[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.All of a sudden, the true Sean was coming through.There was nothing charming about him now.‘You got off lightly, boy.I could have made it much harder for you.Could have sent that lovely wife of yours off to hang around the red light district for a while.Could have sent those photos at a time when you were at your desk, and had them showing some kid having sex with a goat.I could have made this a whole lot worse for you, but I didn’t because it didn’t suit my purpose.You were working for me, after all.’He was up on his feet by this time and he took a couple of strides away before turning back to face me.‘The fact is,’ he continued, with a sneer, the anger in his voice rising by the second, ‘that I don’t need your friendship that much.You’ve got your beautiful wife and your lovely house and your perfect existence, and you have absolutely no fuckin’ right to be higher in the rankings than me just because I was late for a tournament!’I just stood there with my mouth open.He had done this because of fencing?I had heard enough.It was time to end this, once and for all.I turned and looked down the slope to where a line of cars was parked at the edge of the street about a hundred yards away.‘Did you get all that, Derek?’ I said, without raising my voice at all.The headlights on the first of the cars flashed twice.He had got the whole thing.‘Rifle microphone,’ I said, turning back to Sean.‘Picks everything up, clear as a bell, right out to two hundred metres.Anything you want to add to what you’ve just said?’A look crossed his face as it dawned on him what I had done.It was the second time I had seen that expression in three days, and I didn’t like it any more this time than the first.As he launched himself forward, his murderous intent quite plain, I dived sideways and over the bench.I had made a point of wearing a tracksuit, whilst Sean, dressed in his work clothes of pinstripe suit and heavy overcoat, couldn’t move anything like as fast as I could.I hit the ground on the far side and rolled, then dived back toward the bench and plunged my arm into the pile of leaves which had been raked up against its base, my hand closing on the object I had left there earlier just as he came around its far end.As I stood up he saw what I was holding and stopped dead in his tracks.An epee, as a piece of sporting equipment, has only limited potential for harm.The spring loaded tip sees to that.An epee with the tip unscrewed and removed, on the other hand, is an entirely different matter.The tiny, threaded end of the blade will meet with virtually no resistance when it encounters human skin.A tipless epee will easily go through a person and out the other side, and Sean well knew it.‘Look,’ I said, finally feeling as though I was the one in control.‘I’ve got an epee and you haven’t.’He said nothing, but turned and strode off into the night.EighteenI glanced at my watch again, and looked around the pedestrian precinct for her.She should have been there ten minutes earlier.It was an inconvenience, I suppose, but nothing more than that.Not like the whole business with Doktor Chuckles, the real Doktor Chuckles, four months earlier.No, back then if she had been late like this I would have gone absolutely frantic.But now it was all well and truly over.We never had to worry about Sean and his sick games any more.The whole thing had really come to light in the weeks following the business in Copenhagen.Derek’s detective work, and the recording he had made of my conversation with Sean, had been one of the most compelling strands to the investigation which the police had finally been obliged to undertake.On searching his flat, they uncovered a wealth of evidence about his activities over several years.When I found out the truth I was shocked, and realised Sue and I had got off lightly.There was no denying it, Sean was a seriously deranged individual whose true nature had only really been revealed when he went a little too far during the Doktor Chuckles affair [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]