Head Shot

74

The knock at the door was gentle, almost apologetic. She was in the kitchen when she heard it, in her towelling robe and almost dry from the shower, making herself a cup of hot chocolate to take upstairs to bed. For a moment she thought about ignoring it; she had heard nothing from Mario al day… not that she would have taken his cal if he had rung, but his failure even to try to contact her pained her, and made her wonder how much she had hurt him with her final withering remark.

She could guess where he had spent the night. It had been too late for him to go to Neil and Lou, and he had never in his life been one to run home to mother. So Paula's it must have been, and in the mood he had been in there was no doubting either what had happened. Stil. ..

She can't be as good a lay as everyone imagines, she found herself thinking, if he s knocking on my door tonight rather than going back for more.

The gentle knock came again, a little louder but not much. 'Oh hel ,' she said aloud, and headed for the door.

When she saw who was standing there, her mouth fel open, and she stopped herself only a fraction short of collapse. She had forgotten, or made herself forget, many things about him over the years. How blue were his eyes, how cold, how hard and how merciless. How deep was his tan, some of it complexion, the rest the result of years in the sun. How rough were his hands. How brutal he had been, as he invaded her. And most of all, she had forgotten, until that moment, just how much he terrified her.

He stood there with a terrible smile on his face. Not only was his beard gone, but his head was shaven, and gleaming, like a brown egg in the moonlight. He looked ageless; unchanged from the day he had left.

She was frozen as he stared at her, and as he brought the massive automatic, made bigger stil by its silencer, from behind his back.

'Well then, Margaret,' he murmured in the strange accent that had brought her terror then, as it did now, 'how you've grown. I've been watching you for a while, watching and waiting for that man of yours to leave you alone. And now he has. Ditched you final y, has he, for Miss Viareggio?' He moved towards her and she staggered backwards, helpless before him. 'Come on now, lass. Invite your daddy in.

'I've waited a long time to visit you again, you with your big mouth, you that couldn't keep a secret. I've waited a long time to pay you out.'

He moved into the darkened hal and closed the door behind him. Still she backed off, into the light of the living room, where the curtains were drawn. 'Superintendent now, I believe; he murmured. 'It counts for nothing now, my girl, for nothing before me.'

He jabbed the gun at her, then laughed as she flinched. 'Let's see how you've turned out then, woman.' He reached out, fast, with his left hand and tugged at the cord of her robe, ripping it from its loops, then staring at her as the garment fell open. 'Not bad, not bad; bigger than your mother, for sure. And now, we'll see what else. ..'

She stepped away yet again as he moved towards her; her foot caught in the hem of the dressing gown. It slipped from her shoulders, and she fell backwards, full-length, on the floor. She lay there, paralysed, staring up at her monster of a father as he towered over her.