A Fistful of Knuckles

CHAPTER TWENTY: PRINCESS

The caravans rocked on their suspensions as all around him big men clashed with other big men. Sam saw faces that he seemed to recognise.

‘The lads from the gym!’ Gene declared, reaching down and hauling Sam to his feet. ‘Better than the Special Patrol Group.’

‘The gym?’

‘Stella’s Gym, you dope. You didn’t expect me to turn up here empty handed, did you?’

‘I didn’t expect you to turn up here at all, Guv. How the hell did you know?’

If Gene had felt inclined to respond to Sam’s question, he got no chance as two huge fairground roustabouts burst out of the melee and hurled themselves at him. Gene caught one with a bone-crunching haymaker, delivered square-on and pulping the brute’s nose like a squashed tomato. It was enough to send him slithering into the mud, senseless — but his companion, a huge brawny bastard in jeans and scuffed cowboy boots, dropped his head and charged like a bull, ramming into Gene at full speed and lifting him clear off his feet. Cowboy locked his arms around Gene’s body as the guv’nor, carried along, rained hopeless blows on his back. Together, the two men slammed into the side of one of the painted caravans. Gene’s bruised face grimaced. Cowboy released him, but only long enough to jab two rapid blows into the guv’s guts, knocking the breath clear out of his lungs. In the next moment, Cowboy clamped his hands around Gene’s throat — but instead of throttling him, he began twisting and straining, trying to snap Gene’s neck.

Seeing his guv in trouble all at once cleared Sam’s head and renewed his energies. Up he jumped, springing forward and looping his arm around Cowboy’s neck. He wrenched hard — and again — and then yet again, harder still, hard enough to force Cowboy to release Gene and deal with Sam instead. Sam found himself staring up into the broad, sweating face of this bear-like man, his bushy brows knotted, his uneven teeth bared, his small, narrowly spaced eyes glittering with a brutish, dangerous light.

He’s going to rip me to pieces, Sam thought very clearly, everything going into slow motion the way it does in those split seconds before a car crash.

Cowboy’s face drew closer — and then changed. His eyes went round. So did his mouth. His nostrils flared wildly. The blood drained from his cheeks. And from his throat issued a strange, high-pitched, girlish sound that built to a cracked crescendo.

‘Oooiioiiiyeeeiooooooo Oooooyoi! ’

For a moment, Sam could not make sense of what he was seeing. Cowboy’s hands were thrust between his own legs, like he was desperate for a pee; his face was drawn into a ridiculous Larry Grayson-ish expression; he began hopping and jigging, stamping his leather boots into the mud like he was beating out a squelchy tattoo.

And then, Sam glimpsed the guv’s hand thrust between Cowboy’s legs and firmly clamped onto the crotch of his denims. It was a merciless hold. Cowboy danced and howled, but he could not free himself.

Gene twisted, wrenched, and then — with a final crushing clenching of his fist — delivered the agonizing coup de grace. Sam winced just to behold it. Cowboy went down, whimpering in the mud, nursing his crumpled manhood.

‘Like two seedless grapes and a pickled gherkin,’ sneered Gene, glancing at the palm of his hand before wiping it in disgust on his shirt.

All about them, the boxers were starting to overpower and subdue Patsy’s beefcake heavies, grappling them to the ground, clamping them into painful arm-locks that squeezed the tears from their eyes. Ray, his moustache red with blood so that he resembled some kind of Viking, was blazing; enraged and indignant, he turned on Ponytail, launching a punch so hard that it flung Ponytail back like he’d been struck by a mortar shell. Sam saw Moustache-man being thrown down into the mud by a barrel-chested fighter, and one-eyed Chris leaping on him at once, sitting on Moustache-man’s chest and pinning him there, triumphant. It was clearly payback time for the boys from CID.

Sam turned his attention back to the inside of the arena. Patsy was slumped in a battered heap against one of the caravans, blood streaming from his nostrils and even dripping from the tatty remains of his ear. Dermot had dished out a superhuman beating to him, and now stood panting and glowering beside his fallen foe.

Nearby, still wet with paraffin, Spider was blearily lifting his head from the mud and peering drunkenly about.

‘You still with us, Spider?’ Sam called to him.

Spider murmured something incoherent through swollen, bloodied lips.

‘Spider’s still breathing,’ said Gene. ‘Time to collar O’Riordan.’

‘I sort of already have,’ said Sam. ‘I’ve cautioned him, so technically he’s nicked.’

‘Well that’s just delightful!’ Gene declared, rubbing his hands together like a hungry man in a carvery. ‘We can have him for the attempted murder of Spider, and figure out how to pin the Obi evidence to him at our leisure. Plus, I’ve just gotten to crush a bloke’s bollocks. Oh, I do so love my work, Samuel, some days I just do!’

