Shooting in the Dark

possibility of reasoning with him.
    But the man was standing astride her now, his hands with their long fingers striving for a grip around her throat. He made no sound. He was here with one, single, fanatical purpose.
    Angeles kicked out. If she was going to die, and there was no doubt that that was what he had in mind for her, then she was going to inflict as much damage as possible on her attacker. She heard him gasp as her foot connected with his groin. He knelt astride her now, and she managed to pull his fingers towards her mouth. It felt like a thumb between her teeth. She bit down, hard, hoping to sever it from his hand, but he pulled it free.
    She had found blood, though; the tang of it was in her mouth. She reached up to where she thought his face must be, clawing with her fingers, hoping to take out his eyes, to even up the stakes a little. She continued for as long as she could, while his grip around her throat deprived her body of the oxygen it needed to function.
    She stuck two of her fingers up his nostrils, hoping to yank his nose off his face, but before she found the strength something inside her relaxed, gave up the struggle. I’m dead, she thought. I’ve been killed by someone and I don’t even know who he is. There was a far-away sound of knocking and a high-pitched female voice, like something in a dream or an opera. One of her last thoughts was of the birds. Glad she’d got around to filling their feeder. Then there was the death-rattle, way down in her throat, below the relentless grip of the hands that cut off her life.
     

19
     
    JD watched the house from his car. The street was quiet and he had his notebook on the steering wheel. He wished he’d brought the current chapter of his novel to edit, but that was sitting on his desk at home.
    He’d come across an odd couple in the post office yesterday and, while watching the blind woman’s house, he was keen to get them down on paper. They were around forty, she in a wheelchair, obese, her hair uncombed; he was skinny, unshaven for two or three days and he wore cross-trainers, one of which had a sole that gaped like a slack mouth.
    The woman held the telephone while her mate fed cash into the box and dialled. JD noticed that their faces were encrusted with dirt. When the woman put the telephone to her ear she exposed layers of sweat-rings under her arm. The material looked brittle, as though someone had been painting it.
    He moved closer, hoping to overhear the conversation. He took an application for Income Bonds from a container on the wall and posed as an investor. This is what you had to do if you were a writer, spy on people, watch them and record the way they looked, how they interacted with each other and the world. They thought they were safe, their privacy intact: but they were wrong.
    ‘Your dad sends his love,’ the woman said into the mouthpiece. The man nodded his head in approval. ‘He’s all right. He’s gonna mend the fence later. Maybe tomorrow.’ The man shuffled his feet.
    ‘When d’you think you’ll get through again?’ She listened to a long explanation at the other end of the line, nodding from time to time.
    ‘That’s all right,’ she said. ‘I hear what you’re saying. We’ll see you when we see you.’ The man shook his head. He pursed his lips and frowned.
    ‘The bloody neighbours have been at it again,’ said the woman. ‘Why, complaining about the smell. First it was the house, they said the house was stinking. Now they say it’s us, our personal hygiene. Cheeky buggers. Somebody’s coming down from the council, see if it’s right, if we smell. We’re going to Woolies after this, get some perfume. Just in case.’
    They’d talked a couple of minutes more, until they had nothing left to say. Language had dried up like rain under a hot sun. The woman handed the telephone to the man, who hung it up. Then, without a word passing between them, he’d turned the wheelchair around and pushed her out into the street. JD waited for nearly half a minute before he took in a deep breath of air, and it was still redolent with their spoor.
    He didn’t have a specific use for these characters. He collected anything and everything he saw. It was a habit now, something he did without thinking. The woman in the wheelchair and her skinny mate would not be used in his current novel. They may never be used at all. They were an insurance policy. One day he might need them, and if they weren’t immortalized