The Gun Seller

by Hugh Laurie

  'Wasn't locked,' she said.

  I shook my head in disgust.

  'Well that is frankly shoddy. I'm going to have to write to my MR'

  'What?'

  'This place,' I said, 'was searched this morning by members of the British Security Services. Professionals, trained at the taxpayers' expense, and they can't even be bothered to lock the door when they're done. What sort of service do you call that? I've only got Diet Coke. That okay?'

  The gun was still pointing in my general direction, but it hadn't followed me to the fridge.

  'What were they looking for?' She was staring out of the window now. She really did look like she'd had a hell of a morning.

  'Beats me,' I said. 'I've got a cheesecloth shirt in the bottom of my cupboard. Maybe that's an offence against the realm now.'

  'Did they find a gun?' She still wasn't looking at me. The kettle clicked and I poured some hot water into the mug.

  'Yes, they did.'

  'The gun you were going to use to kill my father.'

  I didn't turn round. Just kept on with my coffee-making.

  'There is no such gun,' I said. 'The gun they found was put here by someone else so it would look as if I was going to use it to kill your father.'

  'Well, it worked.' Now she was looking straight at me. And so was the .22. But I've always prided myself on the froidness of my sang, so I just poured milk into the coffee and lit a cigarette. That made her angry.

  'Cocky son-of-a-bitch, aren't you?'

  'Not for me to say. My mother loves me.'

  'Yeah? Is that a reason for me not to shoot you?'

  I'd hoped she wouldn't mention guns, or shooting, as even the British Ministry of Defence could afford to bug a room properly, but since she'd raised the subject I could hardly ignore it.

  'Can I just say something before you fire that thing?'

  'Go ahead.'

  'If I meant to use a gun to kill your father, why didn't I have it with me last night, when I came to your house?'

  'Maybe you did.'

  I paused and took a sip of coffee.

  'Good answer,' I said. 'All right, if I had it with me last night, why didn't I use it on Rayner when he was breaking my arm?'

  'Maybe you tried to. Maybe that's why he was breaking your arm.'

  For heaven's sake, this woman was tiring me out.

  'Another good answer. All right, tell me this. Who told you that they'd found a gun here?'

  'The police.'

  'Nope,' I said. 'They may have said they were the police, but they weren't.'

  I'd been thinking of jumping her, maybe throwing the coffee first, but there wasn't much point now. Over her shoulder, I could see Solomon's two followers moving slowly through the sitting-room, the older one holding a large revolver out in front of him in a two-handed grip, the younger one just smiling. I decided to let the wheels of justice do some grinding.

  'It doesn't matter who told me,' said Sarah.

  'On the contrary, I think it matters a lot. If a salesman tells you that a washing machine's great, that's one thing. But if the Archbishop of Canterbury tells you it's great, and that it removes dirt even at low temperatures, that's quite different.'

  'What are you ...'

  She heard them when they were only a couple of feet away, and as she turned, the younger one grabbed her wrist and turned it down and outwards in a highly competent manner. She gave out a short yelp, and the gun slid from her hand.

  I picked it up and passed it, butt first, to the older follower. Keen to show what a good boy I was really, if only the world would understand.

  By the time O'Neal and Solomon arrived, Sarah and I were comfortably plugged into the sofa, with the two followers arranged round the door, and none of us making much in the way of conversation. With O'Neal bustling about the place, there suddenly seemed to be an awful lot of people in the flat. I offered to nip out and get a cake, but O'Neal showed me his fiercest 'the defence of the Western world is on my shoulders' expression, so we all went quiet and stared at our hands.

  After some whispering with the followers, who then quietly withdrew, O'Neal paced this way and that, picking things up and curling his lip at them. He was obviously waiting for something, and it wasn't in the room or about to come through the door, so I got up and walked across to the phone. It rang as I reached it. Very occasionally, life's like that.

  I picked up the receiver.

  'Graduate Studies,' said a harsh, American voice.

  'Who is this?'

  'That O'Neal?' There was a spot of anger in the voice now. Not a man you'd ask for a cup of sugar.

