'You must think I'm in a really bad mood,' Annie said. 'I wish you'd relax, Paul. I'm not going to give you an injection. I'm leaving the syringe here with you, because it's damp down here and your legs might ache quite badly before I get back. Now, we have to talk.' She settled down and told him her plan. She was drinking constantly from plastic bottles of Pepsi-Cola. She explained that she needed a lot of sugar at the moment. 'Listen to me. We're going to be all right if it gets dark before anyone comes to check on that policeman. It'll be dark in about an hour and a half. If someone comes sooner, there's this,' she 69 said. She reached into her hag and pulled out the policeman's gun. 'First I kill whoever comes, then you, then me.' Once it was dark, she said, she was going to drive the police car up to her Laughing Place, with her husband's old motor bike in the back. She could hide the car up there and it wouldn't be found for months. 'I'd take you with me, because you've shown that you can be a real nuisance,' she said, 'but I couldn't bring you back on the bike. It'll be hard enough driving on those mountain paths by myself. I might fall off and break my neck!' She laughed at her joke, but Paul said, 'And then what would happen to me?' 'Don't worry so much, Paul, you'd be fine,' she replied, but he knew he wouldn't. He would die like a dog down here in the damp basement and make a meal for the rats. There was a Kreig lock on the cellar door by now and the stairs were steep anyway. There were tiny windows, high up one wall, but they were covered in dirt. 'So I'm going to put him in his car and take him up to my Laughing Place and bury him there - him and his . . . you know . . . his bits - in the woods.' Paul said nothing. He just remembered the cows complaining from the barn and then becoming silent. Annie had left them to die and he hoped she wasn't going to forget him too. 'I just hope nobody comes to the house while I'm away. I don't think they'd hear you down here even if they came right up to the house. But I'm going to put a chain across the gate from the road and hang a note on the chain saying that I've gone away for a few days. That might stop them coming up to the house.' Annie was not taking any chances, Paul realized. She was playing 'Can You?' in real life, while he could only play it when he was writing books. 'I should be back by midday tomorrow,' she continued. 'I don't expect the police will come before then. They will come, 70 of course; I know that. But I don't think they'll come asking questions before then. They'll just drive along the roads, looking for his car. So if I'm back by midday I'll have you back in your room before they come. I'll even let you watch me talk to them, if you promise to be good. I say "them" because I think two of them will come, don't yon?' Paul agreed. 'But I can handle two, if I need to.' She patted the handbag which held the policeman's gun. 'I want you to remember that young man's gun while you watch me talk to them, Paul. I want you to remember that it's going to be in here all the time I'............