The Gun Seller

by Hugh Laurie

  I turned to Glass and the blonde.

  'Just to set your mind at rest, because I know you must be wondering ever so slightly about what's going on here. I am not who you think I am. Neither am I who they think I am. You,' I jabbed a finger at Glass, 'are who they think I am, and you,' to the blonde, 'are who I would like to talk to when everyone else has gone. Clear?'

  Nobody put their hand up. I moved towards the door with an ushering motion.

  'We want the file,' said Mike.

  'What file?'I said.

  'Graduate Studies.' He was still a lap or two off the pace at this point. I couldn't blame him.

  'Sorry to disappoint you, but there is no file. Called "Graduate Studies" or anything else.' Mike's face fell, and I genuinely felt sorry for him. 'Listen,' I said, trying to make it easier, 'I was on the fifth floor, the windows were double-glazed, it was United States territory, and the only way I could think to get out was talking about a file. I thought it might appeal to you all.'

  Another long pause. Glass started clicking his teeth, as if this kind of nuisance was just happening too often these days. The Carl turned to Mike.

  'Do I take him?' His voice was surprisingly high, almost falsetto.

  Mike chewed his lip.

  'That's not really Mike's decision, actually,' I said. They both looked at me. 'What I mean is, it's up to me whether or not I'm taken, as you put it.'

  The Carl stared at me, weighing me up.

  'Look,' I said, 'I'll be honest with you. You're a big chap, and I'm sure you can do more press-ups than I can. And I admire you for it. This world needs people to be able to do press-ups. It's important.' He lifted his chin menacingly. Just keep talking, Mister. So I did. 'But fighting is a different thing. A very different thing, that I happen to be very good at. Doesn't mean I'm tougher than you, or more virile, or any of that stuff. It's just something I'm good at.'

  I could see that the Carl wasn't comfortable with this kind of talk. He'd most likely been educated in the school of 'I'm gonna tear your heart out etc' and knew how to respond to that, and only that.

  'What I mean is,' I said, as kindly as I could, 'if you want to spare yourself a lot of embarrassment, you'll just walk away now and have yourselves a decent lunch somewhere.'

  Which, after some whispering and staring, they eventually did.

  An hour later, I was sitting in an Italian cafe with the blonde, who shall hereinafter be referred to as Ronnie because that's what her friends called her, and I'd apparently just become one.

  Mike had left with his tail between his legs, and the Carl had had a 'one of these days fella' look about him. I'd given him a cheery wave in return, but I knew I wouldn't count my life a disaster if I never saw him again.

  Ronnie had sat wide-eyed through my abridged version of events, leaving out the stuff about dead people, and had generally adjusted her opinion of me to the point where she now seemed to think I was a hell of a fellow, which made a nice change. I ordered another round of coffee and sat back to soak up some of her admiration.

  She frowned a bit.

  'So you don't know where Sarah is now?' she said.

  'Not the faintest idea. She may be all right, just laying low, or she may be in quite a lot of trouble.'

  Ronnie sat back and gazed out of the window. I could tell that she was fond of Sarah, because she was taking her worrying seriously. Then suddenly she shrugged and took a sip of coffee.

  'At least you didn't give them the file,' she said. 'That's one thing.'

  This of course is one of the hazards of lying to people. They start getting confused about what's true and what isn't. No great surprise, I suppose.

  'No, you don't understand,' I explained gently. 'There is no file. I told them there was one, because I knew they'd have to check it out before they had me arrested or dumped in the river or whatever they do to people like me. You see, people who work in offices believe in files. Files are important to them. If you tell them you have a file, they want to believe it, because they set a lot of store by files.' Me, the great psychologist. 'But I'm afraid this one simply doesn't exist.'

  Ronnie straightened up and I could see that she was suddenly excited. Two little red dots had appeared in her cheeks. It was rather a pleasant sight.

  'But it does,' she said.

  I shook my head once to check that my ears were where I'd left them.

  'I beg your pardon?'

  'Graduate Studies,' she said. 'Sarah's file. I've seen it.'

  Ten

  Yet in oure asshenolde is fyr weye.

