Vigilantes & Biscuits Page 4

  He hadn’t forgotten that he, and the whole Metropolitan Police Force, were going to be under heavy fire; that the consequences, if his arguments failed to win the day, would be dire. But Gideon had no intention of losing the day. He even had a surprise proposition to spring, if the worst came to the worst; and for this he had obtained Scott-Marie’s permission.

  In short, he was ready for the fray, and as positive proof of the fact, was more than ready to tuck into Kate’s lobster salad.

  Not everyone was facing the future with such confidence in the forbidding light of that September sunset.

  While Gideon and Riddell were happily eating, six miles away across London, Dino Orsini was carrying two platefuls of lasagne verde to a young couple at the corner table of his flashy little restaurant in Finchley.

  He stumbled as he walked; the plates nearly fell, and his plump, creamy cheeks turned nearly as green as the lasagne.

  The young couple watched him curiously. The girl stifled a giggle, while the man told himself righteously that this fat little Italian should go on a diet. Such a lack of briskness surely showed an over-liking for his own spaghetti.

  “Excuse me, Miss,” Dino murmured. “Ee’s hot night. And I am clumsee fool.”

  Dino often talked broken English for his customers. It contributed to the jolly atmosphere he tried to create in his restaurant; an atmosphere of winks, nudges, and chortles by candlelight, in keeping with the motto printed on the menus: Eat good – and feel good – at Dino’s.

  Tonight, though, he was finding it almost impossible to sustain his role. Mental images of his brothers flitted before him, Nicholas and Mario, lying dead from the Rocco gang’s bullets; and then came the inevitable wondering what it would feel like when bullets were pumped into his own body.

  This was the last evening he would be serving in this restaurant. Tomorrow night, his wife, Vittoria, would take over, while he, Dino, would be in a certain bar in Soho, where his brother Mario had been a regular, and where every whisper went straight to Jack Rocco’s ears. He wouldn’t be talking broken English there. He’d be pouring out a stream of voluble Italian, every word calculated to challenge and enrage Rocco. After that, he could expect a call from Jack’s hatchet-men any moment of the night or day; and he was under no illusions about how difficult it would be for Mr. Lemaitre to protect him.

  Vittoria was right. It was a mad thing he was embarking on, he was all kinds of a fool not to back out.

  But beneath Dino’s over-generous layer of quivering flabbiness was a determination of iron. If his death was the only way by which a murder charge could be brought against Rocco, then it was a matter of family duty that he should die. It was as simple as that. He must not allow the thought of Vittoria and the children to come into it.

  He breathed a silent prayer for strength; and as he prayed he instinctively started to cross himself. He forgot that he was still holding a plate of lasagne in each hand. This time, one of them actually slipped and fell to the floor, missing the girl he was serving by inches.

  “Sacramento! Mama mia! I deserve-a to be—”

  He was about to add “shot”, but the word stuck in his throat.

  He put the remaining plate on the table with a far from-steady hand, and disappeared through the swing doors leading to the kitchen quarters.

  Behind him, he heard suppressed laughter on all sides; and when he accidentally cannoned into one of the waiters, and sent more plates crashing, the laughter grew louder still.

  What was wrong with that, he asked himself. People were supposed to “eat good and feel good” at Dino’s. And a moment later, the roars of laughter proved very useful. They drowned the sound of funny fat Dino being violently sick.

  A long way south of Finchley and some miles east of Fulham lies the quiet, leafy suburb of Dulwich. Here a man was facing the future with neither confidence nor terror, but with the grey emptiness of despair.

  Gordon Cargill was almost certain that the corpse-diviner Brodnik was going to confirm the fact that his wife Barbara was dead. Was there, then, any real need for him to keep this painful appointment? Hadn’t he been through agony enough?

  He slowed his car – an elegant black Bentley – down to walking pace as he turned into Maxwell Grove. If Jacob Brodnik’s notepaper was to be believed, the famous E.S.P. man lived along here, at No. 4.

