by Zoe Sharp
I demonstrated with several different techniques. An open-handed chop with the edge of my hand, a swinging elbow, and a hammer fist, as well as a straightforward punch. I knew where the nose area of my targets was without having to sight on it first. I kept my eyes on my students instead, gauging their reaction.
“The nose will be unprotected by heavy clothing or glasses and a blow there will stop most attackers in their stride,” I told them. “It's difficult for someone to keep fighting while their eyes are streaming.”
My own favourite was a sweeping chop upwards just underneath the nose, right on the sensitive septum between the nostrils. Get the angle right and even the biggest, toughest of blokes will hit the dirt.
Of course, angle the blow too straight onto the top lip, and you run the risk of paralysing the respiratory system by damaging the cranial nerves. Angle it too high and you can splinter the nasal bones where they meet at the bridge of the nose, with the inherent danger of then driving the fractured ends onwards, into the brain.
To do that you had to deliver an accurate and powerful punch. I glanced briefly round the group in front of me and considered that none of them were potential heavyweight boxers in the making. Their strength was limited to the point where telling them about the dangers would inhibit them too much. None of them were street-fighters by nature. In an attack situation, I wanted them to hit out as hard as they could, not worry about exactly where they placed the blow.
I showed them a few other locations, for good measure. “Most areas of the face are pretty vulnerable to attack, like the hollow in the cheeks, the skin just under the eye, and then there's always the throat,” I went on. “The throat is always a good one to go for, as is the side of the jaw. On the down-side, you are just as vulnerable to attack in that area, so be careful. That's why boxers keep their chins tucked in.”
“I always thought it was because they had glass jaws,” Joy commented.
I shook my head. “If you keep your jaw shut it's more difficult to do it damage. You're much more vulnerable when you've got your mouth open.”
“My ex-husband would agree with you there,” muttered Pauline. There was laughter again.
I showed them how to form a fist without danger of dislocating their thumbs the first time they hit anything solid, and explained how you had to imagine punching straight through the object you were hitting, rather than pulling back when you made contact.
Then I let them get on with it. It never ceased to amaze me how much built-up anger and aggression came out during this particular lesson. People always claimed to feel surprisingly better afterwards. I know I usually did. I could recommend having a punchbag in the corner of the living room for stress relief and relaxation to anyone.
My mind drifted as I watched a group of normally sober and well-behaved women beat Curly and Mo to a pulp. I wondered how things might have turned out with the Scouser if I'd taken my own advice and hit him, hard, with no mercy and no hesitation.
Maybe my own doctrine that the law of self-defence was to use the minimum amount of force necessary had taken over. But maybe, if I'd known that he'd already got Terry's scalp on his belt, I would have been a lot less squeamish. I reflected, with some bitterness, that the Scouser and his mate certainly overcame their initial reluctance to beat up a woman with remarkable speed.
The thought jarred with me and I struggled to work out why. I backtracked. Somebody at the club gave Terry a computer as part of a debt. OK, I was clear on that. Then he'd tried to worry them by hinting that he knew what information had been stored on the machine. I was guessing for this part, but it seemed feasible.
He must have succeeded in worrying whoever it was. To the point where they had come round to retrieve the computer, with violence. Terry must have told them that I'd got it, and having seen what they'd done to him, I couldn't honestly say I blamed him for giving me away.
OK, so having failed to get the computer from Terry, why had they then waited a day or so before coming round to see me? Why hadn't they turned my place over on the Saturday night, when I was safely out of the way at the New Adelphi? And why, if they were connected to the club themselves, hadn't they known that Charlie was a female name . . .?
The pieces of the puzzle just didn't fit together. Without them I was never going to see the picture clearly.
“Charlie, are you OK?” Joy broke into my thoughts, peering anxiously at me.
I shook them loose and smiled at her. “Yeah, sure. What's up?”
She asked a question about elbow strikes and I stirred myself to demonstrate the technique. Joy wasn't a bad student, quick and smart, even if she did tend to forget some of the moves from one lesson to the next.
I kept stressing practice, practice, practice, but everybody was there by their own choice. I couldn't exactly put them in detention if they didn't do their homework.
She stayed behind to help me clear away after the rest of the class had gone, which was another point in her favour, considering my current state of health.
“So,” I said, stifling a groan as I bent to pick up the final mat, “I saw you at the New Adelphi at the weekend. Have fun?”
I glanced up at her as I said it, and was surprised to see a strange mixture of expressions frozen on her face. Guilt warred with defiance, mingling into embarrassment.
In a heartbeat, I knew.
“Fun?” she repeated, her voice pitched slightly too high. She swallowed and lowered the frequency. “Er, yeah, it was great. I didn't know you were into clubbing, Charlie.”
