Bad Actors (Slough House, #8)(88)
At some point during the last five minutes, her want had stilled. The needy voice crying out for something, she didn’t know what, had quietened.
Unless she just couldn’t hear it for all the crap going on.
At ground level she found a scrum. Reinforcements had arrived, and two black-clad professionals in semi-riot gear—heavy vests, but no shields or helmets—were facing six of the marauder crew. The newcomers were wielding wicked-looking truncheons; the old firm relying on low-tech battery, with two lengths of lead piping and one baseball bat between them, though one hardy nutcase was attempting a headbutt as Shirley arrived, a move both ill-advised and brief. He hit the floor like a badly tossed pancake. In other circumstances, a sympathetic Shirley noted, the truncheoneer would have enjoyed the opportunity to lather his victim a while, but there was no time for such luxuries, and he was already engaged in a one-two with the baseball fan. Uomo Uno was holding back, fists bunched, eyes on the door, and Shirley padded toward him, not sure what she planned, but confident of spoiling his day. But the room shifted, or its gladiatorial epicentre did; the marauders wheeling round as the pros moved towards the reception desk, and the door became accessible. Uomo Uno seized his chance, and as Shirley followed something struck her on the ankle—she sprawled, reached out, and her hand found the baseball bat, which had come skittering across the tiles, liberated from its wielder by a truncheon. Shirley grabbed it, thanked her good-luck fairy, and was on her feet in an instant, following her prey into the night.
In the pool cast by the helicopter’s searchlight, the San’s forecourt had become a circus ring, in which a troupe of Service muscle was knocking seven bells out of twenty assorted hard cases. This should have been a picnic, had everyone been reading from the same script, but while the professionals knew what they were doing, and tended towards the swift and economical, the hooligans had the advantage that they viewed violent encounters as leisuretime jolly rather than occupational necessity. Those knocked down kept getting up for more, and those upright took the windmill approach: fists and feet flying; teeth ready to take a chunk from anything within reach. It was like fighting wild dogs, with the added interest of not knowing what diseases they carried.
Surveying the mayhem Whelan wondered if any of the players remembered what the evening’s objective had been, or whether the whole thing was just a mad game of Chinese Whispers.
Weaving between separate clusters of violence, he helped the battered security guard to his feet, and together they crunched across broken glass to the building, where Whelan propped him against the wall. “Best stay upright,” he said, having no clue as to established practice, but reasonably sure it wasn’t a good moment for a lie down. Looking round, he prayed for signs of sanity, and at that precise moment the alarm shut off.
Ridiculous to pretend that what followed was silence, but for half a second it felt like it: a relief from aural torture. And then chaos poured back through the evening’s open wound: the clashing of bodies and armoured sticks, the whoops and yelps of the warriors, the techno-beat of the hovering chopper, and even his own puny car alarm, which Whelan hadn’t noticed until then, a limp whimper more likely to incur embarrassment than attention.
But in that oasis of imaginary quiet, he’d heard a woman’s voice laying down a challenge.
“I’m Shirley Dander,” she’d yelled. “Who wants to know?”
When Shirley ran through the door the helicopter was hovering twenty feet up, drowning the forecourt in light. Pitched battle was raging: a people carrier was parked slantways, frozen waves of gravel at its tyres; a small car had reversed into the front of the building; and the goon she’d helped through the upstairs window appeared to have landed on one of his comrades. Double score! A blood-smeared middle-aged man in glasses was an unlooked-for absurdity, crouched over a floored figure in security guard’s black-and-blue livery and victim’s red-and-white head wound, but she didn’t pause to question the sight. The baseball bat felt good in her hands, and Uomo Uno was well within reach. He looked like he was running for the carrier, the chicken. Empty-handed, but holding the answers she sought.
Why did you come for me?
As he reached the van she hurled the bat. It bounced off his head and he sprawled against the vehicle, testing its suspension. She paused to retrieve the weapon, and by the time she’d done so he’d steadied himself, turned and thrown a punch all in the same flow, aiming for her face probably, but missing by half a mile. She had his number now. He was a thug, plain and simple. Put him in a boxing ring, he’d be canvas-patterned in a moment. But put him in a cage and he’d rattle the bars loudly enough that you wouldn’t want to enter.
The good thing about snap judgements was that you could be doing something else while making them. In Shirley’s case, this involved swinging the bat into his thigh, keeling him sideways like a broken tree. The fire alarm she’d triggered a hundred years ago ceased its screaming then, the same moment she chose to scream herself: “I’m Shirley Dander. Who wants to know?” He didn’t reply, but more pressingly, someone was rushing her from behind: she knew this the way you’d know if a bull was approaching. Bulls have never mastered the surprise attack. If this newcomer planned to, he could start by making notes as to what happens when you give your position away early: in this case, a full-bodied swing of a baseball bat. Shirley felt the impact in her shoulders. Her attacker felt it in his ribs, and probably every other bone holding him together—not since she’d hit a bus with an iron had Shirley felt quite so fulfilled. I am fucking invincible, she decided. That was a fresh learning right there. I am fucking invincible, and I’m taking these bastards down one by one.