Under Orders

CHAPTER 21

‘I’ve come here to kill you,’ Peter said.

I didn’t doubt it.

‘Inside,’ he said.

We were standing outside my front door near the lift and, typically, there was no sign of my neighbours when you needed them.

We went in through the door and he locked it behind us. He took the key out of the lock and put it in his pocket.

He didn’t once allow me to get close to him. Never close enough to give me the chance of wresting the gun out of his hand before he had time to use it.

‘In there,’ he said, waving the gun towards the sitting room. He seemed to be looking for something.

‘She’s not here,’ I said, assuming it was Marina he was after.

He ignored me.

‘This way,’ he said, again waving the gun, this time directing me back into the hallway.

We proceeded to go all round the flat until he seemed satisfied that we were alone. I could see the clock in the bedroom. It was only ten to one, it would be at least an hour before Marina and Jenny came back. Would I still be alive by then?

‘Go in there,’ he said, pointing at the bathroom.

I went.

He turned on the light and the extractor fan began to emit a whine. I wished it could extract me from this situation.

The bathroom was a small room about six foot six square. It was built in the interior of the building and consequently had no windows. A bath ran down the wall on the right with a lavatory next to it and there was a wash-basin opposite the entrance. But Peter was most interested in what was behind the door attached to the left-hand wall — a shiny chrome three-bar centrally-heated towel rail about three feet long. There were three yellow towels neatly hanging on it.

‘Catch,’ he said and threw me a pair of sturdy-looking metal handcuffs that he had brought with him in his pocket. I caught them.

‘Put one on your right wrist and the other round the bracket of the towel rail where it is attached to the wall. Shut them tight.’

I managed it with some difficulty. My only real hand was now firmly attached to the heating system. Not a great improvement.

‘Now put your left hand out towards me,’ he said.

I wondered if and when I would not do as he said.

He seemed to sense the thought in me and raised his gun higher, taking deliberate aim at my head. I could see right down the barrel. I speculated about whether I would have time to see the bullet coming before it tore into my brain. I decided that I didn’t want to find out. I put my left hand forward.

He lifted the sleeve of my shirt and removed the battery from my false arm and put it in his pocket. He was very careful never to move the gun line away from my eye and I was equally careful not to make any sudden movement that might encourage him to pull the trigger.

‘Now take that thing off,’ he said, stepping back.

‘I can’t,’ I said.

He held the gun in his left hand and grasped my left wrist with his right. He pulled. I pulled back. I stressed my arm to prevent the false bit from coming off. He pulled harder. The arm didn’t shift.

‘You won’t remove it, it stays on permanently,’ I said. ‘You see those little rivets on either side? They’re the ends of the pins that go right through what’s left of my real arm to hold it in place.’

I wasn’t really sure why I told him the lie. The rivets were actually holding the sensors in place on the inside, the sensors that sat against my skin to pick up the nerve impulses that made the hand work. It was only a small act of defiance, but it was something.

He gave the arm one last violent tug but I was ready for him and the fibreglass shell didn’t budge.

He stood back and looked at me. Then he said, ‘Put the arm out again.’

I did so.

He took the battery out of his pocket and clipped it back into place. I moved my thumb in and out.

‘Grab hold of the towel rail,’ he said. ‘There.’ He pointed.

‘What?’ I said.

The gun came up a fraction.

‘Just do it,’ he said.

I placed my unfeeling fingers around the boiling hot rail and closed the thumb. He leaned forward and removed the battery, dropping it on the floor. Without the battery the thumb wouldn’t move. The hand and arm were locked in place.

I was standing in my bathroom with my back against a hot towel rail with both hands firmly attached to it at either end.

Peter Enstone seemed to relax a little. He had been as frightened of me as I was of him.

‘What does it take to stop you?’ he said.

‘Honesty,’ I said.

‘Don’t be so bloody self-righteous,’ he said. ‘You have ruined my life.’

‘You ruined it yourself,’ I said.

He ignored me.

‘Do you know what it’s like to hate your own father?’ he said.

‘No.’

I had never even known my own father.

‘And do you know what it’s like to spend your life trying to please someone only for them to despise the very ground you walk on?’

I didn’t say anything.

‘Do you?’ he shouted.

‘No,’ I said.

‘It becomes your whole existence. Looking for things he will like but only finding things he hates. And all the time he thinks you’re an idiot, an imbecile, a helpless child, with no feelings.’

I stood there looking at the monster. This man was no helpless child.

‘Then I found a way of breaking out of the cage,’ he said. ‘I found a way to control his emotions. To make him happy, to make him sad, and especially to make him angry with someone else for a change.’

