The Walking Dead

What he thought of most often, reflected on most frequently, was that he fitted no stereotype as a police officer in the city of Derby. Wouldn't have been in the force if he hadn't been a dog-handler. He had few ambitions and had never shown an interest in sitting the sergeants' examination; there were plenty who did and were fast-tracked towards it. In fact, nothing that was memorable or worth a commendation had ever intruded on his career. Most certainly, if he had not been a dog-handler, he would have resigned rather than face the bloody binge-drunk rioters in the city centre every weekend but he had been spared that since he had taken on Smack and now Midge. Wasn't in a hurry that morning, and after the news and the weather forecast, bloody awful, he caught up with last night's Evening Telegraph and the Ram's predicted line-up for the coming Saturday's match. Then he poured some more well-stewed tea.

* * *

Few slept well in the cells at HMP Belmarsh. Most woke early, at the clangs of unlocking doors, the rattle of chains and the stamp of boots. Some did not sleep at all and gazed at the ceiling bulb behind its cover or the glow through the barred window of the perimeter walls' arc-lights.

Ozzie Curtis had not slept.

He burned, and hatred was a fire in him.

Didn't reckon that Ollie had missed out on sleep. The dozy bastard relied on him, leaned on him and left the worrying — and hatred — to his elder brother.

He checked his watch, did so every five minutes, and thought it was about the time it would happen.

If it wasn't for the work and the planning — the hating and burning — that Ozzie put in, Ollie would have been running a stall most likely on the Columbia Road flower market; Ozzie had always split down the middle line, fifty-fifty, but had done the worrying. To show for Ozzie's worry, Ollie had a pad in Kent of the same value as his own, the same bloody investment income and the adjacent Spanish villa.

They were going down, both of them; with the jury in protection and the judge bloody poisoned against them, they were looking at long bird. They would be bloody old and bloody decrepit when — if — they emerged from a prison's gates, and they would be without authority.

The fire burned in him because the man with a beard, and his feet in bloody sandals, had taken their money, then grassed them up.

In his mind, flames burned.

Bright flames flickered, flared, then spread.

He looked again at his watch.

* * *

At that hour, in a distant suburb of east London, most households slept. Only a minimal few had been roused by alarm clocks and the automatic switching on of radios.

The few were those who had furthest to travel, those on the earliest shifts, those who were key-holders and had to open up factories, businesses and offices…and among the few who were about their trade before dawn were the three men in an old saloon car, with substituted number-plates, who had cursed at the stench of petrol and had not dared to light the chain of cigarettes on which they would normally have survived.

The car was parked beyond the end of the road, and the driver was left with it. He did not have to be told that he should keep the engine running. First out was the Nobbler, and in a gloved fist he carried a plastic supermarket bag tightly wrapped round a half-brick; The second man held the, source of the petrol stench: a fuel-filled milk bottle with a wad of old shirt rammed into its neck. He had in his pocket a snap-open Zippo lighter.