The Vengeance Man

by John Macrae

  I pored over a map of the area and plotted the attacks precisely. They were all close together and in a straight line. In two of the four attacks, the gang had fled east, downhill towards a parallel road that drained a series of gloomy, run-down avenues with decaying Victorian villas. I drew the escape lines and thought hard. Then I drew a tight circle on the map: they had to come from within that patch. The next chance I got, I took the car and took a prowl around the area. It was a mugger's paradise all right. I parked at the junction of two of the decaying roads and watched. I soon knew I'd been spotted. A grubby curtain twitched on the house opposite; the house alongside couldn't twitch its curtains - they had nailed up sacking at their windows. There I sat for hour after hour, until dusk fell and the street lamps gleamed, making the rubbish strewn streets sinister and Dickensian.

  During the day I had seen few people; just shoppers laden with plastic bags, or school kids. As the darkness settled, I spotted grey shapes flitting down the drab avenue. Raucous bellows of laughter wafted back. The boyos had emerged for their evening's fun. Through the image intensifier I'd 'borrowed' from the firm, I studied them: four schoolboys, not more than fifteen, off searching for mischief. A couple of girls. Drinking lager from a can and throwing down a bottle in the street to shatter in the gutter. Shrieks of laughter and a fog of obscenities hung in the air. No sign of my three baddies though. With a grunt of disappointment, I let them go.

  I cruised the whole area that evening, stopping at dimly lit corners to study the shadows. I saw the occasional group in shimmery electronic green through the I.I. binoculars - but never my bunch.

  I kept it up for seventeen consecutive evenings. I never used my own car. I knew I’d be logged on the local CCTV. Most evenings I used a hire car. To the accompaniment of almost all my best baroque music, I saw absolutely nothing. Oh sure, I saw tarts, and pimps and druggies. I saw couples screwing up the alley ways, even a goat in a garden and once an enraged drunk with his trousers round his ankles unsuccessfully chasing his woman up the street, waving what looked like a genuine butcher's cleaver. I tell you, as street theatre, the backstreets of South London are an education.

  But of my special little group of nasties, I saw not a hair. Maybe they’d given up. Maybe they were all at home watching the telly. After two weeks I reckoned I knew as much about German baroque as I could reasonably take in, and enough about the area as the local beat policeman; but I still hadn't found my muggers.

  To add insult to my own vain searching, they struck again. On the morning of my last day the gang attacked an elderly man, clubbed him to the ground and ran off with his wallet containing eleven pounds. The fall, and the kicking they gave him, broke his hip, his nose, two ribs and ripped off half an ear. But he was an old naval pensioner who had been on the Arctic convoys, and he was tough enough to tell the police that he had broken his stick on one of his assailants who had been a girl wearing red trainers, and that another had been on roller skates and wearing a grey track suit. The rest had fled. It was my three all right. Again, the police hauled them in, and again the three had alibis.

  I studied the map again, and tried to think clearly. The attack was slightly to the north of the line I had originally drawn. Then I double checked all the times of the attacks. I was an idiot. They had all taken place before noon. Whatever it was that brought my three beauties together was a thing of the morning. That's when I'd find them.

  * * *

  Getting a weekday morning off wasn't easy. Eventually I was able to get away on a delivery run to a garage in Croydon that fronted up for our Security Division. We had to collect a van that they had been rigging up on a contract for the Security Service. As the deal was so sensitive, I offered to drive it back to the Box's delivery address, much to Mallalieu's relief. He hadn't wanted to give it to a Bull Pen man, but it was too sensitive a job really to farm it out to one of the drivers. I muttered something about 'keeping my hand in', and next morning took off for the delights of South London.

  Once I'd collected the van, I phoned the Box's address, and told them I'd be delivering it later than planned. They didn't mind. Then I moved into what I had begun to think of as 'my patch'.

  It was a dull day and the pavements had the oily sheen of last night's rain, littered with broken glass, beer cans and old hamburger boxes. I started out by driving every street, looking for a good place to park. I wanted to see as much of the area as possible in the few hours I had. By the time I'd found a good pitch it was after ten o'clock.

