Bright Spark by Gavin Smith Page A

looked at the door, wedged open with a folded
beer-mat, gouges and new splinters in the woodwork where it should have been
secure. Silence swelled, breath being held. He heard himself mutter under his
breath. Shadows inside gathered and surged outwards with a smack of metal on
wood.
    Slowey
felt the world cease to spin on its axis for a second as adrenaline surged
through him, pins and needles in his veins. He’d thrown his weight against the
door, heard something grunt and fall to the floor. There was more barking.
Already his shoulders were sliding on the black emulsion coating the door and
his worn shoes scrabbled for purchase in the gravel. He reached into his jacket
again, fumbled with a press stud as the door bucked against him and felt the
coarse grip of his baton.
    Slowey
flicked the baton, felt a twinge in his wrist as it extended and locked, and
clenched his teeth.  A silent second stretched and plans jostled for attention
in his mind. Should he run for the car and his phone, shout for the landlord,
announce himself to those inside and demand they come quietly? Should he stand
aside from the door just as this villain reached their full momentum in the
hope that they might land stunned at his feet? Surely it couldn’t be Murphy?
    He
was looking at his watch; it was always good to know the correct time of arrest
for statements. Then he was lifted from his feet and sitting on the gravel,
staring at blue eyes and gritted teeth in a red balaclava. The eyes were
moving, the thief getting up, moving more quickly than he was, tracksuit
bottoms ripped at the knee with a gloss of new blood, crow-bar in one hand.
There was barking somewhere, closer, in a different place. 
    The
figure was standing now, one foot pointed at the street, eyes darting between
Slowey and a clean escape, crow-bar still raised. Slowey felt pain seeping into
his back where it connected with something blunt. He was too old and clapped
out for this nonsense.  A small voice wanted to reason with this person, to
conjure up logic of such beauty that anyone listening would declare that it was
a fair cop and handcuff themselves to his car. Slowey listened to a louder
voice.
    He
flung out his legs, scissored them around the figure’s ankles and rolled
blindly. The crow-bar connected with some far off part of him; perhaps a spent
blow, perhaps he was just numb. He rolled upright, hurling phlegm and
fricatives and flailing with the baton. Pressure loomed behind his eyes as a
glorious anger burst its banks. The shock of the baton’s impacts registered but
weren’t felt. Weak blows to knees and elbows and ribs then, as he rose to his
knees and gained some space to swing, to the shoulders and the base of the
skull and the knuckles where they gripped matted hair, the man now shrunken,
foetal.
    Someone
was imploring, a big man’s voice becoming smaller, an echo from the bottom of a
well; Slowey’s vision condensed until he could see only the stricken youth
hemmed by an oval of shadow. There was blood and hair plastered to the tip of
his baton and he couldn’t flick them off, no matter how hard he tried.
    A
sound behind him might have been another footstep slewing on the gravel. A wail
began between his ears, slowly, like arthritic hands cranking an air raid siren
into life. He was the good cop, a talker, not a pummeller. What did his body
think it was doing? The back of his head was so wet. Had he fallen asleep in a
puddle? He couldn’t find his feet but he remembered squeezing them into the
shoes that had never fitted properly but he’d lost the receipt and shoes never
fitted him anyway. His teeth bit hard, a taste of metal, his head tried to jolt
itself from his neck, vision flaking into grey. Warm wet head then head hit
hard. Wasn’t that the wrong way round?

CHAPTER THREE
     
     
     
           One
side of Firth’s face bulged and ached, nerves electric with pain. Even the
timid caress of the sun as it cleared the cathedral and the tower blocks