Read A Fistful of Knuckles for Free Online

objections to such rough handling.
    Don’t think about it, Sam. Just do it. Let’s just get this bloody thing over and done with!
    By means that could only be described as undignified, they got Stella to the Cortina. Gene bunged her into the back seat like she was a sack of old taters. At once, she struggled to come back at him, teeth bared, eyes flashing fiercely. Having both her hands securely cuffed behind her back didn’t daunt her for one moment from taking them both on simultaneously.
    ‘Get in the back and sit on it!’ Gene ordered, shoving Sam onto her. ‘Keep it under control until we get to the station.’
    Sam find himself sprawled across Stella, fighting blindly with her, trying to grab some part of her so he could hold her still.
    ‘Get this weedy boy off me!’ she cried, thrusting her knee into his stomach. ‘Get the guv’nor back here!’
    ‘The guv’nor is driving!’ growled Gene, planting himself behind the wheel and furiously revving the engine. He stamped on the gas and the Cortina lurched forward.
    Sam grappled horribly with Stella as she hissed insults at him and demanded the personal attentions of the guv. But when she realised Gene was not going to relinquish his role and skipper of the Cortina, she fell into a sulk. It gave Sam precious time to get his breath back.
    But the moment they reached the station, it all kicked off again. Gene wrenched on the handbrake like he meant to snap the handle and stormed round the back, grabbing Sam with both hands and hurling him out of the way. Sam fell against the hard pavement and saw Stella going crazy, aiming for Gene’s eyes with two-footed rabbit kicks from her stilettos. But Gene got hold of her waist, dragged her out, and flung him over his shoulder, marching off with her like a Viking bringing home a plundered wench.
    They burst into the CID room, Gene red-faced and striding, Stella thrashing and screaming abuse, Sam panting and trying to keep up. Chris’s eyes bugged halfway out of his head at the sight; Ray’s mouth dropped open so that his chewing gum fell into his typewriter; Annie sprung up from her seat, looking confused, not sure if what she was witnessing was an actual arrest or some sort of blokey prank.
    ‘I got me some cheesecake,’ Gene declared to his team as he lumbered by, slapping Stella’s arse so powerfully that the sound of it echoed round the office like a gunshot.
    ‘Call that a slap?!’ Stella yelled at him as he carried her away down the corridor. ‘Harder!
Harder, you fairy
!’
    Gene booted open the door of the Lost & Found Room and disappeared inside. Sam paused, exchanging silent looks with his open-mouthed colleagues.
    ‘It’s like a caveman’s wedding,’ he said. ‘Back to work, everyone. Me and the guv have got it all under control. Everything’s fine.’
    Nobody believed that any more than Sam himself did. Nervously, he turned and followed Gene into the Lost & Found room.
    Her hands cuffed behind her back, Stella sat, panting and sweating, on a wooden chair, surrounded by abandoned bicycles, unclaimed briefcases, and all the rest of Manchester’s unwanted bric-a-brac that had found its way here over the years. Sam tried to keep his attention away from the way Stella was sitting; like a low-rent, fag-stained Sharon Stone, she had her legs open just that bit too far. Her blonde hair had tumbled over one eye. Her breasts rose and fell heavily beneath the zebra-patterned fabric of her top; she was Moll Flanders meets Bet Lynch on a bad day.
    Gene fished out a packet of Embassy No.6’s from his jacket pocket.
    ‘You crumpled my fags, you fruitcake,’ he accused her, carefully removing a wonky fag from the packet. ‘That, toots, is crossing the bloody line.’
    He lit up and drew on the nicotine like it was the elixir of life itself.
    ‘Right,’ said Sam at last. ‘Let’s all calm down. I don’t think any of us have got the energy for any more messing about.’
    ‘Speak for yourself, young