Killer Instinct: Charlie Fox book one

by Zoe Sharp

  Streaks of pain shot round my skull like cracks, stars exploded in my vision. That side of my face felt as though it had instantly swelled up to twice its normal size, half closing my eye.

  I stumbled and fell onto the flooring. Once I was down Dave kicked me twice in the ribs, vigorously, just for good measure. Then he stood over me and checked my reaction like he was studying a lab rat. My body turned in on itself, fighting the pain. My ribs were on fire, every breath was agony.

  “Where are all your supposed self-defence skills now, Charlie?” he demanded. “You're never going to compare to a man with half your ability, never mind one who's your equal or master. You're nowhere near. Face it, you just don't have what it takes to stop me killing you. I think I'm going to enjoy it.”

  “You can't hope to get away with it,” I said, my voice coming in gasps. It was an awful cliché, but right at that moment I didn't care. I just couldn't seem to fill my lungs with enough air. It was like I was drowning.

  “Oh can't I?” he said softly. “And who's going to stop me?”

  “I am,” I said fiercely, pivoting onto my side and booting his legs out from under him.

  The break-fall he did as he landed was practised and proficient. It took some of the shock out of it, but I'd hit the same leg as before, compounding the effect. It was enough to slow him down and for a moment he was down on his back, arms outstretched.

  I scrambled onto my hands and knees and jumped for the knife, clamping onto his wrist, but I'd over-reached, was off-balance a fraction. He stuck his leg up and tipped me over, rolling his bodyweight crushingly on top of my tender ribs, with the knife still clutched firmly in his hand.

  I could only watch in horror as it descended, as the blade disappeared from my field of vision and closed in on my throat. I felt the chill steel line of it, resting on my windpipe. The memory of Joy was stark and shocking. I looked up and saw death in his eyes, just as she must have done.

  “Well, well, Charlie, looks like I've finally got you where I want you,” he panted, lips back from his teeth in a mirthless smile.

  “Go fuck yourself!” I gasped. I desperately twisted my head sideways and back, bucking under him, clawing for his eyes.

  He jerked. With a cold sense of finality I felt the sting of the knife going in, but there was little real pain. It was like being prodded with a stick. Just the sickly metallic smell of blood and the warm greasy wetness running down my skin.

  Oh sweet Jesus, I thought. He's done it. He's cut my throat . . .

  The cold logical side of my brain registered the probable depth of the injury. If I was lucky the main arteries into my brain would have been severed. I would quickly lose consciousness and bleed to death in minutes.

  If I was unlucky the bleeding from the lacerated tissues would slowly weaken me. If it clogged my ruptured windpipe, I would quite simply drown in my own blood.

  In the knowledge that I was most likely dead already, I went ballistic.

  I had nothing to lose.

  Ignoring the knife, I reached up, managing to grab hold of his ear, digging my nails in deep to the sensitive skin behind it. I used all my strength, ripping it sideways and down, and bringing his body with it. He tumbled to the side of me, bellowing, and the knife rattled to the floor.

  I staggered to my knees. The blood was soaking down into the front of my T-shirt like a grotesque bib. I caught sight of the knife, clutched it, hurled it away into the shadows.

  Dave lurched to his feet, his own blood sliding down the side of his face. He put a hand up to it. “You bitch!” he howled. “Look what you've done to me!”

  Look what you've done to me, sunshine, my brain thought whimsically. I tried to get up, to match him. It was like wading through the surf on a loose shingle beach. I blinked to try and clear my vision, but it remained obstinately hazy.

  The blast of adrenaline made me feel as though I'd been kicked in the chest. My heart was helpfully hammering my blood out of the hole in my neck as fast is it could muster. I was terrified I was going to pass out, lose by default.

  Robbed of his weapon, Dave turned wildly to the stage, just behind us. He snatched up part of a mic stand, a thin metal rod about three feet long, and advanced, snarling.

  I knew the end was coming, inevitable. It seemed important suddenly that I be on my feet to meet it. I lumbered upright, shaking uncontrollably, holding on to the edge of the stage to keep my balance as I turned to face him.

  With an animal grunt, Dave swung his makeshift club double-handed at shoulder height like an American baseball player going for a home run. He put all his bodyweight behind it, the effort lifting him onto his toes, his face contorted with a burning passion.

  I only saw him vaguely. My vision was tunnelling out, the edges blurred with smears of colour like spoilt film. I was going down, and I knew it.

  The rod sizzled the air as it sliced through it. I did the best block I could manage considering I was fairly sure the floor was at ninety degrees to its real location. I took the full brunt of the blow diagonally across my left forearm and I swear I heard the radius and ulna let go with a sharp, staccato snap. The X-rays taken later showed a level, clean break line, as though the bones had been cut straight through.

  The sound and the feel of the blow vibrated through my whole body. The impact spun me round and left me sprawled face-down over the stage, limp and nauseous.

