Chapter 13
The well-built black man left the stage of the Mecca dance hall by the rear door and headed down the corridor to the staff and artists wash room, satisfied that they were giving the sort of performance they had built their reputation on. Above the tight leather trousers the small black leather waistcoat was open, showing the sweat glistening on the deep and hairless chest. He opened the door to the washroom and went inside to complete the urgent biological function necessary before he could relax and enjoy a few tins of beer in the hour they had before their final session.
Once over the threshold of the artist’s toilets at the rear of the Mecca dance hall, he bent his face close to the cracked mirror and examined his nose closely. The swelling and bruising had gone now and it was impossible to tell that it had ever been broken. He gave a sigh of satisfaction and straightened up. That crazy bastard would have at least marked him for life and maybe even killed him if there hadn't been a half dozen of the brothers there admiring the custom job he had just completed on Elwin's old Ford Pilot V8. He turned to the urinal shaking his head at the memory of it and with some difficulty extracted his penis from the skintight leather trousers. At first, when he had asked for him by name, he had thought the guy was a possible customer. He shook his head ruefully in remembrance.
Coming back to the present he shook the drips off and turned from the urinal holding his stomach in order to get the zip closed again. He rinsed his hands and took a long look around the minuscule toilets that gloried in the name of Artist’s rest room. He wouldn't be seeing this place again. This was their last show at the Mecca now that Reliable Records had signed them. That's why he hadn't wanted Jenson prosecuted, because the record company had insisted that the whole business was cleared before they would sign them up. That and the fact that Rasta didn't want the world to know that some white guy of nearly forty had half killed him. He checked his face in the mirror once more and then with a smile to himself opened the door and stepped out into the passage.
The blonde was leaning back against the wall smoking a cigarette, the unoccupied right hand hanging down by her left side. The short red skirt was almost up to her panties revealing good legs, while the minuscule white cotton top show a bare flat stomach and did little to hide much of her full breasts. Her face was half hidden by a huge pair of mirrored sun-glasses and he wondered how while wearing those she had managed to find her way down gloomy passage without falling off the four inch high heels she was wearing. That part of her face he could see showed even white teeth and full sensual lips coated in shiny pink lip-gloss. Her skin had a light golden tan. He felt his organ stir. The girl lifted one foot up behind her to rest the sole of her shoe flat against the wall and putting her head on one side blew smoke towards him.
“I thought you were going to be in there all night.” The voice was without any strong accent. “I hope you weren't playing with yourself or I have probably been wasting my time waiting here.”
Rasta grinned.
“You been waiting for me, baby.”
The girl looked around.
“I don't see any one else here, do you?”
He played along and looked up and down the corridor.
“No.”
She pushed herself off from the wall and dropping the cigarette on the floor, deliberately ground it out with the toe of one black, high-heeled shoe. Taking two steps forward so that there was only an inch or two between them and turning slightly sideways, she put her left arm around his waist and pressed her left hip into his groin. He put his arms around her with one hand on the bare skin of her stomach and felt himself start to swell. She looked up into his face with her lips slightly parted; her breath smoky, but it didn't bother him. He lowered his head and kissed her, driving his tongue between her parted lips while sliding his left hand up under her cotton top, as his right went the other way and cradled her buttocks. He was rewarded with a firm and full naked breast surmounted by a rigid nipple. He began to roll it gently between thumb and forefinger while his tongue did a complicated dance with hers. They swayed back and forth.
When the knife stabbed through his trousers and into his genitals his first reaction was one of puzzlement. Why had she punched him in the balls, she had started this? His second was shock as the pain surged up through his lower stomach from his injured genitals and then finally hysteria as she stepped away from him and he saw the bloody knife in her right hand. He fell back against the wall doubled over, clutching himself with both hands and gasping for breath as the pain winded him, watching with horror as the bright red blood ran between his fingers and dripped to the floor. The girl threw the knife down in front of him and as he looked up at her with terrified eyes, she took off the blonde wig she had been wearing and threw that down with the knife. She sneered at him.
“It was almost too easy, Nigger. I only had to appeal to your prick and you fell for it, didn't you?”
She shook out her own mane of long dark hair.
“I hope I've cut the fucking thing off, I hope you bleed to death.”
Rasta could only fall to his knees and watch the perfect backside moving inside the tight red skirt as Alison Jenson strode off down the corridor and disappeared through the emergency fire door at the far end without a backward glance. Then, as the pain surged again through his lower abdomen, he slid to the floor and began to scream for help.
