Gordon Williams (22 page)

Norman Scutt took another step towards him. George remembered a cowboy film.
Don’t watch his face, watch his finger.
There was more noise upstairs, voices, banging. He began to back away. Norman Scutt came on, the shotgun held in front. George took
slow backward steps, trying to remember where the furniture had been, hoping to draw Scutt into the darkness of the sitting-room.

“One sure thing, you won’t get Niles,” he said. “All this for nothing.”

“He’s still here, don’t tell me any fancy tales. You’m trying to talk your way out of here then? Hard luck, Mister Yankee.”

George knew he had to do something. Take the initiative. Something might startle him – he had a wild look about him, the young guy with the funny sideburns. He was well into the sittingroom now. Norman Scutt stopped.

“That’ll be far enough,” he said. “Just let’s wait till Bert brings them down. I can see you all right, Mister Yankee.”

George knew he had to move now. He had to make the right guess. Either they had some fancy plan – or the gun was empty. They’d been mad enough to kill on sight before. Why start play-acting now? Playing for time. Keep him here till the other one got at Louise and Karen. Light came into the sitting-room from two doors. He was in the middle, outlined against the dining-room door. If the gun was loaded the guy wouldn’t need to aim at that range. He felt no fear. Fear belonged to the imagination. There was no need to imagine anything now. It was this guy or him. Whoever could think better would win. He’d often seen himself in this situation, facing a man with a gun. Often tried to think what you could possibly do.

“Niles is dead,” he said. “I killed him. He tried to take my little girl.”

The tone of voice was vital. Natural. Man to man. As though the gun wasn’t there.

“Oh yeh?”

“Sure! Come on, I’ll show you. You won’t believe how I did it.
Come on, I’ll show you.”

He turned, deliberately casual, making no sharp movement, nothing that would scare him.

He walked towards the stairs.

“You wanted Niles, didn’t you? Come on, I’ll show you how I did it.”

Norman Scutt followed. It had worked. Curiosity! Go off at a tangent. Keep talking.

“He’s in the john, you know, the lavatory? No wonder you guys were after him! When I saw him with my little girl – d’you think they’ll accuse me of murder or anything? After all, the guy was a maniac.”

He said this standing on the second stair. He kept the baseball bat against his chest, hiding it from Norman Scutt. Up another three stairs. Norman Scutt advanced cautiously. He was half-convinced. The Yank wasn’t acting. What did it matter anyway, there was nothing he could do. Bert and him had them cornered now. He wanted to see Niles.

George climbed each step deliberately, not looking round. He heard sounds from the other end of the upstairs corridor but he put them out of his mind. At the last step but one he turned again.

“You see this Niles? You’d never know he was a maniac, believe me. You’d never guess.”

Norman Scutt moved up another two steps. George was on the landing. He stood up straight, holding the bat close to his body. He looked at the lavatory door, which Scutt couldn’t see.

“God, it’s awful!” he said, grimacing. Scutt moved quicker. His head was now a foot below the level of the wooden landing wall. George put his right hand to his face, as though horrified by what
he could see. That was it, the moment Norman Scutt stopped concentrating on the gun and on him. He looked down at his feet for the first time. George swung the baseball bat without lifting his arms, using only his wrists, bringing it round in a twirling motion, as though from the hip.

Up the bat he felt the soft impact of wood glancing against face. Then the jolting sting of wood on metal. Not just on metal. On fingers. Norman Scutt stumbled, his face caught in a gasp of surprise and pain. George put his left foot on a stair and swung the bat down, using all the force of his arms.

“You stinking bastard!” he snarled, a look of grim satisfaction on his face as he watched the other man fall back-wards, first sitting, then his legs coming up, overbalancing, crashing his head against the stairs, his shoes bumping...

George ran along the corridor. He could see the man at Karen’s door, a dark solid shape.

“Come on, you slob,” he shouted. “I’m not a woman.”

Bert Voizey was trapped. He had his back to the door, the knife he’d been using on the latch in his right hand.

“I wasn’t goin’ to hurt them,” he said, his voice pathetic with fear.

