A Fistful of Knuckles

by Tom Graham

  ‘I’m not just talking about your murky, mucky past,’ said Gene, looming over Spider. ‘You cut a deal with O’Riordan, didn’t you! Eh? Speak up! It were you led O’Riordan to Denzil’s flat, weren’t it! It were you who betrayed your own best mate, just to save yourself, weren’t it! Weren’t it!’

  Spider looked up at Gene, eyes filled with hate. Gene glowered back at him.

  ‘That’s my superior officer’s theory, not mine,’ Sam put in. ‘If DCI Hunt’s wrong, just say. Spider – staying silent won’t help you and it won’t help us nail O’Riordan.’

  ‘I knew it …’ Spider murmured.

  ‘What, Spider? What did you know?’

  ‘I knew you’d point the finger at me.’

  ‘Nobody’s pointing the finger at you, Spider,’ said Sam.

  ‘I am,’ intoned Gene, ‘if you hadn’t noticed, Tyler.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Guv, this isn’t helping!’

  ‘He’s a scumbag,’ said Gene. ‘Look at him. Look at that stupid tattoo. Look at his stinking rat hole. You don’t negotiate with human crap like this, Tyler, you flush it down the khazi.’ And turning to Spider he said: ‘Consider yourself well and truly flushed, Spider. I’m nicking you. Obstruction. Withholding evidence. Being in possession of a criminally grubby flat that don’t have no bleedin’ lifts. I’ll work out the details on the way to the station, they don’t matter much – what counts if that you’ll be ‘fessing up by the time I’m through with you.’

  Sam expected Spider to react defensively, furiously – but instead, he seemed more resigned than anything else. Had he come to expect no more from life than injustice and rough treatment? Did he know nothing better than a world of threats and intimidations?

  When I came face-to-face with him under the rollercoaster, he seemed like a man on the very brink of a breakdown. His nerves were shredded. Denzil’s death had shattered him. And look at how he lives! Barricaded-in, paranoid, alone. What kind of existence is this? Is it as bleak and grey and cheerless on the inside of Spider’s mind as it is in the walkways and stairwells of this awful estate? How can we expect a man as strung-out as this to work with us?

  Damn it all, Gene’s bloody gorilla routine is only going to make things worse. Spider needs empathy, not threats. He needs to know that when he speaks, he’ll be listened to. Unless he trusts us, he’ll clam up, go into himself, pursue whatever private plans for revenge he has.

  I need to shut the guv up. I need to get him out of the way, and establish some sort of contact with Spider that will start to win his trust and–

  At that instant, there was a sudden flash of light, and Sam found himself falling backwards, striking a wall, slithering to the floor.

  A bomb … he thought, his head spinning, his vision full of popping lights.

  Gene’s voice was reaching him as if from the far end of a huge, echoing cavern: Tyler … get off your arse and help … Tyler!

  The lights began to disperse. Sam saw the floor, the blocked-in window, the yellowed light bulbs – then he saw Gene and Spider locked together, grappling.

  ‘Guv …’ he said – or rather, he tried to, but his jaw was burning with pain.

  What the hell happened? It was like a bomb went off …

  His spinning brain was starting to put itself back together again. Here and there, normal service was resumed. Thoughts began to flow again.

  He punched me. Spider bloody well punched me! A lightning blow, I never even saw it coming.

  He wondered dimly if his jaw was really broken or if it just felt like it was.

  Only feet away from him, the guv and Spider crashed to and fro, hurling each other against the walls, until suddenly Spider broke free and dashed from the flat. At once, Gene turned on Sam, looming over him like a very pissed off yeti in a camelhair coat.

  ‘You’re not dead yet, Tyler!’ he boomed into Sam’s face. ‘So you got no excuses! On your feet and get moving!’

  Tyler felt himself dragged up, and the next thing he knew he was running out of the flat and along the concrete balcony, following Gene’s flapping coat tails. Up ahead, Spider dashed down a stairwell and vanished from sight.

  Despite his spinning brain, and the pain throbbing through his jaw, Sam had enough wits to comprehend that Spider was fleeing the interview, that they were pursuing him, that this was a chase.

  ‘Shift your lazy arse, Tyler!’ Gene bellowed. ‘The spider has legged it! The bastard’s getting away!’

