28

‘Cook, you cunt!’ a drunken voice broke through the hubbub. I felt a hand on my left shoulder. It grabbed me, jerking me back.

I went with it, letting the hand pull me around. When somebody grabs you like that, they want you to turn into their punch. Spin you around, take a wide swing at your jaw, or a looping fist to your nose. Standard pub brawl. So I turned, but I leant my head back. As expected, by the time I was facing my assailant, his fist was whistling past my nose. It was Kate’s younger son.

Things were looking up. The pub had looked like being a bust, but the man I’d come looking for had shown up and volunteered to be taken down. I let his swing pass me by, threw a short underarm jab into his large stomach. My fist disappeared into his solar plexus, and I drove upwards. A woof of stale air was forced out of his lungs, and he doubled over. I grabbed the back of his head, pushing it down to meet my rising knee, which crunched into his nose.

He staggered backwards, blood spurting from his broken nose, crashing into a table, sending glasses and ashtrays flying.

His older brother, Victor, arm in a plaster cast, took his place. There was a glint of light on the blade in his hand. I backed away. Regardless of whether my opponent had a broken arm, a knife fight was at the bottom of my list of preferred evening activities.

A buzz of anticipation rippled through the crowd. The ancient thrill of a fight.

‘Outside!’ the landlord shouted. ‘Both of you!’

Outside or inside, either was fine with me. Kate’s sons had hidden behind their mother’s skirts the last time our paths had crossed, but now we were going to have words.

*

The crowd in the car park organised itself into a circle, surrounding an empty patch of tarmac the size of a boxing ring, with me and my opponents in the middle. The younger brother pulled off his blood-soaked shirt.

‘I’m going to teach you a lesson,’ he said, throwing his shirt to a supporter in the crowd. ‘You don’t mess with the Davidsons.’ Probably a mantra he’d had running through his head all the way to the pub.

I let him talk. He didn’t know it yet, but he was already beaten. He’d lost the fight the second he’d put his hand on my shoulder. That’s not how you take out a threat. If you walk up behind a man you want on the ground, you put him on the ground, before he knows you’re there. Anything else is play fighting. And if he wanted to play, I’d be happy to oblige, although I predicted that each round would diminish his enthusiasm considerably. When he was finished, I could hand him over to the police and let the law take care of the rest.

Victor concerned me more. He’d already shown he was happy to use the knife, and since then he’d had time to stew on the injustice of being beaten by me the first time. Add to that, I was worried about the feeling he would have got from killing the Leckies. It hits every man differently, but for some, it’s like opening the floodgates.

There was a ripple in the crowd behind me. I risked a glance back. The three strangers were threading their way through. The man with the scar, the young woman, and the man I’d talked to at the bar.

My assailant swung his fist at me while I was distracted. A long swing, theatrical, designed to impress everyone in the car park that he meant business. It had failed him the first time. Trying the same thing again told me everything I needed to know – he wasn’t a threat, and he was stuck in a loop without assessing how it was working for him. If he was a normal drunk, and this was a normal day, I’d have put him down quickly and left him to tend his wounds. But he wasn’t a normal drunk. He was a killer. He and his brother had beaten the Leckies, then when they hadn’t acted the way he’d predicted, they’d gone back and finished the job.

I stepped forwards, into the arc of his swinging arm. I got his arm across my ear for my troubles, but his fist was now behind my head, useless. He crooked his arm, pulling my head towards his chest, where he could bring his left fist up into my face. But I kept my forward momentum, and head-butted him. His nose was already broken, and this time it disintegrated. He screamed and put his hands to his face, all thoughts of attack gone. I pushed him backwards, and he stumbled into his brother.

Victor pushed him aside. No love lost between the brothers, it seemed. If anything, Victor looked disgusted. Didn’t want the failure rubbing off on him.

With his unbroken arm, he reached into his back pocket and pulled out a second knife. Now he had one in each hand. It was very theatrical. Like some kind of assassin from a Fu Manchu story. I didn’t put much stock in his ability to co-ordinate both knives, but I’ve learnt to be cautious when it comes to knives. Better safe than sorry.

I turned to one of the MPs, standing behind me in the crowd. He was watching the unfolding fight with the air of a connoisseur, like a first-class batsman watching a sleepy -village match.

‘Captain,’ I snapped, in my best sergeantmajor voice – quick, efficient, trained to bring my superiors solutions, not problems.

‘These men are deserters,’ I said. ‘Found them stripping off their uniforms in my barn. This one said the King could fuck off. Said he’d like to get the young princesses alone for the night and give them what-for.’

A prostitute in the crowd gasped. She’d been ready to see two men beat each other to a pulp, but hearing a profanity about the royal family was a step too far. A sense of moral outrage that demanded action.

The MP had brought his pint out with him, and he took a long draught. I wasn’t sure he would take the bait. But once he’d had his drink he tugged on a lanyard around his neck, pulled out his whistle, and blew a piercing blast. The ACME police whistle, designed to be heard up to a mile away in a crowded city. My pulse quickened at the sound. A Pavlovian response. The same whistle had been issued to every officer on the Western Front. Every time I’d heard that sound had been one of the worst moments of my life.

The effect was instant, and massive.

‘Move, move, move!’ from the back of the crowd. Before people had a chance to move, four MP sergeants rushed forwards, pushing people aside with no regard for civilian versus soldier, male versus female. If you were between them and the man who’d blown the whistle, you were out of luck. Glasses smashed on the tarmac. Women screamed as they were pushed aside, and the MPs arrived in the -circle, ready to subdue a riot. They’d been selected for size and aggression, trained to run towards a soldier who looked like he was thinking about disobeying an order. The MP with the whistle pointed at Victor, who stood in the middle of the circle, his knives out. The MP nodded, and the four -sergeants piled on.

Victor swung with his knife and nicked the first MP to reach him, drawing blood. Not a wise move. He’d been in for a rough time of it as it was. Now he’d bought himself the strong possibility of life-altering injuries.

‘Both of them?’ the MP asked, as the brother tried to crawl away from the melee, blood gushing from his twice--broken nose.

‘Both of them,’ I said.

Behind the crowd, a large black car pushed its way through the periphery. The scar-faced man was at the wheel, and he caught my eye. He gave me an ironic salute, and I had the same feeling I’d had when I first noticed him. He was a man like me. Someone who’d get the job done, whatever the job was, whatever it took.