Vigilantes & Biscuits Read online

  “There you are, ducks.” The bus conductor squeezed the librarian’s hand. “Told you, didn’t I? We couldn’t possibly be safer.”

  Gideon went on stonily, “The crucial fact remains, however, that if we’re ambushed, a lot can happen in thirty seconds. Your safety will depend on the speed with which you obey my orders – and on a few other factors, including luck. I can’t deny you’d be safer if you stayed at home.”

  It was then that the vicar made the speech that silenced them all.

  “But, Mr. Gideon,” he said quietly, “we are at home! It’s just that our home – this Estate – has become the most dangerous place in England. And until we know why – what this inexplicable force is that is turning our children into thugs and murderers – there will soon be no question of safety for any of us, in any house on any street. So no more talking, please, about danger. Just lead the way …”

  The patrol had set out five minutes later. By two minutes past nine it had completed its first circuit of the Estate, by nine thirty-six, its second. Riddell’s patrol, following the same route but in the opposite direction, had passed them twice on each circuit.

  Riddell saluted smartly every time the patrols came within sight of each other; but Gideon wasn’t deceived. Tom was far too good a police officer to betray anxiety in the presence of a patrol he was leading; he would have kept his inner tensions under the firmest possible control.

  At one meeting-point, Tom came across to talk to Gideon; and at close quarters, it was obvious that he had lost none of his misgivings. It showed in the stiffness of his manner, the abruptness of his voice.

  “There’s – something I should have mentioned earlier,” he said, his voice as toneless as an automaton. “When you go down Naughton Avenue, you might notice a man loitering about in the region of No. 14.”

  “A tall, lanky chap – about thirty – wearing a battered old raincoat?”

  Ordinarily, Riddell would have grinned and said: “I might have known you’d have spotted him already.” Tonight he just nodded stiffly.

  “That’s the man,” he said. “I just thought I’d explain that he’s there under my orders. No. 14 is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ home, and he’s the ‘tail’ that’s been following Hopkins all day. Waste of time, really. Hopkins went straight from the High School to his home, and has stayed there ever since.”

  One consequence of Riddell’s abruptness was that his voice was louder than usual, and carried farther than he had intended.

  Harold Neame leaned forward.

  “Do I understand that my English master is under police surveillance?” he inquired sharply. “Surely, you don’t seriously suspect him of – ”

  “Mr. Hopkins,” Riddell explained with obvious patience, “is being watched for his own protection. He was viciously attacked outside his home last night by a razor gang. We have reason to believe that he is in some danger of being attacked again.”

  “But I thought we were supposed to be the target for tonight,” the Irish milkman said.

  “This gang,” said Riddell, his patience reinforced by an effort all could see, “this gang has often carried out multiple attacks simultaneously, sometimes as many as six in one night.”

  “But how can they do that now?” the Irishman protested. “With a dozen of us patrollin’ round and round until we’re dizzy, and police cars charging up and down every other minute, a man can hardly walk ten yards through the Estate without being spotted as a suspicious character. How can a gang of men possibly go anywhere?”

  The bus conductor grunted.

  “You’re forgetting something, mate. We’re not dealing with men, but with kids – kids who know this Estate like their own backyards. They can slip through holes in fences, clamber over roofs, cut across back gardens – there’s no end to what the little bleeders can do, patrols or no patrols! Sometimes I wonder if they haven’t got us at their mercy, after all!”

  For a moment he had forgotten the librarian, whom he had been cheering up all through the evening. It seemed that she couldn’t do without his support. Her voice rose dangerously: “In that case, why don’t they attack and have done with it? Why do they stay hidden and – and do nothing, for hour after – ”

  Mrs. Thompson boomed her way into the conversation.

  “There’s one very probable answer to that, my dear. They could have hurriedly cancelled their plans, once they saw that we had George Gideon with us.”