  CHAPTER NINE: SPIDER

  Sense and consciousness was still coming back to Sam’s spinning head as he pounded down the stairwell after Spider. His jaw throbbed. It had been one hell of a punch – a real boxer’s punch – a jaw-cracker of a blow.

  Spider belted down the concrete steps, turned sharply and dashed away along one of the balconies.

  ‘After him!’ gasped Gene, doubling up and struggling for breath. His face was puce, his eyes bloodshot. His diet of eighty fags a day washed down with a bottle and a half of scotch was kicking in.

  Sam belted along the balcony. Spider glanced round, came to a stop, and raised his fists, ready to fight.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot, Spider,’ said Sam, edging closer. ‘I need to talk to you, that’s all.’

  Spider tightened his stance. He was serious.

  ‘Pack it in, Spider. We can’t nail O’Riordan if you don’t help us!’

  ‘You don’t want to nail O’Riordan, you want to nail me!’

  ‘No we don’t! Ignore my guv’nor, he’s just trying to intimidate you.’

  ‘I know what he’s doing!’

  ‘Spider, please, trust me – I know it’s hard but trust me!’

  A front door right next to him suddenly opened, and a bleary-eyed bloke in his vest and pants peered out. ‘Do what?’

  Spider shoved past him and dashed into the flat.

  ‘Oi!’

  Sam flashed his badge at the man in pants – ‘Police!’ – and raced in after Spider, crashing through a pyramid of empty Kestrel lager cans heaped in the hallway. He smashed through a door at the far end and saw clothes strewn on the floor, a bed, and a woman in the bed clutching the blankets to her breasts and screaming as Spider clambered across her, making for the window.

  Sam hurled himself at Spider – but he was too late and Spider clambered out the window. The woman in the bed shrieked.

  ‘Police,’ said Sam, flashing his badge again, and he thrust his head out of the window to see Spider clinging from a tiny windowsill and searching with his foot for purchase further down.

  ‘For God’s sake, you’ll get yourself killed!’

  Spider slipped nimbly from one windowsill and caught hold of another. He was as agile as an insect. Was this why they called him Spider?

  The woman in the bed was still screaming in Sam’s ear. Angrily this time, Sam shoved his ID badge in front of her face – ‘Police! I’m the ruddy police!’ – then rushed from the room. The bloke in pants was shuffling back along the hallway; Sam went to rush past him, but the bloke grabbed him and began grappling ineptly.

  ‘Gotcha!’

  ‘Get it into your head, I AM THE BLOODY POLICE!’ And he pressed his ID badge hard into the man’s face until the bloke fell over, sprawled amid the Kestrel cans. ‘And clean your bloody flat, you people!’

  Sam burst out of the flat and tore back along the balcony. He almost slammed into Gene, who was lumbering down the stairwell, puffing like a steam train.

  ‘Guv! Guv! He’s round the back, scaling the wall!’

  ‘Nick ‘im, Tyler! I don’t care how you do it! Just nick ‘im!’

  ‘There was no need for all this!’ Sam called over his shoulder as he leapt and sprinted down the stairs. ‘It’s your fault he bolted, Guv!’

  ‘He assaulted one of my officers!’ Gene hollered wheezily.

  ‘You made him!’ Sam shouted back.

  Reaching ground level, he tore round the back of the block. There were no balconies on this side, just row upon row of window
ledges. And there was Spider, thirty feet from the ground, clambering nimbly down. He glanced at Sam, then tried to climb back upwards.

  ‘Spider, this is pointless!’ Sam called up to him. He rubbed his jaw – good God, it was on fire! ‘Come down, before you break your neck.’

  ‘You bastards want to stitch me up!’ Spider called out, his fingers groping for a firm handhold on a crumbling sill above him.

  ‘My guv’nor’s full of bull, Spider, it’s just his way. But I’m different.’

  ‘You’re a copper!’

  ‘Yes! Yes I am! A decent copper!’

  ‘That’s a laugh!’ Spider snorted. He slipped, groped about blindly for a moment, then regained his grip on the side of the building. ‘It don’t mean nothing to scum like you, but I’d die a hundred times over if it brought Denny back!’

  He meant it. Stella hadn’t exaggerated about Spider and Denzil; neither of them had anyone else in this world. With Denzil gone, Spider’s life was broken; he could go after the man who killed him, he could take revenge – and after that, what? He would still be alone. His world would still be shattered. Seeing him clinging to the side of that grim concrete tower block, it struck Sam how it summed up Spider’s whole existence; precarious – joyless – hunted – hanging by his fingernails.

