CU NOVEL
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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Next day the police came. Paul heard the car and then heard Annie running down the corridor to his room. He put the pencil carefully down on the paper he was covering in his untidy handwriting. Annie ran into the room. 'Get out of sight.' Her face was tight. She already had the bag with the gun around her shoulder. 'Get out of s-' She paused and saw that he had already rolled the wheelchair away from the window. 'Are you going to be good, Paul?' 'Yes,' he said. Her eyes searched his face. 'I'm going to trust you,' she said. She left the room and went outside to meet the policemen. Paul moved so that he could sec out of the window without being seen himself. The policeman who had come three days ago had been hardly 76 more than a child; these two were completely different. One was in uniform and one was a detective. Both were old and experienced. The detective looked tired, but his eyes were watching everything. The other policeman was large and obviously extremely strong. They got out of the car and stood close to Annie while they asked her some questions which Paul could not hear, He thought about breaking the window again, but two things stopped him. First, the detective had his coat buttoned, so he would not be able to get his gun quickly. If he had noticed that, then Annie certainly had too. She would shoot the other policeman first and then the detective. The second thing that stopped him was his desire for revenge. The police would only put Annie in prison. He himself could hurt her, and he wanted to do that. The big policeman pointed towards the house and Annie led them in through the kitchen door. Paul could now hear the conversation. The policemen were asking her about Officer Kushner, which was the young man's name, and Annie was telling them her story. She sounded very calm, but Paul thought he noticed some signs of suspicion in the policemen's voices. They left and Annie came into Paul's room. She stared at him for a full minute. 'Why didn't you shout?' she asked. She couldn't understand it. In her world everyone was against her, so why hadn't he shouted? 'Because I want to finish the book,' he said. 'Because I want to finish it for you, Annie.' She looked at him uncertainly, wanting to believe. Finally she did believe him. It was the truth, anyway. Three days later the local TV news programme sent a crew to Annie's farm. Annie refused to let them on to her laud and fired a shot into the air to warn them off. Afterwards she said, 'You know what they want, Paul? This is what they want.' She scratched her forehead viciously with her fingernails, so that blood flowed down her face. 77 'Annie, stop it!' ''This is what they want too.' She hit herself on the cheek. 'And this.' She hit her other cheek, hard. 'STOP IT!' he screamed. 'It's what they want!' she screamed back. She pressed her hands against the wounds on her forehead and then held her hands out to him so that he could see the blood. Then she left the room and he took up his pencil and fell through the hole in the paper again. The next day two different policemen came, to take a statement from her. She told them the story about Kushner and the Pepsi-Cola bottle. They asked her about the scratches on her forehead. 'How did you get those?' 'I had a bad dream last night.' 'What?' 'I dreamed that people remembered me after all this time and started coming out here again,' Annie said. When they had gone Annie came into his room. Her face was distant and she looked ill. 'How much longer. Paul? When will you finish the book?' 'Tomorrow,' he said. 'Next time they'll have permission to search the house,' she said, and left before he could reply. It didn't take him long to get back to work. His swollen fingers were still locked tightly on to the pencil. Now more than ever he needed to finish the book.

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