  CHAUCER

  I arranged to meet Ronnie at four-thirty, when the gallery closed for the day and the thundering stampede of customers had been safely locked out for another night to drool on the pavement with their camp-beds and open cheque-books.

  I didn't actively try to enlist her help, but Ronnie was a game young thing who, for some reason, sensed a combination of good deeds and high adventure and couldn't resist it. I didn't tell her that so far it had only involved bullet holes and mashed scrota, because I couldn't ignore the possibility that she would be extremely useful. For one thing I was now without transport, and for another, I find I often think better when there's someone else around to think for me.

  I killed some hours at the British Library, trying to find out what I could about the Mackie Corporation of America. Most of the time was spent getting the hang of the index system, but in the last ten minutes before I had to leave, I managed to establish the following priceless information -that Mackie was a Scottish engineer who had worked with Robert Adams in producing a solid frame trigger-cocking cap-and-ball percussion revolver, which the two of them exhibited at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.1 didn't bother to write that down.

  With one minute to go, I cross-referred my way into a crashingly dull volume called The Teeth Of The Tiger, by a Major J. S. Hammond (ret'd), where I discovered that Mackie had founded a company that had since grown to become the fifth largest supplier of defence 'materiel' to the Pentagon. The company's headquarters were currently in Vensom, California, and its last given annual pre-tax profit had more noughts on the end of it than I could fit on the back of my hand.

  I was on my way back to Cork Street, weaving through the afternoon shoppers, when I heard the news vendor's cry, and it may well have been the first time in my life that I actually understood something a news vendor said. The other passersby were almost certainly hearing 'Reeded In Silly Shut Up', but I hardly had to glance at the poster to know that he meant 'Three Dead In City Shoot-Up.' I bought a copy and read as I walked.

  A 'massive police investigation' was under way following the discovery of the bodies of three men, all of whom had perished as the result of gunshot wounds, at a derelict office building in the heart of London's financial district. The bodies, none of which had yet been identified, were found by the security guard, Mr Dennis Falkes, 51 and father of three, returning to his post after a dental appointment. A police spokesman declined to speculate on the motive behind the killings, but was apparently unable to rule out drugs. There were no photographs. Just a rambly background story about the rise in the number of drug-related deaths in the capital in the last two years. I tossed the paper into a bin and kept walking.

  Dennis Falkes had taken some folding money from someone, that much was obvious. The chances were it was Groomed who paid him, so when Falkes got back and found his benefactor dead he didn't have much incentive not to call the police. I hoped for his sake that the dentist story was true. If it wasn't, the police were going to make his life extremely difficult.

  Ronnie was waiting for me in her car outside the gallery. It was a bright red TVR Griffith, with a five litre V8 engine, and an exhaust note that could have been heard in Peking. It fell some way short of being the ideal car for a discreet surveillance operation, but (a), I wasn't in a position to quibble, and (b), there's an undeniable pleasure in stepping into an open-top sports car driven by a beautiful woman. It feels like you're climbing i
nto a metaphor.

  Ronnie was in high spirits, which didn't mean she hadn't seen the newspaper story about Woolf. Even if she had, and even if she'd known that Woolf was dead, I'm not sure it would have made much difference. Ronnie had what they used to call pluck. Centuries of breeding, some of it in, some of it out, had given her high cheek-bones and an appetite for risk and adventure. I pictured her at the age of five, careering over eight-foot fences on a pony called "Winston, risking her life seventy times before breakfast.

  She shook her head when I asked her what she'd found in Sarah's desk at the gallery, and then pestered me with questions all the way to Belgravia. I didn't hear a single one of them thanks to the howl of the. TVR exhaust, but I nodded and shook my head whenever it seemed appropriate.

  When we reached Lyall Street, I yelled at her to take a run past the house, and not to look at anything but the road ahead. I found a tape of AC/DC, slotted it into the cassette player, and turned the volume up as far as it would go. I was working on the principle, you see, that the more obvious you are, the less obvious you are. Given the choice, I'd usually say that the more obvious you are, the more obvious you are, but choice was one of the things I was short of at that moment. Necessity is the mother of self-delusion.

