by Peter Helton
“Shut the fuck up, Mr Honeysett!” She squatted in front of the scrabbling Gordon. “There reigns in all men without exception blood, manslaughter, theft and dissimulation, corruption, unfaithfulness, tumults, perjury, forgetfulness of good turns, defiling of souls, changing of kind, disorder in marriages, adultery and shameless uncleanness, remember?” The meat cleaver in her left hand, she began punching him in the face, methodically, rhythmically: “Do…you…have…any…idea…what…he…did…to…me!?” Under this leather-fisted onslaught Gordon went quite limp, his head on one shoulder, lips, nose and eyebrow split and bleeding. Lisa pulled his right hand from his groin and splayed it on the ground. I thought I could detect a shudder going through her massive body. “He did unspeakable things to my tits to cleanse my soul, you know,” she said conversationally. The meat cleaver came down and three fingers, severed behind the second joint, jumped away from his hand. Blood spurted immediately. A shock went through his body, his face turned grey and his eyes stared madly. Gordon’s breath rattled in and out of his lungs. I realized Lisa had probably punched in his windpipe for good measure. It had to stop, however much both of us hated him.
“Lisa. I know he did unforgivable things to you,” I said without making a move that might invite the attentions of a Chinese meat cleaver. “And he did kill my friend Jenny. But…”
She looked across at me, his second, uninjured hand twitching as she grabbed hold of it and pressed it hard against the tiles for her next operation. She gestured casually with the bloodied meat cleaver. “He didn’t kill her.” She tapped her chest with the cleaver. “I killed the stupid cow. Didn’t mean to, I just hit her too much.”
“Why?” I asked quietly.
“Because the bitch betrayed me. She was supposed to help me get justice from this pig. She said she’d help me. Then she changed her mind. Said no one would believe me ‘cause I’m mad. Keeping the house was more important. The fucking house! What about me? She asked me to leave, just like that. I hit her with that sharpening thing. I was angry.” She nodded. “I do all sorts of shit when I’m angry.”
She made to have another go at Gordon’s digits. Keep her talking. “If you killed Jenny then how come Dave ended up with the sharpening steel in the lock? Did you kill him too?”
“Dozy Dave? Never. But I saw him die all right. When I came out of the downstairs lav after a quick wash Dave was there, bending over Jenny. Gavin was right behind him, as usual. I told them not to say a thing and scram or I’d wring their necks. They ran out of the door like chickens. Later on I walked up the towpath in Widcombe in case Dave had gone to his therapy session anyway. I thought he might. He did everything like clockwork. I needed to know if they’d told anyone. Sure enough, they were both there. They were arguing. Dave pacing up and down, up and down in front of the lock, waving his arms about, excited, haranguing Gavin about something. And then the idiot paced straight over the side and into the lock. He never stopped talking all the way down, either, the daft sod. Gavin ran off as soon as he saw me. I looked down the lock for Dave but couldn’t see him. I still had the sharpening thing, I was going to dump it in the river somewhere. So I chucked it in after him. Satisfied, Mr Detective?”
She turned back to the work in hand, lifted the meat cleaver and struck down. This time the cleaver failed to find its target because a length of two-by-two connected with the back of her helmet, sending her crashing on to Gordon’s limp body. She growled, picked herself up and swung around to face her attacker. Tim seemed a little unsteady on his feet but his eyes under the blood-encrusted forehead were clear. “I’ve come to repay the compliment,” he said. As Lisa rushed him with a furious grunt, he swung the three-foot length of timber and landed another blow on the top of the helmet. It gave a loud crack. Lisa stumbled another step forward, then stopped, swaying a little. “I really don’t want to hit you again, you know?”
She grunted and shuffled forward, the cleaver still raised in her right hand.
“Oh, hell.” He stepped back and cracked another blow across the crash helmet. Lisa hit the floor like a dynamited chimney, face first. The meat cleaver clattered away across the tiles.
It was a moment of blissful quiet. Gordon was unconscious. His heart silently pumped blood out of his twitching hand into a widening pool around his severed fingers. I was bleeding in more modest fashion into my shirt. Tim rested the length of wood across his shoulder like a workman with his spade and took in the bleeding mess in general and Gordon’s severed fingers in particular. “Bloody hell, Chris. Just as well you never lit the barbecue.”
“It’s quite a nasty scratch,” was how Annis referred to my heroic wound. The girls had turned up not five minutes after Tim had restored peace to Mill House. He had a bad headache and probably shouldn’t have been drinking after the thwack Lisa had dealt him in the shed. But we all felt the need for a few fingers of scotch before the inevitable police circus descended on us. We sat around the kitchen table and sipped our whiskies while we waited for the ambulance and the unavoidable Superintendent. Lisa was sitting on the floor with her hands expertly tied by Annis. Gordon, grimly quiet, sat where he was with his hand inexpertly bandaged by Alison. “They could probably sew his fingers back on if we kept them frozen or something,” she suggested.
“Sorry,” I said, jingling the cubes in my glass. “We’re fresh out of ice.”
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks to Krystyna and Juliet for making this book possible; to Imogen, Veena and Clare for the hard work my manuscript needed; to Matt for answering my inane computer questions; no thanks to Asbo the cat for pouring tea into my laptop.
