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?
Someone was rushing Dander from behind, but she seemed to have matters under controclass="underline" even Whelan felt the resulting blow, and he was twenty yards away. The villain hit the ground like a cartoon piano. Dander’s glee outshone the helicopter’s searchlight; evil and innocent at the same time, it made a pumpkin lantern of her face. And then someone blew her candle out.
It was the man she’d been chasing, the one she’d had spreadeagled against the carrier a moment before. Whelan couldn’t see what he’d hit her with, but her baseball bat dropped to the ground, followed by Dander herself, and then she was scooped up and tossed inside the van: all this while fighting raged on; the Service troops heavily outnumbered, but not, on the whole, too bothered by that. Various lumps on the gravel were conquered invaders, their groans audible now the alarm had ceased. The carrier’s door shut and Dander’s attacker was easing into the driver’s seat. The helicopter shifted overhead, and the world tilted as its spotlight slid across the ground. Whelan said, “Wait here,” and let go of the wounded security man, who remained on his feet, which was a good sign. The whirring rotor blades were artificial weather, and Whelan crossed the forecourt like a mime. Someone backed into him, avoiding a truncheon; Whelan pushed and the man staggered forward, straight into the truncheon’s upswing. There was a spray of blood, a destroyed face: all a blur, even with one hand holding his glasses in place, but Dander’s abandoned baseball bat was there at his feet and he collected it without thinking. The people carrier lurched forward, Dander inside, the man she’d been chasing at the wheel . . .
Whelan stood, bat in hand, as the vehicle careered onto the lawn and headed off round the building.
This was what you got when you took your eye off the ball. Something landed on your head; either part of that helicopter—not an essential part; it was still airborne—or an improvised sledgehammer put together by the Italian thug who was just now learning to drive. Shirley had been flung across a row of seats, but rolled onto the floor as the carrier went into an interminable curve. A car was bleating close at hand, and ignorant armies were leathering away at each other, their repetitive clatter and thwock the motor’s backbeat, but all she could see was carpet. A pain at the back of her head was coursing through her body, and when she tried to pull herself up, her hands slid from the seat covers. Whatever the bastard had hit her with, she wanted one. Any moment now she was going to make her way to the front of the vehicle and feed him whatever came into reach, but for the time being was lost in a pinball machine, rocking and rolling with every lurch of the van, which was off the gravel now, crashing over the lawn, swerving the copper beech, and scattering the residents who’d gathered behind the building after evacuating their rooms. And then they were on gravel again. Full circle. The van was back on the drive, heading for the road, and taking her with it—mission accomplished, presumably, though she’d yet to discover whose mission, and what outcome they had in mind.