A Fistful of Knuckles

CHAPTER ELEVEN: CAN THE CAN

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.

‘You like that I break your arms, boy? Eh? You like that?’

Moustache-man increased the pressure. Sam felt his arms being forced remorselessly further and still further up his back. Bones strained. Tendons screamed.

‘Don’t say much, do ya. But you will. You and your mate, we’ll get you talking. You’ll tell us who sent ya and what you’re after. And when we’re done,’ — he pressed his stinking mouth even closer to Sam’s face like he was about to kiss him — ‘I’ll snap you in ‘alf like a Twiglet, you slag.’

Never had Sam heard the word Twiglet used as a threat before.

The man wrenched Sam’s arms viciously. Sam’s eyes were screwed up with the pain, but he felt himself being frog-marched roughly across the yard, then across hard concrete. Forcing his eyes open, he glimpsed Patsy O’Riordan’s monstrous, heavily inked face, with its glittering, wolf-like eyes. Patsy peered at him, scrutinizing Sam pitilessly.

‘I know ‘im,’ he growled, still panting and snorting from the exertion of the fight. ‘I’ve seen this twat before.’

He must have glimpsed me in the crowd when Chris ended up in the ring with him. He’s smarter than he looks … more alert … quicker-witted …

‘What shall we do wivvum, Patsy?’

‘Sling ‘em both in the back.’

The next thing Sam knew, he was being thrown like a sack of potatoes into the back of the van. The only thing that cushioned the impact was Gene’s motionless body. Landing on him like this, Sam found the guv was surprisingly soft.

The van door slammed and the bolt was thrown. More doors slammed, the engine growled into life, and the van roared off.

‘Guv? Guv, can you hear me …?’

Gene’s eyes were still closed. The only movement he gave came from the rocking and bouncing of the van.

‘Guv?’

A huge bruise, the colour of a ripe plum, was spreading slowly across Gene’s temple. There was something particularly unnerving to see him in such a state, and Sam realized that he had unconsciously come to think of Gene as somehow indestructible.

He isn’t indestructible. He’s flesh and blood like the rest of us. Cut him, and he bleeds. Clobber him hard enough, and down he goes.

Sam felt for a pulse and found one. The guv’s strong heart was still pounding away. But how long would he be out cold like this? And what the hell did O’Riordan and his two lackeys have in store for them?

They must have clocked Gene steaming after them and thought he was sent by some underworld rival. It’s like Stella said, that’s what their world is like — it’s all violence, vengeance and betrayal. They expect trouble — anywhere, and at any time. What will they do when they discover we’re coppers? Will that make things better … or worse?

The van accelerated, hurtled round corner after corner, then seemed to leave the road and go bouncing and dipping across rough ground. Sam heard distorted music blaring out over huge speakers. It was Suzi Quatro, belting out Can the Can over the screams of kids on the centrifuge and the waltzer. The van picked its way, slower now, around the outskirts of the fair, then came to a stop. Sam heard O’Riordan, Moustache-man and Ponytail bundle out of the front, head round the back, and throw open the bolt on the doors.

He shot a glance at Gene, lying there with his mouth slack and his eyes closed. For the first time since pitching up here in 1973, Sam saw the guv as helpless and vulnerable. He was as defenseless as a sleeping child. Whatever O’Riordan and his heavies had in store for them, it was up to Sam to see that Gene Hunt came to no harm.

I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do to get us out of this … but damn it all, Gene, I expect you to bloody well appreciate it!

The van doors clanged open and a trio of muscle-bound monsters filled the opening. They were silhouetted against the evening sky and the crazy kaleidoscope of the fairground lights.

‘One of em’s awake, at least.’

‘He’ll wish he weren’t soon enough.’

‘Get ‘em both out. And if that streak of piss in the leather jacket makes a move, open ‘im right up like a can of beans.’

The men bundled in and grabbed him, dragging him out and throwing him down into the cold, wet mud. Struggling up, Sam was gripped and hauled. He glimpsed Gene, hanging like a slab of beef over Ponytail’s shoulder, being carried away. He opened his mouth to protest — Hey you! Bring that man back here! He’s my DCI! — but a fist clouted the side of his head, shutting him up. As fresh waves of pain coursed through his body, Sam glared this way and that, trying to orient himself as to where the hell he was. The fairground was away to his right, all lights and music and excited screams. So — he had been brought to the very fringes of it and set down amid the power generators, snaking cables, parked vehicles and trucks and caravans, away from the eyes of the public, in the private domain of the fairground travellers themselves.

