The Detection Collection. Simon Brett

the absence from home of her parents, he had bullied her into letting him stay. But, having gone to the point of actually catching a Swindon train, in case he was being kept under observation, he got off as soon as he could – the train, unfortunately, was nonstop to Chippenham – and hurryingly returned.

      At home he told Alice why he was there. Tearfully, she thanked him.

      ‘But – but if he comes, what are you going to do?’ she said. ‘You’d have to have a gun to stop that brute.’

      ‘I wouldn’t dare use a gun, even if I did have one. I wouldn’t actually properly know how.’

      ‘But then, darling …?’

      ‘No, we’ll just have to wait and see. He may not come, you know. He may have just wanted to scare you by leaving one of those toothbrushes of his.’

      ‘I suppose so, but …’

      ‘Well, we’ll see. At least I’m here with you.’

      So they waited. They were too tense when it came to supper time even to think of eating anything.

      Darkness fell, and they sat on, where they were in their usual armchairs, one on either side of the mute telly.

      ‘I don’t think we’ll even have the News,’ Henry said at last, dry-mouthed.

      ‘No. No, we must be ready to hear the least sound.’

      That least sound came a little later. A slight but unmistakable noise from the front door. Henry knew at once exactly what it was.

      I must have read about it somewhere, he thought. It’s the faint scratching made by a thin plastic card being forced into the crack between door and jamb and worked up and down to push back the tongue of the lock. But why ever didn’t I think of putting the snib down? Because, I suppose, we never do that. We never have. That must be how, before, he …

      ‘It’s him,’ Alice breathed, taut with anxiety.

      It was.

      He was there just beyond the door, plain to see in the light of the hall. Slab-faced, bulkily tall, a somehow American buff-coloured raincoat hanging from his shoulders. He glared into the darkened room. Then gave a little jerk back.

      ‘Hey, it’s Mr Hubby. Life’s full of surprises, I guess.’

      But, beyond that, he did not seem in any way put out. He took an idle step forward towards Alice, crammed against the back of her chair as if she was pasted to it.

      ‘You wanna watch, Mr Hubby?’

      Henry found he had risen up from his chair, even while he still felt he was fixed as fast into it as Alice was into hers.

      He took three quaking strides and put himself between her and the menacing intruder.

      Who moved both his arms towards him in a scooping gesture, as if he intended to lift this air-light object out of the way. But Henry’s hand dived into his inner pocket, and brought out that big, white, spatula-like toothbrush.

      ‘Yours, I believe,’ he said, however creakingly. ‘Kindly take it and go.’

      Curtiss Boyer laughed. A wide, mouth-open guffaw.

      And Henry struck.

      He sent the alien toothbrush shooting forward straight into that softly red, yawning crater.

      With a howl of rage and pain, Curtiss Boyer staggered back.

      But he was not quelled for long.

      His eyes widened in fury. Or perhaps in delight.

      ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Little man, you’ve asked for it.’

      One lunging step forwards.

      And from behind came an authoritative voice.

      ‘Stop just where you are. You’re under arrest. Citizen’s arrest.’

      A burly, brown-suited figure stepped quickly in, took an elbow in a holdfast grip.

      ‘Caught up with you on the Net,’ he said. ‘Policeman’s Friend. Not that I’m a proper copper any more. Still, mate of mine from those days is on his way. DI now. Make everything regular. Oh, and, Henry, you’d better put that toothbrush somewhere safe. Be needed in evidence.’

       THE SUN, THE MOON AND THE STARS

      John Harvey

      Eileen had done everything she could to change his mind. ‘Michael,’ she’d said, ‘anywhere else, okay? Anywhere but there.’ Michael Sandler, not his real name, not even close. But in the end she’d caved in, just as he’d known she would.

      Thirty-three by not so many months and going nowhere; thirty-three, though she was still only owning up to twenty-nine.

      When he’d met her she’d been a receptionist in a car showroom south of Sheffield, something she’d blagged her way into and held down for the best part of a year; fine until the head of sales had somehow got a whiff of her past employment, some potential customer who’d seen her stripping somewhere most likely, and tried wedging his podgy fingers up inside her skirt one evening late. Eileen had kneed him in the balls, then hit him with a solid glass ashtray high across the face, close to taking out an eye. She hadn’t bothered waiting for her cards. She’d been managing a sauna, close to the city centre, when Michael had found her. In at seven, check the towels, make sure the plastic had been wiped down, bottles of massage oil topped up, the come washed from the walls; once the girls arrived, first shift, ready to catch the early punters on their way to work, she’d examine their hands, ensure they’d trimmed their nails; uniforms they took home and washed, brought back next day clean as new or she’d want the reason why.

      ‘Come on,’ Michael had said, ‘fifty minutes down the motorway. It’s not as if I’m asking you to fucking emigrate.’ Emigration might have been easier. She had memories of Nottingham and none of them good. But then, looking round at the tatty travel posters and old centrefolds from Playboy on the walls, he’d added, ‘What? Worried a move might be bad for your career?’

      It hadn’t taken her long to pack her bags, turn over the keys. Fifty minutes on the motorway. A house like a barn, a palace, real paintings on the walls.

      When he came home earlier than usual one afternoon and found her sitting in the kitchen, polishing the silver while she watched Richard and Judy on the small TV, he snatched the cloth from her hands. ‘There’s people paid for that, not you.’

      ‘It’s something to do.’

      His nostrils flared. ‘You want something to do, go down the gym. Go shopping. Read a fucking book.’

      ‘Why?’ she asked him later that night, turning towards him in their bed.

      ‘Why what?’

      ‘Why am I here?’

      He didn’t look at her. ‘Because I’m tired of living on my own.’

      He was sitting propped up against pillows, bare-chested, thumbing through the pages of a climbing magazine. Eileen couldn’t imagine why: anything more than two flights of stairs and he took the lift.

      The light from the lamp on his bedside table shone a filter of washed-out blue across the patterned quilt and the curtains stirred in the breeze from the opened window. One thing he insisted on, one of many, sleeping with at least one of the windows open.

      ‘That’s not enough,’ Eileen said.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Enough of a reason for me being here. You being tired of living alone.’