The Devil You Know

It took a moment for Scrub to process this much information, but in the meantime, his default options kicked in. He reached out one ham-size hand and closed it on a big fistful of my shirt. Buttons popped and fabric tore as he lifted me off the ground.

His strength was incredible. He didn’t even have to brace himself. My feet dangled, and my back arched involuntarily as he dragged me in close to his face. The bunched-up cloth of the shirt rode up into my armpits and pushed my arms away from my sides so that I looked as though I was trying to fly.

“Which bits of you do you need?” he asked me, his voice rasping like a saw—which by coincidence was what his breath cut like, too. “To do your stuff, I mean?”

“Every last one of them.” I got the answer out somehow, in a choking gasp, but it was a struggle to keep my debonair tone. “It’s a holistic thing. I lose one body part, and I’m out of tune.”

“I could beat out a tune with you on that fucking wall,” Scrub growled, pointing with his free hand. Even in this embarrassing predicament, with my legs treading air and my lungs unable to fill because of the way my weight was lying on the impromptu yoke of my bunched-up shirt, I was amazed. He’d picked up my metaphor and elaborated on it. He was only as stupid as a bag full of spanners, not a hat full of arseholes.

“Do it—myself—,” I wheezed with the last of my breath. I let the whistle drop out of my sleeve, where I’d palmed it when I took my coat off, and held it up in front of Scrub’s smirking, lumpy face.

“Bluff” was the wrong word for it. It was an educated guess.

He smacked the whistle out of my hand so fast and so hard that he almost took the hand with it. Then in one effortless wave of motion, he lifted me and slammed me down onto the rolltop desk, where his heavy hand, with his full weight bearing down on it, held me pinned. My head slammed against the wood, which was cherry with a brass inlay. I saw stars, bells, and tweeting baby birds. Scrub’s meaty forefinger prodded my cheek.

“You ever,” he said with a calm that was a lot scarier than his earlier bluster, “raise that thing near me again, and you will live out your frigging life with nothing between your legs except a ragged hole.”

“Just kidding,” I said when I could say anything. There was a ringing in my ears, and I couldn’t hear my own voice. “But now we know where we stand, eh? So what’s this job you were talking about?”

“You fucking scumbag!” Scrub spat. But he lifted his hand away and took a step back, giving me room to haul myself off the desk and get on my feet again.

“Yeah, right,” I agreed, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and finding that the warmth there was blood; I must have bitten my tongue when he threw me down. There was a sharp ache across my shoulders and a dull one in my head. To make a point, though, I turned my back on him and retrieved the whistle from where it lay against the far wall. I had him taped now, although in the process, I suspected I’d made an enemy for life. I couldn’t resist prodding the bruise one more time, though, for the sake of my self-respect. “What sort of a face did you have before this one, then, Scrub? And what sort of a name? Rover, was it?”

I half expected him to hit me anyway and take the consequences later, but he didn’t. Just as well, because a punch from one of Scrub’s hands would end most fights before they’d even got started and probably lay me out for what was left of the night—assuming I ever woke up from it at all. I think that was what stopped him, to be honest. He had his orders, and he took them very seriously.

“The gentleman who employs me wants some cleaning done,” he said at last, after a range of scary emotions had passed across his face. “Couple of hours’ work. Couple of ton in your hand.”

“When and where?” I asked, pulling back the chair that went with the desk and sitting down—carefully, because of the pain in my upper back.

“Down Clerkenwell. Now. He’s waiting.”

“Not now,” I said. “Can’t be done. I’m finished for the night.”

Scrub, in two giant steps, crossed the room.

“You want to be finished, I’ll finish you,” he rasped. “Otherwise, you come now.”

I’d taken it as far as I could, so I gave it up. Some men have greatness thrust upon them.

Nine

THERE WAS A CAR OUTSIDE ON THE STREET, WHICH I’d seen on my way in but hadn’t really registered. It was a squat, powerful BMW X5 in electric blue, with tinted windows and a showy, diamond-cut grille, so God knows I should have noticed it. I must have been wandering in and out of the afterlife, which isn’t exactly unusual for me.

It was still raining. Scrub had given me about a tenth of a second to grab my coat before herding me down the stairs. I wished to Christ he’d stop long enough to let me put the bastard thing on.