  An hour's fruitless wait didn't improve my temper, although it gave me the chance to try out the van's fittings in the back. It had a superb comms fit, good observation devices, including remoted periscopic binoculars and even a rest bunk for the weary surveillance operator who'd seen it all. Box 500 were certainly getting their money's worth. Countering terrorism was obviously making good business for the Security Service’s budget.

  At eleven I drifted round the area again, this time very slowly. Again I saw nothing. I began to despair. It really was like looking for a needle in a haystack. By ten past twelve I admitted defeat. The whole idea was stupid anyway, and my chances of finding my three muggers almost nil with police resources or talking to the local people, neither of which I dared to do. I folded my map one last time, and turned the ignition key, ready to leave.

  There they were.

  About thirty metres away, standing close together in a little knot at the bottom of some crumbling brick steps. About five young people: track suits, trainer; hoods. They huddled together conspiratorially, the tall one making emphatic gestures with his hands. He was standing firmly in baseball boots, without a roller skate in sight, but the one with the back to me was wearing what looked like expensive red trainers. That would be the ladette. Another one looked small and sallow, and seemed to have a mark on his neck. He kept glancing up and down the dingy street. It had to be them.

  I held my breath and moved as carefully as I could into the back of the van. I left the velvet curtain slightly apart to watch them as I scrabbled with the directional microphone and the observation fittings. Fortunately the electronics were still warm from my earlier fiddling, and the shotgun microphone hissed gently in my ears as it traversed smoothly inside the false roof. I aimed the marker at the group, pulling the earphones on with one hand at the same time. Nothing but clicks and bangs and static came through at first, and I swung the mike control sharply to sweep across the three. Suddenly they boomed in, then faded. I returned to the strongest signal. The voices were clear and urgent.

  " ... ah doan' care. We gotta do it rearl cairful or we gonna get ourselves cot ..." It was the grey topped leader haranguing the one with the white one with red shoes.

  "I don' give a shit." The female voice was nasal South London. "We're always takin' a risk, but we ain' nevah bin cort, we're too fast. I'm still sain', go for sumfin' decent. The post office'll have lotsa money... Anyway, no-one can do nuffin abart us…"

  "Bettah than elevan poun', for shoah." The third speaker was the sallow one. His voice, even across the distortion of the directional mike was thin and mean. Through the remote binoculars I could see him sneering. I was fully into the watch operator's swivel chair now, using the headphones and binocular controls. With my left hand I reached out and twitched the curtain across, cutting out the view through the windscreen and concentrated on the surveillance periscope. I had had bad luck looking for my three customers in the last month, but finding them on the day I had a brand new fully rigged surveillance van to call my own more than made up for it.

  "OK, OK. Ah'll goah along with it. But only one last bust, then we gotta change our image like an’ and split, man, 'cos it not gonna last for evah." It was the grey track suit.

  "So we do the post office, roight?" That was red shoes girl.

  "When?"

  "When you like ... Howsart tomorrah? It’s pension day, innit? All the old biddies’ll be art collectin’ their wages."

  A pause.

  "Ivor ...
you scared?" That was the female sneering voice.

  "Scared's de wrong word ... I'm jus' cairful. You know what ah mean?" Ivor was the tall grey one. "At least no one belts me wiv a stick."

  "Shit, it'll be easy, man. We jus' gotta look real cairful ...What we really need is a gun, man." Red shoes, the girl. Scornful, mocking. "Anyway, tha' ol' man won' be usin' his stick for a long time now." Sniggers. A long pause.

  "OK, OK. But a shooter’d be dead good, if we could get one. We’d get more respec’ wiv a shoo’ah.” The third voice broke in, muffled. “When're we gonna do it then? Tomorra?"

  Red shoes shrugged. "Why not?" She swung round and stared up the street, taking in the van. Through the binoculars she seemed to be looking straight at me, almost at touching distance. "Lissen, let's do it. You guys are good an’ no-one’s gonna lay afinger on us, man. Know what I mean?" She turned back to the other two who were following his gaze. "We meet up tomorrow, same place, then ease down for a good look, OK?"

  The others nodded. Grey top looked uneasy. "C'mon, let’s split”.

