A Fistful of Knuckles (16 page)

But Sam said nothing. He was thinking. Was Stella the one who had betrayed Denzil? Spider had said she had no motive, but here she was at a Patsy O’Riordan fight. It was surely no coincidence. Was there a connection between her and Patsy? And if there was, did she have a motive to betray Denzil, and Spider too?

Before he could think of something to say, he saw Stella’s face tighten into a tense expression of sexual arousal – and at the same moment, there was a surge and roar from the crowd.

The fight was on.

The referee leapt clear from the arena, his comb-over flapping loose, as Patsy and Chalky slammed into each other like colliding freight trains. It was a far cry from the blind thrashing the boy at the fair had hurled at Patsy; these two huge men fired punches like artillery shells, pounding each other’s faces with staggering force. They grappled together, rabbit punching, biting, kneeing each other in the balls – then broke apart, the sweat flying from them, and the blood too. Chalky hulked menacingly, his huge hands clenching. Patsy stared out through his tattooed flesh, eyes blazing, his tiny, compact fists raised and ready, the ridges of his knuckles hard as iron.

Seconds later, they were at each other again, pummelling and pounding. The crowd went wild. The roar of men’s voices was deafening. Stella shamelessly ran her hand down her body and between her legs, her eyes widening then narrowing but never wholly blinking as she followed the action in the arena.

Between the no-holds-barred fighting, and the wildness of the crowd, and the flagrant arousal of Stella, Sam felt he had materialized in some lawless, subhuman zone outside of civilized society, somewhere where all decency had broken down, where there was nothing but violence and lust and cruelty. He was amongst savages.

Perhaps Stella didn’t need a motive to betray Denzil. Perhaps the pleasure of witnessing violence was motive enough.

As he looked at her, he tried to imagine her reacting in just this same way to Patsy beating Denzil to death in his bedsit. Had she licked her lips then as she was doing now? Had her breasts heaved in the same way? Had she rubbed her crotch so shamelessly as Denzil Obi was killed in front of her?

She’s clearly a sadomasochist. But is she a monster? Would her depraved pleasures lead her to be complicit in murder?

He found it hard to believe – and yet, here she was, under the same roof as Patsy O’Riordan, lapping up the violence like it was quality erotica.

But this was no place for him to pursue a line of enquiry. The clamour of the men was deafening. In the arena, Patsy was slugging away at Chalky like a man demolishing a wall. Blood was splattering and streaming down Chalky’s face. Wet, red chunks were flying into the air. Blow after blow impacted against the man’s jaw, lips, nose, eyes, until his face was so pulped that it looked as if it were melting. Patsy rammed a punch into his opponent’s stomach, doubling him up. Chalky vomited. Patsy slammed him upright again with an uppercut, then battered his head this way and that with a rapid succession of left-right-left-right punches. Sam waited for the ref to intervene, for the bell to sound – and then realized that this fight would continue, unchecked, until only one man was standing.

Go down!
Sam silently urged Chalky.
For God’s sake, don’t take any more of this! Go down! Go down!

Incredibly, Chalky ducked Patsy’s blows and staggered past him. There was still one last scrap of fight left in him. Blind and disoriented, he hurled drunken blows at Patsy, stepped into the pool of his own vomit, skidded, lost his footing, and fell. And as he did, Patsy got in one last blow – a crowd-pleaser, an act of pure theatrics on an already defeated opponent. It was a merciless left hook that caught Chalky full-on as he toppled, spinning him over in mid-air and sending him crashing into the ecstatic crowd.

Thank God it’s over,
thought Sam.

But it wasn’t over. Pumped up and raging, Patsy waded into the crowd which parted before him like the Red Sea, revealing the crumpled, bleeding remnants of Chalky on the hard concrete floor – lying in a red sea of his own. Patsy leathered into him, kicking him like he was a football, stamping on his head, aiming blows into his neck, his kneecaps, his genitals.

It’s Denzil Obi all over again …

This couldn’t go on. It wasn’t
boxing.
It was obscene.

Sam shoved forward, roughly pushing his way through the howling men.

‘Stop!’ he bellowed. And then, his instincts taking over: ‘Police! Stop!’

His voice was swallowed by the noise. He was an agent of the Law, but the Law had no place here amid these hollering, blood-crazed men. Struggling to reach O’Riordan, he found himself the target of blows and kicks from the crazed onlookers. He stumbled and went down, glimpsing Stella’s glistening, wet-lipped face loving every second of it. Furiously, he fought his way back up. Somebody grabbed his shoulder and hauled him powerfully to his feet – and in the next moment, Sam was nose-to-nose with Gene Hunt.

