A Fistful of Knuckles (15 page)

Without warning, Gene hit the brake. The Cortina howled to a stop in the middle of the road. Sam damn near went through the windscreen. Behind them, car horns bleated and complained, but Gene ignored them.

Turning to Sam he glowered at him, his eyes narrow, and said: ‘I’m not in this job to prove my manhood to twats like you. I’m here to bring justice to these mean streets. There ain’t enough avenging angels in this world, Tyler, and there sure ain’t enough in this city. But one good man in a Cortina can make a difference.
That’s
why I’m here – to see the right thing gets done once in a bleedin’ while – to see the scum of the earth get what’s coming to ‘em – not to swagger about comparing dicks with gormless berks in poncey leather jackets. You getting my drift, Tyler?’

Behind them, car horns were braying. But Gene’s eyes remained fixed on Sam.

‘Guv, I was just-’

‘That poofy bruise on your gob might make you feel like the Man With No Name, Tyler, and it might very well get D.I. Crumpet dripping in her knickers, but it don’t cut no ice with
me.
If I put a plan into action, it’s not to prove the size of my John Thomas – it’s because that plan’s the
right
plan, the plan that’ll get the job done, the plan that’ll put some bastard behind bars and see this city one degree safer come nightfall.’

Honk! Parp parp!
went the car horns.

‘There’s only one person I’m out to impress,’ Gene growled. ‘That bird you might have seen around – the one with the sword and the scales, and the hanky tied over her eyes. You know the one I mean, Tyler?’

‘I know the one you mean, Guv.’

‘Good. Keep her in mind. She wears a blindfold, Sam, but don’t think she ain’t got her eyes on you
and
me.’

Beep! Beeeeeep!

In his own time, Gene settled back in his seat, put the Cortina into gear, and calmly moved on. He turned right.

‘You’re going the wrong way,’ said Sam.

‘No I’m not.’

‘The hospital’s straight on the left.’

‘Correct.’

‘Then why aren’t we going straight on and then left, guv?’

‘Because we’re not going to the hospital, you dollop. God, Tyler, for a professional copper you can be unnervingly slow on the uptake.’

‘If we’re not going to the hospital, where
are
we going?’

The Cortina nosed its way up a walled-in service road until it reached the grounds of a derelict factory. The sun was starting to set behind the rotting corrugated iron roofing.

‘What the hell are we doing here, Guv? Are we carrying out an extreme makeover on this place?’

Without answering him, Gene cruised the car round the yard until he saw an open shed with dilapidated doors. He parked the car inside.

‘This’ll do,’ he said.

‘Guv, please, I’m not getting my head around this. What’s going on? Why have we come here?’

Gene pointed. Sam looked through the windscreen of the Cortina and out through the doors of the warehouse. In the courtyard beyond, a rough-looking group of men appeared, hurrying through the evening shadows towards a large abandoned warehouse. As they disappeared inside, several more men appeared and went in after them.

‘Who are they?’ Sam asked.

‘Punters,’ said Gene.

‘For what?’

‘Well, Tyler, while you were having a tender heart-to-heart with Spider, me and the boys were getting on with some
real
policework. We were digging up some old contacts from the underworld, putting our ears to the grapevine, getting the word from the street, and all that bollocks. Looks like Patsy O’Riordan’s still active as an illegal bare-knuckle fighter. He’s something of a legend. Nobody’s ever beaten him. And like the fastest gun in the west, whatever town he rolls into there’s always somebody keen to take him on.’

Sam watched as more men arrived and headed inside the old workshop. Now that he thought about it, he saw that it was the perfect place to hold an illegal fight. It was enclosed, private, walled-off from prying eyes. A hundred men or more could gather in that workshop and the world outside would know nothing about it.

‘Forget your poncey plan about posing as fight promoters,’ said Gene. ‘We’ll just wait for O’Riordan to knacker himself out fighting, then nick him.’

‘
Nick him
? Here?! In front of a crowd? Guv, we’ll get ourselves lynched!’

Gene drew deeply on his cigarette, unconcerned.

But Sam was insistent. ‘Think about it, Guv. We don’t have enough evidence to put together a case.’

‘And at this rate we never will. I want that bastard banged up and off the streets. If you’re right and he’s ready to do a disappearing act, then we can’t afford to fanny about anymore. We’ll nick him after the fight – it don’t matter what the charge is – lock him in the cells so he can’t go nowhere, put together the rest of the case, then charge him. No need for pricking about undercover, Tyler.’

