A book of silences

Chapter six - the attack

Shit! She thought, I've cut him twice and he's still going to attack me. She had a momentary thought of the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who'd threatened to bite someone to death with his arms and legs chopped off. She felt a panicked giggle well up inside her. Not so funny in real life.

Bee's scream stopped everyone, and many things happened simultaneously. A man coming around the corner froze, then shouted. Bev, entering the alley behind her, took the scene in instantly. She, too, began shouting, before digging into her bag and throwing anything she laid her hands on at the man. A half-filled pot of paint caromed off his head before bursting open behind him against the wall, green paint exploding across the brickwork. An art textbook followed, narrowly missing his face, followed by a tattered journal, shedding paper inserts like feathers as it whipped towards the man. This, Cat later admitted to her friends, was what she thought had made the man turn tail and flee. Not being stabbed twice with a wicked looking knife, but the indignity of having a tin of paint bounce of his skull, followed by books, handfuls of paintbrushes and a half-eaten packet of sandwiches.

                                                                                                 .....

About an hour later the three girls were sitting in the police station being interviewed by what seemed to be an archetypical Aussie detective. Mid-fifties, stocky, with short salt-and-pepper hair and an aged leather jacket slung over the back of his seat, he'd been ponderously quizzing the three friends for twenty minutes. He'd introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Connor, checked that Bee didn't want to see a doctor, then started in on a long list of questions.

"So, you're sure there was no reason for the attack?"

"Other than wanting to steal my bag, no," said Bee, sarcastically. This was the first time she had been more than compliant and dazed during the whole interview.

"Other than wanting to steal your bag, yes," repeated the detective carefully and wrote something in his notebook. Cat was pleased to see Bee spark and regain some of her spirit; she did not suffer fools gladly in normal circumstances. Glancing at the detective, she thought she could see the hint of a smile, and realized he'd been playing the role of dull plodding copper to get this response. Obviously, he was a lot smarter than he made out, and she had to work hard not to glance at the bag where her knife was hidden. She'd slipped it back into her shoulder pack as soon as the mugger had run off, swearing her friends to silence, and they'd cobbled together a story of the man running off when everyone had started shouting.

"So, one more time. After grabbing you by the throat he demanded your bag?" He looked more closely at the bruises blooming on Bee's throat, darkening marks a few centimeters long running around her neck. "Nasty, I'd put some ice on them," he added as an aside. "Anyway, so he demands your bag, then runs off when your friends arrive and start shouting. Nothing else? No description of the man? Eyes? Hair? He must have been as close as I am, but you didn't see anything. How about his voice? Accent? After-shave?"

"For the fiftieth time, nothing. He was big, he had a hoodie on, his back was to the light. His voice was weird, a bit high and breathy as though he was disguising it." Bev paused for a moment, as though remembering something then continued. "Paper, he smelled of old paper, sort of damp and a little acidic." Another pause. "Like a good, heavy cartridge that you've wetted too many times, you know?" Bev and Cat nodded in understanding.

"And none of you others saw anything of him as he ran off?"

Bev and Cat shook their heads simultaneously. "Other than the clothes, (black), shoes, (black), and build (tall and thin), all of which we've already told you about, no," Bev answered. It always amazed Cat that Bev could somehow manage to insert brackets in her speech, in a sort of summing-up-for-less-smart-people way. She guessed it came from having so many siblings to keep crushed and compliant.

The detective raised his eyebrows and turned back to Bee. "So, this man comes out of nowhere, grabs you not ten metres from the main road, demands your bag then runs off empty-handed when someone shouts at him." He sat for a few moments staring at the girls and Cat could almost feel him disbelieving their story. She'd made her friends swear to not mention her knife on the spur of the moment, but had only just thought about blood, after stabbing the man twice it must be everywhere. Perhaps his coat soaked it all up. She glanced furtively at her hands under the table but could see nothing. Perhaps the detective was just waiting to see whether they'd admit to stabbing the guy; perhaps the mugger was already dead, having bled out somewhere in the town and DS Connor was going to arrest them all for murder or something. The uncomfortable wait went on, and she opened her mouth to confess when the door of the cafe opened, and a young policeman came in. He walked over to DS Connor and whispered in his ear.

Whatever he said caused raised eyebrows and at one point a brief laugh. He muttered something to the PC, who left quickly. "Curiouser and curiouser," said the detective, turning back to the three friends. "Seems your mugger, after being scared off, ran a couple of hundred meters up the road, slipped into a side alley, then took off all his clothes. He then folded them and placed them in a neat pile, before disappearing. We're now looking for a tall, thin, naked man, smelling of damp paper, wandering about the town in the twilight. Kind of distinctive, eh?"

The girls exchanged looks. No one had mentioned blood, and after being stabbed twice there was sure to be lots. "There were no signs of anything on the clothes?" asked Cat tentatively.

"Like what?" asked the detective, turning his gaze back on her.

"Oh, you know, dirt, oil, blood. Clues, that sort of thing."

"Yeah, make-up, disguise stuff, a wig," added Bev quickly.

"Or a wallet? Car keys? Bus pass? Dried paint that could be traced only to one location in the docks?" continued Bee, obviously feeling a bit better. Clearly the others, too, had realized that the detective was far smarter than he pretended to be, and were running interference for Cat.

He smiled briefly at them then got up. "None of them, it seems, but I'm sure forensics will find something after they've had a look." He started to leave, then turned back. "Oh, and however you scared him off, well done." He glanced at Cat's shoulder bag, nodded, then left.

                                                                                         .....

They got a lift back to Bee's place with the young policeman, Gary, who they'd met after the break-in at college. Bee was more upset now, shaking a little, and they'd all decided to sleep over on her floor. She'd already refused an offer to call her parents, saying she'd contact them herself tomorrow. Now, all three girls were lying on the floor in her room under a mishmash of blankets and duvets. Bee was in the middle, and they began to talk through the attack.

"I missed the first bit, so what exactly happened?" said Bev from under the covers.

Cat, lying against Bee under perfectly folded blankets, felt her friend tense before beginning.

"It was like I told the detective, he just appeared. One minute I'm hurrying down the alley, worrying that I'm late, the next this man appears out of the shadows. He grabbed me and shoved me against the wall." The two girls could feel Bee starting to shake a little as she told her story. "He must have been standing there in the dark, waiting for someone to come by." Bee was crying now, gulping in great draughts of air and Cat and Bev cuddled her from both sides as best they could. After a few minutes the sobbing stopped, and her breathing eased. They lay in the dark for a while, before Bee said, in a little voice, "I thought he was going to kill me."

No-one said anything, then Bee continued. "You stabbed him. I saw you creep up on him with that bloody enormous knife we always tease you about and you stuck it right in him. If he hadn't turned ..." She stopped for a minute, remembering the look on Cat's face as she'd crept upon the mugger, the all-consuming rage. "Would you have killed him?"

Cat thought for a moment, remembering the searing anger she'd felt at the man touching, hurting one of her friends, one of her sisters; even thinking about it now made her heart race. She waited a few more seconds just to let everyone think she had to consider the question, that she wasn't a complete knife wielding psychopath. "In a brief second," she answered firmly.

A pause from the others, then Bev added, "And I would have pissed on his corpse afterwards." Bee started to cry again.