A Fistful of Knuckles (2 page)

‘What’s his name again?’ Gene asked, looking down at the dead man.

The landlord said: ‘Denzil Obi. A darkie name. He were one of them half-castes. You know, half-coloured, half-normal. Mongrel type.’

‘Mixed race,’ Sam corrected him. ‘Please – it’s not “half-caste”, it’s not “mongrel” – it’s mixed race.’

‘Don’t make no difference now,’ observed the landlord. ‘Can you take him with you, lads? I want to let the room as soon as possible, like.’

‘Meat wagon’s on the way,’ said Gene.

‘Do you boys clean up too? I mean, look at them carpets.’

‘I’ll Brasso your flamin’ knick-knacks on me way out an’ all. What state was the front door in when you found him? Had it been forced?’

‘No. I had to use my key. I came up because Denzil was behind on the rent, which weren’t like him. He were regular, you know. A good lad, for a coon.’

‘Please!’ Sam insisted irritably, speaking over his shoulder as he looked around the flat. ‘Can we knock it off with the BNP language.’

Gene shot a glance at the landlord: ‘No, I don’t know what the flamin’ chuff he’s on about either.’

The landlord scratched at the hairy dome of his stomach through the holes in his string vest. ‘I was just sayin’ that Denzil were okay, that’s all. He didn’t deserve this.’

Sam looked at the front door; it was fitted with three sturdy bolts and a spyhole for seeing who was on the other side of it.

‘Security conscious,’ said Sam.

He stepped carefully across the blood-splattered floor and examined the window.

‘No sign of this being forced either, Guv. Looks like Denzil opened the door and let his killer walk right in.’

What little furniture was in the room lay overturned. Clothes and possessions were strewn about the floor. There were bloodstains on the bed and up the walls. There were even splatters of red across the ceiling.

‘He didn’t go quietly,’ said Sam. ‘Must have been a hell of a fight.’

‘And this lad looks like he could handle himself,’ said Gene, indicating Obi’s muscular arms and torso. ‘Body builder, was he?’

‘Boxer,’ said the landlord.

‘Who beats a boxer to death?’ asked Sam, shaking his head.

‘Another boxer?’ shrugged the landlord.

‘Or a whole gang of ‘em,’ put in Gene.

Sam looked about the room: ‘Not much room in here for a lynch mob, guv. Barely enough room for the body.’

‘You saying this place is
small
?’ piped up the landlord, looking defensive. ‘It’s
cosy.
People like it.’

‘Any of your other cosy tenants hear anything?’ asked Gene. ‘This whole building must have been shaking like a fun house at the fair when this boy got walloped.’

‘No other tenants, not here. Downstairs is empty.’

‘What about the flat above this one?’

‘Just a couple of layabouts up there, but they’ve buggered off to India or something. Students.’

‘Pity,’ said Gene, flexing his hands and making his leather driving gloves creak. ‘I’m in the mood for questioning students.’

Sam peered down at what remained of Denzil Obi. He had been beaten into anonymity, his nose and eyes reduced to swollen puddings of battered flesh. His mouth had been battered into a misshapen, toothless hole. He was barely even recognizable as a human being. The only identifying mark Sam could make out was the large spider tattooed on the dead man’s neck, its spiky legs reaching up towards the remains of Denzil’s ear.

Suddenly, something else caught Sam’s attention – something inside of Denzil’s slack, gaping mouth. He leant closer.

‘You’re getting unpleasantly intimate with the victim, Tyler,’ Gene said gruffly. ‘Your little woman not keeping you satisfied?’

‘Guv, there’s something in the back of his throat.’

‘His pelvis, probably, given the pasting he’s had.’

‘No, Guv, it looks like something metallic.’

‘His fillings?’

Sam peered closer, trying to see without touching the body. Gene loomed over him.

‘Well? What is it?’

‘I can’t quite see, Guv. Whatever it is, it’s gone down his throat.’

‘Don’t be squeamish, Sammy-boy. Have a rummage.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Sam protested.

Gene loomed closer: ‘Think of it like a first date – stick your fingers in and see what you can find.’

‘For God’s sake, Guv, I’m not qualified to conduct an autopsy!’

‘You don’t need ten years in medical school to fish out a ball bearing, Sam. Dive in, he won’t bloody bite.’

‘Guv, this is a crime scene, and we’re going to act professionally, and we’re not going to start mucking about with the body, and we’re not going to-’

Gene ripped off his driving glove, elbowed Sam aside, and thrust his hand into Obi’s mouth. After a spot of blind fumbling, he produced something and held it up with bloodied fingers. It was a bullet.

