The Ring - An Alex Dorring Thriller

by Vince Vogel

  “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it,” he said from his broken mouth when the glass was taken away. “I never seen such heart in a bloke. When I first got in here, I thought they was takin’ the piss. Old man like him. But I tell ya what; I ain’t ever had to fight so hard in all me life.”

  Dorring gathered that the ‘old man’ he spoke about was Otis. But what was he doing fighting such a bear of a man? The guy who sat wheezing through his broken teeth was at least seven feet tall and must weigh at least 280 pounds. Otis was around six feet and no more than 200. What was he doing fighting such a hulk? Surely no one would pair such contrasting weight divisions together.

  The farmer led them through the crowd. Almost all of them talked about the giant heart of the old man and how they hoped he’d be alright.

  “I never seen a man that age move so quick.”

  “He’s a white haired warrior.”

  “But the sound he made when old Joe hit him that last time. Wet crackin’ sound. I mean, Joe was real sore about the beatin’ he’d taken. Took three blokes to get him off the old man. Thought he’d killed him.”

  “It’d be a massive shame if he has. The old boy deserve a medal for gettin’ in the pit with Big Joe in the first place. Let alone nearly beatin’ the guy.”

  “I heard the old boy was over at Motson’s farm beforehand, fighting two young blokes down there. Says he was warming up.”

  They reached a back room attached to the warehouse. The farmer had to knock and the door was opened a crack by a tall man with a birthmark covering half his face like spilled wine. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down his giraffe’s neck as he said, “We got him on the bed.”

  The door was opened all the way and they went inside. The room was held in the dull glow of a low wattage bulb. The shadows of the men inside shimmered along the gray breeze block walls. There were ten of them. All looking like farmers done up for the village ball. Flat caps with checked shirts and ties. Some in jeans. The older ones in ironed trousers. Most wore shoes, but some still had their wellingtons on.

  They stood around with worried looks and parted for Dorring and Maria to be led through. At the far corner of the room, a mattress sat on the floor. The first thing Dorring spotted was Bess laying beside it. The black and white sheep dog was low on its front with its head lying across the chest of someone. It was Otis. He was lying on his back in a pool of his own sweat and blood, naked from the waist up, with his battered flesh glistening in the dull light. His face was unrecognizable, except for his scraggly white hair and beard. The eyes were closed over, so it was hard to tell if he was unconscious. His busted lips quivered ever so slightly and he appeared to be mumbling something that couldn’t be heard over the low hum of the men’s conversations. He just lay there with his mouth wide open, gums and lips twitching. The whole front row of teeth were broken off and the pink gum was so swollen that Dorring would have taken it for a lump of pink bubble gum had it not been for the bloody holes where the teeth used to be. As for his body, the bruises were already coming to the surface of the flesh like pools of oil from a leaking underwater pipeline. A large purple one that was darkening stood on one side of the ribs and Dorring observed that the flesh was concave; the ribs had been broken.

  Maria dashed forward and kneeled beside the old man, the dog refusing to budge an inch from her master. A thin, delicate hand stroked the side of Otis’ battered face as she leaned over him.

  “What have you done to yourself?” she said softly as her eyes filled with tears.

  There was no response from Otis.

  Maria moved to the side and took hold of the dog, who became restless in her arms. Kneeling in her former position, Dorring felt the ribs. The old man groaned loudly and squirmed. But the eyes didn’t open. He was essentially out cold.

  Secure in the knowledge that the ribs hadn’t punctured the lung, Dorring felt Otis’ skull. The flesh around it was badly bruised, but he beheld no fracture in the bone underneath. He would be badly concussed, but had every chance of waking up.

  “He needs to go to hospital,” Dorring said to the men crowded behind him.

  “I’m afraid he won’t allow it,” said a voice Dorring recognized.

  Gazing along the line of men, he spotted Lloyd’s scarred, one-eyed face held aloft by a shirt collar and tie.

  “What do you mean?” Dorring asked.

  “He won’t have it,” Lloyd said. “Never has before. Old Glenn took him to casualty once and halfway along, he wakes up and opens the door while the car’s still going. Threatened to jump out if Glenn didn’t stop and let him out. So I can tell you for sure, he won’t appreciate it.”

  “But his ribs need to be reset.”

  “He’ll do it hisself. He has before.”

  “But I can’t be sure they haven’t hit the lungs. The jagged ends might press through. Burst the lung, then he’ll be—”

  “No!” came a hiss beside Dorring’s face.

  He turned to Otis. The old man’s hand had reached out and was holding Dorring’s forearm. One of the eyes was open. The lips moved awhile before a sound managed to get out.

  “No… doctors,” he said. “Get me back… to the van… They teach you to reset ribs… in the army?”

  Dorring nodded.

  “Then get me home.”

  “I haven’t got a car,” Dorring explained.

  “I’ll drive ya,” Lloyd said.

  Dorring glanced at Maria.

  “What about the bike?” he asked.

  “We can put it in the back of Lloyd’s pickup,” she said, not taking her eyes from the old man.

