Dead Men's s Boots

It didn’t go through – not quite – but it made a noise like a roc’s egg hitting a concrete floor, and the entire windscreen became instantly opaque as the shatter-proof glass gave up the ghost and sagged inwards, transformed into a lattice of a million fingertip-sized fragments.

The driver and passenger doors slammed open simultaneously, and the two men leaped out onto the street, howling with rage. They were young and they were fast. When it came to handling themselves in a fight, though, their education had been sadly neglected. The first guy to reach me, the one coming from the passenger side, threw a punch that he might as well have put in the post with a second-class stamp on it. I sidestepped and kicked him in the crotch. He folded in on his pain, his universe shrinking to a few cubic inches of intimate agony.

By that time the gent from the driver’s side had come to join us. He got my elbow in his face while he was still bringing his guard up. Then I barged him and tripped him, landing heavily on top of him with my knee on his chest in case he had any more fight left in him.

He didn’t, though. He made a noise like the last gasp from an untied party balloon, then opened and closed his mouth a few times without managing to get out another sound.

I had my fist raised to deliver a knockout – which, with the assistance of the pavement, was virtually assured – but I hesitated. These guys had folded so quickly it was frankly embarrassing. In my mind’s eye I’d had an image of Lou Beddows’s bat-wielding thugs, which was why I’d gone in so hard and so fast: belatedly, I began to wonder if this time I’d got the wrong end of the baseball bat.

I reached into the guy’s corduroy jacket and searched the inside pockets, coming up with his wallet on the first pass. Flicking it open I found an NUS card in the name of Stephen Bass of University College, London. Wolves in sheep’s clothing? How hard could it be to fake an NUS card?

A glance over my shoulder showed me that the first guy – the one whose sex life was likely to be theoretical for the next few weeks – was still down. The one I was kneeling on was trying to speak again, but only the first syllable – ‘My – my – my –’ – was making it out as he gulped for air.

I removed my knee from his chest, backing off and standing up. He rolled over onto his side and drew a few shuddering, raucous breaths.

‘My – brother’s – van!’ he gasped. ‘You’ve- Eurghhhh! Bastard! Bastard! My – brother’s—’

‘You think I give a stuff about the van?’ I growled. ‘You tried to kill me, you psychopathic fuckwits! You’re lucky I didn’t torch the fucking van with the pair of you in it!’

He tried to sit up, failed, tried again and still couldn’t make his bruised chest muscles bend sufficiently to reach the vertical. He was staring at me in horror, and now he shook his head in tight, trembling arcs.

‘No!’ he moaned. ‘Didn’t – didn’t—’

Righteous wrath was still propelling me, but with less and less momentum by the second. ‘What about the graffiti?’ I demanded. ‘Exorcist equals deceased! You left me your fucking calling card. You wanted me to know you were setting th Kered. is up.’

The guy finally managed to get semi-upright. He looked across at his comrade, who was still curled up in a tight spiral like a dead woodlouse. ‘I told you, Martin!’ he wailed. ‘I told you we’d get into trouble!’

Those words put the whole thing beyond doubt. Stone-cold killers just don’t talk like that.

Anticlimax washed over me in a nauseating wave. Whoever had sabotaged the lift would be miles away by now, and I’d just torn into a couple of feckless students who were probably guilty of nothing worse than a preemptive paint job. My knees trembling slightly, I went across to check the damage on the other guy. He was just beginning to be aware of the outside world again, and I helped him to his feet. By the time I’d done that, the driver – Stephen Bass, esquire, if his NUS card was to be believed – had turned his attention back to the van, and was trying to pull the fire extinguisher free without making the punctured windshield collapse in on itself. He gave up quickly, because every attempt to move it precipitated a small shower of broken glass.

‘He’s gonna kill me!’ he kept moaning. ‘He’s gonna kill me!’ Then he turned and pointed at me, tears in his eyes. ‘I’m calling the police, you bastard. You won’t get away with this.’

I shrugged. ‘Sorry, friend. Threatening to murder people can give them the wrong impression. I don’t think the police are going to be too sympathetic under the circumstances.’

He sat down on the van’s step-up board, overcome with misery. ‘My brother needs the van for work,’ he said, his voice choked. ‘He only lets me borrow it when my car’s off the road. He’s not even in the AA.