Blackwater - By Conn Iggulden Page 0,8

I panicked and tried to get up, but I wasn’t wearing shoes and my socks slipped underneath me. I couldn’t do more than make kicking motions in a panic.

There’s a small table and chair in the kitchen. It’s too cramped really, but Carol insisted on being able to use the words ‘breakfast room’ for when we sell the house on. It is her business, after all. That’s the sort of stupid thought that came into my head as Michael dragged me up and dumped me on my own chair. Reasonable force? I’d like to see one of them try it with Michael resting his great fists on my kitchen table.

‘What do you want?’ I said.

‘Have you got whisky?’ he said. I nodded, and out of habit I half rose to get it.

He pressed a hand on my shoulder, holding me down with no trouble at all.

‘You just tell me where,’ he said, looking at the cupboards along the kitchen wall.

‘By the door, there,’ I told him. He would turn and I would reach for one of the knives by the sink behind me.

Instead of following my plan, he reached out and belted me across the face, giving it everything he had. I think I must have blacked out for a while as I lost track of where he was and had to crane my head round, looking for him. He was pouring a little Laphroaig into a glass and everything in the kitchen seemed brighter than usual, like a film.

‘Get out,’ I mumbled at him, feeling ill. Even as I spoke, I felt the acid come back into my mouth. It’s always been the way with me, after some problem with a deteriorating valve. Stomach acid is powerful stuff. I get a blast of it in the back of the throat when I’m frightened or angry, and it burns and burns. There’s a name for the valve problem, but the operation is brutal.

‘I’m not getting out, Davey. You know that,’ he said. I hated him calling me that. My brother and Carol called me Davey, no one else. No one else in my life had known me young enough.

I saw he was wearing black leather gloves to grip the whisky glass. I shook my head to clear it and touched my lips gingerly, trying to feel if they could honestly have swollen as far as they felt. The whole side of my face belonged to someone else. I could only look out of it at him.

‘I don’t want to be doing this, Davey, I want you to believe that,’ Michael said. There was real regret in his eyes, almost a fellow feeling. I hoped to God he wasn’t there to kill me.

‘Doing what?’ I said, terrified. The acid was pooling in my mouth by then, more bitter than vinegar. I wondered what would happen if I spat it into his eyes. Would it burn him the way it seemed to burn me?

‘Giving you a little warning, Davey. And drinking your whisky. Telling you to let her go.’ He seemed almost apologetic as he said the last part.

‘Let who go? Carol?’ I said. I wasn’t thinking well, with my own blood on the table in front of me. It wouldn’t stop dripping out of my nose and I could almost draw loops with it on the pine surface.

‘Someone we both know thinks she may be afraid of leaving you, Davey. I think you and I know that’s not true. You’re not the type, are you, Davey? You’re a sensible sort who won’t make me have to do something more permanent, aren’t you?’

‘She won’t leave me,’ I said, which may be one of the most idiotic things ever to come from my mouth. I should have offered to drive her over to Denis’s house in my own car if Michael would have gone. The thought of his house changed the direction of my spinning thoughts.

‘What about his own wife?’ I demanded. ‘I remember her. What does she have to say about it?’

Michael shook his head, as if saddened by all the world’s troubles. ‘She’s left him, Davey. It hasn’t been good for a while, and I think your wife was the last straw. He’s a free man, Davey. And that’s not good for you, I’m sorry to say.’

‘You’re insane,’ I told him. ‘You can’t just tell a man to leave his wife.’

‘Where do you think she is at the moment, Davey? What do you think she’s doing?’ Michael demanded. ‘This isn’t like