I was just finished when Dixie came back with a cup of water. He didn’t even watch me take my pills, which was just as well — I’m not the world’s expert on palming things. He seemed much more interested in his drink, and as I watched he poured about another inch into the glass.
“How about a drop of that for me?” I asked. I didn’t want him looking too closely at what he was drinking.
“You must be kidding.” He sat down in front of me and deliberately drank from the glass. “I wouldn’t have given you any of that bloody lot if it wasn’t for Scouse tellin’ us to look after yer. He doesn’t want you dead tomorrow — he has his own games to play.”
As he spoke he was looking at my free right arm and touching the knife on the piano stool next to him. I realized he had deliberately left me untied, hoping I would give him an excuse to cut me. It was a bad few minutes. His face was flushed with drink but his eye still had a glassy, calculating look.
What did the drug do when it was combined with alcohol? I hoped it would be strongly sedative. Alcohol is a depressant, and the drug was supposed to damp brain activity. But what would I do if the mixture turned Dixie into a raving madman?
He finished the drink in his glass and glared at me with a fixed, cunning expression as he poured a refill. “Just you wait, you bleeder,” he said suddenly. “Des was one of my best mates. I’ll get you for ’im. You’ll wish you’d never been born. Just you wait.”
He stood up unsteadily and did a shuffling dance step over to the piano and back again. His coordination was badly off. He realized it and stood there frowning, staring at me again.
” ’Sgetting late. Better get you tied up again, an’ relax.” He picked up the knife and came closer. “Move wrong now, an’ that’ll be it. Put yer arm flat on the chair.”
His eyes were blurry and blinking, but the knife was at my throat. He was still being cautious. He wound the rope one-handed around my wrist until it was too tight for me to move more than a couple of inches, and only then laid the knife aside to finish tying me.
“Not so tight,” I said. “That’s hurting.”
He pulled viciously on the cord and made a final knot. Then he picked up the knife again and leaned close towards me. His eyes were only inches from mine, and his warm, whiskey-laden breath blew into my face.
“You’ll know what hurtin’ is soon.” He brought the knife slowly up along my neck, drawing the tip steadily over my chin and cheek. I flinched as the point came higher, and squeezed my right eye tight shut. The sharp point was on my eyelid. I could feel the tremble in Dixie ’s hand transmitted through the steel to my eyeball. I sat motionless, my pulse throbbing in my throat.
Dixie moved the point horizontally along my eye, then at last drew back. “Just wait ’til Scouse has done with you. Then it’ll be my turn.” He straightened, and I took what felt like my first breath in minutes.
He lurched backwards to the stool, looked confusedly around him, and set off unsteadily for the door. He did not speak again as he went through, but I heard the key turn in the lock. Far gone as he might be, he remembered his orders. I waited a couple of minutes, then moved my head forward. If anything was to be done, now was the time for it. I couldn’t wait too long — Pudd’n might come back. When Dixie was tying me again he must have already been feeling unsteady, and instead of tying the knots on the underside of the chair arm, as Pudd’n had been careful to do, he had taken the easier path of tying them on top, on the upper side of my wrist. And this time he had left the light on. I could get my teeth to work on them.
It seemed to take forever, gnawing and tugging at spit-covered, slippery rope until the knots began to loosen and slide open. My right hand took about ten minutes to free. Then I could work on the unseen knots below the left arm of the chair. I was impatient, and that slowed me down. It was another twenty minutes before I was able to stand up, free of the chair.
I took two slow steps towards the door, then stood shaking. For the first time in my life I had real sympathy for Hans Andersen’s mermaid, the one who felt as though she was walking on sharp knives. My circulation was coming back, and at first I couldn’t bear to walk. Finally I managed to stumble over to look at the door.
It was panelled, heavy oak with an embossed metal facing. The lock was massive, with a big, old-fashioned keyhole. I tried the handle for a moment, as quietly as I could, and confirmed that Dixie had locked it when he left. Unless someone would provide me with a fire axe, that wasn’t a possible way out. I went to the window and pulled back the thick drapes.
I had guessed from the trip down to the kitchen that the music room window would be twelve to fifteen feet above the ground. It was more like twenty — I didn’t know how the ground sloped near the house. The window opened easily enough, to leave me staring down into a dimly-seen patch of bushes and flowers.
Too far to drop? I poised myself on the sill, inched forward slowly, and wondered if my injured leg could take the strain. I leaned out farther, holding the wooden window frame tightly in my left hand.
Too high!
I had just decided that when the traitorous fingers of my left hand relaxed and I was falling outward into the darkness, to land heavily on a rose bush and a bed of spiky flowers.
Then it was up on my feet as fast as I could, hobble around to the front of the house, and pause there to decide how to manage the next step. A Fiat stood out by the front entrance. My wishful thinking of keys in the ignition vanished quickly — I couldn’t even open a car door. But standing by the front of the house in a metal rack was an old bicycle. I was on it in a second and off down the long drive, my knees coming up almost to my chin. The bike was meant for somebody a foot shorter, but I wasn’t going to wait to raise the saddle. The house stood midway on a long hill, and I went swooping down dangerously fast, hugging the curb.
A police station was the logical place to go, but I was past logic. All I wanted to do was find a safe place to hide. That was the instinct to keep me going until I found my way to the Underground (Osterley Station, out near the end of the Piccadilly Line), heading back to my flat. Then I realized that wasn’t a safe place any more. Instead I checked into a hotel in Knightsbridge, signed my name as Jan Dussek, went up to my room, and unravelled.
Some might call it shock — delayed terror sounds more accurate. But when I woke up it was nearly ten-thirty in the morning, and there were energetic sounds of cleaning coming from the corridor. I sat up groggily and took stock.
One jacket covering a cut and tattered shirt. One pair of trousers, smeared with mud and oil from the bicycle chain. Muddy shoes. A wallet containing about a hundred and twenty pounds. And a box of pills. With those assets I carried a strong desire to stay away from my flat. So what next? Only one hope left.
The call to Tess didn’t start out well. I hadn’t called her last night, as she had suggested in her note. Why not? She had stayed in and waited.… Her voice didn’t have the warmth in it that I wanted to hear.
Well, I said…
I talked for at least five minutes, with an increasingly perplexed silence at the other end of the line.
“But where’s the house?” she asked, when I ran out of steam. I could hear the unspoken comment that went with it: Can you prove what you’re saying?
“Near Osterley Tube Station.”
“You could find it again?”
“I think so. But I’m damned if I’m going to try. Tess, those lot are dangerous. If I go back there, I’ll want a police escort. And I’m not sure they’ll believe me — you know what Sir Westcott will say.”