Killer Instinct

Nine

I was on the stairs down to the lower dance floor when I first heard the screaming. I took a moment to focus on the direction, then started sprinting.

I took the last three stair treads in one stride and tunnelled through the press of bodies on the floor itself. Once I got closer I didn't need to ask exactly where the problem was. The way everyone was scrambling out of the way told me the answer to that one. The more hurriedly they were moving, the closer I was getting to the epicentre.

Finally, I broke through the edge of the dispersing crowd and found the tableau.

There were three players. The girl was doing the screaming, the action revealing her pierced tongue. She was dark-haired and rather plump, in a skirt too short and a lycra top cut too low.

On the face of it, she was an unlikely inspiration for a jealous rage, but from the look of the battle going on around her, she was certainly the prize. She didn't look like an athlete, either, but there was nothing wrong with her lung capacity.

The lad I immediately pegged as the prospective boyfriend was on his hands and knees at her feet, dripping blood from his lacerated cheek onto Marc's polished flooring. The other – clearly the rejected suitor – was still standing, a few feet away.

He was rigid with fury, breathing fast through his nostrils like a hard-run racehorse. He still had the neck of the broken bottle clenched in his hand.

I thumbed the transmit on my walkie-talkie. “Len, it's Charlie,” I said. “Lower dance floor. There's a nasty one going on down here. I need some help. Now!”

The girl carried on screaming, at that high, intensely irritating frequency of small babies and hotel fire alarms. The boy with the bottle was momentarily distracted. As though he couldn't decide if his best next move was to continue the fight with the prospect, or hit the girl just to shut her up. He shook his head suddenly, as if to clear it.

While he was diverted, I took a deep breath, tried to centre myself, and stepped into the fray. At least with the noise she'd been making, Len and the rest shouldn't have any trouble finding us.

It was immediately clear that neither of the two lads really wanted any outside interference. The reject was desperate for the total humiliation of his rival. The prospect wanted the opportunity for revenge, served hot. It was like breaking up two fighting Pit Bulls. I was more likely to find them both turning on me than I was of stopping them ripping each other to shreds.

“Come on now son, put that down and let's finish this the easy way,” I said.

He twisted towards me, mad-eyed so the whites of them showed all round the irises. “I'm not your fucking son,” he hissed. He brought the bottle up towards me, warning. The gleaming blood of his last victim still decorated its wicked edges. “Stay out of it, bitch, or you'll get some, too.”

He was dangerously hyped up for it to be drink, or simple jealousy. It was in his voice, his eyes. The way he held his body, jerkily stiff, uncoordinated. There was a sheen of sweat pearling on his face, but he was shivering. Great! Where was bloody Len when I needed him?

The prospective boyfriend had used the break in the reject's attention to climb warily to his feet. I risked a glance at him. The bottle had been applied by someone who'd had practice. The thrust-and-screw technique had opened up the whole of the left-hand side of his face. The skin hung in ragged peels from the top corner of his lip to just below his eye. It was going to take a micro-surgeon with a special interest in jig-saw puzzles to piece him back together again so he looked anything like the picture on the box.

I flicked my eyes towards the girl. She'd stopped screaming by now, shoving both hands over her own mouth and gagging as though about to be sick. I turned back to the boy with the ruined face. I hoped whatever she'd been offering him had been worth it.

I didn't like the look in his eyes. He didn't need to touch a hand to his face to know what had been done to him. The evidence was splashing down the front of his shirt in a scarlet river.

He started to swear then. Softly at first, but growing in profanity and volume as he launched himself at his attacker, oblivious to the dangers of the slashing bottle.

I couldn't let them come together again. I knew that. I took the prospect first, sweeping his legs out from under him to send him crashing. I only just managed to jump back out of reach of the reject as he sliced the bottle at me, aiming for my stomach.

I caught him a fast blow to the face as I dodged away, bloodied his nose. There was no real weight to it, but a remarkable amount of nerve-endings meet in the nose. It should have been enough to put him down, should have slowed him down at any rate, but he was feeling no pain. He shook it off like a light tap and kept coming, weapon lifted now, like a dagger.

Christ! Now would be a good time, Len . . .

I swallowed hard. I was going to have to hurt him to stop him. My mind shied away from it, but the facts didn't change. I dithered and nearly lost it altogether.

I hadn't heard the prospective boyfriend get back on his feet until he grabbed me round the neck from behind. The rejected one was still coming, but now I was almost immobile and a much easier target.

I switched off my conscious mind and put a muzzle on my conscience. I needed fast, clinical action. The outlines of all the techniques I'd ever learned unrolled behind my eyes like computer graphics, clear and precise. There was no room for hesitation here. No time for compassion either.