‘It won’t work, Guv.’

‘You’re not the one to make that decision,’ said Gene firmly. He fixed Sam with a granite stare.

Sam stared back, said: ‘You’re jeopardizing the case, Guv.’

‘I’m your DCI, so lump it.’

‘Sir, I will not.’

‘
Sir
? You’re calling me
sir
now? That sounds ominous.’

‘I refuse to arrest Patsy O’Riordan before we’ve established a watertight case against him,’ said Sam, his voice controlled but angry. ‘It is reckless, unprofessional and counter-productive.’

‘No, Sammy-boy, it’s just good basic policing. And I won’t argue about it.’

‘Sir, I formally urge you to reconsider.’

‘There’s that word again! I could get used to it.
Sir Gene Hunt
.’

‘If you’re going to go ahead with arresting O’Riordan …’

‘Which I
am
.’

‘Then you’ve left me no choice,’ declared Sam. ‘You’re on your own here tonight.’

And with that, he flung open the door and clambered out.

At once, Gene popped up on the other side of the Cortina and glared fiercely across the car roof at him.

‘Don’t you walk out on me, Tyler!’

‘You’ve given me no option!’

‘I’m your superior officer, I don’t have to give you ruddy options!’

‘Is all this macho stuff going to your head, is that what’s going on? I saw you in Stella’s Gym, Gene, you were behaving like bloody Popeye Doyle, swaggering about, acting the big man. Why?
Why?
What the hell for?’

‘Because I’d had me spinach.’

‘Popeye
Doyle,
Gene! From the bloody
French Connection,
not the one with the anchors! Oh for God’s sake! What is it that gets into you and makes you carry on like this? Does it make you feel good? Or are you such a bloody hairy-knuckled caveman that when you’re around hard nuts and muscle men you just
have
to give ‘em all the old Mike Tyson routine?’

‘The whaty-who routine?’

‘Is it Ray who’s put this idea into your head about coming here and nicking Patsy?’ barked Sam. ‘I bet it is. I bet you and him were talking while I was interviewing Spider.
That poofy Tyler, all tea ‘n sympathy, he don’t have the balls for a case like this.
Stuff ‘im, Guv – nick O’Riordan, bring ‘im in, put the squeeze on his ol’ ball bearings and get him to fess up
!’

Gene narrowed his eyes suspiciously: ‘Have you been eavesdropping on us, Tyler?’

‘No, Gene, I just know you and Ray too well. You want to play John Wayne out here with the tough guys? Fine. Do it. Do what the hell you want.
I
can’t stop you. But I won’t be part of you screwing up this case. I won’t sink to your level. And I’ll tell you why.’

‘Oh, please do Tyler, I’m hangin’ on every word.’

‘Because
I’m
a man, not a little boy.’

Sam slammed the Cortina door and stomped furiously away. He could feel Gene’s stare boring into the back of his head. As he reached the doors of the warehouse, Gene called after him:

‘I accept your resignation, Tyler. Get your desk cleared by the time I bring O’Riordan in.’

Sam kept walking. He didn’t turn and he didn’t speak. If Gene wanted to interpret what he’d said as a resignation, then so be it. So be it. There was no reasoning with the man. In fact, there was no point trying to work with him at all. Macho, arrogant, conceited, knuckle-headed, backward …

‘Borderline alcoholic, homophobic, racist …’ Sam added under his breath as he stormed across the factory courtyard making for the street. ‘… Unprofessional, bigoted, unthinking, unfeeling …’

‘Wrong way, son,’ growled a huge man with a bristling beard who suddenly blocked Sam’s path. Laughing with his equally huge and hairy companions, he clamped his massive arm around Sam’s shoulders and swept him along. ‘The action’s through here!’

Sam tried to unhook himself from the man’s iron embrace, but the next thing he knew he was stumbling and tripping through a set of doors into a cavernous abandoned workshop. It was filling up with men – with
blokes –
unwashed, unshaven, reeking of cheap tobacco and booze and stinking breath. They were gathering around a cleared space, an arena, empty but expectant, the bear-pit where Patsy O’Riordan and his opponent would clash.

The workshop doors clanged shut. A bolt was thrown. Nobody was getting in or out. Sam glanced round. He caught a glimpse of a camelhair coat amid the eager press of bodies, then lost sight of it.

