Doctor Who_ Combat Rock - Mick Lewis [10]
‘Get away from me before I do something you’ll regret.’
‘Big man! Always the big man! Santi knows you not so bad really. You love Santi.’ Her face was hard with her own anger now. She was only small, but a wildness flared in her features that made Pan hesitate from delivering the blow he was about to dole out.
‘Love? You stupid whore... listen to yourself! I’ve only known you a week. I love what you do in my bed and nothing more, and I can easily find plenty of that elsewhere.’ He spun away from her, and lo and behold, further along the bar to his right a cute Indoni girl with a short, stylish haircut was giving him the eye. He grinned back and raised his drink. Santi watched helplessly as he marched up to join the girl, fighting back her tears of shame and fury.
Jamie saw it all. He was trying not to look over at the older man, but Santi’s theatrical actions were hard to miss. Wina was watching too, and a slight smile played across her lips when she saw Pan approach the new girl.
‘Bad man,’ she said to Jamie pointedly.
‘Aye, an’ she’s better off without him, I’d say.’
Wina looked a little put out. ‘Why you care? You like this girl?’
‘Which girl?’ Jamie scratched his head in puzzlement, feeling as though he was missing something somewhere. ‘Och, no. I just don’t like bullies that’s all.’ She frowned at the word and Jamie laughed. He decided to buy them both another drink rather than get involved in a laborious explanation of the expression. As he got up he could see the rejected Indoni girl make her way desolately over to a seat at the far corner of the long bar from where she watched her former companion flirting with his new consort.
‘You Mafiaaaa...’
Pan lit his cigarette and looked at the girl. She wasn’t as pretty or as sleek as Santi, but what the hell. She would keep his bed warm tonight, and maybe without so much constant jabbering as his last woman. She had big eyes and big lips and a round face with a slightly flat nose. Cute, sexy, but no real prize. Not like that other one... the one with the boy. He dragged on his cigarette angrily and realized the girl he was with – what had she said her bloody name was? Oh yeah...
Kety, not that it made any difference to him, he would have forgotten her by tomorrow – was saying something to him.
‘You Mafiaaa...’
‘What?’
‘Mafia number one,’ she hissed, gazing up at him with something like awe.
‘Yeah, whatever. Why d’ya think I’m Mafia?’
‘My friend say you Mafiaaa. Maybe bad man.’
He grinned. ‘And you like bad men?’
‘Bad men pay well’ Her turn to grin.
He caressed her bottom. ‘Depends.’
She cocked her head on one side, and Pan could see Santi sitting dejectedly at the bar gazing at him. He chuckled and drew sensuously on his cigarette, just for her benefit.
‘I not understand.’ Kety helped herself to a cigarette from Pan’s pack. He considered cuffing her for her forwardness, then relaxed and grinned again. And hell, here he was actually lighting her cigarette. Perhaps he was more of a gentleman than he’d ever figured. Or perhaps he just liked whores.
Bless ’em.
‘Depends how much and what I get for it.’ He smirked at Santi and put his arm around the prostitute.
‘You Mafiaaa...’ she repeated, scrunching up her nose in an expression half cute, half ugly.
‘Yeah,’ he said and dragged her towards the door, feeling Santi’s gaze on him all the way across the club. ‘I’m a bad man all right.
Jayapul. The town that when it does sleep, always has bad dreams. Shanty town blues, and curfew misery. The Indoni army patrolled the filthy walkways and squares looking for sedition, or anything they didn’t like the look of. Power rifles slung on their backs, boots clacking demonstratively. Anyone with sense got out of their way.
The streets were dark, the stars buried. A child cried somewhere in the stacked hutches the local Papul used for houses. One of the soldiers flipped his gun down off his shoulder, swung it towards the origin of the sound, playfully wondering what might ensue if he let loose a pulse into the grubby iron shed where he knew a family was cowering at