Killer Instinct

Ten

After the rain, Sunday morning showed up dry, lit by pale watery sunshine. The sort of crisp weather, close to warmth, that fools spring plants into making an early break for the surface, only to be decapitated by the next frost.

Not that I saw much of the morning. By the time I'd dragged myself out of bed it was past ten o'clock. I worked out to try and lift my energy reserves up from semi-dormant, but I'm not sure I managed to hoist them much over hibernating tortoise level.

I showered straight after, glad to finally wash the last of the smoky smell out of my hair. I dumped all the clothes I'd been wearing into the washing basket, wrinkling my nose.

I had grapefruit juice for breakfast, drinking a glassful with the shutters open, looking out across the Lune. The water level was high that morning. Sometimes the river seems no more than a stream, sandwiched between two rock-strewn, greyish mud banks. But during high springs, with an onshore wind giving it a step up, it can completely flood the stone quay.

At times like those the residents try, Canute-like to fend the water away from their front doors and cellar windows with sandbags. The unlucky ones discover just how good the anti-corrosion warranty is on their cars, parked outside.

I took the precaution of buying a set of tide tables just after I moved in. If the weather looks bad I shift the bike up the ramp they used to use for loading trucks at the back of the building. It leads to a solid brick platform, about four feet above pavement level, just outside the old boarded-up rear doorway. Then I watch the mopping up exercise from the safety of my first floor balcony.

OK, so maybe balcony makes it sound grander than it really is. In reality all I have is an old iron railing about three feet off the floor, embedded in the sandstone and misshapen with rust. I usually treat its protective qualities with caution. I've no desire to find out the hard way that the railing is only held in by the skin of its teeth and a bit of flaky mortar. There's a good twenty-foot drop to the flagged pavement below.

Now I stood leaning on the stonework enjoying the view. I checked my watch, looking forward to nothing more strenuous than a ride out to Jacob and Clare's for lunch.

Afterwards, I looked on the half an hour or so I spent then as a little oasis of calm before I was hit by a full-blown hurricane. Complete with monstrous winds and tidal waves.

Traffic on the other side of the river heading into Morecambe was reasonably light. There was just the soothing rumble of a train crossing the Carlisle Bridge to the west of me. The odd car moving past on the quay below.

Then the phone started ringing.

Reluctant to spoil the mood, I turned away from the window and went to answer it. I had no premonitions as to who was calling me, just a mild curiosity. My pupils tended to respect my weekends, and I'd never built up the kind of friendships with people who loved to chat from a distance.

“Hello?”

“Hello Charlotte.” A man's voice, authoritative, but quiet and self-contained. The sort of voice you could imagine imparting the news of terminal cancer with cool detachment. He had probably done so on more than one occasion.

My father.

I was momentarily stunned. In all the time since the rift between my family and I had first opened up, through all the attempts by my mother to heal the breach, he had never contacted me. Not once.

The last time I'd seen him was just before the court martial. He hadn't bothered to embroil himself in the civil action I'd then impulsively brought against my exonerated attackers. Not after I'd turned down the exclusive legal services of one of his golf club cronies. The guy was a full-blown silk and I couldn't afford those sort of rates. Not when, if I'm honest, the realistic chances of winning looked so slim.

My father had offered to pay, of course, but by then relations had deteriorated enough for me to haughtily refuse my parents' charity. Perhaps, if I hadn't been so proud, the outcome might have been very different.

“What do you want?” I demanded roughly now, shock making me ungracious, and resentful that he was the cause.

I could just picture him, sitting in his study at home, with his back to the high sash window. His rosewood desk would be in front of him, with the leather-cornered blotter sitting exactly centred. Besides the telephone, there would be nothing else on the desktop. Paperwork was ruthlessly dealt with the moment it arrived.

“Your mother is very upset,” he said, his tone eminently moderate.

“That makes two of us, then,” I shot back.

He sighed. “At risk of stooping to cliché, two wrongs do not make a right, Charlotte,” he said.

“Is that so? Perhaps she should have thought of that before she betrayed me.”

“Don't be so emotive,” my father rapped, more like his old self. It made what he said next so much greater a surprise. “Can't you simply accept that she made a mistake? An aberration in a weak moment. It's something that she bitterly regrets, and it's causing her untold grief that you can't find it in you to forgive her.”