  Gideon expected this to be greeted with laughter. He was stunned when everyone in the patrol not only took the suggestion dead seriously, but seemed to be greatly heartened by it.

  Embarrassment made his own voice abrupt, as he turned to Riddell. “Well, let’s get on, shall we? It’s gone ten o’clock, and both our patrols are behind time.”

  Riddell nodded, and returned to his group, which started walking to the right. Gideon and his patrol turned to the left.

  As they did so, there was a flash of lightning, followed by a rumble of thunder; at the same time, a drizzle of rain began, which was to continue for the rest of the night.

  At that very moment, forty miles away on the Bognor-London road, Jacob Brodnik was staring into driving rain, and “seeing” Gideon facing a crisis and danger.

  Gideon himself was aware only that vague misgivings at the back of his mind were, for some reason, suddenly solidifying.

  They had turned into Naughton Avenue. There, halfway down the street as he expected, was the lanky young man in the battered mackintosh, the “tail” whose job it was to loiter outside No.14.

  But something was wrong. The man wasn’t loitering. He was walking very fast – almost running – towards them.

  “Sir,” he said breathlessly, on arrival. “My name’s Stanhope – Detective Constable. I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on – ”

  “Mr. Gerard Manley Hopkins. Yes, I know,” Gideon said. “What’s happened?”

  “It’s not what’s happened, sir – it’s what’s happening,” Stanhope said. “There is a continuous rustling sound … like feet moving through long grass. And it seems to be coming from the back of No. 14.”

  Gideon glowered.

  “Seems to be coming? Haven’t you taken a look?”

  “There’s no way to see the back of 14 from the front, sir. The garage and a side gate block one’s view completely. I’ve tried the side gate and it’s bolted. I was just going to knock at the front door and warn Mr. Hopkins when I saw you.”

  “Right,” Gideon said. He was now speaking as softly as the other. “Which is No. 14? Can you point it out to me from here?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s three houses along, on the right. You can just see the garage – it’s got one of these flat concrete roofs – ”

  Gideon’s eyes followed Stanhope’s pointing finger.

  That was when he realised that something very strange was going on. It was hard to be sure – the drizzle kept getting into his eyes, and the night was so black that there was only the faintest hint of a skyline – but he didn’t seem to be staring only at a garage roof. There was something rearing above it, a silhouette – no, four silhouettes – just the smallest degree blacker than the sky …

  Gideon reached for his walkie-talkie. “This looks like it – the ambush,” he whispered, with all the urgency at his command. “All cars at once, please, to 14 Naughton Avenue.” He slipped the instrument back into his breast pocket, and then, raising his voice as far as he dared, called over his shoulder: “Back. Everybody – back …”

  Everybody backed all right – but not at the same speed. The milkman collided with the bus conductor. The librarian screamed. The vicar tripped in his haste and fell against a fence. Mrs. Thompson cried out in anger as the headmaster tried to hustle her along.

  “Mr. Neame, will you kindly – ”

  The words died in her throat as one of the figures on the garage roof switched on a powerful torch which caught the whole patrol in its beam. Almost simultaneously, the three other figures came to life, and started
firing. Gideon saw three flashes in quick succession, and heard, to his utter horror, not the phut of airguns but the roar of full-scale, medium-calibre revolvers.

  A bullet, intended perhaps for Gideon, caught Stanhope. His lanky body spun round like a leaf in a gale as he fell heavily against a gate. It swung open, and he ended up face downwards on a garden path, choking, twitching, spitting gravel …

  Gideon moved to help him, but was halted by gasps and screams from behind him. The milkman seemed to have been hit in the arm and was cursing loudly and colourfully. The bus conductor had hurled himself and the librarian to the ground,

  Mrs. Thompson was still standing, too petrified with astonishment to move. Harold Neame was dancing with rage, well-mixed, Gideon surmised, with fear.

