One of the nicer features about Poplar Grove in Shepherds Bush is the twin rows of trees that line the road. Around this time of year, the cherry blossom bursts forth and the street takes on a magical quality. At dusk, you can see the sun setting at the far end of the street, casting a pink glow over the cloud of feathery white which bows inwards to make a barely discernible arch that doesn’t quite meet in the middle. At night you can hear the wind rustling gently through the branches and you know that in the morning there will be the gentlest scattering of velvety snow flakes covering the cars below.
“Oi, Shane, get yer facking hands off me arse, ya pervy bastard.”
Among the less pleasant features are the group of Antipodeans who stagger drunkenly past the bedroom window at three in the morning, shrieking flirtatious obscenities at each other in the way that only people who learned to drink in a poorly painted surf club (and are now overwhelmed by the comparative splendour of the Walkabout Shepherds Bush) can shriek flirtatious obscenities. I know that they live somewhere up the road but I have so far been unable to discover exactly where. The day I do discover it will also be the day I borrow a carnival float, park it outside their house and pump Rick Astley music and Arabic calls to prayer at earth-shaking volume right into their front windows. I will continue this barrage until they are quaking and begging for mercy. Never again will I hear the nocturnal belching and the VB can’s clattering as the boys play touch footie down the street. Never again will their Sheilas scrabble their stilettos and squawk in the moonlight. I shall teach them the error of their ways for I am a vigilante and this is what I do.
As we know from the movies, there are many ways to become a vigilante. Some of them are frankly a little far-fetched - radioactive spider bites, gamma ray experiments going wrong, being the sole survivor of your home planet’s death… well I mean to say, really. Others of course make perfect sense. Look at the turning point for the young Bruce Wayne, standing in a darkened Gotham alleyway while his parents are gunned down by a notorious criminal (with a goofy smile). It didn’t take him long to don the rubber cape, get his marketing people to design a nifty logo and begin kicking criminal butt.
It all started with being the victim of a crime.
That was how it began for me, one fateful night in a darkened Shepherds Bush cul de sac. We hadn’t heard much from the Antipodeans. There had probably been some mishap that got them sent home early from the Walkabout. Perhaps Shane had chundered in the wrong place, if there is a wrong place for chundering in the Walkabout. The street was quiet - quiet enough for Liz to hear the sound of my breaking car window tinkling like angry rainfall to the tarmac beneath. We legged it down to the street in time to be in the way when the window-smasher returned to rob the car. I may be guilty of a libellous assumption here so if you were the hoodie-clad gentleman in question and you just happened to be taking a stroll at five o’clock that July Saturday morning, I apologise profusely. Perhaps, had you not turned around immediately on seeing us and disappeared back up the road, we could have sorted out the confusion at the time.
It was five am and we were due to leave for Stansted and a week abroad no more than an hour later. Hank and Cowgirl, not remotely put out by such an early plea for help, took charge of the car for the week and had a replacement window put in. It seemed that Liz’s quick reactions (a key vigilante requirement) had prevented the robbery and, barring a quick trip to Autoglass, that would be the end of it. But none of us noticed until much later that one thing had been taken – the tax disc.
Life continued and being the victims of a crime gave us much to harrumph about and feel ourselves become just that tiny bit more middle class and middle aged. We deplored the crime statistics and the modern age in which we found ourselves. I began to glower at people wearing saggy jeans and showing their underwear on the tube (apparently in sympathy with their unknown brother gangstas on Death Row). Perhaps my first steps as a vigilante might have been in protest of this. One sweaty commute, the sight of so much greying Calvin Klein would have triggered the Michael Douglas in me and I might have taken direct action in what would have been less of a Falling Down and more of a ‘tugging up’ moment, grabbing one of these kids and wrenching his waistline upwards in a near wedgie while decent Englishmen around me applauded and began in turn to turn upon the other baggy panted misfits in the carriage and those that took fright and ran tripped over their own ludicrous unbelted pantaloons and floundered on the ground as they deserved.
This didn’t happen. Well, it hasn’t happened yet. But it might still. Take note, those of you still pursuing your low-slung boxer-showing belt-less trouser folly. While you read this, doubtless moving your mouths and stumbling over the more difficult words, the revolution is round the corner. We will hoist your waistbands upwards to a sensible height. We will finish what Simon Cowell started.
