'You!'
I stared at her through narrowing eyes.
She cast a furtive glance across the desk to the phone, silently judging the distance and deciding against it. She recomposed her features and forced them into a beam of joy.
'You're back!'
'Got tired of swabbing, did you?' I said in a cold monotone.
The beam of joy became a pantomime of anxious concern.
'Oh, Mr Knight, it breaks my heart it does to see the step like that, it really does. It was the police, you see, told me not to touch anything - not that I think for one moment that you ... I mean, all those things they're saying. . . never heard such . . .' The words trailed gently off into the ether. She cast another look at the phone and smiled at me with less conviction this time.
'Still, it's nice to see you back. Will you be staying long?'
I walked across to the desk. She moved back unconsciously pressing herself against the back of the chair.
'I don't know. How long does it take to beat the crap out of an old lady?'
I yanked out the phone cable. Her pupils flashed open.
I sat on the edge of the desk and leaned across. 'Where is it?'
'Where is -'
The words stopped as I raised my index finger.
'Please don't say 'where is what'.'
She looked at me without saying a word.
'I have to hand it to you,' I said, 'you're a real dark horse.' I started flicking the broken telephone cable against the desk. 'I mean, you give the impression that you haven't got two brain cells to rub together, but you certainly worked the stovepipe hat out a lot quicker than me.'
She said nothing, just continued staring at me wondering how much I knew and what I was going to do.
'But then you don't get into the upper echelons of the Sweet Jesus League without being smart, do you? Not into the ESSJAT you don't.'
'I'm not in it, Mr Knight.'
'Not in what?'
'In ... in what you said.'
'What did I say?'
She looked at me uncertainly. 'That organisation you mentioned; I'm not in it.'
'What's it called?'
'Er . . . I don't know.'
'Then how do you know you're not in it?'
'I ... I ...'
'You're a lieutenant in the ESSJAT, Mrs Llantrisant.'
She shook her head in desperation. 'No ... no ... no I'm not, I'm not!'
'All these years you've been swabbing my step and all the time you've been listening at the keyhole.'
'No, Mr Knight, no!'
'That's how you found out about the Punch and Judy man.'
She shook her head and put her hands to her ears. 'No!'
I leaned closer until my face was only inches away from hers. I could smell the musty reek of Eau de Maesteg.
'You killed him, didn't you?'
'Who?' she whined. 'I haven't killed anybody, Mr Knight. Honest I haven't. I'm just a step-swabber. I'm sorry about the peanuts —'
I whipped the end of the phone cord across her face and the words stopped in mid-sentence. A fine pink groove appeared in the thickly plastered foundation cream.
'It wasn't enough for you to destroy his life:' knock him off the pedestal he stood on for thirty years and force him to scratch a living in the Punch and Judy tents of Aberaeron. You had to throw the poor man off a cliff.'
'No, Mr Knight, not me, not me!'
'It was you I fought with that night down at the harbour, wasn't it?'
'No, please, Mr Knight. You've got it all wrong.'
'Have I? Have I?' I shouted. 'I don't think so.' I paused, breathing heavily, and waited for myself to become calm again. I needed to stay in control.
'Tell me, Mrs Llantrisant. Are you familiar with the works of Job Gorseinon?'
She looked at me blankly.
'Brainbocs was. They found a copy of Gorseinon's
She watched me, confused and suspicious. 'I don't think I have. Good book is it?'
'Ooh, curate's egg really. But there's one nice bit where Gorseinon describes how Livia is alleged to have murdered Augustus. He was a wily old bird, you see, Augustus. A bit like you if you don't mind me saying so. And he was paranoid about being poisoned. With good reason as it turned out. It got to the point where he wouldn't eat anything except fruit he had picked from his own orchard. So Livia smeared the figs on the tree with deadly nightshade. Ring any bells does it?'
She looked at me with an empty face like a poker player.
'The story reminded me of that occasion just before Easter when you were taken ill all of a sudden from eating that apple pie. Remember how you called the priest? How he took your deathbed confession? It's funny because we also found in Brainbocs's satchel a book on how to perform the last rites and a fancy-dress hire ticket from Dai the Custard Pie's. It doesn't say what costume he borrowed but I bet if I went down and looked at Custard Pie's ledger I'd find it was a Catholic priest's outfit. What do you say?'
Slowly a change came over Mrs Llantrisant. As if she had decided that the time had come to drop the mask. She brought her hands down from her ears and looked me in the eye. The silly, frivolous old gossip faded away and in its place there sat a different woman. Self-possessed and steely with an expression of stone. Suddenly she darted sideways out of the chair. I leaped after her grabbing at the tails of her housecoat but she moved like a cat and was almost at the door when I managed to grab her ankle. She was strong and fast and would have got away, but my nails caught on her old varicose vein scars. The sharp pain pulled her up for a split-second and made her gasp. It was all I needed. I reached higher and took a firmer grip on her coat. Then her training took over, banishing pain, and focusing every sinew on the task in hand, she turned and sized me up in one cold, robotic look. She lowered one knee, transferred her weight and then spun round driving a backhand smash into my face. I reeled and fell backwards and she moved in with cold precision.
In came the elbow, ramming into my head above the ear and I started to go down. The room swirled and birds sang inside my head. I could see the knee moving up now, the confusion in my brain slowing its hideous progress down to a crawl. A crawl that I felt powerless to avoid. I remember seeing insignificant details with a strange detachment: how the housecoat parted and revealed the elasticised bottom of the bloomer, slightly above the knee. The knee, fish-white and blue-veined like Gorgonzola cheese, slamming upwards like a ramrod. At the last second I jerked to the side and the knee crashed into the filing cabinet. I could see, almost feel myself, the fireworks of pain that shot through her. A deep gash appeared, blood splattered, and she fell to the floor.
I bent over her and suddenly jumped backwards as she jabbed at me with a hatpin which she had pulled from her boot; the hypo-allergenic calfskin boot made in Milan. I dodged the pin and she tried again, but crippled by the wound to her knee she could only lunge and crawl dementedly. I stepped clear of her range of action. Took a careful look round the room and spotted what I wanted. Among the fire irons in the grate was a big cast-iron poker. I picked it up and walked over to where Mrs Llantrisant lay. She looked up at me too convulsed with hate to display any fear. With bitter deliberation I smashed the iron down on her knee. She screamed like a wolf, her spit-covered dentures jettisoning out on to the carpet. Then she blacked out.
When she came round she was sitting in the client's chair, bound at the ankles and wrists with the flex from the TV. I threw a washing-up bowl of cold water with ice cubes into her face. She lifted her head and looked at me, her face still twisted and contorted with misery. I smiled. Then kicked her in the knee; she jerked and writhed,