Sam thought of Annie, who even now was over at Patsy’s caravan, working on Tracy, persuading her to testify against the murderous brute who held her so ruthlessly in his power. He knew in his heart that she would manage it. The Denzil Obi case was as good as closed.

And Annie’s away from all this trouble, he thought. Thank God for that.

Dermot wiped his hands together like a craftsman finishing up after a job. He strode over to Gene and planted himself squarely in front of him. The two men eyeballed each other, and Sam recalled the intense animosity — bordering on outright violence — that had flared up between them when they had first encountered each other in the gym.

Dermot glared. Gene narrowed his eyes. Sam willed his guv’nor to say something civil.

‘Okay,’ said Gene at last. ‘You did a good job — for a Paddy midget.’

‘If you want to learn how to take a punch like a man, pop by and see me at the gym,’ said Dermot. And when he saw Gene’s one unbruised cheek flush with anger, he allowed himself the flicker of a smile and sauntered off to check on his boys.

Gene glowered after Dermot, muttering: ‘Legs like a bloody hamster …’

‘Show some manners, Guv,’ put in Sam. ‘We owe him one.’

But Gene was in no mood to get sentimental. He bellowed out: ‘Raymond!’

Ray’s face, bloodied but fierce, appeared.

‘Right here, Guv!’

‘Call in for some plod! Tell ‘em to find a couple of paddy-wagons that actually work so we can start carting off this bunch of bozos.’

‘Me radio’s buggered, guv. Some pikey trod on it.’

‘Then use Chris’s.’

‘Mine’s buggered too, Guv!’ Chris piped up, still sitting on Moustache-man like he was afraid he’d float away. ‘Same pikey what did Ray’s.’

‘Then find a phone, Christopher, for God’s sake!’ Gene bellowed. ‘We’ve got this monkey-crew locked down, we can spare you for twenty minutes while you find a phone box.’

As Chris reluctantly clambered off Moustache-man and went padding off into the night, Sam suddenly caught sight of Stella standing just beyond the confines of the arena. Wrapped in fake furs, her white stiletto heels sinking into the mud, she observed the last of the fighting with wide eyes and wet lips. She ran a leather gloved hand down over her belly towards her-

I do NOT want to witness this!

Sam looked away — and cried out at what he saw. Or rather, at what he didn’t see.

‘He’s gone!’ he gasped. And then: ‘They’ve both bloody gone!’

Gene span round. A smear of blood against the side of a caravan was all that remained of Patsy; an imprint in the mud was all that was left of Spider.

‘Where’d they go?!’ Sam yelled out, but everybody had been too preoccupied fighting and battering and generally smashing the crap out of Patsy’s boys to notice. Sam cursed and grabbed Gene’s arm. ‘Come on, Guv!’

‘Off the camelhair, Tyler!’

‘We’ve got to get to Patsy’s caravan. Annie’s there. If Patsy turns up there … Jesus, Guv, let’s go!’

He clambered from the arena and began to run across the open ground, telling himself that Patsy had scarpered, that he’d clear off, disappear, that Annie was safe. Labouring through the soft, sticky mud, he became aware of Gene loping along beside him.

‘Tell me, Guv,’ he panted as they ran. ‘What the hell happened back there?’

‘What you think happened? Uncle Genie rode in with the cavalry.’

‘Cavalry? You mean naughty Stella and her dodgy boxers? Guv, you’re a DCI, you’ve got proper cavalry. We’ve got trained officers for this sort of thing.’

Gene snorted contemptuously as he jogged along: ‘I crawled straight from my sickbed to save your scrawny arse, Sam. I was pushed for time. You know how chuffin’ long it takes rustling up enough boys for a shout like this. You get ‘em together and they all start squabbling over the truncheons. You pile ‘em in the van and it don’t bloody start. Then when you do finally get there, half of ‘em turn out to be pink-bollocked pansies.’

‘So you swung by Stella’s Gym instead. That was crazy, Gene, even for you.’

‘Any port in a storm, Sammy-boy,’ Gene gasped back. All this running about was starting to take its toll on his nicotine-encrusted lungs. ‘Stella was most obliging.’

‘I’ll bet she was.’

‘Meaning?’

Sam didn’t have the breath or the inclination to answer. Whatever chemistry there was between Gene and Stella, he wanted no part of it. Spider’s life had been saved, Patsy’s mob of heavies had been neutralized, and Sam and Gene were now free to concentrate on nailing Patsy. That, when all said and done, would have to count as a result — at least in this particular case it would. With Sam at the helm, the operation had proceeded to go monumentally awry. He had to admit that Gene had indeed saved the day.

Struggling for breath, Sam asked: ‘How did you know to come here, Gene?’

‘Tip off.’

‘From who? It was Ray, wasn’t it! I bloody knew it. He wasn’t happy you being away, Guv — he was like a dog without its master.’

‘I am the master, Tyler, but you’re thinking of the wrong dog. It weren’t Ray. It were DI Bristols.’

‘Annie? It was Annie who spoke to you?!’