Damn it!
he thought, feeling trapped and frustrated. And then:
Damn
you
, Hunt, for getting me stuck here! You stupid macho pig! Damn
you!

Okay,
Sam told himself, getting his head together.
Since I’m stuck here, I can do something useful. I can make sure Gene doesn’t arrest Patsy O’Riordan, because if he does – if he shoots his bolt too soon – I can see this whole case going right down the swanny.

He looked around, trying to get a fix on where Gene was, but he couldn’t see him. The place was a riot of excited men, shouting and clamouring and flapping wads of fivers and tenners at each other as they slapped on their bets for the fight to come. Billows of cigarette smoke fogged the workshop. Cans of lager cracked and frothed. There was pushing, shoving, sudden outbursts of temper – men squared up, flung a few punches, were dragged apart; there was braying laughter and phlegmy coughing, burps and belches and huge, ripping farts. Men stood against the wall and pissed openly.

I bet Gene feels completely at home here,
thought Sam.
It’s all blokes. Just blokes. Nothing but blokes. Blokes being blokes. Full-on blokeage. A bloke-fest. Wall-to-wall bloke-a-rama in widescreen with THX sound. A world of pure bloke.

Streams of urine trickled from the makeshift latrines, flowed across the floor, and pooled round Sam’s feet. Disgusted, he forced his way through the jostling crowd to escape a soaking. Heaps of fag ash fell across his jacket. Somebody pulled the ring on a can of lager and showered him in foam.

And still he couldn’t locate Gene Hunt amid the scrum.

What’s Gene’s plan? He said he’d nick Patsy
after
the fight – presumably when he’s exhausted. But would an ogre like Pasty ever go quietly? And what about everyone else in here – does Gene really think they’ll stand by meekly and watch O’Riordan led off to the station? They’ll lynch him!

The place was a powder keg, charged with testosterone and the thrill of imminent violence, ready to go up if Gene was stupid enough to start flashing his police badge and shouting the odds.

I need to stop him. He’ll not only blow the whole case, he’ll get himself killed into the bargain!

‘You need me, Hunt,’ he said to himself. ‘You’ll just have to delay my resignation for another day.’

All at once, the atmosphere in the room shifted. There were cheers, shouts, sporadic booing. Sam saw the monstrous figure of Patsy O’Riordan appear in the arena, the demon face inked onto his huge body glaring and snarling. Patsy postured, flexed his muscles, prowled about like an animal. It was the same sub-human display he had put on at Terry Barnard’s Fairground, just before he had pasted that foolhardy kid who’d so rashly gone up against him.

But his opponent this time won’t be a kid,
Sam thought.
This is a serious fight. This is the real deal.

The crowd parted, revealing the biggest, broadest, blackest man Sam had ever seen. He was a hulking mountain of muscle. His jet-black skin shone. His eyes blazed like points of cold, white light.

A chant went up from a section of the crowd:
Chalk-ee, Chalk-ee, Chalk-ee!

Chalky. What else would he be called? This was the 70s.

Confidently, Chalky stepped into the arena and eyeballed his opponent. Patsy stared right back. The crowded bated and goaded them, but neither man moved. A man with combed-over hair and catastrophic teeth pushed himself between the two boxers, keeping them apart. This was the ref – or rather, the nearest thing a fight with no rules would get to having a ref.

No gloves, no rules, no mercy,
thought Sam.
This is going to be a nasty fight – nasty and vicious and bloody and cruel.

At that moment, he sensed something – a sharp, lemony fragrance that managed to cut through the stench of fag smoke and aftershave and body odour and piss. He knew it at once. And the moment he recognized it, a voice whispered in his ear – husky, hard, but definitely female.

‘Didn’t expect to see
you
, soft-boy. Is this business or pleasure?’

Sam turned, and there was Stella, all lipstick and eye shadow, winking at him. She drew regally on a cigarette held between her red-taloned fingers and blew the smoke into Sam’s face.

‘You want to know what
I’m
doing here?’ coughed Sam. ‘What are
you
doing here?’

‘Getting my rocks off, what do you think?’

Her eyes glittered expectantly at the two men about to beat the living shite out of each other in the arena. A shiver of delight ran through her body.

‘Have you got your beautiful guv’nor with you?’ she asked. ‘Don’t tell me you left him at home.’