He came closer to my face. I could almost have leaned forward and kissed him. Provided, that is, I wanted to kiss the devil.

‘And now you have taken all that away, and worse still, he will now know that it was me that was controlling him. He’s going to be so angry with me again.’

He’s not going to be the only one, I thought. He sounded like a petulant schoolboy caught with his hand in the biscuit tin.

‘Do you know what it’s like to have someone angry with you all the time?’

‘No,’ I said. Actually I did. People were often angry with me for exposing their misdeeds. I had always rather enjoyed it, but I decided not to say so, not now.

‘I’ll tell you,’ he said. ‘It eats away at your soul. When you’re a child, it’s frightening. I spent my whole childhood being frightened of him, every single minute. He would beat me for being naughty, and the harder I tried to be good, the more he saw me as naughty. “Hold out your hand, Peter,” he would say. Then he would hit me with a wooden bat. Then he would smile and say it was for my own good.’

He went quiet for a moment and stared off into space; I could tell he was reliving incidents elsewhere.

‘He used to hit my mother as well,’ he said. ‘He drove her away. At first, she used to protect me from him but then she left. She deserted me and he killed her.’ He paused then went on. ‘Well, he didn’t actually kill her, but as good as. She was desperate to get away from him and she agreed to everything he said so long as he would leave her alone. He saw to it that she left with nothing, no money, no home and no chance of ever seeing me again. I was twelve.’

She obviously hadn’t had a very good solicitor, I thought. Times had changed.

‘He never spoke about her. It was as if she had never existed. I found out much later that she had been absolutely destitute and had even been begging in the street.’ He made it sound like the most shameful thing in the world. I had occasionally seen my own mother beg. It had sometimes made the difference between life and death for us both.

‘She tried to get him to give her some money to live on but he refused. When she tried to take him to court to get access to me, his lawyers blocked her. They just tore to shreds the hardly qualified Legal Aid lawyer that my mother had to resort to.’

Definitely not a good solicitor.

‘She walked straight out of her lawyer’s office and under a number 15 bus. Funny,’ he said, ‘ever since I found that out, I’ve never been able to ride on a number 15 bus, just in case it was the one.’

He sat down on the edge of the bath. The longer he talked, the greater the chance that Muscles would come back with the girls and save my skin, but I would probably need to survive for another hour if the cavalry were to arrive in time.

‘The inquest said it was an accident, but I reckon she did it on purpose. My father killed her as sure as if he’d been driving the bus himself.’

He had tears in his eyes. I wasn’t sure whether it was for the loss of his mother or for the reaction the incident may have produced in Jonny Enstone. Peter’s relationship with his father was highly complex.

‘When I got older and bigger, he stopped hitting me. I told him that if he hit me again I’d hit him back. So he’s changed his tactics from physical to mental abuse. He puts me down at every opportunity. He belittles everything I do. He tells his friends that I am useless, and that I can’t be his true son as I am no good at business. I hate him. I hate him.’

Why then, I thought, don’t you go and shoot him instead of me?

‘And then when I find I am good at something, you go and wreck it. At last I discovered that it’s me that has the power, it’s me that’s in control, and it’s me that people are frightened of.’ He looked up at my face. ‘Everyone except you. You’re not even frightened now.’

Yes, I was. But I didn’t say so. I stood there in silence and watched him.

I began to sweat. In spite of the insulating effect of the towels against which I was leaning, I was getting very hot. I was worried that he should think that my skin was damp due to fear. But did it matter? Yes. It did to me.

‘You should be frightened,’ he said. ‘I am going to kill you. I’ve got nothing to lose now, thanks to you. I’ll get done for the other two murders so why not for three. Three life sentences are just as long as two. And in all those years ahead, I will have the satisfaction of knowing that it was me that beat Sid Halley. I won. I might be in jail but you will be pushing up the daisies. And then one day I’ll be out, but there’ll be no bringing you back from the dead.’

He smiled. I began to be more than frightened. I became angry.

Why, I thought, should this little worm use his father as his excuse for his actions? Yes, his father was an ogre and a bully, but Peter was thirty-two years old and there are limits to how much and for how long you can blame the parents.

The rage rose inside me as it had done in the hospital. I raged, also, at my predicament. Damn it, I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live. I wanted to marry Marina. I especially didn’t want to die like this, trussed up and at the hands of Peter Enstone.

