by Zoe Sharp
I heard Clare come into the kitchen and take over the receiver. “Hello stranger,” she said brightly.
We exchanged idle chit-chat for a few minutes, then I steered the conversation back round to the recent happenings on Lavender Gardens, with particular reference to Ian Garton-Jones’s presence on the estate. “I understand his company, Streetwise Securities have been working on a couple of other estates locally, and he’s had quite an effect,” I said. “Your mate on the crime desk wouldn’t be able to fill in any gaps for me, would he?”
“Probably,” Clare said. “The name rings a bell, and I seem to remember us running some stories on him. I got the impression that we took a slightly disapproving stance – you know, the vigilante angle – but the residents all thought he was wonderful. I’ll find out what I can and give you a shout.”
After we’d finished our conversation I spent some time thinking over the decision to intervene more than I had done already in the affairs of Lavender Gardens. I wondered if it was a poor choice.
I came to the conclusion that it probably was.
Six
By the time Streetwise Securities had been on guard for three days, my vague impression of unease had hardened into certainty.
Garton-Jones was efficient all right, but he achieved his results with a ruthless disregard for personal freedom. Nobody got in without their say-so, which was irritating, but OK. But, nobody got out either. In the space of a few short days, Lavender Gardens had been ghetto-ised. I doubt the Gestapo could have done it better.
The kids in particular were running scared of him. Before, they’d played football in the road, or sat around on the corner of the next street along, by the little late-night convenience store, furtively smoking cigarettes. Now they were conspicuous by their absence. It was like they were under curfew.
For myself, I remembered my promise to Pauline, and kept my head down. After my initial run in, Garton-Jones’s men didn’t stop me again, but they always seemed to be around, lurking in the background to note my movements. I wondered if they were compiling a dossier.
They popped up out of nowhere the first few times I took Friday for his twice-daily constitutional. The way they suddenly materialised was too constant ever to be coincidence. It was at this point I discovered that, either by good luck or good training, the Ridgeback regarded any approaches on the street by strange men as a hostile act. Afterwards, they steered well clear of us.
As the dog’s senses were infinitely more acute than my own, he provided me with a superb early warning system. If I was on foot, I took him nearly everywhere with me and remained totally unmolested.
Sod’s law, then, that the one time when I could have really used the services of a big fierce dog was also the one time I’d left him at home.
It was another miserable evening. A thick stifling blanket of fog had coasted up from the River Lune and was hanging over Lavender Gardens like doom. Friday had been singularly unimpressed by it during his walk. When I rattled his lead to suggest another outing just before nine o’clock, he slunk onto his beanbag in the kitchen and studiously pretended to be asleep.
It was only a short distance to the shop. I set out alone in search of something as mundane as a pint of milk, and didn’t think I was risking my neck by doing so.
As it was, I cut through another of the little ginnels that dissected all the streets on Lavender Gardens, keeping my head down against the mist that clung to my face like a cobweb. The illumination from the streetlights was reduced to an eerie cone-shaped glow round their bases. I began to wish I’d been a little more insistent with Friday.
The fog muffled sound as well as sight, so that I was almost on top of the men before I realised they were there.
Looking at it clinically, it was a good quiet spot for an ambush. A secluded area tucked away behind the shop, little more than an alleyway, colonised on one side by a row of lockup garages. There were no overlooking windows, and plenty of space to put the boot in.
And somebody was doing that with gusto. Putting the boot in, I mean. I heard the sickening sounds of fists and feet being applied with enthusiasm. Grunts of exertion, and corresponding gasps of pain. So much for Garton-Jones and his boys stopping this sort of thing happening, I thought bitterly.
Without really knowing what I was going to do, I edged closer, staying close to the garages. Gradually the scene unfolded out of the murk. On balance, I think I preferred it when it was out of focus.
There were two men standing with a boy lying buckled at their feet. They were part of Garton-Jones’s merry brigade if looks were anything to go by. I wondered if he made all new staff have the same company haircut.
I moved forwards, keeping slow and careful, although it was difficult to be stealthy with so much loose gravel under my feet. The two men had their full attention riveted on their fallen prey. Their faces told me that’s all he was to them. Blood lust is never pretty, and this was about as ugly as it gets.
The boy was down, but he wasn’t out yet, I’ll give him that. I don’t know how long they’d been working him over, but as I watched, he dragged himself up onto his elbows and tried to escape. To crawl away on his belly, oblivious to how hopeless a cause it was.
The man nearest to the boy let him move a couple of feet, then kicked him brutally in the ribs, hard enough to flip him over. He put all his strength into it, arms splayed for balance, like a pro footballer aiming to blast the ball right through the back of the net.
“You Paki-loving little bastard,” he spat. “You’ve had your warnings, and your chances, but you were too fucking stupid to listen, weren’t you, sunshine? And if this doesn’t teach you a lesson, you know who we’re going to come after next time, don’t you?”
