Skinner's rules

94

Someone else was watching the Hall, pressed in the dark shadow of the building. And he was watching Fazal Mahmoud as he sized up the situation and decided on his gamble.

The girl still squirmed in his grasp, trying to bite the hand clampe over her mouth. She had been walking through George Square, a student on her way home from the library, when he had grabbed her in the dark spot between two street lights, pulling her round the corner into the shadow.

It was his strong left hand which was clamped over her mouth, the forearm crushing her breast as he held her with her back towards him. His right arm encircled hers, the hand trapping her left wrist and holdin her completely immobile.

He watched the unfolding drama of the Hall, the police and Fazal Mahmoud.

Suddenly he moved. His right hand left her wrist, and in a single powerful move, ripped her blouse open. Then, a blurred second later, a knife was in the same hand. She felt it slash through the waistband of her skirt. For a second, the left arm relaxed, and she spun out of the man’s grasp, her skirt falling loose round her ankles.

She gathered her breath and screamed, a second before the knife cut her chin. Involuntarily, her arms flew up, and the knife slashed again, across her exposed belly. She screamed again, louder this time. She stumbled back, screaming a third time, and waiting for the next blow of the knife.

It never came. The man was gone, melted away into the darkness. As the girl screamed yet again, feeling the warm blood running down her neck, her chest and her legs, ten uniformed police officers, two in motor cycle gear, sprinted towards her.