  'No, but Mr O'Neal is here,' I said. 'Who's speaking?'

  'Put O'Neal on the goddamn phone, will you?' said the voice. I turned and saw O'Neal striding towards me, hand outstretched.

  'Go and get some manners somewhere,' I said, and hung up.

  There was a brief silence, and then lots of things seemed to happen at once. Solomon was leading me back to the sofa, not very roughly but not very gently either, O'Neal was shouting to the followers, the followers were shouting at each other, and the phone was ringing again.

  O'Neal grabbed it and immediately started fiddling with the flex, which didn't sit well with his previous attempts to convey masterly composure. It was obvious that, in O'Neal's world, there were many smaller cheeses than the harsh American on the other end of the line.

  Solomon shoved me back down next to Sarah, who shrank away in disgust. It really is quite something to be hated by so many people in your own home.

  O'Neal nodded and yessed for a minute or so, then delicately replaced the receiver. He looked at Sarah.

  'Miss Woolf,' he said, as politely as he could manage, 'you are to present yourself to a Mr Russell Barnes at the American Embassy as soon as you can. One of these gentlemen will drive you.' O'Neal looked away, as if expecting her immediately to jump to her feet and be gone. Sarah stayed where she was.

  'Screw you in the ass with an anglepoise lamp,' she said.

  I laughed.

  As it happens, I was the only one who did, and O'Neal fired off one of his increasingly famous looks in my direction. But Sarah was still glaring at him.

  'I want to know what's being done about this guy,' she said. She jerked her head at me, so I thought it best to stop laughing.

  'Mr Lang is our concern, Miss Woolf,' said O'Neal. 'You yourself have a responsibility to your State Department, by...'

  'You're not the police, are you?' she said. O'Neal looked uneasy.

  'No, we are not the police,' he said, carefully.

  'Well I want the police here, and I want this guy arrested for attempted homicide. He tried to kill my father, and for all I know he's going to try again.'

  O'Neal looked at her, then at me, then at Solomon. He seemed to want help from one of us, but I don't believe he got any.

  'Miss Woolf, I have been authorised to inform you ...'

  He stopped, as if unable to remember whether he really had been authorised, and if he had, whether the author had really meant it. He wrinkled his nose for a moment, and decided to press on after all.

  'I have been authorised to inform you that your father is, at this moment, the subject of an investigation by agencies of the United States government, assisted by my own department of the Ministry of Defence.' This clanged to the floor, and we all just sat there. O'Neal flicked a glance at me. 'It is in our joint discretion as to whether we charge Mr Lang, or indeed take any other action affecting your father or his activities.'

  I'm no great reader of the human face, but even I could see that all of this was coming as something of a shock to Sarah. Her face had gone from grey to white.

  'What activities?' she said. 'Investigated for what?' Her voice was strained. O'Neal looked uncomfortable, and I knew he was terrified that she was going to cry.

  'We suspect your father,' he said eventually, 'of importing Class A prohibited substances into Europe and North America.'

  The ro
om went very quiet, and everybody was watching Sarah. O'Neal cleared his throat.

  'Your father is trafficking in drugs, Miss Woolf.'

  It was her turn to laugh.

  Four

  There's a snake hidden in the grass.

  VIRGIL

  Like all good things, and like all bad things too, it came to an end. The replica Solomons swept Sarah off towards Grosvenor Square in one of their Rovers, and O'Neal ordered a taxi, which took far too long to arrive and gave him more time to sneer at my belongings. The real Solomon stayed behind to wash up the mugs, and then suggested that the two of us put ourselves outside a quantity of warm, nourishing beer.

  It was only five-thirty, but the pubs were already groaning with young men in suits and misjudged moustaches, sounding off on the state of the world. We managed to find a table in the lounge bar of The Swan With Two Necks, where Solomon made a lavish production out of rootling for change in his pockets. I told him to put it on expenses, and he told me to take it out of my thirty thousand pounds. We tossed a coin and I lost.

  'Obliged to you for your kindness, master.'

