Page 95 of Blow Down (The Plumber's Mate)
I looked behind me to see the barrel of a shotgun with Vi Majors on the other end of it, her hair wild and her bosom heaving. She looked like some kind of primeval spirit of the hunt. I half expected to see a parked-up chariot pulled by monstrous foxhounds. “You bastard,” she screamed. “I can’t believe I used to have sex with you!”
Arlo? She’d had sex with Uncle Arlo?
What about Lance?
This was doing my head in worse than the floor had.
Suddenly weak, I lay back on the floor again, misjudging it badly and almost knocking myself out completely. To be honest, I’d have been just as glad not to have to listen to the constant stream of obscenity spewing from cuddly old Uncle Arlo, most of it directed towards Vi. But then again, Ow.
“Tom!” Phil’s voice was louder this time. I really wanted him to let me rest, but he insisted on pulling me up into a sitting position. He wasn’t gentle, which I realised after a mo was because he was only using one arm.
Shit. “Phil? Your arm?”
“I’m okay.”
He wasn’t. “Vi?” I croaked. She was just standing there, gun raised. Would it still be loaded, or had she shot the lot?
Did I feel lucky?
“Miss Majors, please put the gun down,” Phil said in what I like to think of as his copper voice.
Vi blinked and seemed to realise what she was doing. Or, more specifically, what she’d just done. “Oh my God.” She put the gun down shakily on a side table, where it snuggled up to a photo of her dad with his arms around Amelia and a big smile on his face. Her hands crept to her mouth. “Oh God.”
Phil struggled to his feet, which I was pretty sure he’d have found a damn sight easier if he hadn’t insisted on holding on to me the whole time. “We’d better call an ambulance,” he said with a definite grudging note in his voice, and grabbed his phone.
“Must be crazy,” I gasped. “Witnesses.”
Phil turned to me. “Probably planning to frame Vi for it somehow. Just like the other attacks.”
A chill ran over me as I worked out what that would have meant.
He’d been planning to kill Phil too.
Christ.
“Me?” Vi sounded indignant. “He was blaming me?”
Dear old Uncle Arlo let out a string of obscenity that, roughly translated, indicated that if he had his way, his darling step-niece would die a withered old hag in jail, the stupid, useless, fat lady-part. Not that he actually used the word lady-part.
Still, to be fair, she had just shot him in the gut.
“So,” I said to Vi, trying not to fall over. “You and Uncle Arlo?”
“He just seemed so . . . Oh, I don’t know. Fun.”
Really? Arlo Fenchurch?
We’d moved to the sitting room, me and Vi, leaving Phil to watch over Uncle Arlo and make sure he didn’t bleed out on the antique wood floor before the emergency services got here or, more to the point, take advantage of the fact he was leaning against the front door and make a break for freedom.
Phil was favouring his right arm, which I hoped to God wasn’t broken, but insisted he was up to it and would yell for help if he changed his mind. He’d refused Vi’s offer to reload the shotgun for him. He hadn’t said that was because he didn’t have a clue how to use it . . . but I was starting to seriously consider Gary’s join-a-gun-club suggestion.
Vi had found me a bag of frozen peas wrapped in a tea towel to hold against the lump on my head. I’d managed to prop ’em up on the back of the sofa and was using them as a pillow. It wasn’t all that comfy, but it had the big advantage of taking zero effort on my part.
“And it was exciting,” Vi carried on. “You know, meeting in secret. He’d pretend he was taking a business trip up to Birmingham, and we’d meet at a hotel. Just like a proper, old-fashioned affair. He’s very old-fashioned in lots of ways, really. He has this way of really making you feel like a lady.”
Couldn’t say he’d ever made me feel like one. “What about Elizabeth?” I had to ask.
Vi rolled her eyes. “She’s just so . . .” She waved her hands and made a sort of ugh noise. “They haven’t slept together for years.”
