The rain was getting heavier by the second.
“Drop the knife,” Dillon yelled, crouching to meet the next attack.
“Ain’t gonna happen, pig,” Winston snarled, his eyes blazing with madness.
Aware that there wasn’t a lot of room for manoeuvre on the deck, Dillon backed away until he bumped into the wheelhouse door. He knew he could probably slip inside before Winston reached him, but it had never been Dillon’s style to retreat. Besides, if he did that, Winston would just kick it open and follow him in, at which point he would find himself trapped in a confined space and completely at the gangster’s mercy.
Grinning insanely, Winston made a show of twirling the knife in his hand as he advanced, enjoying the look of fear that flitted across the detective’s face. Suddenly, he lunged wildly at Dillon, unleashing a vicious horizontal backhand slash that was intended to separate his head from his shoulders.
Dillon instinctively threw himself sideways, smashing into the wheelhouse doorframe with his left shoulder as the steel blade missed his throat by millimetres.
Winston took a step backwards and then came straight back in, this time trying to stab Dillon through the abdomen. Sucking his stomach in, Dillon pivoted sideways like a matador, but not in time to avoid the incoming blow altogether. The wickedly sharp blade effortlessly sliced through his coat and jumper, and he felt a burning flash of pain as it made contact with his flesh.
The rain was coming down in great force now, making the deck slippery underfoot. As Winston circled him, getting ready to attack again, Dillon swiped his hand across his face, desperately trying to wipe the water away from his eyes
There was a flash of lightning out at sea, and for a moment the hulking form of the gangster was illuminated. “I’m gonna skewer you, pig,” he taunted, “and then I’m going to cut off your ugly fat head and mount it on the ship’s wheel for all to see.”
“Bring it on,” Dillon growled through gritted teeth. He could already feel the hot trickle of blood running down his skin but the battle rage was on him now and he didn’t care.
This time, Winston came at him with a fierce backhand slash, and Dillon sprung backwards moving just out of range. Winston advanced relentlessly, slashing inwards this time, but instead of retreating, as he had for both previous attacks, Dillon stepped straight inside the swinging arm and grabbed hold of it, pulling it tight against his body. The gangster reacted by trying to yank his arm free, and as he did, Dillon drove his right elbow back into his opponent’s face with jarring force. There was a deeply satisfying crunch, and Winston yelped in pain.
Stunned by the blow, Winston’s arm went slack, and Dillon took advantage of this to smash his opponent’s knife hand against the boat’s safety railing. Once, twice, three times, he struck bone against metal, but the gangster stubbornly refused to let go.
Suddenly, Winston reached over Dillon’s head with his left hand and dug his fingers into the detective’s eye sockets, yanking backwards with all his might.
Flexing his enormous neck muscles, Dillon shook his head left and right, like a dog drying itself, but he couldn’t break free of the other man’s grip. Before long, Dillon’s head had been pulled against his adversary’s shoulder, leaving his neck dangerously exposed.
With Dillon now totally off balance, Winston found himself in the ascendancy, and he lost no time in trying to drive the knife upwards into his adversary’s throat, laughing maniacally as it closed in on its target inch by inch.
As the blade drew nearer, Dillon grew increasingly desperate. In a last-ditch effort to break free, he stamped the heel of his foot into Winston’s instep. The gangster screamed, and his grip slackened for long enough for Dillon to take a sideways step and drive his fist downwards until it smashed into Winston’s groin. The fugitive howled in pain and doubled over, dropping the knife.
Dillon spun around and drove his fist into the other man’s jaw, sending Winston staggering backwards into the wheelhouse door. As he rebounded, Dillon stepped forward and grabbed him by the lapels. Using the powerful muscles of his neck to catapult him forward, Dillon drove his large forehead into the centre of Winston’s face, causing the gangster’s nose to explode in a cloud of red mist.
Winston collapsed in a crumpled heap against the side of the boat, but then he spotted the knife laying a few feet away from his hand and made a dive for it.
Dillon’s eyes widened in horror as the gangster’s fingers curled around the handle.
“No fucking way,” he yelled, rushing forward to kick the big man’s head as though he were taking a penalty kick during a football game.
Winston’s head jarred forward so violently that, for a millisecond, Dillon was worried that he might have overdone it and broken the gangster’s neck.
Dillon’s foot was throbbing wildly as he cautiously approached the unmoving form and knelt down to check that he was still alive. Finding a strong pulse in Winston’s neck, Dillon breathed a huge sigh of relief and flopped down beside him, ignoring the freezing rain that immediately soaked through his trousers and the pulsating agony in his right foot.
It was finally over. They had recaptured Claude Winston. The satisfaction was indescribable, or at least it was until he thought about the dead constable and his family, at which point the victory seemed somewhat hollow.
As he was catching his breath, Dillon heard footsteps moving along the jetty towards the boat. Seconds later, a middle-aged PC with thick, rain-smeared glasses clambered aboard, holding his flat cap onto his head to stop it from blowing it away in the wind. Rain splashed off of his shoulders and ran down his Gore-Tex jacket in tiny rivulets. “I’m looking for DI Dillon,” the officer announced, ineffectually wiping at his thick lenses with a gloved finger.
“You’ve found him,” Dillon panted.
“I’m PC Goodman,”
