Twice Shy

The sitting-room furniture was all pushed awry. Sarah and Donna sat back-to-back in the centre of the room, with their wrists and ankles strapped to the arms and legs of two of the chairs from the dining room. To one side stood Angelo, holding the Walther, with, beyond the two girls, his look-alike, Eddy. There were glasses and plates sprinkled about, and the smell of long hours of cigarette smoke.

Sarah was facing me.

We looked at each other with a curious lack of emotion, I noticing almost distantly the dark smudges under her eyes, the exhausted sag of her body, the strain and pain round her mouth.

She said nothing. No doubt she considered I was showing too little concern and was too calm as usual: the message on her face wasn't love and relief but relief and disgust.

'Go home,' I said wearily to Angelo. 'You've got what you wanted.'

I prayed for him to go. To be satisfied, to be sensible, to be ruled by his father, to be approximately normal.

Harry Gilbert began to turn from his son back towards me, saying, That's it, then, Angelo. We'd best be off.'

'No,' Angelo said.

Gilbert stopped. 'What did you say?' he said.

'I said, no,' Angelo said. 'This creep's going to pay for all the trouble he's put me to. You come here, creep.'

Gilbert said, 'No, Angelo.' He gestured to the girls. 'This is enough.'

Angelo pointed his pistol with its bulbous silencer straight at Donna's head. 'This one,' he said viciously, 'has been screaming at me for hours that they'll report me to the police, the stupid little bitch.'

'They won't,' I said quickly.

'Dead right they won't.'

Even to Gilbert his meaning was clear. Gilbert made movements of extreme disapproval and active fear and said, 'Put down the gun. Angelo, put it down.' His voice thundered with parental command and from long long habit Angelo began to obey. Even in the same second he visibly reversed his instinct; and I knew that for me it was then or never.

I stretched out my right arm, thrust my hand down into the towel and grasped the stock of the rifle. Swung the towel off the barrel and in the same fluid movement stood in the doorway with the barrel pointing straight at Angelo and the safety catch unlocking with a click.

'Drop it,' I said.

They were all utterly astounded but perhaps Angelo most of all because I'd twice played the same trick on him. The three men stood there as if frozen, and I didn't look at Sarah, not directly.

'Drop the pistol,' I said. He was still pointing it towards Donna.

He couldn't bear to drop it. Not to lose that much face.

'I'll shoot you,' I said.

Even then he hesitated. I swung the barrel to the ceiling and squeezed the trigger. The noise crashed in the small room. Pieces of plaster fell from the ceiling. The sharp smell of cordite prevailed over stale cigarette, and all the mouths were open, like fish. The rifle was pointing back at his heart with the next round in the breech almost before he'd moved an inch, and he looked at it with dazed disbelief.

'Drop the pistol,' I said. 'Drop it.'

He was still undecided. I'll have to hit him, I thought despairingly. I don't want to. Why won't he drop the bloody thing, there's nothing he can gain.

The air seemed to be still ringing with the aftermath of explosion, but it was into silence that Sarah spoke.

With a sort of sullen ferocity, which seemed as much directed at me as at Angelo, she said loudly, 'He shot in the Olympic Games.'

Angelo's eyes developed doubt.

'Drop the pistol,' I said quietly, 'or I'll shoot your hand.'

Angelo dropped it.

His face was full of fury and hate and I thought him capable of flinging himself upon me regardless of consequences. I looked at him stolidly, showing no triumph, showing nothing to inflame.

'You've got the tapes,' I said. 'Get in the car, all three of you, and get out of my life. I'm sick of your faces.' I stepped back a pace into the hall and nodded with my head towards the front door.

'Just get out,' I said. 'One at a time. Angelo first.'

He came towards me with his dark eyes like pits in the olive face, the light too dim now to give them wicked life. I stood back a few steps further and followed his progress to the front door, as in my own house, with the black barrel.

'I'll get you,'he said.

I didn't answer.

He pulled open the door with the force of rage and stepped outside.

'Now you,' I said to Harry Gilbert.

He was almost as angry as his son, but perhaps it was fanciful of me to guess that there was also some recognition that I'd been able to stop Angelo where he couldn't, and that that had been a good thing.

He followed Angelo out onto the driveway and I saw them both opening the doors of Angelo's car.

'Now you,' I said to Eddy. 'You pick up Angelo's gun. Pick it up by the silencer. Do you know how to unload it?'

Eddy the carbon-copy nodded miserably.

'Do it, then,' I said. 'Very very carefully.'

He looked at the rifle and at Angelo getting into the car, and shook the bullets out of the clip, letting them drop on the carpet.