Chapter Nine
I was on the stairs down to the lower dance floor when I first heard the screaming. I took a moment to focus on the direction, then started sprinting.
I took the last three stair treads in one stride and tunnelled through the press of bodies on the floor itself. Once I got closer I didn't need to ask exactly where the problem was. The way everyone was scrambling out of the way told me the answer to that one. The more hurriedly they were moving, the closer I was getting to the epicentre.
Finally, I broke through the edge of the dispersing crowd and found the tableau.
There were three players. The girl was doing the screaming, the action revealing her pierced tongue. She was dark-haired and rather plump, in a skirt too short and a lycra top cut too low.
On the face of it, she was an unlikely inspiration for a jealous rage, but from the look of the battle going on around her, she was certainly the prize. She didn't look like an athlete, either, but there was nothing wrong with her lung capacity.
The lad I immediately pegged as the prospective boyfriend was on his hands and knees at her feet, dripping blood from his lacerated cheek onto Marc's polished flooring. The other – clearly the rejected suitor – was still standing, a few feet away.
He was rigid with fury, breathing fast through his nostrils like a hard-run racehorse. He still had the neck of the broken bottle clenched in his hand.
I thumbed the transmit on my walkie-talkie. 'Len, it's Charlie,' I said. 'Lower dance floor. There's a nasty one going on down here. I need some help. Now!'
The girl carried on screaming, at that high, intensely irritating frequency of small babies and hotel fire alarms. The boy with the bottle was momentarily distracted. As though he couldn't decide if his best next move was to continue the fight with the prospect, or hit the girl just to shut her up. He shook his head suddenly, as if to clear it.
While he was diverted, I took a deep breath, tried to centre myself, and stepped into the fray. At least with the noise she'd been making, Len and the rest shouldn't have any trouble finding us.
It was immediately clear that neither of the two lads really wanted any outside interference. The reject was desperate for the total humiliation of his rival. The prospect wanted the opportunity for revenge, served hot. It was like breaking up two fighting Pit Bulls. I was more likely to find them both turning on me than I was of stopping them ripping each other to shreds.
'Come on now son, put that down and let's finish this the easy way,' I said.
He twisted towards me, mad-eyed so the whites of them showed all round the irises. 'I'm not your fucking son,' he hissed. He brought the bottle up towards me, warning. The gleaming blood of his last victim still decorated its wicked edges. 'Stay out of it, bitch, or you'll get some, too.'
He was dangerously hyped up for it to be drink, or simple jealousy. It was in his voice, his eyes. The way he held his body, jerkily stiff, uncoordinated. There was a sheen of sweat pearling on his face, but he was shivering. Great! Where was bloody Len when I needed him?
The prospective boyfriend had used the break in the reject's attention to climb warily to his feet. I risked a glance at him. The bottle had been applied by someone who'd had practice. The thrust-and-screw technique had opened up the whole of the left-hand side of his face. The skin hung in ragged peels from the top corner of his lip to just below his eye. It was going to take a micro-surgeon with a special interest in jig-saw puzzles to piece him back together again so he looked anything like the picture on the box.
I flicked my eyes towards the girl. She'd stopped screaming by now, shoving both hands over her own mouth and gagging as though about to be sick. I turned back to the boy with the ruined face. I hoped whatever she'd been offering him had been worth it.
I didn't like the look in his eyes. He didn't need to touch a hand to his face to know what had been done to him. The evidence was splashing down the front of his shirt in a scarlet river.
He started to swear then. Softly at first, but growing in profanity and volume as he launched himself at his attacker, oblivious to the dangers of the slashing bottle.
I couldn't let them come together again. I knew that. I took the prospect first, sweeping his legs out from under him to send him crashing. I only just managed to jump back out of reach of the reject as he sliced the bottle at me, aiming for my stomach.
I caught him a fast blow to the face as I dodged away, bloodied his nose. There was no real weight to it, but a remarkable amount of nerve-endings meet in the nose. It should have been enough to put him down, should have slowed him down at any rate, but he was feeling no pain. He shook it off like a light tap and kept coming, weapon lifted now, like a dagger.
Christ! Now would be a good time, Len . . .
I swallowed hard. I was going to have to hurt him to stop him. My mind shied away from it, but the facts didn't change. I dithered and nearly lost it altogether.
I hadn't heard the prospective boyfriend get back on his feet until he grabbed me round the neck from behind. The rejected one was still coming, but now I was almost immobile and a much easier target.
I switched off my conscious mind and put a muzzle on my conscience. I needed fast, clinical action. The outlines of all the techniques I'd ever learned unrolled behind my eyes like computer graphics, clear and precise. There was no room for hesitation here. No time for compassion either.
I shifted my hips sideways and used a clenched backfist to hit the boy holding me hard in the groin. I didn't need to deal with the arm round my throat then. It simply melted away.
I shrugged him off as he crumpled backwards away from me, and moved forward to meet the charge of the crazy boy with the broken bottle held overhead. With deadly accuracy, he stabbed the glass down at my left eye. So directly that when I looked up I could see straight into the taper of the neck.
I blocked him high with my forearm, grunting at the jarring impact. I weaved my right arm quickly up through his to meet it, clasping my hands together round his wrist.
The movements were automatic, fluid, but I didn't want to do this! Oh I knew the moves, had nearly carried them to completion a hundred times, but I'd never had to take that final step. It was crossing the line. It was too far.
I looked up to see the stump of the bottle again, inches from my face. It was quivering from the sheer effort he was putting into trying to drive it downwards towards me. Into me. Oh shit . . .
Leverage is everything. They reckon it takes just eight pounds of pressure to break almost any bone in the human body. I must have applied quite a bit more than that now. I shut out the last lingering doubts and heaved, sideways and down.
The boy's shoulder dislocated with an ease that was mildly surprising. It made a soggy popping sound, like a spoon being pulled out of a bowl of set jelly.
I put my shoulder out once, falling off a horse when I was a kid. The pain is indescribable. You can't escape from it, can't move anywhere to make it hurt any less. It focuses you utterly and you'll do anything to make it stop.
The boy dropped slowly to his knees, the wild light in his eyes dulling as the biting pain of his injury finally took the edge off whatever was floating him. He let the bottle fall to the floor. I kicked it away.
There was the thump of heavy footsteps and I turned to see Len and Angelo had, at long last, deigned to put in an appearance. They skidded to a halt and took in the scene. One boy writhing on the floor, a trail of slimy vomit now mixing with the blood from his face.
The other was still on his knees, whimpering, his torso deformed into an unnatural shrug. Len stared between them, open-mouthed. Angelo just regarded me with those calculating eyes.
'What fucking kept you?' I demanded, stalking past them. I ignored Len's shouted order that I stay put. He was in charge, wasn't he? Well let him sort the mess out, then!
Behind me, the dark-haired girl had started screaming again.
***
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