I reckoned I’d let things go about as far as I could stand. Abandoning my cover, I stepped out into open ground, and walked towards them. I aimed for calm, but the rage was bubbling away dangerously under the surface.
As I closed the gap between us, the boy lay mewling quietly on his back, exposed. His clothes were caked with dirt, his face an unrecognisable slab of blood and swelling. He wasn’t Asian, but that was about as far towards identifying him as I could get. Right now, his own mother would have struggled.
The second man moved forwards eagerly for his turn, pulling back his fist to land another grinding blow to his victim’s head.
“I think he’s had enough, don’t you?” I said coldly, pitching my voice just loud enough to be heard.
The men wheeled round in sync, shifting to stand between me and the boy, as if to hide what they’d been up to. Only their faces weren’t ashamed.
“Fuck off if you know what’s good for you,” one of them growled.
“And let you kill him?” I demanded. “What’s the matter – don’t you have the balls to pick on someone your own size?”
The would-be footballer gave me a vicious grin. “Nah,” he said. “And I don’t mind hitting women, neither.”
Just to prove it, he launched himself at me. It was clumsy and obvious, but then, he wasn’t expecting opposition. I made sure I hit him hard enough for his legs to fold under him. Caught the dull surprise on his face as he went down.
Astounded, his partner watched him fall. He came on then with a ferocity laced with guile, feinting me out. I nearly didn’t make it out of the way at all, and thought myself lucky to dodge back, smarting, with just a split lip to show for the exchange.
You should have run, I told myself bitterly, riding another punch. You should have run screaming for the police. They would have left him alone then. Ah well, too late for that now.
When the first man got to his feet and joined in, I knew I was in big trouble. They were brawling without restraint, but I couldn’t free my mind of the last time I’d truly let go. I’d unleashed a demon I couldn’t control, and daren’t try to again.
It was like trying to fight with my hands tied, and eventually it was what overpowered me.
A stunning blow to the side of my head took me off my feet
. Once I was on the floor they started in with their boots, as they had done on the boy. It wasn’t exactly what I’d choose to do for fun.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. I rolled over onto my side and was aware of a band of brilliant light cutting through the mist. There was no mistaking the bellow of the V8 that accompanied it, rumbling through the concrete under us.
The Dutch-registered Grand Cherokee that had run me off the road only a few days before roared into the mouth of the garage area. The headlights leapt and shuddered as the wheels smacked through the potholes. It slammed to a halt twenty metres away, nodding on its suspension.
For a moment the Cherokee just sat there, and my attackers stilled with it, wary. Then the engine note rose sharply, and the tyres scrabbled for grip on the loose surface. The two men jumped for safety as a couple of tons of off-road vehicle came bowling down the alleyway, with myself and the boy directly in its path.
Just when I was expecting to be turned into pavement pizza, the driver stood on the brake pedal hard enough to trip the ABS. As it kicked in, the anti-lock system let out a terrible graunching noise, like a wounded cow, but slewed the vehicle to an effective standstill. I covered my face against the shrapnel burst of small stones scattered in its path.
Garton-Jones’s men didn’t hang around to see if the boy and I were going to be squashed flat. They legged it as soon as the four-by-four started its run. Sprinting away down the alley, vaulting over a rotting fence at the bottom.
They needn’t have worried about being run down. The jeep stopped within a dozen feet of me, but I found I didn’t have the energy to get up. My head was splitting and my back burned. I swallowed, and found the inky tang of blood in my mouth.
The fog swirled like dust in the beam of the lights, blocking my vision of anything much past the big slatted grille. Where the moisture hit the hot radiator, it raised breaths of steam. I vaguely saw both doors opening. Two pairs of booted feet jumped down onto the concrete, moving quickly. One set went straight past me, heading for the boy.
I lifted my head and saw a big dark-coated figure bending next to him. He pulled off his gloves and searched for a pulse under the boy’s jawline. There was something familiar about him, the size, the shape, but placing it defeated me.
I couldn’t see the man’s face, but I read anger in the sudden tensing of his body. Very gently, he worked his arms under the boy’s shoulders and legs, and lifted him clear off the ground easily, as though he were a child. The boy cried out as he was picked up, and the man muttered darkly under his breath.
The second figure approached me, rolling me gingerly onto my back and peering into my face. I was surprised to see a very attractive girl, with long dark hair. She looked startled.
The man stepped round me, intent on getting his burden into the vehicle. The girl jumped up, laying a hand on his arm.
“Wait!” she said sharply. “What about her?”
“Her?” The man hardly paused, dipping his head to flick a single, indifferent glance at my crumpled form. “We don’t have time for complications,” he snapped. “Leave her,” and his voice was cold.
“We can’t just leave her,” the girl argued quietly. “By the looks of it she’s taken a hammering as well. If they come back and find her, you know what they’ll do.”