  'Cheers, David.' We both took a long suck, and I lit a cigarette.

  I was expecting Solomon to kick off with some observation about the events of the last twenty-four hours, but he seemed happy to just sit and listen while a nearby gang of estate agents discussed car alarm systems. He'd managed to make me feel as if our sitting there was my idea, and I wasn't having that.

  'David.'

  'Sir.'

  'Is this social?'

  'Social?'

  'You were asked to take me out, weren't you? Slap me on the back, get me drunk, find out whether I'm sleeping with Princess Margaret?'

  It annoyed Solomon to hear the Royal family being taken in vain, which was why I'd done it.

  'I'm supposed to stay close, sir,' he said eventually. 'I thought it might be more fun if we sat at the same table, that's all.' He seemed to think that answered my question.

  'So what's going on?' I said.

  'Going on?'

  'David, if you're going to just sit there, wide-eyed, repeating everything I say as if you've lived your whole life in a Wendy house, it's going to be a pretty dull evening.'

  There was a pause.

  'Pretty dull evening?'

  'Oh shut up. You know me, David.'

  'Indeed I have that privilege.'

  'I may be many things, but one of the things I am definitely not is an assassin.'

  'Long experience in these matters,' he took another deep swallow of beer and smacked his lips, 'has led me to the view, master, that everybody is definitely not an assassin, until they become one.'

  I looked at him for a moment.

  'I'm going to swear now, David.'

  'As you wish, sir.'

  'What the fuck is that supposed to mean?'

  The estate agents had moved on to the subject of women's breasts, from which they were extracting much humour. Listening to them made me feel about a hundred and forty years old.

  'It's like dog-owners,' said Solomon. '"My dog wouldn't hurt anyone", they say. Until one day, they find themselves saying "well he's never done that before".' He looked at me and saw that I was frowning. 'What I mean is, nobody can ever really know anybody. Anybody or any dog. Not really know them.'

  I banged my glass down hard on the table.

  'Nobody can ever know anybody? That's inspired. You mean in spite of us spending two years practically in each other's pockets, you don't know whether I'm capable of killing a man for money?' I admit I was getting a little upset by this. And I don't normally get upset.

  'Do you think I am?' said Solomon. The jolly smile still hung round his mouth.

  'Do I think you could kill a man for money? No, I don't.'

  'Sure of that?'

  'Sure 'Yes.'

  'Then you're a clot, sir. I've killed one man and two women.'

  I already knew that. I also knew how much it weighed on him.

  'But not for money,' I said. 'Not assassination.'

  'I am a servant of the Crown, master. The government pays my mortgage. Whichever way you look at it, and believe me I've looked at it lots of ways, the deaths of those three people put bread on my table. Another pint?'

  Before I could say anything, he'd taken my glass and headed for the bar.

  As I watched him carve a path through the estate agents, I found myself thinking back to the games of cowboys and Indians Solomon and I had played together in Belfast.

  Happy days, dotted around some miserable months.

  It was 1986, and Solomon had been drafted in, along with a dozen others from the Metropolitan Police Special Branch, to supplement a temporarily buggered RUC. He'd quickly proved to be the only one of his group worth the air-ticket, so, at the end of his stint, some extremely hard-to-please Ulstermen had asked him to stay on and try his hand at the loyalist paramilitary target, which he did.

  Half-a-mile away, in a couple of rooms above the Freedom Travel Agency, I was serving out the last of my eight years in the army on attachment to the snappily-titled GR24, one of the many military intelligence units that used to compete for business in Northern Ireland, and probably still do. My brother officers being almost exclusively Old Etonians, who wore ties in the office and flew to Scottish grouse moors at the weekend, I'd found myself spending more and more time with Solomon, most of it waiting in cars with heaters that didn't work.

  But every now and then we got out and did something useful, and in the nine months we were together, I saw Solomon do a lot of brave and extraordinary things. He'd taken three lives, but he'd saved dozens more, mine included.

  The estate agents were sniggering at his brown raincoat.

  'Woolf's a bad lot, you know,' he said.

