Dagger of the Mind

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It was while he was pouring his breakfast coffee that Redpath became aware that something was wrong.

He paused for a moment and looked around the small apartment, straining his ears for an extra sound or a missing sound in the murmurous background noise of the building. The apartment block was coming to life in exactly the same hesitant but inevitable manner which was familiar to him from a thousand other mornings, with nothing out of kilter anywhere. He could feel the young couple directly above moving about in an ambience of hurried sex, drip-dry garments hanging like ghosts in the gallows of the doorways, moraines of toast crumbs and marmalade on the butter, and on the sideboard the holy trinity assembled into a neat pile—cigarettes, money and car keys. He could feel old Mr Coates next door slowly regaining consciousness, simultaneously relieved and disappointed over not having died in the quiet hours of the night. On the other side, Harv Middleton, sales representative handling plug-in plastic lettering for menus in cafe windows, but who liked to tell people he was “in advertising”, had already departed for the day in a cloud of conflicting perfumes. Everything was normal in the rest of the building, so the trouble had to be nearer at hand, within the four walls of Redpath’s own apartment.

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