“I'm not,” I said as I straightened up. I fixed her with a grim smile, turning the screw. “I work security there.” I paused just long enough to let the implications sink in, then spelt them out for her anyway. “I keep the druggies out.”
She jumped as though I'd dropped ice down her neck. A strong suspicion became a dead certainty.
“Oh, really?” she said nervously.
“Yeah,” I said. “So, purely as a matter of interest, what did you take on Saturday night?”
She opened her mouth to deny it, saw the expression on my face, and shut it again.
“T-take?” she tried, circling her head as though by doing so she could evade the line of questioning.
I sighed, dropping the mat back onto the pile and turning to face her. “Joy,” I said. “I have no interest what shit you want to shovel into your system in your own time, but I do have an interest in finding out where you got something at the New Adelphi, when I'm supposed to be doing a job there.”
She wavered for a moment, then sat down on one of the row of chairs that were pushed back along one wall, not quite meeting my eyes. I waited for her to form the right words.
She began with justification. “I'm not into anything heavy,” she protested. “A few tabs of Ecstasy at the clubs; a couple of joints to chill out again afterwards. Sometimes I'll go months without anything, then some stuff will come my way again.” She flickered her eyes up to mine, then slid them away, suddenly fascinated by a hangnail on her thumb. “It's less addictive than alcohol and—”
I held up my hand, cutting her off. “Joy, I've already said I don't care what you take, just tell me where you got it. Did you already have it before you got into the club?”
She gave me a slightly scornful look. “Do restaurants let you take your own food in?” she challenged. “You don't get to carry anything into that place. They want to make damned sure you've got to buy fresh on the inside.”
I was startled and tried not to show it. I thought of Marc's adamant statement that nobody brought anything into his club, and of Len's that nothing went on that he didn't know about. Were they naive, or just very clever? Mind you, if they suddenly found out that Angelo had been running a nice little sideline in disco biscuits, it would explain Marc's explosion of anger . . .
I turned back to Joy. “So who did you go to for yours?” I demanded.
I viewed a first flash of temper. “What the hell business is it of yours, Charlie?”
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“You have no idea,” I put in quietly, although my own irritation was rising fast.
After a few moments Joy's eyes dropped from mine again. She shrugged. “I don't know,” she said, almost sullen. “I was with a group of friends. One of them went away and he just came back with some gear.”
“And you didn't see where he'd got it?”
She shook her head, then remembered something. “The only thing was, I told him I was worried about taking anything so openly on the dance floor, in case we got thrown out by one of the bouncers. He just laughed and said where did I think the stuff had come from in the first place?”
“But you didn't see which one?”
She shook her head with such certainty I realised I was getting the truth.
I took a deep breath. “Look, Joy,” I said. “I really need to know who's dealing drugs at the club. Next Saturday, can you get your mate to identify who sold him the stuff last time for me?”
I knew I was going out on a limb on the grounds of a tenuous friendship, and it didn't quite come off the way I'd hoped. Her face flushed and she jumped to her feet. “No way!” she cried. “Oh sure, I do a bit of blow every now and again, and you want me to tell you everyone who's ever passed me a joint. You teach me self-defence, Charlie, not morality. If I want my soul saving, I'll go find a priest! Don't be so fucking high and mighty!”
She started for the door. I moved after her. “Joy, wait, let me explain—” I was going to have to tell her about Terry, about the connection with the New Adelphi, about my own attack, but she had already reached the door out of the ballroom.
She rounded on me, eyes bright with tears. “Just go to hell, Charlie!” and she rammed the door open, disappearing through it with an air of absolute finality.
I started after her, but as I reached the door myself, stretching a hand out, it opened inward towards me and a girl stepped through.
We both stopped with a little exclamation of shock. My mind registered the short frame and spiky hair of Victoria, the waitress from the New Adelphi, even as my mouth was saying, “Sorry, excuse me a moment, would you?”
I dived out into the corridor, but Joy had already disappeared along the hallway, heading for the front door. I caught a final glimpse of her stiff back as she hurried down the front steps. I called her name again, but she was gone.
With a sigh I went back to deal with my new visitor.
“Have I come at a bad time?” Victoria asked with a hesitant smile.
“Oh no,” I sighed. “I've just opened my mouth and only succeeded in changing feet. Don't worry about it. Now then, what can I do for—?”
I'd glanced up as I'd spoken and my voice died in my throat as I looked at her.
“Christ, Victoria, what the hell happened to you?”
The left-hand side of her face was one huge contusion, the bruising starting dark purple round her swollen eye and fading out to a sickly yellow at chin and hairline. Steri-strip dressings closed the edges of cuts to her cheekbone and eyebrow. Through the slit of distended lids, the white of the eye itself was speckled with blood. She looked like shit.
