“Pepper isn’t armed assault,” said a girl sweetly. She did have long black hair, but he would not have been able to pick her out of a lineup.
“Anti-gang flics,” remarked another with evident satisfaction at having been given star treatment.
“Not this one,” corrected the girl. “Stinking little Youth-and-Morals flic, this one. Redeye Robert!”
He had expected total silence and this talkativeness seemed encouraging.
“I find fourteen charges on this dossier, all supported by eyewitnesses.”
“Some eyewitness you make!”
He had fallen with both feet into that one.
“Let’s see — a crippled woman of sixty-eight had her arm twisted by a young girl with long black hair. All her fault for not saying straight off that she had already banked the day’s take. Yes, Miss, you were about to speak?”
The long-haired girl deliberately stuck out her tongue at him.
Van der Valk tapped his teeth with his pen. Young wolves…
None of them would say a thing except to exchange free comments on his appearance, his wages, his probable morals, and his presumed parentage.
He stayed polite, because he had to, mostly. At intervals he made notes on his scratchpad.
Intelligent, articulate — unimpressed and quite fearless — no sign of tension. One nail biter, habitual — well dressed. No pronounced personal vanity — neither compulsive hair combers nor mirror gazers. Antisocial feelings organized into powerful barrier — indifferent to family reactions to publicity, to logical reasoning, suggestion of cooperation, humor, or sarcasm.
Know their law too — cynically confident in the clumsinesss of the tribunal. The Juvenile Court is one of the best jokes they know!
Conclusion after initial examination — tough.
They were locked up. None seemed at all perturbed by the police-bureau cell conditions; all seemed well informed about what they would get to eat, how much, when, and their exact rights concerning washing, exercise, and what they were allowed to keep. The two girls had to be confined separately.
“Aren’t we going to be assaulted in the back room? We’d love that!”
He saw the Commissaire briefly that evening.
“Real wolves and not just wishful thinking. No chink, and their minds made up. Society being good, bad, or indifferent doesn’t interest them, since they are born to prey on it. Getting caught is part of life and they accept it with equanimity.”
“So, you’d suggest, turn them over to the Officer of Justice, since the charges are cut and dried and ready to be smoked. Or do you have fancy ideas — rehabilitation beginning right here among the policemen?”
“When we can,” said Van der Valk mildly. “We’re better equipped than a court. I’d like to make at least the attempt.”
“Wasting time.”
“Will you give me twenty-four hours to prove myself wrong?”
“Yes,” said the Commissaire unexpectedly.
He chose the long-haired girl. Her father was a television cameraman which, maybe, was why the father seemed as cynical as she did; he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in his daughter.
She sat in her cell on a concrete slab that was her bed at night. Van der Valk sat on the bucket because there wasn’t anything else to sit on. He threw her a cigarette.
“The wolf,” he said vaguely, “was pretty annoyed with the shepherd after he noticed them one day eating roast mutton.”
Wonder of wonders — she smiled.
“I like wolves,” he said.
Another smile.
“Jean de la Fontaine remarks — to the shepherds — that the wolf is only in the wrong when he is not the strongest. Something for me to think about. Having thought, I’d like to ask you a question.”
“Go ahead.”
“A female wolf, which is the highest-powered wolf, gives a baby wolf affection and care. If you had a baby wolf — and I assume you wouldn’t mind as long as you were sure it was a real wolf — just what would you teach it?”
She looked at him bleakly. He was being pretty whimsical for a man sitting on a bucket and he thought she was going to tell him off. Instead she said, “What’s the time?”
“Four o’clock — five after.”
She lay back on the concrete slab, put her hands behind her head, and closed her eyes.
“Come back at six.”
“Okay,” he was surprised to hear himself say.
Six o’clock was ordinarily the time to go home to one’s wife, children, supper, and bourgeois pursuits. For a wolf, however, it might be worthwhile to stay on for a little. Or it might be of no use at all. But one couldn’t pass up the opportunity to communicate, to rehabilitate.
Criminalimerick
Gideon and the Young Toughs
by J. J. Marric (John Creasey)[2]
The fifth in J. J. Marric’s (John Creasey’s) new series about Gideon, the Commander of the C.I.D. (the Criminal Investigation Department of Scotland Yard)… the perfect “companion piece” to the new Nicolas Freeling story in this issue — about street attacks by, in this instance, a London wolfpack; and Gideon, like Van der Valk, cares…
Possibly places other than Piccadilly could claim to be the hub of the world, but for Gideon, Piccadilly was the true center of things. It had fascinated him when he had been a child, an adolescent, and — also a long time ago — a rookie policeman. It still fascinated him now that he was Commander Gideon of the C.I.D., the Criminal Investigation Department of the Metropolitan Police Force.
He knew every inch of it.
He knew when any of the vivid electric signs was being changed, or when a new one was going up. He knew when the shops changed hands. He knew what was playing in its theater and its cinema. He knew the newspaper sellers, the flower sellers — when they were about, these days — and he regarded the statue of Eros rather as he might one of his own children.
In most matters a progressive, he felt a positive hostility to all new architectural and town-planning schemes for Piccadilly Circus; but he had the comfortable feeling that in his lifetime he need worry about nothing more serious than the switch to one-way traffic along Piccadilly itself. If that ever came about.
Behind Piccadilly, in Soho, there lurked much crime and vice, as well as fine food, some happiness, and quite a lot of goodness. Piccadilly Circus itself was so brightly lit, so well populated and so well policed, that it was seldom the scene of a crime. A youth or a girl who did not know his or her way about might run into trouble in the side streets, but never in Piccadilly.
Of course, there were days of trouble. Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race night, for instance, or the Welsh or the Irish Twickenham festivals. On such great occasions police were drafted well in advance, and Eros was boarded up. Anyone who managed to climb to the top of the statue and perch some article on the arrow deserved his picture in the newspaper.
These things were as much a part of London as Piccadilly Circus itself.
The outburst of hooliganism which came one hot summer evening did not trouble Gideon. Drunks did sometimes get out of control. High spirits plus hard liquor could create vicious tempers out of cheerfulness.
The second incident, however, was very different.
It happened three nights later.