Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Gamble

Oh shit!

There was a heavy knock on the front door.

“I’ll get it,” said Claudia, turning away.

The power was off, the telephone was dead, there was a knock on the front door, and the hairs on the back of my neck were suddenly standing bolt upright.

“Don’t touch it,” I shouted at Claudia.

She turned to look at me, but she still moved towards the danger. “Why ever not?” she said.

“Claudia,” I shouted again, “get away from the door.”

I was already halfway towards her when the knock was repeated. And still Claudia moved towards it.

I grabbed her just as she was reaching for the handle.

“What on earth are you doing?” she said loudly. “Answer the bloody door.”

“No,” I said quietly.

“Why ever not?” she demanded.

“Keep your voice down,” I hissed at her.

“Why?” she said, but much quieter, with concern. She could probably read the fear in my face.

“Please. Just go over to the kitchen.” I looked over at my mother, who was staring at us, still holding the useless telephone receiver in her hand.

Something about the urgency of my voice finally got through to Claudia, and she went over to join my mother.

They both suddenly looked rather frightened.

I went into the small cloakroom next to the front door and peeked through a minute gap in the net curtains at the person standing outside.

He had on a gray-green anorak with the collar turned up, and this time he was wearing a dark blue baseball cap, but there was no doubt it was the same man that I had last seen in the grainy video from Mr. Patel’s newsagent’s, the same man who had gunned down Herb Kovak at Aintree and the same man who had shot at me in Lichfield Grove.

Bugger, I thought, echoing my mother.

I went back into the big room.

The front door had locked automatically when it was closed, with a latch a bit like a Yale’s. It was quite strong, but was it strong enough?

I went quickly across to the kitchen and locked the back door as well, turning the key slowly to keep the noise to a minimum and sliding across the bolt at the top.

Both my mother and Claudia watched my every step.

We heard the man rattle the front door and they both instinctively crouched down below the worktop.

“Who is it?” whispered my mother.

I’d have to tell them.

“Darlings,” I whispered. “He’s a very dangerous man and he’s trying to kill me.”

Claudia’s eyes opened so wide, I thought they would pop out of her head. My mother, however, thought I was joking and began to laugh.

“I’m being serious,” I said, cutting her off in mid-guffaw. “It’s the same man who killed Herb Kovak at Aintree races.”

This time they both looked more frightened than ever. And I was too.

“Call the police,” Claudia said, then remembered, “Oh my God, he’s cut the phone line.”

And the electricity.

The broadband connection would have failed with the power, and our mobiles didn’t have any signal here.

We were on our own.

“Upstairs,” I said quietly but firmly. “Both of you. Now. Lock yourselves in the bathroom, sit on the floor and don’t come out until I tell you to.”

Claudia hesitated a moment, but then she nodded and took my mother by the hand. They started to go but then turned back. “But what are you going to do?” Claudia asked with huge fear in her face.

“Try to keep him out,” I said. “Now, go on, go!”

They disappeared up the boxed-in staircase, and I heard the bathroom door being shut and locked above me.

And if he did get in and kill me, I thought, perhaps he’d leave them alone and go away, job done. As it was, with all three of us down here, I was sure he would have killed us all.

I looked around for some sort of weapon.

A loaded shotgun would have been nice, but my mother had about as much interest in country sports as I did in origami.

I heard the back door being tried, and I instinctively ducked away from it.

The sun went down, the last of its orange rays disappearing from the kitchen window. And it began to get dark, especially indoors with no electric lights to brighten the gathering gloom.

I looked around in desperation for something to use as a weapon. An umbrella stood in a large china pot near the front door, and a walking stick. I grabbed the walking stick, but it was a collapsible model, for ease of packing. So I opted for the umbrella, one of those big golf types with a heavy wooden handle. It wasn’t much, but it was all there was. How I wished the cottage still had a proper open fire with a big, heavy metal poker, but my mother had replaced it with one of those gas things with fake coals.

But at least I had one advantage over my assailant in so far as I could see him much more easily than he could see me.

It was still quite light outside, and I watched him through the windows as he went right around the house. At one point he came close to the kitchen window, cupping his hands around his face and up against the glass in order to peer in. I made sure I was standing to the side of the window, in a dark corner where he would have had no chance of spotting me.

Perhaps he would go away, I thought.

He didn’t.

The sound of breaking glass put paid to any hope I may have had that this was going to end simply and without violence.

My mother’s windows were old, in keeping with the age of her cottage. They were a version of the old leaded lights, small panes of glass held together by a lattice framework of metal strips.

The gunman had broken just one of the little panes in one of the kitchen windows, but it was enough for him to put his gloved hand through the opening and unlatch the whole thing. I watched him do it in the fading light, and the window swung open outwards.

Where could I hide?

Without doubt the best place to be was in the bathroom upstairs with the door locked but I had no intention of joining Claudia and my mother there. I was sure that that would lead in the end to the deaths of all three of us.

So, where else was there to hide?

Nowhere.

I concluded that hiding was, in fact, my least-favored option. It would simply give the advantage to the gunman, who could take his time, all night if necessary, and eventually he would undoubtedly find me and then I too would get a couple of bullets in my heart and another in my face just as poor Herb had.

So if I wasn’t going to hide, and I certainly wasn’t going to merely stand and wait to be killed, the only other option was to attack, and attack hard and fast.

He started to climb through the window, his gun with its long black silencer entering first.

I stood just to the side of the window and raised the umbrella, holding it by the pointed end so that I could swing the heavy wooden handle.

I used all my strength and brought the handle down hard onto the gun. I had actually been aiming for his wrist, but he pulled it back a fraction just at the last second.

The gun went off, the bullet ricocheting off the granite worktop below the window with a loud zing before burying itself in the wall opposite. But the blow had also knocked the gun from the man’s grasp. It clattered to the floor, sliding across the stonequarry tiles and out of sight under my mother’s old fridge. That evened things up a bit, I thought, but I would have loved to have been able to grab the gun and turn it on its owner.

“Ebi se!” the man said explosively.

I didn’t know what he meant, and it sadly didn’t stop him coming through the window.

I raised the umbrella for another strike, but he was wise to me now and he grabbed it as it descended and tore it from my grasp, tossing it aside as he stepped right through the open window and crouched on the worktop.