A Fistful of Knuckles

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE DEVIL IN THE DARK

They sat together in A amp;E. Sam cradled his mangled arm and winced; from time to time, he remembered the bruise along his jaw where Spider had punched him, and he winced at that too. Annie sat beside him, her eyes bloodshot, her hands gingerly cupping her darkening neck. Across from them, the stretched, blackened skin of Chris’s massive black eye glistened painfully; and beside him sat Ray, picking crusts of dried blood from his moustache and from time to time testing his swollen nose to check if it was broken.

Standing looking down at them at all, his hands clasped behind his back like a stern teacher with his class, Gene glowered slowly from face to face, narrowing his eyes and tightening his jaw. His own face was still half-and-half, purpled all down one side so that he resembled some sort of carnival performer.

‘Well, playmates,’ he said at last. Stiffly, painfully, everybody turned their heads to look at him. ‘Let’s just hope the Queen don’t swing by for a how’d-ya-do, us lot look like shite.’

Nobody said anything. One or two of them couldn’t. But they knew that, in his way, Gene was expressing his relief that all his officers were, if not in one piece, then still alive and repairable. It was the nearest thing to sympathy any of them could expect from the guv. But it was enough.

Gene peered sceptically about at A amp;E.

‘I’ve seen more than enough of the inside of this place already,’ he muttered. ‘All the medicine I need’s down at the Arms. I’ll be with Dr Nelson if any of you feel like joining me later.’

He swept his gaze over his battered team one last team, less out of expectation of a reply than from a grudging admission that he was proud of them. And then, without further ado, he turned on his heel and strode swiftly away.

‘Know what?’ said Chris suddenly, getting to his feet. ‘I think I’ll join him. Just a shiner, nothing life-threatening. Anyone else comin’?’

Ray flicked away a crust of dry blood and rose from his seat. He pinched his nose and gave it a tug: ‘Nah, it ain’t busted. A couple of stiff ones, that’ll put us right. What about you two?’

Sam’s arm was a mess and needed dressing. Annie could barely make a sound and was awaiting a neck X-ray.

‘Stupid bloody question, really,’ Ray admitted. ‘Still — we’ll keep a couple of places reserved for you. If you feel up to it.’

Together, Chris and Ray limped out.

Sam and Annie sat together, alone now except for the bustling nurses, the porters, the patients and their relatives going in and out of the waiting room. They didn’t say anything, nor did they have to. They each knew what the other was thinking.

From across the other side of the waiting room there was sudden shouting. A large man was throwing his arms around, bellowing aggressively at the nurses who were trying to help him into a wheelchair. He was clearly drunk. He raised his fists, his thumbs tucked pathetically inside his clenched fingers.

‘Get your ‘ands off me, you dopey mares! I’ll twat you right out, ya ‘ear me? I’ll smack the lot o’ ya into next bloody week!’

Watching him, Sam felt nothing but a dull sense of boredom. He had had a bellyful of machismo. He could not even summon the interest to be appalled.

As the loudmouth threatened the nurses, he slowly became aware of the three men who had come back in from outside, drawn to him by his raised voice. The three men stood over him, very close; one with a huge black eye, the second with a swollen nose and a moustache all crusted with congealed blood, the third sporting a bruise that covered half his face. In that moment the loudmouth, pissed as he was, sensed something, some power in these men that it was beyond him. He knew that he was on the very cusp of an unpleasantly physical encounter. He was out of his depth.

The fight draining out of him, he sat meekly in the chair.

‘Thank you!’ snapped a nurse at him, angrily throwing a blanket across his knees. And then, to the three men, she said warmly: ‘Thank you.’

Without smiling, the man with the bruised face winked, tugged the lapels of his camelhair coat to straighten them, then turned on his heel and strode out into the night, his two loyal companions flanking him. Three men, in a man’s world.

‘I’ve brought you some grapes,’ said Sam, setting them down by Annie’s bedside.

They were in a side ward, nurses and medical staff bustling along the corridor just outside the door. It was mid-morning of the day after the showdown in the fair. Sam’s arm was neatly bandaged and still reeked of TCP. Annie was propped up in bed, kept in for a day or so purely for observation, her neck a mass of deep purple bruises, but otherwise unharmed.

‘Can you eat?’

‘Very slowly,’ Annie breathed, her voice hoarse and rasping. ‘And only mushy stuff.’

‘God, you sound sexy.’

Sam couldn’t help himself. Annie rebuked him by threatening to punch his bad arm.

‘Okay okay! Truce!’ He smiled at her. ‘For a moment last night, I thought I’d lost you.’

‘What happened to Spider?’

‘He’s dead. So’s Patsy.’

‘And Tracy?’

‘Don’t try and speak, Annie. Rest your voice. Tracy’s fine. Upset, but okay. She’s been crying over Patsy all night apparently, saying she loved him. To be honest, I don’t know if she means it or not. The girl’s a mess. She needs help.’

Annie nodded, then winced.

‘You tried to save her,’ Sam said. ‘You put yourself between her and Patsy. That was brave, Annie. I’m proud of you. It’s the sort of thing that-’

Gently, she laid a finger on his lips to silence him. He took her hand, kissed it, and cupped it in his own.

‘Let me say just one thing,’ he said quietly. ‘I think you’ll sleep easier from now on … now that Patsy’s gone. I … can’t explain it. But I think I’m right.’

She waited for an explanation, but when it became obvious she wasn’t going to get one Annie settled back against her pillows and closed her eyes, letting her body get on undisturbed with the task of repairing itself.

