Were they mine? I might have said they were except for two things. The footprints led into the sitting room whereas I was quite certain that on entering the house in response to Sara’s scream I had run straight upstairs. The other thing was much more disturbing—these were large, barefoot, Man Friday–style prints and I was wearing shoes. For a moment, I just stared at them as if doubting the existence of the shoes that were still on my feet, but the very instant that it registered that these could hardly be my own footprints, I drew Sara’s gun from the waistband of my trousers and quietly worked the slide. Was this the man I had chased in Mr. Hindemith’s garden—perhaps Mr. Hindemith himself? The man who had scared the living crap out of me? If it was, I owed him a hard slap in the mouth with the Walther. But suppose the intruder was armed? Suppose he had found the Glock I’d dropped in the garden? Suppose I ended up getting shot with my own gun? Then three things happened—they were practically simultaneous, but they seemed to occur in slow succession, as if time had decelerated to allow me longer to feel more afraid than I was already—these were accompanied by several missed heartbeats, a prickling on my skin, and a sort of vacuum around my head and shoulders that seemed to suck the sound right out of my ears.