I shifted my hips sideways and used a clenched backfist to hit the boy holding me hard in the groin. I didn't need to deal with the arm round my throat then. It simply melted away.

I shrugged him off as he crumpled backwards away from me, and moved forward to meet the charge of the crazy boy with the broken bottle held overhead. With deadly accuracy, he stabbed the glass down at my left eye. So directly that when I looked up I could see straight into the taper of the neck.

I blocked him high with my forearm, grunting at the jarring impact. I weaved my right arm quickly up through his to meet it, clasping my hands together round his wrist.

The movements were automatic, fluid, but I didn't want to do this! Oh I knew the moves, had nearly carried them to completion a hundred times, but I'd never had to take that final step. It was crossing the line. It was too far.

I looked up to see the stump of the bottle again, inches from my face. It was quivering from the sheer effort he was putting into trying to drive it downwards towards me. Into me. Oh shit . . .

Leverage is everything. They reckon it takes just eight pounds of pressure to break almost any bone in the human body. I must have applied quite a bit more than that now. I shut out the last lingering doubts and heaved, sideways and down.

The boy's shoulder dislocated with an ease that was mildly surprising. It made a soggy popping sound, like a spoon being pulled out of a bowl of set jelly.

I put my shoulder out once, falling off a horse when I was a kid. The pain is indescribable. You can't escape from it, can't move anywhere to make it hurt any less. It focuses you utterly and you'll do anything to make it stop.

The boy dropped slowly to his knees, the wild light in his eyes dulling as the biting pain of his injury finally took the edge off whatever was floating him. He let the bottle fall to the floor. I kicked it away.

There was the thump of heavy footsteps and I turned to see Len and Angelo had, at long last, deigned to put in an appearance. They skidded to a halt and took in the scene. One boy writhing on the floor, a trail of slimy vomit now mixing with the blood from his face.

The other was still on his knees, whimpering, his torso deformed into an unnatural shrug. Len stared between them, open-mouthed. Angelo just regarded me with those calculating eyes.

“What fucking kept you?” I demanded, stalking past them. I ignored Len's shouted order that I stay put. He was in charge, wasn't he? Well let him sort the mess out, then!

Behind me, the dark-haired girl had started screaming again.

***

I left Angelo and Len to deal with the aftermath. I went upstairs to one of the quieter bars and ordered coffee as an excuse to take in some sugar.

When it arrived, I found my hands were shaking too much to lift the cup.

I thought of Angelo's earlier treatment of the three couples outside the club. If you dealt with it every day, you became hardened to violence. If that was so, I didn't want to deal with it every day. Maybe Sam was right and this move was a mistake. Maybe I shouldn't have taken the job on.

Or maybe Angelo was right. I just didn't have the killer instinct.

“Are you OK?”

I hadn't heard Marc come up behind me. Without looking round I said tiredly, “Yeah, just wonderful, thanks.”

He came and sat beside me, linking his well-manicured hands together on the table top. He was wearing another devastating suit over a collarless white shirt with no buttons visible except the pearl stud at the neck. I wondered how long it took him to choose his wardrobe in the mornings.

With a supreme effort, I managed to take a sip of coffee without slopping most of it down the sides of the cup. When I looked up at Marc it was with steady eyes.

He was watching me with a half-smile quirking his mouth. “Once again it seems I have to say you've handled yourself pretty well,” he remarked.

“Once again without any back-up from your own security people,” I put in bitterly.

“So it might seem.”

It was the slight emphasis that tipped me off. My head came up and I stared at him. “You told them,” I said, my voice a whisper as the realisation hit. “You told them to leave me to it, didn't you?”

“I wanted to make certain you could cope on your own, take care of yourself,” he admitted without any visible signs of remorse, “so, yes, I told them to let you handle the first incident that came up solo.” He allowed himself a rueful smile. “I didn't realise it would be one quite so . . . serious.”

I felt a cold sweat break out between my shoulder-blades, prickling my skin. Would I have willingly gone into it knowing I had nobody behind me? I replayed the scene in my mind. Saw again the broken bottle, and the blood. I knew I couldn't have walked away and let those two slug it out until only one was left standing. “And if I hadn't been able to cope?”

He left the question hanging for a few moments. “I didn't doubt for a moment that you could,” he said calmly. His eyes shifted to focus behind me. “Ah, Len, is everything sorted down there?”

