Carver’s first shot had showered him with another man’s blood and brain matter, and peppered the exposed skin of his hands and face with needle-sharp skull-fragments that stung like an assault by a swarm of bees. None of this had bothered him in the slightest. On the contrary, the more bloody the fight had become, the more he had exulted in it. He was a veteran of civil disobedience, from the Brixton riots of 1981, through all the campaigns against American cruise missiles, Rupert Murdoch’s Wapping print plant, Thatcher’s poll tax, G20 summits, globalization, GM crops and wars in the Middle East. He had charged countless police shield-walls and faced their batons, tear gas and water cannons. But absolutely nothing had excited him like the sheer murderous frenzy that had been unleashed in Netherton Street that night. His rational mind had been aware that he had been given specific orders to avoid unnecessary bloodshed, and he had obeyed those orders for as long as he could. But then all calm calculation had ended, overwhelmed by the primal berserker battle fever that had infected him as powerfully as everyone else.
