15. A GUN IN THE NIGHT

THE FANCY DRESS BALL (15)

“If what you’ve just said is true then we must get after Jessica,” said Cynthia thoughtfully, “the child’s got it all wrong. I’ll have to straighten the silly child out.”

“The child isn’t a child any longer, mum,” protested Dakota, “and I think you’ll find she needs more than a slapped leg to be brought into line.”

“Where did Jeffery and I go wrong?” asked Cynthia, more of herself than of us, “we did our best to bring her up … she did well at school, she’s got a place at a good university and is doing well..”

“You did nothing wrong, Cynthia,” I said quietly, knowing what a loving and devoted mother she had been. There was a great deal more to the woman close to tears in front of me than long flowing hair and the looks of Lady Godiva. I knew that. And Jeffery. For all his laid back ways he had always been a good father to the twins.

“There must have been some point, some moment. I mean, she had a gun, for goodness’ sake! Where did she get that from? We don’t have guns in our home. Jeffery would never allow it!”

I looked at her, her grief, the way reality had soiled her, and would have hugged her until she couldn’t take any more hugging had Dakota not been there. But as it was I shook my head sadly. I knew only too well that there were more guns in the country than enough. In my mind one was one more than enough but there are a number of wannabe gangsters out there to whom a gun ought be the tool of his trade. And somehow Jessica had found her way to one, somehow.

“There’s not one of us who can live the lives for our offspring,” I said, “because if we could then my poor, innocent little Tiffany would still be alive on the world and not dead in the graveyard. No, Jessica is her own spirit and what road she’s learned to travel down is absolutely no fault of yours.”

“But she’s my sister and I always thought we were as one,” whispered Dakota, “it’s what twins are, two for one and one for two...”

“All that’s well enough, but not the point,” I said, “Tiffany’s on the rise, the old forces of crime and dominance, that is. I’ve suspected it for some time, the way powerful men seem to be capable of all manner of crooked decisions, and no come-back. Even the press ignores news of them, journalists who ought to know better even praise decisions that are, to say the least, questionable. The old forces are back at work and they’ve somehow managed to source the originator of the image of Tiffany that was everywhere a decade ago. And they’ve gone one stage further. They’ve found Jessica, they’ve recruited her somehow, and even now are using her to their advantage. But she’s no longer an image of a pretty girl with a radiant smile but a walking, talking, breathing pretty woman.”

“But why now?” asked Dakota, “aren’t things bad enough with the dreadful lock down and this pandemic?”

“Besides the fact that its’ actually helpful to them, having a population constantly alert for danger, it’s probably more to do with the fact that a lot of the original crooks are out of jail,” I said, a sudden imagined hand gripping my heart, “and they’re after one thing. That’s what this evenings fancy dress ball was all about. They’ve done their time, sacrificed a few years of their lives, and now that they’re free and with hearts filled with bitterness they want to destroy what they perceive as the reason for that loss. They know who to blame. They want to kill me!”

“That can’t be true,” protested Cynthia, “why you? All you did was write a few articles about them, it was they who were crooks, not you.”

“Drawing attention to them and their wider plans,” I said slowly, “All along I could sniff more than I was writing. It was about more than money, more than a few dead teenagers with their brains addled by toxic chemicals, more than a robbery here or a gemstone heist there. It had to do with the systematic changes a handful of powerful folk wanted to make to society itself and disguise it as a crime wave that will go away.

“Democracy’s bad for criminals, for those who want to take what they can and to hell with everyone else. I could smell it in the air back then, and I can smell it now. And to me, Jessica just proved it, the conviction in her voice. Look, let’s get back to the fancy dress do if it’s still on, what with all the police there chasing up attempted murders, because I want to see Jeffrey and I dared say you want to get home, the two of you. We’ll take my car and I’ll drive. It’ll be safer than walking.”

Oh what a blind and short-sighted fool I was saying that!

My car was in my garage and I eased it out.

“Wait until I’m out before you try to squeeze in,” I advised them.

I always had to ease the vehicle out because there was barely room for it to squeeze past gate posts that had been there, it seemed, since the year dot and probably planted with horses in mind rather than modern cars. But experience was in control as I skilfully found my way onto the road. I looked both ways but there was only one other vehicle anywhere near us so I set off gently once the two women were in their seats, Cynthia in the front next to me and Dakota on a back seat.

“Nice car,” she said, lightening the mood. That was so much like that representative of the Absinthe twins.

But we hadn’t gone more than a dozen yards when the other vehicle revealed itself for what it was as it slowly, though no doubt at its maximum speed, overtook us.

I looked sideways and saw the same two masked and grim-faced men sitting in the front seat of a milk float, the same milk float we had seen on the park, and as the electric vehicle strove to pass us I saw, quite clearly, the passenger as he carefully drew a gun and aimed it at us, a handgun not unlike the one Jessica had threatened us with. His face was covered by a mask, none too clean, I thought, when it comes to protecting its wearer from a virus that is rampantly doing its round of humanity.

In a split second I knew what was going to happen.

Then “duck!” I shrieked, and I pushed my foot onto the accelerator in order to accelerate ahead and leave the milk float behind us, but I was a moment too late as the gun fired, a deafening crack and a bullet smashed through the window just behind my neck, and plunged into the living flesh of sweet young Dakota as she struggled to see what was happening.

And Cynthia screamed.

© Peter Rogerson 01.08.20