Part 22 (1/2)

I didn't answer. The other two men were behind me to the right, out of my sight. I could hear their feet as they occasionally shuffled on the straw. Far too far away for me to reach.

I was wearing what I had put on for lunch with Charles. Grey trousers, socks, dark brown shoes; rope extra. s.h.i.+rt, tie, and a recently bought blazer, quite expensive. What did that matter? If he killed me, Jenny would get the rest. I hadn't changed my will.

Trevor Deansgate switched his attention to the men behind me.

'Now listen,' he said, 'and don't snarl it up. Get these two pieces of rope and tie one to his left arm and one to the right. And watch out for any tricks.'

He lifted the gun a fraction until I could see down the barrels. If he shot from there, I thought, he would hit his chums. It didn't after all look like straight execution. The chums were busy tying bits of rope to both of my wrists.

'Not the left wrist, you stupid b.u.g.g.e.r,' Trevor Deansgate said. 'That one comes right off. Use your b.l.o.o.d.y head. Tie it high, above his elbow.'

The chum in question did as he said and pulled the knots tight, and almost casually picked up a stout metal bar, like a crowbar, standing there gripping it as if he thought that somehow I could liberate myself like Superman and still attack him.

Crowbar.... Nasty s.h.i.+vers of apprehension suddenly crawled all over my scalp. There had been another villain, before, who had known where to hurt me most, the one who had hit my already useless left hand with a poker, and turned it from a ruin into a total loss. I had had regrets enough since, and all sorts of private agonies, but I hadn't realised, until that sickening moment, how much I valued what remained. The muscles that worked the electrodes, they at least gave me the semblance of a working hand. If they were injured again I wouldn't have even that. As for the elbow itself... if he wanted to put me out of effective action for a long time, he had only to use that crowbar.

'You don't like that, do you, Mr Halley?' Trevor Deansgate said.

I turned my head back to him. His voice and face were suddenly full of a mixture of triumph and satisfaction, and what seemed like relief. I said nothing.

'You're sweating,' he said.

He had another order for the chums. 'Untie that rope round his chest. And do it carefully. Hold onto the ropes on his arms.'

They untied the knot, and pulled the constricting rope away from round my chest. It didn't make much difference to my chances of escape. They were wildly exaggerating my ability in a fight.

'Lie down,' he said to me; and when I didn't at once comply, he said 'Push him down,' to the chums. One way or another, I ended on my back.

'I don't want to kill you,' he said. 'I could dump your body somewhere, but there would be too many questions. I can't risk it. But if I don't kill you, I've got to shut you up. Once and for all. Permanently.'

Short of killing me I didn't see how he could do it; and I was stupid.

'Pull his arm sideways, away from his body,' he said.

The pull on my left arm had a man's weight behind it and was stronger than I was. I rolled my head that way and tried not to beg, not to weep.

'Not that one, you b.l.o.o.d.y fool,' Trevor Deansgate said. 'The other one. The right one. Pull it out, to this side.'

The chum on my right used all his strength on the rope and hauled so that my arm finished straight out sideways, at right angles to my body, palm upwards.

Trevor Deansgate stepped towards me and lowered the gun until the black holes of the barrel were pointing straight at my stretched right wrist. Then he carefully lowered the barrel another inch, making direct contact on my skin, pressing down against the straw-covered floor. I could feel the metal rims hard across the bones and nerves and smews. Across the bridge to a healthy hand.

I heard the click as he c.o.c.ked the firing mechanism. One blast from a twelve bore would take off most of the arm.

A dizzy wave of faintness drenched all my limbs with sweat.

Whatever anyone said, I intimately knew about fear. Not fear of any horse, or of racing, or falling, or of ordinary physical pain. But of humiliation and rejection and helplessness and failure... all of those. All the fear I'd ever felt in all my life was as nothing compared with the liquefying, mind-shattering disintegration of that appalling minute. It broke me in pieces. Swamped me. Brought me down to a mora.s.s of terror, to a whimper in the soul. And instinctively, hopelessly, I tried not to let it show.

He watched motionlessly through uncountable intensifying silent seconds. Making me wait. Making it worse.