  They carried Otis out of there, the old man with an arm each around the shoulders of Dorring and Lloyd, groaning badly when they had to lift the arms up to place them there. Slowly, they took him out through the clots of people. They all stopped their talk the moment they spotted the hobbling, half-conscious figure of Otis between Lloyd and Dorring. Every one of them, without being prompted, put his hands together and began clapping. Dorring wasn’t even sure if Otis was with it enough to notice. Upon passing the straw bales used for the edges of the ring, the opponent stood up with his mate’s help and put his own swollen mitts together.

  “You got the biggest heart I ever seen!” he cried after them. “Biggest heart!”

  With Maria and Bess looking on, they loaded the old man onto the back seat. Maria then got in the other side and lay Otis’ head on her lap, stroking his white hair. The dog got in the other side and lay atop of his legs with her chin resting on his stomach and her eyes looking up at her stricken master.

  Once Lloyd and Dorring had placed the Honda into the back of the truck, they drove away from the cheering men and back to camp. On the way, the mood in the pickup was tense and no one immediately said a word, only the light whines of the dog and the distant murmuring of the now unconscious old man breaking the reticence.

  But as they reached the entrance to the dirt track, Lloyd felt obliged to say something.

  “I take it I can count on ya to keep things quiet?” he said as he turned off the road.

  “Yes, Lloyd,” Dorring replied. “You can count on me to keep your illegal bareknuckle boxing fights quiet. The same as you can count on me to keep Jordon’s Orchards’ flouting of labor laws quiet.”

  Lloyd went red. The mottled scar was on his left, so it faced Dorring in the passenger seat. That went an odd hue of purple and the man instantly scratched away at it.

  “That’s good then,” he muttered.

  They reached the camp. Dorring and Lloyd placed Otis in his bed and the dog immediately settled itself within his feet.

  “So we good?” Lloyd asked as he went to leave.

  Maria, Dorring and Lloyd stood outside the caravan.

  “We’re good, Lloyd,” Dorring said. “I take it no one made him get into that ring?”

  “On the contrary. I tried most of the night to stop him. You saw that other bloke? Big Joe. There’s wild animals would have up sticks and run
when faced with him. But there’s a spirit in that old man in there what wants revenge on the whole o’ humanity. An’ that spirit lets him turn away from no man. No matter how big. I seen him beat two men twice his size as though they were kids in the playground. Watched ’em laugh when they see him come in the ring. Watched ’em damn near cry like a babe when they left it.”

  He stared deep into Dorring’s eyes when he said this.

  “So he cures his demons with fighting men twice his size and half his age then?” Dorring said.

  “It’s so he’s ready. See, he’s been waitin’ for—”

  “I don’t think Otis will want us talking about this,” Maria interrupted.

  Lloyd turned to her and nodded.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. Let a man tell his own tale, as my pa used to say. Anyway, I should be goin’. My Angie’ll be wonderin’ where I’ve got to.”

  Lloyd nodded to each of them and went on his way. Maria and Dorring stood for a few seconds, watching him go. When he had, Dorring said in Romanian, “He’s going to kill himself if he keeps doing this.”

  “He doesn’t care,” she replied in the same tongue. “I have pleaded with him many times to stop. It is why I can’t stay with him all year. In the winter, it is worse. The darkness and cold make him even more sad. Sometimes, it’s every single Friday. And then when he can’t get a fight in the ring, he finds it somewhere else.”

  Dorring turned to Maria. “Why?” he asked. “Why does he do it?”

  She didn’t reply straight away. Instead, she touched him on the arm and smiled.

  “You deserve to know,” she said. “But you should ask him this question, not me.”

  “I’ll ask him, all right,” Dorring said. “Just as soon as he can make any sense.”

  Maria smiled again, leaned forward and embraced him. His own arms held onto her and the two stayed like that in the silver gloom of the moon for a minute or so until she let go and he watched her leave.

  Inside the caravan, Dorring found Otis lying on his side, the one without the broken ribs. The dog was lying within the crook behind his folded knees with its chin resting on his hip. Its whines blended with the low sobbing sound emerging from the old man. His back was to Dorring and he was shivering. When the former went to place a blanket over him, he found Otis gazing at a crumpled photo in his hand. It was of the family. The younger Otis, the woman and the girl.

  “Oh, Jessy,” he wept. “I’m sorry I let you down.”

  9

  In the morning, Dorring helped Otis reset the ribs, the old man screaming as they did it. It was the two bottom ribs and they were both fractured in their centers. Thankfully, they reset cleanly.

  “You’ll have to leave off work for a week or two,” Dorring said afterwards as the old man sat back against the side of the caravan, gently holding his ribs and recovering from the pain.

  “I’ll be all right,” he muttered. “I’ve worked with much worse.”

  “What like?”

  “Broken hands. Busted ankle once. Didn’t even know it were broke till I went to step up the ladder and heard it crunch. Just thought it were twisted.”

  Dorring didn’t say anything. He merely sat opposite the old man, watching him. The dog sat next to him. It hadn’t been any more than a few inches from him since they’d gotten back the night before.

  “You been lookin’ at me the whole time since yesterday,” Otis said. “S’pose you got questions. Or are you gonna tell me what for?”

