Blackwater - By Conn Iggulden Page 0,13

way this was going and began to warm to the theme. ‘She’ll hate you if you even bruise me, Mr Tanter. You should have that clear in your head. I can’t see a happy ending here unless you just leave.’

He sat back and seemed to ponder this for a while.

‘I see what you mean, Mike. He sits there as cool as you like with his arse out in the wind.’ I saw Michael smile behind Denis’s back. I wasn’t completely sure what the phrase meant either, by the way. If it meant vulnerable, that was about right.

Denis stood up, and I felt a spike of sudden hope that he was going to take my advice. He nodded to me.

‘You are a sick little man, David. You’ve turned a wonderful woman into a twisted, fragile… I don’t know what she is. You might be right about killing you, or it might be the one thing she needs to really wash you off her skin, you know what I mean? Just seeing you sitting there looking so smug makes me angry, David. I think you have a hold over her, like those men who beat women and somehow they still come back. I don’t understand it. However, I’m not the sort to walk away from things I don’t understand, David. I am a stubborn man.’

He said it like it was something he’d said a hundred times before, like he was proud of it. I could only stare blankly at him as he walked around Michael and stood at the other end of the kitchen. The room felt cramped with those two blocking the door.

‘I’ll stay to watch, Mike, if you don’t mind,’ Denis said.

‘How far do you want me to go?’ Michael asked, his eyes on mine.

Denis thought for a moment.

‘I’ll want to have another crack at this when she comes back, so keep it all under his clothes, all right? Teach him something. Break a couple of fingers, but hide the rest.’

I began to yell then, though I knew the neighbours would all be at work. There was no one to help me.

CHAPTER FIVE

I MANAGED TO GET myself to Brighton General hospital to have my hand splinted. I thought they’d ask me all sorts of difficult questions, but they simply made me wait for six hours just to be told that the X-rays showed two broken fingers. The first thing I’d said to the nurse on reception was, ‘I have two broken fingers,’ but I didn’t mind. They had given me painkillers, and I’ve always liked the building. It used to be a workhouse in Victorian times, and I like that sense of history. Anyway, it was warm inside and there was a machine to get cups of orange-coloured tea. After all the trouble I’d had getting there, I made the most of it. Steering with one hand isn’t a problem, but changing gear and steering is a nightmare.

I think if anyone had been nice to me I might have asked for help, or gone to the police, perhaps. The doctors were too busy to want more than a glance at someone with my kind of problems. Even the nurse who did the bandaging didn’t ask how it had happened. She was flustered and tired and she had a bright line of sweat where her hair met her forehead. I found my gaze focusing on it while she worked on me. It must be a strange thing to spend your day with people who have been really hurt. They say policemen think everyone is a criminal. I wonder if doctors think everyone is just a bag of skin and bones waiting to burst apart all over them. I saw some blood on the linoleum floor while I was there, though it was cleaned up so I stopped my mental letter to the local paper.

I think it was then that I thought of writing to my brother. I was a bit woozy from the painkillers and I had a prescription for more. There was a small leak of acid into my mouth, but when I swallowed it back it stayed down, to my relief. I couldn’t go home and I couldn’t find my car keys. I knew I’d driven to the hospital, but the damn things had walked somewhere between the reception and the waiting room and the X-ray waiting room and the X-ray machine and the nurses’ station and all the other places they’d sent me. I couldn’t bear to