Vigilantes & Biscuits Read online

  Sometimes a master in a bad temper would scrawl “See me” on a whole lot of exercise books in a single batch. Supposing Eric and his friends had all received the same irate summons … and had decided to answer it in their, own way?

  6

  Alive or Dead?

  Coldly, furiously angry, Gideon asked Riddell to send the highest-ranking plain-clothes man at the sub-station over to the Beresford home, to wait for Eric and take him in for questioning. As an afterthought, he suggested that a plainclothes policewoman should come too, partly to soften the cold mechanics of arrest, partly to ensure that Marjorie was all right.

  “Incidentally,” he barked, “you’d better make sure that a police car isn’t used. A Panda standing outside the house would be as good as a beacon warning Eric what he’s in for when he gets home. Tell ‘em to walk here as I did. Yes – walk. Half the trouble with policemen today is that they’ve forgotten they’ve got feet.”

  Gideon himself had forgotten something. A policeman walking through a crowded estate at night was only inconspicuous as long as he didn’t happen to be George Gideon, the best-known figure in the Force.

  His own walk to Marjorie Beresford’s house, a quarter of an hour earlier, had been noticed by dozens of pairs of eyes; and those eyes were ready and waiting to observe the arrival of the C.I.D. team, and Gideon’s subsequent departure for the police station.

  Eric may not have known what was in store for him on his return; but others knew, and were grimly debating whether to let him arrive home at all.

  Gideon reached the police station a prey to a pile-up of conflicting pressures. It was eight fifty-two. That meant that the meeting had already been in progress for twenty minutes or more. Angry audiences insisted on punctuality; unanimous ones didn’t waste time. A vote on forming a vigilante force could be taken at any minute now; and once that vote had been passed, it would be too late for effective intervention, by himself or anyone else.

  But it was here, not at the meeting, that the breaks were coming; and Gideon – a policeman first and a politician a long way second – simply could not force himself away.

  Not, at any rate, until he had asked the strangely-named Gerard Manley Hopkins just a few questions.

  Riddell, he was told by the ever-plump sergeant, was talking to Hopkins in the interview room. Gideon grunted his thanks, and walked straight in.

  He found an odd conversation going on, not, he thought wryly, so much an interview as a Brains Trust session.

  “I’ll tell you who the enemy is on this Estate, Superintendent. Society! A society that robs its young of all idealism, all dreams, all hope. That sets before them only the drab ambitions of a sick materialism – ”

  The speaker was a small, mild-eyed, prematurely white-haired man of about thirty-five. He was sitting forward in a plain wooden chair, a full cup of tea in his hand. He seemed to be as little aware of his circumstances as he was of the tea. Not once did his eyes stray down to the front of his pinstriped suit, even though it had been slashed into shreds. Around his midriff, the razor had cut through jacket, trousers, shirt and vest, leaving a square of flesh incongruously exposed.

  Here we go again, thought Gideon wearily, how often have I heard this clap-trap thundered out before? He decided it was time to intervene.

  “Good evening, Mr. Hopkins. I’m Gideon, Commander of the C.I.D.”

  Hopkins rose from his chair, the forgotten teacup spilling its contents impartially over Gideon and himself.

  “Oh, good lord! I really am sorry – ”

  “Don’t worry.” Gideon flicked a handkerchief over a saturated cuff. “I have come to say how sorry I am about what’s happened, and to ask how you’re feeling now.”

  “That’s very civil of you, Commander. I have a slight headache, and feel a little confused, but – ”

  “Your memory of the attack is clear?”

  “Oh, perfectly. I was just at the end of my road – Naughton Avenue – when five or six young men in stocking masks – ”

  So far, Gideon’s manner had been gently purposeful. Now it subtly changed

  “Young men? Are you sure they weren’t too young to be called that?”

  Hopkins raised a hand, and gingerly touched the bruise at the back of his head where the cosh had landed.

