Craig Russell - The Deep Dark Sleep

I was back in the war.

The speed of thought seems to me the most unquantifiable thing: faster than the speed of sound, even the speed of light, even if Albert says it ain’t so. But what happened to me as I stepped through the door of my Glasgow office took me instantly back to a place where you killed without thought or lost your own life.

He had been behind the door and when I came in he hooked his arm around me from behind and dug his fingers into my eye and cheek, pulling me sideways and down. If I had not been taught the same dance steps, that would have been the end of me, but without having to think it through, I knew a knife was heading for the side of my neck. I caught his forearm with a knife-hand blow. It had enough strength to block the blade, but not much else. I stepped sideways towards the knife, counter to instinct, trapping his arm between my shoulder and the wall. His hand still dug into my face and his thumb was trying to seek out my eye socket. I brought my other hand, which still held the keys, down and back and into his groin.

He gasped and the grip on my face loosened. I grabbed his knife hand and slammed it against the wall. My brain registered the shape of the knife: the long, slender, deadly but rather beautiful profile of a Fairbairn-Sykes. I was in trouble. Big trouble. Only one of us was coming out of this alive. He clung on to the knife, so I kept his knife hand pinioned to the wall with my left hand while slamming my right elbow into his face, five or six times within a couple of seconds. I had enough of a look at his face to see an old, ugly scar on his forehead and recognize him as the guy who had jumped me in the alley. Except this time there was no chat.

His nose burst and there was blood all over his face, but he didn’t pay any attention to it. It was something that I always found hard to explain to anyone who hadn’t experienced this kind of combat: it takes a lot to hurt you. Shock and a gallon of adrenalin blocks sensation until it’s all over. Then it hurts.

I knew I had to deal with the knife. I aimed a blow at his wrist with my Yale key, the only weapon I had, but my attacker brought his knee up into the small of my back and pushed me forward. He was a strong bastard all right and I lost my grip on his wrist and spun around to face him. He held the knife flat, face-up, textbook style. He slashed at me. Again, he wasn’t trying to stab me, like some street thug would do. He was looking for the quick kill: a slash across my thigh, neck or forearm to sever the femoral, brachial or carotid artery. Then you just step back out of harm’s way and watch your opponent bleed out in seconds. Textbook stuff.

I rolled over the top of my desk. Every time he came at me, I moved around the desk, keeping it between me and him, like we were playing a childhood game of tag. I felt something wet on my hand and looked down to see blood blooming on my shirt cuff and the back of my hand running red. He’d got me, but on the wrong side of my arm. I needed a weapon. By this time I had done a full circuit of the desk and he was now behind it, where I usually sat. The only thing I could grab was the hat stand behind me. I held it in front of me, stabbing at him like a retiarius gladiator with a trident. He made a move to get around the desk so I jabbed the base of the hat stand at his face and it jarred as it hit bone. One of his eyes had all but closed, swollen from one of the blows with my elbow and I could tell his vision was compromised. I jabbed again, this time slamming into his chest as hard as I could. My captain’s chair caught the back of one of his legs and he fell backwards into the window, smashing the glass. I pushed again, forcing him through the window. He grabbed the window frame on either side with both hands to stop himself falling through, dropping the F-S knife as he did so.

He gave me the look. The look that says ‘I give up’.

Still, I kept the pressure on his chest with the hat stand.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Who do you work for?’

‘Forget it, Lennox. Just call the police and let’s get this over with.’

Like me, he was trying to catch his breath and this time there was no attempt at a half-assed Glasgow accent. He spoke with an English accent, beautifully modulated, received pronunciation. I wondered for a moment if the BBC Home Service had an elite commando announcer unit.

‘What’s this? Name, rank and serial number stuff?’ I jabbed him again and the bloodied fingers of one hand slipped from the window frame. He scrabbled to regain his grip.

‘Okay, Commando Joe, I’m only going to ask this one more time: who sent you? Joe Strachan? Where is he?’

He laughed as heartily as he could manage, blowing a bloody bubble from one nostril of his shattered nose.

‘Or what? You going to kill me in cold blood.’

‘Something like that. So tell me … where’s Joe Strachan?’

‘You honestly think you’re going to get anything out of me? I’m telling you nothing, Lennox, and no one else is going to make me talk.’

‘You haven’t met Twinkletoes McBride,’ I said. ‘He’s an associate of mine, and he didn’t get his name because of his skills on the dance floor. So talk before I call him around with his bolt cutters.’

A smile I didn’t like spread across his busted and bloody face. ‘You know something, Lennox? I don’t think you’re in any state to call anyone. You’re doing nothing, Lennox. In India, they used to have a saying, he who rides a tiger may never dismount . You can’t reach my knife without letting go of the hat stand; you let go of the hat stand, I get to the knife first. Whatever happens, we go another round.’

‘You didn’t win the last time,’ I said, ‘and you had the element of surprise.’

‘But you’re bleeding, Lennox. Nothing that can’t be patched up, but you’re weakening. I doubt you’ll even be able to hold me off with this thing for much longer. All you can do is stand there and shout for help and hope someone comes.’

‘You know something, you’re absolutely right. It’s a conundrum, but I tell you what, I have an answer to it.’

‘Oh yes?’ He kept that arrogant smile on his face. ‘And what would that be?’

‘That you shout for help … On the way down.’

I thrust forward with all of what was left of my strength. The smile went and the one unswollen eye widened in the bloody mask of his face as he scrabbled to keep his grip. I pushed again and his bloodied fingers slipped from the window frame. He toppled, screaming, out of the window.

I heard a screech of tyres and a woman’s shriek. I went to the window and looked down into Gordon Street where he lay smashed on the deeply dented roof of a taxi.

It was, I thought to myself as I stepped back in to call the police, one way to catch a cabby’s attention. More effective than whistling.

Pushing people out of third-floor windows, apparently, contravenes some Glasgow Corporation bye-law, so I spent most of the next two days in the company of the police.

The first night was spent in the Western General, with a boy in blue sitting guard at my side. For my own protection, Jock Ferguson less than reassured me.

Despite the fact that I was perfectly capable of walking, I was confined to a bed, but not in the ward, instead ending up in a room on my own. My guess was that the police had insisted on it.

I was in good hands. If you are going to have a stab or slash wound, my advice would always be to try and arrange to have it in Glasgow. Glaswegian hospitals have an unparalleled experience of stitching up knife, razor and bottle-inflicted injuries. I even heard of a guy admitted with multiple wounds from a machete. Why a Glaswegian would have a machete was beyond me; I was pretty sure I hadn’t come across dense patches of jungle or rainforest during my time in Glasgow.