The second shot missed him on the other side and, having gone in one side of the hot-water boiler and out the other, ricocheted round the en-suite bathroom. There was no need for a third shot. Sir Arnold had scampered through the door and slammed it behind him. Lady Vy reached for the panic button which had been installed to alert every police station within a radius of fifty miles that the Chief Constable's weekend residence had been entered by intruders.
To Sir Arnold Gonders the next half hour was a foretaste of hell. As the siren on the roof began to wail and the entire building was brilliantly floodlit by halogen lamps in the garden while simultaneously a dozen police stations were alerted to a Top Priority Emergency, he knew that his career was on the brink of an abyss. He hurled himself down the darkened staircase and was halfway to the telephone in his study when the hall lights came on and he was confronted by the elderly Scots housekeeper in her dressing-gown.
'Och Sir Arnold, do you ken wha's ganging on?' she asked.
The Chief Constable brushed her aside with the bloodied bedside lamp. The stupid old cow, of course he didn't know what was going on. Once in his study he dropped the lamp on a valuable Persian rug and grabbed the phone. The number, the coded number to cancel the alert? What the hell was it? Finally, in desperation, he dialled 999 and was asked which of the Emergency Services he required. It was a rather more relevant question than he realized at the time, though the house had yet to catch fire.
'Police,' he barked and was put through to a recorded message asking him to be patient as Police Services were stretched to the limit. Sir Arnold knew that. He had dictated the message to his secretary himself.
'While you are waiting to be attended to,' the soothing female voice went on, 'we at Twixt and Tween Police Services would like you to know about the ancillary assistance we are able to offer the public. Officers are always on hand to conduct Road Safety Classes at schools of all levels, Primary, Secondary, Further and Independent. We also hold regular classes in Self-Defence for Senior Citizens and Persons of the Female Gender. These are available at '
'Fuck off, you bitch,' shouted the Chief Constable and slammed the phone down. A new and even more awful possibility had just entered his mind. Vy and a young man in bed...A toyboy! He had to think of some way of stopping scores of policemen converging on the house in which he had almost certainly murdered his wife's lover. But first he had to find a way of turning that infernal siren off. Livid with a fresh terror he dashed back across the hall to the kitchen in search of the fuses and was blundering about in the pantry where they had been. The fucking things had been moved. That Vy and her electricians. And what was the point of having Emergency Services if you couldn't get through to the sods. The other inhabitants of the house weren't helping. As he turned back towards the study with the intention of blasting that bleeding siren on the roof into silence with his shotgun he came face to face with Auntie Bea.
'Has something dreadful happened?' she enquired, at the same time studying his anatomy with only slight interest and considerable disgust. 'I thought I heard shots and then all those incredible lights came on and that dreary siren. Can't you switch it off?'
'No,' said the Chief Constable. 'And nothing serious has happened.'
'Well, I certainly can,' said Auntie Bea. Behind her in the study the phone had begun to ring. For a moment they grappled in the doorway and then the Chief Constable broke loose and hurried to the study. In the kitchen Bea found the mains switch and the siren wailed down. She came back with the housekeeper and stood in the study doorway. The Chief Constable had answered the phone.
'This is Harry Hodge, the Deputy Chief Constable here,' said a strangely controlled voice.
'I know that. I know exactly who it is,' Sir Arnold yelled back.
'Good, good,' said the voice, still exercising an unnerving calm. 'Are you all right? I repeat, are you all right? Take your time replying.'
Sir Arnold didn't. It was bad enough standing in the study bollock naked with a middle-aged woman in a startling kimono staring at him and at the blood on the floor...'Of course I'm fucking well all right. The button got pressed accidentally is all.'
'Good, very good,' said the Deputy Chief Constable, maintaining his cool. 'I quite understand. Now are you all right? I repeat, are you all '
'Listen, Hodge, what do you mean you understand? I'm standing here starkers and you...' Here he turned on Auntie Bea. 'Fuck off, for Chrissake.'
'Try and keep calm,' said the wretched Hodge in the same nerveless tone. 'Everything is under control. Now then. Are you all right? I repeat '
'You ask me again if I'm all right, Hodge, and so help me God I'll break your fucking neck. I've told you I don't know how many times I'm all right. How many more times have I got to tell you?'
Over the line he could hear the Deputy Chief Constable asking more or less the same question. Sir Arnold remembered the drill. 'Hodge,' he said, with a new controlled calm that was as peculiar in its own way as that of his Deputy, 'Hodge, I am all right. I repeat, I am all right. Repeat. I am all right.'
'Well, that's all right then,' said Hodge almost regretfully. 'It was a false alarm then? Shall I call off the QRS lads?'
'The who?' The past few minutes had slowed the Chief Constable still further.
'The Quick Response Squad,' Hodge said, a new doubt creeping back into his voice.
'Those swine?' yelled the Chief Constable. 'Of course call them off at once. Why do you think I phoned you?'
'Phone me, sir? Phoned me? I don't want to question your judgement at a time like this but in actual fact I phoned you. Are you sure you are quite all right?'
The Chief Constable made a supreme effort. 'Hodge, please believe me when I say I am perfectly all right, all right, all right. Got it? I am entirely all right and I want to get back to bed.'
'If you say so, sir. All the same, it seems a pity not to take the opportunity to use this as a training exercise.'
'No. Repeat, no. Repeat, no, on no account. Over and fucking out.' And putting the phone down the Chief Constable turned back to even more immediate problems.
Chapter 7
The first problem was to get back into the bedroom and have it out with Vy. She was to blame for what had happened. Any reasonable husband coming home and finding some filthy young gigolo in bed with his wife would have acted in a similarly violent manner. In a way what he had done had been rather complimentary to her and showed the right amount of jealousy. There was certainly no need for her to have behaved in that irrational way with the gun. He might have been killed and then where would she have been? On the other hand he had no intention of going back into the bedroom until she'd promised not to do anything dangerous again. Outside the bedroom door he stopped. 'Darling, darling,' he called softly. 'It's me. You know. Me. Pooh Bear and Wiggly Toes and...'