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

The first thing I did was haul him off the chair and away from the table. I laid him out on the floor in the recovery position elaborated in so many diary-backs. He was snoring thickly by then.

I had had a set ideal of what must be done and how I must operate afterwards. I hadn’t had space to plan beyond it. I couldn’t now.

For one thing I had no real notion of how long he might be out.

My success in overcoming him still… disturbed me. He had been omnipotent one minute, and now there he lay, at my mercy. I could kill him easily. I saw that. Perhaps I had anyway, but I didn’t really think so. He was young and fit, big and strong. He would get over it.

I keep all my important personal documents in a folder in the study, another “fussy” habit of my father’s, rather a good one. (He it was, on the rare celebrations when he drank it, who never liked to mix two bottles of wine in one glass, even the same wine. To me, although I never bothered to adhere to the practice before tonight, this seems to demonstrate a certain common sense. Bottles vary.)

My overnight bag came down from the top of the wardrobe.

I put in what I might need for three or four nights, the ordinary paraphernalia – pants, socks, shirts, toothbrush, shaving kit and so on. Any spare cash I drew from the box. There was only seventy pounds, but I had my cards. My passport and birth-certificate I took, and bank and building society details, including the deeds to the house. Cheque books and other financial extras were added, even the used stubs of cheques and payments to me. I wanted nothing left that he could find.

I don’t keep personal letters, the very few I receive. Business emails were mundane enough but too I always delete those. Like several of my species, that is the well over forty-fives, I avoid buying or paying on the net.

From the desk top drawer I took up any discs I’d burned relevant to my work. Among these naturally was the great lumbering tome Untitled, plus the notes for the latest ‘project’. Despite abandoning my house to God knew what, I selected none of my published books. There was only one I had ever been at all fond of, in retrospect, Last Orders, and that was still in print.

Then I set the computer to wipe all remaining data.

I employ passwords for every file, but nevertheless I was taking no chances.

As I’ve said, I’d had no plan beyond my plan. It might all have gone wrong anyway and never reached this stage, since he might have caught me out putting the sedatives in the wine and beaten me up, or worse.

Last prudent thought, I went next door to the bedroom again and took a sweater and a jacket. After that I went out and locked the bedroom door. It had had a key ever since I was thirteen, a perceptive unique act of politesse on the part of my parents. But anyone could break down a door, and anyway there was nothing there of any import. The study, with the buzz of complete deletion going on, I left open. I had everything from there either valuable or pertinent to my life. I turned all the lights off and pulled every plug, except that of the machine. Downstairs the same.

In the kitchen my guest snored on. He was quieter now. In sleep he didn’t look distressed. He looked very young, softer. Perhaps I’d misjudged his age from his street-wise bolshiness, his very insanity. He could be under thirty even.

Scrupulously I emptied the last wine in the sink and rinsed out the glasses and both bottles and then slung the latter in the bin. I’d previously swilled the remaining sleeping pills down the lavatory; they were well on their way to pollute the sea by now. (“No, officer. He just collapsed, quite suddenly. Perhaps he’d had something before he came here. He did drink a lot of wine. At least six glasses.”)

I disconnected the fridge and freezer next. The food, what there was of it, would doubtless go off quite quickly.

I took the sandwich bag from the drawer that contained his note, and added to it the fork he’d used at dinner.

Once I had turned out the kitchen light and the outside light, I picked up my holdall and checked my mobile was in my jacket pocket, which it was. Then, in the hall, I ripped the cord out of the telephone and smashed the receiver on the wall twice.

Going from the house on to the front path I paused a moment, looking up and down. The curtains of 73 were drawn, a rosy pink. Elsewhere I could see the steely flicker of TV screens and, in upper rooms, computers. Outside No 80 the man with the paunch who smoked cigars was indulging in one, and animatedly discussing something with the man with the paunch from No 82, whose wife had made him dig and line the lily pond.

They paid no attention to me. I could hear traffic along the high street, and further off a distant train.

I shut the door but did not double-lock it.

In one of the budding oak trees something stirred, or seemed to. Nothing was visible, even in the denuding glare of the streetlamps.

Turning away, I walked towards the Crescent, and the station.

The Belmont is one of those smaller hotels, and lies in the back-doubles behind Langham Place. It had quite a bit of gilt, and mirrors in the lifts, and jazzy carpets that to tired eyes resemble a dropped jigsaw, but it was very comfortable. I had stayed there quite a few times after various obligatory publishing do’s. Now and then a particularly flush publisher had even covered my expenses there, although never, it had always been stressed, my bar bill.