Catherine in a state of shock and anger stared hollow-eyed in disbelief. I stretched an arm towards her and hugged both girls as if I could never let them go.
Adam Force came to stand against the safe side of the wall into the workshop and begged Rose to stand still and let someone — like himself — come to help her and her father, with the only result that she changed direction towards his voice, lashing through the air in great sweeps of the punty iron.
Catherine, a police officer to the bone, stiffened after her first need for comfort and, with Rose following the sound of her voice, walked away from me and called her station urgently for backup. Stifling human terror, she spoke tightly on her personal radio. “Officer down,” she said, pushing the transit button. “Red call. Red call. Officer in need of immediate assistance.”
She reported the address of Logan Glass, and then and with less formality, and genuine extreme emotion, added, “Come at once. Dear God.”
She dodged Rose’s rushing speed and with incredible bravery knelt down beside her silent hobo partner. The plainclothes inhabitant of doorways, whose name to me had never been more than “Pernickety Paul,” would catch no more villains. Pernickety Paul had taken a long white-hot direct hit through his neck.
I disentangled myself from Pamela Jane and half ran across the room away from Catherine and called to Rose, “I’m here, Rose. I’m over here and you’ll never catch me.”
Rose turned half circle my way and pivoted once more when I jumped past her again and yelled at her. She turned again and again and finally began to tire enough with her blurring eyes for Worthington and Jim to reach my side and for Catherine to come up behind us, and for the four of us to grab Rose at high speed and immobilize her still-slashing punty iron arm. I wrestled the iron a good safe way away from her, feeling the heat of it near my legs, but not on my skin, and still she went on struggling in Worthington’s and Jim’s grasp.
The police side of Catherine flowed in her like a strong tide. She sought and found the handcuffs carried by Pernickety Paul on a belt around his waist. She clicked them roughly onto Rose’s wrists behind her back, the metal bands squeezed tight against her skin.
Rose kicked.
“Take my belt,” Worthington shouted, and I unbuckled his pliable woven leather belt and tied it around one ankle and knotted it to the other, until she overbalanced and lay on her side on the floor, thrashing her legs still and cursing.
There was nothing about “going quietly” in the arrest of Rose Payne. An ambulance with paramedics and two cars full of bristling young police officers drew up outside the gallery and filled Logan Glass, crunching the fragments of the shattered horse to dust under their heavy boots. They talked with Catherine and fetched a blanket in which they rolled Rose like a baby in swaddling clothes and, with her struggling to the end, they manhandled her out through the showroom and gallery door and shoved her into the back of one of the police cars.
Spitting fury, she was soon joined there by the burly Norman Osprey, whose muscles had been no match for three sets of canine fangs. Tom told me later that the big man had sat in the road quivering with fear, his head and hands between his legs, begging for the police to rescue him from the black snarls circling around him.
In the workshop I watched as Catherine, dry-eyed, brought another blanket in from a police car to cover the silence of Paul.
More police arrived, some in uniform and others in plainclothes more suitable for a Sunday in front of the television than a trip to a fiery hell on earth. Off duty or not, some things demanded attendance. White overalls and gray plastic shoe covers were produced and soon the workshop took on the look of unreal science fiction.
I watched a policeman wearing surgical rubber gloves carefully lift the fallen syringe and place it gingerly in a clear plastic bag, which he sealed.
Methodically the police began to sort and list names, and it was the Dragon across the road who offered solace and recovery with a warm heart. One of the police officers removed the tape from Pamela Jane’s wrists, took her personal details, and then with a solicitous arm helped her to the hotel.
I knelt beside Hickory. I told him I was going to remove the sticky strips from his eyes and mouth. I asked him if he understood.
Hickory nodded and stopped struggling against the floor.
As humanely as possible I pulled the tape from his eyes. It painfully came off with eyelashes attached and it was several minutes before his long-obstructed sight cleared and he was staring straight at me beside him.
“I’m going to take the tape off your mouth,” I said.
He nodded.
One of the young police officers stretched a hand down over my shoulder and with a lack of sensitivity simply ripped the strong tape off. Hickory yelled and went on yelling, telling the police officer to free his taped-together hands, and to hurry up.
I left them for a moment and brought the first-aid box from the stock shelves to put a dressing on Hickory’s ear, and after a good deal of chat, the paramedics and the police decided together that he should go to the hospital along with Eddie, who was now deep in shock with hands that had already blistered badly.
Catherine stood by the ambulance’s open door watching Eddie being helped aboard for treatment.
I told her other things she ought to know, extra things about Blackmask Four that had come to me during the night, that I hadn’t mentioned in the dawn.
She said thoughtfully, “Our superintendent is that man standing beside Paul. I think you’d better talk to him. I have to go to the police station. I’ll come back here when I can...”
She took me across the room, introduced me as the owner of the place and left me to deepen the frown of the top brass.
I shook hands with Superintendent Shepherd of the West Mercia police.
First of all he looked with disenchantment at my singlet, now no longer white and clean but grubby from constant contact with workshop clutter. He took in the singed piece of cloth hanging loose in the lower ribs area where Rose’s relentless attentions had connected. He asked if the reddened skin beneath was painful and I tiredly said yes, it was, but I’d had worse burns in the past and would prefer to ignore it; but, I added to myself, burns had always before been accidentally self-inflicted.
I looked down at the blanket over Pernickety Paul, the fusspot who had cared like a father for Catherine’s safety in the violent streets.
“He was a good policeman,” I said.
The superintendent let a small silence ride by before mentioning comeuppance for the perpetrator. He would need me to proceed to the police station to make a statement which would be videotaped and in every way recorded. Judiciously he agreed I could cover the burns with dressings and restore my shirt on top, and then, reluctantly, he also agreed I could hang my coat over my shoulders so as not to freeze out of doors.
During this display of humanity George Lawson-Young arrived, and with his presence transformed the general police atmosphere from suspicion to common sense. He was the sort of deeply respected man that other men in authority instinctively trusted. When he greeted and treated me with noticeably high levels of deference, my standing with the super took a slow drift upwards. I thought he went so far after a while as to believe what I said.
George Lawson-Young asked me as if expecting the answer “Yes,” “Did you work out the identity of the fourth man who assaulted you outside here on the sidewalk two weeks ago?”
“Yes.”