  The Grove looked about right for a corpse-diviner’s home.

  The whole place had the air of being a crumbling monument to a dead era, when to live in S.E.21 meant that your household boasted a cook, a nanny and at least one chambermaid. There were only six houses in the street. Each was detached, standing well back in its own grounds. Each had a wide drive leading up to, and away from, its front door. But there the atmosphere of munificence ended. All the front doors in the road badly needed a coat of paint. All the drives were covered with weeds. Of the six houses, four had been converted into flats or maisonettes; one had an empty, waiting-for-demolition look, and one – half its windows boarded up – was positively derelict.

  It was this derelict house that was numbered “4”.

  Plainly, Jacob Brodnik cared so little for the things of this world that he had let his own home fall into ruins – camping in it, presumably, like a squatter. The man was surely mad; and he, Cargill, had been mad to come.

  He slowed the Bentley to a halt. His face – a smooth, young-business-executive face, handsome, boyishly determined, but with a far older man’s shadows under the eyes – became grim and angry.

  “Well, that’s it, Matt,” he said. “One lunatic is enough. I’m going home.”

  Chief Detective Superintendent Matt Honiwell, in the seat beside him, grunted.

  “Now that you’ve dragged me all this way, you might as well go through with the thing.”

  Gordon Cargill leant back behind the wheel and eyed Honiwell quizzically.

  “That’s a surprising line for you to take. I’d rather gathered that this whole enterprise of mine was an acute embarrassment to Scotland Yard.”

  Honiwell put on his friendliest grin.

  “Scotland Yard doesn’t lose face all that easily, nor do I. I might tell you that quite a few Yard men, from Commander Gideon down, have a sneaking sympathy for you for calling Brodnik in. When every human effort fails, it takes a rather unusual man to try – superhuman ones.”

  Gordon smiled bitterly.

  “Nice to know that. But sympathy falls a little short of support, doesn’t it? You’ve made it crystal clear that even if Brodnik did give us a lead, the Yard couldn’t spare the time or the men to follow it up. So is there really any point in going on?”

  Honiwell hesitated. For a moment, he was tempted to advise Gordon to turn back; it would save the Yard a lot of trouble if he did. But Matt didn’t like the note of bitterness in Gordon’s voice. It was the first hint of anger against the police that he had so far shown, through all this agonising inquiry. Nor did he like the total helplessness in his eyes. It was, Matt decided, healthier for a drowning man to clutch at a straw than to let himself, despairingly, sink. He, at all events, wasn’t going to be the one to snatch it away.

  “Listen, sir,” he found himself saying. “If you turn back now, you’re going to spend the rest of your life with the thought that you didn’t do everything possible to find your wife. And if I encourage you to go back, then – don’t you see? – I’m going to have to live with it, too.”

  Matt was surprised, even alarmed, at his own vehemence. Gideon had warned him to accompany Gordon Cargill on this mission as an impartial observer only. Just how impartial could anyone call this?

  His words, at all events, had done the trick. The hopelessness had gone from Gordon’s eyes, the bitterness from his smile.

  “You’re really quite a copper, aren’t you, Matt?” he said, his tone instantly restoring the odd friendship that had grown up between them over the past harrowing weeks. “Whether you’re a good one or not only God and Scotland Yard know. But I’ll take your advice,
and on your own head be it. Brodnik, here we come!”

  He started up the Bentley and swung it into the weed-strewn drive of No. 4.

  It was on the Wellesley Estate that the reddened sun had the most impact. All the bright white concrete was turned a garish crimson, creating a surrealist landscape, a visual shriek of terror. Everybody sensed instinctively that trouble was ahead tonight; but in a hundred different houses men and women were deciding at last that the time had come to act against it. In a moment, they’d be heading for the vigilante meeting, resolved to join in a great roar of outrage against the police, and to make a unanimous demand for an alternative method of enforcing the law.

  In many other houses, there was no such determination – only a conspiracy of silence and fear.

