Langstone smiled. ‘My people. Not me.’
‘Your tame Biff Boys?’
‘You wouldn’t have been able to get up off the ground if it had been me.’
‘And how are you going to explain this? You can’t hope to get away with what you’re doing.’
‘Why not?’ Marcus had stopped about three feet away from Rory. ‘Unfortunately we’ve had a great deal of trouble with left-wing agitators at our meetings. Communists, Jews, foreigners, people who have the morality of the gutter. They bring all sorts of weapons and try and stir up trouble. Bicycle chains, knuckledusters, knives — you name it, they’ve got it.’
‘Whereas you go in for rubber coshes?’
‘My mechanic advised me to buy one of these. Know what they call them, Mr Wentwood? The motorist’s friend.’
‘It’s an offensive weapon.’
‘Defensive, please. We have to do our best to cope with this wicked violence, don’t we? For the sake of the public, for the sake of democracy. We Fascists stand for free speech and free debate. We can’t let you people interfere with that. It just wouldn’t be right, would it? And of course you end up getting hurt. I’m about to act in self-defence, in case you were wondering, and later on there will be witnesses to confirm it. They will also confirm that you were armed.’ He smiled. ‘In point of fact I’m looking ahead: there aren’t any witnesses just at present. So you can squeal as loudly as you like.’
‘That’s the trouble with you lot,’ Rory said. ‘You start off thinking the end justifies the means. And then you don’t bother justifying anything at all. You just do what you bloody want.’
The last word came out like a bullet on a rush of air as Rory kicked Marcus’s left kneecap. Marcus shouted and lunged forward, his face contorted, and brought the cosh down in an overarm blow. Rory ducked to the left and the cosh hit him like a brick on his right arm, just below the shoulder.
An instant later, Marcus’s left fist caught him full on the mouth. Driven backwards, Rory fell against the table, the corner jabbing into the soft flesh between his ribcage and thigh. Marcus lashed out with his boots, aiming for Rory’s crotch.
Rory squirmed. A toecap thudded into his leg. Cold stone grated like sandpaper against his cheek. He curled himself up and tried to roll away from the kicks. He collided with a table leg. His mouth filled with liquid. He spat, and saw a fine red spray in front of his face. His left ankle exploded with a pain like an overwhelming flash of electricity. He screamed and wriggled farther under the table, scrabbling to escape the kicks and blows. He pushed himself into the corner where the two walls met.
Stone on two sides. All that solid mahogany above. There was a instant of calm, unutterably sweet.
Langstone’s breathing changed tempo. The table trembled. Rory stared between Langstone’s legs, thick and as solid as an elephant’s, at the half-open door to the cloister. The table grated on the floor. The bastard was trying to drag it away from the wall. Automatically Rory threw his weight against the table leg behind him.
There was a grunt. Then the side of the table nearer the door began to rise. Langstone was lifting it up. Rory’s hands scrabbled for purchase.
Something that wasn’t made of stone or mahogany. He laid his hand over it. Something dry, angular and hard, equipped with extraordinary jagged edges, ridges, holes and protuberances. This part here, he thought, which was almost straight, was like the teeth of a saw blade.
Fimberry’s skull. The goat’s head that had come in the post for Mr Serridge, which Fimberry, governed by some strange sense of propriety, had deposited in the Ossuary, the place of the bones.
The table reared up and went over on its side with a thump that seemed to shake the foundations of the chapel. As it rose, Rory uncoiled his body and launched himself like an exploding jack-in-the-box at Langstone. Langstone gave ground, lifting the cosh as he did so.
Rory rammed the goat’s skull into Langstone’s face. The points of the two horns dug into the sockets of his eyes, tearing into soft tissue, jarring on bone.
Langstone shouted. He reeled back, slapping his hands over his face. Rory curled his right hand round one of the horns, raised the skull again and this time brought it down in a sweeping backhand arc. The other horn snapped on impact. Jagged fragments of bone raked through the skin of Marcus’s cheek and ripped into the flesh beneath. Something pattered on the flagstones, like a flurry of sleet.
Rory ran for the door. There was no one in the cloister. The electric lights were on and the windows were black mirrors. He stumbled over the uneven floor, pain shooting up his left leg from the ankle Langstone had hit with the cosh. He was only halfway down the cloister when he heard footsteps, boot heels slamming against the stones.
He glanced back. Langstone’s face was a blur of blood, with a single eye and white flashes of teeth. Rory staggered on. From behind him came a laugh.
‘It’s locked,’ Langstone said.
Rory looked over his shoulder again. Langstone was swinging the cosh, breathing hard in a series of rhythmic snarls, blood trickling down his face and bubbling beneath his nostrils.
He heard another sound: metal moving on metal: a key turning in a lock.
The door to the outside world swung open. A current of cool air flowed through the cloister. Lydia Langstone was standing on the threshold. Her eyes widened when she saw him.
Rory gaped at her, his mouth open. ‘Run,’ he whispered. ‘Run.’
She stepped closer to him, reached up and grabbed his tie. She yanked it as if it were a lead and he a reluctant dog. He plunged through the doorway and sprawled in a huddle of bruised limbs on the forecourt. He was still holding the remains of the goat’s skull.
As if from a great distance he heard the sound of the key turning in the lock of the door.
For the second time that afternoon, Lydia hurriedly unlocked the door of 48 Rosington Place and pushed it open. She retrieved Rory, who was holding on to the railing beside the door and swaying gently, and towed him into the hall. She shut the door and slipped both bolts across. She turned to look at him.
He had propped himself against the wall; his eyes were closed and he was breathing fast and noisily through his mouth. He had a split lip and perhaps he had lost a tooth or two. Blood trickled over his chin and there were drops of it drying on his tie, his collar and shirt. Just below the left eye, the cheek glowed an angry red. She wondered what had happened to his raincoat and cap.
Lydia stooped and opened the letter flap. No one was within her range of vision. There was just enough light to see that Fimberry’s keys were where she had left them, in the lock of the door to the cloister, preventing Marcus from unlocking the door from the inside. Marcus would have to find another way out or somehow raise the alarm — though in that case he might face awkward questions.
She stood up and looked again at Rory. His eyes were open now. He tried to say something but his words mingled with blood and spittle and emerged as an indistinguishable mumble.
‘There’s a lavatory with a basin at the end of the hall,’ Lydia said.
He tried his weight on his left leg, and winced. ‘Ankle,’ he said.
She knelt down in front of him and rolled up the trouser cuff. He grunted as she eased down the sock and probed the ankle with her fingers. She lifted the leg and moved the foot to and fro and from side to side.
‘I think it’s a sprain or bruising,’ she said, hoping she was right. ‘You’ll have to lean on me and sort of hop if necessary.’
‘Second time,’ he muttered.
‘What?’ As she spoke, she realized he was trying to smile.
‘Second time you’ve done this.’
‘I don’t know.’ He paused, gathering energy. ‘You’re rather good at it.’
With her supporting him, he hobbled down the hall. He paused at the newel post to draw breath. She was surprised how heavy the weight of his arm over her shoulders became, and surprised at the racket they made in the silent house. He smelled of tobacco and faintly of mothballs, as though his clothes had been hanging too long in a wardrobe somewhere, as perhaps they had. The tweed of his sports jacket felt rough and stiff;off-the-peg