When Clive Sayers received the call from the all night emergency centre the name George Frederick Fairbrother had not meant anything to him, except that another Friday night was underway. Even when the reception desk had told him that some woman had stabbed the man in the groin, he had only assumed that it was a lover’s tip or some pimp getting what was coming to him. He'd waited around for some half an hour to see the victim while they were stanching the blood and examining the extent of the damage, drinking machine coffee that was even worse than the stuff he got at the station. He glanced around. He himself was only thirty-three, but most of the nurses and doctors here seemed like teenagers to him. Finally the receptionist had called him over to where a young woman in a white coat was standing by the counter.
“Sergeant Sayers, this is Doctor Madden.”
Doctor Madden was slim, blonde, blue eyed and when not on the point of exhaustion, probably quite vivacious. Sayers took all this in at a glance with the practised eye of the professional and then held out his hand to her. The shake was perfunctory.
“Hello, Sergeant. What do you need to know? I only called you because that's the regulations when we get deliberate wounding, but I haven't a clue as to what you want to know.” She went on by way of explanation. “This is my first week here on casualty you see.”
The accent had a faint ring of the North Wales valleys and Sayers gave her his best put the witness at ease smile.
“Well, what I need to know is; when did he come in; what are his injuries and are you sure they are not self inflicted.”
She exhaled rapidly through her nose and shook her head at the same time in a gesture of disbelief.
“Self inflicted? I don't know of any normal man who would have the courage to stab a knife right through one of his testicles. No. I think we can say the wound was not self inflicted.”
Sayers stayed patient with her.
“Can we start at the beginning then, Doctor? When did he come in?”
She shrugged off the tiredness she was feeling and became professional, holding out her hand to the receptionist who put a clipboard in it. She read it through and then looked up at him.
“He was brought in by ambulance at eleven fifty nine, suffering from shock and loss of blood due to a wound to the genital area. Examination showed that he had been stabbed through the genital area with a sharp pointed object, probably a thin bladed knife. This had missed the main artery and nerves of the penis by a couple of millimetres, but had pierced right through one of his testicles. He is now in the Surgical Ward awaiting the removal of the damaged testicle, probably tomorrow morning. Apart from that and I should imagine
some deep mental and physical shock, there is no other damage and I would say no danger to his life, unless he is the one in every million person who for no known reasons die under the anaesthetic.”
She gave the clipboard back to the nurse and swept an escaping strand of blonde hair back behind her ear.
“Is he capable of answering a few questions? Like who did it and why? I should hate to think there was a mad castrator running amok in the city. Who knows who might get it next?” He smiled gently to let her see this last was not to be taken seriously.
“I would doubt it strongly. He was given a pain killing injection for our examination and they have probably given him a sleeping pill or two by now. Sleep is about the only real cure for shock you know. But if you must try he will be in Men's Surgical on the third floor. Now I really must get on.”
Sayers said thank you to her retreating back, but it was doubtful if she even heard. He gave a shrug to the receptionist and started on his way to the lifts on the far side of the reception area; thankful he had only been bright enough to be a plod. At least his life and death decisions had been few and far between. He was also glad that he did not have to work in these conditions. The Nick might not be the lap of luxury, but at least they still could afford office cleaners. He looked at the general scruffiness of the corridor. Florence Nightingale would not have felt out of place in this dump. On the third floor he found the double doors that said Men's Surgical, but apart from one dim light about half way down the ward it was in complete darkness. He was looking around him like a lost tourist when a door a few yards down the corridor opened and a Nursing Sister came out.
“Sergeant Sayers?”
He nodded his reply.
“Reception told me you were on your way up, but I am afraid you are wasting your time. He has been given quite a strong sedative by the house man and he is sleeping deeply.”
She saw the exasperation on his face and turned to the double doors to the ward.
“Come on. I will show you.”
He followed her into the dark and sleeping ward, walking on tiptoe like a character from Gilbert and Sullivan. The Sister stopped by the second bed in and waving away the duty nurse who had appeared out of nowhere she pointed to its occupant. Rasta Fairbrother was lying on his back with his head on one side. His mouth was slightly open and he was evidently in a deep sleep. Sayers, who's eyes were now becoming accustomed to the gloom, leaned forward and looked closely at the face that was partly illuminated by the soft glow of light from the corridor. There was not much light, but enough to make out the Negroid features of the sleeping man and the multitude of small dreadlocks with their brightly coloured ribbons. He recognised him as the man that Martin Jenson had beaten up and then recalled the three young men in the leather trousers who had been hanging around the main entrance when he had arrived. They were the other members of Metal Heaven. It didn't take a genius to work out who might have wanted to stab this man in the balls. He straightened up with a sigh and nodded to the Sister. She nodded back and they left the ward.
“Can I use your telephone, sister?”
“Yes of course, Sergeant.”
He followed her back to the space slightly larger than a phone box that passed as her office.