Twice Shy

Ted smiled. 'The password on this tape is QUITE. Or it is at the moment. One can change the password easily.' He typed QUITE and pressed 'Enter' and the screen flashed into WHICH RACE AT EPSOM?

'See the question mark?' Ted said. 'It always needs an answer.'

I thought about question marks and said I'd better not have passwords, if he didn't mind.

'Whatever you say.'

He typed BREAK and LIST 10-80, and the screen suddenly produced a totally different looking format.

'This is the program itself,' Ted said. 'See Line 10?'

Line 10 read INPUT A$: IF A$ = "QUITE" THEN 20 ELSE PRINT "READY?"

Line 20 read PRINT "WHICH RACE AT EPSOM?"

'If you don't type QUITE,' Ted said, 'You never get to line 20.'

'Neat,' I agreed. 'But what's to prevent you looking at the program, like we are now, and seeing that you need to type QUITE?'

'It's quite easy to make it impossible for anyone to List the program. If you buy other people's programs, you can practically never List them. Because if you can't List them you can't make copies, and no one wants their work pinched in that way.'

'Um,' I said. 'I'd like tapes you can List, and without passwords.'

'OK.'

'How do you get rid of the password?'

He smiled faintly, typed 10 and then pressed 'Enter'. Then he typed LIST 10-80 again, but this time when the program appeared on the screen there was no Line 10 at all. Line 20 was the first.

'Elementary, you see,' he said.

'So it is.'

'It will take me quite a while to get rid of the passwords and make the copies,' he said. 'So why don't you go and sit upstairs by the pool. To be honest, I'd get on faster on my own.'

Pleased enough to agree, I returned to the lazy bamboo loungers and listened to Jane talking about her daughters. An hour crawled by before Ted reappeared bearing the cassettes, and even then I couldn't leave without an instructional lecture.

'To run those tapes, you'll need either an old Grantley personal computer, and there aren't many of them about nowadays, they're obsolete, or any type of company computer, as long as it will load from a cassette recorder.'

He watched my incomprehension and repeated what he'd said.

'Right,' I said.

He told me how to load Grantley BASIC, which was the first item on Side 1 of the tapes, into a company computer, which had no language of its own built in. He again told me twice.

'Right.'

'Good luck with them,' he said.

I thanked him wholeheartedly, and Jane also, and as quickly as decently possible set off on the drive home.

Half a mile down the road, compelled by a feeling of dread, I stopped by a telephone box and called Cassie. She answered at the very first ring and sounded uncharacteristically shaky.

'I'm so glad it's you,' she said. 'How long will you be?'

'About an hour.'

'Do hurry.'

'Is Angelo…?'

'He's been banging ever since you left and wrenching at the door. I've been in the kitchen. He's shaking those planks, he'll have the door off its hinges if he goes on and on. I can't strengthen the barricade. I've tried, but with one arm-'

'Cassie,' I said. 'Go up to the pub.'

'But-'

'Darling, go. Please do.'

'What if he gets out?'

'If he gets out I want you safe up the road with Bananas.'

'All right.'

'I'll see you,' I said, and disconnected. Drove like the furies towards home, taking a chance here and there and getting away with it. Across Royston Heath like a streak, weaving through pottering Sunday-outing traffic. Through the town itself; snarling down the last stretch crossing the Mil motorway, and finally branching off the main road into Six Mile Bottom village.

Wondering all the way what Angelo would do if he did get free. Smash up the cottage? Set fire to it? Lie in wait somewhere for me to return.

The one thing he would not do was to go meekly away.

CHAPTER 16

I walked carefully up the path to the lockless front door which we now no longer guarded with the chest because Cassie found climbing through the window too difficult.

The birds were singing in the garden. Would they sing if Angelo were among them, hidden in the bushes? No they wouldn't. I reached the door and pushed it open.

The cottage lay silent as if long deserted, and with spirits sinking I went through to the kitchen.

Angelo had ripped away one of the main timbers of the door and had dislodged two of the extra planks which had been wedging it shut. The door in fact was still closed, but the knife had gone from the latch.

The hole in the door was large enough to shove an arm through, but not to allow the passage of a grown man. The table and chairs and the two lowest planks hadn't shifted, but with the progress he'd made their stopping power was temporary. I had come not a minute too soon.

'Angelo,' I said.

He appeared almost instantly at the hole in the door, scowling furiously at my return. He put both hands into the gap and violently tried to wrench away the wood from each side, and I saw that he had already been bleeding from his exertions.

'I'm going to let you out,' I said. 'You can save your strength.'