me into trouble.’ The voice was a growl in the throat.
I knew that any tenseness in my body would react on him and screw him up even tighter, but it took a fair amount of concentration to relax every muscle with him out of sight behind my head. I tried to make my voice slow, thoughtful, persuasive, but my mouth was as dry as a Sunday in Salt Lake City.
‘Vic started it,’ I said. ‘Vic and you. Now it’s Vic and Ronnie North. You and I… we’ve both come off worst with Vic…’
He reappeared jerkily into my field of vision. The carrot hair looked bright orange under the electric bulb. His eyes alternately shone with manic fire when the light caught them and receded into secretive shadows when he bent his head. Sophie’s remarks about gelignite on the boil came back to me; and his instability had if anything increased.
‘Cigarette?’ I suggested.
‘Get stuffed.’
It was better when I could see him.
I said ‘What have you told the police?’
‘Nothing. Bloody nothing.’
‘Did they get you to make a statement?’
‘That they bloody did not.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘That simplifies things.’
‘What the hell are you on about?’
I watched the violence and agitation in every physical movement. It was as if his muscles and nerves were acting in spasms, as if some central disorganisation were plucking wires.
I said, ‘What is upsetting you most?’
‘Most?’ he yelled. ‘Most? The fact that you’re bloody walking in here as cool as bloody cucumbers, that’s what. I tried to kill you. Kill you.’
He stopped as if he couldn’t explain what he meant, but he’d got his message across to me loud and clear. He had taken himself beyond the edge of sense in his compulsion to do me harm, and there I was, proving that it had all been for nothing. I guessed that he badly needed not to have failed entirely. I took off my jacket and explained about the strap and buckle saving my life. I undid my shirt, showed him the plaster, and told him what lay underneath.
‘It hurts,’ I said truthfully.
He stopped pacing and peered closely at my face. ‘Does it?’
‘Yes.’
He put out his hand and touched me. I winced.
He stood back, bent and picked up the chair he’d thrown, set it on its feet on the far side of the table, and sat down opposite me. He stretched for the packet of cigarettes and lighter which I’d left lying, and lit one with hands still shaking with tension.
I left my shirt undone and falling open. He sat smoking jerkily, his eyes flicking every few seconds to the strip of plaster. It seemed to satisfy him. To reassure. Finally to soothe. He smoked the whole cigarette through without speaking, but the jerky movements gradually quietened, and by the time he threw the stub on the floor and twisted his foot on it the worst of the jangle had disappeared.
‘I’ll make a bargain with you,’ I said.
‘What bargain?’
‘I’ll say the pitchfork was an accident.’
‘You know bloody well it wasn’t.’
‘I know. You know. The police know. But there were no witnesses… If I swear it was an accident there would be no question of you being even charged with attempted murder, let alone tried and convicted.’
He thought it over. There were a lot of little twitches in the muscles of his face, and the skin stretched gauntly over the cheekbones.
‘You don’t actually want to do time, do you?’ I asked.
‘No.’
‘Suppose we could get you off all the hooks… Assault, fraud, the lot.’
‘You couldn’t.’
‘I could keep you out of jail, that’s for sure.’
A long pause. Then he said, ‘A bargain. That means you want something in return.’
‘Mm.’
‘What, then?’
I ran my tongue round my teeth and took my time over replying.
‘I want…’ I said slowly, ‘I want you to talk about the way you and Vic tried to make me join your ring.’
He was surprised. ‘Is that all?’
‘It’ll do for a start.’
‘But you know. You know what Vic said to you.’
‘I don’t know what he said to you.’
He shrugged in bewilderment. ‘He just said if you wouldn’t go along with us, we’d break you.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘The price of your freedom is every word, every scrap of conversation that you can remember. Especially everything about that ally of Vic’s who got my stable burned.’
‘I told you… I don’t know.’
‘If you want to get out of here, you’re going to have to do better than that.’
He stared across the table. I saw his understanding of my offer deepen. He looked briefly round the