Just as he'd promised, or threatened, Frank did get in contact later that same day. Danny had flown back early from Scotland and been home for half an hour. In the changing room he'd found a solution to the wayward robot problem. He'd picked up a few spare bunny-suits and laid them down in a crescent around his working area, as a barrier for the robots' small wheels. He'd felt like a laboratory rat solving problems in Dan's maze.
If only he could find such simple protection against Frank, who appeared to be getting stronger every day. The only weakness he could see in Frank was a kind of emotional vacuum, but that wasn't much to go on. He was still mulling over the issue when the phone rang, quite strangely, with slightly irregular gaps
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between the double trills. He knew immediately who the call was from, and that he'd have to answer it before Sharon realised something was wrong with the sound.
They were lying on the sofa, Sharon with her head on his chest, watching the late afternoon news. Danny usually tried to avoid this half hour of sound-bites, vox-pop, politicians' meaningless answers and recitals live on locations where there was nothing to see, but today he was forcing himself to cope. Sharon had had a bad day.
Danielle's condition had deteriorated rapidly, so much so that Dr Russell had brought Sharon in urgently to have authority for medical consent transferred while her sister was still able to sign her name. Three hours later, Danielle was in ICU
on the danger list, her blood building up contaminants so fast that neither her kidneys nor the dialysis machine could cope. Worse still, nobody could work out why.
Frank didn't waste any time on preamble.
"Danny, we need to make arrangements."
"Not now."
"Yes, now. I've been generous, given you more than a day."
This was awkward. Sharon's ear was so close to the handset that she could surely hear Frank's word's as well as his own.
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"I'll call you back."
"No, you'll go to your computer and log on."
Sharon, hearing a conversation that couldn't be mixed with a cuddle, rose from his chest without being asked. Danny stood up and brought the handset and cradle across to the stool of the unused piano. He contemplated moving to the dining room, but this wouldn't take long.
"Listen…"
"You'll need some help with this. I suggest you get in touch with Eric."
"That won't be necessary, because nothing is going to happen."
Frank paused. "Are you trying to turn me down, Danny?"
"Absolutely."
"Then I suppose we'll have to do this the hard way. What a pity."
Here we go again, thought Danny, the familiar sequence of refusals and threats. But this was one area where he definitely wouldn't be giving in. Frank, digital or not, would be having nothing to do with Sharon.
"You said you wanted to be left alone,"
said Frank, clearly annoyed.
"Yes."
"I'll see what can be arranged."
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And he rang off.
That could have gone a lot worse, thought Danny. He'd never managed to get rid of Frank so quickly before.
"Well done," said Sharon, who must have assumed the conversation was to do with work.
"I've never heard you so brutal with anybody before."
"Hmm."
She rose slightly, inviting him to slot back into place behind her. Before the interruption of the phone call, their cuddle had been heading towards sex. Not immediate sex, but sex as its ultimate destination, to be reached in 40 minutes or so, little hand movements and noises from Sharon writing it up there on the destination board, but as more than a short journey. It didn't surprise him that her need for comfort might take a sexual direction. Circumstances rarely altered Sharon's appetite for sex. If anything, poor circumstance increased it. For Sharon, sex was an affirmation of life, an antidote for trouble, both a celebration of living and a therapy for it, a physical snake oil.
The doorbell rang, and rang and rang and rang. Its cheesy chimes lost their charm when the button was pressed incessantly.
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"Shit!" Danny was in no mood for visitors. But he'd have to answer it. There was always a chance this was something to do with Danielle.
It wasn't. It was Bradlee, standing there on the threshold with Ronnie behind him, almost directly behind, his face appearing above Bradlee's and his stooped shoulders either side, the rest of his body hidden by Bradlee's short but wide bulk, his watch arm shooting up and down like a metronome. A double-headed four-armed monster, and one that Danny had hoped he wouldn't see again after Moorhen.
"You ain't carryin', eh, Danny?" said Bradlee, who seemed far more ill at ease than when they'd last seen each other. "Just a job, this, like, nothing personal."
"What?"
Bradlee watched Danny's hands rather than his face. He stepped inside and very briefly frisked Danny with his right hand. His left arm was unnaturally stiff. Clenched in his chubby hand was the head of Percy, the peculiar hammer.
Presumably the shaft went up the sleeve of his expensive suit.
"Frank, he says you deserve a spankin', but me and Ron 'ere, we like to keep friends with
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people in the business, know what I mean? So you just get on your bike and we'll call it a day."
"Bradlee, what are you talking about?"
"Go on, fuck off. If anybody asks, we gave you a pasting. All right?"