  “You mean – were they boys? It’s possible, I suppose. Their faces were masked, as I say, and in the dark – ”

  Gideon stepped forward until he was almost standing over the little schoolmaster.

  “Think back, Mr. Hopkins. Think back very carefully. Did you, even for a moment, find anything familiar about your attackers? In the way they moved, or perhaps spoke?”

  Hopkins stared back as blankly as though he’d just been struck by the cosh again.

  “I wish I knew what you were driving at, Commander.”

  “Then I’ll tell you,” Gideon said crisply. He simply hadn’t the time for more finesse. “I have reason to suspect that you might have been attacked by a boy called Eric Beresford, and perhaps some of his friends in Form IIIB.”

  Hopkins’ mouth opened with astonishment; but the astonishment didn’t reach his eyes, which registered an extraordinary procession of emotions – shock, horror, consternation, and then sadness and pity.

  Pity! Gideon nearly choked. That this little man could sit here, his body aching all over from a savage, uncalled-for attack, his clothes virtually falling off him because of a vicious razoring, and feel pity …

  “I very much hope your suspicions are unfounded, Commander,” Hopkins said, in a voice which suggested that his hopes were at variance with his belief. “But in any case you can’t expect me to do anything to confirm them. These boys you mention are my pupils, my charges. I am myself therefore a part of the social environment which has thwarted, enraged, betrayed them. It is my business – it is the business of all of us – to try to understand …”

  Gideon took a long, deep breath.

  “You wouldn’t, I trust, take understanding to the point of withholding information from the police?”

  “Naturally not, Commander.”

  “Then perhaps you would be kind enough to do me one small favour. I believe you wrote ‘Disgraceful work. See me’ in a number of boys’ exercise books last week.”

  “Ah, yes. Some really appalling essays were turned in at the start of the new term.”

  “Do you think you could make me a list of the boys who earned that note on their exercise books?”

  “It will be difficult – but I will certainly try.”

  “Take your time,” Gideon said. “I’ll get a sergeant to come in, and you can dictate the list to him, when you’re ready. After that, if you’re feeling up to it, he’ll drive you home.”

  The schoolmaster smiled at last.

  “Home. Yes. I’ll be glad to get there. My wife Charlotte … she’s a great worrier, you know. So’s my daughter Karen, even though she’s only five. They know my sense of duty is always stirred by the under-privileged.”

  Gideon’s private view that the under-privileged had now become the over-privileged he kept to himself. He gestured to Riddell, and the two men went out together, feeling equally dazed and beaten at the havoc do-gooders could wreak.

  They were halfway down the corridor when they heard a crash behind them, and turned back.

  Perhaps as an after-effect of the coshing, perhaps because of what he had just realised about his pupils, Gerard Manley Hopkins had slithered off the wooden chair, and was lying in a dead faint on the interview-room floor.

  Gideon stayed only long enough to reassure himself that Hopkins’ heart was beating strongly, and that he would recover soon. Then, briskly ordering the sergeant to take over, he strode out of the station and started to walk the fifty yards to the Community Centre. He walked quickly, giving little thought to Riddell, who had his work cut out to keep up with him.

  “Ten past nine,” Gideon grunted, by way of explanation for his haste. “We could have lost, Tom. They could eas
ily have taken that vigilante vote by now.”

  But no. Mr. Harold Neame, the headmaster of Wellesley High School, was a prosy man. He had only just reached his peroration when Gideon and Riddell arrived at the hall.

  It was a peroration that they would have preferred to miss.

  Coldly, implacably, Neame itemised the failures of the police in their area: their failure to stop the endless muggings; their failure to arrest a significant number of suspects; their failure to identify and expose the source of the outrages; above all, their failure to keep law and order.

  Neame was a very different type of schoolmaster from Gerard Hopkins. A tall, donnish-looking man in his late fifties, he had thin academic features and long, straggly hair, which he brushed continually from his eyes. The eyes themselves were cold and hawk-like, matching his chilling manner.

