carpet, there is a trap door that gives access to the circulating pump. It creaks every time you walk over it. He'd tried to fix it and so had I, but without success. As I sat there, warming my feet, it creaked. Somebody was inside the house.
That was why it was cold: one of the windows was open. I reached out and picked the phone up from the coffee table alongside my chair. It was dead. I delved into my inside pocket for the radio, but just as I touched it the door flew open.
The ridiculous and the terrifying are sometimes just a hair's-breadth apart. She was wearing a man's suit that was two sizes too large for her even before her body had been wasted by disease, topped off by a trilby hat. She would have looked as if she were auditioning for the Artful Dodger had it not been for the gaunt face, dotted with sores that would never heal because her immune system was gone. And the sawn-off shotgun. The Dodger never carried a shotgun.
'Who the hell are you?' I said. I knew the answer, but would never have recognised her.
'Put your hands where I can see them,' she croaked, 'and say a quick prayer, before I blow your fucking head off.' Her voice was a cackle, like she had a throat full of eggshells.
'It's Rhoda, isn't it?' I said.
'And you're the late Charlie Priest.' She pointed the shotgun at me.
It focuses the attention like nothing I'd experienced before. Keep 'em talking, the book said.
'Why?' I asked. God! Was that the best I could do? 'Don't you think I deserve an explanation?' Marginally better.
'What explanation did you give Don?' she hissed.
'Don committed murder,' I told her. 'He knew what was coming; bore no grudges. It was my job to put him away, and I did it.'
'He was innocent. He wouldn't lie to me. You didn't get him life, you gave him a death sentence.' She was shrieking now. 'Do you know what it was like? A hundred men sharing a needle, passing it from cell to cell for a month until someone brought a new one in? He didn't deserve what he got in there.'
I was hopelessly off balance, sprawled in the armchair with my arms dangling over the sides. I pulled my feet back against the seat as I spoke: 'Nobody deserves that, Rhoda. Least of all you.'
'What do you care? Look at this!' she screamed, flinging her hat into the corner. The red mane had gone, replaced by a patchwork of weeping lesions. I felt myself recoil at the sight. 'Well, we got it, whether we deserved it or not, and now you get yours.' She levelled the gun at me.
'What about the others, Rhoda? Did they deserve what they got?'
'Ah! Them,' she scoffed. The gun swung a couple of degrees away from me as she threw her head back and laughed. I drew my hands in, placing them on the chair arms.
'Yes, them. What had they done to you?'
She could barely control her laughter, the gun waving about alarmingly, sometimes pointing at me, sometimes not.
'Nothing!' she declared. 'They'd done nothing to me. Don't you see, that's what makes it so perfect.'
'I don't understand.'
'You're the fucking detective. The Top Cop: She taunted me with the words. 'Tell me, then, Mr. Top Cop, what's the perfect murder?'
'Er, I don't know. One that nobody knows has been committed, I suppose.'
'Close, but not quite. One without a motive, that's the perfect murder. I had no reason to kill them. You were just the next in the line. Four proper priests, then you. I was going to kill another person called Priest, just to sew things up, then I could die happy.
Unfortunately that stuck-up bitch you go out with got in the way. That was a laugh when I found out she was a bishop's wife.' She chuckled and grinned, revealing brown teeth with gaps at the sides of her mouth.
She reminded me of the skull on the window of number 48. I flinched at her words, but used the movement to curl my fingers over the ends of the chair arms. I was as poised as I'd ever be.
'Rhoda,' I said, as softly and calmly as I could, 'there's been too much killing. You've had a raw deal, but this won't solve anything.
You could have treatment. They've drugs now that could help you. Put the gun down.'
'There's no treatment for this!' she cried, pointing at her head. She leaned back against the wall and I could see that her cheeks were glistening with tears. 'I said I'd wait for him. I had a job and a flat. We could still have had kids, that's all I ever wanted. It wasn't much, was it?'
'Kids,' I sighed. 'That's all I ever wanted, too. But it wasn't to be.'
'Still…' she said, and the steel was back in her voice and the gun wasn't wavering any more, 'killing you will make me feel better for a couple of days.'
'What about the first two? Were they really you?' The words tumbled out and I wondered if any of our conversation was being transmitted. It would make riveting listening in the control room.
'Ah!' she snorted. 'I saw a headline over someone's shoulder. It said: 'Priest killed. Was it murder?' For a glorious moment I thought it was you. My heart leapt. I got off the bus a stop early to call at the news agent I wept when I read it was only some crumby vicar.'
There was a scrunch of gravel under tyres from the road outside. A look of panic flickered across her face and the gun steadied, pointing at my head. 'Neighbours,' I said. 'They come and go all the time.' I eased myself up slightly. 'So what about the second one? Did you do him?'
'No, he just fell down the tower. That's when I got the idea, though.
I liked the thought of some religious nut knocking off priests.' Her shoulders bobbed up and down with amusement.
They'd surround the house; listen at the windows; then try to make contact, probably by ringing the doorbell. 'But the next two were all your own work,' I said.
'All my own work,' she boasted. 'And now it's your turn.'
'Where did you get the name, Destroying Angel?'
'I know all about mushrooms. Which are good, which are bad. I've always liked that one.'
'I thought they were poisonous?'
'No more talking.' She levelled the gun. 'Kiss your arse goodbye, Charlie Priest '
TRIIIING! The doorbell!
I went in hard and curving. First to the right, towards her but away from the gun, then up for it. Her eyes had flickered towards the sound of the bell, and for a tenth of a second she couldn't decide whether to swing the gun away from my grasping hand or try to blast me with it. It was all I needed. My body hit hers and bounced her back against the wall. The fingers of my left hand curled round her wrist, thin as a robin's leg, and lifted it and the gun towards the ceiling. She went for my eyes with her free hand, clawing ribbons of skin from my cheek.
I jerked my head back and managed to grasp her other wrist. I was a foot taller than her and a few stones heavier. I stretched her arms apart and pinned her to the wall as if she were a petulant child. She was still holding the shotgun.
'In here! I've got her!' I shouted.
Then her knee hit me in the balls.
Forget childbirth the knee in the balls is the most excruciating pain known to mankind. A fireball exploded in my stomach and my knees buckled, as if a scythe had gone through them. I was blinded by agony, but the threat of a twelve-bore is a powerful anaesthetic. Teetering on the edge of blacking out, I concentrated with all the power I possessed on gripping that right wrist. Outside, the door glass was shattering and wood splintering. With a desperate effort I swung her away from the wall and kicked her legs from under her. She fell over backwards. As she hit the floor I collapsed my legs so that my entire weight fell mercilessly on top or her. Our faces were touching as I did so, and her breath erupted in a volcanic torrent into my face. I turned my head sideways to escape it, and she sank her teeth deep into my ear.
The cavalry rushed in. They found us on the floor, as if crucified face to face, with my blood and her saliva intermingling and dribbling down her cheek, on to the carpet.
