Part 8 (1/2)

Walker pulled a pint of bitter without being asked and placed it on the bar. 'Any idea what's causing it?'

Andy shrugged. 'Not really. The hot weather maybe.'

He paid for his beer and went to sit down. As he drank he glanced around, covertly watching the pub's customers. The majority, he noticed, were scowling, standing with their fists clenched, turning to stare at strangers as if inviting confrontation. At the bar, people were barging through without care or apology, causing a number of heated exchanges, and several snapped threats.

He had been in the pub for ten minutes when, seemingly apropos of nothing, a pint gla.s.s flew across the room, beer arcing from it, spattering the crowd.

The gla.s.s smashed against the bar, spraying a woman with crystal splinters. She screamed, her hands flying up to her lacerated face. The man beside her turned, enraged, and launched himself at the nearest target, an elderly, bespectacled man who was standing with his wife, sipping whisky. He bore the man to the ground, punched him in the face, smas.h.i.+ng his spectacles. The elderly man's wife slammed a wine gla.s.s on to her husband's a.s.sailant's head, cutting her hand, and then, astonis.h.i.+ngly, spun like a dervish and began to viciously pummel the young man in the leather jacket who was standing next to her. The young man retaliated, kicking and bludgeoning the woman to the ground. As if the sudden flurry of violence had snapped their own fragile threads of inhibition, other people abruptly turned to launch unprovoked attacks on those standing close to them. These tinders of violence escalated into a forest fire with such astonis.h.i.+ng speed that within half a minute of the catalyst of the exploding gla.s.s the entire room was in uproar.

The chain of events was so swift that Andy, like many others, could only gape at first, his beer gla.s.s clutched almost forgotten in his hand. He had been involved in violent situations before and quickly realised that what was happening here did not conform to the usual patterns.

Brawls and riots generally looked more frightening than they actually were, most of those involved content simply to make up the numbers, to get caught up in the excitement whilst staying out of trouble. Here, though, things were different.

Here, the majority rather than the minority seemed eager to get in on the action.

Women were screeching and clawing and kicking; men were punching, head-b.u.t.ting, picking up whatever they could find to use as weapons. The violence was intense, random, senseless, frenzied. People were simply inflicting pain on others for the sheer crazed joy of it, fighting with whoever was closest to hand, regardless of age or gender.

Andy had only a second or two to take this in before a big guy with a thick moustache and a look of glazed madness in his eyes lunged towards him. Andy jumped up from his seat and instinctively threw his beer in the man's face. As the man blundered on, momentarily blinded, Andy dropped his beer gla.s.s and in one movement stepped forward and punched the man right in the centre of his face, poleaxing him. Before anyone else could zero in on him, Andy ran across to the door at the back of the bar, shot through it and slammed it behind him.

The corridor behind the bar, at the end of which was a staircase leading up to the living quarters, was deserted. To Andy's immediate right was a fire exit door, which he slammed through without hesitation. He found himself in a cobbled back yard that narrowed to an alleyway that ran along the side of the building. The noises coming from inside the pub made it sound as if a wild party was taking place in there. Andy took out his walkie-talkie and put a call through to the station. By the time the police arrived, three minutes later, the violence had spilled out into the street.

Andy stayed out of sight at the end of the alleyway until he heard the sirens and saw the flas.h.i.+ng lights of four panda cars and a Black Maria. When he emerged into the gla.s.s, debris and body-strewn street, the doors of the police vehicles were opening and uniforms were piling out. Though he was grateful for the back-up, Andy still couldn't help feeling uneasy. A good number of his colleagues looked as itchy for a fight as most of the people in the pub had been, and Andy didn't think their eager, yet oddly blank expressions could simply be put down to adrenalin.

As the uniformed PCs and the pub combatants clashed, Reg Stafford, a fellow sergeant and a friend of Andy's, got out of the front pa.s.senger seat of the leading panda car and hurried across. 'What the h.e.l.l's been going on here, Andy?'

he said.

'All h.e.l.l broke loose in there, and I don't just mean a few blokes throwing punches,' Andy said. 'Someone chucked a gla.s.s, and next thing I knew everyone was going at it hammer and tongs - men, women...' He tailed off, shaking his head.

'Right,' Reg said, and even his eyes were glittering a little, 'I'll follow my boys in, see what the damage is. You coming?'

'Wouldn't miss it for the world,' Andy said without enthusiasm.

Reg and Andy followed the uniforms through the open double doors. Inside the pub, which had been comprehensively wrecked, PCs had drawn their truncheons and were setting about their task of breaking heads. Andy tried to avoid watching them too closely, not because he was squeamish, but because he didn't want to see how undisciplined his colleagues had become; didn't want to see the glee on their faces as they brought their truncheons cracking down on skulls. Instead he concentrated on tending to those who had been bludgeoned and beaten out of the fight.

Most of them had relatively minor injuries - scratches, bites, broken noses, missing teeth, black eyes. Others were injured more seriously: there were broken limbs and ribs and gashes to the head, some of which were quite deep.

