‘I can be funny too,’ he said mildly. His hand flashed up, and the broken bottle he had been concealing behind his back whizzed towards my face
I managed to get my face out of the way more by luck than judgment. The impetus of his lunge brought him forward very conveniently for the right-hand punch I hung on his jaw. The smack of bone against bone, and the click of his teeth made a satisfying sound in my ears.
He spread out on the floor, the bottle still clutched in his fingers. I paused long enough to take the bottle from him, and then edged into the room. The air smelt of whisky fumes and marijuana smoke: the kind of smell you would expect to run into in any hole occupied by a man like Barratt, Several broken bottles of whisky lay in a heap in the fireplace. The all-steelfurniture was scattered around the room as if two husky stevedores had been having a fight. The ten-foot polished-steel table lay on its side against a window that had a cracked pane.
Apart from the smell and the furniture, the room was empty. I moved silently over the bloodred carpet to a half-open door, and looked into a room that had the curtains drawn and the electric light on.
An ash-blonde girl lay on the bed. She had on a necklace of ivory beads, a thin gold chain around her left ankle, and nothing else. She was young and reasonably put together, but she didn’t make a pretty picture as she lay on the crumpled sheet. Her mouth was puffed up as if someone had hit her recently, and there were several ugly-looking green-and-blue bruises on her arms and chest.
We looked at each other. She didn’t move, nor did she seem surprised to see me. She gave me that silly, meaningless smile reefer-smokers hand out when they suspect they should be sociable, and the effort is too much for them.
She wasn’t in any state to listen to a sales talk. I had to decide whether I should leave her there or take her home. Although her father wasn’t anything a Boy Scout would want to hang on his totem pole, at least he wouldn’t feed her hasheesh, I decided to take her home.
‘Hello, Miss Wingrove. How about you and me going home?’
She didn’t say anything. The smile remained fixed on the shiny red mouth. I doubted if she heard what I said, let alone understood what was happening.
I didn’t like the idea of touching her, but it was pretty obvious she wasn’t going to leave the apartment on her feet. She would have to be carried. I wondered what the bowler-hatted bouncer would say when he saw me manhandling her through the lobby.