White Riot by Martyn Waites Page A

unmistakably emphasized. ‘—
hate
what we have done here. And want to stop us. And we are not going to let them.’
    He stood back, waited for the applause. It wasn’t long in coming.
    Sooliman Patel hadn’t lived in those run-down streets. Abdul-Haq didn’t live there. There were a few quite prosperous businesses, but not in a great way. But no one pulled him up on it. Everyone wanted to believe in what he said.
    Everyone wanted, he thought, to find a target to hate.
    He started speaking again. Knowing what he was going to say, knowing what they wanted to hear. Luxuriating in the power that he could control a crowd with just his voice. His mind skipped to old newsreel footage of Hitler, of the Führer driving what seemed like thousands of people into frenzies of ecstasy with just his voice. Understood how seductive that was. People wanted to believe in something. Wanted to still the rational voice in their heads, be part of something that they have convinced themselves is right.
    Our streets aren’t safe.
    Our way of life is under attack.
    If we have to defend ourselves it is our right.
    More applause.
    Abdul-Haq became aware of some kind of disturbance at the back of the crowd. Most hadn’t noticed, their attention so focused on him. He had only noticed because of a sixth sense honed through years of street oratory. He glanced briefly in the direction the noise was coming from, sized up the situation immediately. A couple of skinheads, drunk, chanting racist slogans. The applause was drowning them out but people were starting to look, draw the attention away from him. That couldn’t be allowed to happen.
    A surreptitious hand gesture and Waqas and Omardetached themselves from the back of the platform and swiftly skirted round the outside of the crowd. The skinheads were dragged away from the crowd, before even the TV cameras could follow. Abdul-Haq knew what would happen to them next. He didn’t expend too much thought on their fate. They had brought it on themselves. Instead he turned to the crowd again. Smiled.
    Announced a candlelight vigil at the mosque on Grainger Park Road. All would be welcome. Spoke words of healing, of conciliation. Laced them with threats of unequivocal action. Held hands with Mr and Mrs Patel, asked the crowd to pray with him.
    Hoped the sound of the intruders being dealt with wouldn’t ruin the ambience.
    It didn’t.
    Eyes closed, Abdul-Haq listened to the silence, smiled.
    The people were his.

7
    Peta had always had a soft spot for Newcastle’s Civic Centre. Standing on the corners of Barras Bridge and St Mary’s Place in the Haymarket end of the city, it had been built in the Sixties during the T. Dan Smith era and, unlike most of the brutalist concrete monoliths of the period, was something quite beautiful.
    It looked like a huge, secular cathedral. White and circular, it was designed round a courtyard with an imposing twelve-storey main block rising out of it. Capping the block was a copper lantern and beacon with three castles from the coat of arms. And the bit Peta loved best: sea horses. All round the top. So completely unexpected they made anyone looking up smile.
    She walked into the reception area, up to the desk. Her sunglasses hooked over the front of her T-shirt. Now back in her regulation work uniform of trainers, T-shirt and, in a concession to the heat, black linen combats instead of jeans, she felt more herself. In control.
    Peta had gone straight from her mother’s to the gym. Swimming, thirty minutes with weights and the treadmill, her regular tae kwon do session; her usual method of sorting her head out, even more dependent on it recently. Then a phone call to Amar to find he was still away. She was getting fed up with leaving messages for him. Then work, researching and reading.
    Her university psychology course was on hold, lack of money since Albion’s demise. She was glad of the distraction,stopped her thinking of floodlit cellars and body parts, of dead