Robert Goddard - Borrowed Time

“The police? Yes. I suppose they’ll have to be called. To clear up the mess. That’s about all they’ve ever done.”

“Why don’t we-”

“Take the key and release him, Robin!” Paul’s voice was unsteady and his hands were shaking enough to joggle the key in his palm.

“OK, OK. Whatever you say.” I reached out and took the key. Then Paul moved smartly aside and waved me past. I stepped over to the bath and glanced down into Naylor’s eyes. Fear and pleading were swirling there. He knew how much was hanging by a thread. But he’d also heard me assure Paul that, whatever happened, his guilt was now incontestable.

“Go on,” said Paul from behind me.

I stooped over the bath and saw the twin keyholes on the shackles. I smelt Naylor’s sweat, souring in the chill air. He was trembling too. And so was I. I looked back at Paul. “We don’t have to do this,” I pleaded. “We really don’t have to.”

“I say we do. Release him. Now.” He moved to the end of the bath and raised the gun again.

“All right.” I held up the key for him to see. “I’m not arguing.” I leant into the bath, steadying the wrist manacles with one hand while I slid the key into the slot with the other. One turn and they snapped open. Naylor shuddered and parted his arms, allowing me to reach the other set and release his ankles. The shackles clanged hollowly against the enamel as they swung free at the end of their chain. I stood up and watched Naylor fall against the side of the bath, then straighten slowly out along it, his limbs uncoiling stiffly, his face grimacing as blood surged back into constricted joints and stretched muscles.

“Satisfied?” Paul asked bitterly. He leant forward and ripped off the strip of tape sealing Naylor’s mouth in a single sweep of the arm. Naylor gave a cry of pain and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, rolling over as if to hide from his torturer. “I hope you are. I hope you all are.” Paul’s voice cracked as he spoke. He stood up, holding the gun oddly in front of him, as if he’d never seen it before, glancing quizzically at it and Naylor and us in turn.

“We should call the police,” said Sarah, fear writhing beneath the superficial logic of her words. “Without delay.” She must have sensed by now what I too had sensed. That madness was streaming in around us like wolves into an undefended camp. None of us was going to get out of this unscathed.

“You disconnected the phone,” said Paul with a strange mirthless chuckle.

“We can use a neighbour’s. It won’t take long.”

“No hurry, then, is there?” He took a deep breath. “Plenty of time, in fact.” Another breath, deeper still. “You left and I should have followed. But I didn’t have the courage.” Tears began to stream down his face. He wasn’t talking to us any more. He wasn’t talking to anyone we could see. But he could see her. Clearly and distinctly. “I’ve found it now, though. This is the only way, isn’t it?” He opened his mouth wide, pushed the barrel of the gun between his jaws, hesitated for a fraction of a second, then pulled the trigger.

The force of the shot blew Paul back against the loo door, which flew wide open. He fell onto his back in the doorway and the gun clattered to the floor at his feet. Blood trickled down the panelling of the door as it creaked back from its stop and came to rest against his shoulder. And more blood-much more-pumped out behind him in a spreading pool. Silence and immobility closed around us-a long frozen moment of jarred senses and delayed reactions.

Followed by the sound of Sarah sobbing. Then movement, rustling and gathering like reality breaking into a dream. I saw Naylor levering himself up and over the rim of the bath, head bowed, eyes trained on Paul’s body. Time stretched elastically in my mind. And Naylor’s intention burst into a realization. We’d told him his release from prison was an illusion we had the means to shatter. But Paul had been alive then. Now he was dead. If his conspirator were to die as well, along with the only other first-hand witness to what they’d done and why, then Naylor might-just might-walk free.

And even if he didn’t, what did two more murders matter to him? They were a risk well worth taking. We’d made him more dangerous than he’d ever been before. We’d turned him into a man with nothing to lose.

I launched myself across the room as he stepped out of the bath and shoulder-barged him with all my weight. Taken off balance with his limbs still rubbery, he fell towards the wall. I raised an arm to help him on his way, but he had the wit to grab my wrist and take me with him. Then his foot slipped on the enamel and I was free of him for as long as it took to drop to my knees and grab the gun from the floor.

I swung round, the gun in my right hand, my forefinger tracing the trigger-guard and sliding towards the trigger itself. Naylor was above me, one leg out of the bath and one in. He stopped when he saw what I was holding, freezing in mid-movement. His face, distorted by the gashes and bruises Paul had inflicted, knotted into a frown. To lunge at me. Or not. To go for broke. Or play for time. The calculations traced their pictograms across his features as I stared up into them.

“Don’t move,” I said hoarsely, rising slowly and carefully to my feet, with the gun pointing straight at him all the time. And he didn’t move. Not so much as a muscle. “Sarah!” I called without taking my eyes from his. I could just make her out at the edge of my sight, a crouched figure in the doorway, arms clasped defensively around her shoulders. But I knew better than to look directly at her. Naylor would seize any chance I gave him, however slight. “Sarah!”

“Y-Yes?”

“Go and call the police.”

“But-”

“Go!”

“All… All right. I’ll be… as quick as I can.”

“Don’t come back here. Wait for them outside. They’ll need directions.”

“Outside? Surely-”

“Get out, Sarah. Get out now.”

She went without another word, perhaps guessing more of my meaning than I’d intended her to. I listened-and watched Naylor listening-to her footfalls as she ran down the passage. We heard the front door of the flat open and shut behind her. Then silence flooded through the empty rooms around us. It was just the two of us now. Just the confrontation-the decisive moment-we’d spent three and a half years feinting and circling and inching towards.

Naylor slowly lifted his other foot out of the bath and lowered it to the floor, his eyes daring me to tell him to stop. But if I told him and he didn’t stop, I had only one sanction. He was testing my resolve, judging what I did-or didn’t-have the nerve for. He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure. And neither was I.

“What happens now?” he asked, the challenge mounting as he spoke.

“We wait for the police.”

He shook his head. “Don’t think so.”

“I say we do. And I have the gun.”

“But you won’t use it. You haven’t got the bottle.”

“Can you be sure of that?”

His gaze narrowed. For a second or two, he weighed the question in his mind, seeking the certainty he needed. Then he said: “Tell you what. I’ll make a deal with you.”

“A deal ?”

“Yeh. You let me climb through the window, with the tape in my pocket, before the Old Bill turn up… and we’ll call it quits.”

“Why should I?”

“’Cos if you don’t, when they do turn up, I’ll say you were in on it. I’ll say three people took me prisoner and tortured me and threatened to kill me-and you were one of ’em. Abduction. Assault. Conspiracy. Christ knows what. You could be looking at quite a few years inside.”

“They wouldn’t believe you.”