Dead Certainty

by Glenis Wilson

  I put down the empty mug and switched off the bedside lamp. To the left of it, the red neon on the radio alarm flicked from 12.18 a.m. to 12.19 a.m. At least there hadn’t been a power cut whilst I’d been stuck in hospital so the contents of the freezer should still be edible. Drowsily, I slid down, my head cushioned on the goose-down pillow.

  At this point, normally, I crashed out and left the world to go its own way but tonight – no chance. One thirty a.m., and still sweating from the humidity, I hauled myself off the bed into the bathroom and cold water sponged my whole body, minus the left leg. God, that felt better. I returned to my room more than ready to fall asleep. But sod’s law was operating and I was still awake at gone three o’clock.

  Work was usually an exhausting routine, but always at the end of the day I fell straight into the arms of sleep and notched up a welcome seven hours. Since the first crippling accident I’d managed maybe four, perhaps half-a-dozen good nights. The thought made me want to get out of bed right now and go and muck-out a line of stables at Mike’s. Even as the ridiculous thought filled my mind, I sighed at my own absurdity, thumped the pillow and closed my eyes.

  And then I heard it – the unmistakable click of the latch being lifted on the kitchen door. Somebody had entered the cottage.

  My eyes flew open, then I froze, physically and mentally. At three o’clock in the morning one didn’t have visitors – especially visitors who arrived unannounced. Closing my eyes to cut out any visual stimuli, I focused intently on listening for the next sound from downstairs. It could be your common or garden burglar, striped jumper, black mask, swag bag over one shoulder … It could, but I didn’t believe it.

  Aggressive attempts on my person were becoming too numerous to be coincidences. Whoever had got inside the cottage, and at this point I berated myself for not checking the lock last night, was not here to pay a civilized social call. Far from it, I imagined.

  If I’d been fully fit, both legs working, I’d have been down the stairs three at a time by now, protecting hearth and home, but I was acutely conscious of my vulnerable state. The result of a confrontation right now was the likelihood of even further disabilities to add to my battered body. Assuming, of course, that I was lucky enough to still be alive when my assailant left.

  Straining my ears, I must have waited three or four minutes. To me, it seemed like hours, but no further sound disturbed the silence. Maybe it had just been Leo coming back in through his cat flap. And as the time trickled by my red alert diminished. The thought crossed my mind: I’m getting jumpy in my old age. I should hammer the negative trait firmly into the ground. I let my eyelids close and willed myself to relax and let go.

  I could hear the distant sound of water begin pattering. It was soothing. Rain? Not forecast. It increased to a gentle slop, slop that was very soporific. My imagination drifted into a dreamlike state where I felt I was lying in the bottom of a softly padded boat rocking gently to and fro on the water. It was a lovely feeling. I could even smell the engine fuel. Oh, yes, going on a beautiful trip down the river. At last, sleep here I come.

  The next second a tremendous crash reverberated through the cottage accompanied by an ear-splitting squall from an irate cat plus a bellowing of choice expletives worthy of a sailor.

  Leg or no leg, I was out of bed and hopping frantically along the landing to the head of the stairs. An overpowering smell of petrol fumes funnelled up the staircase. My heart was hammering its way out of my ribcage and I flung myself down, barely touching the treads, and landed in a bruised heap in the hall. It was pitch dark but I dared not switch on the light. The air was heavy with the stink of petrol: one spark would be all it took to set off a raging inferno.

  An angry spitting and growling came from somewhere to the right.

  ‘Leo!’ I yelled and crawled across the hall, keeping my nose just a fraction above the floorboards, and into the kitchen. Something heavy and metal clouted my plastered leg. It was a petrol can. Obviously empty, it skittered away, clanking, across the hard quarry tiles.

  The intruder had exited through the kitchen door, leaving it wide open and allowing in a beam of moonlight. My eyes were adjusting to night vision and the minimal help of the moonlight enabled me to see across the kitchen. Leo had backed himself into the narrow gap between the sink unit and the Rayburn. His eyes, enormous, vividly green and wild, glared out at me. He growled fiercely interspersed by spits and swears.