‘Blimey …’ murmured the landlord. ‘Is that what did him in?’

‘If it is, then Denzil Obi choked to death,’ said Gene. ‘This round hasn’t been fired.’

Sam squinted closely at the bullet. It was indeed perfectly intact.

‘Somebody shoved it down his throat,’ he said.

‘Either that or the coon got peckish,’ said Gene. And then, with enough sarcasm to sink a battleship: ‘Sorry, Tyler.
Mixed. Race
.’

The coroner peeled off his latex gloves, dropped them into a pedal bin, and belched like a walrus.

‘Beg pardon. I had whelks,’ he said, patting his flabby chest and growling out more gas.

This put into Sam’s mind the ghastly image of the fat coroner’s digestive system clogged with semi-digested seafood. He felt his own stomach heave uncomfortably. How the hell could the coroner talk like that, here of all places? Damn it all, they were at a morgue not a restaurant!

Unmoved and unconcerned, Gene Hunt lounged against a wall, his arms folded, his manner casual: ‘So Doc, what’s the story with Rocky Marciano? Anything for us to go on?’

‘Denzil Obi’s been dead about two or three days,’ said the coroner. ‘He suffered a prolonged and powerful attack, almost exclusively to the face and head. Massive fractures to the parietal and zygomatic regions.’

‘That bit and that bit,’ translated Gene for Sam’s benefit, pointing to the side of his head and then his cheek.

‘Nice to see you’re picking up the lingo, Inspector,’ said the coroner, impressed.

‘I’m not just looks and charm,’ growled Gene. ‘So what was the weapon used? Iron bar was it? Baseball bat?’

‘Interestingly, no. The nature of the skull fractures are inconclusive, but the contusions to the face and head bear very clear imprints of a human fist. Punch marks, gentlemen.’

‘Well that makes sense,’ put in Sam. ‘Denzil Obi was a boxer. Are you sure these weren’t old bruises?’

The coroner smiled condescendingly and said: ‘I flatter myself, young man, that I can tell an old contusion from a cause of death. Denzil Obi was punched – repeatedly, and with impressive force,’ he fought to suppress another deep, whelky belch, ‘until he died from cerebral haemorrhaging.’

‘But … whoever did this must have hands the size of anvils!’ Sam said.

Again, the coroner shook his head: ‘Quite the opposite. A broad fist wouldn’t inflict quite this degree of concentrated damage; the force of the blows would be more widely dissipated. The man who killed Obi had
small
hands – small, with strongly condensed bone structure, rock solid, packed tight. I measured the bruises; the man who inflicted them has fists slightly less than three inches across the knuckles – about the same length as your index finger, Inspector Tyler. Every punch would have been like an intensely focused hammer blow.’

‘One bloke, you reckon?’ asked Gene. ‘Just one bloke to overpower Obi and beat him to death?’

‘It’s perfectly feasible,’ said the coroner. ‘I could find no evidence that the victim was restrained in any way during the attack, and all the injuries he sustained are consistent with an attack from a single assailant. One man attacked him. One man killed him.’

Gene pulled a sceptical, pouting expression, but the coroner smiled and went on. ‘A single blow, powerful enough and delivered in the right place, could leave even a professional boxer reeling. If the victim was dazed and semi-conscious, his assailant could rain blows on him unresisted. In this case, though, Obi didn’t go quietly. He fought back – at least for a while. His hands were freshly cut and bruised. The struggle may have lasted some minutes.’ He grunted up a noisy bubble of stinking air. ‘Like the struggle between me and these whelks. Excuse me, gentlemen – if I don’t get some liver salts down me
I’m
going to be the next one on the slab.’

‘But what about the bullet?’ asked Sam as the coroner pushed past him.

‘Shoved down his throat
after
he died,’ the coroner called back as he strode away down the corridor. ‘A tantalizing mystery for you sleuths to puzzle over.’

And then, with one last resounding belch, he was gone, leaving Sam and Gene alone.

‘Denzil was a boxer,’ said Sam. ‘Whoever killed him was a boxer too – somebody who knows what they’re doing with their fists.’

‘Most likely,’ said Gene. ‘A boxer with a grudge – and very small hands.’

Without warning, Gene reached out and roughly grabbed Sam’s hand.

‘Guv, what the hell are you doing?!’

‘The length of your index finger, he said,’ growled Gene, peering at Sam’s finger. ‘It’s gonna be like Cinderella and the glass slipper; whoever owns the fist that matches your pink little manicured digit, he’s our man.’