Bradlee caught Danny off-balance and shoved him out of the door on to the top step.
"Bradlee, I live here!"
"Not any more, you don't. Go on, get out of it."
Damn him! This was Frank yet again. He must have had the pair of them waiting outside for his call, even as he was still on the phone to Danny.
Bradlee came out of the house and tried to pull Danny down the steps, but it didn't work out that way. Now he'd recovered his balance, Danny was able to stand his ground.
"Come on!" pleaded Bradlee. "Don't make a song and dance about it. You'll have some old fucker peeking out of her window and phoning the Old Bill. Ronnie, get a grip on the geezer."
Ronnie did as instructed, and pulled at Danny's arm, but somehow Danny was able to resist them both. He was mildly surprised by this, but not half as much as they were.
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Bradlee was already struggling for breath.
"Fuck me, I thought you was all skin and bone?"
The pair tugged and pulled like a couple of stewards at the start line with a reluctant horse, but Danny wasn't moving. Back on the motorway verge he'd put up no resistance to Bradlee, but this was his home and Sharon was inside.
"Bradlee, this isn't the Old Kent Road.
Somebody probably is calling the police right now. I certainly hope so." He had his mobile with him but no hands available to use it. He'd thought about yelling for Sharon, but didn't want to get her involved unless the situation was dire.
There'd be so much to explain. And this struggle on the doorstep was so obvious, so clearly physical, that it really was just a matter of time before one of his affluent and very respectable neighbours did call 999. If Ronnie pulled any harder on Danny's shirt, he'd finish up with a trophy sleeve.
"But you got more form than the fucking Kray twins, you berk. Why didn't you tell us you'd gone down for a shooter? Oh, bollocks!"
Bradlee lost patience with the struggle.
He let go of Danny, and while standing in front of him relaxed his grip on the hammer-head so that Percy's shaft slid through his palm, until he grasped it very close to the end. This was a
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practised trick, intended to intimidate. Danny could imagine him standing in front of the mirror, rehearsing until he got it just right. It was also a trick with a twist. While Danny's attention was taken up by the peculiar hammer, Bradlee raised his right elbow and swung it hard into Danny's mouth.
"Arghhh! Fucking 'ell." Bradlee hopped around waggling his elbow in the air. He was trying to hide the fact that he was in pain, and failing, which made it very clear just how much he'd been hurt.
Danny had felt the impact but not much pain. He brushed his hand across his jaw, it felt fine. What had Bradlee done, somehow mistimed the blow or followed through and hit the doorpost? It was amusing that the violence had backfired, but he was careful not to smile.
Bradlee let go of Percy to nurse his elbow, and continued to grimace and dance around. By the time he returned to pick up Percy again his face had gathered the same red anger it had shown on the night of the Moorhen fire.
"Right, you fucker!"
At that same moment, a white Vauxhall with orange and yellow stripes hurtled through the ancient chicane at the top of St Peter's Street, blue lights flashing but no siren. What fine
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timing for the cavalry, thought Danny. This was an astonishingly fast response by Islington standards, where minicabs were usually quicker to arrive than the overstretched police. The driver was a magician on speed-bumps and somehow managed to get the low-skirted car over them at thirty without the familiar scraping noise.
"Fucking 'ell. Now look what you've done." Bradlee casually tossed Percy over the black railings into the basement patio, where it blended in with the raw concrete floor that never saw sunlight and the discarded parts of an old wooden trellis, as if it had been there for months.
Somehow he managed to drain the redness from his face in a matter of seconds. He brushed imaginary dust from his expensive suit, as any genteel businessman might do as the police approached.
Ronnie had already let go of Danny and now tried his best not to look guilty, though he wasn't very good at it.
A second police car arrived at speed from the other direction, from the east, and a third through the chicane.
"Listen," began Danny. The last thing he needed right now was to spend hours at a police station dealing with paperwork. "Let's just tell the police this was a disagreement between friends,
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right? And then you two can buzz off. I just want to get back indoors."
This had Bradlee utterly perplexed. "You
what? "
Two policemen got out of the first car and made for the steps. They looked smart in their protective uniform waistcoats, they also looked slightly unsure of themselves. One of them regarded Bradlee, who raised his hands to show they were empty and he had no bad intentions.
The policeman turned to Danny, "Danny Mathews?"
"That's me?"
"Will you come quietly?"
"What?"
The second policeman grabbed Danny's right arm as the first one grabbed his left. Both finished up behind his back.
"What the hell are you doing?"
They didn't need to answer. Danny felt handcuffs tighten on his wrists.
"Danny Mathews, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Mandy Steward.
Anything you say may be recorded and used in evidence…"