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.