It was while I was grimacing at people on the tube and composing angry letters in my mind ‘Dear Mr Hilfiger, allow me to draw your attention to an obvious design flaw that seems to afflict so many of your trousers…’ that I received a letter of my own. Transport for London London
I took part in a ‘march’ to protest in which a large number of us, perhaps misguidedly in hindsight, stuck stickers on our cars and drove around Westminster together trying to cause, well, congestion.
It didn’t do much good (until years later when Boris Johnson became Mayor and abolished the extension) but it didn’t stop me objecting.
I also objected to their claim that I was driving my car in the congestion zone on a weekday. Like all enemies of the saggy-trousered, I had a job. I worked for a living. I paid taxes. I kept the state afloat. I had no time to be driving frivolously around town. TFL failed to see my point – “How come we’ve got this picture of your car then,” they countered, sending me a picture of my car on an unrecognisable street at an unidentifiable time. It might as well have been a picture of me driving through San Luis Obispo at midnight for all it showed but the number plate was mine, the bonnet unmistakably that of a silver Audi A3 and the stamp on the photo claimed that it was taken in Central London on a specific weekday.
I was astonished. I checked my diary and confirmed without doubt that I’d been in the office that day. For my Psychology degree I studied some of what are known as the ‘Dissociative Disorders’ and had to admit that it was possible that I’d gone into a state of fugue and sleepwalked out of the office. I could have developed an alternative personality which took control, went home on the tube and drove my car back into town for a quick joyride past the cameras before leaving the car at home (finding the same parking space on Poplar Grove, which NEVER HAPPENS) and heading back to work none the wiser. Psychologically speaking, this could have happened, but it was pretty unlikely. I mean someone at work would have noticed.
Unworthy suspicions popped into my head. Cowgirl was insured on the car. So, come to think of it, was Liz. Was my flatmate coming home from work and using my car to flaunt congestion rules? Did my girlfriend pretend to drive off to work, park her car around the corner and sneak back after I left to spend her days cruising aimlessly around the city in my car? I made careful enquiries. Neither of them had ever been part of an illegal weekday daytime street racing ring east of Marble Arch. Both of them reckoned they had been at work on the day in question. Neither reported any history of mental illness or blackouts. It seemed too unlikely.
While I disputed this charge, my post box became fuller. Gradually a number of unpaid Penalty Charge Notices from parking tickets began to arrive, all claiming that I had been illegally parked in a resident’s permit zone in either Kensington & Chelsea or Hammersmith & Fulham. Bizarrely, all of them were again on days when I was sure the car had been sitting peacefully outside Poplar Grove. More bizarrely, some of them were for places where I actually had a valid resident’s permit.
I harrumphed about this in all directions and finally my mother suggested the answer. “Darling, I should think you’ve been cloned,” she said on the phone one day. It seemed ridiculous. If there was an alternate version of me wandering around, surely I would have heard more about him than just his illegal parking exploits? But she explained that she’d meant my number plate. I did a trawl on the internet and it’s actually surprisingly common. I found stories of people who’d been banged up for eight hours at a stretch on suspicion of driving their Mondeos in bank robberies three towns away. Respectable people were being suspected of ram-raiding jewellery heists while their unscathed Land Rovers sat quietly in their driveways. It looked like I had been cloned. Moreover, compared to so many others, my cloners seemed to be singularly unimaginative criminals.
Like Bruce Wayne, I imagine, I went first to the Police for justice. After a frustrating lunch hour in Savile Row Police station where I was told, despite the impassioned Rumpole-inspired presentation of my case, that there was no evidence of a crime being committed. I fumed and dropped my folder and all over the floor spilled documents; affidavits signed by Hank, Cowgirl, Liz and my boss, stating firmly and indisputably how we were all at least physically present at work at all the times in question. Arriving home, two more unpaid penalty charges awaited me and when I called Hammersmith & Fulham Council, I discovered that four more were on their way.
Liz and I were cat-sitting for friends near Heathrow at the time and when I was clawed awake by an excited ginger at 4am the following morning, I found myself unable to go back to sleep, stressing about these undeserved fines that I seemed utterly powerless to escape. Having trusted the Police to protect me, I realised that they would be no help. If I wanted to sort this out, I would have to take matters into my own hands.
When I spoke to the council the night before I had made a list of all the streets on which the parking tickets had been issued. As all good detectives know, criminals are at their weakest when they get sloppy and patterns emerge. According to this list, there were patterns aplenty. Armed only with the list, I drove into London
Parked in one of the residents permit bays was a car identical to mine – a silver Audi A3 with an identical license plate. I had found it. I had turned vigilante and I had solved the crime. Bruce Wayne had become Batman and the criminals had run round the corner and slap into him. It was a sweet moment of triumph. Of Victory. Of Right.
