Free Riot Act by Zoe Sharp Page A

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