Free A Fistful of Knuckles by Tom Graham Page B

last she spoke: ‘
Was
a boxer?’
    Sam nodded.
    Tracy fiddled with her glasses again: ‘I don’t like the sound of this.’
    ‘What do you mean, Tracy?’
    ‘This boxer, he’s gotta be dead, right, which is why you’re askin’ abaht ‘im. Which means you’re looking for somebody to send down.’
    Sam kept his voice soft but clear. ‘Mr Obi
is
dead, yes. But we’re not looking for “somebody to send down”, Tracy, we’re looking for the person who killed him. No fit-ups, no fall-guys. We want the man who killed him. Now – the only reason I’m asking you about Denzil Obi is that I’ve been told he used to know Patsy. They’ve gone up against each other in the ring.’
    ‘Maybe. I dunno. I never go to the fights.’
    ‘Violence not your scene?’
    The moment he’d said it, Sam could have bitten his tongue off. It sounded provocative, sarcastic, even mocking.
    But Tracy took the statement at face value and replied: ‘I don’t like seein’ Patsy gettin’ walloped … though it’s always the other fella what comes off the worst. Besides, Pats don’t like me going out.’
    ‘Going out? You mean, to fights?’
    ‘It’s right for ‘im to know where I am,’ said Tracy, and again she sounded defensive, as if Sam were criticizing her domestic arrangements. ‘Fights are for blokes. Birds like me should be at ‘ome waitin’, keeping the place in order and that. Don’t you ‘ave a missus?’
    ‘Me? No, not a … not a “missus” as such, no. There
is
somebody but, we’re … well, we’re not …’
    ‘There ya go then, you don’t know what it’s like, do ya! But
I
do. A bloke’s missus has her place, and that’s the way it is and that’s what’s right.’ She sat back in her seat and once again readjusted her sunglasses. ‘You’ll find that out for yourself one day, young man.’
    She’s a slave,
Sam thought.
That’s what these bruises are all about. What did she do to provoke them? Wash up a plate and leave a trace of food on it? Speak out of turn? Not have the dinner on the table when Patsy got in?
    Without warning, Tracy scraped back her chair and got to her feet.
    ‘I’ve ‘ad enough of this.’
    ‘Please stay another couple of minutes,’ said Sam. ‘I promise, I have just two or three more questions I’d like to ask and then that’s it, I’m all done.’
    ‘No. You’re all done
now,
mate. I ain’t got nuffing to say that’s no use to you. I walked into a door, and Patsy earns an honest crust down at the fair. He’s a good man. He looks after me. I love him.’ Tracy’s hard London accent twisted that word, stretched it, contorted it:
I laahve ’im.
‘I laahve my Pats, and if some bloke’s snuffed it, that ain’t nuffing to do wiv him and it ain’t nuffing to do wiv me, so there’s your lot.’
    She tottered on her high shoes to the door, pushing hopelessly at the handle for a few seconds until she realized that the door opened
inwards,
and then turned her blackened face towards Sam. He saw himself reflected, twice over, in the dark lenses of her sunglasses.
    ‘Coppers,’ she sneered. There was real venom in her voice.
    And with that, she was gone.
    Sam and Annie sat in silence, looking at each other. Annie raised a hand and laid it against her chest.
    ‘It’s beating fit to bust,’ she said. ‘Why? Why does that girl affect me like that, Sam?’
    Sam tried to say something comforting, but no words came. What the hell did
he
know? All he could do was put his arms around her in a mute, hopeless display of protection. And to himself, he repeated his vow:
    I’ll never let you end up like that girl, Annie. Nobody will lay a finger on you. I’ll die first. If that’s what it takes, I’ll die to save you.

CHAPTER SIX: TOFFEE APPLES
    CID, A-division. The strip lights were glaring, and the air was already thick with the heady aroma of Embassy No. 6 and
Brut.
    Gene Hunt had marshalled his troops. Chewing on a slim panatella, he planted himself squarely in