 Slow Motion Ghosts by Jeff Noon, read by Dean Williamson, Saturday 11th April 1981, Blood and Petrol. Hobbs arrived at Brixton Police Station around 8.30 that night. He travelled in with four other officers in a patrol car, one of whom kept effing and blinding at what he was seeing through the windows. Jesus Christ. Can't we just let them kill each other? Charlie Jenks told him to shut the hell up. It was bad enough. D.I. Hobbs sat there, squeezed on the back seat. He felt sick with nerves. At the station yards they were quickly organised and issued with orders. Hobbs took charge of a group of nine uniformed constables. Christ, he hadn't done anything like this, not for years. A van drove at them at speed to a drop-off point, spewed them out into the mayhem. They had six plastic shields between them, their only defence against whatever waited for them out there on the front line. No helmets, no proper riot gear. Hobbs's task was to drive the rioters off Shakespeare Road, so a fire engine and an ambulance could get through. He got the line fixed and set the men marching in step, but the rank was quickly broken as they entered the fray. Youths were gathered further down the street, cutting it off. A police car was lying on its side. One rioter bent down to light a pool of petrol and the car burst into flames. The young men and women cheered and danced around the vehicle. It looked like teenagers, kids, nothing more. Most of them were black, but there were some white faces among them. Hobbs shouted orders. He forced his squad to get back in line, to stand its ground, shields interlinked in front of them, centurion style, and then to move forward slowly, slowly, one step at a time. No heroics. No fucking heroics. Do you hear me? These words were blown aside by the night's craziness. In a side street, a fire engine was waiting to come through, an ambulance parked up behind it. The front window of the fire engine had been smashed in. Now Hobbs had his objective in sight, he urged his men on. They were moving well, already pushing some of the rioters back into a cross street when a hail of missiles landed on them. Rocks, house-bricks, bottles, they smashed and clattered against the shields. He tried to keep his men together, but it was no good. More missiles came over and the line staggered, an officer lost his footing, and two of the shields broke apart. A beer bottle found its target, hitting a constable full in the face. He fell. His colleague stumbled around him. Hobbs ran to the fallen man and pulled him free of the scrum. The officer's nose was broken, eyes glazed over, watery, no recognition in them. Pull back! Pull back! By sheer force of will, Hobbs got the nine men back to the park van, two of them dragging their injured colleague along. In the distance, Hobbs could see even more burning cars, and beyond that a building on fire, a public house. Kill the pigs! Kill the pigs! Smoke stung his eyes. He was out of breath. His sides ached. In more than 20 years on the force he'd never faced anything like this. Not even when he was on the beat himself, working streets as poor and deprived as these were. Something had changed in the passing years. Hobbs screamed at his men to regroup, and they did so under his command, eight of them now, and he pushed them forward, putting himself in the front line, glad for the shield he shared with the officer at his side, a man he had never seen before in his life. The missiles hit like the force of God, worse than before, over and over. He could hear cheering, kids were running forward to lob their stones and bottles, and then retreating back to their own lines. It was war, plain and simple. But the cops were breaking through now, forcing the rioters back, and then a bottle hit a shield to Hobbs' left and ex- Sample complete. Ready to continue?