  ‘It’s only me, you old fool, come on out.’ I crawled across the cold quarries and put out a hand to him. ‘You’re all right.’ But he was not to be placated and lashed out with a wide spread paw spiked with four grappling irons. A nanosecond before they connected with my bare flesh, I jerked out of reach. Whoever had entered the cottage had obviously given him a good fright at the least, possibly injured him. Until he calmed down, though, nobody would get anywhere near him. Not without being severely mauled. He’d reverted to the behaviour of his ancestors, feral and fearsome.

  I inched away and stuck my head over the doorstep. The freshness of the air was a blessing. I hadn’t been aware of my shallow breathing until now and I gulped in grateful draughts of the precious stuff. Leo, being low-slung, would fare better. He needed a lot less to keep his ticker ticking.

  As my head cleared with the influx of oxygen, I cautiously lifted my nose from two inches above the stone step until I could comfortably bend my head to both sides and have a full visual check of the driveway and garden outside.

  The moonlight pooled along the gravel leaving dark charcoal shadows on both sides along by the hedge. The five-barred farm gate between my drive and the country lane outside was swinging open. Again, I waited, perhaps ten minutes this time, before levering myself upright and feeling around in the hall behind me for my crutch. I hobbled outside, the gravel playing hell with my balance, and went as far as the gate.

  I slipped through, keeping tightly to the side of the hedge, and glanced up and down the lane. The moonlight illuminated it somewhat and my night vision was working overtime by now. No vehicle sat parked up, nothing moved. Unless my would-be arsonist had darted from the doorway round the back of the cottage, he’d made a quick get-away. I retraced my steps, closing the big gate firmly behind me.

  Once inside the cottage, I grabbed my powerful torch from the kitchen cupboard and played the beam around the room. The offending petrol can I pitched out over the step and stood it upright in the garden, replacing the cap I’d found that had been lying on the doormat. Moving through each of the downstairs rooms, I flung open all the windows, the front door and opened wide the conservatory doors to the back garden. It was black as pitch out there and I didn’t fancy scuffling and fumbling my way between shrubs and bushes trying to find someone who was by now probably approaching the county boundary.

  I still didn’t dare switch on any lights but Leo seemed to have calmed down and was emboldened perhaps by the torchlight to belly-creep, very slowly, towards me. Sitting down awkwardly on the kitchen floor, I patted my good knee.

  ‘Come on, old lad. It’s all right. Let’s have a look at you.’ He climbed painfully and slowly on to my lap. I stroked him very gently, soothing away his fears and murmuring encouragement. All four paws and legs seemed to be OK but as my questing hand travelled the length of his body checking for tender spots, he stiffened and swore loudly as my hand reached his rump.

  ‘OK, old lad, OK. You’re hurting there, aren’t you?’ I played my fingertips gently down both hips and then along his tail. It felt most peculiar, floppy, way out of line. It was a bridge too far for Leo. He spun round and sank his teeth into the fleshy part of my palm. Now I was swearing in tandem. If a bite from a domestic cat hurt this much, I wouldn’t fancy a mauling from a tiger! Clawing himself off my knee, he took refuge back in the gap by the Rayburn. His ferocious emerald gaze dared me to try it again. No way was I going to. Not till I’d downed a whisky.

  Whatever was wrong, a dislocation or maybe even a broken tail, it wasn’t life threatening
but it needed attention pronto. Leo was going to have to submit to being carted off to the vets to be looked at. A battle of some proportion was about to begin. I’d rather have been taking my chances of injury riding in the Grand National.

  The emergency vets was way over at Dunkirk, the other side of Nottingham, and by the time the return taxi dropped Leo and me back at the cottage there didn’t seem to be that much of the night left. Settling a now dopey and docile cat into his basket, I offered him a saucer of milk from which he condescended to take half-a-dozen laps. His tail, which the vet had diagnosed not as a fracture, thankfully, but a dislocation, was wrapped firmly in half a yard of white bandage. If it had been a fracture, Leo would most likely have had to undergo an amputation – instant Manx. And that would have been a tragedy. Leo’s tail was impressive: long, extremely furry and very expressive. We should both have missed its presence. But my relief at the diagnosis did nothing to damp down my simmering anger at the hoodlum who had violated my privacy and caused the cat pain. I left Leo nodding off beside the warm stove and, suddenly aware how shattered I felt, decided to give the stairs a miss. In the lounge there were loads of decently squishy cushions on the three-seater. Added to this the cottage was vulnerable if not actually begging to be turned over – all the doors and windows wide open.

