Weaveworld

VIII

NECESSARY EVILS

he name of the man with the dark suit, whom Cal had seen getting out of the police-car, was Inspector Hobart. He had been in the force for eighteen of his forty-six years, but it was only recently – with the riots that had erupted in the city during the late spring and summer of the previous year – that his star had come into the ascendant.

The origins of those riots were still the subject of both Public Enquiry and private argument, but Hobart had no time for either. It was the Law and how to keep it that obsessed him, and in that year of civil disturbance his obsession had made him the man of the moment.

Not for him the niceties of the sociologist or the civic planner. His sacred task was to preserve the peace, and his methods – which his apologists described as uncompromising – found sympathy with his civic masters. He rose in the ranks within weeks, and behind closed doors he was offered carte blanche to deal with the anarchy that had already cost the city millions.

He was not blind to the politics of this manœuvre. No doubt the higher echelons, for whom he had utter but unspoken contempt, were fearful of the backlash should they wield too strong a whip themselves. No doubt too he would be the first to be sacrificed to the ferocity of public indignation should the techniques he brought to bear fail.

But they did not fail. The elite he formed – men chosen from the Divisions for their sympathy with Hobart’s methods – was quickly successful. While the conventional forces kept the blue line unbroken on the streets, Hobart’s Special Force, known – to those who knew of it at all – as the Fire Brigade, was acting behind the scenes to terrorize any suspected of fuelling the agitation, either by word or deed. Within weeks the riots died down, and James Hobart was suddenly a force to be reckoned with.

There had followed several months of inactivity, and the Brigade languished. It had not escaped Hobart that being the man of the hour was of little consequence once that hour had passed; and through the spring and early summer of this, the following year, that seemed to be the case.

Until now. Today he dared hope he still had a fight on his hands. There’d been chaos, and here, in front of him, the gratifying evidence.

‘What’s the situation?’

His right-hand man, Richardson, shook his head.

‘There’s talk of some kind of whirlwind,’ he said.

‘Whirlwind?’ Hobart indulged a smile at the absurdity of this. When he smiled his lips disappeared, and his eyes became slits. ‘No felons?’

‘Not that we’ve had reported. Apparently it was just this wind – ’

Hobart stared at the spectacle of destruction in front of him.

‘This is England,’ he said. ‘We don’t have whirlwinds.’

‘Well something did this …’

‘Somebody, Bryn. Anarchists. They’re like rats, these people. You find a poison that does the job, and they learn how to get fat on it.’ He paused. ‘You know, I think it’s going to begin again.’

As he spoke, another of his officers – one of the blood-spattered heroes of the previous year’s confrontations, a man called Fryer – approached.

‘Sir. We’ve got reports of suspects seen crossing the bridge.’

‘Get after them’ said Hobart. ‘Let’s have some arrests. And Bryn, you talk to these people. I want testimonies from everyone in the street.’

The two officers went about their business, leaving Hobart to ponder the problem. There was no doubt in his mind that events here were of human making. It might not be the same individuals whose heads he’d broken last year, but it was essentially the same animal. In his years of service he’d confronted that beast in its many guises, and it seemed to him that it grew more devious and damnable every time he stared into its maw.

But the enemy was a constant, whether it concealed itself behind fire, flood or whirlwind. He took strength from that fact. The battlefield might be new, but the war was old. It was the struggle between the Law, of which he was the representative, and the rot of disorder in the human heart. He would let no whirlwind blind him to that fact.

Sometimes, of course, the war required that he be cruel, but what cause worth fighting for did not require cruelty of its champions once in a while? He had never shirked that responsibility and he would not shirk now.

Let the beast come again, in whatever fancy dress it chose. He would be ready.