By that time, Attila had grown used to seeing me as part of the furniture.
“I think I need to encourage more women to come and train here,” he told me. “Having you around to show them we are not all macho apes with bulging muscles has been very useful, Charlie, and you know what you’re doing. We’ll see how it goes, yes?”
And, having nothing better to occupy me at the time, I’d agreed.
Working a regular number of set hours a week had taken a bit of getting used to after several years of working for myself, but I was just about getting into the swing of it.
It had meant that I’d neglected the bike a bit, which was not something I could afford to do when the council were throwing salt around the roads like it was going out of fashion. The aluminium box frame was pitting with corrosion faster than I could keep up with it.
I washed the worst of the salt away thoroughly, then leathered it off and gave the whole of the bodywork and the exposed bits of frame a coat of wax. While I waited for the wax to glaze over, I sat back on my heels and just looked at the bike.
It wasn’t in its first flush of youth, but it was still my pride and joy. Lightweight and compact, the two-stroke RGV was frighteningly quick for a quarter-litre machine, with straight-line performance that bikes more than twice its size struggled to match. Not to mention the cornering agility of a cheetah.
They were out of production now, and when the time eventually came to replace it, I struggled to know what to go for instead. Which made keeping it in good condition even more important.
“Oh, there you are, Charlie,” Mrs Gadatra’s head appeared over the fence. She seemed to have recovered her good humour. “Did you see all the mess on the street this morning? Wasn’t it terrible?”
I agreed that it was and inquired after Fariman’s condition.
“They are still worried about the infection, but his breathing is much easier,” Mrs Gadatra replied. She stared at the Suzuki. “However do you ride such a machine?” she asked. “Whatever does your mother think?”
“She thinks it’s better than walking,” I said, which was nearly the truth.
“These days, I can understand her thinking,” Mrs Gadatra said, nodding wisely so that her earrings jangled. “Still, at least this street should be safer soon, don’t you think?”
“Safer soon? What do you mean? Have the police caught the vandals?”
“The police? Ha.” Mrs Gadatra pulled a face and flapped her hand languidly from the wrist at the very suggestion, setting a dozen gold bangles jingling. “I don’t think they have even looked,” she said. “No, last night the Residents’ Committee asked Mr Garton-Jones to come and take over. I think they were going to telephone him this afternoon. There is another Committee meeting next week. You should come along perhaps. But isn’t that good news?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, shaking my head, “I think I missed an episode somewhere. Who is Garton-Jones and what is he taking over?”
Mrs Gadatra laughed. “Oh, of course. I think this is before you came here, but I’m surprised you haven’t heard about him, though. He and his men have been patrolling the streets on some of the other estates. Of course he is not cheap, but the crime there was awful before he came, and now they say it has almost disappeared completely because of him. He sounds wonderful.”
“Mother!” Nasir’s voice from the back doorway as he came out into the garden was sharp enough to cut through his mother’s chatter. “The children will be home from school soon and they will be hungry.”
“Oh yes, of course, Nasir, I was just coming now,” his mother replied serenely, and hurried inside, giving me a cheery wave as she went.
I turned my attention back to the bike. The polish had set to a fine white mist and I began rubbing it off briskly with a soft dry cloth.
“It’s a bit of a waste, isn’t it?” Nasir’s voice made me jump. I hadn’t realised he was still in the garden, regarding me over the fence with that brooding stare.
“What’s a waste?”
He looked me up and down with a slow thoroughness that was as insulting as it was intended to be. “A bike like that belonging to a girl.”
It was the way he said the word “girl” that really got my back up. The same way some people would say “whore”.
“I hate to break this to you, Nasir,” I returned sweetly, “but we’ve just hit the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth. Women have the vote and everything now. Much as I’m sure you’d approve, we can’t all be kept permanently chained to the kitchen sink, barefoot and pregnant.”
His head came up, eyes flashing as his mouth set into a line of fury.
“You want to watch your step,” he hissed, raising his finger. “You are an outsider here, and you are not welcome.” With that friendly thought he stepped back from the fence, his body rigid. I heard the back door slam behind him.
Ah well, I thought, so much for maintaining cordial relations with the neighbours. Sorry Pauline.
***
The day after, my morning walk with Friday revealed that the police were back on Lavender Gardens. It was half a dozen or so burglaries this time, which had brought them out. That and, I suspect, a growing realisation that if they didn’t at least make a show of force round the estate, the public’s trust in them was going to break down completely.
As it was, the local families advanced beyond their net curtains and their front doors. Now they came out into their untidy gardens to stand taciturn in their reproof at how little positive action had been taken before.
It wasn’t just the older generation who stood and muttered, and eyed the squad cars suspiciously. There seemed to be more teenage boys in the mix than I’d noticed hanging around before. Angry, cocky, eager to prove themselves in the face of authority.
For the moment they contented themselves with silent posturing, but I wondered how long it would be before one of them crossed the line. For their part, once they’d come back out into the street, the police stayed close to their cars, tense. I know most of them wear body armour as a matter of course these days, but in this instance it seemed like provocation.
To keep out of the way, I took Friday by the long route, out onto the main road via the cycle way that ran alongside the river. As I popped up onto the main road by Carlisle Bridge I spotted another of Mr Ali’s green and purple vans. You generally saw them all over the place, but this one made me sit up and take notice.
For a start, it had pulled up just where the two lanes from over Greyhound Bridge narrow into one under the railway line, and was causing quite a major constriction in the traffic flow. The second thing that turned my head was the man leaning in through the passenger-side window to talk to the driver.
It was unmistakably Langford.
As I watched, he took his last cigarette out, stuck it between his lips, and tossed the crumpled empty pack onto the pavement behind him. Then he opened the door and climbed in, ignoring the annoyed hooting of horns. The van driver pulled straight out into traffic with enough disdain for the Highway Code to have earned him an instant re-test.
I wondered vaguely if Mr Ali knew that the head of the Copthorne vigilante brigade was cadging lifts at his expense.
***
Several hours later, I wheeled the bike out and headed for work. Within fifteen minutes of relatively easy town traffic I’d pulled up outside the gym.
Attila’s place used to be an auto salvage yard with such a dodgy reputation that some wag had once painted “reserved for police vehicle only” on a section of the rusting iron fencing just inside the gate. It was still there, despite the change of use and ownership, and I ran the bike into the space underneath the faded lettering.