Typical of my father, that. Giving with one hand and taking back with the other. An admission of guilt coupled with a pointed reminder of my own failings. He made my reaction sound like a character defect. Hardly surprising, when I thought about it.

“An aberration?” I snapped, unable to prevent my voice rising like a police siren. “She refused to stand up and support me when I was on trial, and you call it an aberration?”

“The evidence against you was substantial, Charlotte. On principle, she had to believe that the judicial system came to the correct conclusion. You must understand that,” he said, more gently. “She is a Justice of the Peace, after all. What else could she do?”

“What about me?” I cried, feeling like a child. “What about her daughter? Surely that takes precedence over the damned system? Where were her principles then?”

“She is sorry, you know. She may not be able to admit it outright, but she is, all the same,” he went on, as though I hadn't spoken. “For the damage she's done.”

I tried that out for size on the twisted corner of my psyche that had been feeding on my bitterness and hostility towards them for the last couple of years. It had been leaching acid into my mind like a perforated ulcer. His words should have acted like a balm, but all they did was make it burn more savagely. So she was sorry, was she? For the result, not for the cause.

It was much too little, and way too late.

“And what about you?” I demanded.

His pause, a fraction too long, spoke volumes. “That's not the issue, here, Charlotte,” he said evasively. “This was never about you and me.”

“No, it never was, was it?” I said woodenly. “I don't think I've anything more to say to you.” And I'm not ready to forgive either of you, I added silently.

“In that case, I'm sorry to have disturbed your Sunday morning,” he said without inflection. “Goodbye Charlotte.”

The phone clicked and went dead in my hand. I put it down like it weighed heavy, and moved slowly back to the open balcony, but where before the hum of cars across the river had been hypnotic and anodyne, now it grated.

I finished off the last tepid dregs of my coffee and was about to turn away from the view when I idly noticed the Vauxhall police car approaching along the quay. I felt the first stirrings of apprehension as it moved slowly into view, the occupants glancing up at the houses, obviously looking for an address. They stopped outside mine.

Two uniforms climbed out, adjusting their caps. It looked like the same pair who'd come looking for me the week before at Shelseley. I sighed, and went to spoon instant coffee into a couple of mugs. If being paid a visit by the local law was going to become a regular occurrence, I suppose I'd better at least be sociable.

I left the front door open and heard them stumping their way up the wooden staircase, having a minor argument about who'd done what in the staff canteen the night before. When they reached the landing they paused uncertainly.

“Come on in and take a seat,” I called through. “The kettle's on.”

“Morning Miss Fox.” They did as instructed and made themselves at home on the sofa. As I appeared out of the kitchen, drying my hands on a tea towel, they'd taken their caps off and plonked them upside down on the coffee table. I almost expected them to put their feet up.

I left them to it while I ducked back into the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with two mugs of instant coffee. “So, what can I do for you this time?” I asked, handing them out.

“Yeah, this is getting to be a bit of a habit, isn't it?” the older one said with a grin.

“I didn't realise this was going to happen every weekend or I'd have bought some cake,” I said waspishly, taking the chair across from them.

They looked disappointed, then exchanged glances and pulled on businesslike expressions.

The younger one, Tommy, pulled out his notebook. “We're here because there's been a very serious allegation made against you,” he said, consulting it, “of causing Grievous Bodily Harm during an incident at the New Adelphi Club in Morecambe last night.”

“What?” I realised I had my mouth open and shut it abruptly. “You are joking?” I said, looking from one to the other. Actually, they were both looking faintly amused, as though the whole thing was some gigantic wind-up.

“I'm afraid not, Miss Fox,” Tommy said solemnly. “At the moment no charges are being brought, but we've had an official complaint, backed up by a medical report, that shows one young lad with a forcibly dislocated shoulder, and another with severe facial lacerations and―,” he looked pained, “―a ruptured testicle.”

“Nasty,” agreed the older one, straight-faced but only just. I wondered if they were practising a comedy double act.

“Hang on a minute,” I said, feeling my temper beginning to rise. “Who exactly is it that's made this complaint?”

He read out a female name, which meant nothing to me.

“And who is she, for heaven's sake?”

“She claims to be the fiancée of one of the injured parties, whom you attacked, without provocation, on the dance floor at the club.” I remembered the dark-haired girl with the pierced tongue.

