“You couldn’t help yourself, could you?” asked a voice that I knew from somewhere.
I looked fully at the person who had emerged. Dhapinder Bliss was standing beside the car. Dark sunglasses covered her face. She wore a black trouser suit with an Emerald green blouse underneath and shiny black heels. Her hair was blown out and full of volume. Honestly, she looked fabulous.
“You … y-you?” I mumbled.
She sighed. “It had nothing to do with you! But I should have known; that day you came around for a nosey. Lying about how you wanted to see Sonia. No one ever wants to see Sonia.” She laughed mirthlessly.
“What?” I said.
“Don’t fuck with me, Arden!” She pointed a stun gun at me.
“Jesus Christ!” I squealed and jumped back about a metre. My whole body protested.
“I know it was you. Your dirty little fingerprints all over it. The sort of thing you’d do, with your murderer boyfriend, probably. Trying to find a new person to blackmail, were you?”
“What?” I asked again. What the hell was she on about?
She looked exasperated. “Don’t deny it. You. You broke into the office last night. The police are already there. I’m sure they won’t find any evidence. Far too experienced for that, aren’t you? But I know it was you.”
What. The. Fuck? “Wait,” I said. “You think I broke into your office? Me? Why?”
Dhapinder looked like she wanted to kill me. Which, to be fair, I think she actually did.
“I’m sure you weaselled loads of information from Sonia on your little evenings out; she probably told you all about the money in the office. I’m sure you were biding your time.” She pressed a button, and the stun gun crackled, then she lunged at me. I shrieked and jumped back again.
Kenny barked and jumped at her and knocked the stun gun from her hand. It was Dhapinder’s turn to scream, as forty kilograms of dog bowled her over. His lips were pulled back, exposing his teeth. “Kenny, no!” I wasn’t having my dog put down because he attacked someone.
Dhapinder screamed again and sank beside the car, her face going pale. I grabbed Kennedy and tried to pull him back, but he was still barking and snapping at Dhapinder. “Shush, boy, it’s okay, the psycho bitch won’t hurt us,” I whispered into his fur.
“What in the ever-loving name of Jesus Christ is going on here?” came a voice off to my left.
Dhapinder and I both turned to see Katrina Pettigrew standing a few metres away. She was wearing a straw sun hat, with a lightweight white skivvy and a red summer jacket over it. On her bottom half were a pair of waterproof walking trousers and sturdy boots. In onehand, she held a walking stick, similar to those favoured by Nordic walkers. In her other hand, she held the stun gun and looked at it like it was alien technology that had dropped off a spaceship.
I saw, what I assumed was her car, its driver’s side door open, idling behind Dhapinder’s further down the hill.
“This man!” Dhapinder stuttered, pointing at me. “This man and his dog! He attacked me! His dog is out of control. Thank God you’re here, I thought he was going to kill me.”
“I see,” Katrina said, continuing to look at the stun gun. “But this is yours, is it not?”
Dhapinder’s eyes darted between us.
“So, you happened to have – wait, aren’t these illegal in the UK?” she asked. “You just happened to have one of these to hand?”
“He was in the middle of the road! I stopped to ask him to move out of the way, and he set his dog on me!” Dhapinder yelled.
“Yes, I saw him in the road. I also saw you jump out with this already in your hand.” Katrina looked at me after she said this. “Arden, what happened to you?” She took me in, head to toe and arched an eyebrow. “It looks … like someone ran you off the road.”
Katrina turned her head slowly to Dhapinder. “Which would put you firmly in the wrong, then,” she said.
Dhapinder began to say something. “Quiet!” Katrina barked with a force of will I hadn’t expected from a sixty-year-old widow. “Why don’t you get back in your car and go back to wherever it is you need to be?”
I kept a hold of Kenny, whose growling had largely subsided, but he was still in attack mode. Dhapinder looked like she wanted to spit tacks. After several seconds of mulling Katrina’s words over, while I stood rock still, Dhapinder held out her hand.
“I’ll take my property back, then, please!”
“The hell you will,” Katrina said, holding up the stun gun to the sun and admiring it. “No, I don’t think you need this, deary.”
She gave Dhapinder a withering look when the latter opened her mouth to complain. “In you get,” Katrina said, cocking her head at the car. “Drive away.”
