Twice Shy

'Of course, I do. One doesn't actually forget one's own brother being tangled up in a murder.'

'It's fourteen years ago,' he said doubtfully.

'Things that happen when you're fifteen stay sharp in your mind for ever.'

'I guess you're right. Anyway, you know who I mean by Angelo Gilbert.'

'The bumper-off,' I said.

'As you say. I think the man who hit you on the head may be Angelo Gilbert.'

A great one, my brother, for punching the air out. On a distinctly short breath I said, 'You sound very calm about it.' But then of course he would. He was always calm. In the scariest crisis it would be Jonathan who spoke and acted as if nothing unusual was happening. He'd carried me out of a fire once as a small child and I'd thought that somehow nothing was the matter, nothing was really wrong with the flames and the roaring and crashing all around us, because he'd looked down at me and smiled.

'I checked up,' he said. 'Angelo Gilbert got out of prison seventeen days ago, on parole.'

'Out-'

'It would take him a while to orientate himself and to find you. I mean, if it was him, he would have thought you were me.'

I sorted my way through that and said, 'What makes you think it was him?'

'Your radio, really. He seemed to enjoy destroying things like that. Televisions. Stereos. And he'd be forty now, and his father reminded me of a bull. What you said took me right back.'

'Good grief.'

'Yes.'

'You really think it was him?'

'I'm afraid it's possible.'

'Well,' I said, 'now that he knows he got the wrong guy, maybe he won't bother me again.'

'Monsters don't go away if you don't look at them.'

'What?'

'He may come back.'

'Thanks very much.'

'William, take it seriously. Angelo was dangerous in his twenties and it sounds as if he still is. He never did get the computer programs he killed for, and he didn't get them because of me. So take care.'

'It might not have been him.'

'Act as if it was.'

'Yeah,' I said. 'So long, Professor.' The wryness in my voice must have been plain to him.

'Keep off horses,' he said.

I put the receiver down ruefully. Horses, to him, meant extreme risk.

'What's the matter?' Cassie said. 'What did he say?'

'It's all a very long story.'

Tell it.'

I told it on and off over the next few hours, remembering things in pieces and not always in the other they'd happened, much as Jonathan had told it to me all those years ago. Before going off to Canada to shoot he had collected me straight from school at the end of that summer term and we'd gone to Cornwall, just the two of us, for a few days' sailing. We'd had great holidays there two or three times before, but that year it blew a gale and poured with rain continuously, and to amuse me while we sat and stared through the dripping yacht club windows waiting for the improvement which never came, he'd told me about Mrs O'Rorke and Ted Pitts and the Gilberts, and how he'd stuck magnets in the cassettes. I'd been so fascinated that I hadn't minded missing the sailing.

I wasn't sure that I'd been shown every alley of the labyrinth; my quiet schoolmasterly brother had been reticent in patches and I'd always guessed that it was because probably in some way he'd used his guns. He never would let me touch them, and the only thing I ever knew him to be scared of was having his precious firearms certificate taken away.

'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.'