Crash Course

I finally got to the office around 11 o'clock. It was a full moon, everything standing out in relief against the dark background. The whole of Abergavenny was deserted. I got out of the car and hurried over to the front door, pulling my coat and scarf around me against the cold of the night. Into the office. Up the stairs, pushing open the door at the top and stepping in. I hadn't bothered with the lights, because the moon lit my way. But as I walked across the corridor towards my room, where I had left the papers for Mrs Angelo, suddenly, the lights went on. Heart in mouth, I wheeled round to see a man in black blocking my path to the door, his hand still on the light-switch, a smirk on his face, and a knife in his hand. As he advanced towards me, I backed away. In a reflex action, born of instinct and Indiana Jones films, I reached out to the reception desk and picked up the first objects that came to hand, and, as Smirking Stan came within range, I threw in his face the entire contents of Jeanette's desk-tidy. Paper-clips, staples, treasury tags and a variety of mis-shapen biros struck him, one hitting him in the eye. Some drawing-pins stuck in his face. I followed up this salvo with a volley of Jeanette's blotter and filing trays. This barely seemed to stop him, but there was just enough of a halt in his momentum to enable me to evade his initial thrust and back away from him. Unfortunately, I lost my bearings in my panic, and ended up in the corridor leading to David's room, in the opposite direction from the sanctuary of the door to the street. As I stood there in helpless indecision, he appeared, silhouetted by the light of the moon against the end of the corridor, the smirk, if anything, even more pronounced. What was perhaps even more unnerving that anything was the fact that, from start to finish, he had not uttered a word. But I didn't need to be Sherlock Holmes, master-detective, to realize that he only had one aim in life at that precise moment, and that was to bring about my early demise. It was perhaps a credit to my own single-minded intention not to be killed that I wasted no thought at all on how he had managed to get into the office in the first place. Because of his silence, I could not tell precisely what was going on in his mind, but it wasn't too hard to guess. He could see a craven coward, quivering in his boots, indecisive, hands at his sides in defenceless helplessness. He was absolutely right. Whatever he was being paid for this job, it was too much. I was easy meat, and there was no need for caution. He ran forward, the knife held upwards, ready to bring it down on my unresisting chest or neck or face - the target was there for the taking.