggering with a broken-nosed grunt.
And that’s when it all kicked off.
Punches flew, teeth flashed, and the boot was put in.
Tufty pulled out his extendible baton. ‘Oh dear . . .’ He clacked the thing out to its full length and charged. ‘STOP! POLICE!’
Fists whistled through the air, placards clashed, swearing and screaming bellowed out.
Roberta waded into the crowd, making for the injured Billie. ‘Get out the way! Move!’
But no one paid the slightest bit of attention.
It was getting dirty now: biting, gouging, kneeing-in-the-knackersing . . .
‘TRAITORS! TRAITORS! TRAITORS!’
‘HOY! HOY! HOY!’
And that wasn’t helping.
She reached the victim, shoved Mr Rainbow-Tie out of the way, and knelt – feeling for a pulse.
Christ that was a lot of blood.
The knife’s handle looked like a kitchen job: black, with metal rivets. Probably had a six-to-nine-inch blade, angled upwards from about the middle of her stomach.
Billie’s face was pale and slack.
More blood on the pavement and kerb, from where her head cracked into the concrete.
Yeah, this did not look good.
And still no sign of a pulse.
‘Come on, come on . . .’ No, wait: there it was.
Faint, but still beating. ‘Bingo.’ Roberta grabbed her Airwave handset and pressed the button.
‘Alpha Charlie Nine to Control, not safe to talk. Need an ambulance and backup at Kingsfield Road, Kintore, ASAP! One stabbing victim. Repeat: stabbing victim. Violence ongoing.’
The same nasal voice as before crackled out. ‘Hold on, hold on . . .’
All around, the battle raged, while Mr Rainbow-Tie stood in the gutter, hands over his mouth, feet moving as if he needed a wee. ‘Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod . . .’
‘Get me some bloody backup!’
‘Working on it.’
The man knelt on the other side of the motionless body. ‘Maybe we should pull the knife out?’ He took hold of the protruding handle. Bit his bottom lip.
Roberta slapped him. ‘LET GO: you sodding idiot!’
And he did, snatching his hand away as if the knife was scalding hot.
She glared. ‘You want to make it worse?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’
Idiots, everywhere.
‘TRAITORS! TRAITORS! TRAITORS!’
‘HOY! HOY! HOY!’
She grabbed the moron’s hands and placed them either side of the wound. ‘Apply pressure here. And no touching the knife!’
Tears sparkled in his eyes, welling up as he stared at the blood seeping around his fingers. ‘Oh God, Billie . . . Come on, don’t do this to me . . . You’ll be fine, you’ll be fine . . . Please, please, please, please, please . . .’
‘OK: ambulance on its way, rerouting all available officers . . .’
Roberta scrambled to her feet.