  As we passed the Woolf house, I put my hand up to my eye and prodded a bit, which allowed me to stare at the front of the house as hard as I could while apparently adjusting a contact lens. It looked empty. But then again, I'd hardly expected to see men with violin cases on the front steps.

  We went round the block and I signalled to Ronnie to pull over a couple of hundred yards short of the house. She switched off, and for a few moments my ears rang with the sudden quiet. Then she turned to me, and I could see that the red spots were back in her cheeks.

  'What now, boss?'

  She really was getting into this.

  'I'll take a stroll past and see what happens.'

  'Right. What do I do?'

  'Be great if you could stay here,' I said. Her face fell. 'In case I need to get out in a hurry,' I added, and her face picked itself up again. She reached into her handbag and brought out a small brass-coloured canister which she pressed into my hand.

  'What's this?' I said.

  'Rape alarm. Press the top.'

  'Ronnie ...'

  'Take it. If I hear it, I'll know you need a lift.'

  The street looked as ordinary as it could, given that every single house in it cost upwards of two million pounds. The value of the cars alone, lining both sides of the road, probably exceeded the wealth of many small countries. A dozen Mercedes, a dozen Jaguars and Daimlers, five Bentley saloons, a Bentley convertible, three Aston Martins, three Ferraris, a Jensen, a Lamborghini.

  And a Ford.

  Dark-blue, facing away from me, opposite the house on the other side of the street, which was why I hadn't noticed it the first time round. Two aerials. Two rear-view mirrors. A dent half-way up the nearside front wing. Sort of dent a large motorcycle might make in a side-to-side collision.

  One man in the passenger seat.

  My first feeling was relief. If they were staking out Sarah's house, there was a good chance that it was because they didn't have Sarah, and the house was the next best thing. But then again, they might already have Sarah and had just sent someone along to collect her toothbrush. If she still had any teeth, that is.

  No point in worrying about that. I kept walking towards the Ford.

  If you've ever had any training in military theory, it's possible that you had to sit through a lecture on a thing called the Boyd Loop. Boyd was a chap who spent a large amount of time studying air-to-air combat during the Korean war, analysing typical 'event sequences' - or, in layman's language, sequences of events - to see why pilot A was able to shoot down pilot B, and how pilot B felt about it afterwards, and which of them had had kedgeree for breakfast. Boyd's theory was based on the utterly facile observation that when A did something, B reacted, A did something else, B reacted again et cetera, forming a loop of action and reaction. The Boyd Loop. Nice work if you can get it, you may be thinking. But Boyd's 'Eureka' moment, which to this day causes his name to be bandied about military academies the world over, came when he hit upon the notion that if B could do two things in the space of time it normally took him to do one, he would 'get inside the loop', and the forces of right would thereby prevail.

  Lang's Theory, which amounts to much the same thing at a fraction of the cost, is that you punch the other chap's face before he has a chance to get it out of the way.

  I came up behind the Ford on the left-hand side, and stopped level with it, looking up at the Woolfs' house. The man in the Ford didn't look at me. Which he would have done if he'd been a civilian, because people do look at people when they've got nothing else to do. I bent down and knocked on his window. He turned and stared at me for a long moment before he wound it down, but I could tell he hadn't recognised me. He was in his forties and liked his whisky.

  'Are you Roth?' I snapped, in the best American accent I could manage - which is actually pretty good, though I say so myself.

  He shook his head.

  'Roth been here?' I said.

  'Who the fuck is Roth?' I'd expected him to be an American, but he sounded extremely London.

  'Shit,' I said, standing up and looking towards the house.

  'Who are you?'

  'Dalloway,' I said, frowning. 'They tell you I was coming?' Again he shook his head. 'You been out of the car? Missed the call?' I was pushing hard, speaking fast and loud, and he was puzzled. But not suspicious. 'Heard the news? Seen a newspaper, for Christ's sake? Three dead men, and Lang wasn't one of them.' He stared up at me. 'Shit,' I said again, in case he hadn't heard me the first time.

  'What now?'

  Cigar for Mr Lang. I had him. I chewed my lip for a while, then decided to take a chance.