‘I think I’ve talked enough,’ he said suddenly, standing up. ‘I get fed up with all those silly films where the gunman spends so long telling his victim why he’s going to kill him that someone finally arrives to stop it. That’s not going to happen here because I’m going to kill you now, then I’m going to wait and kill your girlfriend when she gets home. She can keep you company in hell.’

He laughed.

He leaned forward until his face was just six inches away from mine.

‘Bye, Sid,’ he said. ‘Now be a good boy and open your mouth.’

Instead, I hit him.

I hit him with all the pent-up anger and frustration of the last three weeks.

I hit him with the stump of my left arm.

The look on his face was more of surprise than hurt. But I had put every ounce of my considerable strength into that blow and he went backwards fast. The edge of the bath caught him behind the knees and he went over it. There was a satisfyingly loud thud as the back of his head hit the far rim of the bath near the taps. Thank goodness for old-fashioned values, I thought. This bathtub was not one of the modern flexible cheap plastic things; it was solid cast-iron and very hard.

Peter was lying face up in the bath but he was half turned, with his chin pushed into his chest. He groaned a little but he was unconscious. But for how long?

Now what?

My left forearm hurt.

I had been gradually easing it out of its false case for some time and the seal around the elbow had finally separated as I had cautiously flexed it back and forth without his noticing. Now I looked at the end of my stump. It was sore and bleeding, such had been the force of the blow.

The task now was to get out of the bathroom before Peter came round and finished off what he’d started.

I tugged at the handcuffs on my right hand. I twisted and pulled, I jerked and heaved but made no impression whatsoever on the metal, I simply tore and chaffed my wrist until I was bleeding on both sides.

I trod on my arm battery that was lying on the floor. How do I pick that up, I wondered? I kicked off my shoes and used my left big toe to pull the sock off my right foot. I tried to pick up the battery in my toes but it was too big to grasp.

Peter groaned again. I was getting desperate now. I bloody refused to be still attached to this bloody towel rail when he came round.

I went down on my knees and tried to get my mouth down to the battery but it was too far. I used my toes to pull the battery a little closer and, between my right foot and left stump, I managed to upend it so that it sat vertically on the floor. I hung down with most of my weight on my sore handcuffed right wrist, but I didn’t care. I stretched my body down and forward as far as I could reach and put my mouth over the end of the battery.

I could feel a tingling on my tongue as it touched the battery electrodes. I had freshly charged it the previous night.

Peter groaned again and this time more loudly. I looked at him in alarm. He was being sick. I could see the vomit as it came down his nose and out of the corner of his mouth. I hoped he’d choke on it.

I knelt on the floor again and tried to use my mouth to push the battery into its holder in the fibreglass shell that stuck out rigidly sideways from the mechanical hand that was firmly gripping the towel rail. It was simple really. Place the lower end of the battery under the lugs at the wrist end of the holder and snap the upper end in under the sprung plastic clip. A task I performed day in, day out, hundreds of times a year. But always with my dextrous right hand. It was not so easy with a tingling mouth and when my life depended on it. Eventually I positioned the battery at the correct angle under the lugs and used my nose and forehead to push the other end in. It snapped into place. Hallelujah!

Now I had to get my bruised and bloody stump back into the fibreglass shell before it swelled up too much to fit. I stood up and eased it in. Normally I used talcum powder to help as the fit was tight even at the best of times, and a little moisture can cause the real me to stick to the plastic, making things impossible. This time I had no available talcum powder and there was masses of moisture, both blood and sweat.

I managed it after a fashion although the elbow seal was far from perfect. I sent the impulses but the thumb refused to budge. Bugger. Maybe there was blood between my skin and the electrodes. I tried again and then again.

The thumb moved a fraction but still refused to swing open fully.

I kept sending the necessary signals and slowly, little by little, the thumb moved enough to allow my hand to unclasp the towel rail.

But I was still firmly attached on my right-hand side.

My normally strong mechanical left hand was letting me down. The hand that this morning could have crushed not only eggs and fingers, but also apples and tennis balls, would have had trouble now with a soap bubble. Nevertheless, I used it to attack the handcuffs. But I had no success. I wished I had a cutting tool on the hand like that character in the James Bond movie. I would have cut myself out of trouble in no time.

Peter coughed. Perhaps he was indeed choking on his vomit.

I wondered if I should shout for help. But wouldn’t it rouse Peter? And would anyone else hear me anyway? My building was predominantly occupied by businessmen. Would anyone be in their flats to hear me at one thirty on a Tuesday afternoon? The porters/security were safely behind their desk, four floors down. They may as well have been on the moon.

