The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1819 by Angharad Copyright © 2012 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

“What happens now?” asked Simon.

“I press charges for assault or attempted murder.”

“How could you prove the latter?”

“I think severe bruising around the throat shows it was more than a love bite and that he was intent on throttling me.”

“Do we even know who they are?”

“No, Si, so don’t start thinking about employing a hit man.”

“I wasn’t going to, more about to whom we send the bill for cleaning and repairs.” I glanced down at where he was looking, both the knees of my jeans were torn.

“The healing doesn’t work on denim.”

“Oh, pity, how did you know what I was thinking?”

“If I told you, darling, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

“Okay, amongst my super powers, I can read your mind.”

“Really?”

“Don’t you believe me?”

“Not sure, what am I thinking about now?”

“That’s rude.” I slapped him on the shoulder.

“How the hell did you know that?” he was suitably amazed. I had no idea why. I can’t understand half of what he’s on about when he tells me what he’s thinking, let alone what’s actually going on in his mind. Seems he’s very gullible at the moment. As for knowing he was thinking about sex–well it’s Simon, and when he isn’t working, it’s about all he thinks about not having the distraction of liking football.

The next morning when I got back from taking the girls to school, Inspector Milligan called. “Tell me, Lady Cameron, how is it that two men, both of whom had injuries inflicted by you, suddenly recovered?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about?” I played stupid.

“You assaulted two men last evening at the university, one of them quite badly.”

“Now that’s interesting, Inspector, because the way I remember it, they were attempting to assault me. In fact, I go so far as to suggest that one of them was intent on killing me.” I pointed to the Technicolor bruises around my throat.

“I accept you received some superficial injuries during the event, Lady Cameron.”

“If you’ve come to insult me, you might as well leave, Inspector.”

“No, I’ve come to inform you that, Igor Aronavitch, the one we assumed had a displaced patella and dislocated elbow, escaped custody last night after his miraculous recovery.”

“Is he Russian?” I asked.

“Romanian, I think.”

“And you think he might try to get even for my intervention?”

“I have no idea what he might try, Lady Cameron, but I did think it was only fair to warn you. Perhaps you’ll have a reconsider about how he suddenly got better?”

“Obviously he wasn’t as badly hurt as we all thought.”

“Obviously.”

“Won’t he try to get home?”

“I don’t know, Lady Cameron. We’re still holding his three friends, courtesy of your intervention, so he might feel he has a score to settle. If you do see him, please call for help, he might be more successful at inflicting more than a few bruises next time.”

“I see, and who do I call–Ghostbusters?”

“Very funny, Lady Cameron. I’d better be getting back to the station, prisoners to intimidate and all that, you know.”

I saw him out and warned the others that this creepy Romanian might be about. “I see, your playing Girl Scout has backfired again,” Stella was a bit irritated.

“Oh come off it, Stel, you’d have intervened as much as the next man.” My protests fell on deaf ground or was it stony ears?

“You have to be joking, Cathy. A whole lab worth of equipment isn’t so much as worth breaking a nail to protect. It wasn’t even your lab.”

“No, but it’s my university.”

“You went to Sussex.”

“It’s the one which sees fit to employ me and also Tom. I have some loyalty towards it.”

“Now you tell me.” She rolled her eyes and went off to get Puddin’ off Kiki, quite what they were doing I had no idea.

Anyhow, Puddin’ came past a couple of minutes later loudly declaiming, “Duckin’ dog.”

It might just be enough of an alliteration to avoid adding to her vocabulary when her mother hears her.

I spent the rest of the morning on the phone to Simon and then to the schools advising them that my children could be targets. Lunch, for which David made the most exquisite French toast, I have ever tasted. I have no idea if anyone else calls it that, but it’s essentially bread which has been dipped in beaten egg which is then fried to crispness. I went on my own to the university to sort out the dormice and then go to collect the girls. I doubted anyone would be stupid enough to meet me there again, so I felt quite confident.

I had a minor seizure when I saw someone come down the stairs as I entered the lab complex then recognised it as one of the technicians from Bio-chem.

“Hey, thanks for saving all our stuff–we’d have been up the creek next month without it.”

“You’re welcome, must go and check my dormice.” We parted and I entered our labs and did the feeding and so on. I locked the door on leaving and walked towards the car park. As I walked my phone rang.

“Hello?” I said stopping to answer it.

“Cathy, it’s Andy Bond.”

“Hi, Andy, how are you?”

“If you’re near the university, get away quickly, we think Boris has been sighted nearby.”

“Boris? The Lord Mayor of London?” My brain reeled, what would he be doing here and why would the police warn me about him–he’s crazy but relatively harmless.

“The big guy who escaped from the hospital...Cathy?” A shadow had moved to cover me and part of the path.

“Cathy? You all right?” I could hear Andy Bond.

“Um, I think the monkey has landed,” I said before the phone was ripped from my hand and hurled into the bushes.

“That was uncalled for, my husband gave me that as a Christmas present,” I protested.

“Too bad,” he said with a thick accent, “we have unfinished business.”

“I don’t think so, unless you want me to show you how I did it last time.” A bit of bravado usually does the trick–don’t show them you’re frightened–well, it’s supposed to work with dogs, perhaps it does with great apes.

“Now you die,” he said or more accurately growled and grabbed at me. The adrenalin was flowing in me–in fact, I suspect that was all that was flowing, my blood having frozen in fright. However, I managed to step away, avoid his grasp and plant a kick in his midriff which sent me flying backwards.

He just stood there laughing as I rolled over and sprang to my feet. The problem now was that he was between me and my escape, behind me lay the laboratories and it looked shorter to run round them than my attacker.

He lumbered at me like a runaway steam roller and I backed away until I was nearly in the bushes which separate the buildings from the pavement and roadway. I tried to run past him but he was surprisingly nimble on his feet.

He did come at me and I sidestepped, kicking the back of his knee as I dived away. He fell and I thought I’d made a gap to escape, but he grabbed my leg in a huge ham of a fist and pulled me back.

“You make Igor mad,” he said menacingly.

“I think you’ve been mad for some time, actually.”

He lunged at me and I feinted and then rolled behind him, kicking him in the bum as I went. He staggered into the bushes, which are things like roses and pyrocanthus–designed to stop people breaking into the laboratories by the windows.

“Stand clear, Cathy,” called a voice from above and I looked up and threw myself away from the bushes as the enraged gorilla stood up from amongst the herbiage and glared at me, looking up himself just in time to see a laboratory stool land on his bonce and drop him like a pole-axed wombat.

Moments later the sound of sirens filled the air and Stan, the techi from Bio-chem held me as I shivered and trembled at the groaning that was emitted from the bushes.

“Thank you,” I managed to get out as my teeth started chattering.

“Well, it looked as if you could do with a bit of help,” he said and I could feel the warmth of his body as he held me.