Despite clutching at his throat and squawking, the Scouser didn't stay on the floor for long. He was soon back in the play. He started for me as well, and there was death in his eyes.
The balcony suddenly seemed my best option. I turned and ran the last few strides towards the opening, aware all the time that the Scouser was only a heartbeat behind me.
It seemed ironic that only that morning I'd been wary of even leaning on the rusted balcony rail for fear that it would give way. Now I swung myself over it, double handed, with a certain amount of gusto bordering on abandon. I winced as I heard the dusty graunching noise of the rail's anchor points taking the strain.
For a moment I dangled there, suspended over a drop to the pavement below that looked horrendous from this angle. Oh great idea, Fox! What the hell are you going to do now?
The Scouser made it to the balcony and he decided my next move. Now he'd had his toy taken away from him he resorted to simply punching me in the ribs, through the railing. The air gushed out of my lungs and my hands simultaneously lost their strength.
I let go, half-falling, half-slithering down the crumbling sandstone front wall of the building, my fingers scrabbling at the masonry. I managed to find a tiny crevice on top of a window lintel, and gripped on to it by the weakening strength of three fingers.
I know it's possible to support your body weight by such slender means. I've seen them do it on the telly. Unfortunately, I'm not a whipcord-thin elastic free-form climbing expert. Maybe I just needed one of those little sacks of chalk on my belt. Or is that Sumo wrestlers? Whatever, inexorably, my fingers started slipping.
The Scouser decided to put his two penny-worth in by depth-charging me with what was left of an occasional table. I ducked instinctively, my grip slackening in panic, and I plunged the final ten feet towards the pavement.
In theory, a human body falls at thirty-two feet per second, per second. This probably explains why one moment I was suspended in mid-air, and the next I was thumping down onto the flagstones, with no discernable gap in between.
I landed on my feet, but my legs were forced up and I crashed straight onto one side. Never have I been so grateful for wearing leathers. The kevlar reinforcement in key areas saved my hip and elbow from real damage, but I still hit the ground with enough violence to bash the air out of my battered lungs again.
I forced myself to my feet out of sheer bloody-mindedness. OK, so the smoker might be out of the play as far as a running chase was concerned, but the Scouser was only injured enough to make him mad. If I wanted to be able to stay moving, I had to start moving. Now.
Head thumping, I dragged myself upright, snivelling with the effort, and limped off along the frosted quay.
As a getaway it was pitifully slow. I was so numb that I didn't even register until I'd been going maybe fifty yards that I was heading the wrong way. Not towards the middle of town and the brightly lit, crowded bus station, but towards the industrial estates. Hardly likely to be Piccadilly Circus at this time on a Sunday evening.
I hesitated, nearly turned back, but then I heard the thunder of heavy feet rushing down the wooden staircase. The Scouser was coming after me. I put my head down and stumbled on.
Even in my leathers, the cold was biting. My breath was visible in clouds around me. It didn't help that the whole of the front of my shirt was soaked through. I was wheezing like a chronic consumptive on their last legs.
I ducked through the next alleyway which brought me out onto the waste ground behind the building. They'd pulled down most of the Victorian factory next door, but never really got round to finishing the job, never mind redeveloping the plot.
One piece of the building was still standing, a gable end wall, two storeys high, with part of the roof beams sticking out from it like a skeleton. The rafters hung down at a drunken angle, and there were huge cracks in the brickwork itself. I always expected to wake up one morning to find the whole thing had collapsed and saved the demolition team a job.
The ground was littered with broken bricks and debris. It made my progress far too slow. I turned and headed for the road again, only to spot the silhouette of the Scouser moving along the pavement, obviously searching.
I held my breath, but he was in the glare of the streetlights, and I was still in the shadows. As long as I stayed here I was hidden, but it was a temporary respite.
The Scouser turned inwards, away from the river, and started coming towards me. I edged back the way I'd come, aware all the time that I was fading.
The cold was scorching my lungs and leaching the feeling out of my fingers. I'd started to shake with delayed reaction. My head was banging so hard it was making me feel sick.
All the while, I cursed myself for not hitting the Scouser harder. I could have continued the lock I had on him to its logical conclusion, and cracked his elbow joint using my knee as a fulcrum. I could have hit him in the groin while he was down on the floor. I could have fractured his clavicle, one of the easiest bones to break, or thumped him in the throat to slow down his breathing. I could even have jabbed at his eyes, which would have required little strength and given me a much better chance of evading him now.
I knew, though, that part of me had revolted against what I'd done to stop the fight at the New Adelphi Club. I just hadn't been able to bring myself to do it again. I'm sure my reasoning must have been clear and sound at the time, but now it seemed a foolish, if not deadly mistake.
I tried to creep quietly over the rough ground, while the Scouser closed on my position in a less surreptitious manner. I could see the alleyway in front of me. Only a few yards more.
At that moment, I saw the headlights of a car approaching along the quay. The extra illumination bled into the alleyway. I heard a roar of triumph from behind me, and realised that it had given away my location to the Scouser.
I abandoned all attempts at secrecy and made a run for it. I burst onto the pavement just as the car was drawing level. With my attacker only a few feet behind me, I had no choice but to keep going.
I threw myself into a forward roll, hit the front wing in a dive and clattered over the bonnet. I even had time to realise that the vehicle was a big BMW as I spilled across the bodywork.
The Scouser didn't have quite the same incentive to practice his aerobatics. He skidded to a stop on the pavement, and judged in a second that the odds had tipped against him. He turned and pelted off along the quay on foot.
The BM driver's reactions were remarkably fast. He had already slammed on the brakes by the time I made contact with his paintwork. As I bounced off the other side and tumbled into the far gutter, he had already opened the driver's door and was halfway out.
“Charlie!” he yelled. “Christ, are you all right?”
It was Marc Quinn.
Twelve
I tried to climb to my feet, but my legs wouldn't obey the usual commands. I made two attempts, like a punch-drunk boxer with the count on him. I ended up on my knees both times. The referee would have had no choice but to stop the fight.
Marc saw the state I was in at first glance and his face closed in with fury. He looked longingly after the rapidly disappearing Scouser for a moment, then moved quickly to pick me out of the gutter.
His instinct was to grab me round my ribs to lift me. The pain it caused made me cry out, pushing back away from him and ending up back where I started.
He started to swear then, amazingly inventive oaths about what he was going to do to the people who'd worked me over, as and when he ever caught up with them. It was educational to listen to even if, afterwards, I couldn't remember a single piece of invective.