The Mule

by David Quantick

  I may not have looked very sympathetic at this point, because Carrie turned to me with a look that was, to say the least, uncharacteristic of a member of her family. I’m not always very good at reading faces, but this one was unmistakable. It was regret. Or pity. Probably both. As I say, I’m not very good at reading faces. But I was almost mollified. Then again, here I was in a hospital bed with a bullet wound and presumably half of the Continent’s police sitting outside with a variety of arrest warrants.

  ‘After that, the rest you know. We were in a bar and my father shot you,’ said Carrie, as if reading my mind, ‘and then we were pretty much left to fend for ourselves.’

  ‘I’m sorry I let you down,’ I said, a bit sniffily.

  ‘You know I don’t mean it like that,’ said Carrie. ‘You nearly died trying to save my life.’

  I didn’t know if I was being mocked or not, but as this was a normal state of mind for me, I said nothing yet again. It seemed to me that saying nothing was a good thing to do. If I’d said nothing more often, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up going to Paris and meeting a lot of psychopaths, one of whom shot me.

  ‘In fact, it looks like you did save my life,’ Carrie said. ‘The police were outside and they heard the gunshot. Broke in, disarmed my father, handcuffs all round.’

  ‘They were outside before the gun went off?’

  ‘Yes, they’d been on your … they’d been after you for a few hours but you were always one step ahead of them. It was like you knew what you were doing.’

  ‘I was trying to be caught,’ I said. ‘I just couldn’t quite get it right.’

  ‘I’ll say,’ said Carrie. ‘The police said they’d missed you at the hotel, at the institute and even at the apartment. They only found you and Frant at the bar when they heard the gun.’

  ‘So why aren’t I in jail?’ I said.

  ‘One moment please,’ said Carrie, exactly as if she were a telephone receptionist. She took her shoes off and a moment later was under my hospital duvet. This time I very much said nothing.

  ‘The police,’ Carrie said, ‘weren’t after you. They were after Frant. They had footage on the institute’s CCTV of Frant attacking that man, but there was only the one security camera and you weren’t in shot. So they didn’t know who you were. And when they broke down the door and found you on the floor, shot, they kind of eliminated you from the list of suspects. Excuse me.’

  This last she said as she suddenly got out of the bed and with a single movement placed a chair under the door handle. She got back into bed. I remained still, for a while.

  ‘What,’ I said, when I could speak. ‘What about the other police? Quigley and Chick? They were after me for your murder.’

  ‘Them,’ said Carrie, sounding more amused about the police than expected. ‘They were there, yes. They’d apparently been trying to get the French police to take them seriously about a murder without a body apparently committed by a man with no criminal record, but all that pretty much collapsed when they found the murder victim, as in me, alive and the murderer, as in you, on the floor, with a bullet in him.’

  ‘I see,’ I said after a while in which some other things happened. ‘But what about you? What about your … what about Madame Ferber and Euros Frant?’

  ‘Attempted murder, accessory to murder, assault with a bust, conspiracy to this and that,’ Carrie said airily. ‘I’m going to visit them, I’m not completely unfilial. But – you know …’

  She stopped talking and gave me a look that, for once, I found hard to misinterpret. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in bed in a private ward with someone whose life you have saved, but I’m assuming you haven’t, and that you can work out the details for yourself. I’ve got things to do.

  In fact, from now on I’ve got a lot of things to do. I’ve still got to go home and explain to my publisher how his most respected and bestselling author is now in jail. In recompense for that, I’ve been asked by that author’s daughter to see if he’d be interested in publishing a book that is about to be somewhat notorious. And suddenly I’ve got a personal life to deal with. Carrie says we probably won’t meet again, but we’ll see about that.

  There is, as I say, a lot to do. But that’s fine. I’m the Mule. And I don’t give up.

  David Quantick writes for television (Veep, The Thick Of It, Brass Eye) and radio (One, The Blagger’s Guide). He is also the author of the comic novel Sparks, the comic book That’s Because You’re A Robot, and several short films, including the award-winning Welcome to Oxmouth. A script-writer, broadcaster, and comedy writer, David once appeared on Celebrity Come Dine With Me, where he came fifth out of five.

  THANKS

  Special thanks to Tamsin Shelton for her brilliant editing, Susan Woods for her detailed and invaluable notes, and to everyone at Unbound for everything else.

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