  And in one house there was stark hysteria. The hysteria of a woman who had lost the power to face the future on any terms at all.

  Marjorie Beresford had spent the morning and afternoon wondering what she would say to her son when he came home from school.

  It had never occurred to her that he might not come home at all.

  He should have been back by four. When five o’clock came, then six, then seven, she was reduced to walking round and round the house in an agony of bewildered despair. Ordinarily she would have rung up the school long since, and then telephoned the parents of Eric’s friends for news. Perhaps by now she’d have called the police. But guilt, and the knowledge of what Eric might – must – have done, had somehow induced a kind of paralysis in her. Supposing Eric had been found out, and was on the run?

  No, that wasn’t possible; the police would have called.

  Perhaps, then, he’d joined up with a gang – was about to become involved in more of this crazy, stupid, bloody violence…

  Bloody. She thought of the shirt, the knife –

  Her brain whirling, Marjorie went to the front door, and for the twentieth time in as many minutes, peered down the road in the desperate hope that she might see Eric coming.

  The sun shone in her eyes. The red, red sun that seemed to be turning everything to blood.

  Something snapped in her mind.

  She couldn’t stand this any more, she had to talk to someone, get advice.

  The telephone was just behind her in the hall. Exactly as she had done that morning, she found herself dialling the Gideons’ home. Only this time she didn’t stop at the first three digits. She finished dialling, and got right through.

  Since Gideon and Riddell had just left for the meeting, it was Kate who listened calmly, quietly, while Marjorie poured out – in an unstoppable, only-just-audible torrent of words – the first inside report that had come from the Estate of fear.

  5

  The Walkers

  Gideon’s mood of brisk confidence did not long survive, once his Rover turned into the Wellesley Estate. The crimson sunset was fading now, but in its place had come a strange twilight overhung by an eerie redness, as though some great fire was blazing somewhere just out of sight. The tension in the air was almost tangible; and Gideon didn’t have to look far to see the cause. The pavements on both sides of the road were thronged with people streaming in the direction of the Community Centre. And there was something odd about these people. Few were strolling along, idly chatting, as one might expect, seeing that the Centre was only a minute’s walk away, and there was half an hour to go before the meeting. Most were walking quickly, purposefully, angrily through the weird red dusk.

  Some were even carrying weapons, or objects which could be used as such. Gideon saw three youngish men with walking sticks, perhaps borrowed from old uncles or grandfathers. Others had heavy car torches. Of course, thought Gideon, to be out and about on the Wellesley Estate after dark took considerable courage.

  Watching these angry walkers, Gideon began not only to understand their mood but to share it; and to know how close it came to fury.

  “Tom,” he said dryly, “this is going to be one hell of a meeting. If this Harold Neame is any sort of an orator he can convert this lot into a full-scale lynch mob with a flick of his finger.”

  Riddell pulled out a handkerchief, and wiped his face. The night was hot and humid.

  “I don’t think Neame’s quite that type,” he said. “Oh, he’s sincere enough, and angry enough. But he’s been a headmaster too long for effective rabble-rousing. He barked at me this morning as though he expected me to take a hundred lines. If he talks to the audience that way, I don’t think it will be difficult to win them over to our side.”

  Gideon shook his head. “I’m not so sure. When people get scared and desperate, it’s very easy to turn that fright and desperation into hate, and easiest of all to turn it into hatred of the police. That’s the game Neame’s been playing, and even though he disguises it under a plea for law and order, it’s the most lawless game in the world. Don’t you realise? These people all around us: they’re the respectable folk, the people we’d ordinarily rely on, the people who make policing possible, and who have always turned to us for help. And tonight they’re going to that hall to attack us, jeer at us, shout us down! And if trouble starts – and from the look of those faces, I’ve no doubt that some sort of trouble will – who can tell whose side the majority will be on?”

  “I can,” said Riddell confidently. “They’ll be on yours. You’re forgetting something. That there’s no crowd of citizens – respectable or otherwise – that can shout George Gideon down.”