I looked closely at the handcuffs. The cuff around my wrist was annoyingly tight. Too tight for me to slip my hand through, I’d tried that. The other cuff around the rail bracket was not so tight. I put the thumb of my false hand through the ring and tried to use the arm as a lever to break the lock.

I couldn’t move it far enough so I eased my forearm once more out of the shell and used my left elbow to push the prosthetic arm down. I am sure that the boffins at the Roehampton artificial limb centre would have loved to know that I was using their highly expensive pride and joy as a crowbar.

But it worked. The thumb on the hand was stronger than the lock that resisted for a while but finally gave way with a crack. My false arm fell to the floor but it had done its job. I was free from the towel rail although I still had the handcuffs dangling around my right wrist.

I wasted no time. I leaned over Peter in the bath and took his gun. I held it in my right hand and pointed it at him. Should I shoot him? I asked myself. Indeed, could I shoot him? I had never been one to shy away from a bit of violence if it were necessary, but shooting someone seemed a bit extreme, even terminal. Especially someone who was unconscious.

I wasn’t sure that I could bring myself to shoot Peter even if he woke up. Perhaps I would threaten to do so but then not have the resolve to carry it out. If I wasn’t going to use the gun, then no one else was either. I removed the bullets from the cylinder and put them in my pocket.

I left Peter where he was and went into the sitting room to call for reinforcements from the police. I put the gun down on the table and dialled 999.

‘Emergency, what service?’ asked a female voice.

‘Police,’ I said.

I could hear the voice give my telephone number to the police operator who then came on the line.

‘Police emergency,’ he said.

‘I need help and fast,’ I said. ‘I have a gunman in my flat.’

He asked for the address. I gave it. He asked if I was in danger. Yes, I said, I was.

They were on their way.

‘Tell Superintendent Aldridge that the gunman is Peter Enstone.’

‘Right,’ said the police operator, but I wondered if he would.

I walked into the hallway and used the internal telephone to call down to the reception desk.

‘Yes, Mr Halley?’ said a voice. It wasn’t Derek. It was one of the new staff.

‘Some policemen will be arriving soon. Please send them straight up.’

‘Certainly, sir,’ he said somewhat uncertainly. ‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Everything’s fine.’

I went back to check on my unwanted guest in the bathroom, but the bath was empty.

Oh my God! Everything was far from fine.

I should have shot him while I’d had the chance.

I spun round but he wasn’t behind me.

Now what should I do? Should I go and get the gun? Should I reload it?

And where was he? There weren’t many places to hide in this flat. I went back to the kitchen door, picked up the internal telephone to push the buzzer to summon help from Security downstairs.

I never got the chance.

Peter came charging out of one of the bedrooms straight at me. His lips were drawn back, revealing his teeth in some evil grin, and there was murder in his eyes. This wasn’t to be the cold-blooded, almost sanitized killing he had planned, this was going to be uncontrolled and furious. He was in a frenzy and a rage. That made two of us.

He dived at me as I tried to side-step into the kitchen and he used my own false arm as a club to aim a swing at my head.

That’s a bit cheeky, I thought. That was usually my game plan.

I dodged and he caught me only a glancing blow on my shoulder. I shoved him and sent him spinning across the hall on his knees. He was quickly back up on his feet and bunching for a fresh attack. I dropped the internal telephone and retreated into the kitchen and tried to close the door.

He stuck his foot in the gap and pushed hard. I leaned on the door to keep him out but he had the strength of the demented, as well as two good hands.

I looked around for a weapon. I had a pocket full of bullets but no gun. Too late to discover that I could have gladly shot him dead.

There was a pine block full of kitchen knives on the work-top on the far side of the room near the cooker but it would have meant leaving the door to reach them. Did I have a choice, I asked myself. I was slowly losing the battle to keep him out anyway.

Again, I asked myself the question. Even if I reached a knife, would I use it? I had once known a particularly nasty villain who had told me that killing with a knife was an experience not to be missed. He had described with relish how he liked to feel the warmth of his victim’s blood on his hand as it spurted out from the wound. It was an image I had often tried to remove from my consciousness without much success. Could I stab Peter and feel the warmth of his blood?

He heaved at the door and sent me sprawling across the floor.

I jumped up and went for the knife block.

He tore at my collar and tossed me away from it. He stretched for it himself. I grabbed at him and put my right arm round his neck and pulled him backwards.

But I was losing this fight. Hand-to-hand combat is somewhat tricky when your opponent has twice as many hands and no scruples about using his nails and teeth as well.

