(2013) Collateral Damage by Colin Smith

footscrapers
set into large grey blocks of stone. About four minutes after her parents had left
Dove drove up the dirt track in his Cortina.

 
    He had been watching the place for almost three days, spending
his nights in a small hotel in a nearby market town. It had taken him a day to locate
the minister's country home because the newspapers had not given the full address
in their accounts of Ruth's case. Sometimes, when he could see people were getting
curious about his own curiosity, he had posed as a reporter. He had told the landlord
at the Bull this, but the man had not appeared to be listening.
    Even now, when he had watched the two cars drive away, he could
not be certain she was alone. He patted his jacket until he could feel the little
revolver where it lay tucked into the waistband of his trousers, a position he was
not altogether happy about although he had made sure that the hammer rested on the
chamber with the screw. The schoolteacher took a deep breath, pulled back the heavy
brass knocker, and let it clatter against the wood. He wondered how he was going
to play it. Without any nonsense, he thought. In and out. The longer he was around the more chance of getting caught.
    The cabinet minister's daughter was out of the bath, her feet
covered in talcum powder, trying to decide what top to wear with her jeans. When
she heard the knocking below she grabbed a blue check shirt, and was buttoning it
up as she went barefoot down the stairs, powdering a faint talcum spoor on the carpet.
    'Oh, it's you,' she said when she pulled back the heavy oak door.
She had been half-expecting it to be her father come back to apologize for the row.
He sometimes did things like that.
    It wasn't exactly the greeting Dove had been expecting.
    'I'd like a few words,' he said. 'It's about Koller. May I come
in?'
    'Are you supposed to question people on bail?' She quite liked
the idea of having some dozy fuzz about the place to tease and Shoulders seemed
no brighter close up than he did at three hundred yards. He was a good-looking hulk
though, even if he was a bit overweight in his appalling suit. Strong jaw, white,
even teeth; of course she would let him in. She might even make him a cup of coffee
if he was nice. She was very bored.
    Dove thought: some reporter must have telephoned her and asked
for an interview. Any moment now she's going to slam the door in my face.
    Standing on the doorstep Ruth was almost as tall as him. She
stared briefly into his blue eyes - 'guileless', she thought - lowered her gaze
slightly and noted the big right fist, blond hair on the back of his hand, playing
with his lapel. She stood there like this, half-smiling, waiting for his reply.
Then she was having great difficulty getting her breath and at the same time appeared
to be falling backwards. She was vaguely aware that these sensations coincided with
a sudden movement of the big fist with the blond hairs on it. Now they were in the
hall and the front door had slammed shut. He was standing over her as she lay on
the rush matting with her knees drawn up, her hands on her belly, trying to hold
the pain in almost as if she was in labour. He bent down and pulled her up by the
shirt. For a moment she thought perhaps there had been a mistake and he was trying
to make amends, but he pulled her up so savagely that most of her shirt buttons
flew off. There was a lot of pain. She wanted to scream but she couldn't catch her
breath. She was on the floor again and her nose seemed to be swelling across her
face and her mouth was full of some warm salty liquid. This process of being picked
up and knocked down with heavy blows to the face was twice repeated and for a few
seconds she lost consciousness.
    When she came to she was sitting on one of the kitchen chairs,
her head between her knees, spitting bits of tooth on to
the stone floor. Her shirt was torn and bloodstained, her breasts were mostly exposed.
Her nose was bleeding and her upper lip was beginning to swell