‘...what does it matter how he found out? How did you find out in the first place...’
‘...beating him up wouldn’t have worked either. I told you... burning his place hurt him more...’
‘...you can’t put pressure on a wife and children if he hasn’t got any...’
‘...brother... no good... just a lush...’
I shifted along on my stomach and looked again. Another uninformative slice of furnishings.
I couldn’t see who Vic was talking to nor hear the replies. The answering voice came to me only as a low rumble, like a bass drum played quietly. I realised in the end that its owner was sitting against the window wall but so far to the left that unless he moved I was not going to be able to see him from where I was. Never mind, I thought. I would see him face to face soon enough. Meanwhile I might as well learn as much as I could. There might be a gem for the bargaining session ahead.
‘...can’t see any other way out...’ Vic said.
The reply rumbled briefly.
Vic came suddenly close to the window. I buried my face and stretched my ears.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I more or less promised him you would meet him.’
Rumble rumble, seemingly displeased.
‘Well I’m damn well not going inside just to save him from knowing who you are.’
Rumble rumble.
‘Damn right I’ll tell him.’
Rumble rumble rumble.
Vic hadn’t been exactly frank, I thought. He hadn’t told his rumble-voiced friend that I was due there at six o’clock. Vic was going to hand the friend to me on a plate whether the friend liked it or not. I smiled in the dark. Round two.
‘I don’t give a damn about your reputation,’ Vic said. ‘What’s so bloody marvellous about your reputation?’
A long rumble. Infuriating not to be able to hear.
Vic’s voice in reply sounded for the first time as if he were stifling doubts.
‘Of course I agree that business is founded on trust...’
Rumble rumble.
‘Well, it’s too bad because I’m not bloody going to jail to save your reputation, and that’s flat.’
Rumble.
Vic moved across the window from right to left, but I could still hear him clearly.
‘Where are you going?’ His voice suddenly rose sharply into anxiety. ‘What are you doing? No... No... My God... Wait...’ His voice went higher and louder. ‘Wait...’
The last time, he screamed it. ‘Wait...’
There was a sort of cough somewhere inside the room and something heavy fell against the window. I raised my head and froze in absolute horror.
Vic was leaning back against the glass. The net curtain all around him was bright scarlet.
While I watched he twisted on his feet and gripped hold of the curtain for support. On the front of his lilac shirt there was an irregular scarlet star.
He didn’t speak. His grip slackened on the curtains. I saw his eyes for a second as he fell.
They were dead.
Without conscious thought I got to my feet and sprinted round to the front of the house. It’s easy enough looking back to say that it was a mad thing to do. At the time all I thought was that Vic’s murdering friend would get clean away without me seeing who he was. All I thought was that I’d set Vic up to flush out the friend, and if I didn’t see who it was he would have died for nothing. The one thing I didn’t think was that if the friend saw me, he would simply shoot me too.
Everything happened too fast for working out probabilities.
By the time I had skirted the pool and the garden room the engine of one of the cars in the drive was urgently revving. Not the big Jaguar. The Cortina. It reversed fiercely in an arc to point its nose to the drive.
I ran. I came up to it from behind on its left side. Inside the car the dark bulk of the driver was shifting the gears from reverse to forward. I put my hand on the handle of the rear door, wanting to open it, to make him turn his head, see who he was, to stop him, fight him, take his gun away, hand him over to justice... heaven knows.
The Cortina spurted forward as if flagged off the grid and pulled my arm right out of its socket.
16
I knelt on the ground in the familiar bloody agony and thought that a dislocated shoulder was among the ultimates.
What was more, there were footsteps coming up the drive towards me.
Scrunch scrunch scrunch.
Inexorable.
All the things have to be faced. I supported my left elbow in my right hand and waited, because in any case I could barely move, let alone run away.
A figure materialised from the darkness. Advanced to within six feet. Stopped.
A voice said, ‘Have you been run over?’
I nearly smiled. ‘I thought I told you to stay in the car.’
‘You sound funny,’ Sophie said.
‘Hilarious.’
She took two paces forwards, stretching out her hands.
‘Don’t touch me,’ I said hastily.
‘What’s the matter?’
I told her.
‘Oh God,’ she said.
‘And you can put it back.’
‘What?’
‘Put my shoulder back.’
‘But...’ She sounded bewildered. ‘I can’t.’
‘Not here. In the house.’
She had no idea how to help me up. Not like jump jockeys’ wives, I thought briefly, for whom smashed up husbands were all in the day’s work. I made it to my feet with the loss of no more than a pint of sweat.Various adjectives occurred to me. Like excruciating.
One foot gingerly in front of the other took us to the door that Vic’s friend had left open, the door to the hallway and the office. Light spilled out of it. I wondered if there was a telephone anywhere except in the office.
We went very slowly indoors with me hunched like Notre Dame.
‘Jonah!’ Sophie said.
‘What?’
‘I didn’t realise... you look... you look...’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I need you to put it back.’
‘We must get a doctor.’
‘No... the police. Vic Vincent’s been shot.’
‘Shot.’ She followed my gaze to Vic’s office and went along there to take a look. She returned several shades paler, which made two of us.
‘It’s... awful.’
‘See if you can find another telephone.’
She switched on several lights. There was another telephone on a table flanked by a sofa and a potted palm.
‘Call the police,’ I said.
She dialled three nines. Told them a man had been killed. They would come at once, they said. She put the receiver down and turned towards me purposefully.
‘I’m going to dial again for an ambulance.’
‘No. You do it. It has to be done now. At once.’
‘Jonah... don’t be stupid. How can I? You need professional help. A doctor.’
‘I need a doctor like yesterday’s news. Look... doctors don’t put shoulders back. By the time they arrive all the muscles have gone into spasms, so they can’t. They send you to hospital in bloody jerking ambulances. The hospitals sit you around for hours in casualty departments. Then they send you for X-rays. Then they trundle you to an operating theatre and by then they have to give you a general anaesthetic. It takes about four hours at the best of times. Sunday evenings are not the best of times. If you won’t do it... I... I...’ I stopped. The prospect of those long hours ahead was enough to scare the saints.
‘I can’t,’ she said.
‘I’ll tell you how...’
She was appalled. ‘You must have a doctor.’
I muttered under my breath.
‘What did you say?’ she demanded.
‘I said... God give me a woman of strength.’
She said in a low voice, ‘That’s unfair.’
I went slowly past her through the hall into the open-plan dining-room and sat gingerly on one of the hard straight-backed chairs. What I felt was beyond a joke.