“Yes sir.” Len took a chair alongside me, leaning back and scowling. “Bad one. We had to get a meat wagon for the pair of them.” He glanced at me and said grudgingly, “You did OK, but you should have gone in sooner. We're not the police. We don't have to give them a chance to surrender. You go in hard and fast so they don't know what's hit them.”

He demonstrated his point by smacking a fist against his palm. “As soon as trouble starts, you stamp on it. Trying to talk them out of it is just a waste of time and it'll get you hurt.”

“Being reasonable is never a waste of time,” I said, trying not to grind my teeth. “Most people will respond to reason, given the opportunity. Most people will respect reasonable force as well. Unlike back there at the door when Angelo kicked that guy when he was already down and out of the play. That's not being reasonable. That's just vindictive. That bloke'll remember that, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's back with a few more of his mates later. That is what will get you hurt!”

I watched with mild interest as the blue touch paper of Len's temper ignited. Marc's presence was probably the only thing that was keeping his hands clenched on the table top instead of round my windpipe. “You don't know the first thing about this game, so keep your half-baked opinions to yourself,” he growled. “We've seen it all. Done it all. And we know how to handle it!”

Irritated, he lifted himself back to his feet and stumped away.

I swivelled round in my chair and waited until he'd made two strides. “If you're so all-seeing and all-knowing, perhaps you can tell me what the boy was on?”

Len stopped, revealing quite a bit by the way his head ducked at the question. He turned back slowly, eyes flicking nervously to his employer as he did so.

“On?” It was Marc who made the demand, his voice sharp.

“Yeah, Len here was only too keen to let me know earlier that nothing went on in this club that he didn't know about, so he should be able to tell me – what was he on?”

“What are you talking about?” Len asked. He didn't make it sound convincing.

“The kid with the bottle,” I said patiently. “I hit him hard enough to put him down, but he stayed on his feet, and he kept coming. I don't know what shit he had in his system, but I'd lay money that you can't buy it over the counter at Boots.”

Marc sighed, as if talking to a child. “Charlie, we don't ask people for a blood sample on the door before we let them in. If he had taken something, he probably did it before he came into the club.” He pinned me with those pale eyes. “I can tell you now that nobody with any sense tries to bring anything in to my place. Not if they know what's good for them.”

Len vigorously voiced his agreement. Marc glared at him. He made a swift exit.

Marc stood, smoothing out his jacket, his face tightly controlled. Abruptly he leant forwards, resting his hands on the back of my chair and the table top. He spoke in a voice quiet with fury. “I will not have anyone spreading rumours that the New Adelphi is open house for aspiring chemists. Is that understood?”

I had to force myself to hold his gaze, not to back away from him. Pure pig-headedness made me pause for a few moments, defying him, before I nodded.

Satisfied, he straightened up. “Now,” he continued, his voice icy, “if you’re sure you’re all right, I have a club to run.”

***

I fully expected that to be the last I saw of Marc all evening, but to my surprise he reappeared just as we were packing up, around two.

Most of the security lads had already said their goodnights, climbed into their cars and departed into the night.

It had started to drizzle around midnight, a fine spray which sat on people's clothing like dust when they came into the club. Now the rain had started in earnest. I wasn't looking forward to the ride home. What a night to forget my waterproofs.

I'd already pulled on my leather jacket and scarf when Marc caught up with me. “Have you got a moment, Charlie?”

I paused, running quickly through a mental checklist to see what else I'd done to deserve another talking to. I couldn't think that the way I'd handled the brawl on the dance floor could have been dealt with any better. Angelo, of course, would have just kicked both their heads in. And probably the girl's as well.

Now, I just nodded and followed Marc upstairs. We went right the way up to the small dining area on the top floor. I was surprised to find one of the chefs waiting for us, still in his whites.

Marc turned. “I was going to have a bite of supper. Will you join me?”

It was phrased as a polite request, but I wasn't sure of the reaction I'd get if I said I'd rather be on my way home to bed. I hesitated. Although I'd had a break at ten, I'd been too unsettled to do more than drink coffee. It had been good strong stuff and now it was doing its best to burn a way out through the front of my chest. Eating something might dampen it down a bit.

I smiled. “Yes, please, that would be great.”

We made our way over to a centre table and two place settings were whisked in front of us. Marc ordered wine. Mindful of having my wits about me for the ride home, I stuck with water.

“You should smile more,” Marc said as he lifted his glass. “It suits you.” His voice was strangely neutral. I looked hard for mockery, but couldn't find it in his impassive features.

I took a swig from my glass and avoided his eyes. When I next looked up it was to find him amused.

“What's so funny?”

“I was just thinking what a contradiction you are, Charlie,” he said. “You field a right hook more easily than you take a compliment.”