Sam caught one last glimpse of Gene being carried away like a dead deer, then he was shoved roughly forward. His hands and knees sank into the boggy ground. As he lifted his head, he heard a growl — a deep, dark, animal growl, horribly close to his face. He froze, not daring to move anything but his eyes. He saw a monstrous set of paws clawing at the wet mud, then a set of slavering jaws, then a pair of glowering, hungry eyes. The Rottweiler strained and snarled, held at bay by the heavy chain padlocked to its neck.

‘Say hello to Princess,’ intoned Patsy, hunkering down beside the ferocious animal and roughly slapping its taut haunches. He turned his inhuman, painted face towards Sam and bared his teeth in what might have been a grin, or a leer. He looked even more bestial and uncivilized than the Rottweiler. ‘Princess don’t like blokes who come rushing out of the shadows after me. And neither do I.’

Princess snapped and snarled. Sam flinched. Moustache-man laughed.

Sam glanced anxiously about, still on his hands and knees. He could see now that Princess was tethered outside a caravan which was presumably what Patsy called home. It seemed barely big enough to contain such a huge, ogre-like man.

‘On your feet, son,’ Patsy ordered.

Slowly, Sam obeyed. Princess bayed and snapped until Patsy barked roughly at her to shart arp! The beast glowered, fell silent, but continued to bare her fangs.

‘Right then,’ said Patsy. ‘I’ve seen your dopey face before, haven’t I.’

‘I came to the fair the other night,’ Sam said. ‘I saw you fight.’

‘And now you’ve come to see me fight again. Who sent you?’

‘Nobody sent us.’

‘Bollocks. You and your oppo thought you could jump me after the fight — you thought I’d be shagged out and knackered, didn’t you. DIDN’T YOU!’

Patsy roared these words. Rage coursed like lava through his bloodstream. His ugly face distorted demonically; he clenched his narrow, bony fists and fiercely pounded his chest like a gorilla, bellowing wordlessly, more like an animal than a human being. Then he fell silent, breathing hard through his flattened nose, and glared at Sam as if he was about to pounce on him and devour him. It was like being in the presence of a grizzly bear.

‘Who are you?’ Patsy growled.

Sam hesitated. Would admitting to being a copper make things better or worse for him and Gene? Maybe he had no choice; if they went through Gene’s pockets, they’d soon find his police ID badge.

Fixing his gaze on Patsy, Sam drew up all his courage, stuck out his chest, and said: ‘My name’s DI Tyler — Sam Tyler — CID, A-Division. And that man you’ve just carried away is my DCI.’

O’Riordan laughed — a repellant, wheezy, gurgling sound, like the noise of gas bubbles bursting in a clogged sewer. ‘Rozzers! They’re rozzers!’

Moustache-man joined in the laughter, and this in turn set off Princess, who howled and yapped until Patsy clouted her round the head and silenced her.

‘Yes, we’re police officers,’ Sam announced, determined to gain some degree of authority here amongst these men. ‘And you lads are in serious trouble. Assaulting an officer — two officers — and obstructing them in the pursuit of their duty. Abduction. Unlawful imprisonment. And while we’re at it, I’ve a mind to see your license for the possession of a domestic dog, Mr O’Riordan — if you have one.’

‘You got a way with words, bud. That’s good. A man should be able to express himself — one way or another.’

Patsy puffed himself up, straining the fabric of the white tee-shirt that encased his massive torso. Sam could make out the dark, vague forms of the many tattooed eyes and daggers and demons and houris beneath it.

‘You thought we were going to attack you,’ said Sam. ‘You thought we were working for some underworld character with a grudge against you, didn’t you.’

Amused at his language, Patsy slapped his massive thigh: ‘Underworld character! Yeah, you’re a copper all right! But what sort of copper, I wonder?’

‘I told you — I’m a Detective Inspector.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

Patsy stopped laughing, very suddenly, and loomed over Sam, peering at him intently, sniffing him slowly the way a lion would. Up close, his tattoos looked less like ink than rotten, gangrenous veins threading through his sandpaper skin. Sam could see the red welts left by Ben’s knuckles around his eyes and mouth, crusts of dried blood lodged in the nostrils of the spongy mass of his broken nose, and — somehow, most horrible of all — the misshapen, featureless hole on the side of his head that bore witness to Spider’s ineptitude as a hitman all those years ago. Patsy was a walking catalogue of violence and pain — and yet, burning out of the battered, painted face were the fiercest eyes Sam had ever seen, unbroken, undefeated, utterly defiant, and malignantly cunning.

‘We’re always getting coppers hanging round backstreets fights,’ Patsy muttered, his voice low and dangerous. His breath reeked of sewage and rancid milk. ‘They love a flutter on the ol’ fisticuffs. For some reason, though, they always seem to bet on the wrong bloke. Is that what happened tonight, is it? Did you bet on the wrong bloke?’

