Twice Shy

'You can't mean…' Bananas said tentatively.

'What?'

'To… to… No, you couldn't.'

'Not that final solution, no. Though it's quite a thought. Cement Wellingtons and a downwards trip in the North Sea.'

'Tankful of piranhas,' Cassie said.

Bananas looked at her with relief and almost laughed, and finally put the telephone receiver back in its cradle.

Angelo stopped mumbling and came fully awake. When he realised where he was and in what condition, the skin, which had until then been pale, became redly suffused: the face, the neck, even the hands. He rolled halfway over onto his back and filled the room with the intensity of his rage.

'If you start swearing,' I said, 'I'll gag you.'

With an effort he said nothing, and I looked at his face squarely and fully for the first time. There wasn't a great deal left of the man whose picture I had once pored over in a newspaper; not youth, not black hair, not narrow jaw, not long thin nose. Age, heredity, prison food, all had given him fatty deposits to blur the outlines of the head and bulk the body.

Average brains, Jonathan had said. Not clever. Relies on his frightening-power, and gets his results from that. Despises everyone. Calls them creeps and mugs.

'Angelo Gilbert,' I said.

He jerked, and looked surprised, as if he had thought I wouldn't know him: and nor would I have, if Jonathan hadn't called.

'Let's get it straight,' I said. 'It was not my brother who sent you to prison. You did it to yourself.'

Cassie murmured, 'Criminals in jail are there voluntarily.'

Bananas looked at her in surprise.

'My arm feels better,' she said.

I stared down at Angelo. 'You chose jail when you shot Chris Norwood. Those fourteen years were your own fault, so why take it out on me?'

It made no impression. I hadn't really thought it would. Blaming one's troubles on someone else was average human nature.

Angelo said, 'Your fucking brother tricked me. He stole what was mine.'

'He stole nothing of yours.'

'He did.' The words were bass-voiced, fierce and positive, a growl in the throat. Cassie shivered at the menace Angelo could generate even tied up in ignominy on a cottage floor.

The crock of gold, I thought suddenly, might have its uses.

Angelo seemed to be struggling within himself but in the end the words tore out of him, furious, frustrated, still bursting with an anger that had nowhere to go. 'Where is he?' he said. 'Where's your fucking brother? I can't find him.'

Saints alive…

'He's dead,' I said coldly.

Angelo didn't say whether or not he believed me but the news did nothing for his general temper. Bananas and Cassie displayed a certain stillness, but thankfully kept quiet.

I said to Bananas, 'Could you watch him for a minute while I make a phone call?'

'Hours if you like.'

'Are you all right?' I asked Cassie.

'That stuff's amazing.'

'Won't be long.' I picked the whole telephone off the table beside her and carried it into the office, closing the door as I went.

I called California, thinking that Jonathan would be anywhere but home, that I'd get Sarah, that it would be siesta time under the golden sun. But Jonathan was in, and he answered.

'I just had a thought,' I said. 'Those tapes that Angelo Gilbert wanted, have you still got them?'

'Good grief,' he said. 'I shouldn't think so,' A pause while he reflected. 'No, we cleared everything out when we left Twickenham. You remember, we sold the furniture and bought new out here. I got rid of pretty well everything. Except the guns, of course.'

'Did you throw the tapes away?'

'Um,' he said. 'There was a set I sent to Mrs O'Rorke and got back again. Oh yes, I gave them to Ted Pitts. If anyme still has them it would be Ted. But I shouldn't think they'd be much use after all these years.'

'The tapes themselves, or the betting system?'

'The system. It must be long out of date.'

It wouldn't matter too much, I thought.

'There are a lot of computer programs out here now for helping you win on horses,' Jonathan said. 'Some of them work, they say.'

'You haven't tried them?'

'I'm not a gambler.'

'Oh yeah?'

'What do you want the tapes for?' he said.

To tie Angelo up in knots again.'

'Take care.'

'Sure. Where would I find Ted Pitts?'

He told me doubtfully to try the East Middlesex Comprehensive, where they'd both been teaching, but said it was unlikely he was still there. They hadn't been in touch with each other at all since he'd emigrated. Perhaps I could trace Ted through the Schoolmasters Union, who might have his address.

I thanked him and disconnected, and went back into the sitting-room, where everyone looked much as I'd left them.

'I have a problem,' I said to Bananas.

'Just one?'

Time.'

'Ah. The essence.'

'Mm.' I stared at Angelo. 'There's a cellar under this cottage.'

Angelo had no fear: one had to give him that. I could see quite clearly that he understood I meant not to let him go, yet his only reaction was aggressive and set him struggling violently against the washing line.

'Watch him,' I said to Bananas. There's some stuff in the cellar. I'm going to clear it out. If he looks like getting free, give him another bash on the head.'

Bananas looked at me as if he'd never seen me before; and perhaps he hadn't. I put a quick apologetic hand on Cassie's shoulder as I went, and in the kitchen opened the latched wooden door which led to the steps to the cellar.

Down there it was cool and dry: a brick-lined room with a concrete floor and a single light bulb swinging from the ceiling. When we had come to the cottage we had found the garden chairs stacked in there, but they were now outside on the grass, leaving only oddments like a paraffin stove, some tins of paint, a step-ladder and a stack of fishing gear. I carried everything in relays up the steps and dumped it all in the kitchen.

When I'd finished there was nothing in the cellar to help a captive; yet I would still have to keep him tied because of the nature of the lockless door. It was made simply of upright planks with bracing bars across the top, centre and bottom, the whole screwed together with the screwheads thankfully on the kitchen side. Across near the top there were six thumb-sized holes, presumably for ventilation. A good enough barrier against most contingencies, but not to be trusted to withstand the sort of kick with which the enemy had battered his initial way in.

'Right,' I said, going back into the sitting-room. 'Now you, Angelo, are going into the cellar. Your only alternative is an immediate return to jail, as all this…' I indicated the room '… and that…' Cassie's arm '… will cancel your parole and send you straight back behind bars.'

'You bloody can't,' he said furiously.

'I bloody can. You started this. You damn well take the consequences.'

'I'll get you busted.'

'Yeah. You try it. You got it wrong, Angelo. I'm not my brother. He was clever and wily and he tricked you silly, but he would never use physical force; and I will, you mug, I will.'

Angelo used words that made Bananas wince and glance apprehensively at Cassie.

'I've heard them before,' she said.

'You've a choice, Angelo,' I said. 'Either you let my friend and me carry you carefully down the steps without you struggling, or you struggle and I pull you down by the legs.'

The loss of face in not struggling proved too much. He tried to bite me as I bent down to put my arms under his armpits, so I did what I'd said; grasped the line tying his ankles and dragged him feet foremost out of the sitting-room, through the kitchen and down the cellar steps, with him yelling and swearing the whole way.