To Indigo, Tanith Lee [best ereader for comics .TXT] 📗

“Oh, not your wife, then?”

I swore inwardly. Damn him. Damn him, after all that he had tripped me.

I said, “My wife does some of it, but she broke her leg last year. I prefer her not to do too much.”

“Oh dear. And now she’s at the hospital, waiting for you.”

“Yes.”

“You think I won’t let you go?”

“Will you, Joseph?” I used his name deliberately. But to use it was demoralizing to me, as if I were an extreme arachnophobe forced to say Spider. Spider.

“Well not just yet perhaps. I want to get to know you a bit more, first. But why don’t you call her? Surely she has a mobile. Explain you may be late.”

“Use of mobiles is not allowed inside a hospital.”

“True. But couldn’t you leave a message? She’ll check for messages, won’t she? No? Well, it’s difficult.” He seemed concerned. “I wonder what we can do.”

It occurred to me it was fruitless to permit more play to him on this. “Forget it,” I said. “She’ll think I couldn’t make it. She’ll probably call.”

“Probably. And then you can tell her.”

“And what do I say, Joseph?”

“An old friend has turned up and detained you. Or I suppose we could both go to the hospital. Would you prefer that?”

“I don’t think either Lynda, or her sick mother…”

“I could always wait outside the ward.”

“Joseph,” I said, “I don’t want you to go to the hospital. I don’t actually want you in this house, but here you are. Let’s keep to that limit, shall we?”

“What if Lynda comes back?”

“She will of course come back, and my son will be with her.”

“And your son’s girlfriend,” Joseph reminded me helpfully.

“Veronica…” the first name I could now lay mental hands on, “may not be coming back. Just my wife and son.”

“Your son,” said Joseph. “What’s his name?”

My mind went blank. Then it cleared.

“I called him after my father,” I said with warped truth. “William.”

“But it’s rather strange isn’t it, I think so, that your neighbours never mentioned your wife to me?”

“Why should they? You were talking to them about me.”

“Well next door, for example. The old couple. I implied you weren’t – quite yourself, shall I say. Wouldn’t they recommend we try to get hold of her, your nearest and dearest? They might assume, quite reasonably, if I was your son, I was Lynda’s son too.”

I didn’t reply. What could I say?

Joseph smiled.

Abruptly he said, “Why don’t you stop calling me Joseph and use my preferred nickname? I made it up myself when I was a child. Sej. Call me Sej.”

Something in me pressed me to ask, “Why Sej?”

For a moment he seemed enigmatic, in possession of a secret, the way children are, when they think they know something important you have no idea of. But he answered at once. “Third and fourth letters of my name, with the capital J placed at the end.”

To a psychologist this might be revealing. I am not one.

On the shelf by the dog the clock now showed as twenty past five. He glanced at it. Engaging as a child – again – if not the cunning, demonic child he might – must – have been when a true child he was – Joseph-Sej asked me, “What’s for supper?”

I’d forgotten them.

In a way not quite absurd, since I had taken only one, and not gone back for more. They were sleeping tablets prescribed by my GP for a particularly bad spell of insomnia three years ago. But that one I took, although I had forgone my nightly single whisky or glass of wine, and I had slept nine hours, made me feel nauseous and rotten for twenty-four hours after. One should flush unwanted medications down the lavatory. Had I meant to? Or had I known, on some ridiculous ‘magical reality’ inner level that, three years after, I might need to have kept hold of them?

They were in the bathroom cabinet, pushed behind the elastoplast and spare flask of shaving foam. Three years out of date, but they would still have a kick in them. They’d better have. They were all I’d got.

Of course it occurred to me he might have seen them. Opening up a personal cabinet would be nothing to one like Joseph Sej Traskul. Conceivably he’d taken the Grande Tour of the upper storey and looked in every closed-off place. Then again these tablets were fairly anonymous, and stuffed behind other items. It seemed to me nothing had been moved.

Preparation was another matter. But as I keep repeating, I write that kind of book. (Which also a police investigation would swiftly dig up. Culpable through prior plotting. At this point I did not care).

Capsules that could be broken would have been easier, but I removed six tablets, and put them in the bath. Then I got in and ground them to powder under the heel of my shoe. Lack of hygiene after all was not a consideration. I kept rubber gloves for my cleaner in a box by the basin. I took one out, scooped up and put the dust of the tablets into the thumb of the glove, tied it off and cut it free with the nail scissors. Into my pocket it went. The rest of the glove I shredded and hid in the heap of socks in the laundry basket. He might investigate there, but perhaps he already had and decidedly it wouldn’t be somewhere to search from choice. The last trace of powder I wiped from the bath with toilet paper and then flushed.

Having washed my hands, I left the bathroom and went down.

He hadn’t made any objection to my going upstairs. Maybe he kept an eye on the front door. Now he was standing in the doorway of the other downstairs room, reading a book. This used to be a dining-room but for years it’s been my library. The book he was reading, or pretending to read, was Treasure Island. But he glanced up and said, casually, “You have a lot of