  Dave grabbed hold of my shoulder and yanked me over onto my back. “Oh no, I want to see the look on your face, bitch,” he said quietly, his voice twisted and breathless.

  I looked up numbly, my expression blank. It was his eyes that were the most frightening, wild with the excitement of what he was doing.

  I struggled to a sitting position on the edge of the stage, using only my right arm to push myself upright, my broken left dangling uselessly by my side. I slowly pulled my feet back so they were under my knees to give me balance. Dave stood over me, breathing heavily, the rod lowered in front of him now he had me beaten.

  Afterwards, I couldn't explain how I came to the decision. I didn't do it consciously, which scares me. The opportunity presented itself and I took it instinctively, that's all. I didn't hesitate for a second, didn't agonise over the moral rights and wrongs, didn't stop to consider the consequences. Dave had dropped his guard and I took advantage of it to hit him as hard as I could.

  Yelling from the base of my screaming lungs, I burst suddenly upright, ramming my feet into the floor to lift my body off the stage as my arm straightened.

  I hit Dave just under the tip of his nose with the heel of my open hand, but I was aiming for a spot about eight inches further on. It was a deadly punch to throw, and I was fully aware of the fact. I put everything I had left into it, every scrap and ounce of energy. The forfeit for failure was an ugly, prolonged, and vicious death.

  It didn't fail. The force and the angle of the blow caused Dave's nasal bone to shatter just at the bridge of his nose, between his eyes, as I'd prayed it would. The sheered end was driven onwards and upwards, slicing deep into the frontal lobe of his brain.

  According to the police pathologist, he was dead before his body finished falling.

  He splayed backwards, landing hard on the dance floor, head cracking hollowly against the polished wooden surface. His body continued to jitter, trying to evade the creeping paralysis that slowly enveloped it as his heart finally gave up the fight.

  It took a while for him to stop twitching. The lifeless fingers relaxed. The mic stand rolled out onto the floor, rocked a little, and lay still. It was only then I could bear to look.

  There was a dribble of saliva stringing from the corner of his slack mouth. His eyes were still open in his flattened, distorted face, frozen with the momentary surprise that had been his final expression, right in the instant before I killed him.

  For a while I was too exhausted to move. I don't know how long I sat there, shivering. It seemed an age. Finally, I dragged myself shakily to my feet, edging round Dave's spra
wled corpse, and swayed drunkenly over to Clare.

  At first I thought she was unconscious, but when I touched her shoulder she jolted like I'd stung her. She looked up, her pupils pin-point dots in her unfocused eyes.

  “Charlie?” she murmured, her voice thready. “You're all covered in blood.”

  “I know,” I croaked. I reached up tentatively to my throbbing neck, suddenly realising that I could still breathe and talk. My fingers touched ragged ends of flesh and I dropped them away. If it wasn't that bad, I didn't need to worry about it, and if it was, I didn't want to know.

  Besides, my left arm and my face were yelling at me through the central nervous system equivalent of a megaphone. I felt light-headed, and freezing cold. I couldn't stop my teeth clattering together like a flamenco dancers' convention. In a detached way I registered that my body was shutting down, going in to shock. I knew if I didn't do something soon, I was in big trouble.

  One-handed, I couldn't manage to undo the zip-ties round Clare's wrists and had to give up trying. “I'll get help,” I muttered.

  It seemed a hell of a long way across the dance floor to the bar, where the nearest phone was, but I managed to get there by sheer bloody determination.

  I had to dial the number of the police station three times before I got it right, and when they answered I asked them to put me straight through to MacMillan. There was only a short pause before he came on the line.

  “Superintendent, it's Charlie Fox,” I said, my voice wavering.

  “Charlie! What the hell do you think you're up to?” he demanded.

  “Angelo didn't kill Susie and Joy,” I told him, launching straight in without preamble. “It was Dave Clemmens and I missed it, all along. He raped and killed them, and he's just tried to kill me.”

  “Charlie, listen to me. Stay right where you are.” His voice became terse, persuasive. “I'll send a car to pick you up straight away. I give you my word that you'll be quite safe.”

  “OK,” I said meekly, “I'm at the New Adelphi Club.” He relayed the information to someone alongside him. I suddenly felt unutterably tired. I slid to the floor, cradling the phone with my good hand. When he spoke again I said, “There's no need to rush – the bastard's dead.”

  Epilogue

  In the end I didn't go to trial for the murder of Dave Clemmens. They didn't even charge me with his manslaughter, which was a bit of a surprise really, considering the technique I'd used. I suppose if I'd waited until later and stabbed him to death with a pair of pinking shears, they would have sent me down for life.

  Ironically perhaps, the only charges I did face were for assaulting a police officer. I think WPC Wilks's ego had been more bruised than her jaw. They let me off with a caution, though. MacMillan delivered my stern lecture himself, with only the barest hint of a smile.

  The thing I regret most about this whole business is the effect it's had on my friends. Physically, Clare emerged from the encounter relatively unscathed, but the road back from the mental trauma she'd suffered looked like being a long and tortuous one.

