As he headed home in the small hours with the baffles closed on Poke’s open duals and Bonzo snoring snug as a dormouse inside his jacket, Tinker heard the screams. He traced them to a bus stop where a trail of spilt handbag crap led to the darkened mouth of an alley.
Coasting up, his headlight revealed all. A young woman was down with a knife at her throat; one thug had his pants around his ankles while two more waited, snickering, for their turn. The alley appeared to be a dead end.
Silly boys, thought Tinker, and smiled. “Mine,” he said to an awakened Bonzo, and reached for his belt knife.
“Okay, wankers,” he boomed, “payback time.”
“Oh yeah,” sneered the bigger of the two watchers, sliding a heavy jemmy from his jacket sleeve. “What are you gonna do about it, grandpa?”
Tinker flicked open the enchanted blade with his thumb. “Och,” he said, “terrible things.”
Running up, the big lad swung with all his might… and found himself holding a stub. Meeting no resistance, his force tumbled him forward as Tinker stepped back. The other punk pulled out a Stanley knife but his clumsy buddy got in the way. Now Luke Skywalker had been pretty stoical about losing his sabre hand, however this jerk proved no Jedi. A steel toecap to the head granted temporary relief as the other scrambled to his feet, gaped at the severed hand, and legged it.
“Yours,” Tinker called, and the Staffs pup expanded to normal size, taking off after his share of the action.
Meanwhile, the would-be rapist hurried to haul up his kit then went at Tinker with a length of chain. Catching it around his forearm, Tinker tugged him onto the knife, held low in his right hand.
“How does that feel for a change?” he asked conversationally, working the molecule-edge around like coring an apple. “Better be getting a set of tits to go with your new hole.”
The castrati passed out as blood pumped from a ‘disarmed’ crotch, which left the last little shitbag. No fool, he kept the knife to the woman’s throat as he backed her past Tinker and out of the alley. He threw her against the bike so hard both fell over, then got off his mark. The punk probably never saw the brindled blur that caught him by the heel, but sure felt the face-plant on an unyielding pavement. He didn’t feel much after that, which was just as well. Gorphons aren’t known for their table manners.
Tinker had a good laugh at the pundits while watching the local news on his ancient black and white telly. First the police P. R. woman deploring vigilantism and advising the public to leave it to professionals.
“Yeah,” muttered Tinker. “Too busy form-filling and counting their GATSO money.”
Next came the predictable socio-apologist, always good for a giggle. He wrung his hands over disadvantaged youth with no outlets for their natural impulses—except arson, rape and bloody murder. Now the poor handicapped boys would never find a decent job.
“Never worked in their lives,” muttered Tinker. “And Eastern Europeans throng here, slaving at minimum wage to send home support for their families.”
Finally, almost reluctantly, the victim was given a brief bite. “Say what you like, he’s my white knight in black leather,” she said with a smile. “He can put his boots under my bed anytime he likes.”
Tinker slapped his thigh, and Bonzo woofed, albeit a little put out that he didn’t get a mention.
Next day the yellow press picked up on the ‘dark knight’ angle complete with an artist’s impression that had him a cross between Azrael and Batman—he sure hoped those guys kept to the funny pages. There was the usual hand-wringing over crime statistics but Tinker could care less about bank jobs, with their gross profits they could afford it. Drug dealing and prostitution should be legal as far as he was concerned, however bag snatchers preying on seniors getting their pensions got right up his nose. Somebody ought to do something.
Mrs. Kelly crashed to the pavement as Joe ripped the purse from her arthritic grip. Seven kids and osteoporosis had left her bones as brittle as Edinburgh Rock. Her pelvis shattered like glass, a virtual death sentence at her age.
Easy money–Joe didn’t care as he sprinted away. He didn’t see the blade poke out from the alley, didn’t feel its molecule edge sever ankle bones like mist. Oh, but then he cared lots.
He was interviewed afterwards in his wheelchair.
“Hey, I needed the dosh, disability don’t go far.”
“And what was your disability, sir?” asked the interviewer.
“Addict, ain’t I.”
Tinker near choked on his spliff. Since when did choosing to do drugs constitute disability? “Well, you’re disabled for real now, kid,” he said. “Can’t wait till some yobo pegs you for an easy mark.”
A few more of those and pensioner muggings dropped off, to the amazement of no-one except the authorities. Bike thefts, however, started to appeal as safer targets of opportunity for drug-hungry neversweats.
After polishing Ubermensch up till he glittered, Tinker left him in the college lot where ‘tea-leafs’ regularly preyed on students’ bikes and scooters. The big Vee looked almost exactly like a top-of-the-line Harley, rich fare indeed for larcenous little fingers. Did they know what happened to horse thieves back in the Wild West?
