‘Hungry?’ she said. ‘There’s some cheese, I think.’
We ate chunks of cheese in our fingers, absent-mindedly.
‘What are you going to do?’ she said.
‘Wait for them to catch him, I suppose.’
‘He won’t run... he doesn’t know you saw him.’
‘No.’
She said anxiously, ‘He doesn’t... does he?’
‘If he’d seen me he’d have come back and shot us both.’
‘You think the nicest thoughts.’
The evening had left smudgy circles round her eyes. She looked more than tired: over-stretched, over-strained. I yawned and said I ought to be going home, and she couldn’t disguise her flooding relief.
I smiled. ‘You’ll be all right alone?’
‘Oh yes.’ Absolute certainty in her voice. Solitude offered her refuge, healing, and rest. I didn’t. I had brought her a car crash, a man with a pitchfork, a bone-setting and a murder. I’d offered an alcoholic brother, a half-burnt home and a snap engagement. None of it designed for the well-being of someone who needed the order and peace of an ivory control tower.
She came with me down to the car.
‘You’ll come again?’ she said.
‘When you’re ready.’
‘A dose of Dereham every week...’
‘Would be enough to frighten any woman?’
‘Well, no.’ She smiled. ‘It might be bad for the nerves, but at least I’d know I was alive.’
I laughed and gave her an undemanding brotherly kiss. ‘It would suit me fine.’
‘Really?’
‘And truly.’
‘I don’t ask for that,’ she said.
‘Then you damn well should.’
She grinned. I slid into the driving seat. Her eyes looked calmer in her exhausted face.
‘Sleep well,’ I said. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’
It seemed a long way home. My shoulder ached: a faint echo, but persistent. I thought with longing of a stiff brandy and stifled a sigh at the less reviving prospect of coke.
When I got back the house was dark.
No lights, no Crispin.
Hell, I thought. He had no car any more; no transport but his feet. The one place his feet could be trusted to take him was straight to the source of gin.
I parked outside the kitchen as usual, opened the unlocked back door, went in, switched on the lights, and shouted through the house.
‘Crispin?’ No answer. ‘Crispin.’
Total silence.
Swearing under my breath I went along to the office, intending to telephone the pub to ask what state he was in. If he were too far gone, I’d drive up and fetch him. I had picked up the receiver and begun to dial when I heard the door behind me squeak on its hinges.
So he hadn’t gone after all. I turned with the beginnings of a congratulatory smile.
It wasn’t Crispin who had come in. I looked at the heavy pistol with its elongated silencer, and like Vic the urgent words which shaped in my mind were no and my God and wait.
17
‘Put the telephone down,’ he said.
I looked at the receiver in my hand. I’d dialled only half the number. Pity. I did as he said.
‘I saw you at Vic’s,’ I said. ‘I told the police.’
The gun merely wavered a fraction. The round black hole still faced my heart. I’d seen what it had made of Vic, and I had no illusions.
‘I guessed you were there,’ he said.
‘How?’
‘A car parked by the hedge... Saw it when I left. About twelve miles on I realised it was yours. I went back... the place was crawling with police.’
My tongue felt huge and sluggish. I looked at the gun and could think of nothing useful to say.
‘You and Vic,’ he said. ‘You thought you had me in a corner. Too bad. Your mistake.’
I swallowed with difficulty. ‘I saw you,’ I repeated, ‘and the police know.’
‘Maybe. But they’ll have trouble making it stick when you’re not alive to give evidence.’
I looked desperately around for a way of diverting him. For a weapon to attack him with.
He smiled faintly. ‘It’s no good, Jonah. It’s the end of the road.’
He straightened his arm to the firing position adopted by people who knew what they were about.
‘You won’t feel much,’ he said.
The door behind him swung on its hinges while he was already beginning to squeeze the trigger. The sudden shift of my attention from sick fascination at the round hole from which death was coming to a point behind his back was just enough to jerk his hand.
Enough was enough.
The flame spat out and the bullet missed me.
Crispin stood in the doorway looking with horror at the scene. In one hand he waved a heavy green bottle of gin.
‘The old heave-ho,’ he said distinctly.
He wasn’t drunk, I thought incredulously. He was telling me to go right back to a rugger tackle we’d perfected in boyhood. Instinctively, faster than thought, I feinted at our visitor’s knees.
The gun came round and down towards me and Crispin hit him hard on the head with the gin bottle.
The pistol swung away from me and fired, and I snapped up and lifted the only heavy object within reach, which was my typewriter. I crashed it down with all my strength in the wake of the gin bottle, and the visitor sprawled on the floor with blood gushing from his scalp and the typewriter ribbon rolling across his unconscious face and away to the wall.
‘You old crazy loon,’ I said breathlessly, turning to Crispin. ‘You old blessed...’
My voice died away. Crispin half sat, half lay on the floor with his hand pressed to his side.
‘Crispin!’
‘I’m... not... drunk,’ he said.
‘Of course not.’
‘I think... he shot me.’
Speechlessly I knelt beside him.
He said, ‘Was he the one... who burnt the yard?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hope... you killed him.’
His body sagged. I caught him. Eased him down to the floor and with one hand grabbed a cushion for his head. His pressing fingers relaxed and fell away, and there on the waist band of his trousers was the spreading patch of blood.
‘I’m... floating,’ he said. He smiled. ‘It’s better... than... being drunk.’
‘I’ll get a doctor,’ I said.
‘No... Jonah... Don’t leave me... you sod.’
I didn’t leave him. Three minutes later, without speaking again, he left me.
I closed his eyes gently and got stiffly to my feet, trying to fold numbness around me like a coat.
The pistol lay where it had fallen. I pushed it carefully with my toe until it was completely out of sight under the low-slung armchair. I didn’t want the visitor waking to grab it again.
The visitor hadn’t moved. I sat on the edge of my desk and looked down at the two of them, the unconscious and the dead.
Time enough, I thought, to call in those more or less constant companions, the busy and probing police. A quarter of an hour sooner or later, what did it matter. There was nothing any more to be gained. Too much had been irrevocably lost.
I didn’t care how much damage I’d done with the typewriter. The head I’d busted with it looked more bloody than dented, but I felt a strong aversion to exploring. In all my life I had never wanted to kill anyone; had never thought I could come within a mile of it. I had not even intended to kill with the typewriter, but only to stun. I sat quietly on the desk and shook with fury inside, and wished I could have that blow back again, so that I could make it heavier, avenging and fatal.
Whatever my brother had been, he had been my brother. No one had the right to kill him. I think at that moment I felt as primitive as the Sicilians.