Twice Shy

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.'

'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?'