Injury Time - Beryl Bainbridge [38]
‘I can’t remember its name,’ mused Edward. ‘Tiger . . . Twinkle . . . something like that.’
If they really were listening to every word, thought Simpson, the police would think they were cracking up. When he got out of this, even if it was dawn, he was going to go straight round to Marcia’s and find out who had answered the telephone. The lunches he’d bought her, the bottle of perfume he’d sent on her birthday, the time he’d wasted when he should have been attending to his business! He wondered sadly if she found bald men unattractive. Muriel had once told him he was better-looking now than when she’d first met him. But then, when she’d met him, Marcia hadn’t been born. How the devil had she known he was in a call box?
‘The gun,’ Muriel said. ‘On the draining board.’
They stared bewildered at the weapon not six feet away. ‘It proves my point,’ Edward said uneasily. ‘They wouldn’t leave a loaded gun lying around.’
‘They’re under a considerable strain,’ reminded Simpson. ‘Particularly that poor girl.’ He was acutely aware of his wife, sitting there in the shadows in an attitude of childlike passivity, detached from the general discussion yet capable of noticing such things. She was behaving oddly. Usually in a crisis – the girls late home, a minor accident to the car – she was prone to bossiness, to taking control. He’d tried twice in the last half hour to comfort her; each time she’d removed her cold hand from beneath his and withdrawn it to her lap. He sensed she was watching, waiting, and it unnerved him. ‘I think you ought to have a dekko at it, Freeman,’ he said. ‘Your background and all that.’
‘Look here, I never saw any action, you know.’
‘I meant the ducks, old man. That sort of thing.’
‘They told us we mustn’t move,’ whispered Binny. ‘They said we’d better not.’ All the same she loosened her arms from about Edward’s neck.
‘I’ll provide a cover,’ offered Simpson, as Edward rose reluctantly from his chair. He began to mutter absurdly, ‘Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb . . .’
The floorboards creaked as Edward tiptoed laboriously towards the kitchen. Though he was inching his way with obsessive caution, one foot placed carefully in front of the other, it was as if he was running full tilt across the room. It was similar to those agonising moments in the school gymnasium, when it was his turn to vault the horse. Any second now he was doomed to spring upwards and attempt the splits in mid-air. Perspiration began to trickle down the collar of his shirt. He should never have mentioned those beastly birds. He peered at the gun from several angles, bottom thrust to the group in the other room, heart thumping lest Harry should return – or worse, the inhuman brute who had leapt upon the woman. To his relief the gun was lying on a bed of upturned plates. Moving considerably faster on his return journey to the table, he explained that the whole thing was rather like a house of cards. The weapon was lodged among dishes and things. One false move and the whole caboodle would fall with a fearful clatter into the sink. If the women hadn’t been present he might have been prepared to take the risk. As things stood he simply couldn’t take the responsibility for a confrontation at this point. They could all be shot down like flies. ‘You see my dilemma,’ he said, hovering thankfully about the table.
‘But you said the guns wouldn’t be loaded, pet.’
‘We can’t be certain. Not one hundred per cent certain.’
Binny made no move to let him sit again. He was forced to lean against the wall, fists clenched to the pit of his stomach.
‘Loaded or not,’ Muriel remarked. ‘It won’t make any difference. They don’t mean us to live.’
11
Outside, the police were requesting householders to remove their cars from the street. Several women in torn nightclothes dragged deck chairs on to the balconies.
A confused report had come in regarding a woman and two children held for six hours in a house in Wood Green and just released. Nothing had