George was glad. The guy had a knife. He had a bat. He raised it above his head, his elbows cramped by the narrow walls. Bert Voizey tried to cower behind his elbows, dropping the knife. As the bat began to hammer down on his head and shoulders and arms he let out high-pitched roars of terror. He tried to shove past George, almost on all fours. George kneed at his face, bringing the bat down with short jabs.

He went on hitting down until there was no more movement from Voizey. When Louise opened the door he was standing above the
huddled shape on the corridor floor, the bat half-raised as though to strike again.

“I got them all,” he said to Louise. He was panting. “I got every stinking one of them. Come on, you pig –” he kicked Voizey’s arm. Voizey didn’t move. He kicked again.

“George! Stop it, you’ve...”

“Have I? Have I? I’ll show them, I’ll –”

He swung back his right foot and drove a terrible kick into Voizey’s body.

“STOP IT, GEORGE!”

He didn’t listen to her. He had won. Smashed them all. The panting wouldn’t stop. He’d won. He bent down and took a grip of Voizey’s sleeve with his right hand, the bat still in his left. He began to drag Voizey along the corridor, pulling him roughly, grunting, snarling things she couldn’t understand.

“What is it, Mother? I’m frightened, Mother. Oh Mother, Mother –”

“It’s all right, darling. They won’t hurt you. Daddy’s chasing them all away.”

She cradled Karen in her arms, sitting on the bed as she’d done while the man had been trying to get the door open, twisted so that she covered her daughter.

At the top of the stairs George pulled and kicked at Voizey until he could shove him over the first step. He watched with a thin smile round his eyes as the unconscious man slid down till he came to rest against Scutt’s legs. For a moment he stood over them with the bat, waiting for some sign of movement. There was none. He had to put down the bat to push them to the bottom of the stairs, treating them like heavy bags of coal, using his feet and his hands. When they
were flat on the sitting-room floor he went back up the stairs for the bat. He patted it as he went down again, into the dining-room.

The one who’d been caught under the falling table was moving, but not much. George gave the table a kick, making the other end jab into Cawsey’s chest. Cawsey moaned.
He
wouldn’t be giving any trouble for a while.

He went back into the sitting-room. Now he knew the truth. All that nonsense about thresholds and civilisation. He had won! That mattered, nothing else. His chest heaved uncontrollably.

He switched on the sitting-room light. The coffee table lay on its side. Glass was strewn across the floor under the window. The house hadn’t protected them,
he
had. Beaten them all. He went into the hall. The door was open. He stopped for a second. Moving cautiously, bringing the bat up, he moved towards the study.

The big fellow had gone. Run away, out of the door, run off into the snow, knowing when he was beaten. George grunted with satisfaction.

He needed to let somebody know. First he’d look outside, Christ, he’d forgotten all about Knapman – and the other guy, the one who’d shot his own feet! Pity about Knapman. Nice enough guy. As far as the other one was concerned he had probably bled to death.

He stepped out into the front porch.

The snow had stopped. The house was surrounded by a gleam of dazzling white. He felt tired. And proud. The greatest feeling in the world. To do it yourself. To know you could stand up to anything and anybody. To know you were a man, to be able to feel it in your guts. What a night! What a story! People would say –

The rush came from the side, out of the shadow of the porch. He swivelled to meet it, but before he could bring back the bat to swing
he was hit by the bulk of Phillip Riddaway. They went over together into the snow. The weight of Riddaway collapsed on top of him. He tried to bring his knees up but they didn’t have the strength to lift against that massive body. He tried to free his arms, but they were held in a bear hug.

As he struggled he felt his own feebleness under the big man’s crushing weight...

It was like drowning in a sea of heavy stone. Cushioned by snow underneath he still felt his chest and stomach being flattened by the dead weight of the man on top. He jerked and squirmed but Riddaway had him pinned down. Like a drowning man, part of him seemed totally detached. His body could feel what Riddaway was trying to do, keep his arms pinned while he levered with feet and knees to get up into a sitting position. He knew he had to hang on, not give Riddaway a chance to get up on his knees. He tried to lock his heels round Riddaway’s ankles, to keep Riddaway’s legs straightened out. Riddaway’s forehead butted sideways into his face. He tried to bite Riddaway’s ear. As a boy he’d wrestled like this, scrambling fights with boys, rolling over and over on sandlots and grass parks and asphalt play areas. Like a smell that can suddenly evoke haunting pictures from a forgotten past, the feel of another body on top of his own, pressed hard from head to foot, brought out long-dead emotions and memories. He jammed the side of his
head against Riddaway’s face, knowing that only by sticking tight could he stop Riddaway butting him senseless. Bracing his right knee he tried to jerk his body up, trying to turn Riddaway over on his side. There was no lifting that weight. He saw the white wall of the house, the darkness of the sky, the light above the porch, a window, objects flashing meaninglessly across his eyes as scenery whirls before the screaming face on the roller-coaster. They were locked in a pulverising intimacy, total strangers who understood only that the other was, like himself, fighting for life. To live the other had to be destroyed.

