On my knees, coughing for breath, I watched Vjoersterod appear in the doorway, take in the scene, and walk past me into the room. A black-booted foot kicked the door shut behind him. There was a soft whistling swish in the air and another terrible thump high up between my shoulder blades. Elizabeth cried out. I staggered to my feet and tried to move in her direction. The heavy man in black, Ross, the chauffeur, slid his arm under mine and twisted and locked my shoulder.
‘Sit down, Mr Tyrone,’ Vjoersterod said calmly. ‘Sit there.’ He pointed to the tapestry-covered stool Mrs Woodward liked to knit on as there were no arms or back to get in the way of her busy elbows.
‘Ty,’ Elizabeth’s voice rose high with fear. ‘What’s happening?’
I didn’t answer. I felt stupid and sunk. I sat down on the stool when Ross released my arm and tried to work some control into the way I looked at Vjoersterod.
He was standing near Elizabeth’s head, watching me with swelling satisfaction.
‘So now we know just where we are, Mr Tyrone. Did you really have the conceit to think you could defy me and get away with it? No one does, Mr Tyrone. No one ever does.’
I didn’t answer. Ross stood beside me, a pace to the rear. In his right hand he gently swung the thing he had hit me with, a short elongated pear-shaped truncheon. Its weight and crushing power made a joke of Charlie Boston’s boys’ knuckledusters. I refrained from rubbing the aching places below my neck.
‘Mr Tyrone,’ Vjoersterod said conversationally, ‘Where is Tiddely Pom?’
When I still didn’t answer immediately he half turned, looked down, and carefully put the toe of his shoe under the switch of the electric point. From there the cable led directly to Elizabeth’s breathing pump. Elizabeth turned her head to follow my eyes and saw what he was doing.
‘No,’ she said. It was high pitched, terrified. Vjoersterod smiled.
‘Tiddely Pom?’ he said to me.
‘He’s in the racecourse stables at Heathbury Park.’
‘Ah.’ He took his foot away, put it down on the floor. ‘You see how simple it is? It’s always a matter of finding the right lever. Of applying the right pressure. No horse, I find, is ever worth a really serious danger to a loved one.’
I said nothing. He was right.
‘Check it,’ Ross said from behind me.
Vjoersterod’s eyes narrowed. ‘He couldn’t risk a lie.’
‘He wouldn’t be blackmailed. He was out to get you, and no messing. Check it.’ There was advice in Ross’s manner, not authority. More than a chauffeur. Less than an equal.
Vjoersterod shrugged but stretched out a hand and picked up the receiver. Telephone enquiries. Heathbury Park racecourse. The Clerk of the Course’s house? That would do very well.
Willie Ondroy himself answered. Vjoersterod said ‘Mr Tyrone asked me to call you to check if Tiddely Pom had settled in well...’
He listened to the reply impassively, his pale yellow face immobile. It accounted for the fact, I thought inconsequentially, that his skin was unlined. He never smiled; seldom frowned. The only wrinkles were around his eyes, which I suppose he screwed up against his native sun.
‘Thank you so much,’ he said. His best Foreign Office voice, courteous and charming.
‘Ask him which box the horse is in,’ Ross said. ‘The number.’
Vjoersterod asked. Willie Ondroy told him.
‘Sixty eight. Thank you. Goodnight.’
He put the receiver carefully back in its cradle and let a small silence lengthen. I hoped that since he had got what he came for he would decently go away again. Not a very big hope to start with, and one which never got off the ground.
He said, studying his finger nails, ‘It is satisfactory, Mr Tyrone, that you do at last see the need to co-operate with me.’ Another pause. ‘However in your case I would be foolish to think that this state of affairs would last very long if I did nothing to convince you that it must.’
I looked at Elizabeth. She didn’t seem to have followed Vjoersterod’s rather involved syntax. Her head lay in a relaxed way on the pillow and her eyes were shut. She was relieved that I had told where the horse was: she thought that everything was now all right.
Vjoersterod followed my glance and my thought. He nodded. ‘We have many polio victims on respirators in my country. I understand about them. About the importance of electricity. The importance of constant attendance. The razor edge between life and death. I understand it well.’
I said nothing. He said, ‘Many men desert wives like this. Since you do not, you would care if harm came to her. Am I right? You have, in fact, just this minute proved it, have you not? You wasted so little time in telling me correctly what I wanted to know.’
I made no comment. He waited a fraction, then went smoothly on. What he said, as Dembley had found out, was macabrely at variance with the way he said it.
‘I have an international reputation to maintain. I simply cannot afford to have pipsqueak journalists interfering with my enterprises and trying to hold me up to ridicule. I intend to make it clear to you once and for all, to impress upon you indelibly, that I am not a man to be crossed.’
Ross moved a pace at my side. My skin crawled. I made as good a job as I could of matching Vjoersterod’s immobility of expression.
Vjoersterod had more to say. As far as I was concerned, he could go on all night. The alternative hardly beckoned.
‘Charlie Boston reports to me that you have put both his men out of action. He too cannot afford such affronts to his reputation. Since all you learned from his warning attentions on the train was to strike back, we will see if my chauffeur can do any better.’
I tucked one foot under the stool, pivoted on it, and on the way to my feet struck at Ross with both hands, one to the stomach, one to the groin. He bent over, taken by surprise, and I wrenched the small truncheon out of his hand, raising it to clip him on the head.
‘Ty...’ Elizabeth’s voice rose in an agonised wail. I swung round with the truncheon in my hand and met Vjoersterod’s fiercely implacable gaze.
‘Drop it.’
He had his toe under the switch. Three yards between us.
I hesitated, boiling with fury, wanting above anything to hit him, knock him out, get rid of him out of my life and most particularly out of the next hour of it. I couldn’t risk it. One tiny jerk would cut off the current. I couldn’t risk not being able to reach the switch again in time, not with Vjoersterod in front of it and Ross behind me. Under the weight of the Spirashell she would suffocate almost immediately. If I resisted any more I could kill her. He might really do it. Let her die. Leave me to explain her death and maybe even be accused of slaughtering her myself. The unwanted wife bit... He didn’t know I knew his name or anything about him. He would think he could kill Elizabeth with reasonable safety. I simply couldn’t risk it.
I put my arm down slowly and dropped the truncheon on the carpet. Ross, breathing heavily, bent and picked it up.
‘Sit down, Mr Tyrone,’ Vjoersterod said. ‘And stay sitting down. Don’t get up again. Do I make myself clear?’
He still had his toe under the switch. I sat down, seething inside, rigid outside, and totally apprehensive. Twice in a fortnight was definitely too much.
Vjoersterod nodded to Ross, who hit me solidly with the truncheon on the back of the shoulder. It sounded horrible. Felt worse.
Elizabeth cried out. Vjoersterod looked at her without pity and told Ross to switch on the television. They both waited while the set warmed up. Ross adjusted the volume to medium loud and changed the channel from a news magazine to song and dance. No neighbours, unfortunately, would call to complain about the noise. The only ones who lived near enough were out working in a night club.