I swear it was that way round. I swear the gun levelled a fraction before the fierce determination showed on the detective’s face. The next is a crystal clear memory that I wished was a blur. The gun hand lifted, steadied and I shouted a warning, with hands thrusting at the man before me. But I wasn’t shouting at the finger drawing white upon the trigger or the sheer fantasy of hope that it would be possible for the detective to close the range in his fearsome dive for that gun hand. But at the Colonel who was on the floor, propped against his kitchen counter, grey, head back and eyes closed, gasping for breath.
The report of the gun firing passed unnoticed. Unnoticed, that is, by all but the policeman, who had the horrific experience of being flung to the tiled floor by the force of a bullet passing through the muscle of his upper arm.
Then Duckett was panicking because the report of the Webley deafened us a second time and it drew a yelp and a flinch from everyone and I honestly didn’t believe Duckett had ever considered the possibility that he would actually shoot anyone. He’d meant Abbey to do everything. But suddenly this wasn’t a careful incrimination of his enemy but his own crime and the warning had been given twice by his own hand that would bring a small army of policemen running, and a retired old soldier’s breath was rasping in his throat and the detective was down with a hand clapped over his left sleeve and blood was staining the tiles beneath him.
‘Oh hell, you’ve still got the gun. I didn’t want it to come to this.’
It was the detective, shouting but breathlessly, as well he might, as Duckett abandoned his lamps amongst the clutter on the tabletop, scampered around its perimeter and bent over the Colonel from the other side. The detective’s words were an effective warning to the rest of us that Duckett’s power hadn’t been overcome.
‘Oh God, oh God, oh God!’ Duckett was saying as he bent. ‘Did I shoot him too?’
The policeman was watching him and twisting onto one knee when he looked as though he would have liked to have stayed writhing on the floor for a while yet to give full release to the shock and pain of his injury. Instead he was up and on his feet and staggering a little, with his hand clamped over the wound so that his left arm was held immobile against his side, and from the way his gaze was fixed he too was clearly very much focused upon the state of the Colonel. I was dropping into a crouch beside the old man so quickly that I crashed into the chair I’d recently left and had to pause to set it aside before trying to crouch again.
My hands were mirroring Duckett’s as we both reached to loosen the collar about the Colonel’s neck. The old man was alive but gasping, as pale and blotched as ever, and collapsed with his head against the neatly painted panel that boxed in the base of the heavy stone worktop. There was, I saw after the first frantic second, no blood. The second gunshot had missed us all and embedded itself harmlessly in the wall above the sink.
The Colonel’s breath was rattling. I whispered frantically to no one in particular, ‘It’s his heart. We must have finished his heart.’
Duckett had the collar and a twitch of his wrist cautioned me to resist the impulse to compete with him for control of the invalid, so I had the old man’s right hand. It was lifeless. Nervous fire ran quivering through every corner of my body when fingers suddenly slid about my waist from behind. After the first frantic second while instinct decided that this was Abbey’s attempt to reclaim me, I realised it was Detective Fleece’s arm and it was begging me to draw back a little from the Colonel. I didn’t want to go, but the policeman was insistent. I went with him, even though every part of me that dwelt in fear was focused on the knowledge that there would be blood on the policeman’s hand. My brain clung to the idea that it wasn’t the blood that frightened me but the violence it represented.
Unfortunately, because the violence was in the kitchen with us, this didn’t remotely help.
Duckett still had the Webley. He was bending close to the Colonel; he was abandoning the throat and reaching for the old man’s wrist in a quest to test his pulse. As Duckett moved, the detective’s touch suddenly hardened and snatched me back from the careless aim of that weapon. The shock of our movement made Duckett start and crack his head on the overhanging worktop. He leapt back as if we’d attacked him. I thought I knew now why the policeman had dragged me out of the way. That gun was close to going off again. Duckett was barely in control of the way his finger lay upon the trigger. He was too busy screaming out orders to the Colonel. ‘Get up. Move! We’re going to the car.’
And the Colonel made some sound, a wheezing groan as nothing obeyed the command except one flailing hand and I was lurching instinctively towards him again to try to help him breathe, but Duckett was snarling and the detective’s good arm had come about me securely now. He held me. It was probably for the best. I was gibbering and Duckett was trying to marshal us into order and the Colonel’s mouth was working for air like a landed goldfish. Richard’s father looked finished.
