Darren Craske - The equivoque principle

'Hush up, constable, or my friend will rip your arms off,' Butter replied, hoisting the cuffed Jennings to his unsteady feet.

Prometheus and Hawkspear finally broke free of each other, but Hawkspear was up on his feet first, lashing out with his knife, slashing at the air to force Prometheus back. Again and again, Hawkspear sliced the air between them, but Prometheus never took his eyes from his opponent. As Prometheus stepped back, his heavy boots came into contact with a large stack of broken ceramic tiles, and he fell over backwards. Unable to hold onto anything, he tumbled head over heels down the small concrete steps that led to the outside. His weight shattered the dry, dead wood of the doors with ease, and Prometheus crashed down the steps into the bakery's yard. Hawkspear watched the giant's writhing frame as he lay stunned on the ground and leapt towards his prey, his greasy strands of black hair clinging to his forehead with grimy sweat. Hawkspear's knife was raised for the killing shot, and he lunged…

Prometheus flicked one eye open and smiled. In fights he rarely needed to employ tactics-his size and strength usually proved ample weapons-but with an enemy like Hawkspear, he had to use more than just his brawn. At the last possible moment, he side-stepped out of the way-as a large javelin of an iron pole pierced Hawkspear right through the stomach. The Irishman's howl of agony echoed around the ruins of the yard. The pole went right through the man; it smashed through Hawk-spear's spine, protruding from the other side of his back. Hawk-spear spat blood, trying frantically to catch his breath. He gripped the metal spear and tried to pull himself off-wailing with pain the whole time, but it was useless. The metal pole was embedded straight through him, pierced like a butterfly in an entomologist's collection.

'Ye…lucky bastard, Miller,' he said weakly.

'Ye know what they say about us Irish,' Prometheus said, dusting down his clothes. He walked unsteadily over to Hawkspear, the loose stones slipping from underneath his feet. 'Ye should have stayed in prison, Tommy…ye didn't deserve t'walk free for what ye did. Now…ye won't be walkin' anywhere.'

'I ain't dead yet,' Hawkspear said, his hair wringing with sweat. He spat a mouthful of dark-red blood in Prometheus's direction. 'Ye talk about me walkin' free? And what…about…ye, Miller? How comes…ye're the one who's allowed t'walk free, eh? If not for ye…me brother and sister…would still be alive.'

Prometheus grabbed Hawkspear's sodden hair, and wrenched it back furiously, the jar making the speared Irishman squeal anew in agony. 'Listen t'me, ye slimy piece of filth, don't ye dare try an' justify what ye did t'Lily-t'Twinkle, t'them others! Ye're going t'burn in hell for what ye've done, Tommy-I swear that.' He released Hawkspear's head roughly, causing the lank-haired Irishman's torso to slip further down the spear. His thick dark blood coated the pole like black treacle.

Just then, Butter and Jennings emerged from the bakery door and stepped out into the yard. Once Jennings saw Hawkspear's coughing and spluttering body speared through the guts, a dark, wet patch appeared on the front of his trousers.

'My God…is…is he dead?' Jennings gasped.

'Not yet,' confirmed Prometheus. 'But he soon will be…as will ye, lad.'

Jennings mewed like a newborn kitten, and wept into his hands, as Butter prodded him forwards with his elbow. The constable fell awkwardly onto the gravel at Prometheus's feet.

'I see you were victorious,' Butter said to Prometheus, eyeing Hawkspear's twitching form. 'Now what shall we do?'

Prometheus stared intently at his Inuit friend as if he had just spoken a foreign language to him. 'What do you mean "do"? We watch 'em die, of course.'

'Surely you cannot mean that?' asked Butter.

'Why can I not? It's nothin' less than they deserve, lad.'

Jennings's jaw trembled. 'I ain't like 'im over there! He's a bloody killer! Let me go…and I'll tell you what I know, eh? What d'you say?'