  In fact, thought Gideon in blank despair, they were doing everything but obey his orders to back away out of danger. Perhaps from panic, perhaps from an obstinate determination not to desert each other, the fools were staying in the torchlight.

  “God help us!” Gideon groaned. “They’re asking, begging, praying to be killed – ”

  And no fresh command of his could move them before the gunmen fired again.

  There was only one thing he could think of to do.

  His own revolver in his right hand, a large police torch in his left, he strode forward until he reached the No. 14’s garage. The owner of the torch became confused, uncertain whether to play his beam on the advancing Gideon or the huddled patrol. He chose Gideon – and the patrol was plunged back into the relative safety of darkness.

  There was an agonising silence, which was not a silence at all to Gideon; he was nearly deafened by the pounding of his own heart. He could see nothing beyond the beam of the enemy’s torch, turned into a dancing blur by the drizzle, which had suddenly become solid rain. He wondered if the rain was the reason why there had been no more shots; it would be driving hard into the attackers’ eyes. He did not deceive himself, though. Rain or no, his large frame made him an unmissable target, and the range was point-blank: the garage was less than six feet away.

  He stared up unflinchingly into the darkness just above the beam.

  Puzzled, for a good two seconds the figures on the roof did nothing; and two seconds was all that Gideon needed.

  His own revolver roared once. The bullet whipped into the blackness a fraction to the right of the torch, and plainly hit the hand holding it. There was a startled yelp; the torch went out. At the same instant, Gideon flicked his torch on.

  “Your turn for a share of the spotlight, lads,” he said grimly, and swept its beam up towards the garage roof.

  He saw four crouching boys, startlingly youthful; he judged them to be somewhere between thirteen and fifteen years old. Three held revolvers, which were still smoking, or perhaps steaming as a result of the rain. The fourth boy was staring, stunned, at a hand from which blood was dripping. All wore stocking masks, but the rain had made the material cling to their faces, and it was possible to see the white, stretched skin beneath, the distorted, but unmistakably frightened eyes, the mouths fallen open with shock, confusion, fear.

  “You’re right,” said Gideon levelly. “This is your comeuppance, you murdering little bastards. Didn’t expect it to come quite so soon, did you? Drop those guns, or I’ll – ”

  One of the boys raised his gun, seemed on the point of pressing the trigger. Gideon fired first and caught him in the shoulder. He gasped and swayed. The gun joined the smashed torch on the garage roof.

  Then there was a totally unexpected interruption. Gideon heard footsteps on the pavement, as the cold, donnish voice of Harold Neame cut through the air.

  Those stocking-distorted faces did not fool the headmaster for a second. One quick glance upwards, and he said: “I know them, Mr. Gideon. I know all of them …” As formally as if he were calling the roll at assembly, he intoned: “Douglas Keating, Roger Wheatland, Clive Matthews, Richard Barratt. Come down this instant, you cowardly, vicious, besotted – killers – ”

  Up till then, the boys had probably hoped that they could somehow shoot or bluff their way out of this situation, and escape incognito. At the realisation that they were known by name, panic swept through them. And suddenly – they had gone. There was not a boy in sight. They had all scuttled to the rear of the roof, well out of the torch’s range, and the next instant, a series of heavy thuds announced that they were jumping from the roof straight down on to the lawn behind the garage. Gasps of pain accompanied two of the thuds, and Gideon wasn’t surprised. A drop of seven foot took some absorbing when one had a bullet in the shoulder or a bloody great hole in one’s hand …

  What were the boys playing at, he wondered. They must have known that the police cars would be here in seconds; that the whole area would be cordoned off. Did they really think that by scrambling though a few fences, they could get clean away?

  Or … weren’t they planning to get away?

  The thought spun Gideon round as fast as the bullet had spun Stanhope. Belatedly, he remembered whose garage this was; whose lawn the boys were now crossing. And he thought he knew just why they had chosen this particular spot for an ambush.