Across the Colonel’s floundering form, I found that Duckett was fascinated by me again, staring with more of that blankness that seemed to be a precursor to action and all the while he was still hovering over the Colonel as if to drag the poor old man from the floor. I was snarling at him. And clinging to the detective now as he gripped me, and sobbing all at the same time. I was saying, ‘He can’t move to the car. Look at him. And who’s going to carry him? Detective Fleece? Abbey?’
The detective could barely support the weight of his left hand and Abbey was shaking his head. Abbey could have managed me, but the Colonel must have rivalled his weight. I saw Duckett’s eye stray to the gun. The finger shifted slightly on the trigger.
‘Don’t you dare.’
I didn’t know I had it in me to growl like that. It made Duckett flinch. In a raw, alien tone, I hissed, ‘Don’t make this your death. I did this by seeking shelter in his house. If it’s his heart, leave him be.’
In my head was the desperate will to drive this point home. That Duckett hadn’t killed him. He hadn’t killed anyone yet – at least, not willingly, even if we included the poor unfortunate firemen at his warehouse. He could leave the Colonel here, leave him to gasp his last. And I could live with the hope that whatever else happened to the rest of us, there was one small chance that this wasn’t as bad as it looked and Richard might arrive in time to save his father.
There was a pause; a momentary consideration. I felt the detective adjust the grip of his arm about me. I was clinging to him fiercely now. The policeman was panting and sweating too, like the Colonel had been. He was feeling the strain of a body put to injury but still trying to function. He and I gripped each other while Duckett made his decision.
‘Give her to me. Bring the lamps.’ Duckett’s voice disturbed the sanctuary of stillness in less time than it took him to move around the fallen man to join us. He was very close. He robbed me of my last chance to see the Colonel. The yard outside the kitchen window was fearsomely bright but empty. If anyone had heard the two gunshots, they weren’t near enough to make a difference here.
‘Bring the lamps yourself. They’re your problem if we’re stepping out there.’ The detective’s voice was loud again. His grip drew me a step away. His arm was strong. The policeman wasn’t surrendering me for anything, but not solely for the purpose of protecting me any more. Because the man who held me must believe we’d reached the point where anybody’s life might rank now in Duckett’s mind as useless as the Colonel’s fading gasps, and the policeman was specifically considering the value of his own. It changed everything; the idea that if Detective Fleece allowed Duckett to separate us here, the act itself would almost certainly lead Duckett to think of him as an aggressor once more rather than my support. It was an awful concept to consider how swiftly Duckett might lurch into realising that it would be simplest to leave the policeman behind here to keep company with the Colonel, and in a similar state of health.
Responsibility revived and with it came awful hopelessness that was like an angry sickness. I supposed that ever since I had entered the kitchen I had presumed that the policeman was only waiting. That I could depend on him to know what to do if only the balance of the odds against us were changed, but he was no more in control than I was. I’d been making the same selfish mistake that Mrs Abbey had in thinking that a man with experience would know what to do to make all the difference. But, in truth, training stood for nothing against the insanity of an impulsive decision made by a man who was holding a gun.
So I gripped him like a woman caught in a paralysis of horror and saved him, and in a moment Duckett was distracted by his habit of believing that control might always be restored through fire.
‘Florence,’ he said and directed Mrs Abbey to collect up the lamps before proffering the matches with shaking fingers.
Mrs Abbey’s expression was stony as she reached out a hand. She took the matchbook and led us to the doorway. The Lagonda stood there and it waited patiently while she poured the contents of the first lamp over the back seat. Under Duckett’s whispered instructions she lit a match and cast it, spinning, to join the spreading sheen of oil. I startled her when I shook off my supposed stupor and snapped out, ‘Release the handbrake at any rate, would you?’
Surprised, she braved the creeping fire enough to reach in and release the handbrake. Now I understood the value of a car whose doors were hinged at the back. It was easy enough for her to step clear as the car began to slide gracefully backwards down the slight slope. It was carrying that fire away from the ancient timbers of the house. It was just in time too, because while the flames had seemed content at first to simply lap away within the patch of oil, now they were investigating the leatherwork and their newfound freedom.
I was bustled across the yard with the detective and Duckett was hiding in the midst of us – in case anyone should be looking, I supposed, since he made sure Abbey was placed in an incriminatingly prominent position. Duckett was shouldering open the door into the tithe barn and then I was stepping of my own volition before him into the blinding dark after all that sunshine. The last thing I saw before Abbey shoved the door shut was his wife’s fear-bleached face, flooded in an unguarded moment with hate, which passed over Duckett and moved, slowly but surely, onto me.
I watched, spellbound, as hate merged with a determined kind of triumph. She still believed in her blackmail. She still thought Richard could save us.