‘Tyler, you twonk!’

‘Get your hands off me, Hunt! I’m nicking him!’

‘You’ve changed your tune all of a sudden!’

‘Somebody has to stop this! Now get off me!’

‘You wade in now, Tyler, and O’Riordan will
kill
you! And I mean
kill
you!’

‘
Now
look who’s changed their tune!’

A few yards away from them, Patsy was picking up from the floor what was left of Chalky, holding his limp body with one hand so that he could pulverize it further with his other. Sam glimpsed Chalky’s head lolling from side to side, his face a shapeless pudding of blood.

‘Wait!’ hissed Gene as Sam fought to get free of him. ‘Wait till he’s done!’

‘That man will be dead!’

‘For Christ’s sake, Tyler, it’s just a bit of fisticuffs!’

Patsy hurled Chalky’s head down hard against the floor, then jumped on it with both feet. Blood snorted from Chalky’s nostrils.

And that, it seemed, was that. Panting, heaving, the saliva swinging in gloopy ropes from his slack mouth, Patsy glared about at the cheering crowd, all humanity extinguished from his burning eyes. He raised his arms and began to parade around the workshop, exultant and victorious.

Gene kept his grip on Sam, snarled at him: ‘Wait! We’ll get him after. Not here. After.’

‘I don’t have to take your orders anymore, Hunt. I resigned, remember?’

‘No. I don’t remember. Must be getting older.’

As Patsy completed a triumphal circuit of the workshop, Sam looked across at the mushy heap that was Chalky. It lay still for a while, then, at last, began to move. With heroic effort, the man dragged himself, dripping and bleeding, to his feet – then slithered back down to the floor, senseless and exhausted.

And then, to Sam’s surprise, and to Gene’s too, Stella appeared like an administering angel. She was still panting from the orgasmic pleasures of the fight, but now she crouched down beside Chalky and began attending to him, clearing the blood from his mouth and nose with a cloth, supporting his head with her hand, offering him sips of water from a bottle. She looked up at Sam, and then at Gene, and, raising her voice to be heard over the racket of cheering men, she said: ‘Don’t just stand there, gorgeous. Give us a hand.’

In a filthy, windowless room adjoining the workshop, beneath the hard light of a single naked bulb, Sam and Gene carried Chalky in and sat him in a chair. Stella gently cupped the man’s swollen cheek with her hand.

‘Still with us, Ben?’ she asked.

Chalky – or rather, Ben – mumbled inaudibly. He could barely move his mouth, and he couldn’t open his eyes at all.

‘Good boy,’ said Stella, and she stroked him tenderly. ‘I’ll see you’re okay.’

From the workshop next door, the shouts and cries of the excited crowd echoed in.

‘This here one of your boys is it?’ asked Gene. ‘You told me you were legit.’

‘
I
am,’ said Stella. ‘But boys like Ben need to make money where they can. Or try to.’

‘What’s your connection to Patsy O’Riordan?’ Sam asked.

‘This isn’t the most convenient time for an interview,’ Stella replied. But then she sighed and said: ‘There isn’t
any
connection. I was here to keep an eye on my boy.’

‘
And
to get your kinky kicks watching it,’ put in Gene.

‘A girl’s business is her own.’ Then Stella thought for a moment, and said in a low voice: ‘Why are you asking about O’Riordan? Is he a suspect?’

‘That’s classified information,’ said Gene, puffing out his chest self-importantly. ‘And since
you’re
still a suspect, luv,
and
a filthy mare, it’s got chuff all to do with you.’

‘Don’t be like that, Hunt,’ said Stella. ‘We’ve had good times together.’

‘Don’t kid yourself, Grandma,’ growled Gene. ‘Stay here and play Florence Nightingale with what’s left of your toyboy. Me and gormless here have got a murder enquiry to be getting on with.’

He went to the door and looked out into the workshop beyond. Men were sorting out their winnings, arguing over monies owed, finishing off their lager or else pissing it out against the walls. There was no sign of Patsy O’Riordan.

‘I’m not bloody losing him!’ intoned Gene urgently. ‘Let’s roll, Tyler. Come on, move yourself!’

‘I’ve told you, Gene, I’m against nicking O’Riordan until we’ve got a case against him.’

‘Five minutes ago you were shoving your way towards him shouting
Stop, police!
’

‘Yes, I was. It was instinct, Gene. Seeing that lad getting a pasting, I couldn’t help myself.’