  Sneery face broke in. "Hey, who's that van? Outside firty free. Darn there. The grey one." He jerked his head towards me.

  They all looked at me again. I felt their coldly calculating eyes and held my breath. The earphones crackled.

  "Ah doan know. I never see it befoah."

  "It locked, huh?"

  Grey top shrugged. "Shit, I dunno, Jelly."

  "C'mon Ivor, les' go see, huh? Mebbe it's gonna have a weak lock, eh?" They sniggered again.

  To my horror, they began to amble down the pavement towards me, the Red shoes girl leading. While the back double doors of the van were securely locked and no-one could see inside, the driver's door was still unlocked. For a second I was paralysed. Then I pulled off the headphones and dived low under the velvet curtain. By lying flat and reaching full length across the driver's seat, I could press the inner locking button down. I prayed that they wouldn't see the brief white flash of hand, then hardly daring to breathe, I edged carefully on my belly under the velvet curtain back into the body of the van.

  They were so close I'd lost them on the binoculars. I softly pulled back the sliding inner covers on the one-way viewing windows to see them about five metres away. The van was fitted with all-round viewing ports and it was eerie to see them so close, knowing that I was invisible to them. I didn't need the microphone either. Muffled by the bodywork I could hear their voices, and then the van rattled as the driver's door was shaken. "Shit, it's locked."

  "Hey, man, doan' fuss. Jelly, try the back."

  Sallow face walked round and tugged hard at the back doors. The van rocked. He twisted as hard as he could and kicked the doors. I held my breath. Then he kicked the handle again, which snapped off and sailed into the road.

  "Oh, shit, look what ah've dun." He laughed and the other two came round the back to join him.

  The girl sneered. “You'll nevah git in it nah, you ..."

  "OK, OK." Someone charged the back doors with his shoulder. The van lurched on its suspension. Frightened now, I looked round for a suitable weapon. Nothing. The three yobboes kicked the back doors, but, thank God, they had been reinforced against this sort of attack. A wave of rising panic made my armpits begin to sweat. How the hell was I going to explain this away?

  "Hey c'mon, why don’ we go rarnd the front." This was Red shoes. "Mebbe you can smash a window." No doubt about it. The girl was the leader.

  The three heads moved round the left side of the van. Again it rattled as they tugged at the passenger door. Red shoes swore again at being thwarted and Sallow Face guffawed at her discomfiture.

  "Lissen, Nelson, I'm goin' to get into this fuckin’ van now." Red shoes was angry. I wondered if she had to try to impress her two mates. She stumped in front of the van and leant over the pavement wall to get something from a grimy garden. With horror I saw that she had got a brick.

  "Hey, cool it girl. We doan' wan' no trouble...."

  But Red shoes was angry. Holding the brick carefully by one end she smashed it against the driver's door window. There was a resounding 'boing' and she staggered back, holding her wrist. The special proof armoured glass was unmarked, but, to judge from her antics, Red shoes wasn't. "You' fuckin..." she trailed off into a stream of bad language while the other two shrieked with falsetto laughter like a couple of seagulls, as Red shoes stuffed her aching wrist under her armpit. Despite the tension I grinned to myself.

  Red shoes now bent to retrieve the brick. "What kind of fuckin’ van is this, anyways?" I heard her say, then she threw the brick at the glass as hard as he could. Again it bounced off, narrowly missing the other two, who ducked and stopped laughing. It was getting ugly. I couldn't afford them going for the wheels or tyres at any price and that could be next.

  "Hey, cool it Jelly!" shouted the tall one they'd called Ivor. He looked alarmed. In fact, he looked about a quarter of what I was feeling, standing in the back of a brand new specialist surveillance van costing six figures and full of secret and sensitive equipment, surrounded by three psychopathic vandals. I had to do something to stop them and fast, even if I had to leap into the driver's seat and drive away. Then I remembered the alarm. I could hardly use the van's radio phone to dial 999, but I could scare the shit out of them.

  As Jelly hefted hers brick to throw one more time, I banged my hand hard down on the round red button. Immediately a police siren wailed overhead, loud and high-pitched. Inside it was deafening. The girl Jelly froze, the brick tumbled from her hand and then she was gone, haring down the avenue as if the hounds of hell were at her heels. As if by magic Sallow Face Nelson had already disappeared, and down the other pavement I could see Greytop Ivor was working on the UK all-comers 400 metres backstreets dash record.