  I collapsed gratefully on to the settee, adjusted two or three cushions behind my head and lay back to await the dawn. This time I fell asleep instantly, one thought dominating my mind: whoever had harmed Leo, I intended to track down the bastard. And when I did …

  NINE

  At an indecently early hour I telephoned Annabel on her landline. A sleepy, upper-crust, and grumpy man’s voice answered. It was Sir Jeffrey.

  ‘Sorry, I really hope I didn’t wake you.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘I do apologise, I wanted to speak to—’

  ‘Annabel.’

  ‘Er, yes.’

  ‘Hold on.’

  There was an unmistakable rustle of bedclothes. I winced and gritted my teeth. Lucky, lucky sod. A picture of them both snuggled up intimately in bed burned itself into my mind. Annabel never wore nightdresses; she always slept naked. Just the thought of her was arousing me even before she spoke.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘It’s me, Annabel.’

  ‘Hello, Harry. You need me?’

  By God, what an understatement. I gripped the receiver hard and managed to say, ‘I’d like your help.’

  ‘Are you in trouble?’

  ‘No, no, not me. Leo, actually.’

  ‘Oh, the darling, what’s wrong?’

  ‘He could do with some healing.’

  Her voice changed, warmed and softened as women’s do when children and animals are involved. The maternal nurturing instinct kicking in, probably. It was a very feminine sound, loving, caring. I swallowed hard.

  ‘We’ve just got back from the emergency vet over at Dunkirk and, well …’

  ‘He’s feeling sorry for himself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Some bastard got into the cottage during the night. He dislocated Leo’s tail.’

  Annabel gave a tiny moan of anguish. ‘Oh, no!’

  Jeffrey’s voice chipped in. ‘Darling, what is it? What’s upsetting you?’

  What he meant was who’s upsetting you, although he knew damn well it was me. In his place I’d be feeling the same. What he really meant was get the hell away from her. But Jeffrey was much too well-bred and polite to lower himself and show his emotions. What did she see in him? Did he show any passion towards her when they made love?

  I fought down my jealousy.

  ‘Some distant healing would be wonderful if you could send Leo some.’ With Sir Jeffrey lying beside her I dared not ask her to come over to the cottage. But it didn’t stop me really wanting her to.

  ‘Of course I will. Is he in much pain?’

  ‘No, the vet gave him a jab but I suppose he will be when it wears off.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said very softly. ‘Don’t worry, Harry, leave it with me.’

  ‘Thanks, Annabel, I really appreciate it.’ And I meant it. I knew the power behind the healing. I’d been on the receiving end myself.

  Replacing the receiver, I looked up the number of an acquaintance who had heroically opted for a career in the fire service. Even as we were speaking his pager powered into action and a second or two later I was holding a dead mobile. But at least we’d swapped the necessary information. On my part, describing the state of the kitchen awash with petrol and on his, the action required to get rid of the noxious fluid. Amazingly, once the fumes dispersed through open doors and windows, which they had, it was childishly simple – simply swill it away.

  Obediently, I filled a bucket with soapy suds and grabbed the yard brush. It could have doubled for a sitcom. Trying to brush the petrol over the doorstep with a strong arm action should have had the brush head doing sterling work but since I had one leg in a ‘do not get it wet, Mr Radcliffe’ plaster, I was hopping about like a flea on speed.

  High up on the worktop well out of the battle zone, Leo, in a tranquillized doze in his cosy bed, lay smugly superior watching the entertaining proceedings.

  As I line danced and pirouetted and sent a river of water slopping out of the kitchen door, he yawned widely and settled down for a nap. After the night I’d had, I could have done with some shut-eye myself.

  Instead, I swabbed and swilled as anger welled up inside at the blatant arrogance of the unknown man – or woman – who had come within a few seconds of firing my home. My precious home, my place of peace and safety. Huh! So safe, both Leo and I could have fried.

