Across the other side of the Barn, surrounded by four or five men dressed in gaudy sports casuals, there stood a tall, broad-shouldered man with cropped white hair and ugly tribal tattoos across his upper chest and shoulders. He was staring at Marty. His face was long and pale and his eyes were narrow; the muscles in his jaw were so tense that it looked like they might burst through the skin at any moment, like parasites escaping their host.
“That’s him,” said Best, nodding in the direction of the other fighter.
“I know,” said Marty. “Not very pretty, is he?”
“He looks tough.” Best glanced at Marty, as if judging his response.
“It’s the ones who don’t look tough you have to worry about. You know that. Blokes like this one, they’re all image, all gym-bought muscles, cheap tattoos and a whole lot of front. Just look at you: a short-arse with a pot belly, and yet you’re the most fearsome bastard I ever met.” He smiled, letting Best know that he was at least half-joking. Nobody else could get away with talking to Erik Best like this. Marty knew that he was afforded certain privileges because he made the man a lot of money…
Best laughed softly, shook his head. “You’re a cunt, Rivers. But that’s why I like you.” He slapped Marty on the right bicep — hard, with enough force to let him know that he was being favoured.
“Humpty Dumpy,” said Marty, looking back at his opponent. The other man was having his shoulders massaged by a short, fat man in a comically dated Kappa tracksuit. His curly black hair was soaking wet, as if he’d been caught out in the rain.
“One of these days,” said Best, moving away, “you’re going to have to tell me what the fuck that means, marra.”
Marty did not smile. He couldn’t. He was entering the zone, the place where all bets were off and no prisoners were taken. He smelled phantom blood in the air and his head was filled with the distant sounds of battle: cries and screams and gunfire, women wailing in a litany of loss as their menfolk were slain in the streets. Towers falling. Planes crashing. Cities burning. He felt connected to an ancient source of warfare, a rich seam of death and destruction that raged constantly beneath the surface of the world. This, he knew, was the real face of humanity. Some people — those like him and the man across the Barn — were either born or created to fight. The difference was fractional; whether by design or birthright, they were warriors. The only thing that mattered now was who would walk away as the victor and who would remain there in the makeshift ring, face to the floor, bleeding into the dirt and the hay and suffering the ignobility of defeat.
“Okay, everyone, we all know why we’re here.” Best’s raised voice silenced the gathered onlookers. He was that kind of man, one with a high level of natural charisma. Glasses and bottles clinked, somebody coughed, whispers hung in the air, but his voice rose above it all. “Give us a few minutes to have a chat with the fighters, and then we’ll start the bout. Keep drinking, keep betting, and don’t give me any fucking reason to not invite you back here.” He grinned, but his eyes shone with barely repressed fury.
Marty followed Best across the room, towards the spot where the Polish kid was standing with his cronies. They were silent; all eyes were upon him as he stepped across the dim space. The Polish kid started to shadow box, but his gaze remained fixed on Marty. His technique wasn’t bad, but Marty’s was a lot better.
Marty nodded his head once and bared his teeth in a feral grin. The kid stopped his performance, realising that it was not having the desired effect.
“Okay,” said Best once they had all gathered together. “You all know the rules, and as I’ve said before, if anyone tries anything funny, they’re fucked. I have men who will pile in at a given signal and crack your skulls if you even look like you’re messing about. I want a clean fight… but not
Marty nodded.
“Yes,” said the fat, curly-haired man in the Kappa, his English clipped but perfectly clear. “We know rules. We play by rules. It is the same everywhere. My man will win this, whatever rules may be.”
The Polish fighter smiled. Marty noticed for the first time that his front two teeth were missing from the upper row. He probably wore dentures, and had taken them out for the fight. Rather than make him look tougher, it showed a potential weakness.
“Right then, retreat to your corners and get ready. Let’s get this thing going and make some money.” Best watched as the men walked around the ring and took up their positions at their allocated corners. The Polish fighter climbed in through the ropes, followed by the fat man, clearly his trainer and corner man. The others just stood there and practised looking shifty, like extras in a cheesy gangster flick.
“Where’s Jock?” Marty scanned the barn, looking for Best’s usual corner man.
“He’s here… somewhere. Probably drinking my fucking whisky.”
A small, lean man in a flat cap appeared at ringside, raising a hand in welcome.
Marty walked to his side of the ring and shook the man’s hand. “Jock. How’s it going?”
“Nae bad,” said the wiry Scotsman. “You feeling fit?”
Marty nodded. “Fit as a butcher’s dog.”
“Good.” Jock lifted the middle rope and stepped aside to allow Marty to climb through the gap. “You should take this kid easy. He’s big, but he’s slow as fuck and he telegraphs them big punches about half an hour afore they arrive.”
Marty started moving, keeping his feet light. He’d been training for this bout for about a month, with early morning runs, sparring sessions at a friend’s gym in Byker, and some work with heavy weights. He was lucky in that he was naturally athletic, and his early boxing training had taught him his ring craft. Most of his opponents in these bouts were either Irish gypsies with no style and plenty of energy, or men like this one — immigrants who were fighting to feed their families, because they had no other saleable skills to offer this flattened economy.
Everybody feared the gypsies, but Marty was more cautious of the fighters who had more at stake than a campsite reputation. A man who fights for his children, for his wife, is a man who will not go down easily, and even when he does go down the odds are that he won’t stay there for long unless he is put out cold.
A fight like this one was like a fight against himself: battling his own inner demons, but each with a different face and a different style than the last. Some of them were experienced martial artists; a few of them might even be champions of some obscure brand of cage fighting back in their own country. But they were all tough as steel, hard as iron nails. They never quit until they had no choice.
He looked at the small, exclusive crowd on the other side of the ropes, scanning their faces for anything other than a shallower version of the kind of hunger he’d seen breaking though Erik Best’s features. But all he saw were shining eyes, open mouths, and a never-ending demand to be entertained.
Marty would entertain them. Hell, yes. He’d show them something they’d never forget.
He’d show them Humpty fucking Dumpty.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT WAS NIGHT in the Concrete Grove. Clouds scudded overhead, clustering around the pyramidal tip of the Needle. Shapes moved within those clouds — birds or shadows, or perhaps something else, something more sinister. The sounds of the estate combined to create a song of sorrow: barking dogs, a distant car or house or shop alarm, an occasional raised voice, the tinny beat of somebody’s stereo left to play dance music into the wee hours…
Brendan looked up from the book he was reading, feeling as if he were being watched. He experienced the sensation whenever he was alone, had grown up with it hounding his days and blighting his nights. He never felt safe, even when he was by himself —
Something was keeping a close eye on Brendan, and he knew in his heart that it had begun on the night that he and the other two Amigos had been trapped in the building outside the cabin in which he now sat.
He was reading a Stephen King novel and trying to pretend that fictional terrors were more frightening than real life, but he also knew that this was a lie. Real life was worse, always so much worse, than fiction… and hadn’t his life become a fiction, like something from the books he liked to read?