“OK,” I said, holding up my hands. “I'll admit to the shoulder and I suppose to the testicle, but one of them had already glassed the other one in the face before I got there. That was nothing to do with me.”

“So you just waded in there, two against one, when you claim one of them was armed with an offensive weapon, and you inflicted major injuries on the pair of them?” the older one demanded incredulously. He caught sight of my punchbag on its hook in the corner of the living room. “A bit of a boxer, are you?”

I ignored his last sarky remark. “Yes, he still had the bottle on him when I got there,” I said. “Look, I was employed as a member of the security staff to deal with trouble. I saw the fight and I went to break it up, but they both had a go at me. What was I supposed to do while one had his arm round my throat and the other was trying to disembowel me – reason with them?” Oh God, I sounded like Len.

“And you fought them off?” Tommy asked, a picture of dubiousness.

“That's right.”

“By yourself?”

“Yes!”

“Any ideas what started this fight in the first place?” the older one put in.

I shrugged. “It looked like it was probably a classic case of "Oi, get your hands off my girlfriend" but it didn't help that he was definitely on something at the time.”

I thought of Marc's warning, delivered almost as a threat. Nobody spreads rumours that the New Adelphi is open house for aspiring chemists, he'd said. Don't worry, Marc, the only people I've mentioned it to are a couple of coppers. Oh well . . .

The pair opposite me exchanged pointed looks again, but to my surprise they didn't pursue it further. On cue they both got to their feet.

The older one screwed his hat into place and regarded me dubiously. “That will be all, for the moment, Miss Fox,” he said. “We'll let you know if any charges are being brought.”

I rose, too, stuffing my hands into my jeans pockets. “Is that likely?”

“Who knows? But if I were you,” he said with a faint patronising tone, “I'd try and stay out of trouble for a while.”

“Thanks a lot,” I muttered under my breath as they disappeared down the staircase. “That's a great help.”

Their footsteps faded as they reached the street. It was only as I turned away from the door that I saw Tommy had left his hat lying upside-down on my coffee table. I crossed the room and picked it up. I was just debating whether I wanted to bother going after them to give it back when I heard a single set of footsteps on the stairs again and Tommy reappeared in the doorway.

I dangled the offending item from a finger. “Forgotten something?” I asked, my voice acidic.

To my surprise, he gave me a level look as he retrieved his headgear. “No, actually,” he said, “I just wanted a chance to have a quiet word with you. On your own, like.”

I raised my eyebrows and said nothing.

Tommy hesitated, glancing uneasily over his shoulder as though his mate might somehow miraculously materialise on the landing behind him.

“I just wanted to give you a word to the wise,” he went on, hurriedly. “On the face of it, you don't look a likely candidate for a Section Twenty assault, know what I mean? You haven't got a record, but quite a few of the guys Quinn's got working for him have. You're mixing in dangerous company if you want to keep your nose clean.”

“You mean you don't believe that's how it happened?” I demanded, feeling my temper rise like a prickle of hairs. “You think that the kid was clean and I just went overboard?”

He flushed, looking uncomfortable. “Quinn swears security's tight enough so that nobody manages to get into the place with anything on them,” he said.

When he saw my face he added hastily, “Not that I take that as gospel, but by the time the boy was through with Casualty and our lads got to see him, he wasn't showing any signs of being on anything. On the other hand,” he went on, “he didn't seem very happy with his girlfriend that she'd got us involved, which was good for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if he hadn't been so dead against pressing formal charges, we'd have been breaking your door down at five this morning and hauling you down the station instead of coming round now for a friendly chat, like.”

“But I was just doing my job,” I protested.

He shrugged. “That's not the impression we got from Quinn's staff. They were dropping hints that you might have gone in too hard, like. You want to watch your back there, Charlie.”

“I will.” I managed to remember my manners enough to be slightly less ungracious. “Thank you, anyway. I appreciate the warning.”

He looked embarrassed. “Yeah, well, you do quite a bit of work up at the Lodge, don't you?” he said. “I get called out to a lot of domestics. Mrs Shelseley's a nice lady.”

“Tom!” yelled a voice from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you going to be all day? Get a shift on, will you.”

“OK,” Tommy called back. “I'm on my way.”

He flashed me a quick smile, jammed his hat on, and trotted away to join his colleague.

