How many times had he gone over the same page in the book he was holding? It felt like time had slowed down and he’d been there for hours, reading and re-reading the same passage. But still the story made little sense, and the intricacies of the plot eluded him.
He stood up and went to the door, opened it and looked out at the night. Darkness lay like a shroud across the landscape. He blinked, his eyes burning for a moment, and then he glanced left, then right, before stepping out of the security cabin. The Needle loomed above him, watching him, just like whatever he and his friends had disturbed had always watched him, and in the same way that he often examined himself, in the mirror. Filled with doubt and mistrust; not quite believing the image that he saw reflected there in the glass.
The acne on his back had calmed down earlier, but now it was beginning to itch. He resisted the urge to scratch at it, and clenched his hands into fists.
The thought of the telephone call he’d received from his boss only a couple of hours earlier filled him with a rage that felt like something sexual, a slow-building sensation demanding some kind of release. Brendan was nobody’s gofer, but right now, wrapped up in the arms of an endless night — a night that had lasted for two decades — he felt like he was bound to his old friends like a horse strapped into an ill-fitting harness.
This time Simon had gone too far; his actions were offensive. Brendan knew that he was probably overreacting, and that Jane would talk him down in the morning, but when it came to Simon Ridley, and the way that bastard had left them all here to rot, he often found it difficult to rein in his emotions.
The skin on his back and shoulders itched madly. He tightened his fists and dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands. One pain to take away another, like for like, tit for tat: it was like old magic, and the spell never failed.
Grinding his fingernails into the soft flesh, he forgot about his acne, and imagined his fingers digging right down into the skin and gristle and tearing through his hands, emerging from the other side dripping in blood.
Sighing, he looked up, at the second, third, fourth floors, and saw a shadow flit across one of the intact windows. Was it Banjo, the junkie, making a night-time patrol of his own, or was it something much worse? He remembered a man with a stick and a beaked mask, a figure who made a sound like maracas but in slow motion. They had called him a name, Captain Clickety, but he knew now that the simple act of naming your demon does not banish it back under the bed or to the rear of the wardrobe… sometimes a demon will like its given name, and it will reach out to embrace those that named it.
Sometimes the monsters were real.
He turned around and went back inside the cabin. Glancing at the novel, he was unable to pick it back up and finish the chapter. Not now; not tonight.
Not when it was night in the Concrete Grove, and the memories were so close to the surface that they threatened to break through and hurt him.
Once again, the skin of his back and shoulders started to itch. This time, he knew, it would be even more difficult to resist scratching at the wounds. Maybe they’d open up and bleed anew, causing new pain to layer over the old.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“SHAKE HANDS,” SAID the ref, pushing Marty and the Polish kid together at the centre of the ring. Marty stuck out his wrapped hand and the other man grabbed it, squeezed hard, and shook it once.
“
The two men parted company, backing away towards their corners. The next time they came together, it would be all business.
There were as many variations of the rules in these bouts as there were fighters. This time, as was often the case with one of Erik Best’s fights, it was old school: fists only, no feet, no chokeholds, no head butting; no biting or gouging or elbows. The ref — a big man himself, another ex-boxer — was there to ensure that nobody stepped across the line and the fight was, insomuch as any illegal bout could ever be, a fair one.
Unlike boxing, there were no rounds to speak of. This was a fight to the finish. The man who remained standing at the end was the winner and would receive the entire purse. The loser would depart empty-handed and no doubt suffering from worse injuries than wounded pride. Such was the way of these things, and Marty was as experienced as anyone else he knew on the small, secretive bare-knuckle circuit. He’d learned the hard way, after the accident that ended his boxing career. At the time, he’d felt that he had no other option than to fight. He was a born fighter, so he simply continued along that same path.
People were shouting and screaming. Men and women jostled for position, trying to get a good view. The Barn was now a place of gladiatorial combat. The air was thick and heavy with the expectation of violence, and the audience moved as one amorphous mass, heavy and swaying, their sweat mingling and rising in a thin, steaming cloud. Couples grabbed at each other beneath the poor lights, in some savage act of foreplay. Others stood and watched, generating an altogether different kind of energy.
Marty ignored it all and moved slowly forward, raising his guard. Aleksi kept his own guard low, just as he had done in the videos Erik had supplied for Marty’s research. It was apparent that the kid relied on brute strength, but that was no match for speed, guile and ring craft. The two men circled each other like great beasts, each summing up the other, inspecting his opponent for weak points. The roar of the crowd was reduced to a whisper; Marty focused on the other fighter to such an extent that everything else faded away. His vision narrowed to a tunnel and he began to smell the other man’s musk. Soon he would taste him, like a tang in the air. His senses would be so attuned to the task, and to his foe, that his body would have recognised him in a dark room filled with a hundred strangers.
“
Marty waited, waited, waited… smiled, bobbed his head and weaved a little, throwing wide a few light jabs just to rile the other fighter. He said nothing, he never did. He was a silent enforcer, a man who let his fists speak with a language of their own.
The lights flickered overhead, but Marty was only dimly aware of the change in illumination. He did not take his eyes off Aleksi. To do so would break the spell.
The lights flickered again, and that was when the kid decided to strike. He moved in surprisingly fast, going low with a decent shot to the body. Marty turned to the side and bent at the waist, not enough to dodge the blow completely but more than enough to absorb its immediate power. He responded with a short left hook, which caught the kid on the side of the head. The kid staggered, his feet shuffled backwards, and Marty slammed a good straight right into the centre of his forehead. He felt the dull jolt of the impact through his fist and along his forearm.
The small crowd made even more noise at this point, but Marty barely registered their jeering. He went in fast, double-jabbing all the way, and pushed the kid back onto the ropes. He lost his footing for a second, his left leg buckling slightly in his stance, and it was enough for Aleksi to mount a spirited retaliation. Marty retreated, blocking a barrage of mostly wild blows, and tried to work out exactly how far he was from the ropes on his side of the ring. He couldn’t risk grappling with this one; he was outweighed by at least two stone, and had less reach. He had to keep on the move, ducking and dodging and wearing the other guy out with combination shots.
They stood toe-to-toe for a moment, trading blows. Marty used his defence, and was pleased to see cuts opening up on the other man’s face: a long gash across his brow over the left eye, a nick in his cheek beneath his right. Blood washed down his face, thinned by the adrenalin in his system.
Marty took too long admiring the damage. He felt a glancing blow to the temple and reeled; he was rocked immediately by another quick punch to the cheekbone, this time from the big right hand. Then, just as he was beginning to think he’d misjudged or underestimated the kid, he saw what he’d been expecting from the beginning. The Polish kid dropped his right shoulder an inch or so and feigned with a left, preparing to unleash his main shot: the big looping right. Marty struck before the kid had time to consider his next move: a straight right, catching Aleksi on the chin; he followed with a double-left jab, and then finished the combination by throwing all he had into
