Free The Lucifer Network by Geoffrey Archer Page B

crapbags. Five minutes and he needed to be out of here. She might be early, although she never was.
    He shoved the bowl under the tap and left it to drain, then banged open the door to the toilet – his second session of the morning. Nerves.
    At twenty-two minutes past he was out of the front door and onto the open landing. As he walked along it, he glanced down at the grass and concrete a hundred feet below where children would be playing before long. For most people in the block, Saturday morning meant a lie-in, so when he reached the end of the passageway the lift came quickly and was empty.
    Eighty households in Windsor Court, all nursing secrets behind their draughty aluminium-framed windows. Some with children, some just couples, few of them married. It wasn’t a place Petrie would have chosen to live, but the loss of his job in the City eighteen months ago had left him no choice. Sandra was the breadwinner now. £16,000 a year, she earned, a tenth of what he’d made before the Jews he’d worked for had booted him out. She claimed not to mind being the provider, saying they’d managed to stick together in the good times, so they could do it in the bad. But
he
had a problem with it. Failure to find another City job had wrecked his confidence – in all aspects of his life. Sandra was suggesting Viagra.
    Amongst the occupants of the block were a fewAfro-Caribbean families and a handful of Asians, but most of the residents were white. He stepped from the lift and walked briskly across the open yard. Few people about, which was a relief. On the far side was a row of lockups where he kept his car, a twelve-year-old Escort. The garage door swung up on its weights. He checked that the Tesco bag was still on the back seat, together with the baseball cap and dark glasses. He’d prepared the gear last night after Sandra had gone to work.
    He started up and drove into the daylight, then got out and closed the door, telling himself that if he left the garage open some nigger would come and piss in it. He headed west, keeping carefully to the speed limits. The last thing he needed today was for a dutiful plod to feed his number into the Police National Computer. His path cut across London – Angel, Euston, Baker Street, then out past Hangar Lane onto the A4. At the Polish War Memorial by Northolt airport he turned left, cutting through into the heart of Southall.
    His skin began to prickle. Every face here was Asian. Men with turbans, women swirling in synthetic silks. He could smell the curry spices through the car’s ventilation system. Another country in everything but name, a part of England which the criminals in government had allowed to turn foreign. It angered him, seeing the state of the place, which did him good, giving him the bottle for what he had to do next.
    He drove the Escort into a parking area behind the High Street, tugged the baseball cap down on his head and jammed the dark glasses onto his face. On this day in history, his leader had told him in the e-mail he’d received a week ago, all across Europe, people would be standing up for their heritage. This was the day when the fight back started, the moment when the streets would begin to be reclaimed by those they belonged to.
    He got out, locked the doors, then, with the Tesco bag dangling from his right fist, he set off towards the street market.
    Brentford
    09.25 hrs
    It had been another bad night for Sam Packer. Instead of sleeping, his restless mind had relived the day twenty-seven years ago when his father died. It had been early July 1971. Looking forward to the summer holidays, he’d come home from school to find his dad on the living room floor, grey and gaunt, mouth agape, eyes glassy and still. Then the district nurse had appeared. Fat, professional fingers closing the lids on the face that looked so different from the chirpy grinner in the black-and-white wedding snap that was framed in silver and anchored