“Pack up our things,” I said to Claudia. “Mum, pack an overnight bag. No, take enough for a few days. We’re going somewhere else.”
“But why?” my mother asked.
“Because someone sent this man here to kill me and when he finds out that his gunman hasn’t succeeded, that someone might send another to try again.”
Neither of them asked the obvious question: Why was the man trying to kill me? Instead they both quickly went together to pack, taking the flashlight with them and leaving me standing in the dark.
In spite of being pretty certain the man was indeed dead, I didn’t stop listening, holding the gun ready in case he made a miraculous recovery.
I found I was shaking.
I took several deep breaths, but the shaking continued. Perhaps it was from fear, or relief, or maybe it was a reaction to the sudden realization that I had killed a man. Probably a bit of all three.
The shaking continued for several minutes, and I became totally exhausted by it. I wanted to sit down, and I felt slightly sick.
“We’re packed,” Claudia said from upstairs, the flashlight again shining down the stairway.
“Good,” I said. “Pass the things down to me.”
I stepped carefully onto the first few stairs, next to the man’s legs, and reached up as Claudia handed down our bags and my mother’s suitcase.
Next, I guided each of them down in turn, making sure they stepped only on the wood and not on the man.
“Oh my God. Oh my God,” Claudia said, repeating it over and over again, as she came nervously down the stairs, pressing herself against the side while at the same time holding her hands up to ensure she wouldn’t touch the man by mistake.
My mother was surprisingly much more stoical, waltzing down the stairs as if there was nothing there. In fact, I suspected that she would’ve liked to have given the corpse a sharp kick for ruining her roast dinner.
The three of us went out to the car, loaded the stuff and drove away down the rutted lane, leaving the dead man alone in the dark house.
I drove into Cheltenham and called the police, but I didn’t dial the emergency number. Instead, I called Chief Inspector Tomlinson on his mobile.
“The man who killed Herb Kovak,” I said, “is lying dead at the bottom of my mother’s stairs.”
There was the slightest of pauses.
“How tiresome of him,” the chief inspector said. “Did he just lie down there and die?”
“No,” I said. “He broke his neck falling down the stairs.”
“Was he pushed?” he asked, once again demonstrating his suspicious mind.
“Helped,” I said. “We fell down the stairs together. He came off worse. But he was trying to stab me with a carving knife at the time.”
“What happened to his gun?” he asked.
“He lost it under the fridge,” I said.
“Hmm,” he said. “And have you told the local constabulary?”
“No,” I said. “I thought you could do that. And you can also tell them he was a foreigner.”
“How do you know?”
“He said something I didn’t understand.”
“And where are you now?” he asked.
“In Cheltenham,” I said. “The gunman cut the power and the telephone wires. I’ve had to leave to make a call on my mobile. There’s no signal at the cottage.”
“Is anyone still at the cottage?”
“Only the dead man,” I said. “I have Claudia and my mother with me in the car.”
“So are you going back there now?” he asked.
“No,” I said firmly. “Whoever sent this man could send another.”
“So where are you going?” he asked, not questioning my decision.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ll call you when I do.”
“Who knew you were at your mother’s place?” he asked, always the detective.
“Everyone in my office,” I said. And whomever else Mrs. McDowd had told, I thought.
“Right,” he said. “I’ll call the Gloucestershire Police, but they’ll definitely want to talk to you, and to Claudia and your mother. They may even want you back at the cottage.”
“Tell them I’ll call them there in two hours,” I said.
“But you said the line had been cut.”
“Then get it fixed,” I said. “And get the power back on. Tell them I think my mother has left the stove on. I don’t want the place burning down when the power’s reconnected. And also tell them I’ve left the back door unlocked so they won’t have to break the front door down to get in.”
“OK,” he said. “I’ll tell them.” He paused. “Is the gun still under the fridge?”
“No,” I said. “I retrieved it.”
“So where is it now?”
I had so wanted to bring it with me, to give myself the armed protection that I’d been denied by the police.
“It’s outside the front door,” I said. “In a bush.”
“Right,” he said, sounding slightly relieved. “I’ll tell the Gloucestershire force that too. Save them hunting for it, and you.”
“Good,” I said.
It had been the right decision to leave the gun behind. I could still claim the moral high ground.
I hung up and switched off my phone. I would call the police on my terms, and I also didn’t want anyone being able to track my movements from the phone signal.
“Do you really think we’re still in danger?” Claudia asked next to me.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I’m not taking any chances.”
“Who knew we were there?” she asked.
“Everyone at the office, I expect,” I said. “Mrs. McDowd definitely knew and she’d have told everyone else.”
And Detective Chief Inspector Tomlinson had known as well.
I’d told him myself.
It was my mother who finally asked the big question.
“Why was that man trying to kill you?” she said calmly from the backseat.
We were on the road between Cirencester and Swindon.
I’d made one more stop in Cheltenham at one of the few remaining public phone boxes. I hadn’t wanted to use my mobile for fear that someone could trace who I was calling. We were going where no one would find us.
“I’m not totally sure but it may be because I am a witness to him killing a man at Aintree races,” I said. “And it wasn’t the first time he’d tried.”
Neither my mother nor Claudia said anything. They were waiting for me to go on.
“He was waiting outside our house in Lichfield Grove when I got back there on Tuesday afternoon,” I said. “Luckily, I could run faster than him.”
“Is that why we came to Woodmancote,” Claudia asked, “instead of going home?”
“It sure is,” I said. “But I didn’t realize that Woodmancote wasn’t safe either. Not until it was too late. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“But what about the police?” my mother asked. “Surely we must go to the police. They will look after us.”
But how much did I trust the police? I didn’t know that either. They hadn’t given me any protection when I’d asked for it and that omission had almost cost us our lives. No, I thought, I’d trust my own instincts. The police seemed more interested in solving murders than preventing them.
“I have been to the police,” I said, driving on through the darkness. “But it will be me who will look after you.”
And I would also find out who was trying to have me killed, and the real reason why.
Well, lover boy,” Jan Setter said, “when I asked you to come and stay, I didn’t exactly mean you to bring your girlfriend and your mother with you!”
We laughed.
We were sitting at her kitchen table in Lambourn, drinking coffee, the said girlfriend and mother having been safely tucked up in two of Jan’s many spare bedrooms.