Sam was tempted to ask her about her sneaky manoeuvre behind his back, speaking to the guv about Sam’s undercover operation and getting him involved. Why hadn’t she confided in Sam about it? Had she thought he’d react badly, that his manly pride would be wounded at the thought he couldn’t manage the operation without Gene?

What does it matter what her motives were? She did the right thing. God alone knows what would have happened if Gene hadn’t turned up with reinforcements. She did the right thing to speak to him. She showed good sense. She acted like a good copper. What else matters?

He tucked her hand under the starched bed sheet, kissed her forehead, told her to get plenty of rest, and, with reluctance, left.

The fair was gone. The rides had been dismantled and hauled away. The common ground upon which they had stood was now just an empty patch of mud — except for the remains of the ghost train. What was left of it stood alone and forlorn, a burnt-out metal skeleton surrounded by flapping police tape and guarded by a single uniformed bobby.

Sam momentarily imagined Patsy’s charred remains still smouldering inside.

No. What’s left of Patsy’s now in the morgue. There’s no trace of him here — except ashes, perhaps, and some lingering stink of burning.

So. Was that it, then? Had the Devil in the Dark been destroyed?

‘Well? Has it?’ he asked out loud, waiting for a reply from the Test Card Girl. But no reply came.

I don’t know what that Devil was, or where it came from … and I don’t know what the hell I saw last in the ghost train. A corpse … a rotting corpse dressed up in a Nehru suit … a festering body, and yet somehow alive and conscious. I’d seen that damned thing before, lurking about in the shadows, hovering on the edges of nightmares … And Annie knew it too, had sensed it in dark dreams of her own. What the hell was it? Is it truly dead now? Was it destroyed in the fire? Gene didn’t seem to notice it all. Perhaps it was just some sort of delusion. Perhaps it wasn’t real.

He tried to believe that, but couldn’t. He knew what he had seen. Like the Test Card Girl herself, that rotting, maggot-infested horror had been some manifestation from deep down within him, the product of some foul sewer of the subconscious where all the darkest parts of his psyche lurked and brooded. Did the Devil in the Dark represent some part of him that wanted to hurt Annie? Is that what it all meant? Had he transferred that subconscious violence onto the form of Patsy O’Riordan, seen in him the embodiment of that barbaric, murderous fraction of himself?

Who knows what goes on the deep cellars of our minds, he thought.

Letting his mind be still for a moment, Sam tried to detect some hint of that demonic creature’s presence — a tingle of fear, an icy sensation of dread, the suspicion that he was being watched by malevolent eyes. But he felt nothing.

Whatever the Devil in the Dark was, it’s gone now. When Patsy burned, it burned too. I’ve purged myself of it. Exorcised it. I’m free. We are free, me and Annie. We are free.

He turned his back on the blackened remains of the ghost train, pulled his collar up to fend off a sudden chill wind, and began heading home. Up ahead, a group of lads were hanging about on the verge of the open ground, sharing cigarettes. As Sam passed them, one of them stepped out in front of him, blocking his way.

‘Give us a light,’ he said, his face and voice unfriendly.

‘Sorry, don’t smoke,’ said Sam. As he tried to go by, the rest of the lads clustered around him, hemming him in. Sam sighed. ‘Use your noodles, there’s a copper just over there.’

‘I said give us a light.’

‘How old are you, son? You boys shouldn’t be smoking.’

‘And since when were you the boss of me?’

The boy jabbed at him, shoving Sam’s chest.

He’s testing me, seeing what I’m made of.

‘Get on back to your mammies, lads, before I nick the lot of you,’ said Sam gently. He made his way forward, found his path blocked again, but this time fixed the boy in front of him with a level, eye-to-eye stare. He didn’t blink. The boy did. Moments later, the lads shuffled back. They were just a gaggle of bored kids, playing at being men.

Kids playing at being men …

Unhurried and unconcerned, he headed off along the street. What stopped him was the voice that suddenly called out to him. It was the same boy who had challenged him, but somehow his intonation had changed.

‘That’s the last time you turn your back on me, Sam Tyler.’

In that moment, the blood froze in Sam’s veins. He felt that same panicked compulsion to run, run for his life, that he had felt in the gloom of the ghost train last night.

He span round. The boys were all standing in a loose group, staring at him, their leader casually lighting a cigarette.

‘Who told you my name?’ Sam asked. His heart was pounding. ‘Who the hell told you my name?’

The boy drew on his cigarette, exhaled luxuriously, and said: ‘I make it my business to know my rivals.’

‘What do you mean, “rivals”?’

‘You and my wife,’ the boy said, his young eyes suddenly glinting with a very mature malice. ‘You, Tyler … and my wife.’

‘Wh … What the hell are you-’

‘You think you got rid of me?’ the boy hissed. ‘Oh no. I’ll keep coming at you, you cheating bastard. I’ll keep coming at you until I’ve got my wife back … my wife … mine.’

The boy flicked his cigarette at Sam. It bounced off his chest in a shower of sparks.

His rage overcoming his terror, Sam lunged forward, heedless of the pain that at once shot through his bandaged arm.

The boys tore off, whooping and laughing, spreading out across the open ground, heading off in every direction — just a noisy group of scallies once more. They called back mockingly as they ran: up yours, mistah! Come on then, nick us! Oooh, I’m brickin’ meself!

But the rage had gone out of Sam. In its place, he felt nothing but a cold, congealed dread. He looked back at the remains of the ghost train, and knew that whatever evil thing he had witnessed in there, he would witness again.

When the Test Card Girl appeared, stepping out from behind the burnt ruins and standing innocently beside the bobby on sentry duty, Sam turned away in disgust and began walking. If she called to him, he didn’t hear.