Stephen Booth - Dancing With the Virgins

She backed up against a gate and turned too quickly to keep her balance. She felt her ankle twist and pain shoot up her leg. Her foot went numb, and for a moment she lost control of her right leg and had to drag it with her round the corner of the pen. Maggie kept advancing, walking steadily, until she had backed Fry beyond the occupied pens towards the empty fatstock ring, away from the noise and the crowd. Fry risked a glance over her shoulder and saw that she was reversing into the end of the passage. Behind her was the gate into the ring. She briefly considered taking a stand and relying on the chance of deflecting the knife with her baton. But realistically, she knew that her best hope was to gain time until support arrived.

In a ceremonial kata , with two opponents equally matched and wary, you had to watch for the opportunity, the first opening that would enable a strike. Movements became rhythmic and formal, just as they did now. But for Fry, the first opening she allowed could be her last. She had to watch the knife, refuse to be distracted by Maggie’s eyes. She had to keep Maggie talking.

‘Maggie, put the knife down.’

‘You can’t tell me anything about memories either, Diane,’ said Maggie. ‘I know what memories are. I know now that Ros is dead.’

‘But how did she die, Maggie?’

Maggie lashed out suddenly with the knife, a casual sideways stroke without even looking where she was aiming. The blade sliced through the side of one of the plastic barrels as if it had been paper. A sweet, sickly smell filled the passage.

Fry glanced at the tear in the plastic for only a second before she recognized the attempt at distraction, and then she quickly met Maggie’s eye again.

Fry remembered her ‘CUT’ technique. Create distance. Use cover. Transmit and ask for assistance. She had to watch her assailant’s hands; stay alert, state red. Expect to get cut. She felt behind her with her left hand for the sliding handle of the door. She pulled it open quickly and slipped through the gap. Maggie feinted suddenly with the knife, and Fry jumped backwards, stumbled as her ankle sent another jolt of agony through her. Now they were in the auction ring itself. They moved from side to side, back and forth, manoeuvring for advantage, reluctant to get too close, their movements mirroring each other’s. Fry began to imagine that Maggie was mimicking her, dragging one leg as she moved.

The first lights of approaching police vehicles flickered through the wooden slats in the walls, bouncing their colours against the ceiling lights and the pen sides. They distorted shapes in the auction ring and created dozens of new shadows that cascaded through the tiers of seats. It was almost as if there was an entire crowd up there, waving, stamping their feet, cheering, ready to give the thumbs down to the defeated.

Fry cursed herself silently. It was always the case that you weren’t wearing your stab-proof vest when you needed it. The heavy vest hindered her movement, and she had left it off. Uniformed officers had a side-handled baton, a much better weapon against a knife attack. An ASP was more easily concealed, but it was an attacking weapon, not designed for defence against a knife. If Fry had been in uniform, she would have been better equipped. But now she was aware of the thinness of her jacket, a flimsy layer of fabric that provided no protection at all from a blade. She felt as though her chest and abdomen were exposed and vulnerable. She was also aware of her bare hands, the left held out, palm facing Maggie, the classic defensive gesture taught in the personal safety handbooks. She imagined her palm being cut, the tendons of her fingers severed.

‘It’s so ironic, Diane,’ said Maggie. ‘Because I think that you were looking for someone, too. The search can take you to some strange places, can’t it?’

They stared at each other — Maggie cool, Fry becoming more angry.

‘Who is she, Diane?’ said Maggie. ‘Who is the woman you’re looking for?’

‘None of your business.’

Fry lunged forward and struck with her ASP at Maggie’s knife hand. But in that moment of anger, she had made her mistake — she had forgotten her injured leg. Her knee threw her off balance, enough for Maggie to jerk her arm out of the way and let the baton hiss harmlessly past her wrist. Before she could right herself again, Fry glimpsed a flicker of steel as the knife came towards her. She closed her eyes just one second before the point of the blade carved open her skin.

Ben Cooper ran along the auctioneer’s walkway, distracted by the clanging gates and the movement of the cattle. He looked around, saw only rows of pens, inquisitive bovine faces, damp concrete and cold streaks of light from the broken roof. He could see no sign of Diane Fry. All he knew was that his slowness had put her in danger.

Outside, DI Hitchens would be organizing the troops as paramedics arrived to take over the task of battling for Todd Weenink’s life. But for Cooper, there was no time for waiting.

A market attendant saw Cooper and pointed towards a passageway between the sale rings. At the end of the passage, a pool of something dark and sticky was trickling across the concrete into the drainage channel.

At first, Diane Fry felt no pain, just a strange kind of exposed feeling to her face as the flesh parted under the knife and cold air struck the tissues underneath. As she backed away, the stinging pain started and the blood began to run down her face.

Maggie watched her. ‘That was your fault,’ she said. ‘Now you’ll be scarred, like me.’

Fry tried to wipe the blood away from her eye with her hand, but it trickled down her jawline and on to her neck. Mentally, she had been prepared for it. But physically, the sudden laying open of the skin still jolted her body, and caused a shock to the nervous system that twisted her stomach and drained the strength from her limbs.

Ben Cooper had reached the fatstock sale ring. He stopped at the end of the passageway, with the high steel bars of the ring between him and the two women.

‘Armed police!’ he shouted. ‘Drop the knife!’

Both the women turned towards him, startled. Then Cooper saw Fry fall as her leg gave way. She hit the concrete, and her baton dropped out of her hand, rolling under the seats at the edge of the ring.

Diane Fry could hear the panic in Cooper’s voice. Maggie looked towards Cooper and met his eye, defiant. It was then that Fry recognized something in Maggie’s face. It was the most dangerous look of all — the look of somebody whose life was already over. If you had lost everything that you ever cared about, it didn’t matter what else you did. It was all irrelevant. This was the way Maggie wanted it to go. She would not drop the knife — she wanted someone to shoot her.

‘Armed police! Drop the knife! Now!’

With a great effort, Fry hoisted herself up on her left hand and kicked Maggie’s feet from under her with her good leg. Their limbs tangled together, and they both went tumbling down the tiers of seats.

The two women lay in the sawdust, clutching each other like lovers. They sweated and gasped as they stared into each other’s eyes. Now she was so close, Fry could smell the cigarette smoke in Maggie’s hair, no longer masked by the perfume. She could picture the ashtray on Maggie’s desk, alongside the telephone and the letter opener, the only objects that had been important enough to earn space on that pristine surface. And Maggie Crew never had visitors to her apartment — so whose was the cigarette ash? It was a question Fry had never thought to ask.

Other armed officers had joined Cooper outside the ring. They shouted more warnings. But they couldn’t fire now. They had no clear target — the women were too closely entwined.