There’s a man in the hall. He’s not Jonny. I can tell because of a few key differences.
1) Jonny is a foot taller than this guy.
2) Jonny isn’t Chinese.
3) Jonny doesn’t habitually carry a fucking big knife.
39
He may not be tall, but he’s muscular. Dressed in black. He doesn’t look military, but I wouldn’t say he’s a civilian either. He’s … somewhere in between.
I’m the first one to shout; he’s the first one to move.
‘Em!’ My voice sounds a bit strangled. I can hear the panic in it and I hope she does too. But there’s no time to say anything else, because at that moment the man jerks towards me, hefting the knife as he approaches. It’s practically a claymore, but he’s not struggling with it a bit. I find myself thinking,He must spend a lot of time in the gym, and then,No shit. Then I run.
For some reason – a faint desire to draw the guy away from Em and Elle? – I sprint out of the hall in the other direction than the one I approached from, towards the kitchen anddining room. The ground floor of the house is arranged in two big loops, and I know it better than him, so I gain a bit of ground as we go. But I risk a look over my shoulder as I round the kitchen island and he’s uncomfortably fast. And I only have the advantage of greater familiarity with the place once. If we do a second lap, he’ll catch me.
By the time I’m back in the hall, the girls have arrived, and they scatter away from me in opposite directions before they even see the guy chasing me – Elle back into the living room doorway, Em towards the front door. The guy pauses as he hits the hall. I’m in the middle, right under the chandelier, with nothing but empty space for ten feet around me. Any manoeuvre that could get me and the girls out of the house would be best, I think, and then realise, no. Why would that be? Look at this guy. We’re not equipped to deal with him inanyenvironment.
I wish he would say something. He hasn’t said a word yet, and if he’d only tell me what he wanted, maybe we could … No point in that either. The knife makes it pretty clear what he wants. He’s still focused on me, although he’s clocked the girls too. He looks grim, as if this job has already gone slightly wrong, and he’s having to adapt to keep the show on the road. Join the club, mate.
He moves towards me, and I stumble backwards to the foot of the stairs. Yes. That’s an idea. If I can draw him upstairs, the girls can get out and away. OK, there’s the ten-second plan of retreat. We’ll work on the following ten seconds in thefullness of time. He comes towards me, and I turn and flee up the staircase. He follows. Good.
The staircase is a grand one, which splits into two halfway up. I take the left fork, and he follows. I move backwards along the gallery, and see the girls are coming up behind him. What the hell are they playing at? I try to gesture at them to go, but there’s no time, because the man’s about to bulldoze me to the very soft carpet.
Some people say that in life-threatening situations they find an extra reserve of strength that allows them to lift the crashed car off their loved one, punch the bear, whatever. I just want to put on the record that this doesn’t happen to everyone, and as he shoulders me to the ground, I have never felt weaker or flimsier. The one thing I do remember is to kick. I’m wearing my nasty heavy boots, and from my position on the ground, as he’s starting to bring the knife down, I jerk back like a grasshopper and go for a kneecap.
Whatever I hit, it crunches satisfyingly, and puts him off his stroke. I scrabble away while the guy yelps – the first noise he’s made so far – and get back on my feet, saying a little prayer of thanks to the man who just saved my life, Dr Marten.
I stumble backwards and turn another corner. We’re on the cross-beam bit of the landing now, running from the left side of the house to the right. There are bedrooms all round this landing, none containing any blunt instruments.
I edge past a wooden podium with a gorgeous old vase on it. It’s the only ornament on the whole landing. I reach out totry knocking it across his path, as if it would slow him down at all, but he lashes out with the knife and I pull my hand back. The blade leaves a thick wound in the solid oak of the podium. Over his shoulder, I can see the girls trailing, the idiots. Why won’t they leave?
He’s past the podium now, and he makes a couple of experimental little slashes in the air to make me jump backwards. He glances over his shoulder at the girls, but doesn’t seem worried. I can see him winding up his legs for a proper spring at me, this time with the knife first. He’s not even going to bother knocking me down, he’s just going to lunge.
I know that reading this, you’re thinking I should just parry the blow, but the first eighteen inches of this guy’s attack are going to be all knife. If there is an effective parry for that kind of move, I don’t know it. He growls, and crouches, and I just pray it happens fast enough, or that Em and Elle use the tiny bit of time I’ve bought them to get out of the house. I knew this was coming, at some level, ever since we saw Davy’s body. I’ve had a good run, stayed in some nice places. I even made some friends recently.
‘Hey.’
The guy swivels, just as Em hits him on the ear with the vase.
It makes a very satisfying noise, the sound of a couple of million pounds’ worth of porcelain disintegrating. It even produces a little cloud of blue-white powder, which dissipates around him like a halo. I would have hoped – you might think – it would be enough to knock him out cold, but he just shakes his bullet head and coughs.
He’s muzzy, though, and I realise: this is the moment. This tiny reprieve is the only possible opportunity I have to seize the advantage before he recovers and resumes his attempt to get my guts out of my torso and onto the parquet floor.
What the hell.
I run headlong at the guy, clamp my arms around his torso, drive him into the landing rail in what any rugby referee would consider an illegally high tackle, and over we go together.
40
As we pivot over the rail, I can feel his knife at my side, but I have the guy in a bear hug, and he’s still so shocked to be going over the edge of the landing that he’s not able to do much with it. If I land on the blade, I’ll have yet another problem, but my thinking is now short-term enough that anything which keeps me alive for the next second and a half feels like a good bet.
As we go, we bounce off the chandelier – hard enough to smash it half to bits, not nearly enough to slow our descent. And then we’re tumbling together, upside down, and a few confused impressions push themselves through my brain without me having time to focus on any single one. I shouldn’t have bothered giving up smoking for my health. I should have met these guys years ago and travelled around with them,having fun, rather than leading a solitary existence with only my rules for company. I should definitely have slept with Em a second time.
That’s enough of that. The hall floor is rapidly becoming the biggest thing in my field of view, and there’s nothing to do but see who lands on top.
Drum roll …