  Any attempts I made to offer comfort seemed to make things worse. Eventually I just had to leave her be and hope that, when she'd recovered enough to view things with a clearer perspective, she didn't hold me entirely responsible for what had happened.

  It's bad enough that I blame myself.

  Ailsa sent me a short little note telling me she didn't feel it was appropriate for me to continue my classes at the Lodge. She was divorcing Tris on the grounds of gross mental cruelty and, with the facts as they were, I doubted there was a judge this side of senility who wouldn't come down heavily in her favour. She had already announced her intention of selling the house to a local property developer and moving the refuge to somewhere on the north Wales coast.

  I had a feeling Tris would mourn the loss of his family home more than the disintegration of his marriage, but I don't know for sure how he took the news. He never contacted me again.

  The police picked up Angelo a couple of days after the raid on the New Adelphi. He'd gone to ground with an old mate of his from Liverpool. I couldn't ignore the possibility that the man was probably one of the pair who'd ransacked my flat, but there wasn't the evidence to pursue it. There was enough forensic to bind Angelo to Terry's killing, though, and that was the main thing.

  When it came to Dave, after reviewing all the facts, the powers that be decided my claim of self-defence was justified. They judged that I didn't have a case to answer, and I walked away free. The police were able to lay the three recent attacks firmly at Dave's feet without question. It looked like I'd done everyone a favour.

  But that doesn't make it any easier to forget.

  The doctors at the hospital told me I'd been lucky, that wrenching my head away had caused the knife blade to slice into the side of my neck rather than across my throat, missing by fractions the trachea and vital arteries, which had slid back behind my neck muscles. They stitched me up again and set and plastered my arm. The ribs and the cheekbone, so they told me, were best left to sort themselves out, given time.

  They sent me to see a community psychiatric nurse for counselling about coming to terms with what I'd done, but I have a feeling the bones will be mended long before my conscience.

  Like I said, the worst part is knowing that, if I was ever in the same situation, I'd do exactly the same thing again. No doubt about it.

  It doesn't sit well with me, that – the realisation that I have not only the knowledge, but the instinct to kill. It sets you apart from the other people you pass in the street, makes you feel alone, less human than they are.

  I proved Dave wrong, though. Given a straight fight between a man and a woman, neither with any particular advantage in skill over the other, it isn't a foregone conclusion that the man will always win. I suppose then, right at the end, I could have said to him, “I told you so.”

  Just as long as I'd said it fast enough.

  Afterword

  This Afterword was originally written for the Busted Flush Press US trade paperback edition of KILLER INSTINCT, published in 2010. Publisher David Thompson planned similar editions of RIOT ACT, HARD KNOCKS and ROAD KILL, but he tragically died, suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of thirty-eight, shortly before the second book was due to go to print. This was a huge loss to everyone who knew him – one from which we are all still reeling.

  When David asked me to write an afterword for the new edition of KILLER INSTINCT, it made me think afresh about this, the very first Charlie Fox book, and why I chose to join her story at this point.

  This is not, after all, the beginning of Charlie’s journey, but I look back on it as the major turning point in her life. The events covered during the course of the book change her forever from having been a victim, to not only fighting back on her own behalf, but as a protector for others. It sets her out, whether she is aware of it at the time, on the path she will subsequently follow into the world of close protection.

  Ironically enough, it was Charlie’s first official job as a bodyguard, in the events of book four in the series, FIRST DROP, that brought her to US shores for the first time in more ways than one. Setting FIRST DROP in Daytona Beach, Florida over the Spring Break weekend caught the eye of a New York editor, who decided that’s where the story should start for American readers, and the title mistakenly gave the impression there was no history to Charlie before then.

  But there is, and KILLER INSTINCT is the first instalment.

  I wrote this story at a time when I had just been the target of a number of death-threat letters through my work, and I probably identified with Charlie more closely during the course of this book than any other. Of course, those letters never escalated to anything like the level of threat that my protagonist faces here, but they planted the germ of the idea. And it did inspire me to go out and learn a lot of self-defence techniques, which have stood me in very good stead ever since.

  I chose the northern English city of Lancaster for the setting
because it was not only an area I knew well, but because I was intrigued by the dual-edged personality of the place. By day it’s an attractive university town, filled with history and the kind of elegant Georgian architecture that has seen it called the Bath of the North.

  But by night the number of pubs and clubs give the city an altogether darker feel. At one point it had one of the highest violent-crime rates per head of population in the country. And although one or two people asked if the events described in the book could really happen in a place like Lancaster, my answer is . . . they did, more or less.

  In one of those weird twists of fate, shortly after KILLER INSTINCT was published, one of the local nightclubs was shut down after a drug-dealing scandal, in which the owner and half the door staff were allegedly involved. (And if you’re cheating, and reading this afterword before you’ve read the book itself, you better just forget that bit!)