He forced his temple against Riddaway’s cheek, slowly manoeuvring his head so that he could sink his teeth into some soft part of the other man’s face. Riddaway drew his head back for another butt, but he craned his neck to keep their heads pressed together. Under his body Riddaway’s right hand felt for a hold on his wrist. There was a slight easing of the bear hug. He jerked his body in an upwards arch, desperately pulling his arms up out of Riddaway’s powerful grip. Riddaway brought up his right knee, jabbing into his groin. He drew up his left knee, fencing with the big man’s leg, smothering his movements. He was no match for the brute power that held him to the ground. He smelled liquor. And sweat. Old, stale, rancid sweat. How could people live like that? Was this a man – like himself? Did they really speak the same language?

For a moment he thought of stopping his struggles and speaking to this man. A reasonable tone of voice. Say, pal, what the hell are we doing this
for
?

He felt his nose and chin press into skin. He pulled his lower jaw down until he could feel his teeth touching soft flesh.

There was a mad, insensate, electrifying, hysterical, sadistic glee
about it. Biting into flesh. Bite, bite, bite! Glee and hatred and revenge and power. Riddaway’s body jolted into brutal jerks, the great fish electrocuted by the searing pain of the barb. Big hands tore themselves free from the weight of the two bodies and beat at his head. His own arms were free then. Four hands grappled and pulled and strained at each other. There was a terrible strength in his jaw. He wanted to sink in, deeper and deeper, to destroy.

Riddaway began to roar. His palms splayed across George’s forehead and cheek, fingers digging for soft spots, George’s hands, groping for Riddaway’s ears, his hair, his jaw quivering with an awful tension, teeth clamping tighter and tighter on a wad of flesh. He had to hang on. Riddaway’s hands would tear him in pieces. Riddaway’s thumbs jabbed into his eyes. He screwed his eyelids tight, tighter. He screwed Riddaway’s ears in his fists.

Riddaway punched him. He bit harder. Riddaway tore at his hair. There was no pain. He could feel it, but there was no pain. Riddaway plucked at his throat, thumb hooking round his windpipe. Riddaway drew up his knees, forcing his back into the air, trying to bring his knee down into his stomach. He let himself be pulled by Riddaway, hanging on like a terrier with its teeth into the soft belly of a dog twice its size. Riddaway got a grip on his throat with both thumbs and began to squeeze.

He jerked his knee up into Riddaway’s groin. He felt the quivering tension of his jaws, biting through flesh, teeth trying to meet teeth, muscles of iron under the chin. He gouged harder on Riddaway’s ears. One hand left his throat, crushing fingers wrapped round his wrist and tore his hand away from the ear. He jerked his knee up again, feeling it ram home.

Riddaway’s fist crashed into his eye. He bit harder. He could
never let go. His eyes were shut, lids squeezed so tight there was a singing in his ears. Riddaway got a knee on to his stomach.

His guts! He jerked sideways. They fell over. He let himself be pulled by his teeth, bringing the heel of his palm up to Riddaway’s nose.

When he felt himself free of the weight he opened his jaws. Riddaway’s hands stopped tearing at his face. He threshed like a salmon, pushing himself away, getting to his knees. Riddaway had both hands on his face, still bawling with unspeakable pain.

George was running before he got off his hands and knees, knowing only that he had to get out of the reach of Riddaway’s hands. He ran for the front door.

Louise, he shouted, but there was no life in his jaw.

Riddaway was coming behind him. He didn’t have to look round. He
knew.
They were like one being, existing only in their lust to kill the other.

He forced his leaden legs to move, palming himself off the walls, breasting through the door.