door and deposited him on his own sofa.
He opened his eyes, blinking away the tears that the pain had started there, and as his sight cleared he saw looming over him the terrifying features of Jurassic George.
Now to the sound range that he'd never expected to reach was added a whimper. He would have declared with some force that whatever else he might be he wasn't the whimpering type, but there was no other word to describe the noise he heard himself make in anticipation of George's renewed assault.
And now that monstrous face was coming closer, so close that he could feel the hot breath as the boxer uttered words Joe could not understand but which he knew must be his death knell.
21
Frozen Broccoli
In his detective career Joe had formulated many a hypothesis that proved so far from the truth that it would have taken a fully equipped inter-galactic space expedition to traverse the distance between. This time he felt he understood the truth beyond hypothesizing. George had made such a ham-fisted effort at reconciliation with Eloise that he'd provoked her into saying something like, Yeah, that Joe's quite tasty and you're dead right, he really fancies me and I wouldn't mind getting something going there.
The only problem was, as the sounds issuing from the boxer's mouth stretched into syllables and then joined together to form words, something was going wrong with the script.
What he seemed to be hearing was, 'Hey, Joe, my man, are you OK? Take your time, man. Breathe deep. Here, try to sit up, get your head between your legs, long breaths, that's it, yeah, you keep doing that, I'll get you some water…'
Then George vanished into the kitchen.
Persuaded that he was aurally hallucinating, Joe glanced desperately toward the door. What he saw there drained any little strength he had remaining. The frame around the lock was splintered like matchwood… the wooden chair he'd wedged under the handle had snapped in half like a breadstick…
In any case George was back.
'Drink this. Hey man, how are your goolies? Thought that bastard was going to pull them right off. My corner man say, anything an ice-pack can't cure, you need surgery, so let's try this.'
Joe found himself looking at a packet of frozen broccoli as, with remarkably delicacy, Jurassic's banana- bunch fingers unfastened his trouser belt, slid down the fly zip and pressed the packet against his crotch.
After the initial cold shock, it felt great, and as his injured parts stopped demanding ninety-nine percent of his attention, it started getting through to him that either George had a serious schizoid condition, or he wasn't in fact the attacker.
He gasped, 'George… why you here, man?'
'Came to say I'm sorry,' said George. 'For this morning, you know… the misunderstanding…'
'Like when you tried to kill me, you mean?' said Joe.
'Hey, no, I was never gonna let you go,' said the boxer earnestly. 'Just give you a fright, shake the truth out of you.'
'And now you know the truth?'
'Yeah. That Beryl girl, she convinced me. Then when I saw Eloise later at the garage… well, she really bad- mouthed me for even dreaming she'd pick you over me-no disrespect meant, man-'
'None taken,' Joe assured him, feeling better by the second. 'So things are OK between you two?'
'Just great!' said George, his face lighting up. 'But she says I gotta apologize to you, which I want to do anyways. So I come round here and there you are getting into the lift, only you don't wait. So I come up after you and I reach your door and I hear this noise of yelling inside. First, I think maybe you and your girl are having a domestic, then you start screaming and I know it ain't no family row. So I push open the door and there's you hanging over the balcony and this guy pummeling you and trying to pull your goolies off. So I give him a tap and he hits the deck, and I'm just going to make sure he don't get up again when I notice you're slipping away. So I've got to grab you and meanwhile the guy has got to his feet and hightailed it out of the door. Sorry about that, Joe, should have hit him harder, then he'd still be here for you to give him a kicking.'
'George, don't be sorry, you made the right decision and I'm truly grateful.'
'That's OK. You must be really burning up, this pack's beginning to thaw. Think I saw some prawns in the freezer, how about I try them?'
It occurred to Joe that lovely little Mimi, who'd jumped to the wrong conclusions this morning when she burst in on him standing starkers over a nurse with her legs in the air, would really mark him down as a Number One weirdo if she could see him now having his crotch massaged by Jurassic with a packet of broccoli.
He took control of the pack himself and said, 'No thanks, George, this will be fine.'
But the thought of Mimi brought to mind the conversation he'd just had with her on the phone. King Rat knew he hadn't gone to Spain. Didn't need a Sudoku whiz to work out it must have been Colin Rowe who told him.
And what was King's likely reaction…?
'George, my friend, this guy trying to kill me, you get a good look at him?'
'Yeah. Didn't know him, but I'll know him again. Real mean-looking bastard, got them hard eyes, know what I'm saying? Like some guys in the ring who try to stare you down while the ref's doing the intro. Me, I let my fists do the fighting. What you been doing, Joe, to get him so pissed with you?'
'Don't think it was him that was pissed,' said Joe.
Had to be Hardman, the Rat's personal minder, who'd been sent round to take care of him. Not kill him, which was a small comfort. Getting knocked about a bit was regarded as an occupational hazard for a PI. Indeed, Joe had heard Sergeant Chivers, his arch-enemy in Luton's Finest, opine that a day in which Sixsmith got a good kicking could never be said to have been altogether wasted. But not even Chivers would have been able to turn a blind eye if Joe's body had been found splattered on the paving stones under the Rasselas tower. No, Hardman's mission had been to put him out of the picture by terrifying and disabling him.
Which he'd got at least half right. But what he'd also done was confirm that King Rat was definitely involved, and the only thing that got the Rat's nose twitching was the ripe smell of filthy lucre. Lots and lots of it. A multi- million deal. Which, together with Mimi's hint that something big was brewing between ProtoVision and the supermarket chain, put Wright-Price in the frame, dead center.
It was beginning to look like Butcher's obsessive belief that Sir Monty was involved was more than just political prejudice.
But Joe found it hard to accept that a man so self- lessly devoted to the well-being of Luton City FC could be party to any form of physical violence that took place off the field. He was ruthless in business, yes. He would cut so many corners in a deal he could turn a polygon into a straight line. But he was at heart a sportsman. Would he underwrite beating up a fellow Luton fan? Or framing an honest golfer for cheating?
Joe found it hard to believe. Which meant nothing. He'd been absolutely certain the Lutes were going to stuff Spurs last time they went to White Hart Lane, and look what happened then.
But he only knew one way to find out.
With a sigh, he started to push himself upright.
'Hey, you take it easy now,' advised George. 'You want I should call that girl of yours? She's a nurse, right? Maybe she could give you a massage or something.'
'Think that would probably finish me off right now, George,' he said. 'Look, I got things to do. Thanks a bunch for helping me out here. Don't know what I'd have done else. Except maybe die.'
'My pleasure,' said the big boxer. 'Listen, man, you get any more trouble, you give me a call, right?'
'You'll be first on my wish-list,' Joe assured him.
As George left, he paused and looked at the splintered door frame.
'Sorry about that,' he said. 'You'd best get that fixed afore some of them Hermsprong brothers come across to borrow your TV and hi-fi. You got anyone you can ring?'
'Yeah, but it will probably be the weekend before he gets here.'