‘Discussion for another time, Sammy-baby,’ growled Gene, hawking up and gobbing out a huge pellet of discoloured phlegm.

Up ahead they could see the caravan. There were lights in the windows.

Panting and streaming with sweat, Sam and Gene lumbered up — and as they did, they were met with frenzied barking. Princess dashed at them, slobber frothing around her muzzle, her teeth bared and snapping, her eyes wild. She reached the limit of her chain and was brought to a sudden, clanking stop. Straining, she clawed at the ground and howled furiously. Sam noticed that the C-90 cassette was still dangling from her collar.

With Princess holding ground between them and the caravan, Sam and Gene hung back, keeping clear of the wild jaws.

‘Annie!’ Sam cried. ‘Annie, are you okay in there?!’

‘Nobody in there, you bastards …’

It was Patsy. He appeared like a huge, blank patch of darkness, stepping out from behind the caravan and standing by the post to which Princess’s chain was clamped. Blood flowed down his face. He wiped it away slowly with the back of hand.

‘You still standing?’ intoned Gene. ‘You’re like one of them elephants too thick to know when it’s dead.’

‘I don’t go down so easy,’ Patsy growled back.

Gene bristled. But Sam was in no mood for macho exchanges.

‘Patsy, it’s over,’ he said. ‘You’re nicked. No point running. And no point hurting anyone else.’

Patsy eyes glinted in the darkness.

He’s not complying, Sam thought. He’s going to fight it out to the bitter end.

‘You said there’s nobody in that caravan,’ he said. ‘Where’s Tracy? Patsy, where is she?’

‘She’s supposed to be ‘ere,’ Patsy breathed, his voice barely human now. He sounded like an ogre speaking from the shadows. ‘She’s supposed to be ‘ERE!’

Sam glanced about frantically.

Annie’s got more sense than to stay put here. She’s taken Tracy and cleared out. But where?

The fairground was flashing and roaring just beyond the parked trailers and caravans, brimming with the sound of people.

She’s gone where it’s crowded. Safer there. Easier to hide. More chance of help if Patsy turns up getting heavy.

Patsy bellowed wordlessly, the rage crackling about him like an electrical charge. He grabbed hold of the stake to which Princess was chain and wrenched it from the ground. As it became free, so did Princess.

‘Look out, Guv!’

The Rottweiler sprang, dragging the chain and post with it. As Sam dived away, Gene threw a punch at the hound, catching it on the jaw and cracking its head to the side. Princess yelped, landed awkwardly, and then scrambled back up, more furious than before.

‘Patsy, you bastard!’ Sam yelled, but Patsy was already loping away towards the lights of the fairground, towards Tracy — and Annie. ‘If you touch her …! If you damn well touch her!’

He lunged forward, meaning to run after Patsy, but all at once Princess was on him, sinking her teeth into his arm. Sam screamed and battered at the beast’s muzzle with his fist, wildly hollering bastard, bastard! as if it were Patsy himself he was fighting.

A white tasselled loafer — soiled, but operational — connected hard with Princess’s arse, but the pain and rage just made her clamp her jaws all the tighter. Sam clawed at her frothy snout, but it was solid and implacable as a sprung bear-trap.

‘Gene! It’s chewing my bloody arm off! Gene!’

The pain was extraordinary. Blood was starting to run down the leather of his jacket. It felt as if the dog’s fangs had pierced all the way down to the bone.

Gene loomed up out of nowhere. In his hands he held the post to which Princess was tethered. For a moment, Sam thought he would skewer the beast with the sharp end, transfixing it like it was a vampire — but instead, he thrust the point between Princess’s jaws, working it in like it was a crowbar, and then, in a single movement, wrenched that terrible muzzle open.

Sam felt the fangs sliding out of his flash and scrambled backwards, clutching his arm to staunch the blood. He saw Gene advancing, jabbing at Princess with the pointed end of the post like it was a spear. Snarling and snapping, the beast retreated, backing up the steps that led into the caravan. Here it chose to stand its ground, its hackles bristling, its muzzle frothing, surrounded by the spotless furniture and immaculately arranged knick-knacks of its master. Without warning, the hound sprang forward, but Gene booted the caravan doors shut straight in its face. He plunged the spiked-end of the metal stake into the ground and thrust the top of it against the door, wedging it firmly shut. Still chained to the stake, Princess went crazy, slavering and clawing to get out, muzzle appearing frantically at the edge of the door, but she was well and truly trapped.

Gene glared and said: ‘Sit. Stay.’ Then he turned to Sam and, without sympathy, growled: ‘If you’ve gone and lost a bloody arm, Tyler …’

‘I’m okay,’ grunted Sam, his teeth gritted against the pain. ‘Never felt better. Now let’s not waste any more bloody time!’

Together, they made off after Patsy O’Riordan, whilst behind them Patsy’s neat, prim little caravan rocked and howled.