Vigilantes & Biscuits Read online

  “All I am proposing is that you should wait for Commander Gideon’s return before talking any more about sending out patrols tonight. This knifing has changed the situation drastically. We do not know what further mischief may be planned. There could be other cases of murderous violence, which might erupt anywhere in Wellesley. In the circumstances, to allow small bands of unarmed, untrained civilian volunteers to roam the Estate all night would be like sending lambs to the slaughter. I feel – ”

  The rest of his words were lost in a roar of fury. Gideon let the door swing shut again, stood back, and leant heavily against a wall. That bloody fool Riddell! Certainly, he was going by the copper’s rule book – the policeman’s first duty was to see that citizens were never unnecessarily put at risk – but rule books didn’t help against a hostile populace in a lynch-mob mood. With great difficulty he, Gideon, had damped down that mood by promising instant action in which the public could be directly involved. By virtually withdrawing that promise on the first provocation, Riddell was making it look as though the police weren’t serious – had, in fact, got cold feet about the whole vigilante scheme.

  Gideon almost groaned aloud. The psychological damage that had been done might be very hard to repair. Just how hard became all too clear a moment later. The shouting stopped – or, rather, thinned into a single shouting voice. Gideon stepped back to the door, and saw through the glass that someone from the hall – the sour, dyspeptic-looking man who had called the audience a “many-headed multitude” earlier on – had jumped on to the platform beside Neame, and was making a speech of almost Hitler-like savagery.

  Gideon didn’t have to open the door to hear him. The thin, strident voice, pitched on a note of high hysteria, pierced glass and wood with ease.

  “So murderous violence is being planned against us, is it? In that case, ladies and gentlemen, I suggest there is only one answer: to get murderously violent ourselves. Let’s all go out of this hall together – a great, irresistible army – and not stop until we’ve hounded every hooligan off the Estate. We must search every street, every garden, every house, every room even. And each time we find a boy with a knife, or a razor, or a gun, or so much as a guilty look, we’ll – “ For a moment, Gideon thought the man was actually going to say “string him up”. But, perhaps mindful of the T.V. cameras, he ended less wildly: “ – give him a taste of his own medicine.” It came to the same thing, of course, Gideon thought grimly. That phrase could be a licence for anything – kicking, beating, knifing – total bloodlust in the name of justice. And if the hooligans ganged up and replied in kind, tonight could be one of the bloodiest ever experienced in Britain in time of peace.

  It had to be stopped – and stopped immediately.

  But how?

  8

  Lambs to the Slaughter?

  The people in the hall were clapping their approval. Or, at least, some of them were. From the rather thin volume of sound, Gideon sensed that quite a few members of the audience must be refraining from joining in; and even Neame and the platform committee (or, at least, as many members of them as he could see through the narrow pane) were looking hesitant, clearly in two minds about how far they wanted to go.

  If he could walk in there and somehow, very quickly, restore the confidence in the police that Riddell had destroyed, there might still – just – be a chance of saving the day.

  Once Gideon saw what he had to do, he hesitated less than a second before starting to do it. He strode straight through the swing doors, making sure that they swung to behind him with a resounding enough thud to turn half the heads in the audience his way. He strode on down the main aisle, looking neither right nor left until he reached the platform. He did not bother to climb the steps. His commanding personality – coupled with his height and bulk – enabled him to dominate the hall quite effortlessly from where he was.

  Neame, the passionate orator, the committee – all on the platform were overshadowed as effectively as though a bright spotlight had swung away from them.

  “I’m sorry I was so long,” Gideon said briskly. “There were several matters in connection with the knifing incident that required to be dealt with urgently.” He gave the impression that he was totally unaware that anything of importance had happened since he had left the hall. What was more, by some magic of the will, he succeeded in suggesting that nothing important could have happened while he’d been away.

