Blood on the door

‘Jesus,’ Selle said, ‘someone just dived over the garden wall.’

‘Where?’ Risa said, abandoning the book she was reading and jumping up from the dining room table. Leaning across the kitchen sink, faced pressed to the glass, she peered through the small square window that faced south towards the village. ‘Are you sure, I can’t see anyone?’

Selle looked out over the garden through the French windows: half of the panorama looking east was obscured by their stone-built garage; the dry-stone wall that encircled the property bordered the lower field which was full of cows and their calves. Seeing nothing, she gazed up at the empty higher field, then at Old Booths, the farm that stood silhouetted against the leaden sky.

‘Are you sure you saw someone?’ Risa shouted.

‘Of course, I’m sure,’ Selle said.

From the gap between the garage and the stone wall, Selle watched as a bent female figure emerged, shoeless, covered in blood, crouching, then running across the grass towards the back door.

‘Don’t let her in,’ Selle called, as the pounding began on the back door. ‘Call the police, it’s none of our business.’

‘Oh my god,’ Risa said, as she caught sight of the sobbing, injured woman. ‘Selle, get fresh towels from the bathroom, now!’

By the time Selle got back downstairs, the shivering, shaking woman was seated on a wooden seat in the kitchen, Risa knelt beside her holding her hands.

Selle watched as Risa cleaned their traumatised visitor’s injuries. Between the sobs and gulps they learned her name was Pam Mead, wife of the plastic lawn millionaire Andrew Mead who had been renting the converted barn next to Old Booths, that Andrew Mead had attacked Pam with a knife, that she had jumped from a second-floor window and escaped down the hill, fleeing for her life.

‘Is your husband the one with the Daimler?’ Selle asked.

Risa shot Selle a look of annoyance as she bathed Pam’s lacerated feet in a plastic washing up bowl.      

 ‘Yes,’ Pam said, her breathing steadying.

‘We need to lock the doors, and we need to call the police, Pam,’ Risa said.’

‘Thank you, you’ve been very kind,’ Pam said. ‘Tell the police… he has a gun.’

The police and an ambulance arrived.

Armed officers and a police helicopter arrived.

Andrew Mead surrendered without firing a shot. Denying the charge of attempted murder, he was convicted many months later of grievous bodily harm and sentenced to three years in prison and released after eighteen months.