Twice Shy

I slid the copies into the gaudy boxes, thanked Ted, returned to the common-room, and told my four long-suffering lieutenants that I had developed a stupefying sick shivery headache and would they please take my afternoon classes between them. There were groans, but it was a service we regularly did for each other when it was unavoidable. I was going home, I said. With luck, I would be back in the morning.

Before I left I made a detour to the prep room where Louisa was counting out springs and weights for the 2nd form that afternoon. I told her about the headache and got scant sympathy, which was fair. While she took the load of batteries through into one of the laboratories to distribute them along the benches I opened one of her tidy cupboards and helped myself to three small objects, hiding them smartly in my pocket.

'What are you looking for?' Louisa asked, coming back and seeing me in front of the still open doors.

'Nothing particular,' I said vaguely. 'I don't really know.'

'Get home to bed,' she said sighing, casting herself for martyrdom. 'I'll cope with the extra work.'

My absence meant in reality less work for her, not more, but there was nothing to be gained by pointing it out. I thanked her profusely to keep her in a good mood for the others, and went out to the car to drive home.

No need to worry about Angelo being there: he was in the Keithlys' house a hundred miles away in Norfolk.

Everything felt unreal. I thought of the two girls, tied to the chairs, uncomfortable, scared, exhausted. Don't fool about, Sarah had said. Do what Angelo says.

Somewhere in one of the sideboard drawers we had a photograph album, thrust out of sight since we had lost the desire to record our joyless life. I dug it out and turned the pages, looking for the picture I had taken once of Peter, Donna and Sarah standing out on the pavement in front of Peter's house. The sun had been shining, I found. All three were smiling, looking happy. A pang to see Peter's face, no moustache, looking so pleased with himself and young. Nothing special about that photograph: just people, a house, a street. Reassuring to me, however, at that moment.

I went upstairs to my own small room, unlocked the gun cupboard and took out one of the Mauser 7.62s and also one of the Olympic-type rifles, the Anschtz. 22. Packed them both into the special suitcase along with some ammunition of both sizes. Carried the case down to the car and locked it into the boot.

Reflected and went upstairs to fetch a large brown bathtowel from the linen cupboard. Locked that also into the boot.

Locked the house.

After that I sat in the car for three or four minutes thinking things out, with the result that I went back into the house yet again, this time for a tube of extra-strength glue.

All I didn't have enough of, I thought, was time.

I started the engine and set off not to Welwyn, but to Norwich.

Propelled by demons, I did the trip in a shorter time than usual, but it was still four-thirty when I reached the city outskirts. Six hours since Angelo had telephoned. Six long hours for his hostages.

I drew up beside a telephone box in a shopping parade not far from Donna's house and dialled her number. Praying, I think, that Angelo would answer: that all would be at least no worse than it had been in the morning.

'Hullo,' he said. Eagerly, I thought. Expecting his father.

'It's Jonathan Derry,' I said. 'I've got the tapes.'

'Let me talk to my father.'

'I'm not at your father's house. I haven't gone there yet. It's taken me all day to get the tapes.'

'Now you listen, creep…' He was roughly, nastily angry. 'I warned you…'

'It's taken me all day, but I've got them,' I interrupted insistently. 'I've got the tapes. I've got the tapes.'

'All right,' he said tautly. 'Now take them to my father. Take them there, do you hear?'

'Yes,' I said. 'I'll go there straightaway, but it'll take me some time. It's a long way.'

Angelo muttered under his breath and then said, 'How long? Where are you? We've been waiting all fucking night and all fucking day.'

'I'm near Bristol.'

'Where?' It was a yell of fury.

'It'll take me four hours,' I said,'to reach your father.'

There was a brief silence. Then Sarah's voice, tired beyond tears, numb with too much fright.

'Where are you?' she said.

'Near Bristol.'

'Oh my God.' She sounded no longer angry, but hopeless. 'We can't stand much more of this…'

The receiver was taken away from her in mid-sentence, and Angelo came back on the line.

'Get going, creep,' he said; and disconnected.

Breathing space, I thought. Four hours before Angelo expected the message from his father. Instead of pressure mounting inexorably, dangerously, in that house, there would at worst, I hoped, be a bearable irritation, and at best a sort of de-fusing of suspense. They wouldn't for another four hours be strung up with a minute-to-minute expectation.