The Age of Odin - James Lovegrove [51]
Arrest. Custody. Bail. Court.
The police officer who put the plasticuffs on me knew me. We'd had a couple of run-ins before, normally around pub closing time. He knew I was ex-military, knew about my record, my hospitalisation, my discharge. At the trial he told the judge that I had a history of ABH and public affray, infractions which he and his colleagues had gone easy on because of my "background circumstances." The judge suggested that perhaps if they hadn't been quite so lenient in the past, the distressing incident with Mr Sellers might have been averted. The cop took the rebuke on the chin.
This, after all, wasn't mere ABH, it was GBH. Sellers had needed extensive facial reconstruction surgery. He would never look the way he used to and many of the nerves in his face no longer worked, but fortunately he had suffered no brain damage. He glowered at me throughout every minute of the trial and that was hard to take - if looks could kill and all that - but it was Gen up in the viewing gallery whose gaze weighed the most heavily on me. The hurt and recrimination in her eyes. The set of her jaw, which said, This is it, Gid, I've put up with it so far, but this is the final straw...
I got the divorce papers while I was banged up. I signed them, sent them back. She never visited. Why should she? I'd disappointed her once too often. I wasn't the man she'd married. Hadn't been for a long time.
The stretch handed down was surprisingly short, which caused outrage in some quarters: Sellers and family shouting "Shame! Disgrace!" in court, and a handful of indignant letters in the local newspaper. The judge, for all that he'd ticked the cops off for being soft on me, was soft on me himself. An expert witness, a shrink who specialised in the psychology of people who'd suffered major head trauma, stood in the box and said there was every chance I'd not been in full control of my faculties. The injury to my brain could well have upset my mental equilibrium. It was possible I was still suffering the after-effects of the IED explosion, even two years on. "In light of such testimony," the judge said during his summing-up, "you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, may wish to take the view that Mr Coxall is a man with diminished responsibility for his actions and thus cannot be held wholly accountable for them. You may also wish to take into account his role in Her Majesty's Armed Forces and his service to our country, in the performance of which he suffered most grievously." An eight-month custodial sentence was what I was given.
I'd have got away with serving only six of those eight months, too, if I hadn't had that altercation with the crackhead on B Wing. No time off for good behaviour.
Once out, I made a vow never to let the blackness rise again. If I ever felt it welling up inside, I would simply remove myself from whatever situation was triggering it. I would walk away. All the fights I'd been getting into, the blackness was behind them. It was to blame. I had to contain it, corral my blind rage. It would do me no good.
Except now. Facing Hval the Bald.
Now, the blackness was my great ally. My secret weapon. My ace. It came, and I let it fill me. Consume me. Overwhelm me.
Five minutes later, our duel was over. Hval was on his hands and knees on the arena floor, and I stood over him, issgeisl raised. His head was bowed. Blood - his blood - matted his fur and covered the ice in congealing smears, bright red against the glittering whiteness. His breath rattled in and out, thickly, stickily. Punctured lung. He was a goner. We both knew it. Everyone in the cavern did. The frost giants looked on in appalled silence. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Bergelmir clasping his throat, aghast.
"Fancy that," I said, loud enough for