The meanest Flood

magician didn’t give him an option. If Sam arrived at the site of the murder then the spell had worked. But if Sam didn’t arrive on site, like in Oslo, if he kept out of the way, then the victim would die anyway and Sam would still, somehow, be implicated.
    This wasn’t something he could handle alone. He knew very well that the magician could see the entire street from the windows of his house.
    Standing out of view he hit Menu on his mobile: Phonebook, Select, J. He thumbed through the first couple of Js until JD’s number showed in the display panel. He held the phone to his ear and listened to the speed-dialling, dimly aware that he was being approached by someone who had been leaning against a shop window.
    The bleating of the engaged tone allowed him to look up in time to see the guy. The one who had taken his photograph that day, the guy who’d kneed him in the balls. Sam had time to sidestep as the big man raised his fist and came at him hard and fast. What was it with this guy? Black shirt and leather trousers today, something swinging round his neck... a shark’s tooth? Sam couldn’t remember what he was wearing last time, something just as showy. Was he connected to the magician? And if so, how?
    Sam slipped his mobile into his inside pocket and concentrated. The guy had put him down last time, but Sam had been sloppy then. This time around he had his wits about him. But don’t be complacent, he told himself. The guy’s packing a lot of weight. If he landed a good right Sam would spend the rest of the day sleeping.
    Best to finish it quickly.
    The big man turned. There was real hatred in his eyes. He came again, pushing his chin forward, wrapping the fingers of his right hand into a tight ball of bone and gristle. Apart from the time with the camera Sam had never seen him before. If it had been the magician he could have understood it. He wouldn’t have liked it any better, but he would’ve had some idea where the guy was coming from. As it was Sam couldn’t fathom why this guy hated him so much.
    But it wasn’t question time. Sam stood his ground as long as possible. He balled up his own fist, made it look as though he was going to trade punches, which was what the big guy would have loved. He saw the punch coming from way back but waited until the guy was totally committed, saw that extra twist of the shoulder as the man anticipated Sam’s nose transformed into a spray of gore and cartilage.
    Sam ducked, he went down low and heard the fist whistling past his ear as it careered onward into oblivion. At the same time he sprang forward, aiming his head into the fast-approaching solar plexus of his attacker, keeping his knees bent to absorb the impact.
    He heard the guy groan as the air was knocked out of him. But the velocity kept the man moving. As Sam came up the big guy’s legs left the ground and he went into an involuntary somersault, coming down on his back, somehow contriving to break the fall with the palms of both hands. Sam spun around, adrenalin shooting through his body, and before his opponent could think of getting back to his feet Sam took a well-aimed kick at one of his shins. The man didn’t have enough air left to scream with the pain, but it registered on his face and the reaction of his leg quivering on the pavement left Sam feeling almost sorry for him.
    A small group of women had come out of the shop and were standing around the doorway giving all their sympathy to the loser and looking at Sam as if he’d crawled out of an old cheeseburger.
    He reached for his mobile again and hit redial. But JD was still engaged.
    He looked down at the man on the pavement. ‘What’s your problem?’ he asked. ‘You wanna tell me about it?’
    The big man rolled on to his side and propped himself on an elbow. His lungs still didn’t function like he expected. ‘You killed Kitty,’ he gasped.
    Sam shook his head. He remembered the police telling him Katherine had a boyfriend in Nottingham. And that was the accent, that Black Country inflection which was still in the man’s speech when everything else had been knocked out of him.
    ‘I didn’t kill her,’ Sam said.
    ‘You were there,’ the big man said. ‘I found the place you stayed. The landlady remembered your face.’
    ‘That’s why you took my photograph?’ Sam said. ‘Yes, I was there, but I didn’t kill her. I didn’t kill anyone. I was set up.’
    The man on the pavement tried to laugh but his lungs wouldn’t