‘I’m not playing Prince Charming for
you,
Guv! You’re not using
my
finger as a measuring stick for murderers!’

‘I thought you’d always wanted to give me the finger, Sammy-boy.’

‘Give over!’

Sam wrenched himself free from Gene’s powerful grasp.

‘Let’s at least
try
and behave like professional coppers, Guv,’ he said. ‘Denzil knew his killer. That would explain why he let him into the flat. They quarrelled – fought – after a few minutes, Denzil was overpowered, and the killer pummelled him to death. But why stick a bullet down his throat afterwards?’

Gene shrugged: ‘Symbolic.
I
dunno. We’ll ask the killer when we nick him.’

‘And how are we going to do that, guv? Where are we going to start?’

‘Somewhere conducive to contemplation, where the mighty Gene Hunt noggin can work its magic.’

‘And where’s that, guv?’ asked Sam.

Gene looked at him flatly and said: ‘Where’d you think, dumb-dumb? And
you’ll
be the one getting them in.’

The Railway Arms was quiet at this time of day. The atmosphere seemed poised, ready for the crush of drinkers, the clamour of manly voices, the braying of blokey laughter that would fill the place come evening time. The familiar pumps gleamed along the bar, promising Watney’s, Flowers and Courage on draught. The ashtrays sat clean and expectant, like baby birds awaiting feeding. The floor was not yet sticky underfoot with spilt beer. And Nelson, resplendent in his flowing dreadlocks and a gaudy shirt depicting the sun setting over a Caribbean island, seemed nicely mellowed, perhaps conserving his energies for the bustle and bullshit of the evening crowd.

‘
Very
thirtsy coppers today,’ he observed, glancing at his watch as Gene strode in through the door, Sam in his wake. ‘What’s the reason for dis early visit? Are we celebrating victories or drownin’ our woes?’

‘One of your lot just got whacked,’ announced Gene, leaning against the bar and sparking up a fag. ‘We need a moment to cogitate on the clues. Two pints of best, and make it snappy.’

‘What you mean, one o’
my
lot?’ asked Nelson as he pulled the pints.

‘A black,’ said Gene, speaking around the cigarette clamped between his lips. Sam literally cringed. Gene glanced at him, ‘All right then, a ‘mixed race black’. ‘Appy now, Tyler? Whatever you call him, he was mashed to smithereens like a blood pudding under a steamroller.’

‘Is dat so?’ said Nelson, raising his eyebrows but playing it very cool. ‘Terrible. It’s a terrible world we’re livin’ in.’

‘It is,’ put in Sam. ‘There’s terrible things that get done.
And
said. Nelson, I apologise on behalf of my DCI. He isn’t really a pig-ignorant National Front scumbag racist, he just sounds like one.’

‘Who you calling an NF scumbag?’ retorted Gene. ‘I’m colour blind, me. I know all the words to the Melting Pot Song.
Gonna get a white bloke, stick him in a black bloke …
’

‘That really is enough, Gene!’ Sam silenced him, and he meant it.

But Nelson was laughing: ‘Blue Mink! Now I tink I got that stashed away some place.’

‘You see?’ growled Gene, gulping down a mouthful of beer and giving himself a froth moustache. ‘Nelson knows what’s racialist and what ain’t. The trouble with you, Tyler – well, apart from all the
other
troubles with you – is that you think screaming like a nancy with a stinging dick at what normal blokes say makes you some sort of saint. Well it don’t. It just makes you a mouthy get with no sense of what’s what.’

‘It’s a little thing called political correctness, Guv. It’s all to do with treating diversity with respect.’

‘“Diversity with respect”!’ sneered Gene, downing another frothy draught. ‘Kid gloves is for butlers and snooker refs, Tyler. You can’t wear ‘em in the street. Or on the beat. Now knock it off and let the mighty Genie noggin’ get to work. I got a killer to catch.’

Gene carried his pint and smouldering fag over to corner table and ensconced himself.

Sam shook his head and turned to Nelson: ‘I’m sorry you have to hear talk like that.’

‘Oh, forget it, friend!’ Nelson beamed at him, his showy Jamaican accent vanishing and being replaced with the broad tones of Burnley. ‘Water off a duck’s back. Your boss, he don’t mean no harm. He’s just repeating what he’s learnt.’

‘It’s not right, the way he talks. Where I come from, Nelson, it’s all very different.’

‘Yup,’ said Nelson. ‘And where
I
come from too.’

‘Have you been drinking with the guv again?’ asked Annie, looking up at Sam from her desk at CID. ‘Sam, it’s barely lunchtime!’