The Thousand Faces of Night - Jack Higgins [32]
'Thanks, Jerry,' she told him. She turned to Marlowe. 'You can drive if you like.' He handed her in and then went around to the other side and climbed behind the wheel.
The big car handled like a dream; when they reached the main road leading out of Barford, Marlowe accelerated until the needle lifted towards eighty. 'It's a lovely car,' he told her.
She smiled. 'The best. Haven't you ever wanted a car like this?'
For a brief moment he hovered on the brink of telling her about his past. About the days when he'd driven a car like this all the time. When he'd had money and clothes and women. Everything a man could ever want and yet he didn't tell her these things. He didn't tell her because he suddenly realized that things like that had lost their importance. A car was a car, it had an engine and four wheels and it got you from place to place. Was it really so important to have one that cost two thousand pounds?
He cursed silently. If he went on thinking things like that he was going to spoil the evening. Deliberately he pushed them back into some dark corner of his mind and turned into the car park of the road house which they had now reached. As they walked towards the entrance, he forced his mind to concentrate on enjoying the rest of the evening.
It was eleven o'clock when he turned the car into the courtyard outside Jenny O'Connor's flat and stopped the engine. For a moment they sat in silence and then she said, 'I really enjoyed myself. You dance exceptionally well for such a big man.'
He shrugged. 'Give the credit to those Martinis. I wasn't with you half the time.'
She chuckled. 'Coming in for a night-cap?' She placed a warm hand on his arm and something stirred inside him. After all, why not? He opened the door and started to get out.
A fist lifted into his face and some inexplicable reflex action caused him to duck so that the blow glanced off his cheek. He slammed the door outwards and it thudded against some solid body as he hurled himself forward, ice cold rage surging through him.
A foot tripped him and he hurtled to the cobbles, instinctively putting his hands to his face and rolling away to avoid the swinging kicks. A foot caught him in the side, another grazed his face and then he was on his feet again. Jenny O'Connor hadn't screamed once. For a moment, a terrible suspicion surged through him that perhaps she had played him false and then her front door opened. Light flooded in a golden shaft across the courtyard.
'Inside, Hugh! Inside!' she cried.
In the shaft of light, Blacky Monaghan and his two friends stood revealed. One of them was holding a length of iron railing in both hands and he suddenly darted forward and swung for Marlowe's head. Marlowe ducked and the bar rang against the stone wall behind him. He lifted his foot savagely into the man's crutch. The bar rattled against the cobbles and the man gave a terrible, choking cry and sank to the ground.
Monaghan stood back and wiped a hand across his brow. From the sound of him he'd been drinking. 'That won't do you much good, you bastard,' he snarled. He spoke to his remaining ally without taking his eyes off Marlowe. 'Go get him, Paddy. Slice him up good.'
Paddy took his hand out of his right pocket and slowly opened an old-fashioned bone-handled razor. He started towards Marlowe, his hand extended. Marlowe waited until he was only three or four feet away, then he dropped to one knee, picked up the iron bar his first assailant had dropped and smashed it across Paddy's right arm. The bone snapped like a dry twig. Paddy slipped to the cobbles in a dead faint, his face contorted into a mask of agony.
As Marlowe started to get up from his knee, Monaghan came in with a rush and kicked him in the side, lifting him over and backwards against the wall. The Irishman moved in fast, his foot raised to stamp down on the unprotected face. Marlowe grabbed the foot and twisted and Monaghan fell heavily across him. For several moments they rolled over and over across the cobbles