  Say what you like, they were fast, those kids, especially when they thought they blown it. They should have enrolled in the local athletics club. Mind you, they’d probably push steroids to the members. But they were quick.

  By the time they'd gone, doors were opening and people looking into the street. Round here police sirens were always interesting. I waited a few more seconds, then turned the off' key on the panel. The alarm siren cut out in mid wail as suddenly as it had started, and a blissful silence descended. I quietly eased into the driver's seat, wiped my sweating palms and pulled away, followed by the wondering stares of the avenue's inhabitants. I didn't mind; it was quite funny really. No harm had been done - and now I knew where to find my three muggers next day. By the time I got into Brixton High Street I was smiling. I hoped Jelly's wrist hurt from her brick-banging efforts. Her pride certainly had been.

  I warned Mallalieu that I would be late in the next day. "Broken tooth," I said glumly;

  He smiled. "Sign of age. You're slowing down; falling apart. Fancy letting some yobboes rip the back handle off at traffic lights." This was the story I'd given him about the damage to the van. "Oh, well ... enjoy the dentist; I can't stand them."

  I tried to look suitably embarrassed and he wandered off. I wondered what he'd think he knew of my real plans for an appointment tomorrow. I was going to sort his yobboes out.

  And, as a special treat, I was going to let them see a gun.

  CHAPTER 22

  A marked increase in Gun Crime

  I like guns.

  In the lock up garage that night I dragged out a carefully loosened breeze block and unearthed a cloth roll containing my oldest and most secret treasures: an ex-SOE Ballester-Molina .45 automatic, and a Colt Courier .32 revolver. Although I’m not a great fan of handguns, the old Argentinean automatic pistol was far more accurate than any version of the US Colt .45 it had been copied from. With it I knew I could hit a man target 8 out of 10 at thirty metres, which for me was good hand gun shooting. Moreover, the soft nosed .45 bullet was a real manstopper. But it was unsuitable for what I had in mind, and I daren't scatter empty .45 cases onto the pavement, which automatics do - automatically. No, it was the revolver, .32 calibre, or nothin
g. Reluctantly I put the heavy silver-grey automatic away and returned to the flat with the smaller gun and twenty neatly packed .32 'New Police' bullets.

  On the kitchen table I carefully stripped, cleaned and reassembled the revolver. I left the pistol grips off at first, but a skeleton butt saved little bulk and was uncomfortable in the hand, so I screwed them back on. Then I turned my attention to the ammunition.

  Point 32 calibre pistol ammunition can’t really be described as a man stopper. But then I only wanted to drop a bunch of hooligan kids and at short range at that. Stopping power is simply a measure of a bullet's ability to deliver its energy to the target and the most important single factor is its weight. At only 100 grammes, the .32 is little more than a very dangerous toy except in skilled hands. I set out to make my .32 ammunition as dangerous as possible.

  Taking six of the rounds, I gently jiggled them until the bullets came out of the end of the brass cartridge cases. Being careful not to spill any of the grains of propellant, I stacked the open shells on the table and opened some of the spare rounds to pour a little of their propellant into my selected cases.

  I'd no idea how much extra charge I'd squeezed in; not much, but the combination of the little extra muzzle velocity and a flat lead dum-dum head should splatter any mugger at close range.

  Just to make absolutely sure, I took the six loose bullets and jammed them one at a time, back end upwards, into a modelling vice. With an Exacto razor hack saw, I carefully cut a cross in the lead circle of the flat ends. The lead sawdust sprinkled through the gleaming copper jackets of the bullets and drifted onto the table. By the time I had finished I had six flat head bullets, each with a deeply incised cross in the wrong end.. Then I carefully pushed them back, point first into their brass cases. Displaced propellant spilled onto the table. Checking the bullets for length against an undoctored one, I finally sealed the six back to front rounds with a little clear UHU. The blunt exposed ends of the doctored bullets gleamed like miniature metal thermos flasks, each marked with its deep-cut cross on the top.