At that moment, the doors to the cocktail lounge swung open and the two detectives came running in, closely followed by George.
“Bloody hell!” said one of the detectives. “What’s all this bloody smoke? What the bloody hell’s happened to him?”
“Keep away!” I warned him. But in that split second of distraction, Duca snatched my wrist, and wouldn’t let go. The skin on its fingers was crusted and split, like pork crackling, but its grip was bony and incredibly strong.
With a deep grunt, it seized the shaft of my hammer, and twisted it around so viciously that I dropped it. It bounced across the Korkoid floor, well out of my reach.
“Jim — Jim!” asked George, in a panic. “What do you want us to do?” One of the detectives pulled out a large Webley revolver and waved it at us, but Duca and I were so close together that he was obviously too scared to shoot. Not that a bullet would have done any good, even if it had hit Duca right between the eyes.
“Oil!” I told George. “There, on the table!”
“What?”
“There’s a bottle of oil on the table! Pour it over it!”
Now that it had relieved me of my hammer, Duca was concentrating on the crucifixion nail that I was holding in my left hand, trying to screw it around so that it was pointing at my heart. Duca’s breathing was harsh, and it kept coughing up a thick, bloody mucus. Its eyes were bloodshot and unfocused, but it was absolutely determined to kill me. I could hear the cartilage in my wrist crackle as it gradually bent my hand around the wrong way, and I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Gah! Shit! Agh!”
“You want to talk — about mortality?” it wheezed. It had managed to lodge the point of the nail underneath my rib cage, and was pressing hard. “You want to talk about — death?”
I felt the point of the nail break my skin. The pain was so intense that I went cold all over. Even my blood felt cold, as it soaked down the front of my shirt.
“You want to talk about revenge?” said Duca. “This is my revenge!”
It hooked its left arm around my back, trying to pull me downward, so that the nail would penetrate my rib cage, and force its way upward at an angle of forty-five degrees, into my heart. It was making thick, animal-like grunts, almost as if it were trying to violate me.
I didn’t see George. But I suddenly felt something slippery slide down the side of my face and pour directly onto Duca’s forehead, and into its eyes. The holy oil couldn’t harm me at all, but it had a devastating effect on Duca. Its face began to crackle, and what was left of its skin began to crumple up like cellophane thrown into an open fire.
“No!” screamed Duca. Smoke poured out of its face, and its eyes literally fried in front of me, so that they turned opaque.
The young detective with the Webley revolver came up close now, and pointed the muzzle at Duca’s right temple.
“Don’t!” I warned him. “You won’t be able to kill it! Bring me that hammer!”
But Duca let out a terrible screech, and the detective jerked backward and pulled the trigger. There was a deafening bang and a bony chunk of Duca’s right eye socket was blown away, but at the same time the shot ignited the holy oil.
Duca exploded into flames, still relentlessly gripping my wrist. I felt a scorching blast of heat on my face, and I heard my hair crackle. My silk necktie caught fire and flared up around my neck.
“Get it off me!” I screamed out, but Duca was blazing so fiercely that George and the two detectives couldn’t get close.
There was only one thing I could do. I heaved myself upward, so that I was kneeling, and then I gave another heave, so that I was on my feet. The pain was horrifying. I felt as if my face was being blasted with a blowtorch. All of my clothes were alight now and I was sure that I was going to die.
Duca was a dead weight, and a burning dead weight, but somehow I managed to drag it across the cocktail lounge to the doors.
“Open the doors!” I shouted at George. “Open the goddamned doors!”
George and one of the detectives ran ahead of me and opened them. I pulled Duca out of the cocktail lounge and onto the deck.
Even today, I find it hard to believe that I managed to manhandle Duca across the deck, and over to the rail. I can’t actually remember doing it. I do remember falling, though, and hitting the water over a hundred feet below. It was like hitting a cold concrete sidewalk.
Both of us went under, but at least Duca released its grip. I went down and down, and I thought that I would never come up again. But I managed to kick my legs and paddle with my hands, and at last I began to rise to the surface. When I finally broke out into the daylight, I found that there were crowds of people staring down at me, and it was raining red-and-white lifebelts.
Two young sailors stripped off their sweaters and dived into the water to help me. I circled around and around, looking desperately for any sign of Duca.
“There was another man!” I panted, as the sailors swam up to me.
One of them dived under the water and disappeared for what seemed like five minutes. When he reappeared, he shook his head and shouted out, “Can’t see anyone, mate! Think we’ve lost him!”
The sailors swam with me to the dockside. Between them they half-carried me up a ladder, and when I reached the top there were willing hands everywhere, all of them outstretched to help me. I was wrapped warmly in a blanket and a wheelchair was brought from the office so that I could sit down. I was shaking uncontrollably with shock.
“How are you feeling, mate?” said an elderly man in a cloth cap, leaning over me with a worried frown. He reached into his pocket and took out a pack of Woodbine cigarettes. “Bet you could do with a fag.”
For some reason, I couldn’t stop myself from bursting into tears.
Days of Silence
I was taken by ambulance to East Grinstead, in Sussex, to the Archibald McIndoe Burns Unit, which had cared for so many young Spitfire pilots during World War Two. I spent six weeks there, recovering from my injuries, while August turned to September, and the sweltering heat of the summer became a memory.
My burns were mostly first-degree, although I needed a skin graft on the left side of my neck and two fingers on my left hand were permanently crooked. I broke my collarbone, too, when I hit the water, and fractured three ribs.
It was a peaceful, almost dreamlike time. Out of my window I could see a red-tiled rooftop and the top of a large horse chestnut tree, with bright green conkers beginning to ripen on it. The sky seemed to be the same pale blue every day, as if it were a child’s painting, rather than a real sky.
I had plenty of visitors, of course. Charles Frith came to see me two days after I was admitted, along with George Goodhew and a bespectacled woman from the Home Office, who said nothing at all but took pages of notes in Pitman’s shorthand.
Charles Frith brought me a large box of Cadbury’s Milk Tray chocolates, which he immediately opened and proceeded to eat.
“Hope you don’t like coffee creams,” he said. “They’re my favorite.”
“No sign of Duca, I suppose?” I asked him.
Charles Frith picked out another chocolate and shook his head.
“We’ve had Royal Navy divers searching the whole area,” said George. “They’ve even been diving as far away as Pilsey Island, where they found Commander Crabb.”
“Thanks to your efforts, Captain,” Charles Frith added, “I think we can safely say that Mr. Dorin Duca has had his chips. Not only that, we’ve tracked down three of your dead Screechers and given them polio jabs, too. Two in London and one in Birmingham.”
“Heads removed, bodies buried in consecrated ground?”