'Ye expect mercy, constable?' yelled Prometheus. 'If ye aided Hawkspear, yer as guilty as he is, so ye are…and ye'll die by his side.'

Butter's lithe form skipped across the loose shards of gravel, and clung to Prometheus's arm tightly. 'No, Prometheus, this is not right. These men should see justice…not revenge,' he appealed. 'We must see them delivered into law's grasp.'

Prometheus considered his small companion's words. He looked over at Hawkspear, his body shivering and fidgeting on the pole. He would so dearly love to see the man dead. For what he had done, not just to him, but to Lily and to Twinkle too…death was far too good for him. Butter was right; it was justice that they deserved.

'Mebbe ye're right, Butter, lad…' Prometheus gripped the impaled Irishman by the thigh and shoulder, and tensed his muscles. He bent his knees, and sneered into Hawkspear's face. 'Brace yerself, Tommy…this is going t'hurt,' he said, as he hoisted Hawkspear into the air. The ripping and slurping of his body as it was pulled from the pole was inaudible over the sound of Hawks-pear's scream.

Prometheus lifted the man clear of the pole and saw the gaping wound-as big as his fist-glistening in the moonlight. He knew that it meant only one thing-a slow, wretched death in agonising pain. Before long, Hawkspear would be begging for a quick release that would never come. That was perhaps the greatest act of justice.

'Come on, Butter,' he said with a satisfied smile. 'Let's get these two mongrels back to the station. And if Hawkspear dies on th'way, the rats'll get a feast t'night-if they can stomach his filth.'

SERGEANT BERRY RUBBED his palms roughly into his eye sockets, more to wake himself up than to disperse any tears. His sadness at losing not only his commissioner, but his friend too, was fading rapidly the more he learned from Cornelius Quaint, a man surprisingly yet convincingly in possession of a great many details. The more Berry heard, the more he knew it was all true.

'Curse that man,' he said, slamming his fist onto the desk.

'Which one? Renard or Dray?' asked Quaint dryly, picking at his fingernails. 'There's nothing you could have done, Horace…Renard is highly skilled at this sort of game…the man escaped getting shot in the bloody heart, for God's sake! That's one magic trick I've not quite managed to pull off yet.'

'He sounds like the Devil himself, this Renard fellow,' Horace Berry said.

Quaint toyed with a pencil on the desk. 'Actually, he's more like the person the Devil aspires to be. He's cunning, ferocious and fearless, just the kind of enemy you don't ever want after your blood, Horace.'

'So, what's next then? I mean, if this Hawkspear is working for a man like Renard, and Dray and Jennings both got mixed up in it somehow, that still leaves us with a gaping hole in this whole mess. Murdering innocent folk-what's the point? What's the motive behind it all?' said Berry, scraping his chair against the rough wooden floor as he stood up. He approached a large blackboard affixed to the wall, and snatched up a mottled cloth next to it. As he took the cloth to the board and erased the remnants of handwriting, the brief recollection of Dray's fate sent a flare of nausea through Berry's veins. 'Right, so if we look at the main players in this mystery like a pyramid, with your mate Renard at the apex, and Hawkspear and Oliver at the lower points, there must be a connection of some sort, unless they answered an advert for "Mercenaries and Murderers" in the local rag! So what's their connection?' said Horace, tapping the chalk on the board in time with his words, as if he were thinking aloud. 'You said that Renard knew Dray from way back, when Sir George was up to his tricks with his smuggling, right?' Berry drew a dotted line in chalk, linking the two names. 'So that's their connection. But, either the Commissioner or Renard needs to have some kind of connection to Hawkspear-to be able to release him from Blackstaff prison is one thing, but out of all the murdering scum there-why pick him? Now, if Oliver was consorting with offenders-especially ones stuck in Blackstaff for a double manslaughter charge-that'd surely get noticed. If you're sent to Blackstaff, you're not likely to rehabilitate, know what I mean? I doubt he'd be that stupid.'