  We were into our third pint, and Solomon had undone his top button. I'd have done the same if I'd had one. The pub was emptier now, as people headed home to wives, or out to cinemas. I lit my too-manyeth cigarette of the day.

  'Because of drugs?'

  'Because of drugs.'

  'Anything else?'

  'Does there need to be anything else?'

  'Well yes.' I looked across at Solomon. 'There needs to be something else if all this isn't going to be taken care of by the Drug Squad. What's he got to do with your lot? Or is it just that business is slow at the moment, and you're having to slum it?'

  'I never said a word of this.'

  'Course you didn't.'

  Solomon paused, weighing his words and apparently finding some of them a bit heavy.

  'A very rich man, an industrialist, comes to this country and says he wants to invest here. The Department of Trade and Industry give him a glass of sherry and some glossy brochures, and he sets to work. Tells them he's going to manufacture a range of metal and plastic components and would it be all right if he built half a dozen factories in Scotland and the north-east of England? One or two people at the Board of Trade fall over with the excitement, and offer him two hundred million quid in grants and a residents' parking permit in Chelsea. I'm not sure which is worth more.'

  Solomon sipped some beer and dried his mouth with the back of his hand. He was very angry.

  'Time passes. The cheque is cashed, factories are built, and a phone rings in Whitehall. It's an international call, from Washington, DC. Did we know that a rich industrialist who makes plastic things also deals in large quantities of opium from Asia? Good heavens, no, we didn't know that, thanks ever so much for letting us know, love to the wife and kids. Panic. Rich industrialist is now sitting on a large lump of our money and employing three thousand of our citizens.'

  At this point, Solomon seemed to run out of energy, as if the effort of controlling his fury was too much for him. But I couldn't wait.

  'So?'

  'So a committee of not particularly wise men and women put their fat heads together and decide on possible courses of action. The list includes doing nothing, doing nothing, doing nothing, or dialling 999 and
asking for PC Plod. The only thing they are sure about is they do not like that last course.'

  'And O'Neal... ?'

  'O'Neal gets the job. Surveillance. Containment. Damage Control. Give it any flipping name you like.' For Solomon, 'flipping' constituted strong language. 'None of this, of course, has anything whatsoever to do with Alexander Woolf.'

  'Of course not,' I said. 'Where is Woolf now?'

  Solomon glanced at his watch.

  'At this moment, he is in seat number 6C on a British Airways 747 from Washington to London. If he's got any sense, he'll have chosen the Beef Wellington. He may be a fish man, but I doubt it.'

  'And the film?'

  'While You Were Sleeping.'

  'I'm impressed,' I said.

  'God is in the detail, master. Just because it's a bad job doesn't mean I have to do it badly.'

  We supped some beer in a relaxed silence. But I had to ask him.

  'Now, David.'

  'Yours to command, master.'

  'Do you mind explaining where I come into all this?' He looked at me with the beginnings of a 'you tell me' expression, so I hurried on. 'I mean, who wants him dead, and why make it look as if I'm the killer?'

  Solomon drained his glass.

  'Don't know the why,' he said. 'As for the who, we rather think it might be the CIA.'

  During the night I tossed a little, and turned a little more, and twice got up to record some idiotic monologues about the state of play on my tax-efficient dictaphone. There were things about the whole business that bothered me, and things that scared me, but it was Sarah Woolf who kept coming into my head and refusing to leave.

  I was not in love with her, you understand. How could I be? After all, I'd only spent a couple of hours in her company, and none of those had been under very relaxing circumstances. No, I was definitely not in love with her. It takes more than a pair of bright grey eyes and pillows of dark-brown, wavy hair to get me going.

  For God's sake.

  At nine o'clock the next morning I was pulling on the Garrick tie and the under-buttoned blazer, and at half past nine I was ringing the enquiries bell at the National Westminster Bank in Swiss Cottage. I had no clear plan of action in mind, but I thought it might be good for morale to look my bank manager in the eye for the first time in ten years, even if the money in my account wasn't mine.