trace of strain in her voice, like the owner of a runaway dog forced to pick out their prized pedigree hound from among the mongrels and strays of the city pound.
“OK, Mummy,” Nina said over her shoulder. She turned back, gave me a smile that hinted at the sunny teenager she used to be, and impulsively hugged me. Her thin arms were fleetingly tight around my shoulders. “Thank you,” she said, breathless, then she was scurrying away across the wooden floor.
Her parents both put a protective arm around their daughter as she reached them, and their brief stare in my direction was cold to the point of hostile. I ignored them.
“Take care of yourself, Nina,” I said, giving her a final wave.
When they'd gone, I turned to find Dave watching me with curious and calculating eyes.
“What happened to her?” he asked, nodding towards the empty doorway.
“She trusted someone who wasn't to be trusted,” I said shortly. “Now, are you here to talk, or fight?”
I spent the next half an hour or so running through various moves with Dave that should get him out of a few potentially nasty situations. By the time we'd finished both Dave and I were sweating and breathless. I was down to a T-shirt and Dave had lost the jacket, but he must have been regretting the choice of jumper, bruises or no bruises.
To finish, we did a brief recap. I quickly ran through each of the moves again, but there was really no need. He'd got the hang of them.
Afterwards, he helped me drag the crashmats back over to their corner and stand them up against the wall. I pulled my sweatshirt on again, and Dave shrugged back into his jacket. He dug into a pocket and handed over the amount of cash we'd agreed on for the first of his lessons. I accepted without demur. I think I'd earned my money.
It wasn't until we'd moved out of the ballroom and along into the hallway that Dave voiced the question that had probably been on his mind for a while.
“D'you really believe that the stuff you teach these young lasses can actually save them?” he said. He clearly had Nina in mind, but I immediately thought of Joy. It took me a moment to answer.
We'd covered knife attacks in the classes Joy had attended. She knew the theory. She should have been more than capable of fending off her attacker, disarming and disabling him.
Should have been.
But wasn't.
And now she was dead. Just thinking about it twisted a knife in my own side. Joy had paid a mammoth price for not doing her homework. Still, I couldn't help wondering about it. Were her reflexes against a surprise attack really so poor that she'd let a stranger, whoever he was, get close enough to her to pull out a knife and slash her with it? Surely not.
I hedged. “If I didn't believe it, I wouldn't be doing it.”
“Don't you think, though, that people misjudge you at the outset, like those two kids at the club last week, and you rely on that element of surprise too much?” he asked. “OK, so you're fine against someone with comparatively little skill, who's not expecting a counter-attack, but against a stronger opponent, one who knows what he's doing, no way.” He shook his head, grinned at me. “I mean, come on, Foxy. No woman could ever hope to beat a man when their abilities are well matched.”
By woman he meant a smaller, lighter, weaker adversary. I thought of all the martial arts gurus whose work I'd studied. Hardly any were six-foot blokes. They were mostly short in stature, quick and nimble. I'd seen them wipe out bigger, heavier challengers without raising their pulse rate enough to register on an electrocardiogram.
“I'd have to disagree,” I said.
Dave just grinned again as he zipped up his jacket, dug in the pocket for his car keys. “Well, you would say that, wouldn't you?”
I was just about to argue, when the door to Tris and Ailsa's sitting room was flung open, and the lady of the house came galloping out. Grasped in her upraised right hand was a heavy rolling pin with wooden handles and a white marble centre.
“Quick, quick!” she yelled. “I've just seen him, from the kitchen window. He's heading for the front!”
I didn't stop and ask who she meant. I didn't need to.
Before Ailsa had even reached us, I'd spun round and was already running for the open front door. I took the entire flight of steps in one reckless bound, then skidded and nearly lost my footing on the mossy flags at the bottom as a result.
As I fought to regain my balance, cursing, a figure came bolting along the side of the house. Even with the loose gravel underfoot, he was running like an Olympic sprinter, arms working furiously to propel him forwards in a desperate rush.
He came level with the front steps, passing within about twenty feet of me, and moving fast. He must have caught the flurry of movement, though, because he turned his head and looked straight into my eyes.
It almost seemed like everything moved forwards into slow motion. I had time to create a mental record of the dark trousers and ribbed sweater, the black ski mask covering his features. Only the eyes stood out, whites gleaming.
The sudden, stark memory of the two masked men who'd broken into the flat materialised like a phantom, and almost sent me reeling. It was only the thundering approach of Ailsa, with Dave following on, that jarred me into action.
I set off like a hare across the lawn on a diagonal intercept course. The grass was easier to run on. Anger gave me speed. I didn't care that the man was most likely carrying a knife big enough and sharp enough to cut my throat. I didn't care that he'd already proved beyond any shred of doubt how prepared and how capable he was of using it. Stupid, really.
The man almost made it out of the gateway, but at the bottom of the drive the gravel was at its most rutted. Two deep troughs had been gouged out by the constant wheel tracks of the cars turning between the gateposts.
He caught his foot on the crest of one, stumbled with his arms outstretched, and nearly went headlong. The streetlight from the road outside was shining down onto him. In the yellowed glow I saw the fingers of his gloved hands splay outwards. Open.
Empty.
That was all it took. In the next moment I'd taken a final stride forwards, and leapt.
I hit him with the point of my right shoulder just an inch or so below the small of his back, and grabbed. He went down with a violent whumph, like he'd been hit by a fridge.
The force of the impact drove us skittering along the drive for another ten feet or so after we'd hit on the ground. The man was face-down in the gravel, floundering. Of the two of us, I reckon I probably had the easier ride.
We were half out onto the pavement itself by the time we slithered to a messy halt. The man brought his elbow back sharply, more wild than scientific, but it was enough to throw me off his back.
I landed hard, but scrambled up instantly, screwing round into a crouch. The man was on his knees, taking longer to rise. His mask and the front of his jumper were torn and bloody. Frantic, I checked his hands again, and readied myself to strike.
Then, a whirling figure entered stage right at a dead run and unfurled a sweeping upward blow with the rolling pin that snapped the man's head sideways, blood spraying. It would have made an easy six over the boundary, had the head not been still firmly attached at the neck. If the England cricket team selectors had been there, Ailsa would have been capped on the spot.
The man's arms flapped as his body twisted, then he slowly collapsed backwards onto the pavement behind him. I had to grab Ailsa's arm to stop her going in for the kill. She was trembling violently all over, and screaming abuse so tangled it was almost totally incoherent.
The noise had brought out most of the remaining residents from the Lodge. They filed down the drive and approached cautiously across the lawn, but they had the grumbling air of a lynch mob about them. It would only take one brave one to throw the first stone, and things were going to get very nasty.
I thrust the still-quivering Ailsa onto Dave, having first carefully prised the bloodied rolling pin from her fingers. Robbed of the adrenaline that had fired her, she more or less fell into his arms. He took her weight with
