Stuart Pawson - The Mushroom Man

"Ah! Them," she scoffed. The gun swung a couple of degrees away from me as she threw her head back and laughed. I drew my hands in, placing them on the chair arms.

"Yes, them. What had they done to you?"

She could barely control her laughter, the gun waving about alarmingly, sometimes pointing at me, sometimes not.

"Nothing!" she declared. "They'd done nothing to me. Don't you see, that's what makes it so perfect."

"I don't understand."

"You're the fucking detective. The Top Cop: She taunted me with the words. "Tell me, then, Mr. Top Cop, what's the perfect murder?"

"Er, I don't know. One that nobody knows has been committed, I suppose."

"Close, but not quite. One without a motive, that's the perfect murder. I had no reason to kill them. You were just the next in the line. Four proper priests, then you. I was going to kill another person called Priest, just to sew things up, then I could die happy.

Unfortunately that stuck-up bitch you go out with got in the way. That was a laugh when I found out she was a bishop's wife." She chuckled and grinned, revealing brown teeth with gaps at the sides of her mouth.

She reminded me of the skull on the window of number 48. I flinched at her words, but used the movement to curl my fingers over the ends of the chair arms. I was as poised as I'd ever be.

"Rhoda," I said, as softly and calmly as I could, 'there's been too much killing. You've had a raw deal, but this won't solve anything.

You could have treatment. They've drugs now that could help you. Put the gun down."

"There's no treatment for this!" she cried, pointing at her head. She leaned back against the wall and I could see that her cheeks were glistening with tears. "I said I'd wait for him. I had a job and a flat. We could still have had kids, that's all I ever wanted. It wasn't much, was it?"

"Kids," I sighed. "That's all I ever wanted, too. But it wasn't to be."

"Still…" she said, and the steel was back in her voice and the gun wasn't wavering any more, 'killing you will make me feel better for a couple of days."

"What about the first two? Were they really you?" The words tumbled out and I wondered if any of our conversation was being transmitted. It would make riveting listening in the control room.

"Ah!" she snorted. "I saw a headline over someone's shoulder. It said: "Priest killed. Was it murder?" For a glorious moment I thought it was you. My heart leapt. I got off the bus a stop early to call at the news agent I wept when I read it was only some crumby vicar."

There was a scrunch of gravel under tyres from the road outside. A look of panic flickered across her face and the gun steadied, pointing at my head. "Neighbours," I said. "They come and go all the time." I eased myself up slightly. "So what about the second one? Did you do him?"

"No, he just fell down the tower. That's when I got the idea, though.

I liked the thought of some religious nut knocking off priests." Her shoulders bobbed up and down with amusement.

They'd surround the house; listen at the windows; then try to make contact, probably by ringing the doorbell. "But the next two were all your own work," I said.

"All my own work," she boasted. "And now it's your turn."

"Where did you get the name, Destroying Angel?"

"I know all about mushrooms. Which are good, which are bad. I've always liked that one."

"I thought they were poisonous?"

"No more talking." She levelled the gun. "Kiss your arse goodbye, Charlie Priest '

TRIIIING! The doorbell!

I went in hard and curving. First to the right, towards her but away from the gun, then up for it. Her eyes had flickered towards the sound of the bell, and for a tenth of a second she couldn't decide whether to swing the gun away from my grasping hand or try to blast me with it. It was all I needed. My body hit hers and bounced her back against the wall. The fingers of my left hand curled round her wrist, thin as a robin's leg, and lifted it and the gun towards the ceiling. She went for my eyes with her free hand, clawing ribbons of skin from my cheek.

I jerked my head back and managed to grasp her other wrist. I was a foot taller than her and a few stones heavier. I stretched her arms apart and pinned her to the wall as if she were a petulant child. She was still holding the shotgun.

"In here! I've got her!" I shouted.

Then her knee hit me in the balls.

Forget childbirth the knee in the balls is the most excruciating pain known to mankind. A fireball exploded in my stomach and my knees buckled, as if a scythe had gone through them. I was blinded by agony, but the threat of a twelve-bore is a powerful anaesthetic. Teetering on the edge of blacking out, I concentrated with all the power I possessed on gripping that right wrist. Outside, the door glass was shattering and wood splintering. With a desperate effort I swung her away from the wall and kicked her legs from under her. She fell over backwards. As she hit the floor I collapsed my legs so that my entire weight fell mercilessly on top or her. Our faces were touching as I did so, and her breath erupted in a volcanic torrent into my face. I turned my head sideways to escape it, and she sank her teeth deep into my ear.

The cavalry rushed in. They found us on the floor, as if crucified face to face, with my blood and her saliva intermingling and dribbling down her cheek, on to the carpet.

Sparky prised her jaws open with a spoon handle. Once she was off me she allowed the boys in blue to take her away. Sparky cleaned up my ear with a wet cloth whilst I put a tentative hand down my Y-fronts and gingerly explored the contents. He handed me a tea towel and told me to keep it pressed against the side of my head.

"Well, at least we know what to call you from now on," he said.

"What?" I groaned.

"Van Gogh," he replied.

"I'd have thought Goebbels," suggested Nigel.

"It's not funny," I snapped, somewhere between laughing and crying.

"And if you've knackered my front door you can bloody well pay for a new one."

"You're right, Charlie, it's not funny," Sparky admitted, hooking his hands under my shoulders. "C'mon, let's get you to hospital. Can you stand up?"

They did some nifty microsurgery on my ear and told me it would soon be as good as new. When they learned that the person who'd bitten me had advanced AIDS they handled me with rubber gloves and spoke in whispers.

My right testicle looked reasonably normal, but its partner resembled a ripe aubergine. No treatment was offered. "We'll just see how it goes," the doctor said, adding that he'd have another look at the ear in a week. Two nurses, female, said they'd check my goo lies again tomorrow morning.

In the afternoon a woman in civilian clothes with a comfortable face came to visit me. She had a permanent smile, as if she were dosing her HRT patch with cocaine. She introduced herself and told me she was an AIDS counsellor.

The gist of it was that I should think carefully before I decided to have a test. Even if it proved negative the fact that I had been tested might lead to difficulties with life insurance or obtaining a mortgage. I should ask myself if I really needed to know.

"Of course I bloody well need to know," I growled at her.

In which case, she reassured me, the news was not all bleak it was possible to be HIV positive and not develop the disease for as long as twenty years. As nobody had heard of AIDS that long ago I took this information with a pinch of scepticism. When she went into the bit about anal and oral intercourse I told her I was tired and pulled the blankets over my head. Her parting shot was that everything we had said was confidential. Who told you? I thought. She scared the willies out of me.

Modern NHS hospitals have a menu system for mealtimes. Every day you are given a list of the following day's dishes, upon which you tick your selections. Unfortunately this means that on your first day you have to have what the previous occupant of the bed chose on his last day. I was following a diabetic rabbit on hunger strike. I vowed revenge on the next hapless soul to lie here.