  That’s me, he thought suddenly. I’m hanging on by my fingernails too. That damned Test Card Girl keeps telling me – my dreams keep telling me – my heart keeps telling me …

  ‘There’s a reason for that,’ said the Test Card Girl softly, appearing out of nowhere and slipping her small, cold hand into Sam’s. ‘Shall I tell you what I know? Shall I tell you the secret about Annie?’

  ‘I’m sick of this,’ said Sam, pulling his hand free from the girl’s icy grasp. He rubbed at his eyes. ‘I’m sick of it! You hear me? Sick of it! SICK OF IT!’

  ‘Yeah,’ came Spider’s voice from just above him. ‘You and me both mate.’

  Spider dropped lithely to the ground. His face was pale and his shoulders were slumped. His energies had drained away. He looked defeated.

  ‘Sick of it,’ he said. ‘All of it.’

  And with that, Spider slumped down and buried his face in his hands.

  Sam looked about him, but he knew already that there would be no sign of the girl. She had vanished back to whatever dark recess she had so suddenly emerged from.

  Sam crossed over to where Spider was collapsed against the foot of the tower block, crying silently, and sat down beside him. He sighed, exhausted.

  ‘It’s not easy, is it,’ he said.

  Without looking up, Spider shook his head.

  ‘Sometimes you feel like … just jumping off a roof.’

  Without looking up, Spider nodded his head.

  ‘I tell you, Spider – I don’t know what I’d do if I lost the person I care most about.’

  Spider said: ‘I hope you never have to find out.’

  He sobbed, just once, then swallowed it down; the tattoo on his neck flexed its inky legs, looking more vulnerable and pathetic than the mark of a hard man.

  ‘My jaw hurts,’ said Sam.

  ‘Sorry,’ snuffled Spider.

  ‘That’s okay. Not your fault.’

  ‘Are you going to arrest me?’

  ‘Nah.’

  They sat together for a bit, each one lost in his own thoughts, until at last Gene Hunt appeared, swaggering up in his camelhair coat, issuing threats and smart-arse wisecracks.

  ‘Wait for us in the car, Guv,’ Sam said without getting up. His voice was tired. He was in no mood for Hunt right now. ‘Just … wait in the car.’

  Gene fell silent, staring down at Sam and Spider, his expression unreadable, eyes narrowed. Then, without a word, he turned and marched away, aggressively firing up a Woodbine as he went.

  ‘You’re going to A&E!’ Annie ordained. ‘Right now!’

  ‘Nothing’s broken, I’ll be okay,’ said Sam, wincing as she touched his bruised and swollen jaw.

  ‘Since when were you the expert, Sam? I’ll take you to casualty myself.’

  They were back at CID. After all the argie-bargie at the tower block, Spider had at last come along quietly. Sam had walked with him back to the Cortina, where Gene had been unusually quiet. Sam reiterated to Spider – and perhaps to Gene too – that nobody was being arrested and nobody was being accused, that Spider was expected to do nothing more than help them with their enquiries back at the station. Spider had shrugged and nodded, and without a word got meekly into the back of the Cortina. The three of them had driven back to CID without saying another word.

  But by the time they had gotten back to the station, there was a huge and monstrous bruise burgeoning across Sam’s jaw and cheek. The sight of it had shocked Annie, so much so that she seemed on the verge of battering Sam herself if he didn’t go to A&E and get it checked out.

  ‘Later,’ he said.

  ‘That means never.’

  ‘No, Annie, it means later. We’ve got a witness to interview.’

  ‘And you don’t want to look like a sissy in front of the boys, is that it?’

  Sam laughed, then winced. Laughing sent bolts of pain stabbing through his jaw.

  ‘Don’t think I’m being gung-ho,’ he said. ‘You know as well as I do that bumps and knocks are all part of this job.’

  ‘“Bumps and knocks”?! Sam, you look like one of the Black and White Minstrels!’

  ‘God, I hope not,’ Sam muttered, wincing as much from the memory of white men grotesquely blacked up and singing Old Man River as from the pain in his jaw. ‘Look, Annie, I can’t stand here arguing. Spider’s in a fragile mood; he lost everything he thinks of as family when Denzil died – he’s a broken man. He’ll talk to me, I know it. He’ll talk to me right now. I can’t delay. And God knows, I can’t leave the interview to Gene.’