  If everything went wrong – and everything had now gone wrong – Gerard Manley Hopkins’ home was only the length of a short lawn away. The boys had only to smash their way in there, wave their two remaining guns, and three prize hostages would be theirs for the taking.

  A five-year-old child.

  A helpless young mother.

  And a totally unworldly schoolmaster whom they would probably start by shooting out of hand … whom they were very likely under instructions to kill.

  With Neame following hard on his heels, Gideon started running along the pavement towards No. 14. If he could be inside the front door before the boys attempted to break in at the back –

  Suddenly, things started happening all round him. Two area cars came screaming up, to halt at the kerb and spill uniformed men on to the pavement just ahead.

  Behind him, he heard the running footsteps of Riddell’s patrol approach from the far end of the street.

  Closer behind him, he heard his own patrol shouting.

  Ignoring everything, he kept on his way, but the distractions had delayed him – infinitesimally, but fatally.

  From the rear of No. 14, slicing through the other sounds and instantly silencing them, came the crash of breaking glass; a shot, and then, in a woman’s voice, a single, hysterical shriek.

  That would be Charlotte. Did it mean that Hopkins had already been –

  Gideon forced himself not to think, only to act.

  A second later he was on the step of No. 14, hammering authoritatively on the door.

  20

  Siege

  Charlotte Hopkins’ scream had been the response of her tortured nerves to a solid three minutes of cumulative terror.

  It was hard to believe that it was only three minutes since that moment when, preparing a milk drink for Gerard in the kitchen, she had first heard strange noises in the garden. Opening the back door and peering out, she had seen four boys come clambering over the fence, and go sneaking across the lawn towards the garage.

  Charlotte had called out to her husband. He and she had gone into their dining-room, which had a large plate-glass sliding door opening on to the garden. Without turning the light on in the room, they had stood and watched … and had had a perfect view of everything that had happened: the shooting at the patrol; the appearance, first, of Gideon, then of Harold Neame at their garage gate; the turning of the tables on the boys, and finally –

  Finally their view had become a little too perfect. They saw the four boys – two of them lurching and stumbling in pain, the other two brandishing guns – coming straight at them across the lawn; heading, in fact, for this very window.

  It was exactly like the climax of a nightmare; and there was something nightmarish, too, about the way she and Gerard just stood there, watching the boys come on. It was as though they had been hy
pnotised into total paralysis.

  With a supreme effort, Charlotte shook herself out of it.

  “Quick,” she whispered urgently. “If we lock the back door, it’ll hold them for a moment. Then if you go round

  the front and fetch the police – Gideon himself, if possible … Gerard.”

  The sense of nightmare was now overpowering. Gerard hadn’t moved, and was stubbornly resisting all her efforts to make him do so.

  “Don’t you realise, darling? I recognise these boys. And two of them are hurt – in need of help. All I have to do is reason with them – ”

  “Reason?” Charlotte suddenly saw, with terrible clarity, that the word had no real meaning for Gerard. He had seen the gun flashes, and heard the shots and the screams from the road; he must have known that the boys were killers. Yet, because these facts conflicted with his theories, he had closed his eyes and ears to them completely. There was no point in arguing; only in acting. Charlotte was slight in build, but desperation gave her strength. She seized Gerard’s arm, and dragged him a couple of steps towards the doorway. But that was as far as she got before the boys’ figures loomed up outside the plate-glass door, their black silhouettes like something out of a horror movie, totally blotting out what little light there was in the room.

  The next second came the crash as the glass was kicked in. Despite the fact that two of them were wounded, the boys marched into the room like storm-troopers. Charlotte remembered having read somewhere that towards the end of World War II, many of Hitler’s storm-troopers had been only fifteen –

  One of the boys fired a shot up at the ceiling. It was intended to frighten; and it succeeded. The crack in that confined space was deafening. Gerard started violently. Charlotte imagined for a moment that he’d been hit, and screamed – a long, piercing, hysterical scream.