  I seized a corner of the sopping doormat and hurled it with force out the back door. Its working days were over. Thank God the kitchen floor was still in its original state. Red quarries withstood a load of abuse. Had the floor been wooden, as my fireman adviser had told me down the phone, it would have had to be ripped up and replaced. Wood was absorbent. It would have been a possible inferno only awaiting a lighted cigarette to be injudiciously dropped.

  Finally, satisfied the floor was petrol-free, I scrubbed down the wall tiles of any possible petrol splashes. By now the anger in me was roaring and I burned it off in savage physical effort. The result was the tiles ended up gleaming – never before had they been so clean.

  I stood surveying the restored kitchen – two hours it had taken me – and I felt the anger die away, leaving me drained. It was indeed a negative emotion. I dropped the cleaning cloth into the bucket. A coffee shot was needed.

  I carried Leo, complete with basket, into the conservatory then went back for my mug of strong coffee. We were both sprawled out there a few minutes later when I heard a familiar, loved voice.

  ‘Just look at the pair of you, not safe to be left.’ And Annabel walked in. ‘How’s my gorgeous boy, then?’

  My eyes widened in amazed anticipation and I gazed up at this angel who had just materialized, but she swept past me and homed in on a positively smirking ginger cat. He gave a welcoming yowl and rubbed his head against her breast as she cooed and hugged him tight. Lucky sod. What with Sir Jeffrey and now Leo getting all the loving attention, I was definitely surplus. I dropped my gaze to give them some privacy and took a swig of coffee. But at the same time, part of me lit up inside and rejoiced she was here. As far as I was concerned this was where she should be.

  ‘So, what happened?’ Annabel transferred her attention to me. A slight frown furrowed the fine brows and the look in her eye said ‘no bullshit’. I didn’t even try to pull wool. ‘So,’ she sighed gustily, ‘some lunatic tried to torch the cottage.’

  I tilted my head. ‘That’s a fair assumption.’

  ‘And if he’d succeeded, you’d be in the morgue now.’

  ‘Only me; they don’t take cat corpses.’

  She clutched Leo closer to her. I noticed he wasn’t objecting.

  Annabel growled with annoyance.
It was one of the endearing little habits she had that I found particularly attractive. She could also purr. But that was pre-Sir Jeffrey, of course. The reason I knew was because she’d reserved it exclusively for times spent in our double bed. Annabel was most definitely a feline female. And I loved her.

  I wondered if she ever purred for sir.

  ‘Who have you upset? Even a lunatic doesn’t put himself to the trouble of spending money buying a can of petrol and lugging it round here without some provocation. Whoever it was intended to finish you off.’ Her frown had deepened into grooves across her forehead. She was obviously worried, and I didn’t like it.

  ‘At this moment, Annabel, I don’t know who or indeed why. But I intend to find out. Please don’t worry; I don’t want you getting upset. Whoever the bastard is, what he does to me is one thing but when it affects you … And I’m not having it. He’s not going to win, full stop. So be a good girl and don’t let it get to you, OK?’

  ‘Too late, Harry, it’s already got to me. Your well-being has always been my Achilles heel …’ Her voice tailed away. A change of subject was definitely needed.

  ‘What did you tell Jeffrey? I know he wasn’t impressed by my ringing so early.’

  She shrugged. ‘You needed me for Leo. Anyway, he shot off down to London straight after breakfast.’

  ‘Ah, breakfast. I knew there was something I’d forgotten.’

  ‘Haven’t you eaten?’

  ‘No, too busy doing the hokey-cokey with a bucketful of suds and the yard brush.’

  ‘Right.’ Determinedly, she set Leo down in his basket.

  ‘Whoa there, girl.’ I struggled to my feet. ‘You’re not going to run around after me.’

  ‘We’re bloody lucky that you’re still actually here, so shut up and sit down.’

  She swept out, headed for the kitchen. Leo and I exchanged wise looks. You don’t argue with Annabel in that mood.

  I sat.

  An hour later I was reluctantly waving her off in the Range Rover. Leo missed the goodbyes; he was fast asleep, having received a soothing healing from his mistress.