I sighed, trying to roll away the tension that was cramping my shoulders. All in all, it wasn't quite the way I'd envisaged starting off my quiet Sunday morning.

***

By the time I'd changed into my leathers, got the bike fired up, and locked the flat, it was well past the eleven-thirty by which I'd promised to be at Jacob and Clare's. I knew Jacob, who timed the cooking of his meals like a covert military operation, was going to be spitting feathers, but I also knew it was going to be easier to explain my lateness face to face.

As I gunned away along the tree-lined quay towards town I should have been having a good time. The weather was just right, the sort of cold air the Suzuki really runs well in, but I would have felt better if it had been dark grey skies and raining buckets.

I was so angry it made my hands ache.

I slipped through into a gap in traffic on the main road going past the bus station and weaved smoothly across all three lanes to make the best progress. If I was going to ride like that, I really should have been giving it all my concentration, but half my mind was on other things.

How dare they not believe me! OK, so you tend to get pulled by the lads on Traffic more when you're on a bike than if you drive a car. Even so, that hardly made me a criminal, for heaven's sake. And anyway, it was clear they didn't have a clue about my past to damn me by.

I barrelled left round Sainsbury's and, by dint of dropping down two gears and caning it, managed to hit the temperamental lights on Parliament Street just as they were turning to amber.

I always used to think of myself as very law-abiding. Still do, I suppose – I even have a TV licence. But when I'd needed justice in the past, it had been spectacularly unforthcoming. Now I was suddenly on the receiving end of the boys in blue, when all I'd been doing was my job.

If this was the sort of treatment I could expect working for Marc, I made up my mind to tell him to stuff it!

I made it out to Jacob and Clare's place on the outskirts of Caton in record time for me. Clare came out to greet me as I pulled up. She had a couple of the dogs with her, a loopy wire-haired terrier called Beezer and a clumsy old half-blind black Labrador named Bonneville.

I wasn't surprised to see Clare waiting for me. Jacob not only deals in classic bikes, but all sorts of interesting antiques as well. He stores the stuff in the numerous barns and outbuildings dotted around the place and he doesn't like surprise visitors.

Somewhere along the drive are two hidden sensors, connected to warning buzzers inside the house. I've never been able to work out exactly where they are.

Now I cut the engine and toed the side-stand down, pulling off my helmet. Beezer greeted me by bouncing three feet into the air and yapping excitedly. Clare took one look at my face and swallowed the crack she'd undoubtedly been going to make about me being late.

“What's happened?” she demanded, leading the way in through the studded oak front door.

“Don't ask,” I said. My anger had dissipated, replaced by a weariness that went through to my bones. I told myself I was just tired, but I knew it went deeper than that.

We moved along the uneven stone flags of the hallway to the big cosy kitchen, where Jacob should have been slaving over a hot stove.

He was actually sitting at the scrubbed pine table. There was a glass of wine by his elbow and a pile of paperwork in front of him, and he was speaking in what appeared to be Klingon on the telephone. It turned out to be Japanese. Clare whispered to me that he was winding up the sale of a pair of restored Velocettes to a collector in Tokyo.

“On a Sunday?” I whispered back.

Jacob looked up and dazzled me with that slow grin of his, then went back to his unintelligible conversation.

Clare dragged me a cold beer out of the fridge and we went through to the snug back sitting room to leave Jacob to finish the call in peace. Despite the sun outside, a blazing fire was lit in the huge open hearth. I disappeared into the depths of their big squashy sofa when I sat down, quickly buried by the arrival of the terrier on my lap.

“So,” Clare said when I'd had my first mouthful of beer, “are you going to tell me what's been going on?”

I told her the whole tale about my experiences at the nightclub since I'd rescued her from the clutches of Susie Hollins. Jacob came in just as I was telling her about my confrontation with Len. They both sat in silence until I'd gone through the events of the night before in full, and my subsequent encounter with the police that morning.

“The fascist little shits!” he said with feeling when I'd finished. “Do they honestly think you're going to start a major fight on your first night? Unbelievable!”

“What are you going to do?” Clare asked. Bonneville came waddling into the lounge then, following the sound of our voices, and collided with a standard lamp. Clare caught it without taking her eyes off me, well used to the dog's blunders.