  “Well, at least I know where you’ve been going all this time and who’s been beating you up.”

  “Mystery solved.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “No?”

  “No. It doesn’t explain why someone your age would do such a thing. Another beating like that and you might not make it to your next birthday. I mean, I went to the toilet after you this morning. I take it that the blood in the bowl was from you?”

  “So I pissed a little blood. It’ll be back to normal in a couple o’ days. Usually is. You’ll be surprised how well I heal. Plus, health-wise, I’m as fit as a fiddle.”

  “That still doesn’t tell me why.”

  The eye that still could, opened at Dorring and a dark look held him.

  “You’re gettin’ on my tit,” the old man said. “You wanna be me mother, is that it?”

  “Only your friend, if you’ll let me.”

  “I don’t need a friend.”

  “That’s not what it looks like. If it hadn’t been for me and Maria last night, then what?”

  “Old Lloyd would have taken me back on his own.”

  “What if you’d have died?”

  “I didn’t and I wouldn’t. Takes a lot more than a beating to get rid o’ me. Trust me, boy, without this I feel dead. It’s the only thing I got.”

  “What about them?”

  This stunned the old man. Dorring was pointing at one of the photos on the wall. Otis became even angrier.

  “I like you, Dorrin’,” he said in a harsh tone. “I like that you don’t ask ’bout things. All this time with me and not once have you asked ’bout them because you could sense it were a bad thing.”

  “I let you be, Otis, because I respected your privacy.”

  “Then respect it now!” he snapped at Dorring.

  “Not when it involves me. Not when I have to carry you half-dead out of a barn at one in the morning because you’re trying to kill yourself, but are too afraid to do it in any conventional sense.”

  “Kill myself! Huh!” He clapped a hand on his knee and winced, the hand being badly swollen like the rest of him. “Is that what you think this is?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No…” He thought about it for a moment, rubbed his chin. “Maybe some part of it. Deep down. But not really.”

  “Then what are you trying to do?”

  “Tryin’ to be ready!” he shouted across the tiny gap between them. “Tryin’ to make sure when the time comes, I can take ahold of him with me bare hands and rip every bit of flesh from his bones. For when the day comes when I am sitting across from him like I am from you now.”

  “Who’s him?”

  Otis went to say, but something inside of him was unwilling to share it. Instead, the old man sank back into the wall of the caravan and shook his head.

  “I don’t know,” he muttered. “An’ there ain’t no use tellin’ what I do. You’ll be gone soon enough and I’ll be alone once more.”

  For a minute, Dorring let the old man sit against the wall with his eyes closed. The pain in his ribs was still bothering him and every so often, he’d shuffle in his seat to try and get a comfortable position. Each time he did, he’d wince in pain and place his hand softly on the ribs.

  “I had a family once,” Dorring said eventually and the old man’s eyelid popped open like a blind.

  “You say something?”

  “I said I had a family once.”

  “Good for you,” Otis grumbled and threw the blind back down over the eye.

  “Wife and little girl. They’re both dead.”

  This had an effect on Otis. Slowly, he roused his body away from the wall and sat up; the purple blind lifted over the eye as it stared at Dorring.

  “Why’re you tellin’ me this?” he asked.

  “Because you’re not alone in your misery. No matter what you think.”

  “How’d they die?”

  “Men came. They died.”

  “The men come for you?” Otis asked.

  “Yes. They took me somewhere afterwards. Locked me in a room with their dead bodies. Made me watch them rot.”

  Otis was gazing deep into Dorring’s eyes. He was wondering if he was lying. Why would he lie? the old man pondered in his head. It was too elaborate if he was. No need.

  “Must’ve made you go mad,” he said.

  “It did,” Dorring said back. “For a while. Maybe still. I don’t know. I still see them sometimes.”

  “I s
ee mine all the time,” Otis muttered blankly, the eye glazed over.

  “So you see,” Dorring said, “if and when you’re ready, I’m here. I know what a burden the loss of family can be to a man.”

  Otis merely stared back across the caravan. Nodding, he sat back against the wall and once more closed the eye.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “An’ I mean that, too.”

  Nothing more was said that day.

  10

  Detective Sergeant Barker was out the back of the station smoking a cigarette when he got the call.

  “Sarge,” said Detective Constable Harriet Green down the phone, “you’ve got to come have a look at this.”

  “I’m busy,” he grumbled. “What is it?”

  “I can’t exactly explain on the phone. I need you to come see it.”

  With a groan, the old detective tossed his smoke into the gutter and went inside. Upstairs in the detective’s office, he reached his desk to find Harriet Green standing over it, gazing at his computer.

  “You know, you should really sort this thing out,” she said without looking up at him as Barker entered the office. “Your files are all over the place.”

  “I like it like that,” he said curtly, coming around the desk and joining her.

  “Okay,” she said. “So I got a call from forensics five minutes ago. They said they’ve sent you an e-mail with the results from the fingerprint and hair analysis from the Carter case. He said that something odd came up. Something really odd.”

  “What?”

  “Read the names from the analysis of physical evidence found in the room where Carter was killed.”