Shooting in the Dark

can feel the pressure as it passes my temples on its way to oxygenate the brain. There is movement inside the house and I have to keep telling myself to breathe as my ears strain to hear the approaching footsteps. It is not Angeles Falco’s voice that I hear: ‘Someone at the door. I’ll get it.’
    The latch is lifted and like something out of the storybooks we had as children, I am bathed in the soft light from the hallway. The woman looks at me and smiles and in the same instant she recognizes me. Angeles Falco’s voice comes floating down the stairs: ‘No, don’t answer it.’ There is despair in her voice.
    As the woman who has opened the door is rearranging her facial expression - from a happy smile of welcome to something between revulsion and sheer terror -1 move in. I go for her throat but the needle actually enters the side of her neck. I shoot a dose of the drug into her and she pulls away. For a moment I wonder if I have injected any of the substance into her, but I don’t have to wonder for long.
    ‘What have you done?’ she asks. She’s looking at the syringe in my hand. She raises her hand to her neck and looks at it. But already I can see the drug going to work. She totters for a moment, then falls into the pile of the carpet.
    I have a back-up syringe but I’m not going to need it. The one I am carrying is still more than half-full.
    Soft footsteps on the stairs. ‘Janet, who is it? Is there someone there?’ I stand by the fallen body and hold my breath. She comes around the corner, into the hallway, and stops dead. Her feet are bare. She cannot see anything. She feels that something is wrong but she doesn’t know what it is. ‘Janet?’ She speaks the woman’s name quietly. She knows I have come for her and she doesn’t want me to hear.
    She is so close to me that I can see the network of small creases around her eyes. I can hear the way her respiration has become jerky and unreliable. Her lips are trembling and I can smell whisky. If I stretch out my arm towards her, still holding my breath, the point of the syringe is only half a metre from her neck. She takes an involuntary step backwards, her blind eyes staring, her nostrils flaring. She is like a thoroughbred filly spooked by a wolf.
    To fight or take flight. This is the age-old formula with which she is faced. All animals display the same characteristics when they are trapped. But most animals know what it is that they have to fight, and they know from what they have to flee. This woman knows nothing. Except, perhaps, that she cannot win. That whatever she does will lead to the same result.
    She takes another step backwards and moves her right arm towards the phone. She picks it up and holds it to her ear. Another flash of panic crosses her face. She depresses the hook-switch and listens again. The silence gags her, it sends a tremor of certainty through her body.
    ‘I’ve come to collect,’ I tell her.
    She drops the telephone, lets it slip out of her hand, but she doesn’t move. Her hand remains where it was, near her face, as if she was still holding the instrument. ‘Who are you? Where’s Janet?’
    I don’t reply. She knows who I am. I take a step towards her and she reaches for the wall. ‘Where’s Janet? What have you done with her?’
    ‘Take three steps forward,’ I tell her. ‘Short ones, or you’ll stand on her.’
    She hesitates. She moves forward by feeling the area in front of her with her toes. It is as if I had directed her through a maze or an area of open country littered with animal traps. She is fearful that a set of iron claws will snap around her legs. She takes the third step and nudges the inert body with her foot. She comes with a tiny cry and falls to her knees. Her hands are on the woman’s face. She cradles her head, relieved that Janet is still alive, that she can feel her breathing, however lightly.
    ‘What have you done to her?’ she asks. ‘What do you want of me?’
    I can reach her easily now. I push the point of the syringe into the back of her neck and depress the plunger. ‘You bastard,’ she says. ‘Leave us alone.’
    She goes down like a tree. Within a few seconds there is a mound of unconscious female flesh in front of me.
    I open the front door and bring in the lump hammer, the crowbar, the screwdriver and the rope. I drop the latch and lock the door with the mortise lock as well; good-quality stuff, several levers to impede the most determined thief.
    They are like