  “Incidentally,” he continued, very firmly and confidently, “I have had clearer thoughts about tonight’s vigilante patrols. Now that this violence has taken place, they will be more urgently needed than ever. And I don’t think we should wait until this meeting is over; I think we should send them out at once.” It was a temptation to glance at Riddell, but Gideon resisted it. His voice sharpened as incisively as if he were giving a Yard briefing.

  “It is now ten o’clock. If we’re quick, we could get the first patrols on the streets by ten thirty. It will take two patrols, with six members in each, to patrol the Estate adequately; and we ought to have it patrolled until well after daybreak – say six thirty a.m. tomorrow. So I suggest we have two further patrols ready to take over from the first ones halfway through the night, at two thirty a.m. That means I require twenty-four volunteers for tonight’s patrolling, and thirty-six for tomorrow night, when we’ll be having three shifts starting at eight p.m. In other words, I’m appealing for sixty of you to volunteer. Now.”

  There was a long, agonising pause. Then Neame, on the platform, said authoritatively, “Count me in, Commander, as No. 1.”

  He left the platform, the entire vigilante committee following him to “sign on”. Gideon took down their names in a notebook, not batting an eyelid as he listed two clergymen, an engine driver and a chiropodist among them. Then the speaker’s table was pressed into service as a recruiting officer’s desk, and Gideon detailed two uniformed constables to sit there and take the rest of the names. The Hitler-like demagogue disappeared somewhere behind the queue that was forming three deep down the central aisle. His speech had been forgotten as completely as if he had never made it. Instead of a hysterical invitation to a combined witch-hunt and blood-bath, the public felt that it had been offered a sensible, practical job to do. And it was jumping at the chance.

  Within a quarter of an hour, the sixty volunteers had signed on; and then Harold Neame proposed that the meeting should close.

  “Commander Gideon has promised that, as far as it’s humanly possible, this action will be enough to end the violence on this Estate,” he said. “I suggest we take him at his word, and hold no more meetings until we have had a chance to see the effect of – Gideon’s Force.”

  Without realising it, the donnish headmaster had coined the name that was to stay with the new organisation from that moment forward.

  The motion was carried nem con; the meeting broke up; the T.V. men started dismantling their lights and cameras, and preparing to go home.

  The sixty volunteers remained, waiting for instructions.

  Gideon didn’t keep them waiting long.

  “I am afraid I am going to have to ask all of you to accompany me to the station,” he announced sternly; then added, with a grin: “It is only fifty yards down the road. It will be easier there to work out the rotas for the different patrols; to issue patrol-leaders with walkie-talkies, and so on. Would you all please follow me, and we’ll decide which of you are to be sent out on patrol duty straight away. I hope we shan’t detain you long.”

  A minute later Gideon was striding down the street towards the station with Riddell at his side, the crowd of volunteer vigilantes, led by Harold Neame and his committee, closely following.

  Neame was leading in a typical headmaster’s style, his forward stride being one of absolute confidence. Behind him came the committee and behind them, the rest of the volunteers – a mixed assortment of human types, mostly men, but with a fair sprinkling of women. A wealthy-looking middle-aged woman walked side by side with an Irish youth in a b
us conductor’s uniform. An attractive girl in jeans walked arm in arm with a senior citizen, dressed in what looked like a wartime siren suit. Gideon, who had asked all the volunteers to list their occupations along with their names and addresses, knew that amongst this throng were bank clerks, shop assistants, draughtsmen, factory workers, nurses, T.V. repairers, hairdressers, teachers, housewives, milkmen – in fact, people in almost every job one could think of. A complete cross-section of the Wellesley Estate was walking behind him; with only a little exaggeration, one could call it a complete cross-section of Britain.

  The grimness with which everyone had walked towards the hall earlier that evening had entirely disappeared. There was a strong sense of excitement in the air, and most of the crowd were laughing and talking among themselves as gaily as though they were off on some holiday excursion. The committee tried to hold themselves aloof, but even one or two of them were grinning.