“There's not a lot I can do,” I said. “I'm not sure I want to carry on working at the club, though. I rely on recommendations from the local police for some of my business. I can't afford to upset them.”

“What interests me,” Jacob put in slowly, “is why they came round to see you at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, why didn't this Len and Angelo back up your story? I thought you bouncer types were supposed to stick together,” he said with a bit of a grin. “It doesn't sound like they've tried to help you at all. In fact, it sounds more like they're actively trying to drop you in it.”

I thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I know Marc said afterwards that he'd told them to let me handle something on my own, just to check me out, but I would have thought it should have been obvious to someone of their experience straight away that it was serious.”

“Exactly,” he said, downing the last of his wine as he stood up. “Perhaps you should be asking yourself what you know that could be so important, Charlie. Or what you might find out when you're there. It might tell you why someone seems to want to get you out of the way.”

“That's ridiculous,” I argued. “I didn't go after them for a job at the place. Marc made me an offer last Saturday night when Susie had a go at Clare. Why on earth would he do that one week, then try and get rid of me the next?”

“Maybe he didn't have a choice,” Clare put in. “If I remember right it was actually that bar manager chap – Gary is it? – who first suggested they employ you. Maybe Marc couldn't say no without it appearing suspicious.”

“Suspicious to whom?” I asked, idly scratching the terrier's head. Beezer wriggled her muscular little body with delight. “He could have shot Gary down in flames instantly and it wouldn't have looked anything out of the ordinary. No,” I shook my head, “he seemed quite keen then.”

“So,” Jacob said, “what happened between then and yesterday to make him change his mind about you?” He moved stiffly over to the door. “Do you want to come through to the kitchen, by the way? I'll see if anything of my culinary masterpiece can be salvaged at this late hour.”

Clare grinned at me behind his back as I stood up, tipping the disgruntled terrier off my knees. We followed Jacob's halting steps back along the hallway. He walks with a permanent limp, his legs more steel than bone in places.

Jacob used to race bikes when he was younger, with more courage than was good for him. If he travels abroad he jokes that he has to take his X-rays with him to avoid being strip-searched going through the airport metal detectors.

Once we were settled round the kitchen table and Jacob had retrieved an absolutely perfect beef and baby onion stifado out of the oven in the Aga, he repeated his earlier question. “So, come on – what's happened to warrant this man Quinn's sudden reversal of opinion of you?”

“Susie Hollins was murdered for a start,” Clare supplied, getting carried away with the idea. “Hey, that could be it! She'd just been in his club, and we've only got his word for it that he actually threw her out.”

“Clare,” I said, tearing off a hunk of crusty bread to shamelessly sop up my gravy with. “Marc was sitting down talking to us just after that. I hardly think he'd had time to do Susie in, change into an identical set of clothes so there'd be no bloodstains, and get back upstairs to chat, all within the space of about ten minutes, do you?”

She looked crestfallen. “Oh. No, I suppose you're right.”

I recalled the incidents at the Lodge, but I didn't mention them to Jacob and Clare. I don't know why. I suppose I just didn't want to admit that since Susie's rape and murder someone had been taking rather too much of an interest in other vulnerable women. It was as if putting voice to my fears would make them more real.

Jacob got up to replenish our drinks, giving Clare's shoulder a reassuring squeeze as he went past. “Anything else you can think of?”

“Well, Terry did come round last Sunday with a computer he said he'd picked up from someone at the club as part of a debt,” I said uneasily, remembering he'd been supposed to be collecting the lap-top this weekend, but he hadn't been in touch.

“Hang on a minute – who’s Terry?” Jacob said, sitting down again.

“He’s the local mobile video man,” Clare put in promptly. “He comes round to the office every Friday. Or he usually does, but this week he didn’t show up.”

“And he gave you a computer as part of a debt?”

“No, no,” I explained. “He told me that someone at the club owed him money, and they’d given him a lap-top computer instead, but they’d password protected it, so Terry couldn’t use it.” I forked a chunk of meat into my mouth and savoured it as it dissolved on my tongue. If I believed all the scare stories that I was going to get mad cow disease from eating British beef, I reckoned it was probably worth it.

“So why did he come to you?” Clare asked. “You don’t even own a computer.”