  Despite this manner, perhaps because of it, Neame was rousing high emotion in his audience. At the end of every sentence of his indictment of the police, there were thunderous growls of agreement. Gideon and Riddell, pushing their way through the jam-packed hall, felt that every one of those growls was a direct accusation aimed at themselves.

  Neame suddenly made sure of it.

  He broke off to point a long, bony forefinger directly at them.

  “I am delighted to see that Commander Gideon, head of the C.I.D and, through television, a familiar figure to everyone in Britain, has decided to honour us with his presence. I am also pleased to welcome Chief Detective Superintendent Riddell, who, I understand, has been in charge of the police investigations here throughout the past weeks. I do not think that any of us need be surprised that these gentlemen are arriving when our meeting is almost over. Everything the police have done in Wellesley has been characterised by a certain – slowness off the mark – shall we say?”

  This was greeted by a roar of laughter that threatened to split Gideon’s eardrums. He had reached his seat now, vacated by one of the plain-clothes men, but did not sit down. Arms folded, jaw thrust out, he stood there, easily the most commanding figure in the room, waiting for the sound of ironic hilarity to die down.

  But the roar didn’t die down. It changed its note, became a vocal tidal wave of derision and disgust. Torches, walking-sticks, newspapers, clenched fists were being waved at him from all sides; and behind them, beneath them, were now row after row of angry, frightened faces.

  It was like a nightmare: the worst nightmare of his life.

  Beside him, Gideon heard Riddell breathing hard, and wondered how far he was from breaking point. He became aware of other things: the unwinking eyes of T.V. news cameras, taking this painful moment of police history to the nation, to the world. A crowd of suspiciously well-dressed yobs occupying the rows of seats immediately behind him. What were they here for? To cause trouble, start a fight? Suddenly he spotted a familiar face in the middle of them: John Rowlandes, old Malcolm’s son, the D.C. from the area patrol car. Gideon’s spirits rose at the sight of him. So his little ploy had succeeded; the derided police had one man planted in the midst of the enemy …

  The demonstration was beginning to subside at last. Probably it was Gideon’s expression that was doing it. He managed to look as totally unmoved as a rock being hit by a schoolboy’s pebbles.

  As soon as individual voices could be heard again, Harold Neame shouted from the platform.

  “I do not think I need say anything further to express the feelings of this meeting. But while Mr. Gideon is on his feet I would like to ask him one question. Can he deny that in the circumstances in which the Wellesley Estate finds itself today, the only sensible, honourable course for its citizens to take is to found a law-keeping force of their own?”

  A total silence descended on the room, as everyone waited for Gideon’s reply.

  This was his moment, Gideon told himself. Everything would be lost if he muffed it.

  Loudly and clearly his voice boomed through the hall.

  “I wouldn’t dream of denying it, Mr. Neame. I’ve come here

  to propose exactly the same thing myself.”

  There was another silence, this time a stunned one.

  Neame, as thoroughly taken aback as his audience, brushed grey strands of hair out of his eyes.

  “Did I hear you correctly, Mr. Gideon? You say you have come here to propose setting up a vigilante force?”

  “That is so,” said Gideon easily, “but not quite the force you’re probably thinking of. I had a long consultation with the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police this afternoon. I put it to him – and he agreed with me – that there was a strong case here in Wellesley for setting up something completely new in the history of crime prevention: a police-directed army of part-time volunteers, a sort of Home Guard against crime. They would be identified by special armbands, and patrol the Estate in groups of six to eight. A smaller group would not give effective enough protection. Each unit would keep in constant walkie-talkie touch with a central control-point – probably the police sub-station – ”

  A feeling of excitement was sweeping through the room. This audience of furious malcontents was beginning to reveal itself for what it really was: a collection of normal citizens suffering from a combination of fear and frustration. Gideon’s calmness eased their fears: the clarity and detail of his proposals sliced through their frustration. What they needed was a clear-cut plan of action, involving every man and woman who wished to volunteer, a plan that was ready to be put into immediate effect; and that was exactly what George Gideon was giving them.

