Dick Francis - Crossfire

Pierrepoint would have been proud of me tonight. Alex wasn't actually dead, but he had been trussed up like a chicken ready for the oven in not much longer than Albert had taken to hang a man.

And now Mr. Reece was ready for a spot of roasting.

I have no idea what you're talking about." It was only to be expected that he would deny any knowledge of blackmail.

He was still lying on the hall floor, but I had rolled him over onto his back so he could see me. I'd patted down his pockets, removed his cell telephone and turned it off. All the while, he had stared at me with wide eyes, the whites showing all around the irises. But he had known immediately who I was, in spite of my dark clothes, hat and mud-streaked face.

"So you deny you have been blackmailing my mother?" I asked him.

"I do," he said emphatically. "I've never heard such nonsense. Now let me go or I'll call the police."

"You are in no position to call anyone," I said. "And if anyone will be calling the police, it will be me."

"Go on, then," he said. "It's not me who would be in the most trouble."

"And what is that meant to imply?"

"Work it out," he said, becoming more sure of himself.

"Are you aware of what the maximum sentence is for blackmail?" I asked.

He said nothing.

"Fourteen years."

His eyes didn't even flicker. He clearly thought he was onto a good thing. He was assuming that I would just threaten him a bit, then let him go and do nothing more.

But one should never assume anything.

I had told Ian that I would be out all night. No one was expecting me back for hours and hours. So I was in no hurry.

I left him lying on the hard hall floor and went into the kitchen to see if I could find myself a drink. Waiting all that time outside had made me thirsty.

"Let me go," he shouted from the hallway.

"No," I shouted back, putting his phone down on the worktop.

"Help," he shouted, this time much louder.

I went quickly through into the hall.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

"Why not?" he said belligerently.

I shrugged myself free of the small rucksack on my back and removed the roll of duct tape. I held it towards him and pulled the end of the tape free. "Because I would be forced to wrap your head in this. Is that what you want?"

He didn't shout again as I went back into the kitchen and fetched a can of Heineken from his fridge. I took a drink, allowing a little of the beer to pour out of the corner of my mouth and drip onto the floor near his legs.

"Do you have any idea how long a human being can go on living without taking in any fluid?" He went on staring at me. "How long it would be before chronic dehydration causes irreversible kidney failure, and death?"

He obviously didn't like the question, but he still wasn't particularly worried.

I bent down to my rucksack and dug around for the short piece of chain attached to the ring by the padlock. I held it up for him to see, but it was clear from his lack of expression that he didn't know where it had come from, or its significance. He probably wasn't fully aware that his lack of reaction may have saved his life. Maybe I didn't now want to kill the little weasel, but that didn't mean I didn't want to use him.

"Are you a diabetic?" I asked.

"No," he said.

"Lucky you."

I removed the red-colored first-aid kit from my rucksack. It was what was known in the expedition business as an "anti-AIDS kit." It was a small zipped-up pouch containing two each of sterile syringes, hypodermic needles, intravenous drip cannulas, ready-threaded suture needles and scalpels, plus three small sterile pouches of saline solution for emergency rehydration. I had bought it some years previously to take on a regimental jolly, a trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. It was designed to allow access to sterile equipment in the event of one of the team having to have an emergency medical procedure, something that was not always readily available, especially in some of the more remote hospitals of HIV-ridden sub-Saharan Africa.

Thankfully, no one on the expedition had needed it, and the kit had returned with me to the UK intact. But now it might just prove to have been a worthwhile purchase.

I removed one of the syringes and attached it to one of the hypodermic needles. Alex watched me.

"What are you doing?" He sounded worried for the first time.

"Time for my insulin," I said. "You wouldn't want me collapsing in a diabetic coma, now, would you? Not with you in that state."

Alex watched carefully as I unpacked one of the pouches of saline solution from its sterile packaging and hung it up on the stair banister. The packaging had an official-looking label stuck on the side with "insulin" printed on it in large bold capital letters that he couldn't have failed to see. I had asked him if he was a diabetic, and he'd said no. I hoped that he wouldn't know that insulin is nearly always provided either in ready-loaded injecting devices or in little glass bottles. I had produced the official-looking insulin label that afternoon using Ian Norland's printer.

I drew a very little amount of the clear liquid into the smaller of the two syringes, pulled up the front of my black roll-necked sweater, pinched the flesh of my abdomen together and inserted the needle. I depressed the plunger and injected the fluid under my skin. I smiled down at Alex.

"How often do you have to do that?" he asked.

"Two or three times a day," I said.

"And what exactly is insulin?"

"It's a hormone," I said, "that allows the muscles to use the energy from glucose carried in the blood. In most people it is created naturally in the pancreas."

"So what happens if you don't take it?"

"The glucose level in my blood would have become so high that my organs would stop working properly, and I would eventually go into a coma, and then die."

I smiled down at him again. "We wouldn't want that, now, would we?"

He didn't answer. Perhaps me in a coma or dead was exactly what he wanted. But it wasn't going to happen. I wasn't really diabetic, but my best friend at secondary school had been, and I'd watched him inject himself with insulin hundreds of times, although he'd always used a special syringe with a finer and less painful needle. Injecting small amounts of sterile saline solution under my skin might be slightly uncomfortable, but it was harmless.

I went back into the kitchen and picked up his flight bag from where it had come to rest. It was heavy. Inside, amongst other things, were a laptop computer and a large bottle of duty-free vodka that had somehow survived the impact with the hall floor. I put the bag down on the kitchen table, removed the computer and turned it on. While it booted up I took an upright chair out into the hallway, placed it near Alex's feet and sat down.

"Now," I said, leaning forwards. "I have some questions I need you to answer."

"I'm not answering anything unless you let me go."

"Oh, I think you will," I said. "It's a long night."

I stood up and went back into the kitchen. I pulled down the blind over the window, turned on a television set and sat down at the kitchen table with Alex's computer.

"Hey," he called after about five minutes.

"Yes," I shouted back. "What do you want?"

"Are you just going to leave me here?"

"Yes," I said, turning up the volume on the television.

"How long for?" he shouted louder.

"How long do you need?"

"Need?" he shouted. "What do mean 'need'?"

"How long do you need before you will answer my questions?"

"What questions?"

I went back into the hall and sat down on the chair by his feet.

"How long have you been having an affair with Julie Yorke?" I said.

It wasn't a question he had been expecting, but he recovered quickly.