'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'm talking to them, whenever they come - tomorrow or the day after or whenever. You can sec them, but if they see you - either by accident or because you do something stupid like you did today - if that happens I'm going to take the gun out of the bag and start shooting. And remember: you're already responsible for one policeman's death.' 'Nonsense,' said Paul, knowing that she would hurt him for saying it. But she didn't. She just smiled her calm, mother-knows-best smile. 'Maybe you don't care for them, Paul. Maybe you don't care if you kill two more people. Hut if I have to kill those two policeman, I'll have to kill you and me as well, and I think you still care for yourself.' 'Not really, Annie,' Paul said. 'I don't really mind leaving this life any more.' 'Oh, yes, I've heard that before,' she said. 'But as soon as you switch off their medical equipment or pick up the pillow to put it on their faces, then they struggle and try to cry out.' Hut you never let that stop you, did you, Annie? 'Anyway, I just wanted to tell you,' she said. 'If you really don't care, then when they come you can shout to them. When they come I'll meet them and they'll ask me about the young policeman. "Yes," I'll say, "he was here yesterday. He showed 71 me a picture of Paul Sheldon. I told him I hadn't seen him and then he went away." They'll be surprised. "How can you be sure that you've never seen Paul Sheldon?" they'll ask. "He disappeared last winter." I'll tell them that Paul Sheldon is my favourite author, so I'd remember seeing him. I have to say that, Paul. Do you remember?' He remembered. He remembered a photograph in her album. In the picture Annie was sitting in prison while she was waiting for the jury to return to court and pronounce her guilty or innocent. Under the picture was written: Miserable? Not the Dragon Lady. Annie sits quietly and reads while she waits for the jury. And in the picture Annie was holding up her book so that everyone could see she was reading the latest Misery novel. 'So,' Annie went on, 'I'll say that the young policeman wrote all this down in his book and said thank you. I'll say that I invited him in for a cup of coffee. He refused, but he accepted a bottle of cold Pepsi, because the day was so hot.' She held up an empty bottle of Pepsi. 'I'm going to stop and throw this in a ditch three or four kilometres up the road,' she said. 'But first I'll put his fingers all over it, of course.' She smiled at him - a dry smile, with no humour in it. 'They'll find the bottle, and then they'll know that he went past my house - or they'll think they know, which is just as good, isn't it? They'll search for him for a while, but then they'll come back. Oh, yes, they'll come back, because I'm the Dragon Lady. I'm the only crazy one in the area, so they'll come back, and they'll come into the house this time. But they'll believe me at first - that's the point. So we'll have some time, Paul. Maybe as much as a week.' She looked at him coolly. 'You're going to have to write faster, Paul.'