Cometh the Man

A Visitor

Clarice Starling was not used to doing nothing. It was, strangely, the thing she often found the hardest about her new life with Hannibal, and as she watched mindless TV that morning and flicked through countless magazines, she began to wonder what she might do once they were settled, once they achieved some sense of normality.

Would they ever achieve a sense of normality?

The vulnerability she had felt recently was another unfamiliar territory for her. She had always been so fiercely independent, so fearless. The way she had been feeling scared her – the safety she only felt when he was around, the reliance on him to bring her back from the edge. If she was honest with herself, it was that reliance that had made her question – momentarily – whether the things she was experiencing might have been his doing.

She wasn't sure whether the reality that they weren't was better or worse.

Two things happened in that moment to bring Clarice out of her own head – the telephone began to ring, and somebody knocked at the door.

She hesitated, as if weighing up the priorities, before she moved to open the door.

"Inspector Petrauskas," she frowned.

"Morning. Or afternoon, is it?" he smiled at her, before studying her face. "Is everything alright?"

"Yeah, I just... I thought you were with Hannibal, at the station," Clarice told him.

Petrauskas shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. "No. I haven't seen him today."

Where is he?

"...Well, he isn't here," she told him, as if answering her own internal question.

"That's okay. It was actually you I came to see," the Inspector told her. "May I come in?"

Clarice hesitated for a moment, before nodding her head and allowing him through.

"Where is your lovely daughter today?" he asked.

"She's in her room. Reading," Clarice told him.

"Ah. Educated, like her father," Petrauskas commented.

She nodded, distracted momentarily by the flashing red light on the phone, which she now realised must be a message.

"Will you excuse me just a moment?" she asked, moving across to the phone.

Picking up the handset she placed it to her ear and pressed the button, listening to the babble of Lithuanian for a moment, before a more familiar voice took over. Hannibal's.

"Clarice. If you are at home, I need you to listen to me very carefully," he said, almost urgently. "Do not open the door to anybody. There's no need to be alarmed, and I shall be home shortly. But in the meantime, do not engage with anybody, even if they say they are the police."

The line went dead and Clarice sensed the presence directly behind her as she placed the handset back down. In that moment she knew that something was very, very wrong.

"Now then, Clarice," Petrauskas whispered, directly in her ear. "I think it's time for you and I to have a little chat."

Clarice tried to turn around but he caught he arms, forcing her against the side table. She struggled, but Petrauskas was stronger and she found herself overpowered by him, one arm folded tightly around her neck.

Clarice felt the hard plastic pressed against her jugular, but the sting of the needle came before she had time to realise it was a syringe.

She reached for the nearest thing, a fairly heavy ornament sitting by the side of the telephone. But whatever the Inspector had injected into her neck was already working its way through her veins, slowing her movements.

Petrauskas pried the ornament easily from her fingers and Clarice struggled one final time – a last ditch attempt to escape his grasp. When it proved fruitless, she did the only thing she could think left to do, and bit down hard into his arm.

In her periphery, she saw the ornament come up in the air, felt the heavy blow against her head.

And then everything went black.

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