Miss Merton made herself a cup of milky tea and took it into the sitting room. Rajah, her blue Persian, opened an eye as she came in then went back to sleep, purring gently. He was old now and occasionally made a mess on the carpets but, once he’d had his nose rubbed in it, he behaved himself again. Before she settled into her armchair, Evelyn looked up at the class photographs she had hung above the television. There were rows and rows of eleven-year-olds, some of them serious but many grinning cheekily at the camera. The parents were to blame. The parents and the government. There was no discipline in society anymore. If it continued like this, she thought as she turned on the TV, there would be rioting in the streets.
The doorbell rang, provoking a sigh from Evelyn Merton. She enjoyed the morning talk shows, particularly the ones where feckless people were made to see the error of their ways.
A youngish man was standing outside, a blue cap on his head.
“’Mornin’,” he said in a bold way that immediately put Evelyn’s back up.
“Can I help you?” she asked coldly.
“Gas,” he said, smiling to reveal gleaming and unnaturally pointed white teeth. “Come to read the meter.” He looked at a clipboard. “Merton, is it?”
“Miss Merton. Very well, follow me.” Evelyn stopped and turned as she was halfway down the hall. “Show me some identification, please.”
The man closed the door and dropped the snib. He held the clipboard out to her. It was then that she realized he was wearing latex gloves. Surprised, she looked down at the board and took a heavy blow to her left temple.
She grunted, and then felt herself being dragged over the carpet to the main bedroom.
“Quiet, bitch,” the man hissed between tight lips.
“Wha…what do you…want?” Evelyn asked. “No…no money in the house.”
She grunted as she was pulled onto the bed. She could feel ropes being tightened around her wrists.
“No…no,” she said, but she could hear that her voice was faint.
Then she felt ropes on her skin. They were tightened and her legs were opened. Looking up, she realized that her wrists and ankles had been tied to the bedposts.
“No…” she said, fear making her bladder empty.
“Oh, she’s a dirty old woman,” the man said with a sharp laugh. “She’s going to have to lie in her own muck.” He took his hat off and opened the bag he’d been carrying.
Evelyn Merton watched as he zipped a white plastic suit over his clothes, then put what looked like a surgical cap over his short fair hair.
“Scream if you like, Miss Merton,” he said, emphasizing her title as if it were a swear word. “But the problem with living in a bungalow is that your neighbors aren’t very likely to hear you, especially above the racket from your television.” He smiled. “Besides, Mrs. Smith in number thirty-three is out shopping and Mr. Humboldt in number thirty-seven has been in hospital for the past ten days. Not that you’ve bothered to visit him, have you, you poisonous old toad?”
Evelyn started to sob, her eyes blurred by tears. She’d read often enough in the Mail about elderly women being assaulted in their own homes, but she’d never believed it would happen to her. Perhaps she could reason with the man. There was something about him that was familiar, but her throbbing head couldn’t make sense of it. Something about him…
Her assailant sat down on the bed near her face and leaned over. “I imagine you’d like to know what’s going on, Miss Merton,” he said, his voice steady. He had a neutral accent, but to her experienced ear there was a trace of Cockney in it. “Don’t worry, I’ll fill you in.” He gave a laugh that made her blood run cold. “But first, I’m going to shut you up. I used to have to listen to you enough.” He grabbed her face, thumb and fingers pressing hard into her cheeks. She was forced to open her mouth and a cloth of some sort was stuffed into it. She panicked as she was forced to breathe through her nose, and struggled in her bonds.
“Calm down, you old cow,” he said, the East End tones more evident. “Calm down and take your punishment like a…well, like a stinking old woman.”
Evelyn’s mind was filled with flashes from the past. Take your punishment like a man. That had been one of her catchphrases as a teacher. In the first part of her career, she’d applied the cane liberally. Later on, she’d been forced to come up with more imaginative forms of chastisement for the boys who had threatened her authority-and it was always boys. The girls had seemed to see sense when they encountered a worthy opponent and kept their heads down. Insolent faces cascaded through her thoughts: vicious, calculating little hooligans; ne’er-do-wells who’d begun smoking before they were ten and sworn like troopers…
“Mmm!” she said with a feeble groan. “Mmm!” She felt a blade close to her skin, slicing though her clothes.
“Yes, Miss Merton,” the man said, this time his voice high-pitched like one of her pupils’. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Evelyn closed her eyes as her outer and undergarments were cut apart and tugged from beneath her. No man had ever seen her entirely naked, not even Gilbert. When he had started coming to her bed not long after their mother died, she’d always kept the light off. She cringed in shame, feeling the soggy bedspread beneath her loins. Then her eyes sprang apart when she felt latex-covered fingers probe inside her.
“Well, well,” the man said, bending over her midriff. “We all thought you were a virgin, but it seems that someone’s been here.” He gave her a lascivious grin. “Or did you use a cucumber?” Then a knowing expression spread across his smooth features. “Silly me,” he said, following her eyes to the photograph on the bedside table. “I forgot. Mr. Gilbert. I remember your brother from sports days. He used to time the races.” He laughed, a cold and pitiless sound that chilled her blood. “And call us ‘dirty little tinkers.’ You and your brother were the dirty ones, weren’t you, Miss Merton? Still, nothing wrong with keeping it in the family. I had a very close relationship with my mother, too, you know. Then again, I was adopted.”
Suddenly the knife, a large blade that could have been a soldier’s, was in front of her eyes. She whimpered through the gag.
“No, Miss Merton, it’s too late to say you’re sorry.” The man brought his face close to hers. “You hurt me, Miss Merton. You hurt me a lot. Do you remember?”
She shook her head, trying to keep her eyes off his.
“Let me help you. My name’s Leslie Dunn. Mean anything to you?”
Evelyn closed her eyes. No, she thought desperately, it can’t be him. Not the weasel-faced Les Dunn, the boy who used to look at her in the most impudent way, as if she had no right to discipline him.
“I can see it does. Nice to see you again.” The man laughed. “Not.” He ran his eyes over her body. “I always thought you’d look disgusting without any clothes on and I was right.”
Then the blade was at her face again. “Let me remind you what you did to me so that you understand why I’m exacting retribution.”
She moaned again.
He ignored her. “You made me stand in the corner with one leg raised for a whole lesson, do you remember? Because I put my hand up at the wrong time. You made me crawl around on all fours like a dog for a day because you thought I’d made a barking noise. It wasn’t me, it was Richard Brady.” He gave another empty laugh. “He paid the price a long time ago. And you ridiculed me in front of all the kids, not once, not twice, but hundreds of times.” He stood up and started walking around the room in the heavy-footed way that Evelyn had always had. “‘Leslie Dunn,’” he said in a high-pitched voice, “‘if your parents weren’t drunken idiots, you’d know that behavior like yours is unacceptable in polite society. Leslie Dunn, if you can’t come to school with clean clothes, then don’t come at all. Leslie Dunn, your writing is like a brainless chimpanzee’s.’” He fixed his eyes on her. “And so on. You didn’t really think you could get away with treating people like that, did you, Miss Brother-fucking Merton?” He slapped her hard on the cheek. “Did you?”