Under His Influence

“I can’t comment on our sources, sir, but we do need to come in, just briefly, to eliminate any concerns.”

“Come in? Do you

have a warrant?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Then I’m afraid the answer’s no. Listen—” He lowered his voice to a confidential tone, “—my wife and I were…busy. She’s waiting for me upstairs.”

“Is that your wife?” piped up one of the officers, having spotted Mimi clinging to the newel, eavesdropping.

John spun round, catching a guilty Mimi and tightening his mouth to indicate his disapproval.

“Why did you get out of bed?” he demanded.

“So this is your wife? Do you mind if we have a word? Mrs. Stone…”

Mimi swallowed hard and stepped forward, defying John’s wrathful glare.

“I am Mrs. Stone.”

John stared, eyes popping, on the verge of explosion.

“Is everything okay, madam? We heard that some people were worried about you. Just need to check it out.”

Mimi’s voice was thick, so much so that it almost seemed to be resisting her as she spoke, but the words got there eventually.

“No. Everything’s not okay. Not at all. I’m afraid of him.”

“Don’t do this! You don’t know what’s at stake! Don’t do this to me, Mimi. You can’t…”

Deliberately, she avoided John’s eye.

“Please arrest him. He’s a danger to me. A danger to himself. A danger to everybody. He needs to be put away.”

“You want to file a charge, madam?”

“Yes, I do. Assault. I want him done for assault. At least that.”

“Right. Mr. Stone, I’m going to have to ask you to accompany us to the station—a little bit of cooperation here will save a lot of trouble.”

But John was already trying to shut the door in the officers’ faces, reaching out blindly for Mimi, who threw herself out onto the front step, into the safety of the policemen.

“It’s all right, you’re safe,” one of them said, and it was only then that stiff-upper-lipped Mimi realised she was crying.

“This is all a mistake. She’s overreacted to something trivial,” Stone was saying, trying his best to keep a lid on the rage Mimi could see behind his eyes.

“No, it isn’t,” she cried. “He is evil. I’ve never thought that of anyone before—but he is.”

John took a pair of shoes from the rack in the porch and accompanied the officers with as hard a veneer of amused inconvenience as he could muster.

“She’s deluded,” he hissed, passing Mimi, sending out a message to her while the psychic link still held. “You will be to blame when it happens. It will be your fault. The death of humanity—do you want that on your conscience?”

She blinked through tears, staring at his back on the way to the police car. What on earth did he mean by that?

“We’ll need a statement,” one of the officers told Mimi while the other assisted John into the police car. “A female officer will call round a bit later on. The main thing for now is that you’re safe and he’s contained.”

“Who called you?” Mimi asked, suddenly realising that she would not be able to press charges against John without incurring accusations of false representation. She was not, after all, John’s wife.