pyjamas. Some carried torches.
It startled me, the reaction. Lavender Gardens was a notoriously crime-ridden estate and I would have expected a far more apathetic response to any cry for help. Maybe there was hope for the area after all.
My sense of complacency lasted until I reached the far crumbling kerb and we threaded our way through the line of close-packed empty vehicles.
Friday lurched to a halt so abruptly that I ran into his rump and nearly stumbled. It only took a second before I realised the reason for his sudden check. For me to register a bulky figure rising behind a parked van.
Shock made me gasp, sent me reeling backwards. Fear convulsed my hands, so that I tightened my grip on Friday’s lead.
A harsh laugh greeted my recoil, as though that was the effect its owner always hoped his appearance would have, and had yet to be disappointed. “A tad late to be walking the dog, isn’t it, Fox?”
The man swaggered forwards into the glow of a streetlight, sending a spent cigarette butt sizzling carelessly into the gloom. Three other shadows solidified behind him, keeping station. All of them were dressed in military surplus urban cam fatigues, and carrying an assortment of makeshift weaponry that would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so deadly serious.
Friday settled for giving out a low growl. It was difficult to tell if his hackles were up, because Ridgebacks have a line of opposite-growing hair down their spines anyway, but the sight and sound of him was enough to stop the men in their tracks.
I unwound slowly, trying to steady my heartbeat. “What are you doing here, Langford?” I asked sharply. “Bit outside your territory, isn’t it?”
With one eye on the dog, he treated me to a humourless smile, glancing round at the men behind him for back-up. “We go where we’re needed,” he said piously.
“Well, you’re not needed here.”
“No?”
“No,” I snapped. “These people have got enough problems with law and order without your bunch of bloody vigilantes joining in. Get back to Copthorne. There’s plenty for you to do over there.”
“Oh, don’t you worry,” he said, voice sly, “we’ve got Copthorne all sewn up.”
“Well, that’ll be a first,” I threw back at him, starting forwards again. The one nearest to Friday moved back quickly, but the other two made sure I had to shift course to step round them. The cheap little power play brought grins to their faces.
Langford, self-styled leader of the local vigilante group, shared the same basic mental genotype with playground bullies and third world secret policemen. I’d recognised it the first time I’d met him and his cronies, and I’d gone out of my way to avoid contact ever since.
Commotion broke out further up the street. I turned and started to run again, Friday loping alongside me, ignoring the heavy footsteps pounding along behind.
Shahida was standing in her nightdress in the middle of her driveway, wailing. She had nothing on her feet, and her normally neatly-plaited greying hair was a wild halo around her head.
Several of her neighbours clustered round, trying to soothe her. Their efforts only served to enrage her further. “Of course everything is not
I skidded to a halt and pushed my way through. “Shahida,” I said urgently. “Where are they?”
“In the garden.” She waved towards a gate that led round to the side of the house. Then, having passed on the baton of responsibility, her face crumpled into tears. “Please, Charlie, don’t let him do anything stupid.”
Langford’s men shoved past me, making it to the gloomy back garden first. Where the lawn had once been was now a square of gravel and artistically-placed rocks, leading down to the box hedge at the bottom.
The shed where Fariman kept his tools was a squat wooden building that stood over by the hedge on a raft of concrete slabs. It was a dingy corner, despite the orange glare of streetlights reflected by the low cloud overhead, and the light spilling out from the open kitchen doorway.
Even so, I could see that the lock that had once secured the shed had been ripped out, leaving a jagged scar, pale against the dark wood that surrounded it. It should have left the shed totally exposed, but the door was firmly closed, all the same.
Shahida’s husband was thrusting his not inconsiderable bodyweight against the timber frame to wedge it shut as though his life depended on it. His bare feet were digging in to the edge of the gravel to give him extra purchase. Fariman wasn’t a tall man, but what he lacked in height, he made up for in girth.
He looked up, proud and sweating, as the group of us burst into view round the corner of the house.
“I have them! I have them!” he shouted.
Something hit the inside of the door with tremendous force. It bucked outwards, opening by maybe three or four inches, before Fariman’s sheer bulk slammed it shut again. His thick, black-framed glasses bounced down his nose, and almost fell.
The fear leapt in my throat. “Fariman, for God’s sake come away from there,” I called. “They can’t take anything now. Let them go.”
Langford treated me to a look of utter disgust and strode forwards. On the way past, he swung a provocative fist at Friday’s head.
The dog made a solid attempt at dislocating my shoulder as he leapt for the bait and the lead brought him up short. Goaded, he let out half a dozen rapid, raucous barks before I could quieten him. The deep-chested sound of a big dog with its blood up, raising the stakes for whoever was sweating inside the shed.
Langford flashed me an evilly triumphant grin. “Keep the little bastards pinned down,” he bellowed, breaking into a run. “We’ll take care of them. Come on lads!”
The trapped thieves must have heard Langford’s voice, and if they didn’t know the man himself, they could recognise the violent intent. Behind the small barred shed window, I could see movement against torchlight. It grew more frantic, and the hammering on the door increased in ferocity.
“Don’t worry, Charlie,” Fariman cried, the old man’s voice squeaky with excitement. “I have them. I ha —”
There was another assault on the shed door. This time, though, it wasn’t the dull thud of a shoulder or boot hitting the inside of the panel. It was the ominous crack of metal slicing straight through the flimsy softwood.
Fariman’s body seemed to give a giant juddering twitch. His eyes grew bulbous behind the lenses of his glasses, and he looked down towards his torso with a breathless giggle. Then his legs folded under him and he slowly toppled sideways onto the gravel.
Behind him, sticking out a full six inches through the shed door he’d been leaning into so heavily, were the four vicious stiletto prongs of a garden fork. Where the exposed steel should have glinted brightly under the glare of the lights, instead it gleamed dark with blood.
For a moment, the wicked tines paused there, then were withdrawn with a sharp tug, like a stiffly re-setting trap. Even Langford’s brigade hesitated at the sight. The blood lust that had lit their initial charge faltering in the face of an enemy that hit back.
Before they had time to assimilate this new threat, the shed door was kicked open. Three figures emerged, furtive, moving fast. They were dressed in loose dark clothes, with woolly hats pulled down hard and scarves tied over the lower half of their faces like cattle rustlers from the Old West. Despite the disguises, it was clear at once that they were just boys.
Langford and his men had a renewed spasm of bravery. Then they wavered for a second time, coming to a full stop halfway across the back garden. When I realised what the boys were holding, I understood the vigilantes’ sudden reluctance to continue the attack.
Fariman’s shed was crammed with odds and ends, like any other. Old pop bottles that he’d never quite got round to returning; a bag of rags for cleaning brushes and mopping up; and plastic cans of stale fuel for some long- discarded petrol-driven mower.
All the ingredients, in fact, for the perfect Molotov cocktail.
The leader of the boys edged forwards. He was holding a disposable cigarette lighter ready under the wick. His hand shook perilously.
“Get back or I’ll do it!” he screamed, voice muffled by the scarf. He sounded as though he was about to burst into tears. “All of you, get right back!”
“Give it up,” Langford warned, teeth bared. “This doesn’t have to happen.” He held up both hands as though
