The three men left in the van, two holding the girl down, the other bare-arsed on top of her, were frozen into shocked immobility. The violence of the onslaught was so extreme, the noise of Jack's continuous roaring so disorientating, that he was on top of them before they could register what was happening. He used the hand holding the belt to grip the hair of the bastard raping the girl, wrenched his head up and swung the torch in a mighty forehand smash into the wide-eyed, frightened face. Blood erupted from the broken nose in a stream, and the youth slithered sideways with a whimper of pain.
"GET OUT!" Jack shouted at the girl who was scrambling to her knees in terror. "GET IN THE CAR!" He whipped the belt back and sliced it through the air into the eyes of a boy who was struggling to his feet in the corner. "YOU BLOODY LITTLE SHITS!" he roared. "I'M GOING TO KILL YOU." He brought his boot down on the unprotected groin of the rapist and turned like a madman on the only youth he hadn't touched. With a cry of terror, the boy cowered away, his arms held protectively above his head.
Perhaps, after all, reason hadn't entirely deserted Blakeney. He abandoned the torch and the belt, flung himself precipitately out of the van, bundled into the car after the girl, and roared it into motion, tugging door closed as he did so. He saw Hughes too late to avoid him as he careered across the tarmac, and caught him a glancing blow with the offside wing, bouncing him into the air like a rag-doll. Jack's anger was out of control, a red frenzy that pounded in his head like cannon-fire. Spinning the wheel, he turned the vehicle in a tight circle and headed back towards the crouching figure, switching on the headlights with a lazy flick of his fingers to catch Hughes's terrified face in the glare as he prepared to mow him down.
He had no idea what stopped him doing it. Perhaps it was the girl's screams. Perhaps his anger abated as rapidly as it had surged into life. Perhaps, quite simply, his humanity triumphed. Instead, he slewed the car to a screaming halt, slammed the door into the man's body and leapt out to wind his fist around the long hair and drag Hughes to his feet. "Into the back, sweetheart," he said to the girl, "as fast as you can." She was too terrified not to obey and slid in hysterics between the seats. "Now, you, in," he said, yanking down on the hair and shoving his knee into the small of Hughes's back, "or, so help me, I'll break your filthy neck now."
Hughes believed him. As the lesser of two evils, he allowed himself to be thrust face-down across the seat and sighed as Jack's heavy weight descended across his legs. The car raced into life again, screaming across the tarmac as Jack forced it into gear, the door slamming shut when it impacted against another flying figure. "PUT YOUR SEAT BELT ON!" he yelled at the screaming girl. "IF THIS BASTARD MOVES A MUSCLE I'M GOING TO PILE THE SIDE WHERE HIS HEAD IS INTO THE BIGGEST BRICK WALL I CAN FIND." He changed up, swung out on to the road and set off at a blistering pace through Southbourne with his hand clamped over the horn. If there was any justice in this cess-pit of a world, someone would get the police out before the Ford transit caught up with him.
There was some justice left in the England Rupert Brooke died for. The local police received seventeen 999 calls in three minutes, twelve from elderly widows living alone, four from outraged men, and one from a child. They all reported the same thing. Joy-riders were turning the quiet tree-lined streets of their suburb into a death-trap.
Jack's car and the pursuing white transit were ambushed as they tore on to the main road leading into Bournemouth city centre.
The phone rang in Mill House at eleven-thirty that night. "Sarah?" Jack barked down the wire.
"Hi," she countered with relief. "You're not dead then."
"No. I'm under sodding arrest," he shouted. "This is the one telephone call I'm allowed to make. I need help PDQ."
"I'll come straight away. Where are you?"
"The bastards are going to charge me with joy-riding and rape," he said furiously, as if she hadn't spoken. "They're fucking cretins here, won't listen to a word I say. Goddammit, they've banged me up along with Hughes and his animals. The poor kid they were having a go at in the back of the van's completely hysterical and thinks I'm one of them. I keep telling them to contact Cooper but they're such bloody morons they won't listen to me."
"Okay," she said calmly, trying to make what she could of this alarming speech, "I'll get Cooper. Now tell me where you are."
"Some shit-hole in the middle of Bournemouth," he roared. "They're about to take swabs off my fucking penis."
"The address, Jack. I need the address."
"WHERE THE HELL AM I?" he bellowed at someone in the room with him. "Freemont Road Police Station," he told Sarah. "You'll have to bring Ruth, too," he sais with regret. "God knows, I never meant to involve her but she's the only one who knows what happened. And get Keith as well. I need a solicitor I can trust. They're all bloody fascists in this place. They're talking about frigging paedophile rings and conspiracies and Christ knows what else."
"Calm down," she said sternly. "Keep your mouth shut till I get there and, for God's sake, Jack, don't lose your temper and hit a policeman."
"I already have, dammit. The bastard called me a pervert."
It was well after two o'clock when Sarah, Cooper and Ruth finally arrived bleary-eyed at Freemont Road. The night Sergeant at Learmouth had been adamant in his refusal either to contact Cooper or to give Sarah his home phone number when she put through an urgent call requesting to speak to him. "DS Cooper is not on duty, madam," was his measured response. "If you have a problem, you deal with me or wait until tomorrow morning when he will be on duty." It was only when he was faced with her angry presence in front of his desk, threatening him with questions in Parliament and court action for negligence, that he was moved to contact the Detective Sergeant. The counter-blast from Cooper's end, not in the best of moods, anyway, after being woken up from a deep sleep, left him shaken. He grumbled away to himself for the rest of his shift. Sod's law said that it didn't matter how considerate a chap tried to be, he was always in the wrong.
Keith, even more irritable than Cooper to be dragged from the arms of Morpheus far away in London, perked up a little to hear that Jack was under arrest for joy-riding and rape. "Good God," he said with cynical amusement, "I had no idea he was so active. I thought he preferred spectator sports."
"It's not funny, Keith," said Sarah curtly. "He needs a solicitor. Can you come down to Bournemouth?"
"When?"
"Now, you oaf. They're taking swabs off him at this very minute."
"Did he do it?"
"What?"
"The rape," said Keith patiently.
"No, of course he didn't," she spluttered angrily. "Jack's not a rapist."
"Then there's nothing to worry about. The swabs will prove he hasn't been in contact with the victim."
"He says they think he's part of a paedophile ring. They may charge him with conspiracy to rape even if they can't charge him with the actual offence." She sighed. "At least I think that's what he said. He's very angry and it was all a bit garbled."
"What on earth's he been up to?"