I blocked the car in with my own and called 999. I explained that I had solved a dastardly car cloning crime and had contained the evidence with my own car and would they mind getting the hell down there quickly and arresting the criminals before they could strike again. I then backed away from my car and began to ponder the implications of this.
What would Mac Taylor do in this situation? What conclusions would Gil Grissom draw? Were Horatio Caine to push his sunglasses back and survery Richmond Way through squinting eyes, what horrific cliché would he consider appropriate? People have accused me on occasion of watching too much CSI, (as if that’s even possible). The laugh is now on those people because, were they to find themselves in my situation, how would they be expected to realise that crimes like this are most likely the work of organised syndicates? My cloned car is just the tip of a vast groaning iceberg concealing a jagged underbelly of drugs, money laundering, contract murder and of course anything involving lots of guns. There was probably a meeting of the five Shepherds Bush families going on around the corner and when it was over a couple of bodyguards of the Don in ill fitting suits with suspicious bulges would saunter round to collect his cloned Audi and might be somewhat miffed to discover that it had been blocked in. They would look around for the perpetrator of this outrage and immediately seek reprisals. Sweating, despite the chill of the early morning, I backed a block away from the cars and called Liz.
Liz doesn’t watch nearly enough CSI – barely any at all – so wasn’t really aware of the very real danger I was in. But, hearing the fear in my voice she got in her car, drove up to London Kew Gardens
Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea, on hearing the news were only too happy to overturn the parking fines. Transport for London were less keen but finally, after I’d sent them a three page representation showing the cars standing adjacent to each other with a minute analysis of the difference in screw position on the number plates and the precise thickness of the fonts used comparing both with their photo of the congestion charge breaking car, they capitulated. I received a thoroughly begrudging letter saying that they’d overturn the fine but would reserve the right to throw the book at me should it be discovered that I was pulling the fast one they so obviously suspected me to be pulling. All told, I’d been laid open to over eleven hundred quid’s worth of fines that would only have got bigger had I not managed to find the car. Being a vigilante had been proved to make sound financial sense.
The Police refused my suggestion that they park a plain clothes car next to the stolen car and lie in wait for the thief, claiming that they had too much else to do. I think it was a foolish decision – they could have made a clean bust (and eaten plenty of doughnuts in the process) – it’s what Mac Taylor would have done. As it happened, they managed to place someone in the car through forensics, finding a set of fingerprints of a well-known offender on a baseball cap inside. When questioned, he told them that a man had turned up on his doorstep one day and offered to sell him the car. Hmmm. I suppose it must have made a refreshing change from those guys flogging tea towels and dusters. He was charged but, due to a lack of evidence, they couldn’t make a conviction stick and as far as I know, he went free and was never even pursued for the parking tickets (although I’m guessing some bounty hunter in the pay of TFL is scouring the streets for him like Inspector Javert in pursuit of Jean Valjean). I’d love to tell you his name and that I’m sure he’s guilty as hell but I suppose he was found innocent and there are libel laws so all I can say is that his initials are O.J. and, if that reminds you of another obviously guilty person who somehow managed to get off, well I’m sure that’s no coincidence.
So OJ is free to walk the streets once more, despite the best efforts of the Metroplitan Police force and I have to tell you that the only thing that’s really standing in the way of the total anarchy caused by OJ (and people in silly trousers) is vigilantes - people like Bruce Wayne and me. And maybe you. Have you been a victim of crime? Have you had a nice letter from those nice people from your local Victim’s Support Service? I suspect that they are secretly a part of the Vigilante screening process and if instead of, accepting their counselling, you ask them where you can buy a cape and have a cool logo done, they might have a secret department that can help. If not, just join the charge with the ordinary people like me, like my former sidekick Liz.
We didn’t need costumes or martial arts training - just an early morning drive with right on our side. But before we knew it, we were fighting crime and dispensing our own brand of vigilante justice before vanishing back into the obscurity of the mild mannered alter egos that many of you know. You don’t know where we’ll strike again, where our swords of justice will thrust, but if you’re shrieking on the streets of Shepherds Bush or showing off your shreddies over saggy trousers, you’d better be afraid. Very afraid.
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