The blow split the skin but bounced off the bone with a dull ‘thunk’. One each side of the Pole the doors of flats 22 and 24 opened inwards and men surged out. It all happened in less than half a second. In the same time Kowalski went berserk. Although slow-thinking in most ways, the Pole knew one technique perfectly, that of fighting.
In the narrow confines of the corridor his size and strength were useless to him. Because of his height the pickaxe handle had not reached the full momentum of its downward swing before hitting his head. Through the blood spurting over his eyes he discerned there were two men in the door in front of him and two others on each side. He needed room to move, so he charged forward into flat 23.
The man directly in front of him staggered back under the impact; those behind closed in, hands reaching for his collar and jacket. Inside the room he drew the Colt from under his armpit, turned once and fired back into the doorway. As he did so another stave slammed down on his wrist, jerking the aim downwards.
The bullet ripped the kneecap off one of his assailants who went down with a thin screech. Then the gun was out of his hand, the fingers rendered nerveless from another blow on the wrist. A second later he was overwhelmed as the five men hurled themselves at him. The fight lasted three minutes. A doctor later estimated he must have taken a score of blows to the head from the leather-wrapped coshes before he finally passed out. A part of one of his ears was slashed off by a glancing blow, the nose was broken and the face was a deep-red mask. Most of his fighting was by reflex action. Twice he almost reached his gun, until a flying foot sent it spinning to the other end of the sitting room. When he did finally go down on to his face there were only three attackers left standing to put the boot in.
When they had done and the enormous body on the floor was insensible, only a trickle of blood from the slashed scalp indicating that it was still alive, the three survivors stood back swearing viciously, chests heaving. Of the others, the man shot in the leg was curled against the wall by the door, white-faced, glistening red hands clutching his wrecked knee, a long monotonous stream of obscenities coming through pain-grey lips. Another was on his knees, rocking slowly back and forwards, hands thrust deep into the torn groin. The last lay down on the carpet not far from the Pole, a dull bruise discolouring his left temple where one of Kowalski’s haymakers had caught him at full force.
The leader of the group rolled Kowalski over on to his back and flicked up one of the closed eyelids. He crossed to the telephone near the window, dialled a local number and waited.
He was still breathing hard. When the phone was answered he told the person at the other end:
‘We got him … Fought? Of course he bloody fought … He got off one bullet, Guerini’s lost a kneecap. Capetti took one in the balls and Vissart is out cold … What? Yes, the Pole’s alive, those were the orders weren’t they? Otherwise he wouldn’t have done all this damage … Well, he’s hurt, all right. Dunno, he’s unconscious … Look, we don’t want a salad basket [police van] we want a couple of ambulances. And make it quick.’
He slammed the receiver down and muttered ‘Cons’ to the world in general. Round the room the fragments of shattered furniture lay about like firewood, which was all they would be good for. They had all thought the Pole would go down in the passage outside. None of the furniture had been stacked in a neighbouring room, and it had got in the way. He himself had stopped an armchair thrown by Kowalski with one hand full in the chest, and it hurt. Bloody Pole, he thought, the sods at head office hadn’t said what he was like.
Fifteen minutes later two Citroën ambulances slid into the road outside the block and the doctor came up. He spent five minutes examining Kowalski. Finally he drew back the unconscious man’s sleeve and gave him an injection. As the two stretcher-bearers staggered away towards the lift with the Pole, the doctor turned to the wounded Corsican who had been regarding him balefully from his pool of blood beside the wall.
He prised the man’s hands away from his knee, took a look and whistled.
‘Right. Morphine and the hospital. I’m going to give you a knock-out shot. There’s nothing I can do here. Anyway, mon petit, your career in this line is over.’
Guerini answered him with a stream of obscenities as the needle went in.
Vissart was sitting up with his hands to his head, a dazed expression on his face. Capetti was upright by now, leaning against the wall retching dry. Two of his colleagues gripped him under the armpits and led him hobbling from the flat into the corridor. The leader helped Vissart to his feet as the stretcher-bearers from the second ambulance carried the inert form of Guerini away.
Out in the corridor the leader of the six took a last look back into the desolated room. The doctor stood beside him.
‘Quite a mess, hein?’ said the doctor.
‘The local office can clean it up,’ said the leader. ‘It’s their bloody flat.’
With that he closed the door. The doors of flat 22 and 24 were also open, but the interiors were untouched. He pulled both doors closed.
‘No neighbours?’ asked the doctor.
‘No neighbours,’ said the Corsican, ‘we took the whole floor.’
Preceded by the doctor, he helped the still dazed Vissart down the stairs to the waiting cars.
Twelve hours later, after a fast drive the length of France, Kowalski was lying on a cot in a cell beneath a fortress barracks outside Paris. The room had the inevitable whitewashed walls, stained and musty, of all prison cells, with here and there a scratched obscenity or prayer. It was hot and close, with an odour of carbolic acid, sweat and urine. The Pole lay face up on a narrow iron cot whose legs were embedded in the concrete floor. Apart from the biscuit mattress and a rolled-up blanket under his head, the cot contained no other linen. Two heavy leather straps secured his ankles, two more his thighs and wrists. A single strap pinned his chest down. He was still unconscious, but breathing deeply and irregularly.
The face had been bathed clean of blood, the ear and scalp sutured. A stick of plaster spanned the broken nose, and through the open mouth out of which the breath rasped could be seen the stumps of two broken front teeth. The rest of the face was badly bruised.
Beneath the thick mat of black hair covering the chest, shoulders and belly other livid bruises could just be discerned, the results of fists, boots and coshes. The right wrist was heavily bandaged and taped.
The man in the white coat finished his examination, straightened up and replaced his stethoscope in his bag. He turned and nodded at the man behind him, who tapped at the door. It swung open and the pair of them went outside. The door swung to, and the jailer slid home the two enormous steel bars.
‘What did you hit him with, an express train?’ asked the doctor as they walked down the passage.
‘It took six men to do that,’ replied Colonel Rolland.
‘Well, they did a pretty good job. They damn nearly killed him. If he wasn’t built like a bull they would have done.’
‘It was the only way,’ replied the Colonel. ‘He ruined three of my men.’
‘It must have been quite a fight.’
‘It was. Now, what’s the damage?’
‘In layman’s terms: possible fracture of the right wrist—I haven’t been able to do an X-ray, remember—plus lacerated left ear, scalp and broken nose. Multiple cuts and bruising, slight internal haemorrhaging, which could get worse and kill him, or could clear up on its own. He enjoys what one might call a rude good health—or he did. What worries me is the head. There’s concussion all right, whether mild or severe is not easy to say. No signs of a skull fracture, though that was not the fault of your men. He’s just got a skull like solid ivory. But the concussion could get worse if he’s not left alone.’