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as the body loosened up. Every turn of the wrist was tightly controlled, every jab of a sharp heel executed with flawless technique and timing. Not an animal at all. A machine.
‘But most of the other policemen would leave him alone, Ben,’ said Helen. ‘They don’t think he’s worth bothering with. The pressure to keep questioning him comes from you.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘The woman detective — she told me it was you.’
Roundhouse, spearhand, hammer strike and stamping kick. A twisting hand to the groin, a chop to the throat. Diane Fry executed practice strikes at all the vulnerable points of the body — face, neck, solar plexus, spinal column and kidneys. Every blow was fast and hard, and perfectly focused. And every one of them lethal.
‘She had no right to say that.’ No right? That was a ludicrous understatement. It was against all codes of behaviour. And she
o
couldn’t have ruined his chances with Helen more effectively if she had been trying. But then a hard knot of anger twisted in his stomach as it occurred to him that perhaps she had been trying.
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‘It’s true, though, isn’t it, Ben? I can tell it is from your voice.
‘Helen, I just know that there’s something wrong. Something that involves your grandfather.’
‘Is there? How can you know?’
But Cooper shook his head, unable to answer He was watching Fry, and he was flushing an even deeper red, though now the embarrassment was giving way to an intense rage.
‘Let me know when it is that you stop being a policeman, Ben,’ said Helen. ‘In the meantime, I think it would be better if I said “no” to your suggestion, don’t you? In the circumstances.’
Circumstances. What a word, he thought. So often used in a pretentious and meaningless way. Yet all of life could be reduced to that one word. Difficult circumstances. The wrong circumstances. Killed by circumstances.
Around Diane Fry an admiring half-circle of dojo members had gathered, Cooper’s fellow students, his second family. Sensei Hughes stood watching her, applauding when she had finished her kata. She bowed at the waist, stretched on her toes, breathing deeply, invigorating her muscles, letting the power spread diroughout her body. She was ready for the next thing, ready for her kumite, her sparring bout. Ready to humiliate Ben Cooper in front of his friends.
The tall student looked on in amazement as Ben Cooper tossed down the phone, spun on his heel and lashed out with a clenched fist at the practice punching board, denting the soft wood. His scream was not the one taught at the Way of the Eagle dojo, but it came from the soul.
Helen had listened very carefully to Ben Cooper’s voice as he ended the call. She could tell he was trying to sound calm, like a man who hadn’t just been rejected and hurt. But he had never been able to conceal his feelings very well.
Sensing his suffering, she felt all the more sorry for having caused it. She felt sorry because of what he had said about Harry. And because she knew that Ben was right.
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Fry had been chatting to Sensei Hughes for ten minutes before it occurred to her to wonder what had happened to Ben Cooper. The sensei sent one of the students to look in the changing room, but Cooper had already left.
Fry shrugged, baffled. ‘He was making a phone call, so perhaps he was called away.’
‘Something urgent. Life in the police force can be very unpredictable. We understand that,’ said Hughes.
She was getting on well with the instructors and the other students, who all wanted to know where she had been trained. The sensei offered to include her in the next grading night, when he felt she could rise to fifth clan grade. At the end of the session, she went with a group of students to the pub on the corner, the Millstone Inn, where they ate lasagne and chips and talked about competitive sport of all kinds.
Only when she had got outside in the street and paused to say goodbye on the corner of Bargate did the tall brown-belt student tap Fry on the shoulder and mention Ben Cooper’s behaviour. He was a serious-minded young man, and felt that
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what he had seen in the changing room demonstrated a lack of the self-discipline and the positive attitude taught by the dojo. He had known Ben for two years, and he was worried.
Suddenly Fry grew frightened. Through her mind ran a series of scenes from the last few days. There were a series of flickering images of Ben Cooper, first as the capable, self-possessed detective whose reputed success and popularity had been rammed down her throat until the sound of his name infuriated her.
But gradually the picture changed, and Cooper turned into the morose, nervous, unpredictable man who had walked out of the dojo in an angry and violent state of mind. She knew that she had played her part in his deterioration; indeed, she had to acknowledge that she had done it deliberately. She had seen him as a challenge.
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‘Do you know where he might go? A pub somewhere?’ The student shrugged. ‘There are a lot of pubs he knows around Edendale. But his training’s too important to him, so
he doesn’t drink a lot.’
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After four or five pints, Cooper was beginning to feel that nothing mattered. After seven pints and a couple of whisky chasers, the black dogs appeared from every corner of the pub, prowling and snarling, waiting for him to turn his back on them, for the chance to pounce. He had eaten nothing all day, and the beer sloshing in his stomach made his head dip and swell. His hands and neck were flushed with the effects of the alcohol, his hands trembled and his lips were turnim’ numb. Now the whiskv was burning its av
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through his system, stimulating his muscles and making him feel as though he could pull down walls.
