[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]blast the horn, fetch that gardener on the run from whatever he was doing, ask
him what the bloody hell was going on. Instead, he eased open the driver's
door, began to swing himself out. And that was when he heard the banging on
the inside of the garage door, the steel shutter vibrating. Somebody was
shouting.
'Mr Eversham, Mr Eversham, don 'I get out of your car. There's a rattlesnake
on the rockery!'
Peter Eversham froze, heard the words but their meaning did not sink in. He
recognised Keith Doyle's voice but what the blazes was the stupid bugger doing
inside the garage with the shutter down? And another thing . . .
What the fucking hell was wrong with the car? A noise as though the exhaust
had suddenly come loose, was banging and rattling on the underside. But it
couldn't, the car was stationary.
'Peter!' Cynthia Eversham screamed, panicked, and grabbed her husband's arm,
overbalanced him back into the seat.
'What the . . .'
Even as he fell he saw the snake, a thing like a thick painted hosepipe
darting out from beneath the Jag, its vicious strike missing him and pinging
on the inside of the open door. Cynthia was yelling, shrieking hysterically,
and then the car door obeyed the laws of gravity, swung softly shut on the
slight incline. Clicked.
'Jesus God!'
'It was a snake, Peter. It tried to . . .'
'For Christ's sake, shut up,' he pushed her away, and in the same movement
eased the handbrake off, felt the car begin to roll slowly backwards. And as
it did so the occupants heard something happening beneath them, that frantic
rattling sound again, interspersed with lashing noises as if a horse whip was
flaying mercilessly on the underside of the car.
Still rolling backwards. Cynthia screamed, clutched at her seat, saw that vile
light-coloured reptile with the black diamond markings thrashing frenziedly on
the tarmac in front of them. It wriggled, tried to leap, fell back, squirmed
and convulsed, turned its repulsive head towards them, as if mouthing insane
reptilian curses. But something was wrong with it, even in her state of terror
she saw its injury, the lower part of its body crushed and flattened like the
hose that time when Doyle had washed the car for them and had left it lying on
the drive and she had backed over it.
'Oh, my God!' she was going to be sick any second. 'Peter, you've run over
it!'
He jerked the handbrake back on, halted the car, then started the engine,
drove forward in a wide sweep that took him to the front of the house
alongside Doyle's parked van. He killed the engine, glanced in his mirror. The
rattler was thrashing fiercely from side to side, rattling and hissing its
pain and fury but it wasn't going anywhere.
'Peter, don't get out!'
'Stay where you bloody well are.' He slammed the car door and ran for the
porch, fumbling for his key.
Breathlessly he leapt up the stairs, on to the landing, into the bedroom.
Fumbling under the bed, pulling out a dusty leg-o'-mutton leather gun case,
his trembling fingers scarcely capable of undoing the straps. Metal clinked as
he fitted barrels and stock together, slapped the wooden fore-end into place
to hold them together, grabbed some orange-cased 12-bore cartridges out of a
carton on top of the wardrobe, spilling the rest on to the carpet.
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Back down the stairs, loading the gun as he went, almost slipping on the
polished wooden blocks of the hall floor. Outside, seeing Cynthia still
sitting in the car, hands pressed to her pallid face in fear and anguish,
mouthing something at him. Shut up, you stupid bitch.
The diamondback was still very much alive. It was throwing itself from side to
side, manoeuvring a course towards the front door, propelling its awesome body
in spite of its terrible injuries, malevolently rattling its hate for the man
who had done this to it. Only one thing was uppermost in its pain-crazed mind
- to kill!
Peter Eversham was trembling as he lifted the shotgun to his shoulder, a
big-game hunter suddenly faced with a charging wounded water buffalo; its life
or his, there would only be one survivor. He had his life in his hands.
Ten yards, maybe less. He tried to draw a bead on the head but it darted from
one side to the other, dodged away from the shaking twin barrels as though it
knew. Oh Christ, so different from driven grouse that couldn't fight back.
Five yards. He swung his sights on to the body, the lower damaged part that
dragged behind the rest, took a trigger pressure. A deafening blast, and
somewhere in the background he heard his wife screaming, saw the snake jerk
and roll, seem to twist back on itself as though it was trying to view the
damage.
At that range the concentrated shot charge was still strung together, had cut
through skin and tissue, almost severed the lower body. A slimy pulp streaked
the tarmac. And in that split second Peter Eversham finally got his bead on
the head.
The left barrel, leaden death obliterating the rattlesnake's head, throwing it
back into the morass behind, its nerves twitching. And then it was still.
It was dead.
Eversham lowered the smoking gun, opened the breech and the spent cartridge
cases were ejected, bounced on the drive. He stood there, experienced a
euphoria that was only just beginning to make its heady impact on him. A pose
he was reluctant to relinquish, the hunter looking down on his trophy,
awaiting the arrival of his bearers.
The garage shutters slid upwards and Keith Doyle emerged, white-faced.
Eversham thought the gardener might spew up just to complete the picture.
Cynthia still had her face covered; look at it, you two, look at it. It's dead
and I killed it. Me, Peter Eversham. They've been hunting the bastards for two
days but they didn't do any good until I returned.
'Well done, Mr Eversham.' A cry of relief, the young red-haired man having to
hold on to the car, swaying unsteadily on his feet. 'It trapped me in the
garage. We better get the police.'
'I think this is them now.' Peter Eversham heard the bee-boraf an approaching
siren, anticipated the white Escort turning into the drive. He shifted his
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