Shadow Play by Frances Fyfield Read Free Book Online Page A

balled into the furthest corner. Her knees were clasped to her chest and her hands were over her ears in an attitude which suggested both fear and indifference. Centre stage, two young men in half police uniform, with navy serge trousers beneath blue shirts, one ripped but both still buttoned, wrestled and punched with the savagery of fighting dogs. ‘You cunt, you bastard.’ Guttural, meaningless insults, as ineptly delivered as the blows which nevertheless made sounds of bruising flesh.
    They were equal in weight, size and hatred, but neither had half of Michael’s disciplined bulk. He stepped towards them, crunching over broken glass, and seized each rutting youth by the collar. He took a fistful of stiff cotton shirting in each hand, twisted it, yanking the material against each throat, and with this purchase, braced himself and flung them apart. One staggered backwards against the wall, his head striking with a sickening thud, the other reverberated against the wardrobe door, falling half across the crouching youth and the girl, who shrank further away. In the silence of panting breath, Michael noticed that she held her skirt over her naked loins and on the floor, in the brief moment when the light swung back, he saw a tracery of lace underwear. The room smelt strongly of sweat, fish, cooking meat; a stench of smells, with the last scent of blood carrying the taste of iron into his mouth. Gradually, the light slowed its wild arc and the faces became clear.
    â€˜Parkin? John! Williams! You clowns! Will you wash your faces now and report for duty? Or you’ll catch it.’ The radio on Michael’s belt crackled: they all remembered who and what they were, moved in a dream of automatic response to orders. In stumbling from the room, all but the boy crouched on the floor, whose room it was, cast a look of venom in the direction of the girl on the bed. PC Michael glanced at her in sheer dislike and left her there. It was only on the way back he felt sorry for his behaviour. At half-past ten, Police Sergeant Morgan convened the nightshift parade again and shouted at them all, innocent or guilty, including PC Michael, for repeating the cock-and-bull story he had been told, designed to exonerate them all. Michael stared straight ahead with his mild eyes; the rest were silent and resentful. Third from the end, the smallest of the relief, PC Williams, displayed a swelling eye, now pink, soon to be purple. He kept his mouth closed to relieve the pain of a broken tooth, but he could not prevent himself crying like a baby, raising his fist to his swollen mouth to prevent the shameful sound of a boy whimpering.
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    â€˜I knew you wanted steak really. You could have put it on your eye, then I could have cooked it.’
    â€˜Bit like getting a dog to bury it in the garden to tenderise it. You have the sort of ideas to encourage a vegetarian. Did you read that one in the book?’
    â€˜Fish is good for you. Isn’t it? Protein without fat? But think of how they catch it, all that thrashing around—’
    â€˜You could do with a bit of fat. Slender’s one thing, being thin, another …’
    â€˜Now look who’s talking. You look as if you could snap in half.’
    â€˜Well, if you want to try,’ Bailey said, ‘I’m all yours. Be gentle with me, though. I’m not a well man.’
    Helen laughed, like the old days, when she had first sat on the worn but brilliant colours of his junk-shop sofa and admired the barrenness of his walls. She didn’t even think of the journey home, the cold outside, the balcony cat which had sat on her pristine blouse and made it grey without any comment from either of them. Even then, he had been haunted by the vision of keeping her thus, a fixture in his life instead of this ever-moving, ever-tantalising target. He supposed a woman as handsome as this, as kind but as definite as this, was bound to be this way. Bailey could no longer