London Borough of Shadwell
To: David Cool, Housing Manager
From: Nigel Morris, Finance Director
Re: Lakelands Estate
I recognise the problems of Lakelands Estate and I have read the "National Housing Federation Survey of Successful High Density Estates in London", your copy of which I return herewith.
One does not need to be a sociological genius to understand that fitting a door entry system to every entrance, at the same time as fitting gates to cut off walkways between the blocks, would reduce criminal opportunities - unfortunately, nor do you need to be a financial genius to see that we can't afford it. The cost of these operations, plus CCTV and warden patrols is almost half the total housing maintenance budget for the whole borough for the entire year. It simply cannot be done.
As to your other little problem, the attempted mugging of Elaine Norton, married daughter of Councillor Blankett., Can't you just re-house her somewhere decent and get him off your back? If he has scruples and wants you to do something about Lakelands anyway, spin him some delaying tale about looking for 'Government Funding from the Urban Renewal Fund' or The Mayor of London's Housing Action Fund, or something similar.
Nigel.
email
To:(Alexanda Adams)
[email protected] CC:(Shirley Dixon)
[email protected] From: (Jerimiah tombs)
[email protected] Re:First Success
Congratulations. That the councillor's married daughter should be mugged may stir things up a little. I admire your approach to the problem by the way - great lateral thinking, but I think I will go for something stronger. I believe I met just the thing on the astral last week.
Jeremiah
III
Nathanial St John Curbishly's smile on the posters in his car was a forced, professional one and the overall effect was that he appeared just a little smug - but not nearly as teeth-grittingly smug as the real thing standing alongside the car. He was watching his three by-election workers coming towards him and wondering whether there was enough time to start on the Lakelands Estate, just over the road. He had just decided to ring on his mobile for some more workers - three was not really enough to let loose up there: he should have at least another four or five. Put two yobbos as bodyguard for nice old lady, perhaps? He dialled the BNP office number.
Wilf Stacker was not a yob. He was not a very pleasant character in some ways, but he was not a yob, though Curbishley had lumped him with Wazinsky and Scott, who more or less were. Stacker looked smart, for one thing, and was wearing a suit and tie. For another he had a good job in IT support at a City firm and, though he was (like Scott and Wazinsky) a Shadwell United fan, he carefully stayed out of trouble at matches.
"All done, Mr. Curbishley," he said, "Just a few leaflets left."
"How are you for time?" Curbishley asked.
"How about a nifty pint and then another couple of hours?"
"I don't really want us anywhere around here after dark," Curbishley said, and glanced at his watch. "We could have a quick one, meet up with some more workers and do another hour and a half across the road in Lakelands."
"Seems reasonable," Stacker agreed.
"Here," Wazinsky interrupted, "Isn't that what's 'is name, the Nigerian player from West Ham?" They all looked. A well built, fit looking young man was just turning into the estate.
"Out of football kit they all look alike to me," Curbishley said dismissively.
"I owe him one," Wazinsky said dangerously. "He scored for West Ham against us the other week, and when I heckled him I got banned from the ground for a month."
"For heckling?" Curbishley was surprised. "I thought football crowds were one long heckle."
"Yeah, well, sort of," Wazinsky agreed. "But I sort of mentioned his colour and the stewards didn't like it. Anyway, I owe him."
"So let's get him," Scott said, and started across the road. He was accompanied by an eager Wazinsky.
"Not very helpful to a by-election campaign," Stacker observed. "I'd better go and make sure nobody sees anything that can be tied to you, Mr. Curbishley."
Nathanial Curbishley nodded and turned to look up the street, where two policemen were approaching - still some way off but ambling towards him in a relaxed but careful manner.
Obu Nabangi turned into one of the entrances, not really conscious of Scott and Wazinsky running towards him. Fortunately for his footballing career, the lift was working and on the ground floor. As the lift doors were just closing Scott charged in, but he was a fraction too late to catch them. Nabangi went up to the second floor.
"Up the stairs," Wazinsky panted, and the two yobbos began racing up the hard way.
The lift trundled unhurriedly past the first floor, reached the second floor and Obu Nabangi stepped out, though the door onto the walkway. Scott and Wazinsky heard the lift and stormed on up the stairs, too many cigarettes and beers taking their toll. They staggered panting onto the walkway. Nabangi was some way off, ringing a doorbell, apparently quite unable to hear what both young thugs could plainly hear. The baying of a pack of approaching hounds!
Could the sound be on someone's TV? Could it be inside both their heads simultaneously, but not Nabangi's? The stairwell door opened behind them and they were joined by Wilf Stacker, unflustered and unhurried.
"Ah, there you are," Stacker remarked. "Not caught up with your Nigerian foot ..."
"Can you hear that," Scott said hoarsely.
The sound, if was inside their heads, was inside Stackers as well.
"Sounds like dogs," Stacker said. He was still more puzzled than scared.
"Or wolves," said Scott more scared than puzzled.
"And getting nearer," Wazinsky said, rather more 'thoroughly alarmed' than scared and starting to back towards the door.
"Getting nearer from both sides," Scott said.
