yourselves.”
The Residents’ Committee man snorted his derision, glad to be back on safe ground again. “We have tried Neighbourhood Watch before. It isn’t enough,” he argued.
Cautiously, I agreed that Neighbourhood Watch schemes were a start, but the difference they actually made to crime figures wasn’t that great. “On the other hand, recruiting what amounts to a gang of mercenaries to garrison your streets is inviting disaster. I’m sorry.” I shrugged. “But it is.”
“So what do you propose? That we do nothing?”
I took a deep breath, and launched into the details of a plan they could put into action themselves. It wasn’t so much Neighbourhood Watch, more Neighbourhood React. The idea was not that they hid behind their net curtains and watched the crime happening outside, they needed to react to it.
So, if kids were vandalising cars in the street, the entire population of that street had to come outside and tackle them about it. It was a straightforward safety-in-numbers tactic. Even the bravest vandal will think twice about taking on a crowd of fifty, or a hundred, no matter what their age and ability.
There was a chain system they could easily put into operation, where the first person to spot a crime taking place would ring two neighbours, who would each ring another two, and so on. The whole street could be mobilised in minutes. Far quicker than any police response. Far cheaper than Garton-Jones and his men.
“All you need to do is get to know each other, keep in contact, and keep an eye out for each other,” I said at last. “If you don’t learn to look after each other, you’re going to have to pay someone else to do it for you forever.”
I glanced round the faces. Some looked enthusiastic, others dubious, but the majority showed little emotion. I really had no idea whether I’d got through to them or not.
“So, Mr O’Bryan,” said the Residents’ Committee man, “what is your opinion of this scheme?” In the absence of anyone better, I suppose he was the nearest thing to a professional there.
O’Bryan’s features were noncommittal as he slowly pulled a cigarette out of a new pack, and put a struck match to the end of it. For a moment, as he regarded me narrowly through the fresh smoke, I thought he was going to rubbish the idea.
“I’m always reluctant to advise anybody to confront criminals,” he said eventually, almost diffidently, “but this sounds like it’s got legs. I think you should get some detailed proposals from Miss Fox and give them some serious consideration.”
The meeting broke up about then. I found myself agreeing to put something together for the Residents’ Committee before Garton-Jones’s deadline ran out, and joined the throng as they headed out.
I looked round for Madeleine and saw that she’d managed to get to the exit ahead of me. Trying to push through to get to her proved difficult, and by the time I reached the car park she was just about to climb into a black cab that had pulled up in front of the pub. I started forwards, intent on speaking to her.
“Miss Fox.” It was O’Bryan’s voice that stopped me. He came jogging out of the doorway of the Black Lion, car keys in his hand. “Ah, I’m glad I caught you,” he said, panting slightly. “Can I offer you a lift?”
I eyed Madeleine’s back disappearing into the taxi with a certain amount of resignation, then turned back to O’Bryan and lifted my bike helmet. “I have my own transport,” I told him.
“Ah, yes, of course you do,” he said, pausing awkwardly for a moment. “I’m parked just at the back there. Can I walk with you?”
I thought it an odd request, but shrugged my compliance. If nothing else, it was a bit of insurance just in case Langford had decided that tonight was the night he wanted his revenge.
We moved round to where I’d parked the Suzuki, and I noticed a dark green MGB roadster, with wire wheels and plenty of chrome about the grille, parked a couple of spaces away from the bike.
“I like to leave it well out of harm’s way,” O’Bryan confided unexpectedly. “Some people are very careless of your paintwork when they open their car doors.”
“Don’t I know it,” I said, bending to unlock the chain from round the bike’s back wheel. I stood and nodded to the MG. “It seems you’ve got quite a classic car collection.”
“Oh,” O’Bryan looked both embarrassed and pleased. “Another one I restored myself,” he said, pride uppermost. “I enjoy picking them up for a song and doing them up. That old thing was laid up for years. It was in a pretty sorry state when it came to me. Still, the thrill of getting them back out on the open road makes all the hard work worthwhile.”
“How’s the Merc?” I asked.
He blinked and the smile went out. “It’s going to take a bit of effort to get that back up to scratch,” he said, and the steely glint was back in his eyes again. “That was one of the reasons I wanted to speak to you, actually.” He hesitated before going on, occupying his hands with the business of lighting another cigarette.
I shifted from one foot to the other, trying not to shiver in the cold, and said oh yes, in a manner that I hoped was designed to prompt him on.
“Well,” O’Bryan said carefully, “I wouldn’t like you to find yourself in the same position, Charlie. Where they pick you out, I mean, make you a target. And if you take these kids on, set yourself up as some sort of leader in the fight against them, they will mark you out, believe me.”
He paused again, drawing on his cigarette. Took it out of his mouth and expelled smoke upwards into the chilled evening air like an industrial chimney. He glanced at me, his gaze calculating. “They’ll make it personal.”
Personal. I was on familiar territory there. The thing was, did I have to watch out for the kids who were causing the crime, or Garton-Jones’s thugs who were supposed to be preventing it? Was I supposed to be guarding against the likes of Roger, or protecting him? And where the hell did Sean fit in to all this?
I swung my leg over the bike, then looked back at O’Bryan levelly. “Thanks for the warning,” I said, “but I know all about things getting personal, and I rather think they already have.”
***
My words to O’Bryan might have had the ring of bravado to them, but for days afterwards I lived with my nerves on a knife-edge.
Particularly after I’d put together some proposals for the Residents’ Committee on how they could take over from Streetwise Securities and do the job themselves. It was a simple basic idea, that just involved people finding out a little about their neighbours. Their names and phone numbers for a start, their daily routines.
After that, if someone noticed anything out of the ordinary, they would have a network of neighbours to call upon for help. It was a system designed to build up, street by street, until the whole of the estate could be brought together into a proper community scheme.
Well, that was the theory, but whether it would work in practise or not was something else. In my experience, neighbourly disputes and personality clashes could drive wedges deep enough to bring the whole thing down round their ears. Still, trying it had to be better than leaving matters up to Garton-Jones on an indefinite basis.
The Residents’ Committee must have thought so, too. According to Mrs Gadatra, who seemed to have an inside hotline, when his end-of-the-week deadline hit, they told him they’d decided to try another way, and had regretfully dispensed with his services.
“And how did he take that?” I’d asked with some trepidation over the garden fence.
“Very well,” Mrs Gadatra reported. “If anything, he seemed enthusiastic about the whole idea.”
“You’re joking,” I said, unable to believe he hadn’t gone ballistic.
“No, no,” she assured me. “He just offered to renew his company’s services at some later date, if required, and left it at that. He was really quite gracious in defeat.”
I began to think I must have imagined his vehemence that night in the street, but I knew I hadn’t. There was some wider game at stake here. I only hoped it wasn’t part of Garton-Jones’s plan to bring about his return in the wake of a sudden, violent return to disorder. It was a worrying thought.
With that and O’Bryan’s warning in mind, I stayed away from Kirby Street as much as I could during the following week, without actually breaking my promise to Pauline. The gym became a sort of sanctuary, away from the dark corners of Lavender Gardens.
I went back to my martial arts training, tried to find calm and focus in the balletic smoothness of the moves, the intellectual control. And when that didn’t work, I beat seven bells out of Attila’s punchbag.
Even the big German noticed something was wrong. He had the knack of spotting physical problems
