In the pool cast by the helicopter’s searchlight, the San’s forecourt had become a circus ring, in which a troupe of Service muscle was knocking seven bells out of twenty assorted hard cases. This should have been a picnic, had everyone been reading from the same script, but while the professionals knew what they were doing, and tended towards the swift and economical, the hooligans had the advantage that they viewed violent encounters as leisuretime jolly rather than occupational necessity. Those knocked down kept getting up for more, and those upright took the windmill approach: fists and feet flying; teeth ready to take a chunk from anything within reach. It was like fighting wild dogs, with the added interest of not knowing what diseases they carried.
Surveying the mayhem Whelan wondered if any of the players remembered what the evening’s objective had been, or whether the whole thing was just a mad game of Chinese Whispers.
Weaving between separate clusters of violence, he helped the battered security guard to his feet, and together they crunched across broken glass to the building, where Whelan propped him against the wall. “Best stay upright,” he said, having no clue as to established practice, but reasonably sure it wasn’t a good moment for a lie down. Looking round, he prayed for signs of sanity, and at that precise moment the alarm shut off.
Ridiculous to pretend that what followed was silence, but for half a second it felt like it: a relief from aural torture. And then chaos poured back through the evening’s open wound: the clashing of bodies and armoured sticks, the whoops and yelps of the warriors, the techno-beat of the hovering chopper, and even his own puny car alarm, which Whelan hadn’t noticed until then, a limp whimper more likely to incur embarrassment than attention.
But in that oasis of imaginary quiet, he’d heard a woman’s voice laying down a challenge.
“I’m Shirley Dander,” she’d yelled. “Who wants to know?”
When Shirley ran through the door the helicopter was hovering twenty feet up, drowning the forecourt in light. Pitched battle was raging: a people carrier was parked slantways, frozen waves of gravel at its tyres; a small car had reversed into the front of the building; and the goon she’d helped through the upstairs window appeared to have landed on one of his comrades. Double score! A blood-smeared middle-aged man in glasses was an unlooked-for absurdity, crouched over a floored figure in security guard’s black-and-blue livery and victim’s red-and-white head wound, but she didn’t pause to question the sight. The baseball bat felt good in her hands, and Uomo Uno was well within reach. He looked like he was running for the carrier, the chicken. Empty-handed, but holding the answers she sought.
Why did you come for me?
As he reached the van she hurled the bat. It bounced off his head and he sprawled against the vehicle, testing its suspension. She paused to retrieve the weapon, and by the time she’d done so he’d steadied himself, turned and thrown a punch all in the same flow, aiming for her face probably, but missing by half a mile. She had his number now. He was a thug, plain and simple. Put him in a boxing ring, he’d be canvas-patterned in a moment. But put him in a cage and he’d rattle the bars loudly enough that you wouldn’t want to enter.
The good thing about snap judgements was that you could be doing something else while making them. In Shirley’s case, this involved swinging the bat into his thigh, keeling him sideways like a broken tree. The fire alarm she’d triggered a hundred years ago ceased its screaming then, the same moment she chose to scream herself: “I’m Shirley Dander. Who wants to know?” He didn’t reply, but more pressingly, someone was rushing her from behind: she knew this the way you’d know if a bull was approaching. Bulls have never mastered the surprise attack. If this newcomer planned to, he could start by making notes as to what happens when you give your position away early: in this case, a full-bodied swing of a baseball bat. Shirley felt the impact in her shoulders. Her attacker felt it in his ribs, and probably every other bone holding him together—not since she’d hit a bus with an iron had Shirley felt quite so fulfilled. I am fucking invincible, she decided. That was a fresh learning right there. I am fucking invincible, and I’m taking these bastards down one by one.
That was the last thought she had for a while, as the sun rose and set in the blink of an eye, all of it inside her furious, buzz-cropped head.
So that was Shirley Dander.
What interested Whelan was that she wasn’t Sophie de Greer, despite what he’d told Nash; that Lamb’s got something going on, that he’s stashed de Greer in the San, under the name of Shirley Dander. Assertions that had made sense that afternoon. From his new perspective, sense was the other side of the county line. It was the quiet warmth of his study, where he should have stayed. Sorry, Oliver. I’m retired. How hard would that have been?