  'You here alone?'

  He nodded towards the house.

  'Micky's inside.' He glanced at his watch. 'We change over in ten minutes.'

  'You change over now. I have to get in. Anybody show so far?'

  'Nothing.'

  'Phone?'

  'Once. Girl's voice, about an hour ago. Asking for Sarah.'

  'Right. Let's go.'

  I was inside his Boyd Loop, that was obvious. Amazing what you can make people do if you get the first note right. He clambered out of the car, eager to show how quickly he could clamber out of cars, and followed at my shoulder as I strode over to the house. I took the keys to my flat out of my pocket and then stopped myself.

  'Have you got a knock?' I said as we reached the front door.

  'Pardon?'

  I rolled my eyes with impatience.

  'A knock. Signal. I don't want Micky blowing a hole in my chest as we go through the goddamn door.'

  'No, we just... I mean, I just shout "Micky".'

  'Gee, that's really neat,' I said. 'Who worked that one out?' I laid it on a bit, trying to make him bristle so he'd be all the keener to show how efficient he was. 'Do it.'

  He put his mouth to the letter-box.

  'Micky,' he said, and then glanced up, apologetically. 'It's me.'

  'Oh, I get it,' I said. 'That way he knows it's you. Cool.'

  There was a pause, and then the latch turned and I pushed straight into the house.

  I tried not to look at Micky much, so he'd know straightaway he wasn't the point at issue. But a quick glance told me he was also in his forties, and as thin as a very thin stick. He wore leather backless gloves and a revolver, and probably some clothes as well, but I wasn't really paying attention to them.

  The revolver had a Smith Sc "Wesson nickel finish, a short barrel, and an enclosed hammer, making it good for firing from inside a pocket. Probably a Bodyguard Airweight, or something similar. A sneaky kind of a gun. You may ask whether I could name an honest, decent, fair-minded kind of gun, and of course I can't. All guns throw lead at people with a view to causing harm, but, given that, they tend t
o have more or less distinct characters. And some are sneakier than others.

  'You Micky?' I said, looking busily round the hall.

  'I am.' Micky was a Scot, and was trying frantically to get some sign from his partner as to who the hell I was. Micky was going to be a problem.

  'Dave Carter sends his regards.' I was at school with a Dave Carter.

  'Oh. Yeah,' he said. 'Right.'

  Bingo, Two Boyd Loops in five minutes. In a giddy whirl of triumph, I walked over to the hall table, and picked up the phone.

  'Gwinevere,' I said, enigmatically. 'I'm in.'

  I put the receiver back on the cradle and moved towards the stairs, cursing myself for having so massively overdone it. They couldn't have fallen for that one. But when I turned, they were both still standing there, meek as lambs, with a pair of 'you're the guv'nor' looks on their faces.

  'Which one is the girl's bedroom?' I snapped. The lambs exchanged nervous glances. 'You checked the rooms, right?' They nodded. 'So which is the one with the lacy pillows and the poster of Stefan Edberg, for Chrissakes?'

  'Second on the left,' said Micky.

  'Thank you.'

  'But

  I stopped again.

  'But what?'

  'There's no poster ...'

  I gave them both a fair rendition of a withering look, and carried on up the stairs.

  Micky was right, there was no poster of Stefan Edberg. There weren't even that many lacy pillows. Eight, maybe. But Fleur de Fleurs was in the air, one part per billion, and I felt a sudden, physical stab of worry and longing. For the first time I realised how much I wanted to protect Sarah from whatever it was, or whoever they were.

  Now maybe this was just a lot of old damsel-in-distress nonsense, and perhaps, on another day, my hormones might have been busy on another subject entirely. But at that moment, standing in the middle of her bedroom, I wanted to rescue Sarah. Not just because she was good, and the bad guys weren't, but because I liked her. I liked her a lot.

  Enough of that kind of talk.

  I went to the bedside-table, lifted the phone receiver and tucked the mouthpiece under a lacy pillow. If either one of the lambs started to regain some courage, or just curiosity, and felt like trying Dial-An-Explanation, I'd hear it. But the pillow ought to stop them from hearing me.