Spider Light(81)
He was not dead. Dear God, he’d had a six-inch blade driven into his neck, and he was still alive! He had fallen to the floor, clutching at the piano as he went, bringing some of the furniture down with him, but he was still moving, flailing at the air, grabbing at a small side table and overturning it, clutching at the edges of the piano. Nothing for it, then, better stab him again. She bent over him, and brought the knife down a second time and this time it went in deeper. Donna felt the scrape of bone. Collarbone? Breastbone? Oh, who cared what it was, and who cared that the knife, Antonia Weston’s own knife, had embedded itself so deeply in bone and flesh.
‘This is Antonia’s punishment,’ said Donna, staring down at the blood-soaked figure on the floor. ‘She’s taken Don away from me, so I’m taking you away from her. She’ll find you dead, and she’ll go through agony, and it’ll serve her right.’
He struggled again, but it was a poor weak struggle now. Why wouldn’t he die! The knife was still sticking out of his neck but he had managed to grasp the handle, his fingers were curling around it. Donna backed away at once, because supposing by some faint chance he managed to get sufficient purchase on the knife to pull it free and managed to struggle upright and attack her? She remembered the paperweight, still in her pocket, and began to reach for it. If he really did start fighting her she would bring it smashing down on his skull and that would finish him off. It would make it even more shattering for Antonia Weston when she found him.
The knife came free with a wet sucking sound, and dropped harmlessly to the floor. The man’s head fell back, there was a rush of exhaled air from the torn windpipe, then he was dead.
It was an extraordinary moment. Seconds earlier he had been alive, the blood pumping out everywhere–oh God, yes, she was covered in it–and then quite suddenly he was nothing. Empty.
Donna could not stop looking at him. It was remarkable to realize you had taken the life of someone without knowing anything about him. He was dark and thin-faced and quite slightly built. His skin had the translucent pallor of someone who spends a good deal of time indoors.
Had he and Antonia been married? How long had they been together? Donna straightened up, for the first time looking around the room which was not entirely dark due to a street lamp outside. She had a sudden deep need to know more about this man, about the kind of life he and Antonia had had. She stared about her: at the furnishings and the things on the high narrow mantelshelf over the fire.
Then she saw one of the pieces of furniture that had been overturned was the chair the man had been sitting in. She saw it was not a conventional piano stool, or even an ordinary dining chair. It was a wheelchair. The man she had just killed had not been a coward or disdainfully contemptuous of a house-breaker. He had been a cripple. Probably he had heard her from the moment she had broken the glass of the door, and had gone on playing in the hope that she would take whatever valuables she wanted, and go away leaving him unharmed. You heard of people doing that: you even heard of them pretending to be asleep when burglars got into their bedrooms, because they were afraid of confronting the burglar.
Well, I’m sorry, Mister Whoever-you-were, said Donna to the dead remote features, but it’s too late for regrets. I’d probably have done all this even if I had known–although I might have done it a bit differently.
She stepped carefully back from the mess of blood, removing the thick socks when she got clear–she was pleased she had remembered about those–and went into the hall. It was then that she heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel drive outside, and she stopped, her heart skipping several beats. Was it Weston coming back? Donna had not heard a car or the garage being opened or closed. She was momentarily angry with herself for not being more aware.
She glanced at her watch. Nine o’clock. It could only be Weston, coming home for that meal the musician had been going to cook for her, but that Weston would not now eat. Donna hesitated, looking towards the oblong of pale light that was the bungalow’s front door. Half of her wanted to stay and hide somewhere so she could witness Weston’s agony, but the other half knew she must not risk it.
A shadow moved just beyond the door, and Donna darted back to the kitchen. Back door? What do I do if there isn’t one? But there was a half-glazed door that opened onto a paved area beyond the kitchen. Locked? Yes, but the key was in the lock. She turned it, and stepped out into the cool night air, and as she did so, she heard someone tread on the broken glass and push open the shattered front door.
Donna went around the far side of the bungalow, skirted the edge of the lawn, hopped over the low wall, and was back out on the street and walking towards her car.
She made herself an enormous greasy fry-up when she got back to the flat, and drank most of a bottle of wine. After this she went to bed, and slept until the alarm woke her at half past seven. The radio came on with the alarm, and the seven thirty news contained an item about the violent murder of Richard Weston, the wheelchair-bound brother of a doctor of psychiatry at a big North London hospital.
Donna stared at the radio. The musician had not been Weston’s husband or boyfriend at all. He had been her brother. From out of the confused tumble of her thoughts, she heard the newsreader say that the body of a second man–believed to have been the murderer–had been found next to the body, and that Dr Antonia Weston, was being held for questioning in connection with this second death.
It was only then that Donna realized Don had not come home last night.