  Even Neame’s attitude was changing. When he spoke again, the cold anger had gone from his voice. In its place was something very like respect.

  “Would these patrolling units have the power to arrest?”

  “Certainly,” said Gideon. “And it wouldn’t take any special legislation to give it to them. Every citizen has the right to arrest anyone whom he sees breaking the law. These volunteers would simply be acting on their ancient basic rights as citizens. Of course, they wouldn’t be able to search houses, or hold suspects for questioning … but, as I’ve said, they’ll be in direct radio touch with the police, and a Panda car can reach any part of the Estate in under two minutes. So they shouldn’t be by any means powerless in any situation.”

  “How soon can this force be started?” someone asked.

  “If enough of you come forward at the end of this meeting, there’s no reason why the first patrols shouldn’t be out tonight.”

  There were excited murmurs, gasps of astonishment, grunts of approval. This was the kind of talk they had come to hear all right; and they had got more of it in two minutes from Gideon than in nearly three-quarters of an hour of listening to Harold Neame.

  “What shall we call this force?” asked a cheerful, red-faced woman farther along Gideon’s row. “The Gideonites?”

  The roar of laughter that followed was warm, enthusiastic, anything but mocking.

  “I don’t care what we call it,” Gideon replied, “as long as it brings the walls of violence tumbling down.”

  This was greeted by actual applause, in which one man – a sour, dyspeptic-looking individual in the front row – definitely did not join.

  He got to his feet, and shouted, contemptuously, “Shakespeare was right about the many-headed multitude! Five minutes ago you were all attacking the police for their bungling incompetence. Now you want them to take charge of this whole vigilante project. Why? Do you want to have that bungled too?”

  Gideon turned red with fury. But his voice remained calm, deliberate, matter-of-fact.

  “If I believed there had been a single moment of incompetence in the handling of this inquiry,” he said, “I would not be here to defend it. And the Chief Detective Superintendent in charge of the case would not be standing here beside me. The plain truth is that in any free community, the police are only as strong as the public’s will to support them. For reasons which I won’t go into now, public support for the police on this Estate has become dangerously w
eak. If, as I hope and believe, this meeting marks a dramatic change in that situation, then I can make you this promise. With your help, the violence on the Wellesley Estate can be ended – once and for all – in a matter of days from now!”

  It was perhaps the rashest promise of his life. And he had made it in front of T.V. cameras and half the crime reporters of

  Fleet Street. If he failed to fulfil it, it could mean nothing less than the end of his career. Yet Gideon felt no twinge of anxiety; only confidence that he had spoken the literal truth.

  And if he was wrong – if he had really put his head on the block – at least there was one consolation. As far as this meeting was concerned, he had won an overwhelming victory. A good half of the people in the hall were on their feet cheering. Harold Neame, his expression of sour denunciation now turned to approval, was clapping lustily: as was the supporting committee on the platform behind him. All along Gideon’s row, people were pressing forward to talk to him, smiling, waving, wanting him and Riddell to shake their hands.

  But in the row behind Gideon, there was a different story.

  The well-dressed youths were looking around them with silent, vicious anger.

  Gideon heard a sudden whisper.

  “Let’s stick the pigs!”

  He whirled round, in time to see chairs crashing over, fists flailing, the sharp gleam of a razor blade …

  The trouble didn’t last long. The constables at the door, and the plain-clothes men who had been positioned all over the audience, had had their eyes on those youths from the beginning of the meeting, and were more than ready. But it took them a few moments to get across the hall and close in.

  And it was during those moments that a very strange event took place.

  John Rowlandes got to his feet, kicked over his chair, pushed past two or three of his fellow trouble-makers, and arrived immediately behind Gideon.

  And as Gideon swung round towards him, he aimed a right hook at the Commander’s jaw.