And then, quick as a cat, she jammed the syringe into the fleshy base of his right hand, and started to depress the plunger.
He screamed in pain, and dropped the gun. He stared down in horror as the syringe began to empty. Suddenly he unfroze. He tore his wounded hand away from her and yanked the needle out, throwing it as far from him as he could.
I remember once reading an article by some journalist on the tender topic of male sterilisation. Arguing in favour, he wrote that the after-effects of the procedure were no longer-lasting and no worse than a sharp blow in the stones from a soccer ball. Clearly this was a man who had never played football.
I remember my Dad once saying of an infamous serial killer, ‘Hanging’s too good for that bastard. It’s a good kick in the balls he needs.’
And that, right there in the heart of the Geneva woods, was what I gave Rawdon Brooks, as he stood staring at his hand. Only it wasn’t; it was worse than that. I gave him, left, right and centre, the legendary Oz Blackstone toe-poke, which may not look elegant, but when perfectly delivered, as this one was, can send the ball, plural in this case, flying further, straighter and faster than the finest instep delivery. I’ll never know for sure, but I like to think that I tore them clean off.
He didn’t scream. He howled. It was a primal sound, like a bear with its paw caught in a man-trap. I saw Prim staring at him, her mouth wide open in awe at the depths of his agony.
For good measure, as he stood there, clutching his person, knees turned in in the classic manner, I stuck the head on him. I’m not as good at that as I am at the toe-poke, but this was a pretty fair example. My forehead caught him on the left cheekbone, stunning me slightly and rocking him backwards.
I waited for him to go down, as reason told me he must. I stood back and waited for him to crumple. I mean he was a man, and I’d just nailed him with a blow from which not even the strongest guy can recover.
Yet he was still on his feet, the great bastard. His eyes were rolling, his cheek was swelling, his chest was heaving, but he was still on his feet. He reminded me bizarrely of Charles Laughton after his flogging in Hunchback, only Esmeralda was nowhere in sight. As I stood there watching him, I became transfixed. When his hand shot out and caught me round the throat, I didn’t move. It wasn’t until he began to squeeze that I realised how strong he was. Within a second or two my eyes began to swim. My hands went to his wrist, but his grip was locked on tight.
I was thinking about nothing other than him, and dying. The two muffled plops from my left hardly registered. What did register was Brooks’ hand loosening its grip as he straightened up and fell backwards. His blazer had fallen open, and I saw the sudden bloom of red on his chest.
I looked behind me. Primavera stood there, as I had never seen her before. Her hands were locked together around the run in a markswoman’s grip. Her eyes were cold and hard. And then all at once, they softened, and she started to shake.
I grabbed the gun from her and jammed it into a side pocket of the satchel. On the ground, Brooks rolled over, scrambling around, trying to get to his feet. Christ, was there no stopping this guy!
‘Come on!’ I yelled at Primavera, dragging her back to the real world. ‘Let’s go!’ I grabbed the satchel, and realised for the first time that I still had that stupid duffel bag slung over my shoulder. I threw it away and grabbed her hand, pulling her behind me as we plunged out of the wood, back towards the green space of the park. For a while I thought we were lost, but at last we saw light ahead. As we cleared the woods, we looked at each other. Behind us we could hear the crashing of pursuit.
‘Come on!’ said Prim this time. ‘Let’s get back to the car. He doesn’t know where that is, or what it looks like.’
‘Can you remember the way?’
‘I think so. Come on. Run!’ We raced off across the grass, towards the gates. Handicapped as I was by the weight of the bag, I could still keep pace with Prim. Or maybe she was hanging back for me; I didn’t have the breath to ask her.
We had turned into the street and were racing along the pavement when I looked back over the fence into the park and saw our pursuer break out of the woods. It wasn’t a run as much as a shamble, more like Quasimodo than ever. His left eye was closed tight, and his shirt front was soaked in blood. He was loping along, almost doubled over, but he was loping helluva fast.
‘Leg it, for Christ’s sake,’ I gasped. ‘Here comes the Devil and he is pissed off!’
We sprinted through the pedestrians, knocking the wee ones aside, excusing ourselves around others. From the sounds of outrage behind us, I guessed that Brooks was clearing everyone out of his way. ‘Why isn’t the heroin stopping him, if it was meant to kill us?’ I gasped.
‘Because I just stuck it in his hand, not in a vein. Just shut up and run!’
When we reached the traffic lights, the pedestrian crossing was showing the red man sign, and the vehicles were flowing fast and freely. I grabbed Prim’s hand and tugged her along the pavement, off towards the next corner and Rue Berner, looking, searching as we ran, for a gap in the traffic. At last, a chance appeared. We darted out between two cars, did a frantic shimmy in the middle of the road and made it to the other side.
We stopped, and looked back. Brooks was glaring at us across the street. His good eye looked wild, and his chest was heaving, but his eyes were still dead set on us. ‘God, the heroin must be fuelling him,’ gasped Prim.
If it was, it made him start straight across the road after us, looking neither right nor left.
If you’ve ever heard a dog, a big dog, being hit by a vehicle, you never forget the sound. But if you’ve ever heard the noise of a human being run over by a big vehicle, that’s something that will give you nightmares for weeks afterwards.
There’s the squeal of brakes and the awful thump, but then there’s a tearing, dragging, cracking, crushing sound, and an awful last gasp. We were legging it up the pavement, when we heard it all. Gradually we slowed to a halt, like we were in a film and the camera was breaking down, until, reluctantly, we turned around.
It was a tourist bus, from Bathgate, of all places. When we saw him, Brooks was still moving under its wheels, his head and bloody chest sticking out. The rest of him was hidden, fortunately, under the bus, but around him, a crimson pool was starting to spread.
Instinctively, Primavera started towards him, but I took her hand, holding her back. ‘No, honey,’ I said, as gently as I could. ‘You’re not a nurse any more, remember. We’ve won. Now let’s just get ourselves out of here.
‘You and I are going home. I don’t know about you, but I am absolutely knackered.’
In which the boat sails and our ship comes in
We almost melted the wee Peugeot, but we made it to St Malo just in time to catch the night crossing. And this time there was a cabin available; a tiny cabin, but one of our very own, with a shower and two berths.
A Grand Prix circuit: small, but very definitely Formula One.
‘Primavera, Primavera …’ I moaned her name in the dim glow of the emergency light. She leaned her head towards me, kissing my chest, biting my nipples gently, responding to my touch and moving her self against my hands.
‘Where have you come from?’ I asked, wallowing at last in the perfection of her body, in her firm, full, big-nippled breasts, in the amazing narrowness of her waist, in the rounded curve of her hips, in the flatness of her belly, in the thick nest of wiry blonde hair at her centre, shining and sparkling as she moved.