"Run!" Wazinsky screamed and turned. He could 'see' several big hounds approaching on the walkway, baying as they loped along the, tongues hanging out, teeth bared and saliva dripping from enormous muzzles.
Both Scott and Wazinsky dived through the door and plunged down the stairs, as if the Shadwell United football team had been given a good half time talk by the manager. The West Ham footballer was forgotten. Stacker also moved quickly, but he simply removed the wedge he had used to keep open the lift doors. As they closed he saw the phantom hounds chasing the two would-be thugs down the stairs.
Nathanial St. John Curbishley had been chatting amiably to the two police officers when the mini bus with Councillor George Blankett and the Mayor of London's Housing Advisory Team turned into Lakelands Estate.
"Drat!" Curbishley said under his breath. Out loud he remarked with forced amiability, "I see the local Labour Party is also putting up a spirited campaign." He nodded towards the mini bus, "Councillor Blankett and the Labour candidate were among that crowd."
"Sounds like the hunting lobby," one of the two police officers remarked.
It did sound a little like that. A baying of hounds might (or might not) have been a subjective one, inside all their heads - but the crash of a vehicle against something solid could be heard, and that wasn't. Two figures dived across the road to the car to stand there gasping and panting. A third strolled across in more leisurely fashion.
"Have these two been up to something?" Curbishly asked.
"Good as gold," said Stacker. "Just a little keep fit exercise."
Curbishley looked doubtfully at his two workers. "They don't look very fit to me," he said.
"They came over here as if the hounds of hell were after them," the talkative policeman said.
"They were," remarked Stacker. Somebody might have asked what he meant, but there was the sound of an approaching ambulance.
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From:(Shirley Dixon)
[email protected] To: (Jremiah Tombs)
[email protected] CC:(Alexanda Adams)
[email protected] Re: Neighbourhood Watch
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I'm afraid the well meaning clergyman and the not-so-well-meaning councillor seem to have put a temporary end to our neighbourhood watch scheme, but I have to say that I always thought your astral friends were a little OTT, as it were.
As it happens, I may have a 'middle way' solution to the problem. The question is, how can I create a guardian without wishing harm on anyone (which would do my immortal soul no good at all?
I think I have the idea, but I'll need both of you to help.
Shirley
IV
The boys all liked to impress Tracy Willis if they could. Tracy was not a magazine cover girl beauty, but she already had a bustline which suggested she might soon be a 'page 3' girl. She not only looked older than just sixteen, she had tastes that belied her age as well. She had been 'borrowed' by her mum's boyfriend one afternoon earlier in the year, which had impressed her, though it was unlawful by a couple of weeks at the time. She had also borrowed some of her mum's gadgets, which had impressed her too. She was no longer likely to be impressed, as she once had been, by the silly or malicious pranks of overgrown toddlers.
These three particular boys were fourteen and fifteen, which was a bit on the young side for Tracy to let them inside her knickers. She wasn't, anyway, very impressed by them, more scornfully amused by their efforts.
First they had piled up a range of potential missiles - bricks, pieces of paving stone and so on - on the walkway over the car park access road. Next they had gone down to the waste bin store at the bottom of one of the rubbish chutes. They forced the padlock off with a crowbar and wheeled out one of the bins.
Setting fire to the contents of the bin was more difficult than it sounded, and they had to open and screw up lots of newspapers to really get it going. Once alight it made quite a cheerful blaze. They pushed the burning bin back into the bin store, closed the doors and ran back up to the walkway over the access road. Smoke was wisping out of the rubbish chute by the time they called the fire brigade on Tracy's mum's mobile, that being safer than using their own.
Two of the boys heaved up a larger slab of concrete and balanced it on the parapet, like soldiers defending the walls of a medieval city. Another piece of concrete rose silently in the air and hovered gently over their heads. A brick, or three quarters of one, also floated into the air and hovered over Tracy's head. Nothing was said, but Tracy would not have needed a very high IQ to figure out that there was a connection between the piece of paving slab balanced on the wall and the brick floating above her head. Suddenly the whole joke seemed less funny and she wandered off. The brick floated in more or less the same place. Tracy decided to go home and see what was on TV and, once she had gone from the site of the proposed ambush, the brick floated gently back down to some six inches from the ground and then crashed down as if casually thrown, as indeed it had been.
In the mean time the third boy, who had not actually picked up a missile, decided it might be a good idea not to. The sound of an approaching fire engine could be heard. He took a couple of steps backwards, away from the paving slab - and it was just as well for him that he did.
As the fire engine approached, the piece of concrete floating above the two boys with the slab descended suddenly and precipitously, as if it had been dropped - not surprising, since it had. The concrete did not land on either boy's head. It crashed between them, smashing on the paving slab and sending bits of the concrete showering over them. It may not have actually hit them, but they were certainly surprised. They jumped backwards. The paving slab rocked dangerously for a moment and then toppled inwards, as if given a helping hand.
Fortunately the slab hit the walkway, because the impact would have broken a foot. Unfortunately it bounced, and came down sideways across one foot of each boy.
A maniacal chattering and laughter rang out along the walkway, as if a cage-load of astral orang-utans were running wild. The sound was drowned by the fire engine passing underneath and three dispirited would-be vandals walked miserably away, two of them limping.