Almost every one of those who had been too badly injured to continue fighting seemed dazed, confused, as if they had emerged from a hypnotic trance. Several of them asked Andy what was happening; one or two even seemed to have difficulty remembering where or who they were.

Andy made as many of them as comfortable as he could, a.s.sured them that ambulances were on their way, then moved deeper into the melee. The police were getting on top of the situation now, hauling people outside. Some battlers still struggled furiously as they were dragged away, whereas others became quiescent, the blank-eyed fury on their faces giving way to a sleepy bewilderment. Gla.s.s crunched beneath Andy's feet and the floor was strewn with debris. A large wooden table-top, cracked and splintered, was lying on the ground, the legs smashed off it, no doubt used as weapons.

Andy lifted the table-top aside, intending to prop it against the wall, help to clear the way for his colleagues. As he did so he froze. Beneath the table was a man lying in a very large and still spreading pool of blood.

'Over here!' Andy shouted, shoving the table-top aside and dropping to his knees. He grabbed the man's wrist and felt for a pulse. It was there, but it was flickering, erratic. He saw almost immediately what had happened. The man had been stabbed several times in the stomach and chest. The points of entry were ragged as though something other than a knife - a broken gla.s.s perhaps? - had been used. Andy hoped that this meant the wounds were not too deep, though the amount of blood that was still gus.h.i.+ng from them seemed to suggest otherwise.

Andy and two uniformed constables tried to stem the bleeding as much as they could, first with beer towels taken from the bar and then, after Bob Walker had risen dazedly from his hiding-place, with bigger, thicker towels from the airing cupboard upstairs. It was not long, however, before the towels were saturated and the men's hands and clothes covered in blood.

It seemed to take an age for the ambulances to arrive, but eventually two paramedics in yellow jackets were there beside Andy.

'He's been stabbed several times,' Andy said, moving aside for them. 'His pulse is very weak.'

'All right, let's take a look,' said one of them, a balding man with a darkly stubbled chin, who exuded an air of calm efficiency.

He produced a small scalpel, which he used to slice open the front of the man's blood-soaked s.h.i.+rt. Pulling the s.h.i.+rt open, he instantly recoiled. 'Jesus, what the h.e.l.l's that?' he exclaimed.

His colleague, Andy and the two policeman stared in horror and disbelief at what had been revealed. All over the man's chest, shoulders and upper arms were ma.s.ses of small, black quills.

Through her open window came the susurrating rhythm of the sea stroking the sh.o.r.e. Her eyes closed, curled up on her bed, Charlotte wondered whether this was what it was like in the womb. How nice it must be, she thought, to be in the warmth and the dark, soothed by the sound of a mother's internal tide - the pumping of a heart, the ebb-and-flow of life-giving blood. How wonderful to have no cares, no fears, no thoughts. She would have found it easier to relax into the idea if her own cares had not been eating her up inside, denying her sleep.

She sighed, rolled over and opened her eyes. As she sat up, the weight of her anxieties sank like ballast inside her. Mum had gone to bed two hours ago, exhausted with weeping, but Charlotte had lain sleepless ever since. It felt as though her life was coming apart. What had she done to deserve it? Why was she being punished in this way?

She looked at her clock. It was five past two in the morning. For almost five hours her mother had wailed and clung to her, declaring that her life was over. Charlotte had done her best to console her, even though she too had felt like weeping. They had had no dinner, but even now Charlotte felt too sick to eat.

The evening had been punctuated by emergency sirens whooping outside, police cars and ambulances racing by.

Soon after, round about 11.30 p.m., they had heard Dad come back. He had been drunk, stumbling and muttering, making so much noise as he tripped up the stairs that Charlotte felt sure it would bring Mrs Macau swooping down on him like a vampire bat. It was the only time that night when her mother had stopped crying. She and Charlotte had clung to each other, staring fearfully at the closed door.

Thankfully he had blundered past, opening and then slamming the door of the room he was supposed to be sharing with Mum. After that they had heard nothing. He had probably collapsed on to the bed and instantly fallen into an alcohol-induced sleep.

At midnight, Mum had announced that she too was going to bed. Before turning in she had tearfully wondered about calling the police to report the fact that Chris still wasn't home. Charlotte, though, had managed to dissuade her.

'Don't worry, Mum, he'll come back when he's ready.'

'But he's only a baby,' Imogen wailed.

'Don't let him him hear you say that,' Charlotte said, trying to keep her voice light. hear you say that,' Charlotte said, trying to keep her voice light.

Mum clutched her hand and looked imploringly into her eyes. 'He will will be all right, won't he?' be all right, won't he?'

'Course he will.'

'Promise me.'

Charlotte licked her lips uneasily. 'I promise.'

Mum had seemed pacified by that, had kissed Charlotte goodnight and gone to bed. Charlotte had offered to let her have her her bed and to sleep on the floor, but Mum had waved the offer away. bed and to sleep on the floor, but Mum had waved the offer away.