Twice Shy

'So there you are,' I said finally. 'Jonathan got Angelo tossed into clink. And now he's out.'

Cassie had listened with alternating alarm and amusement, but it was doubt that remained in the end.

'So what now?' she said.

'So now, if Angelo's on the rampage, hostilities may be resumed.'

'Oh no.'

'And there are certain disadvantages that Derry number two may have to contend with.' I ticked them off on my fingers. 'One, I can't shoot. Two, I know practically nothing about computers. And three, if Angelo's come charging out of jail intending to track down his lost crock of gold, I've no idea where it is or even if it still exists.'

She frowned. 'Do you think that's what he wants?'

'Wouldn't you?' I said gloomily. 'You spend fourteen years in a cell brooding over what you lost and dreaming of vengeance and yes, you're going to come out looking for both – and a small detail like having attacked the wrong man isn't going to put you off.'

'Come to bed,' Cassie said.

'I wonder if he thinks the way he used to.' I looked at her increasingly loved face. 'I don't want him busting in here to hold you hostage.'

'With no Jonathan to cut the telephone wires and send for the posse? Come to bed.'

'I wonder how he did it?'

'What?'

'Cut the wires. It isn't that easy.'

'Climbed the pole with a pair of scissors,' she said.

'You can't climb a pole. There aren't any footholds except at the top.'

'Why are you wondering about it after all these years? Come to bed.'

'Because of a bang on the head.'

She said, 'Are you really anxious?'

'Uneasy.'

'You must be. I've mentioned bed three times and you're still sitting down.'

I grinned at her and rose to my feet- and at that moment an almighty crash on the front door burst it open with splintering wood and a broken lock.

Angelo stood in the gap. Stood for less than a second regaining his balance from the kick which had brought him in, stood with the baseball bat swinging and his face rigid with ill intent.

Neither Cassie nor I had time to protest or yell. He waded straight in, laying about him, smashing anything near him, a lamp, some corn dollies, a vase, a picture… the television. Like a whirlwind demented, he devastated the pretty interior, and when I leapt at him I met a fist in the face and a fast knee which missed my groin, and I smelled his sweat and heard his breath rasp from exertion and took in what he was grittily saying: and it was just my name and Jonathan's, over and over.

'Derry-Derry-Fucking Derry?

Cassie tried to help me, and he slashed at her with the heavy wooden bat and connected with her arm. I saw her stumble from the pain of it and in a fury I put one of my own arms round his neck and tried to yank his head back, to hurt him enough to make him drop his weapon and probably if the truth were told to throttle him. But he knew more about dirty fighting than I'd ever learned and it took him about two elbow jabs and a scrunching backhand jerk of my fingers to prise me loose. He shook me off with such force that I half fell, but still clung to his clothes with octopus tentacles, not wanting to be thrown clear so that he could get another swing with that bat.

We crashed around the broken room with me sticking to him with at least his equal ferocity and him struggling to get free; and it was Cassie, in the end, who finished it. Cassie who had grabbed the brass coal scuttle from the hearth by its shining handle and swung it in an arc at arm's length, aiming at Angelo's head. I saw the flash of its gleaming surface and felt the jolt through Angelo's body: and I let go of him as he fell in a sprawl on the carpet.

'Oh, God,' Cassie was saying. 'Oh, God.' There were tears on her face and she was holding her left arm away from her body in a way I knew all too well.

Angelo was visibly breathing. Stunned only. Soon to awake.

'Have to tie him,' I said breathlessly. 'What've we got?'

Cassie painfully said, 'Washing line,' and before I could stop her she'd vanished into the kitchen, returning almost at once with a new line still in its package. Wire wrapped in plastic, the bright label said. Strong enough, indeed, for a bull.

While I was still uncoiling it with unsteady ringers, there was the sound outside of someone thudding up the path and I had time for a feeling of absolute despair before I saw who it was.

Bananas came to the dark doorway with a rush and there stood stock still taking in the ravaged scene.

'I saw his car come back. I was just closing up…'

'Help me tie him,' I said, nodding at Angelo, who was stirring ominously. 'He did all this. He's coming round.'

Bananas turned Angelo onto his face and held his hands together behind his back while I built knots around the wrists, and then continued with the job himself, leading the line down from the wrists to join it to two more knots round the ankles.

'He's broken Cassie's arm,' I said.

Bananas looked at her and at me and at Angelo, and walked purposefully over to where the telephone stood miraculously undamaged on its little table.

'Wait,' I said. 'Wait.'

'But Cassie needs a doctor. And I'll get the police…'

'No,' I said, 'not yet.'

'But you must.'

I wiped my nose on the back of my hand and looked remotely at the resulting smear of blood. 'There's some pethedine and a syringe in the bathroom,' I said. 'It'll do a lot to stop Cassie hurting.'

He nodded in understanding and said he would fetch it.

'Bring the box marked "Emergency". It's on the shelf over the bath taps.'

While he went and came back with his ever-surprising speed, I helped Cassie to sit on a chair and to rest her left arm on a cushion which I put on the telephone table. It was the forearm, I found, which was broken: both bones, probably, from the numb uselessness of her hand.

'William,' she said whitely, 'don't. It hurts. Don't.'

'Darling… darling… It has to have support. Just let it lie there. Don't fight it.'

She did mutely what I said and looked paler than ever.

'I didn't feel it,' she said. 'Not like this… not at first.'

Bananas brought the emergency box and opened it. I tore the syringe out of its sterile package and filled it from the ampoule of pethedine. Pulled Cassie's skirt up high over the sun-browned legs and fed the muscle-relaxing pain-killer into the long muscle of her thigh.

'Ten minutes,' I said, pulling the needle out and rubbing the place with my knuckles. 'A lot of the pain will go. Then we'll be able to take you to the casually department of Cambridge hospital to get it set. Nowhere nearer will be open at this time of night.'

She nodded slightly with the first twitch of a smile, and on the floor Angelo started trying to kick.

Bananas again walked towards the telephone and again I stopped him.

'But William-'

I looked around at the jagged evidence of a passionate need for revenge; the explosion of fourteen years of pent-up hate.

I said, 'He did this because my brother got him jailed for murder. He's out on parole. If we call the police he'll be back inside.'

Then, of course,' Bananas said, picking up the receiver.

'No,' I said. 'Put it down.'

He looked bewildered. Angelo on the floor began mumbling as if in delirium; a mixture of atrocious swear words and loud incomprehensible unfinished sentences.

'That's stir talk,' said Bananas, listening.

'You've heard it before?'

'You hear everything in the end in my trade.'

'Look,' I said. 'I get him sent back to jail and then what happens? It wouldn't be so long next time before he was out, and he'd have a whole new furious grudge to avenge. And by that time he might have learned some sense and not come waving a piece of wood and going off half-cock, but wait until he'd managed to get a pistol, and sneak up on me one day three, four years from now, and finish me off. This…' I waved a hand, 'isn't an act of reason. I'm only Jonathan's brother. I myself did him no harm. This is anger against life. Blind, colossal, ungovernable rage. I can do without him focussing it all on me personally in the future.' I paused. 'I have to find a better… a final solution. If I can.'