  Gideon didn’t smile.

  “Thank you for those few kind words,” he said wearily. “Forgive me if I forget ‘em – fast. I was a sight too smug earlier this evening – and smugness is our deadliest enemy tonight. If I’m to win these people over, I’ve got to put every bloody thing I have into what I say – and I wish I could overcome the feeling that even so, it may not be enough. If only – ”

  He broke off, startled to find Riddell picking up his train of thought as precisely as though it were his own.

  “If only we had one tangible clue as to what was really happening here,” he said. “To tell you the truth, George, I’m not too concerned about the people who are turning out to this meeting. They’re the ones with nothing to hide; they’re just motivated by a blazing bewilderment about what’s been happening all around them. It’s the other people on the Estate I’m frightened about. The ones who’ll be staying at home behind drawn curtains and bolted doors, terrified to move or speak because of – because of what?” In the gloom, Riddell’s face was suddenly a gleaming mask of sweat. His day off, followed by that relaxed dinner at the Gideons’, had undoubtedly done him good: but now that good was being eroded at an alarming rate. He was already almost as jumpy as he had been in Gideon’s office at the beginning of the day. What he’d be like by the end of the evening –

  “Steady,” Gideon said quietly, his voice giving no hint of the decision he’d just reached that Riddell simply had to come off this case. “Remember what I said this morning about taking time off. You’re due for leave and I’ll see you get it.”

  Riddell tried to laugh, but the sound was hoarse and strained.

  “I also remember what you said about breakdowns. Wouldn’t it be just my luck if that came first?”

  Gideon, having no answer, concentrated with unnecessary caution on his driving.

  They had arrived in the High Street, passing through the battered shopping precinct, the shop windows dark behind protective boarding. The small police sub-station was some yards ahead, and beyond that loomed the Community Centre and the three schools. Clearly, not all Wellesley’s citizens were walking to the meeting. Although it was still only just past eight, the Centre’s small car park was jammed full, while in front of the Centre itself were parked B.B.C. and I.T.V. news vans, their cables trailing inside the building. Gideon’s heart sank at the sight of them. If this vigilante movement got massive publicity from the outset, it could become a national conflagration within days … It was more than ever important for him to stop it at the onset. He remembered
the surprise proposition he’d discussed with Scott-Marie, to be used “if the worst came to the worst”. There was little doubt in his mind that such a condition would soon become inevitable.

  In order to avoid an encounter with T.V. reporters, most of whom knew him by sight, Gideon decided to stop outside the police station and walk the remaining fifty yards to the Centre.

  He could get someone to park the Rover in the police station yard, which he remembered was fairly sizeable.

  He pulled up, and he and Riddell alighted. At that moment a large black Triumph nosed its way out of the yard. It was an area patrol car, with a uniformed sergeant and constable occupying the front seat, and a loutish-looking youth clad in jeans and a denim jacket at the back. The loutish-looking youth would be, in reality, a detective constable, clearly a very young one; a lad who had served some years in uniform on the beat, and now, fresh from Hendon College, was anxious to prove himself in plain-clothes work. Area patrol cars operated to a standard routine. If any suspicious activity was spotted, the car itself would drive on by; but the D.C. would nip out of the far-side door, and try and get a closer look at what was going on. He would have a walkie-talkie concealed on him, so that he could keep in unobtrusive contact with the car, which would have stopped round the next corner, and be waiting to hear from him.

  On a sudden impulse, Gideon strode up to the car. Even in the poor light, the sergeant recognised him instantly. The car stopped. The sergeant saluted, and wound down the window.

  “Good evening, sir.”

  “Good evening, sergeant. There’s no special trouble on the Estate, is there?”

  “No, sir. There are dozens of people on the streets, presumably proceeding to the Community Centre, but so far, the reports say that they’re all behaving in an orderly manner.”

  Lower-rank policemen, talking to Gideon for the first time, often took refuge in witness-box phraseology. Somehow it always made Gideon adopt formal language, too.