“No,” I agreed, “but I have friends in low places. You remember Sam Pickering, with the Norton? He’s a bit of a whizz with the things and he managed to get round it, no problem. The only thing was, when we got into the machine, there didn’t seem to be anything on it, so I don’t know if it was one stolen recently from the club itself, or if it just happened to belong to somebody who worked there.”

“How did Sam get round the password?” Clare wanted to know, elbowing Beezer who was trying to sneak onto her lap to beg food from her plate.

I shrugged. “I’ve no idea.” Under the table, Bonneville decided I might be a softer touch and dumped her greying muzzle on my knee, sighing noisily. If she thought I was going to share Jacob’s cooking with her, she had another think coming.

“More to the point, what was the password?” Jacob asked.

“Bacchus,” I said, spelling it.

“Bacchus,” he repeated, almost to himself. “Hmm. Someone’s into Greek mythology with a twist.”

“You know what it means?” I asked, surprised. “My dictionary didn’t include it.”

“It’s the Latin name for Dionysus, who was the son of Zeus and the god of wine,” Jacob said promptly, raising his glass and grinning at me. “Your education is sadly lacking, Charlie.”

“That’s a bit obscure, isn’t it?” Clare demanded. “And anyway, apart from the wine bit, what’s the connection with the nightclub?”

Jacob held up a finger to silence our questions and left the table. After half a beat, both the dogs scrabbled after him. Bonneville cannoned off the door frame on the way out.

Jacob returned a few minutes later, carrying a book on Greek mythology. The dogs circled him expectantly. He sat down and pulled out a pair of delicate half-moon glasses. They should make him look like an old man, but they actually have a magnifying effect on his sex appeal.

“Ah, here we are. Bacchus. Also known as Bromius the Boisterous, which gives you some idea what he got up to in his spare time. Married Ariadne. He was also god of tillage, law-giving and intoxicating herbs like ivy and laurel. And,” he looked at me, “he was worshipped at Delphi.”

I felt a shiver ripple across my back.

“But Delphi isn’t the same as Adelphi,” Clare protested.

“True,” he allowed. “Adelphi isn’t mentioned by the ancient Greeks at all, but it would be an easy mistake to make.”

“Particularly,” I said slowly, meeting Jacob’s dark gaze, “if your education was sadly lacking.”

***

In the afternoon we had a ride up to the local bikers' meeting spot at Devil's Bridge near Kirkby Lonsdale, stayed there until about three, then headed back towards Caton.

I was easily persuaded to stop off at Jacob and Clare's for another quick coffee, and we ended up slouched in the lounge watching the Superbike racing on Eurosport. It was past five o'clock and pitch dark outside by the time I dragged myself reluctantly away.

The lack of cloud cover meant the ground was crystallised with frost. I rode back into Lancaster very cautiously, taking corners strictly upright and feeding the brakes in gently. The Suzuki's pathetic headlight, even on high beam, would have made hurrying a reckless exercise, in any case.

Town was quiet as I stooged through and I was soon chaining the bike up outside the back of the flat. I pulled the cover over it and set the alarm, then ambled round to the front of the building.

I jogged up the wooden staircase without any thoughts of stealth, my bike boots clattering loudly on the treads. My mind was on nothing more than a bite of supper and trying to catch up on some of my lost sleep from the night before.

I was right up to the flat door before I noticed that it wasn't locked any more. Wasn't even shut, in fact. Before it dawned on my sluggish and outrageously slow brain that getting away from the place very quickly was possibly the best idea I'd had in a long time. Maybe I just wasn't having a logical day.

Of course, in that sort of situation the last thing you actually want to do is walk away. I was filled with anger that someone had broken in, gone poking through my things while I'd been away. Pawed all my belongings. I thought all too briefly of bringing in reinforcements, then pushed open my front door.

I only took a couple of steps inside the door of the flat when I froze. Almost literally. It was like an ice box in there. I realised I'd been so irritable when I'd left that morning, I'd forgotten to close the shutters to the balcony. Now the night air cast an arctic chill over the interior. Damn.

The second thing was the smell of cigarettes.

Not only do I not smoke, but I don't let anyone else who does do so in my flat. My heart lurched in my chest. I turned to flick the overhead lights on and that's when they jumped me.

Something very hard, moving very fast, landed with a sickening crunch just over my right ear. I remember starting to fall, but there the recollection ends.

By the time my floorboards had rushed up to meet me, I was out of it.