  Only Tom Riddell remained grim. Since Gideon’s intervention he hadn’t spoken once; and his face, or as much of it as Gideon could see in the darkness, was white and haunted. Perhaps he was remembering his disastrous speech, and how close it had brought the whole Estate to the brink of a holocaust. Or perhaps he still had reservations about the idea of using civilian patrols.

  This second guess proved to be the right one.

  Riddell suddenly turned and said quietly, so that no one behind them could hear: “George. All this patrolling – is it just a device to keep the lynch-mob occupied, or do you really believe it can stop the violence?”

  “I really believe it can stop the violence,” Gideon answered. “And I’ll tell you why. The last time the Estate had peace and quiet was when Uniform was doing its ‘saturation policing’. They had so many men here that every point on the Estate was passed by a policeman – how frequently? You know the statistics better than I do.”

  “Every twelve to fourteen minutes,” Riddell answered flatly, as though reciting from an over-familiar textbook.

  “Right,” Gideon said. “Now, with two patrols making the whole Estate their beat from ten thirty to six thirty, supplemented by two area cars on constant patrol, we can actually beat that figure. Every point on the Estate should, by my reckoning, be passed either by a patrol or an area car every nine to eleven minutes. Nobody’s pretending that that’s a final answer to the violence. But it ought to damp it down for a while – and a few days’ grace is all we should need to bring the ringleaders to book. I’ve a hunch we’re pretty hot on their trail.”

  “You are, George – that’s for certain.! But isn’t there a danger that for that very reason, the violence will escalate rather than die down?” Riddell’s voice suddenly became harsh and strident, betraying nerves that were taut as bowstrings. “For instance, do you know why I think Eric Beresford was knifed tonight? It was simply because you were seen coming and going from his house.”

  Gideon was so shaken that he stopped dead in the street, oblivious to the confusion this created behind him. The thought that he might inadvertently have caused what had happened to Eric was one of the biggest shocks in a shattering night. He had a childish impulse to deny angrily that the evidence suggested any such thing. But he checked himself. He had to admit that Riddell’s theory was not only feasible; it was almost the only tenable explanation. What other motive could the enemy have had for suddenly turning – murderously – on one of their own gang?

  Gideon began walking again, now at a greatly increased pace.

  “If you’re right,” he said, “and you certainly may be – this organisation really must have eyes everywhere.”

  “They have, George, they have!” Under normal circumstances, Riddell would never have dreamed of addressing his superior, in such familiar terms, in a voice which could not fail to carry to listening ears. But the man was beyond such niceties: he was perilously close to being beyond reason. His obsessive fear and hatred of the mysterious evil on the Estate seemed to have taken over his entire personality, making him as unmanageable as a madman.

  “And do you realise what this means?” he declared loudly, oblivious of the fact that by now the whole crowd was his audience. “The enemy will have detailed knowledge of this patrol operation from the word ‘go’. No matter how hard we try to screen the volunteers, their spies will get in. No matter how frequently we change the rotas or the routes, they’ll know where each patrol will be at any given time. And at some point, they’re bound to plan an ambush – probably a quick knife attack by one of their most vicious mugging units. The patrol leader will be pounced on first, his walkie-talkie snatched before he’s said a word. The first the control point at the station will know of the attack will be ten minutes later, when an area car goes past and sees the bodies of the patrol.”

  “The bodies of the patrol…”

  The phrase had all the impact of a blow, and it sent Gideon’s senses reeling as if he had been physically winded. Half of his mind was inclined to dismiss Riddell’s fears as the product of a near-paranoiac obsession; the other half whispered that they could be alarmingly close to the truth.

  The volunteers evidently felt the same. No one in the crowd could have missed hearing Riddell’s declaration; and it had had a dramatic effect. The excited laughing and chattering had given way to a tense, strained silence.

