LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TWO

      At roughly the same time as this annunciation of his projected apotheosis, Detective-Superintendent Andrew Dalziel was being sick into a bucket.

      Between retchings, his mind sought first causes. He counted, and quickly discounted, the six pints of bitter chased by six double whiskies in the Black Bull; scrutinized closely but finally acquitted the Toad-in-the-Hole and Spotted Dick washed down with a bottle of Beaujolais in the Borough Club for Professional Gentlemen; and finally indicted, examined, and condemned a glass of mineral water accepted unthinkingly when one of the pickled onions served with his cheese had gone down the wrong way.

      It had probably been French. If so, that put his judgement beyond appeal. They boasted on their bottle that the stuff was untreated, this from a nation whose treated water could fell a healthy horse.

      The retching seemed to have stopped. It occurred to him that unless he had also consumed two pairs of socks and a string vest at the Gents, the bucket had not been empty. He raised his eyes and looked around the kitchen. He hadn’t switched on the light, but even in darkness it looked in dire need of redecoration. This was the house he’d moved into when he got married and never found time or energy to move out of. On that very kitchen table he’d found his wife’s last letter. It said Your dinner is keeping warm in the oven. He’d been mildly surprised to discover it was a ham salad. But it wasn’t till next morning, when an insistent knocking roused him from the spare bed which he occupied with reluctant altruism whenever he got home later than 3.00A.M., that he began to suspect something was wrong. Insistent knockings were a wife’s responsibility. He found her bed unslept in, descended, found downstairs equally empty, opened the door and was presented with a telegram. It had been unambiguous in its statement of cause and effect, but it had been its form as much as its content which had convinced Dalziel this was the end. She’d found it easier to let strangers read these words than say them to his face!

      Everyone had assumed he would sell the house and find a flat, but inertia had compounded cussedness and he’d never bothered. So now as his gaze slipped to the uncurtained window, it was a totally familiar view that he looked out upon – a small backyard which not even moonlight could beautify, bounded by a brick wall in need of pointing, containing a wooden gate in need of painting, which let into the back lane running between Dalziel’s street and the rear entrances of a street of similar housing whose frequent chimneys castellated the steely night sky.

      Only there was something different to look at tonight. A bedroom light went on in the house immediately behind his. A few moments later the curtains were flung aside and a naked woman stood framed in the square of golden light. Dalziel watched with interest. If this were hallucination, the Frogs might be on to something after all. Then as if to prove her reality, the woman pushed the window open and leaned out into the night, taking deep breaths of wintry air which made her small but far from negligible breasts rise and subside most entertainingly.

      It seemed to Dalziel that as she’d been courteous enough to remove one barrier of glass, he could hardly do less than dispose of the other.

      He moved swiftly to the back door, opened it gently, and stepped out into the night. But his speed was vain. Movement had broken the spell and the gorgeous vision was fled.

      ‘Serves me bloody right,’ growled Dalziel to himself. ‘Acting like a kid that’s never clapped eyes on a tit before.’

      He turned away to re-enter his house but something made him turn again almost immediately. Suddenly from soft porn it was all action movie on the golden screen … a man moving … something in his hand … another man … a sound as explosive as a cough too long suppressed during a pianissimo … and without conscious thought, Dalziel was off and running, cursing with increasing fervour and foulness as he crashed from one pile of household detritus to another.

      His gate was unlocked. The gate of the house behind wasn’t, but he went through it as though it was. He was too close now to see up into the first-floor room. It occurred to him as he charged towards the kitchen door that he might be about to meet a gunman equally anxious to get out. On the other hand there might be people inside as yet unshot, whom his approach could keep that way. Not that the debate was anything but abstract, as if an incendiary dropped on Dresden should somehow start considering the morality of tactical bombing as it fell.

      The kitchen door flew open at a touch. He assumed the lay-out would be similar to his own house, which it was, saving him the bother of demolishing walls as he rushed through the entrance hall and up the stairs. There was still no sign of life, no noise, no movement. The door of the room he was heading for was ajar, spilling light on to the landing. Now at last he slowed down. If there had been sounds of violence within he would have entered violently, but there was no point in being provocative.

      He tapped gently at the door and pushed it fully open.

      There were three people in the room. One of them, a tall man in his thirties wearing a dark blue blazer with a brocaded badge on the pocket, was standing by the window. In his right hand was a smoking revolver. It was pointing in the general direction of a younger man in a black sweater crouched against the wall, squeezing his pallid terrified face between his hands. Also present was a naked woman sprawled across a bed. Dalziel paid these last two little attention. The young man looked to have lost the use of his legs and the woman had clearly lost the use of everything. He concentrated on the man with the gun.

      ‘Good evening, sir,’ said Dalziel genially. ‘I’m a police officer. Is there somewhere we can sit down and have a little chat?’

      He

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