Victoria couldn't fail to take in my reaction. She gave a bravado half-smile that made her mouth tremble, suddenly in danger of losing the last thread of her slender self-control.
I put my arm round her shoulder and led her to the chair Joy had so recently vacated. Victoria sank onto it as though her legs wouldn't support her any more, twisting her hands together in her lap.
I perched alongside, keeping my arm round her and digging in the pocket of my jogging pants for a respectable handkerchief to offer. She threw me a brief smile of thanks and we sat in silence for a while as she searched for a logical entrance to her story.
I didn't try and hurry her into it. Whatever had happened to Victoria, although obviously not really fresh, was still close enough to be traumatic. By the way her hands where shaking, she was probably still in shock.
The shock always gets you. It certainly did with me.
The bright lights and the warmth of the Lodge receded, to be replaced with the memory of another time, and another place. It had been dark then, frosty, and cold enough for snow.
Donalson, Hackett, Morton, and Clay.
I'd been younger then, in some ways more self-assured, in others more vulnerable. We'd been learning some hand-to-hand stuff as part of the course, but my attackers knew exactly the same techniques as I did, and I was outnumbered four to one.
In reality, I didn't really know any more about self-defence than to try and knee my attackers in the groin, or punch them in the stomach. Now I can put my mind to over fifty sensitive areas on the face and neck alone.
I was strong and a bit of a fitness freak back then, but even so it was no match for superior male muscle. Under pressure I've always been able to think fast. So I didn't cower. I fought and kicked out instantly, tried to yell blue murder.
I suppose it was about then that the four of them realised they were going to have to kill me to keep me quiet about what they'd done. The memory that has stayed with me longest is of lying half-insensible on the frigid earth, listening to them discussing in panicked undertones how best to dispose of my body.
The emotional aftershocks had taken a long time to die down. I doubted I'd ever be without the ripples left behind. When I was able to view the events with the clarity of distance, I was just left with the anger of my own helplessness.
I felt a burst of that same anger looking at Victoria's battered face, and knowing that had she come to my classes I probably could have taught her how to avoid the worst of it.
Now, she made a determined effort to get herself together. I smiled encouragingly.
“D'you want to talk about it?” I ventured at last.
She sniffed and nodded. “God, sorry, look at me, falling apart on you,” she muttered, blowing her nose loudly, which started it off bleeding. I made a quick decision that she could keep the handkerchief.
“Who did this to you, Victoria?” I asked gently, although I think I already knew the answer.
She sniffed again, dabbing at the fresh blood. “Angelo,” she admitted, her voice breaking. “We've only been going out for a few months, and at first he was great, but lately . . .” She tailed off, glancing at me, and I realised that the blood from her nose had been caused by the ring she usually wore there being half ripped out through the skin . . .
I was trying so hard not to let Victoria see my distaste at this piece of mutilation that I almost missed what she was saying next.
“He seems to really hate you, Charlie. It scares me.”
“Angelo hates me?” I stared at her blankly. “Why on earth does he hate me?”
“Because you're not afraid of him,” she said, as though stating the obvious. “He expects everybody to be afraid of him – especially women. He likes his women passive – submissive, even. When you'd been to the club for your interview he was dead scathing about you because you wouldn't take Len on. He thought it was because you couldn't do it. Then you took care of that fight last Saturday and now he thinks you were taking the piss out of them both.”
I made no response to that. There didn't seem to be much I could say. Victoria took my silence to be scepticism. She peered at me again. “I think he hates the control you've got,” she went on, hesitantly. “Angelo's driven by his anger, it takes him over. You're different. You get mad, but you use it. You don't let it dominate the way you behave. Angelo doesn't understand that, and it infuriates him.”
“So he takes it out on you?” I demanded.
She shrugged her thin shoulders. Some big man Angelo was, turning his fists onto a girl a third of his size and weight. It made me burn with the sheer injustice of it.
“What do you need from me, Victoria?” If there was anything I could do, I'd do it.
She looked surprised. “I don't need anything from you,” she said. “I just thought I ought to warn you, that's all – about the way Angelo feels.”
“Do
es he know you're here?”
A furtive flicker crossed her face. “God, no! He'd go mental if he found out,” she said, unable to keep the trace of fear out of her voice entirely.
I turned to her, gripped her arm. “Victoria, get away from him,” I warned. “If he did this to you, get out now, while you still can!”
She slid her gaze away. “I'm OK,” she protested. “He'd had a bit to drink. He didn't know what he was doing and he was really sorry afterwards.” She got to her feet, tried a bigger, braver smile. “He's promised it won't happen again.” I couldn't work out if it was me she was trying to convince, or herself.