  They were outside the police station now. Gideon slowly climbed the half-dozen steps that led to the main entrance, still unsure how to cope with the situation; what, if anything, to say. By the time he reached the top of the flight he had decided. It was only right to play it straight with these people – to tell them there was an outside chance that they had been listening to the truth.

  He turned and faced them, his expression almost as grim as Riddell’s. The police station’s blue lamp, immediately above his head, made him seem more than ever a massive embodiment of British justice, British law.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “I gather you’ve all heard my colleague’s views on the risks you are facing. I assure you that the police will take every possible step to see that those risks are minimised. On the other hand, if Chief Detective Superintendent Riddell’s assessment of the situation turns out to be correct, then obviously your lives will be in a certain amount of peril. If any – or all – of you wish to withdraw – ”

  “Withdraw?”

  The word was flung back at him in a roar of derisive contempt.

  “What do you take us for, Commander?” The speaker was the senior citizen in the siren suit. “I thought you said you were organising a Home Guard against crime. Well, I know something about the real Home Guard – I served as a sergeant in it, clean through World War II. And what d’you imagine my platoon would have thought of me if I’d said: ‘Do you wish to withdraw tonight, lads? There might be a bit of an air raid.’

  Whatever the risks you’re talking about, I don’t reckon they’re bigger than Hitler’s bombs were, then.”

  “And quite apart from that – “ Neame was talking now, his thin, donnish tones in startling contrast to the ex-sergeant’s rich Cockney – “what about the risks to our wives and children if we don’t take a stand, once and for all, against the violence here?”

  Gideon, for the moment, was lost for a reply. Over and over again, during his career, he had felt humbled by the courage and determination shown by policemen under his command. It was an odd experience to have the same feeling about a cross-section of the public – that public which had behaved like a mindless rabble only half an hour before.

  It was a moment before he could trust his voice. Then he said, gruffly, “Well – if you’re all agreed – in the station, everybody, please.”

  Watched by a despairing Riddell, the crowd surged forward towards the steps. At that moment – finally, irrevocably – Gideon’s Force was born.

  9

  Halfway Up a Hill

  At that moment, six miles away in West Dulwich, another kind of force was very definitely not being born: that force of a hundred or more policemen wh
ich Jacob Brodnik had requested should be put under his command – to, as he put it, “carry out my instructions without question for the space of forty-eight hours”.

  Gradually, in the course of a long, agonising discussion, Matt Honiwell had been cornered into admitting that, as far as the Yard was concerned, such an arrangement was out of the question.

  For all his frailty, Jacob Brodnik had a formidable temper. Fury blazed out of his deep-set eyes.

  “You have wasted over an hour of my time, Mr. Honiwell, which is not important. But you have also been playing games with the mind of a man in acute distress – “ he glanced across at Gordon Cargill who, embarrassed, looked away “ – and with the life of a woman in desperate danger. This is not, I think, so easy to forgive. You owe it both to Mr. Cargill and myself to lay your cards on the table – if you have any cards to lay. Please tell us precisely how many men Scotland Yard would be prepared to give me.”

  Hating the position in which he found himself, Matt decided that he had no more room for manoeuvre.

  “Mr. Brodnik, I have already explained that I am here purely as an observer. I have no authority to commit Scotland Yard to anything whatsoever.”

  Brodnik’s eyes – perhaps the most expressive that Matt had ever seen – still registered fury, but mixed with it now was both disbelief and contempt.

  “You are a man without authority? But you were introduced to me as Chief Detective Superintendent Honiwell. You must at least have someone under your command.”

  Matt was beginning to wish that he was anywhere on earth but here.

  “I am not without authority, Mr. Brodnik. But I am also under authority. And my strict instructions – of which Mr. Cargill was well aware before I came – are that under no circumstances can I release even one man to follow up unsupported E.S.P. information.”

  “Not one man?”

  The fury died out of Brodnik’s eyes. Everything died out of them. They became as blank as the glass eyes of a dummy, signalling, more plainly than anything else could have done, that the interview was over; Mr. Brodnik was through.