‘I don’t know about my guv’nor, but I didn’t bet a penny,’ said Sam. ‘I’m not a gambling man. Also, I wash behind my ears and I’m always in bed by eight.’

Patsy grinned, running his fat, pink tongue over his uneven yellow teeth: ‘So what were you after, then? Eh? Or shall I guess? Did it have anything to do with that blackie Denzil Obi?’

‘If you mean Mr Denzil Obi, the mixed race gentleman whose murder we’re investigating, then yes it did.’

‘Reckon it was me what done it?’

‘Yes. I think it was you.’

‘And why would I go and do a fing like that?’

‘Revenge. He tried to kill you nearly ten years ago. He put three bullets in you.’

‘And then blew my ear off,’ said Patsy, nodding. He shrugged. ‘Water under the bridge.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘Listen, sonny — if I went after every bloke I had a grudge against, there’d be a heap of bodies higher than that Ferris wheel, you getting me? I’m a boxer, not a murderer. Denzil Obi, he’s your murderer … leastways, he would have been if he’d had half a clue in his dopey black head. And that slag Spider, he’s no better. Ask yourself — who shot who? Eh? It was them two who came after me with a shooter, right? And who did I shoot? No one.’

Sam opened his mouth to speak, then shut it again. His brain was still reeling from all the blows and the screaming pain coursing through his battered jaw, but he couldn’t afford to be woolly headed. He had to think. He had to play the next few moments very, very carefully.

Gene’s out of the game, at least for the time being. How this situation plays out is entirely down to me, and there’s nothing the guv can do. My plan was to draw Patsy into a trap, win his confidence, and somewhere along the way get him to admit that he killed Obi. Gene pissed on that plan — but now’s my chance to put it into action! He’ll kill me for it later — but let him. It’ll be too late by then.

‘Listen up, Patsy,’ said Sam, and he shot a sideways glance at the menacing figure of Moustache-man looming over him. ‘I want a word with you, in private. You can help us — and, in return, we can help you.’

Patsy ran his small, bony, breezeblock-breaking hand over Princess’s back, smacked her meaty arse, then turned to Sam and said: ‘You can talk in front of any one of my lads. They’re sound.’

‘I’m sure they are. But this is … a little delicate.’

Patsy chewed this over, then told Moustache-man to bugger off. Moustache-man glowered fearsomely at Sam for a moment, as if warning him not to try any funny business, then loped off in the direction Ponytail had carried Gene.

‘Well then,’ said Patsy, drawing closer to Sam and looming over him. His nightmarish, tattooed face was drawn into an unreadable expression. ‘You got what you wanted. It’s just me now.’

‘Get your goons to bring my DCI back here and then we can start talking.’

Princess growled.

‘She don’t like hearin’ you givin’ me so many orders, son,’ said Patsy. ‘And neeva do I. Spit out what you want to say, or clear off.’

It was hopeless trying to argue. Sam had no choice but to leave Gene in the hands of fate.

‘That dog’s making me jumpy,’ said Sam. ‘Let’s go inside.’

‘Inside then.’

Sam turned towards the caravan, but Patsy stopped him with a hand on his shoulder. His touch, surprisingly, was light, his hand barely resting on Sam’s jacket. But even so, Sam could sense the implacable strength that resided within it, like the silent, terrible potential poised within the heart of a primed warhead.

‘You don’t want to nick me for what happened to Obi,’ he said, his voice low, his eyes glaring. ‘You really don’t, son.’

‘We know you did it,’ Sam replied, almost in a whisper.

‘Can you prove it?’

‘No. We can’t get enough evidence together.’

‘So what you gonna do then?’

‘What we always do. Pin it on somebody else.’

‘Wiv my help?’

‘Yeah. With your help, Patsy.’

Sam paused. He thought, in his own opinion, that he sounded pretty convincing. But would Patsy buy it?

For several moments, Patsy did nothing. Then he frowned. Or at least, Sam assumed it was a frown; the man’s face was so disfigured by ink that his expressions were hard to read. He watched Patsy’s troll-like face, watched the eyes narrow, watched the tongue dart back and forth across the tombstone teeth.

‘Bent coppers,’ Patsy said at last. And then he grinned: ‘You gotta luv ‘em! You always know where you stand with a bent copper. They’re the only sort you can trust. I tell you, boy, you should have been up front about this from the off and we’d never had clobbered ya! C’mon, son, we’ll have a drink and hammer all this out.’

He turned and squeezed himself through the door of the caravan.

Alone for a moment, Sam exhaled, letting out the nervous tension that had been building in him until he thought he’d burst. He looked down at his hand and forced it to stop shaking. Princess snarled at him, and he backed away from the tethered beast to join the untethered one inside the caravan.