Peter O'Donnell - Cobra Trap

" All the Collier organs are in working order," her husband announced with dignity, "as I'm prepared to demonstrate. How about going to bed?"

"Any time, honey. But it's only seven of a summer's evening and maybe we should hold off the demonstration till after our hostess returns."

"You've been reading books on etiquette. Moreover, you too can smell that they're up to something and you're dying to know what. All right, I'll give you a thrashing at backgammon while we wait. Come on."

Collier had spent three days at the penthouse after leaving hospital, then he and Dinah had gone down with Modesty to her cottage in Wiltshire for a further ten days. Now they were back at the penthouse and planned to return to their home in Surrey tomorrow. That morning Willie had come up from The Treadmill, his pub on the Thames. An hour ago he and Modesty and Weng had left on unspecified business.

"Do you think it's to do with us?" Collier said quietly as he set up the backgammon board. "I mean with what happened to us at The Black Horse?"

Dinah picked up the cup and dice. "I don't know. Modesty tells me just about everything, but she's said nothing about that."

"They never do when it's a caper," he observed. "Neither before nor after unless you drag it out of them. Come to think of it, we might just as well go to bed."

She laughed. "I'll get something out of Willie. Oh golly, it's good to see you back in form, tiger."

He reached out to take her hand. "I want to tell you something strange, sweetheart. It's hard to put into words and it sounds crazy, but I have a curious sense of… of relief, of satisfaction almost, at having endured a beatingup. I'm a cardcarrying coward and the thought of being the kind of victim they sometimes show you on television makes my stomach churn. But now it's happened, and it's past, and I've come out on the other side." He laughed suddenly. "God, I wouldn't want it to happen again, but… I don't know, I've sort of joined the club of those who've been through it, and I feel a bit braced up by that." He shook his head. "What's a nice girl like you doing, married to a total prat like me?"

"I can't remember now," Dinah said thoughtfully, "but I guess I had nothing better to do that day. Let's give it a bit longer anyway. I think I've started a baby."

Collier stared, then nodded. "Yes. As a professional statistician and lustful maths expert I was beginning to suspect something of the sort." He took her hand and touched it to his lips. "That's wonderful, sweetheart."

"Yep. Good old fertile Collier."

"Oh, come now. You were there too, as I remember." He released her hand. "My word, I do lead an interesting life. Do you know this will be the first time I've ever beaten a pregnant woman at backgammon."

"Cocky sod," said Dinah amiably, and threw the dice. "Not yet you haven't."

Weng sat in a hired car parked a short stone's throw from The Black Horse. During the past week he had checked that the man called Pike came regularly between halfpast seven and eight, and stayed for about an hour. This evening Pike had arrived ten minutes ago, and Weng had used his mobile phone to report this fact. Now he watched with interest as a man and a woman on foot turned the corner and moved towards the pub.

The man was greyhaired, quite tall but paunchy and roundshouldered, wearing a dark, rather shabby suit and a clerical collar. The woman was also greyhaired and running to fat. Incongruously she wore a white T-Shirt with Jesus Saves on it and green corduroy trousers. As they passed the car Weng saw that the man had sad, hangdog brown eyes and carried a concertina hung round his neck. The woman had blue eyes, wore grey cotton gloves and carried a small haversack with some papers sticking out of it. In the mirror Weng watched them enter the pub and prepared to follow.

As the door swung to, the clientele of The Black Horse fell suddenly silent, all eyes on the newcomers. Some glanced sidelong to where Pike stood drinking with three or four of his close cronies. Here was unusual fodder for Pike, and they wondered how he would react. Pike favoured younger, possibly tougher prey, but all was grist that came to his mill for the propagation of his image as the hardest of hard men.

The couple gazed benignly around, then the man played a long chord on his concertina. "Good evening, brothers," he said with a strong Scottish accent. "Ah am the Reverend James McNally but Ah'd be much pleased if you'd call me Jamie, and here's my wife, Jeannie. We come not to preach but to lift your hearts with songs of praise to the good Lord." He looked towards the barman. "You've no objection, brother?"

The barman, a dour man in his fifties, looked a question at Pike, who gave a slight shake of his head and set down his glass. Moving as if to the door, he walked past the woman, jostling her with his shoulder so that she stumbled sideways and almost fell. Her husband said in severe tones, "Have a care, friend. It's no' polite to be near knockin' a woman doon."

Pike turned to him. "Who the bloody 'ell d'you think you are? We don't want no biblethumping jocks 'ere." His fist flashed out in a hook to the head, and the man staggered back, yet even as Pike prepared to follow up he had an odd feeling that his blow had barely connected and it was therefore strange that the vicar or whatever he was had gone reeling back across the barroom to fetch up against a table near the door.

Pike had taken no more than a pace after his victim when the woman was suddenly there confronting him, eyes blazing.

"Ye'll no' abuse ma husband when he's speakin' for the Lord!" she cried angrily. "Repent before the Almighty, ye great cowardly bullyin' creature! Doon on yer knees, wull ye? Doon on yer knees an' beg forgiveness, ye fallen brute sinner!" Somebody laughed. Nobody noticed the young oriental who slipped through the door and stepped lithely up on to the table where the Reverend James McNally now stood.

Then it happened. Pike swung an open hand to slap the woman aside, but by the smallest of movements, seemingly unintentional, she evaded the full force of the blow so that it became little more than a light slap across the face. Then one gloved hand swung in a seemingly casual fashion to hit Pike in the face with the littlefinger edge, and it was as if he had been struck by an iron bar. He reeled back, blood streaming from his nose, shock and fury exploding within him. Then he launched himself at her.

Throughout the next thirty seconds the woman never ceased talking. At first she moved back in a small circle, seeming ever and by chance just beyond reach of Pike, yet hitting him incessantly with her gloved hands and sometimes with a flickering movement of a sensibly shod foot. After fifteen seconds it was Pike who retreated, trying to escape her, limping, clutching at his ribs, cowering with an arm crooked above his head.

And all the time her penetrating voice hammered at him. "Have ye no shame, man? Wull ye lay wicked hands on a poor wee woman who did'nae ask but that ye put aside the ways o' violence an' repent before the Lord? For yer ain soul I'm beggin' ye to remember the worm that dieth not an' the fire that burneth for ay. Up, man! Up!" He had fallen, and she hauled him to his feet by an ear. "I'll have ye fall on yer knees from yer ain guid wish to repent, not from weakness o' the flesh!"

Only one man noticed the young oriental with the camcorder to his eye, and moved towards him. As he approached the table, the vicar with the concertina gave him a friendly smile. An arm shot out, and the man remembered nothing more until he woke under the table several minutes later. Another crony ventured to intervene between Pike and the woman, reaching out to grab her arm. It seemed almost an accident when she backheeled him in the crotch. He gave a screech of pain and sank to his knees, clutching himself. The rest simply watched, transfixed, bereft of all initiative.