  ‘But, Sam-’

  ‘Trust me, Annie. It’s important.’

  Annie looked hard at him for a moment, then her face softened.

  ‘I just worry sometimes,’ she said. ‘Seeing you come back all covered in bruises …’

  ‘I know. And I worry about you too.’

  ‘I don’t see why, Sam, it’s not me getting into fights.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said Sam. ‘It just seemed like the right thing to say. But I meant it. I do worry. You can’t help worrying about people that you …’

  ‘People that you what, Sam?’

  ‘People that you like. People you care about. Care about a lot.’

  This was not the time, and it certainly wasn’t the place, to follow this conversation where it wanted to go. Over Annie’s shoulder he could see Ray talking on the phone; Ray tipped him a crude, blokey wink. Sam felt the urge to wrap that telephone cable round his neck and throttle him.

  ‘I don’t mean to sound like your mother, Sam, but you can’t muck about when it comes to your health,’ said Annie, looking at him with such seriousness that Sam wanted to laugh again. ‘Don’t you smirk! It’s important to take care of yourself.’

  ‘If I didn’t hurt so much I’d kiss you right now!’ said Sam.

  ‘Lucky escape for me then, innit,’ said Annie, and she headed back to her desk. ‘And don’t think I haven’t got my eye on you, Boss. The minute you’re done with your interview, I’m whisking you straight down the hozzy to be checked over. And that’s final.’

  ‘Nurse Cartwright knows best,’ said Sam.

  ‘Nurse Cartwright knows everything,’ she replied, trying to sound more serious than she actually was.

  But as Sam turned away and headed for the Lost & Found Room, he felt a sudden unease. Annie’s silly remark echoed through his head.

  ‘Nurse Cartwright knows everything.’

  Everything, he thought. She knows what it is, the secret that she carries, the secret that the Test Card Girl wants to tell me … the deep, dark secret that will tear my world apart …

  ‘Utter crap,’ he muttered to himself as he strode purposefully along the c
orridor. ‘There is no secret. Annie’s Annie – and that’s all there is to it. And we’re going to be together. And we’re going to be happy. And that’s that.’

  He willed the Test Card Girl to show up, with her mournful little face and intimations of a terrible revelation. But this time, for once, there was no sign of her.

  It was just Sam and Spider, sitting across from each other in the Lost & Found Room. Gene was off sulking; just as Sam had felt excluded from the highly charged, sadomasochistic interview he had conducted with Stella, so Gene felt excluded from this. As Sam had told Annie, Spider was indeed in a fragile mood; he was willing to talk, but not to Gene. The overbearing, red-blooded, Woodbine-chewing technique of the mighty Hunt would not work here. What was called for was something altogether more low key, more one-to-one. It felt less like a police interview than a counseling session. And Gene Hunt didn’t do counseling sessions.

  ‘So,’ said Sam, handing Spider a cup of revolting CID coffee. ‘Are we right about Patsy O’Riordan? Did he kill Denzil?’

  Spider nodded.

  ‘And does he want to kill you?’

  Spider nodded again.

  ‘Why?’ asked Sam in low voice. ‘What’s going on here, Spider?’

  Spider cupped his coffee in both hands – Sam noticed the old scabs and bruises on his battered brawler’s knuckles – and stared silently for a few moments, lost in himself. Then, in a voice so soft that it was almost a whisper, he began to speak.

  ‘When we were kids,’ he said. ‘Denzil was the nig-nog. The coon. To the white kids, anyway. To the black kids he was the honky, the white-boy. Everybody took a crack at him, being half-caste an’ all.’

  ‘Mixed race,’ said Sam.

  ‘Don’t matter what you call him, he still had the shit kicked out of him from all sides. But I could never get worked up about all that stuff – you know, the colour of a fella’s skin. Maybe it’s something your parents teach you. I dunno. My parents didn’t teach me nothing, except how to take a punch. But then …’

  He waved away these useless old memories.

  ‘Whatever. One day, when we were kids, Denzil was getting a pasting. There was a whole load of ‘em piling into him, white kids and black kids, and I thought to myself: stuff this, it ain’t right. So I waded in, helped him out. Me and Denzil really cracked a few faces. We were … what? Ten? Eleven? I don’t know how old we were. When I think back, I always imagine us as grown-ups. It’s like we weren’t never kids, not properly.