and air horns blasting around them, the man reared up and grabbed Pete in a bear hug. He was three inches taller than Pete’s six feet and almost twice as wide, and it felt like his whole bulk was muscle and bone. With his right arm trapped inside the bear hug, Pete’s shoulder screamed its agony again as his feet left the floor.
One hand trapped, the other holding the baton and his feet dangling useless, Pete brought his knees up around the guy and tried kicking at the backs of his legs, but it was useless. Instinct urged him to grab the back of the guy’s head and pull back, but he knew what the reaction to that would be. A headbutt. Instead, he brought the baton down between them, placed it under the man’s nose and pushed back hard. The man growled like a big dog as his head was forced back, but his arms didn’t give at all. Then he turned his head, but the steel baton lodged under his cheekbone. He turned further and it was across his ear. Pete saw a chance, took a breath that was limited by the pressure on his ribcage, and bellowed in the man’s ear as loudly as he could. ‘Let go. Now.’
It had the opposite effect.
He felt himself jerked tighter into the crushing embrace. Twisting in the man’s grip, he tried to get a knee between his legs, but the big man anticipated the move and blocked it.
Which left only one option.
Pete dropped the baton and clawed his left hand, going for the face. His first and third fingers found the man’s eyes while his thumb and little finger gripped the sides of his face. The man tried to twist away, wrenching his head around to the side, but Pete held on. He tried the other way and, despite the pain in his wrist, Pete still held the grip, pressing the two fingers into his eye-sockets. With his eyes squeezed shut, the man wrenched his head this way and that, tightening his grip on Pete’s torso even further, but there was no escape. Pete felt the eyeballs give a little under the pressure of his fingers. With a roar, the big man lifted him higher, then slammed him down onto the floor, letting go as he did so and twisting away, body bent as his hands went to his eyes.
Pete took the fall, neck bent to hold his head up off the concrete. Pain lanced through his shoulder again. A quick glance told him he couldn’t see his baton, so he rolled to the side, away from the man, in case he recovered more quickly than expected, then gained his feet. He saw the baton on the floor three feet to his left, reached for it, but was beaten by the older woman he’d taken down earlier. She snatched it back away from him, her face twisting into a hate-filled grin.
‘Now, Mr Piggy…’
Her broad local accent was somehow unexpected, but Pete didn’t allow it to affect his reaction. He lunged forward, ducking his head as he grabbed for the wider end of the baton. Felt the top of his head impact her face as his hand closed around the coated steel. The woman screamed, falling backwards as he snatched the baton backwards out of her hand. He opened his eyes to a horrific image. Her hate-filled eyes blazed over a lower face that was slick and red with blood, the mouth open in a snarl of bloody teeth. He caught her still-extended arm and snapped a handcuff onto the wrist, twisting it hard to turn her around and connecting her hands behind her with the cuffs, then shoving her forward so she fell with a scream onto her face.
Pete turned fast, baton raised and brought it down hard across the back of the big man’s neck, flooring him. Used a second pair of cuffs to bind his wrists around the top of his leg, then looked up and around.
The fight was over.
The one in the ring, too, he saw. A white bull terrier was snarling quietly as it mauled and shook the body of a brindle dog that was covered in blood.
And beyond, the back doors of the barn stood ajar.
‘Shit,’ he muttered. They’d hoped for a clean sweep, but it looked like someone, at least, had got away.
He searched the figures in the barn. Couldn’t see either Jim or Mick Douglas, one of the city PCs who had accompanied them on the raid. A quick count told him that two other members of the crew were missing too. With the gate blocked off, they must be in the fields and woods between here and the university. He lifted his radio. ‘DS Gayle for DS Hancock, over.’
*
‘Oh, come on. Nobody doesn’t like fairgrounds.’ PC Qadir Hussain waved his hand expansively. ‘Look around you. The lights, the smells, the sounds, the excitement: what’s not to like?’
His patrol partner, PC Karen Upton, kept resolutely walking. ‘The lights, the smells, the sounds,’ she said. ‘The crowds, the pickpockets, the cons. The whole thing makes me sick.’
Qadir laughed as one overloud pop song gave way to another, the smell of diesel fumes wafting between the brightly lit stalls to briefly overlay the sweetness of candyfloss, the salt of the ocean and the sourness of cooked onions. ‘Killjoy was here, eh? Down on Plymouth Hoe.’
‘I’ve got nothing against people having fun. I just don’t see it in these places. They’re nothing but a legalised excuse for petty crime.’
‘Who tipped your pram over tonight?’ He glanced across at her as they approached a particularly dense knot of people between a hot-dog stand and a confectionary trailer.
Karen shot him a sour look, her dark eyes fiery in the flickering light of the densely packed seafront fair. ‘Nobody. I just don’t happen to agree with you. It happens sometimes. Get over it.’
They eased through the densely packed throng and suddenly were in the open. He nodded to the dodgems stand to her left. ‘You can’t tell me you don’t enjoy them, at least.’
She turned. ‘OK. There’s an exception to every rule.’
‘Says the woman who’s here to enforce them.’
‘What – you’re a Muslim in a navy town and you don’t appreciate irony?’
Something in her voice as she ended the comment made him glance at her. She was frowning, staring at the expansive ride. ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘The kid on the back of that yellow car over at the far side. There’s something…’
He saw the youth she was talking about. He might have been in his early teens. As he watched, the kid jumped off the back of the yellow car, ran a few steps and hopped onto the back of another, one hand to the upright pole that drew power from the overhead grid to drive the little vehicle. Two girls were in the seat, long hair flying as they laughed, one steering while the other glanced up at their new rider. The kid grinned down at her then dropped into a crouch.
Qadir shook his head. ‘He doesn’t look familiar.’
‘I’m sure I’ve… Got it. He’s on the mispers list. Comes from Exeter, I think.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘There was something about his background.’
‘He’s coming around.’
The young girl was steering the car around the sheet-rubber arena, going with the flow of the multicoloured mass of cars with their laughing and shrieking occupants. They rounded the last corner, heading towards the two uniformed patrol officers. Qadir raised a hand to wave.
‘Hey, kid.’
The youth spotted them. His expression changed. He reached through between the girls, grabbed the steering wheel and shoved it over to the side. The car suddenly angled across the centre of the arena, away from Qadir and Karen.
‘Shit,’ Karen shouted. ‘Go that way.’ She pointed to the right and set off to the left, jumping up onto the wide metal edge of the ride and running along it as Qadir headed the other way. A family group was standing right in his way. He swung around them, started to run, but the crowd was too tightly packed. He pushed through to the edge of the ride, jumped up and started around it in the opposite direction to his partner. Glancing across, he saw the kid jump free of the car an instant before it hit another one at an acute angle. The girls screamed as the kid jumped over the nose of an oncoming red dodgem car, stepped between two others as they passed and reached the