“Maybe I'm just used to men seeing me more as a potential sparring partner,” I hedged. Or as a target.

The chef reappeared at that moment with two succulent Spanish omelettes that melted on your tongue. We both dived in like we were starving. There was a long pause before Marc took up the thread of the conversation again.

“I think it's only fair to tell you that a sparring partner is not how I think of you at all,” he murmured. His voice was rich with hidden meanings, most of which I didn't want to think about right now.

“Yeah, right,” I said, trying not to squirm.

“So cynical for one so young.”

I regarded him straight-faced. “I'm forty-five really, but I've got this painting in the attic,” I said.

To my surprise, he frowned, shaking his head. “I don't get you.”

“Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray,” I explained and dredged the abridged story line from a long-forgotten pigeonhole in my memory. “He was an exceptionally beautiful young man who lived a life of total depravity, but he had a portrait of himself which he kept hidden away, and while he utterly escaped the ravages of time and the effects of his own immorality, his likeness in the picture grew more hideous and more ugly.” I shrugged diffidently. “We studied him at school.”

Marc raised an eyebrow, and took another sip of his wine. “They didn't go a bundle on Oscar Wilde where I went to school,” he said wryly. “Didn't go much on education either, for that matter.”

“It doesn't seem to have done you much harm,” I commented.

He inclined his head slightly with a modest smile. I must remember that method of accepting praise. It was gracious without being smug.

“Ambition can overcome plenty of obstacles if you're determined enough,” he said quietly. He pulled out a packet of cigars and lit one, dunking the end directly into the flame until it caught. “I grew up with plenty of ambition and not much else.”

He pushed his empty plate to one side and twirled the stem of his glass between his forefinger and thumb. He watched the pale golden liquid shimmer in the bowl for a few moments, lost in his thoughts. That single diamond on his little finger dazzled as it caught the light.

Finally he looked up, and met my eyes levelly. “I was born in one of the grimmest tower blocks in the roughest areas of Manchester,” he said. “My mother overdosed when I was seven.”

The bald statement hung in the air between us like it had suddenly grown a body. Stricken, I searched for the right thing to say, but had to admit defeat. There wasn't any right thing.

Marc suddenly seemed to realise what he'd said. He waved an elegant hand mockingly towards his expensive attire, as if only too aware of the contrast with his present-day situation. “If you saw anybody round my old haunts wearing a suit it was usually because some time that day a judge was going to be referring to them as ‘the accused’.”

I felt my shoulders relax a fraction. “Sounds like one of those places where the ambulance crews have to go in wearing flak jackets.”

Marc half-smiled, little more than a derisive twist of his lips. “Oh no,” he said, “they never bothered sending ambulances.”

***

When I finally left the New Adelphi Club it was almost three-thirty. There are not normally two three o'clocks in my day and I was shattered. My eyes felt as though someone had emptied the contents of a seaside sandal into them. My hair and even my fingernails stank of cigarettes.

There was almost no traffic on the ride home, and I was able to give part of my brain over to thinking about the snippets of his past that Marc had handed to me during supper.

The contrast with my own upbringing was stark. While he'd been avoiding rats in pissy stairwells, and dodging the drunken fists of yet another temporary uncle, I'd been taking ballet classes and going to the Pony Club. There'd been a lot of distance travelled between then and now. For both of us.

The rain hadn't eased off on the way back to Lancaster, so I wasn't surprised when I hit the light switch at the bottom of the main staircase in the hallway below my flat and nothing happened.

I think the wiring in the whole of the building was rejected by Noah for the ark because it was past its best even then. Every time there's heavy rain with the wind in the north-east the water seeps in somewhere like a thief and the circuit breakers in the basement click out.

It took me ten minutes or so, swearing, to stumble down there with a torch and flip them back in line. I tripped over a pile of junk on the way and I just knew I was going to have a bruise on my shin the size of a beer mat.

Great! Still, the way things had gone at the club, it was probably the perfect end to a pretty shitty sort of a day.

I fell into bed and into sleep almost simultaneously, but it wasn't untroubled slumber. I woke abruptly in the early hours, before it was light, from a jumbled dream where my father was trying to inject my mother with rat poison through a huge syringe.

She kept screaming and struggling and my father was ordering me to hold her down. I tried to do as I was told, crying because I knew it was wrong. When I looked up at him and he'd changed into a giant rat with yellow eyes.

I looked back down at my mother, but she'd changed, too. It was Susie Hollins I was holding now, on the dance floor at the New Adelphi, while a shadowy madman with a razor-sharp knife reared over us both. He laughed as the blade came slashing down to cut her throat.