The man let out his breath in a controlled hiss. “OK, Madeleine, get her in, but hurry up. This place will be crawling any minute.”
Madeleine, bless her, didn’t need telling twice. She hauled me to my feet, draping my arm across her slender shoulders to half-drag me to the jeep and bundle me into the back seat. She slammed the door behind me, and hopped nimbly into the front.
The man loaded the boy in from the other side, lying him sideways across the plush leather bench seat. I ended up with his battered head on my lap.
“Hold tight,” he ordered briefly over his shoulder as he regained the driver’s seat. It threw me for a moment until I realised that the Cherokee was left-hand drive.
He thrust the gear lever into reverse and the four-by-four did its best to pebbledash anything within ten feet of the front end as the tyres bit, firing us backwards. I clutched at the boy to stop him going crashing into the footwell.
The man rocketed through the estate, shooting junctions with a blatant disregard for possible other traffic. A couple of times I saw running figures as Garton-Jones’s men tried once more, in vain, to close off our escape route.
Finally, wrestling with the wheel, he broadsided out onto the main road, causing an oncoming BMW driver to dive for the brakes and the horn. Then we were barrelling along in the direction of Morecambe.
I glanced down at the boy’s face. His eyes were closed, one of them forced shut by the swelling and the other not far behind. The bruising was already starting to show, great blotches of discoloration. His nose was bleeding, but probably not broken. I reckoned the cuts and grazes that covered the left side of his face would mostly heal without scarring.
It was only then, as I studied him in the intermittent waves of illumination from the streetlights, that I recognised the boy as Roger.
It was odd, the emotion that filled me at that moment. Mrs Gadatra had been so emphatic when she’d said he deserved a beating. I wondered if she’d still be so vehement if she could see him now. The idea was one thing, the reality quite another.
I looked up at my rescuers sharply. Who the hell were these two? I remembered O’Bryan saying Roger was one of three, with a brother and a sister. The brother, he’d remarked, was known to be a bit of a hard-case. Hell, I could believe that of this guy.
I wasn’t so sure about his appraisal of the sister, though. The girl in the front seat had that ex-private school look about her. All long bones and good breeding. She didn’t act like a trainee hooker, however you squared it.
“So, where are we going?” It was Madeleine who asked, but if she hadn’t, I probably would have done.
“We need to get him home, get him cleaned up,” the man said, not taking his eyes off the road.
“You want your mum to see him in this state?” she demanded, blowing my sister theory right out of the water. “He needs a doctor.”
“Don’t worry about Mum. Between me and my dear departed Dad, she’s seen plenty of trouble in her time. We’ll get him home, check him out,” he insisted. “The first sign that he’s got internal, I’ll take him straight to the hospital, OK?” He risked a glance across at her then, and for the first time I saw his profile clearly against the lights.
It stopped my breath.
When O’Bryan had told me Roger’s surname, I thought he’d said Mayor, but I’d been wrong. It was Meyer. And he had an older brother, all right, who’d fallen in with a rough crowd, and had moved away.
He’d joined the army, for which he’d been perfectly psychologically and physically suited. He’d excelled as a soldier, quickly making sergeant. Eventually he’d become a training instructor on one of the toughest courses devised by the military.
I know, because I was there.
I’d loved him, and he’d betrayed me. Dropped me to the wolves and left me to be ripped to pieces by them alone. Once the news of our affair had broken, and the press had turned on me, that love had withered, died, and rotted into hatred.
Sean Meyer was a name from my past that I’d hoped never to hear again in this lifetime, let alone come face-to-face with its owner . . .
Had he recognised me? He’d certainly been watching the estate, keeping tabs on his younger brother. I thought he’d been aiming for Garton-Jones that night when he’d nearly run us down, but it could just as easily have been me.
Leave her. With a shudder I remembered his words back there in the alleyway. If it wasn’t for Madeleine, whoever she was, I’d still be there, with the hard-liners from Streetwise Securities using me as a surrogate punchbag. Venting their frustration that their real victim had got away.
Still, Sean was damned good at abandoning people when they needed him.
Now, he veered the Cherokee off the main road, ducking through half a dozen dark and empty back streets, veiled by the fog. I watched his eyes keep flicking to the rear-view mirror, constantly checking for any sign of pursuit. I suppose it was inevitable that eventually he’d have the chance to take a proper look at me.
And as soon as he did, he knew.
How could he not?
I saw the eyes widen. He jumped like he’d been shot, and stamped on the brakes, twisting round in his seat to stare at me directly, as though the mirror might have lied. Madeleine gasped as she was thrown forwards and the inertia jammed her seatbelt. I nearly lost hold of Roger’s still-unconscious body.
Then I took one look at the angry disbelief in Sean’s face, and totally bottled it. Before the vehicle had even stopped, I’d flung open the door, and catapulted out onto the road.