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nothing on earth was going to stop him now.
As he reached the bottom of the second flight of stairs, the Gunner went
through the open door at the top. A moment later there was a sudden sharp cry.
Mallory was perhaps half-way up the stairs when the girl started to scream.
Faulkner had her by the left ankle and was dragging her down the sloping roof
when Mallory appeared. In that single moment the whole thing took on every
aspect of some privileged nightmare. His recognition of Faulkner was
instantaneous, and at the same moment, a great many facts he had refused to
face previously, surfaced. As the girl screamed again, he charged.
In his day George Mallory had been a better than average rugby forward and for
one year Metropolitan Police light heavyweight boxing champion. He grabbed
Faulkner by the shoulder, pulled him around and swung the same right cross
that had earned him his title twenty-seven years earlier. It never even
landed. Faulkner blocked the punch, delivered a forward elbow strike that
almost paralysed Mallory s breathing system and snapped his left arm like a
rotten branch with one devastating blow with the edge of his right hand.
Mallory groaned and went down. Faulkner grabbed him by the scruff of the neck
and started to drag him along the roof towards the railing.
For Miller it was as if somehow all this had happened before. As he came
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through the door and paused, thunder split the sky apart overhead and the rain
increased into a solid grey curtain that filled the air with a strange,
sibilant rushing sound and reduced visibility to a few yards.
He took in everything in a single moment. The girl with her dress half-ripped
from her body, crouched at the foot of the sloping roof crying hysterically,
and Faulkner who had now turned to look towards the door, still clutching
Mallory s coat collar in his right hand.
Faulkner. A strange fierce exhilaration swept through Miller, a kind of
release of every tension that had knotted up inside him during the past
twenty-four hours. A release that came from knowing that he had been right all
along.
He moved in on the run, jumped high in the air and delivered a flying front
kick, the devastating mae-tobigeri, full into Faulkner s face, one of the most
crushing of all karate blows. Faulkner staggered back, releasing his hold on
Mallory, blood spurting from his mouth and Miller landed awkwardly, slipping
in the rain and falling across Mallory.
Before he could scramble to his feet, Faulkner had him by the throat. Miller
summoned every effort of will-power and spat full in the other man s face.
Faulkner recoiled in a kind of reflex action and Miller stabbed at his exposed
throat with stiffened fingers.
Faulkner went back and Miller took his time over getting up, struggling for
air. It was a fatal mistake for a blow which would have demolished any
ordinary man had only succeeded in shaking Faulkner s massive strength. As
Miller straightened, Faulkner moved in like the wind and delivered a fore-fist
punch, knuckles extended, that fractured two ribs like matchwood and sent
Miller down on one knee with a cry of agony.
Faulkner drew back his foot and kicked him in the stomach. Miller went down
flat on his face. Faulkner lifted his foot to crush the skull and Jenny
Crowther staggered forward and clutched at his arm. He brushed her away as one
might a fly on a summer s day and turned back to Miller. It was at that
precise moment that the Gunner reappeared.
The Gunner s progress down the sloping roof had been checked by the presence
of an ancient Victorian cast-iron gutter twice the width of the modern
variety. He had hung there for some time contemplating the cobbles of the yard
thirty feet below. Like Jenny in a similar situation, he had found progress up
a steeply sloping bank of Welsh slate in heavy rain a hazardous undertaking.
He finally reached for the rusting railings above his head and pulled himself
over in time to see Faulkner hurl the girl from him and turn to Miller.
The Gunner, silent on bare feet, delivered a left and a right to Faulkner s
kidneys that sent the big man staggering forward with a scream of pain. As he
turned, the Gunner stepped over Miller and let Faulkner have his famous left
arm screw punch under the ribs followed by a right to the jaw, a combination
that had finished no fewer than twelve of his professional fights inside the
distance.
Faulkner didn t go down, but he was badly rattled. Come on then, you
bastard, the Gunner yelled. Let s be having you.
Miller pushed himself up on one knee and tried to lift Mallory into a sitting
position. Jenny Crowther crawled across to help and pillowed Mallory s head
against her shoulder. He nodded, face twisted in pain, unable to speak and
Miller folded his arms tightly about his chest and coughed as blood rose into
his mouth.
There had been a time when people had been glad to pay as much as fifty
guineas to see Gunner Doyle in action, but up there on the roof in the rain,
Miller, the girl and Mallory had a ringside seat for free at his last and
greatest battle.
He went after Faulkner two-handed, crouched like a tiger. Faulkner was hurt
hurt badly, and the Gunner had seen enough to know that his only chance lay in
keeping him in that state. He swayed to one side as Faulkner threw a punch and
smashed his left into the exposed mouth that was already crushed and bleeding
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from Miller s efforts. Faulkner cried out in pain and the Gunner gave him a
right that connected just below the eye and moved close.
Keep away from him, Miller yelled. Don t get too close.
The Gunner heard only the roar of the crowd as he breathed in the stench of
the ring that strange never-to-be-forgotten compound of human sweat, heat,
and embrocation. He let Faulkner have another right to the jaw to straighten
him up and stepped in close for a blow to the heart that might finish the job.
It was his biggest mistake. Faulkner pivoted, delivering an elbow strike
backwards that doubled the Gunner over. In the same moment Faulkner turned
again, lifting the Gunner backwards with a knee in the face delivered with
such force that he went staggering across the roof and fell heavily against
the railing. It sagged, half-breaking and he hung there trying to struggle to
his feet, blood pouring from his nose and mouth. Faulkner charged in like a
runaway express train, shoulder down and sent him back across the railing. The
Gunner rolled over twice on the way down, bounced across the broad iron gutter
and fell to the cobbles below.
Faulkner turned slowly, a terrifying sight, eyes glaring, blood from his mouth
soaking down into his collar. He snarled at the three of them helpless before
him, grabbed at the sagging iron railing and wrenched a four-foot length of it
free. He gave a kind of animal-like growl and started forward.
Ma Crowther stepped through the door at the head of the stairs, still in her
nightdress, clutching her sawn-off shotgun against her breast. Faulkner didn t
see her, so intent was he on the task before him. He poised over his three
victims, swinging the iron bar high above his head like an executioner, and
she gave him both barrels full in the face.
21
It was almost nine o clock in the evening when Miller and Jenny Crowther
walked along the second floor corridor of the Marsden Wing of the General
Infirmary towards the room in which they had put Gunner Doyle.
They walked slowly because Miller wasn t in any fit state to do anything else.
His body seemed to be bruised all over and he was strapped up so tightly
because of his broken ribs that he found breathing difficult. He was tired. A
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