I didn't like to press her further. She had enough problems of her own to worry about. When I'd arrived there were a couple of cars in the driveway being loaded with possessions, as more of the Lodge's residents moved out.
The day had been lit by thin pale sunshine and now the light level was falling fast. I had to flick on the overhead lights before Dave and I could continue.
Now, I re-focused with an effort. “OK,” I told him, “your priority here is to get away very quickly. It takes remarkably little time to be strangled. You can't afford to waste it.”
I suppose I cheated a bit, really. I'd left my hands on his wrists and as I spoke I went for two pressure points on the back of his right hand. A quick twist and I'd not only broken his grip, but I'd put a solid lock onto his wrist and started taking him down with it.
Dave could have stayed upright, if he'd been really determined, but it would have hurt him to do so. The only way to escape the pain was to roll with it. When I let go he favoured me with a rueful smile and climbed to his feet again.
“Nice one,” he allowed grudgingly. “Can I try that on you this time?”
I nodded and put my hands round his throat. He was wearing another of those dreadful nylon jackets, but today it was over a lime green polo-necked jumper with a designer label stitched into the collar. I remembered the bruising from his altercation with Marc and tried not to clutch him too tightly.
I'd found Marc's hands much more careful when they were touching my body. And dextrous.
I brought myself back on track with some difficulty and explained the technique to Dave. Finding the right pressure points isn't easy. Most people require practice to get it right, but Dave picked them up more or less straight away.
Next thing I knew I was hitting the crashmat in a half-roll. As I came back to my feet, I found him watching me with a crafty grin on his face.
“You've done this before,” I said accusingly.
He looked suddenly innocent. “I've just always been a quick learner.”
Before I could answer there was a tentative knock on the already open door to the ballroom. I turned to see Nina hovering from one foot to the other on the threshold.
“Hi,” I said, giving her an encouraging smile. “Come on in.”
“Oh.” After some hesitation, she advanced further. She was wearing a long knitted skirt and ugly shoes that seemed to be the zenith of current fashion. I would have broken both my ankles the first time I tried to walk down a flight of stairs in them. “I don't want to disturb you,” she said. “I just came to say goodbye, that's all.”
“You're leaving?” I tried to sound surprised, but I don't think I could really raise it.
She nodded, not quite meeting my eyes. She flicked a nervous glance in Dave's direction. He caught it, and casually wandered off to one of the French windows in apparent contemplation of the rapidly darkening garden. I watched some of the tension seep out of Nina's body as he moved away, and was grateful for his unexpected sensitivity.
“I wanted to say thank you as well,” she said.
“What for?”
“Well, for the other night.” Edgy, she checked that Dave was far enough away not to be obviously listening in. “You went out to see if you could find him – you know, th-the man I saw.” She was wearing a Celtic design silver ring on one hand, and was twisting it round and round until I thought she'd screw the end of her finger off.
“I didn't know, you see, not until Ailsa told me – what h-happened to you,” she said quickly, when I still looked nonplussed. “But you went out anyway, into the dark. I-I don't know how you could bear to do it.” She shrugged, almost helplessly. “I hope one day I'll be able to do that, too.”
“You will,” I said, and meant it. “If you want to, you will.”
She seemed about to say more, but a middle-aged couple appeared in the entrance to the ballroom and made throat-clearing noises. They were too well-dressed, too well-fed, to ever look comfortable in their present surroundings, and by the looks of it they hadn't tried too hard.
“Nina,” the woman said, “we need to go, darling, if we're going to miss the worst of the traffic.” There was a trace of strain in her voice, like the owner of a runaway dog forced to pick out their prized pedigree hound from among the mongrels and strays of the city pound.
“OK, Mummy,” Nina said over her shoulder. She turned back, gave me a smile that hinted at the sunny teenager she used to be, and impulsively hugged me. Her thin arms were fleetingly tight around my shoulders. “Thank you,” she said, breathless, then she was scurrying away across the wooden floor.
Her parents both put a protective arm around their daughter as she reached them, and their brief stare in my direction was cold to the point of hostile. I ignored them.
“Take care of yourself, Nina,” I said, giving her a final wave.
When they'd gone, I turned to find Dave watching me with curious and calculating eyes.
“What happened to her?” he asked, nodding towards the empty doorway.
“She trusted someone who wasn't to be trusted,” I said shortly. “Now, are you here to talk, or fight?”
I spent the next half an hour or so running through various moves with Dave that should get him out of a few potentially nasty situations. By the time we'd finished both Dave and I were sweating and breathless. I was down to a T-shirt and Dave had lost the jacket, but he must have been regretting the choice of jumper, bruises or no bruises.
To finish, we did a brief recap. I quickly ran through each of the moves again, but there was really no need. He'd got the hang of them.
Afterwards, he helped me drag the crashmats back over to their corner and stand them up against the wall. I pulled my sweatshirt on again, and Dave shrugged back into his jacket. He dug into a pocket and handed over the amount of cash we'd agreed on for the first of his lessons. I accepted without demur. I think I'd earned my money.
It wasn't until we'd moved out of the ballroom and along into the hallway that Dave voiced the question that had probably been on his mind for a while.
“D'you really believe that the stuff you teach these young lasses can actually save them?” he said. He clearly had Nina in mind, but I immediately thought of Joy. It took me a moment to answer.
We'd covered knife attacks in the classes Joy had attended. She knew the theory. She should have been more than capable of fending off her attacker, disarming and disabling him.
Should have been.
But wasn't.
And now she was dead. Just thinking about it twisted a knife in my own side. Joy had paid a mammoth price for not doing her homework. Still, I couldn't help wondering about it. Were her reflexes against a surprise attack really so poor that she'd let a stranger, whoever he was, get close enough to her to pull out a knife and slash her with it? Surely not.
I hedged. “If I didn't believe it, I wouldn't be doing it.”
“Don't you think, though, that people misjudge you at the outset, like those two kids at the club last week, and you rely on that element of surprise too much?” he asked. “OK, so you're fine against someone with comparatively little skill, who's not expecting a counter-attack, but against a stronger opponent, one who knows what he's doing, no way.” He shook his head, grinned at me. “I mean, come on, Foxy. No woman could ever hope to beat a man when their abilities are well matched.”
By woman he meant a smaller, lighter, weaker adversary. I thought of all the martial arts gurus whose work I'd studied. Hardly any were six-foot blokes. They were mostly short in stature, quick and nimble. I'd seen them wipe out bigger, heavier challengers without raising their pulse rate enough to register on an electrocardiogram.