‘Tyler,’ said Gene, looking seriously into Sam’s eyes. ‘Don’t muck about. Trust me. I know what I’m doing.’

Sam stared back at him, narrowed his eyes, and at last said: ‘I don’t think you do.’

Gene raised himself to his full height, glared momentarily at Sam, then swept out through the door. Sam knew at once that he was going after O’Riordan, that he was mad enough to try and nick him all by himself, and that nothing – least of the protestations of Sam Tyler – would swerve him from his course of action.

‘You gonna let your guv’nor go into battle all by himself?’ asked Stella, looking up at him with glittering eyes.

‘This place …’ growled Sam. ‘Biggest open-air asylum in the world!’

Gritting his teeth with rage, he barged through the door in pursuit of Gene Hunt.

Sam strode briskly across the now-deserted workshop, stepping nimbly over the trails of drying urine staining the hard floor.

‘Guv! Wait!’

Gene had already reached the far side of the workshop and was disappearing through a tall set of metal doors.

‘Hold up, Guv! Think about what you’re doing!’

As Sam rushed forward, his foot came down on a fat gobbet of blood still wet and glistening after the fight. He skidded, lost his balance, and went down hard on the concrete floor. The impact shot a bolt of pain up his spine and set his bruised jaw throbbing. For several moments, he sat there, one hand hovering over his jaw, his face set in a grimace of agony, unable to move.

Panting and groaning, Sam at last managed to haul himself laboriously back onto his feet. But by now Gene had disappeared. Cursing his guv’nor under his breath, he limped across the workshop to the metal doors and looked out into a gloomy courtyard littered with old packing crates and a crumpled heap of beige sacking. There was still no sign of Gene.

‘Damn it, Hunt. Damn
you
!’

Sam headed out into the shadowy courtyard, making for a corrugated metal gate that was the only way Gene could have gone. It was just as he reached it that a huge figure loomed out of the darkness, grabbed hold of him and hurled him to the ground. A burst of shattering pain ripped through Sam’s jaw. He cried out – but even as he did, a boot slammed into his stomach and knocked the air clear out of his lungs. Sam found himself writhing on the floor, doubled up and gasping hopelessly for breath.

‘Who is it?’ came a rough voice from across the yard.

‘Dunno,’ answered the slab-like man who now stood over Sam, pinning him to the ground beneath his boot. ‘Just some fella.’

Heaving and moaning, Sam fought to draw scraps of oxygen into his collapsed lungs. His vision swam. He told himself:
you will not pass out – you will NOT pass out – damn it, damn it, you
will not pass out!
With effort, he angled his head to look up at the man who had him trapped. He saw battered jeans, a checked shirt, massive forearms, an unruly black moustache, and a wild mop of shoulder length hair framing a hard, flat face.

‘He don’t look up to much,’ Moustache-man grinned down at him.

‘Check him for a shooter,’ the other voice called across.

Moustache-man roughly shoved his hands inside Sam’s jacket and fumbled about.

He’ll find my police ID,
Sam thought.
And then what? How will he react when he finds I’m a copper?

Thrusting his hand into Sam’s inside pocket, Moustache-man pulled out the ID in its leather case.

‘What you got?’ the other man called across to him.

‘Nuffing,’ Moustache-man announced. ‘Just a wallet.’

‘Leave it for Patsy,’ ordered the other man. ‘Just so long as this little runt ain’t got no tricks up his sleeve, that’s all that counts.’

He didn’t even bother to look inside,
Sam thought as the badge was shoved back inside his jacket.
They’re not interested in my money. This isn’t a mugging.

Now Sam could see that at the far end of the courtyard was another figure, just as huge as Moustache-man, but sporting a ponytail tied with a grubby red ribbon. He took hold of the mound of beige coloured sacking and began hauling it up. It was then that Sam realized that it wasn’t sacking at all – it was Gene. He caught a glimpse of Hunt’s face, his eyes closed and his mouth slack, before Ponytail threw him over his shoulder and strode across to the corrugated iron gate.

‘Bring ‘im,’ he barked, and Moustache-man reached down and grabbed Sam in his iron-like grip.

Sam kicked out, aiming to drive his heel into Moustache-man’s crotch, but missed, catching his muscle-packed thigh instead. Drawing on every ounce of strength, Sam tried to scramble away, reaching wildly for a heap of broken crates, hoping to grab some chunk of wood and fight his way out. But at once he felt those powerful hands slam down on him, dragging his arms behind his back and immobilizing him. Agonizingly, he was dragged to his feet. Sam felt the rough bristles of the man’s moustache prickling against his cheek.