He dug his nails into my already sore wrist and used the still-dangling handcuffs to pull my hand up to his mouth where he bit it. But I refused to let go and went on hauling him away from the knives. He bit me again, this time using all his might to sink his teeth into my thumb. I thought he would bite it off completely.

I gave up my neck-lock, and tore my hand free of him.

He went for the knives.

I picked up the only thing I could see. My trusted one-handed cork remover. The spike sat ready for action on a shelf next to the wine glasses.

I tried to stab it into his back but I couldn’t get it through his coat.

He chose a long wide carving knife from the block and turned around. I knew the edge was sharp. I had honed it myself.

So it was to be my blood warming his hands.

He was still smiling the evil grin and if anything his lips were even further back than before. There was something horrific about what such hate can do to a human being.

He stepped forward and I stepped back. In two strides I was flat against the wall.

As he lunged at me, I stabbed him with the cork remover. I drove the spike deep into the soft tissue between the thumb and first finger of his right hand.

He screamed and dropped the knife. The spike had gone right through. The sharp point was clearly visible sticking out of his palm. He clutched at it.

I pushed past him. The front door to my left was no good, it was locked and the key was in Peter’s pocket. I went right and fairly sprinted down the hallway to the bathroom. I locked myself in.

A moment later, I could hear him walking about.

‘Sid,’ he said. He sounded quite calm and also very close. ‘I have my gun back now and I’m going to come in there and kill you.’

Not if I could help it.

Where were the bloody police?

I heard the gun go click. Then click again, and again.

‘Oh, very funny,’ he said.

I hoped to God he hadn’t brought more ammunition with him.

‘Well, Sid, what shall we do now?’ he said through the door. ‘Perhaps I’ll wait here until your girlfriend comes home. Then you’ll come out.’

I wasn’t sure whether it dawned on me or Peter first that Marina was not coming home.

I had been in the bathroom for well over an hour. I wasn’t coming out and Peter hadn’t been able to get in. He’d tried a few times. At first, he had attempted to kick the door down. I had leaned against it and I could feel the blows through the wood. Thankfully, the corridor outside was so narrow that he couldn’t get a run at it and the lock had held easily. Next, he had tried to hack his way through with the carving knife. I know because he’d told me so, but wood doesn’t cut very easily with a knife, even a sharp knife, and I reckoned it would take him all night to get through that way. I was glad I didn’t have a fire axe in the flat.

The phone had rung several times. I could hear my new answering machine picking up each time after seven rings, just as I’d told it to.

I’d worked out that the police must be somewhere outside and it was probably them on the phone. They must surely have stopped Marina from coming back. By now they must have also intercepted the real Charles Rowland.

I wondered how long they would wait.

A long time. They would have no desire to walk in on a loaded gun.

The phone rang again.

‘Answer the phone, Peter,’ I called to him through the door.

There was no sound. He had been quiet for a long time now.

‘Peter,’ I shouted, ‘answer the bloody phone.’

But the machine did it for him, again.

I wished I had my mobile. It was on its charging cradle in the sitting room and I had heard it ringing, too.

I sat on the edge of the bath in darkness. The light switch was outside in the corridor and Peter had turned it out long ago. The only light came from the narrow gap under the door. I had several times lain down and tried to look under, but without much success. Occasionally I had seen a shadow as Peter had walked past or stood outside the door. But not for a while now.

What was he doing?

Was he still there?

I stood up and put my ear to the door. Nothing.

The floor was wet. I could feel it on my right foot, the one without the sock.

What was he up to?

Was he pouring something flammable under the door? Was he going to burn me out?

I went down quickly on my knees and put a finger in the liquid. I put it to my nose. It didn’t smell of petrol. I tasted it.

I knew that taste. When one was accustomed to eating grass at half a mile a minute it was seemingly always mixed with blood from one’s mouth or nose. And blood is what I could taste now. I found I was paddling in the stuff and it was coming under the door. It had to be Peter’s but the wound I had inflicted on his hand would not have produced so much.

Gingerly I opened the bathroom door and peered out. Peter was seated on the floor a little to the left, leaning up against the magnolia-painted wall.

His eyes swivelled round and looked at me.

I was surprised he was still conscious. His blood was all down the wooden-floored corridor and there were splashes of it on the paintwork where surges of it had landed.

He had used the carving knife with its finely honed edge.

He had sliced through his left wrist so deeply I could see the bones. I had seen something like that before.

I stepped towards him and used my foot to pull the knife away, just to be on the safe side.

He was trying to say something.

I went down and put my ear close to his mouth. His voice was so weak I could barely hear him.

‘Go back in the bathroom,’ he whispered. ‘Let me die.’