Tom Graham - A Fistful of Knuckles

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.