Chapter 36
Jamie gets to Carrie just as she draws level with the house.
‘I was beginning to think you’d bottled it!’ she says.
‘Sorry.’ He glances up at the bedroom window, knowing how easily sound travels at night. ‘I dropped off.’ He starts walking, so fast she has to run to catch up with him. Anything to get her away from the house.
‘The boss says once you’ve done this, we can brief you on our next operation.’ Carrie delivers this promise as though she’s bribing a child. Eat your greens, and I’ll give you ice-cream.
Jamie looks at her. ‘What operation?’
‘He says it’s our biggest yet; not like anything we’ve done before. He reckons it’s the one that’s going to make everyone see that New Dawn means business.’
A cat yowls from the bushes, making them both start.
Not like anything we’ve done before. Not a protest, then.
Not arson. Despite everything, he feels a dart of adrenaline.
This is why he got himself into this nightmare – to gather information.
All he needs to do is find out what they’re planning, then he can go to the police.
They’re getting closer to the corner shop.
Jamie desperately tries to think of a way to seemingly go through with his ‘initiation test’, without putting anyone at risk.
Could he light the fire then somehow put it out without Carrie seeing?
Suggest they burn down something else? A derelict building he could convince her is full of refugees?
‘The boss has wanted this Paki shop done for ages,’ Carrie says. ‘Apparently the owner’s brought his parents over. That’s the problem, isn’t it? You open the floodgates, and they swarm in.’
Jamie remembers Nadeeka mentioning Surinder’s parents. His mother was ill and Surinder had been worried about being so far away from them. As his hand clenches around the tin of lighter fuel in his pocket, an idea hits him. ‘Damn!’ He stops walking. ‘I’ve left the lighter fuel at home.’
‘Oh, Jamie!’ She turns back the way they came, but Jamie puts a hand out to stop her.
‘It’s fine, there’s a twenty-four-hour garage around the corner; it’ll be quicker than going home. I’ll see you at the shop.’
‘I’ll come with—’
But Jamie is already sprinting. This isn’t a way out, but it might just save Surinder and his family from losing everything – including their lives.
There’s a phone box next to the petrol station – one of the few not to have been taken out or turned into lending libraries. It stinks of piss, and Jamie breathes through his mouth as he Googles the corner shop’s number.
A man’s voice answers, thick with sleep. ‘Hello?’
Jamie stays on the line, needing Surinder to be fully alert.
‘Who is this?’
How long to get back to the shop, to light the fire? How long for the smell of smoke to drift upstairs? Five, ten minutes? Jamie can’t risk Surinder falling straight back to sleep again.
‘Fuck you very much.’ Surinder sounds properly awake now. ‘Who is—’
Jamie hangs up.
Carrie is waiting for him across the street from Shop Express. ‘Did you get it?’
He nods. Surinder’s shop is sandwiched between a residential house and a launderette that has been closed ‘for refurbishments’ for at least a year.
The remainder of the red-brick row is a mix of houses and flats, and the sight of birthday balloons through a front room window makes Jamie’s breath catch.
How many families live within those walls?
How many children, old people, animals? The whole terrace could go up.
Carrie pulls up her hood. ‘Come on, then.’
Jamie takes a deep breath. If he does this, he’ll gain the boss’s trust and then he’ll be able to do what he’s wanted to do all along: pass evidence to the police that will bring New Dawn down. He pulls the lower half of his balaclava over his face, and they cross the road together.
‘Great,’ Carrie says, peering through the glass door of Shop Express. ‘There’s a doormat. Try and get as much of the lighter fluid as possible on that.’
Jamie hasn’t prayed since he was a child, and he’s pretty certain that, if God exists, he doesn’t respond to prayers sent up during the commission of a serious crime.
Nevertheless, as he pours the lighter fluid through the letterbox, he prays that Surinder is still awake; that he and his family will be spared.
‘Now light it.’ Carrie’s eyes glint in the dim light, her voice fervent, almost manic.
But Jamie’s hands won’t stop shaking. He fumbles with the box of matches, spilling several on to the pavement. The first match he strikes snaps in two; the second extinguishes in his trembling hands. He tries a third time, and again the flame dies before he can move the match towards the door.
‘Give it here,’ Carrie says, exasperated.
She takes the box of matches, lights one expertly, and drops it through the letterbox.
There’s a beat, then a sudden flare as the lighter fuel catches.
‘That’ll show them,’ Carrie says gleefully.
She looks at him, her face ablaze with excitement.
‘You did it!’ Without warning, she reaches up and kisses him, hard and fleeting. Then she runs.
Jamie runs too; towards the piss-stained phone box to call 999. Behind him, the glass door shatters with a gunshot crack that echoes in the empty street.