Another wheelchair, another interview.
“I… I wasn’t gonna to steal it,” the thief sobbed through tears of self-pity. “Just take it for a ride.”
“Then take it to bits and part it out,” Tinker added.
“All I felt was this tingle in the small of my back. C… can’t feel nuffin now.”
“No, not with a severed spinal chord,” said Tinker. “Be sure to tell your pals while they last.”
It got so you could leave a bike ticking over and it would stay that way till it ran out of petrol. Wheelchairs proliferated on the run-down council estate, becoming virtually a ‘scarlet letter’ and permanent reminder to the weeds of crime.
However, the best was yet to come.
Cocking his leg against the back of a mosque, Bonzo had the same opinion of all organized religions as his master, the pup sniffed the air suspiciously. Tinker had learned to trust the gorphon’s olfactory acumen, and followed him to a small window set high in the rear wall.
“What is it, our kid?” he asked as the pup became more agitated. Denied human speech for the lack of a descended larynx, Bonzo had to act out like Harpo Marx to get a message across.
Jumping up and down like a Jack Russell on a hot plate and barking failed to work. Bonzo’s brindled brow furrowed as he strained to communicate. An explosive fart followed, and the pup threw himself down flat on the ground, pressing stubby paws over his face.
“Yeah, that’s pretty much my opin…” Tinker broke off as the penny dropped. “You mean explosion—bombs?”
Now the tail whipped into life and Bonzo smiled; boss was getting smarter all the time.
Leaning Poke against the wall, Tinker stood on the Bates seat, reached up, and cut out a circle of glass. Bonzo squirmed through, returning a couple of minutes later with a mouthful of what looked like orange putty.
“Bloody ‘ell,” Tinker breathed, “Semtex. Looks like another job for the dynamite duo.”
A little while later, Tinker tossed the Semtex back in, at the bottom of a lit Molotov, and didn’t spare the horses making himself scarce.
His ears were still ringing as they watched the national news. Tears ran down his hairy face as it was announced that the local imam and his cronies were present when it went up and had been ‘hoisted by their own petard’. They weren’t tears of grief.
Bonzo rolled on his back kicking his paws in the air as the hand-wringers were trotted out.
“A disgraceful example of intolerance… clearly the work of some extreme fascist group…”
No argument here, thought Tinker, that cap sure fitted all religious fundamentalists.
Then the announcer cut in with an update. The fire department had just discovered the remains of a bomb factory.
The faces of the pundits were priceless. Bonzo choked on his ale and barked till he wet himself. Tinker wasn’t far behind as the experts changed tack around this new, inconvenient fact.
“Young Muslim men facing racial and religious prejudice… not accepted by British society… forced to take violent measures.”
It didn’t take a real stretch to figure the combination of fanatical amateur bomb makers and sophisticated explosives could result in premature martyrdom. Local man-in-the-street interviews proved less sympathetic: “invasion by immigration”, “throwing stones at the fire brigade”, “Arab kids dancing on their desks when 9/11 announced”. Acceptance for folk who paraded their oppression of women and screamed hatred from bully-pulpits had never gone over big in Blighty with its tradition of strong female leaders and a dislike for fascism that went back to Moseley.
“Oh well,” Tinker addressed Bonzo as they tidied up, “that was fun while it lasted.” He knew where the straight and narrow road of vengeance led–‘look not into the abyss, for the abyss also looks into you’–evil has a way of rubbing off on you. Besides, heroes generally ended up with a bullet in the head or a knife in the back from the power-that-be; Lawrence didn’t fall off his Brough without help. Individual excellence always threatens mediocrity and many a Gulliver had been hamstrung by moral pygmies. Heroes never really accomplish anything lasting: medals gathering dust in pawnshop drawers, memorial plaques ripped off for scrap, yesterday’s comics pulped in the landfill.
Professional welfare mums would continue to pump out pond life, greedy weaklings still give drugs a bad name, and ignorant god-botherers try to kill everyone who didn’t kow-tow to their vicious fantasies. Oh, he knew these were the losers and it was the big boys as needed sorting out. However the heroes that went after them simply disappeared, unheralded and unmourned—Tinker had no intention of adding to the ranks of the forgotten.
It was a couple of weeks later that he noticed an article in the paper about a group of mum’s who caught a mo’ in the act of abducting one of their kids outside school. They’d high-heeled his wedding tackle into fish paste.
“Way to go, ladies,” he whispered. “Way to go.”
