Felix Francis - Dick Francis's Gamble

I rushed at him, but he was ready, pushing me aside with ease, so that I stumbled across the kitchen towards the sink.

I turned quickly, but the man had already jumped down to the floor. I watched him as he looked around and then withdrew a large carving knife from the wooden block next to my mother’s stove. Now, why hadn’t I thought of that?

I moved quickly to my right, putting the dining table between him and me. If he couldn’t reach me, he couldn’t stab me either.

There followed a sort of ballet, with him moving one way or the other and me mirroring him, always keeping the table between us. Once we ran around and around the table three or four times, with me watching carefully for him to change direction. He pulled out chairs to try to slow me down, but I was quick. I may not be as fit as I was as a jockey but I was still no slouch in the running department. It had fared me well in Lichfield Grove and was doing so again here.

But for how long?

He only needed to get lucky once.

He changed his tactics, using one of the chairs to climb up onto the table, and then he came straight at me across it.

I turned and ran for the stairs, pulling open the latch door and bounding up the steps two or three at a time. I could hear him behind me, and he was gaining.

Where could I go? I was running out of options.

Panic began to rise in my throat. I didn’t want to die.

I turned to face him. At least I would see it coming and I’d be able to make some effort to get away from the thrust of the knife.

He stood at the top of the stairs with me just four feet away in front of him. He advanced a step, and I retreated a step, then we both repeated the drill, but my back was now up against the wall. I had no farther to go.

He came a step closer to me, and I readied myself for his strike, although what I would do when it came I didn’t know.

Die, probably.

Claudia stepped out of the bathroom, just down the corridor to his right.

“Fuck off, you bastard,” she shouted at him with full fortissimo. “Leave him alone.” She then slammed the bathroom door shut again and locked it.

He turned momentarily towards the noise and I leapt at him, wrapping my right arm around his neck with my forearm across his throat while at the same time trying to gouge his eyes out with the fingers of my left hand.

I squeezed his neck with all my strength.

But it was not enough.

The man was considerably taller and stronger than I, and in spite of my best grip he simply began to turn himself around to face me. And with both of my arms held up around his head, my abdomen would be totally defenseless to a thrust of the knife.

What had that spinal specialist told me?

“Whatever you do,” he’d said, “don’t get into a fight.”

He’d said nothing about falling down stairs.

I hung on to the man’s neck as if my life depended on it, which it probably did, and then I dived headfirst down the narrow boxed-in stairway, taking the man down with me. It was a crazy thing to do, especially for someone who had precious little holding his head to his body. But it was my only chance.

I twisted as we fell so that I landed on top of the man, his head taking the full force of the heavy contact with the wall where the stairway turned ninety degrees halfway down. We slithered on to the bottom of the wooden stairs, coming to a halt still locked together by my right arm, which I was still pulling as tightly as I could around his neck. We were lying partially through the leverlatch doorway, our legs still on the stairs, our heads and torsos sticking out into the room beyond.

Even for me on top, and using the man’s body to break my fall, the first impact with the wall had been enough to drive the air from my lungs, but at least my head hadn’t fallen off.

I pulled my arm from under his neck and jumped to my feet, ready to continue the fight, but there was no need. The man lay limply, facedown, where he’d come to rest.

I went quickly to fetch my mother’s collapsible walking stick and then I used it to retrieve the gun from beneath her fridge, hooking it out with the handle.

If the man moved so much as an eyebrow, I thought, I’d shoot him.

I stood over him for what felt like a very long time, pointing the gun at his head and watching for any movement.

But the man didn’t move. Not even to breathe.

Nevertheless, I still didn’t trust him not to jump up and kill me, so I kept the gun pointing at him all the time.

“Claudia,” I shouted as loudly as I could. “Claudia, I need your help.”

I heard the bathroom door being unlocked and then footsteps on the floorboards above my head.

“Has he gone?” Claudia asked from the top of the stairs. It was so dark that she couldn’t even see the man lying right beneath her.

“I think he might be dead,” I said. “But I’m taking no chances, and it’s getting so dark I can hardly see him.”

“I’ve got a flashlight by my bed,” my mother said in a matter-of-fact tone.

I heard her walk along the corridor to her room, then she came back, shining the flashlight brightly down the stairwell.

“Oh my God!” Claudia said, looking down.

In the light we could see that the man’s head was lying almost flat against his right shoulder in a most unnatural position. The man’s neck was clearly broken just as mine had once been.

But, on this occasion, there were no friendly paramedics to apply an immobilizing collar, no one to save his life with prompt and gentle care as there had been for me at Cheltenham racetrack all those years ago.

This man’s broken neck had bumped on down to the bottom of a wooden stairway, all the time being wrenched to one side by my arm.

And it had killed him.

What the hell do we do now?” Claudia said from the top of the stairs.

“Call the police,” I said from the bottom.

“How?”

“I’ll take the car and find somewhere with a signal,” I said.

But there was no way Claudia and my mother were allowing me to go off in the car, leaving them alone in the house with the gunman. Dead or not, they were still very frightened of him, and I can’t say I blamed them.

“Pack up our things,” I said to Claudia. “Mum, pack an overnight bag. No, take enough for a few days. We’re going somewhere else.”

“But why?” my mother asked.

“Because someone sent this man here to kill me and when he finds out that his gunman hasn’t succeeded, that someone might send another to try again.”

Neither of them asked the obvious question: Why was the man trying to kill me? Instead they both quickly went together to pack, taking the flashlight with them and leaving me standing in the dark.

In spite of being pretty certain the man was indeed dead, I didn’t stop listening, holding the gun ready in case he made a miraculous recovery.

I found I was shaking.

I took several deep breaths, but the shaking continued. Perhaps it was from fear, or relief, or maybe it was a reaction to the sudden realization that I had killed a man. Probably a bit of all three.

The shaking continued for several minutes, and I became totally exhausted by it. I wanted to sit down, and I felt slightly sick.

“We’re packed,” Claudia said from upstairs, the flashlight again shining down the stairway.

“Good,” I said. “Pass the things down to me.”

I stepped carefully onto the first few stairs, next to the man’s legs, and reached up as Claudia handed down our bags and my mother’s suitcase.

Next, I guided each of them down in turn, making sure they stepped only on the wood and not on the man.

“Oh my God. Oh my God,” Claudia said, repeating it over and over again, as she came nervously down the stairs, pressing herself against the side while at the same time holding her hands up to ensure she wouldn’t touch the man by mistake.