On his hands and knees he got down and reached for it.
‘Oops,’ the operator said.
All eyes turned to Henry as the officer in charge. It was as if the world was holding him in sharp focus. Everything else was blurred and only Henry stood out. He did not know what to do. His mind was a complete blank.
‘If there’s an anti-tamper on it and he moves it. .’ the operator said bleakly.
Then, for Henry, the world seemed to resume some of its normality. ‘Move the wheelbarrow. Jab him with it. Do something. Try and distract him from touching the bomb — I’ll go and get him out.’
‘You must be barking,’ Renfrew said. ‘You can’t go in there now.’
‘I’ve been in once and it didn’t explode. If he doesn’t touch it, then it probably still won’t explode.’ Henry’s eyes flashed back to the screen. The man was stretching out towards the lunchbox, could not quite reach it. ‘And if it’s on a timer only, it’s more than likely to be set for a busy period. I’m going,’ he said. ‘Distract him if you can.’
The operator thumbed the joystick. The wheelbarrow arm extended and pushed the drunken man in the ribcage and knocked him over. He rolled and recovered. The extending arm went out towards him again, attempting to push him over again. The drunk struggled to his feet and lumbered towards the wheelbarrow. The screen got a close-up shot of his fat legs and then the sole of his boot as he tried to stamp on the nasty, horrible thing that had attacked him.
Henry moved like lightning.
He ran up the promenade and skidded through the door of the club, hurtling across the foyer and down the steps into the bar. If it hadn’t been so serious, it would have been ridiculous. The fat drunk was laying into the wheelbarrow as though it was an adversary in a street fight. He rained kicks on it, which must have hurt him, because they were having no effect on the wheelbarrow which just stood there placidly absorbing the onslaught without complaint.
Henry hurried across, shouting, ‘You need to get out of here now, that could be a bomb under there.’
‘Eh, what? Fuck off, copper.’
That was all the negotiation Henry was prepared to do. With strength induced by fear, anger and danger, Henry looped an arm around the man’s neck, grabbed his shirt and started to drag him across the bar using the momentum of the man off balance. He managed to get him as far as the foot of the steps which led up to the foyer. He dropped the gasping man, who landed on the small of his back, legs akimbo. It was only past bad experience that prevented Henry from booting him in the testicles. Last time he’d done that, the recipient of the kick had lost a ball and caused Henry no end of grief.
Such had been the speed and power of Henry’s attack, there was still a look of utter surprise in the drunk’s face — which Henry tried to use to best advantage.
He said menacingly, ‘You get the fuck up them steps, or I’ll beat the living shit out of you here and now. There’s a bomb in here.’
It was as if the man had not heard.
‘Fuck you,’ he shouted and dived for Henry’s feet. He got them before Henry could move out of the way. Henry cursed as he fell onto his hands. He kicked back at the man’s chest and extricated himself from the grip.
Large and drunk though the man was — and the stench of booze on his breath was overpowering — he was moving pretty quickly now that Henry had lost the element of surprise. He threw himself onto Henry’s back and flattened him on the floor. It was like being crushed by a bed and doing a belly-flop at the same time. All the air whooshed out of him, winding him. The man pummelled him, though the punches were not well placed or particularly effective. Henry rolled away, jerking his elbow into the man’s face, satisfyingly connecting with a hard bone somewhere. The man emitted a scream of anguish, but only got madder. He came after Henry with his feet, starting to boot him before he could stand up properly.
‘You idiot,’ Henry yelled to no effect.
He took a kick in the lower stomach and recoiled against a pair of double doors marked ‘Store Room — Private’. The doors did not give even when the back of Henry’s head whacked hard against them.
The drunk bore down on him, a snarl on his lips. ‘I’ve always wanted to do a cop.’
Henry’s mind clicked into clarity. He ducked and sidestepped, spun on his heels and drove his fist into the side of the man’s head, hard, right on the ear. The blow had no effect, except to make the guy even angrier. Henry hit him again, hurting his knuckles on the man’s cranium. Still no effect. The man turned like a Challenger tank, roared and grabbed Henry. He wrapped both arms around him, pinning Henry’s arms to his side and squeezing tight. The men were stomach to stomach, chest to chest, both now with red faces: the drunk’s from exertion, Henry’s from his chest being constricted. The man swore at Henry, who felt his feet leave the ground. The drunk started to move in a circular motion, round and round, still trying to squeeze the life out of Henry, to crush him, while bouncing up and down.
He began to laugh. ‘I’m gonna kill you, cocksucker.’
Which was OK, but why? Drunks do not reason well and Henry did not want to die by being squeezed to death by a bloated, admittedly strong, inebriate, nor by getting blown to bits by a bomb. This thought gave him a surge of self-survival.
He braced his arms and, using all his strength, pushed them outwards and upwards and broke the man’s vice-like grip. Henry’s hands went to either side of the man’s head, each grabbing an ear, holding the head steady as he head-butted the bridge of the man’s nose with his forehead. The nose did not burst as expected, nor did the man seem to have an adverse reaction to the blow. He just laughed and tried to grab Henry again. Henry pushed against the man and they crashed back against the double doors. This time, they flew open with a clatter. The men reeled through into a room full of collected rubbish onto which they tumbled. They continued their struggle amongst black bin liners crammed with all sorts of debris which burst open, spilling everywhere as they fought.
Henry was hitting hard now. Punching, kicking, kneeing, gouging. The rules of restraint deserted him because he was fighting for his life — and the life of an idiot he was duty bound to try and save.
The fat man was running out of steam. Huffing, puffing. The fight was deserting him. His flab, which had been a weapon in its own right in the first few moments of a confrontation, was now draining him of energy and becoming a useless burden. Henry found himself standing over the man, breathing heavily, knowing he had won.
‘You arsehole, have you had enough?’
Blood dribbled out of the fat man’s nose and bubbled with his breath.
‘Yeah, yeah. . no need for that.’
‘There — is — a — bomb in there,’ Henry panted. ‘How the hell did you get in?’
‘Whaddya mean? I was havin’ a shit.’
So the toilets hadn’t been properly searched. ‘Right, we need to get out now, do you understand me? This whole place has been evacuated. Didn’t you think something odd was going on?’
‘Yeah, but. .’ he said inadequately.
‘Up, now. Let’s get going.’
Henry offered his hand. The man reached up and, rather like the Michelangelo painting on the roof of the Sistine Chapel, their fingers never actually came into contact because the bomb exploded.
It was as though someone had opened a furnace door and at the same time whacked Henry on the shoulder blades with a shovel. He was lifted off his feet by the blast and thrown down into the fat drunk’s arms. For the second time in a matter of seconds, every drop of oxygen was forced out of his lungs and out of his bloodstream.
Fortunately for Henry and the fat man they were not in the direct line of the blast and it was this that saved them. Before the blast reached them, it had to do a right turn into the store room, thereby losing some of its hurricane-like force. It was fortunate their conflict had rumbled into the rubbish room. Had they been standing at the foot of the stairwell, they would have been hit by a flying wheelbarrow which had been blown right across the bar, through the doors and halfway back up the stairs, accompanied by pieces of chairs and tables, reduced to matchsticks by the explosion and even more insidiously, the thousands of panel pins which the bomb maker had packed into the device.