them.
‘Give us your cash,’ Karl ordered, showering James with spit as he spoke.
‘I’ve got a better idea,’ James sneered. ‘Why don’t you suck my balls?’
Karl tried swinging his knee across James’ body to pin him, but whatever he’d been smoking made him slow and James knocked him off with a double blow: one knee in the stomach and an elbow in the jaw.
As Karl stumbled, James drove him back until he clattered into a locker. Once he was trapped, James smashed a palm into his nose, and the back of his head slammed the metal door as James swept his feet from beneath him. Across the room, Bruce had gone for a more clinical approach, taking out Mark with a single punch to the side of the head.
‘You wanna tax me now?’ James shouted, as the teenager at his feet wrapped his arms over his face, fearing another punch. ‘Empty your pockets.’
While Karl handed James a mobile, lighter, cigarettes and wallet, Bruce knelt down and went through the unconscious Mark’s pockets. His haul was the same as James’, except for a small bag of cannabis resin and a plastic-handled flick-knife.
James and Bruce stripped the money from the wallets and Bruce put the knife in his locker. Other lads had heard the rumble and stood out in the hallway trying to see what was going on.
‘One Nokia, one Samsung,’ Bruce said casually, as he lobbed the phones, cigarettes and lighters into the crowd. ‘Compliments of Bruce Beckett.’
James grabbed his multitool from the jeans crumpled on the floor and held the saw-toothed blade under his opponent’s bloody nose.
‘You’d better drag your mate out of here,’ James snarled.
Karl nodded, but James’ brutal punches had torn his stomach muscles and he could barely stand straight, let alone haul his friend. In the end, James and Bruce had to drag Mark down the hallway to his room, where they dumped him on the floor between the beds.
The two agents were pumped after the fight and James stared at his bloody fist as they walked back to their room.
‘It’s all spattered over your chest as well,’ Bruce noted. ‘You’d better take a shower.’
Onlookers shrank away as James passed them in the hallway with his shower gel in hand and a towel slung over his back. He’d done nothing to be proud of, but he couldn’t help feeling big when he saw how they all backed off.
*
‘Bloody hell,’ James gasped, as he scrambled into his jeans and slid his trainers on without socks.
Bruce propped an elbow on his pillow and did a big yawn. ‘What’s up?’
‘It’s nine-forty,’ James said. ‘I’m supposed to be at the parole office already. Chloe’s gonna go bananas.’
‘Didn’t you set an alarm?’
James shook his head as he grabbed his jacket and checked his money was still in his pocket. ‘I didn’t bother, I’m usually awake by nine, but I haven’t gotten to sleep until really late the last two nights.’
‘Oh well,’ Bruce said nonchalantly. ‘Nothing I can do. I’m going back to sleep.’
‘Get off your arse and move the locker,’ James yelled, as he pulled his jacket up his arms.
There was a chance of a revenge attack after the fight with Karl and Mark. The room didn’t have a lock, so they’d barricaded the door with Bruce’s metal locker. It wouldn’t stop anyone getting in, but the metal scraping across the floor would give them plenty of warning.
As soon as there was a big enough gap for James to squeeze through, he bolted into the corridor. He’d just woken up, so he sprinted into the toilet and started to pee without realising that Mark was standing right beside him. He had two swollen eyes and a massive egg on his forehead.
‘You ain’t heard the last of this,’ Mark said menacingly.
James was tempted to smack Mark’s head against the wall to remind him who was boss, but he was in a state of panic and he didn’t even stop to wash his hands before hurtling down the four flights of stairs to the ground floor.
He charged down the main hallway and out on to the street, before crossing the road and sprinting four hundred metres to the bus stop. Luckily, he had to wait less than two minutes for the bus, but he still didn’t reach the parole office until 10:07.
The single-storey building was situated between a petrol station and a place that did car valeting. The central heating was set way too high and a bunch of teenage boys and young men sat