The Gun Seller

by Hugh Laurie

  'Oh tell me, do,' I said.

  'I will tell you. Even though you know it already. It goes to the American people. Two hundred and fifty million people get a hold of that money.'

  I did some not very quick arithmetic. Divide by ten, carry the two ...

  'They get two thousand dollars each, do they? Every man, woman and child?' I sucked my teeth. 'Now why doesn't that ring true?'

  'A hundred and fifty thousand people,' said Barnes, 'have jobs because of that money. With those jobs they support another three hundred thousand people. And with that half-a-billion dollars those people can buy a lot of oil, a lot of wheat, a lot of Nissan Micras. And another half-million people will sell them the Nissan Micras, and another half-a-million will repair the Nissan Micras, and wash the windshields, and check the tyres. And another half-a-million will build the roads that the Nissan fucking Micras run on, and pretty soon, you've got two hundred and fifty million good democrats, needing America to go on doing the last thing it does well. Make guns.'

  I stared down at the river because this man was making my head swim. I mean, where do you begin?

  'So for the sake of those good democrats, a body here and a body there isn't such a terrible thing. Is that your drift?'

  'Yip. And there isn't one of those good democrats who'd say any different.'

  'I think Alexander Woolf would say different.'

  'Big deal.'

  I kept looking at the river. It looked thick and warm.

  'I mean it, Lang. Big fucking deal. One man against many. He was out-voted. That's democracy. Want to know something else?' I turned to look at Barnes, and he was facing me now, his lined face caught in the flicker from the theatre sign. 'There's another two million US citizens I didn't get around to mentioning there. Know what they're going to do this year?'

  He was walking towards me, slowly. Confidently.

  'Become lawyers?'

  'They're going to die,' he said. The idea didn't seem to disturb him all that much. 'Old age, auto accident, leukaemia, heart attack, fighting in bars, falling out of windows, who knows what fucking thing? Two million Americans are going to die this year. So tell me. You going to shed a tear for every one of them?'

  'No.'

  'Why the hell not? What's the difference? Dead is dead, Lang.'

  'The difference is I didn't have anything to do with their deaths,' I said.

  'You were a soldier, for Chrissakes!' We were face to face now, him shouting as loud as he could go without getting people out of bed. 'You were trained to kill people for the good of your fellow countrymen. Isn't that the truth?' I started to answer, but he wouldn't have it. 'Is that, or is that not, the truth?' His breath smelled oddly sweet.

  'This is very bad philosophy, Rusty. It really is. I mean read a book, for God's sake.'

  'Democrats don't read books, Lang. The people don't read books. The people don't care a piece of blue shit about philosophy. All the people care about, all they want from their government, is a wage that keeps getting higher and higher. Year in, year out, they want that wage going up. It ever stops, they get themselves a new government. That's what the people want. It's all they've ever wanted. That, my friend, is democracy.'

  I took a deep breath. In fact I took several deep breaths, because what I now wanted to do to Russell Barnes might result in me not breathing again for quite a while.

  He was still watching me, testing me for some reaction, some weakness. So I turned and walked away. The Carls moved up to meet me, coming at each side, but I kept going because I reckoned they weren't going to do anything until they had the signal from Barnes. After a couple of paces, he must have given it.

  The Carl on the left reached out and took hold of my arm, but I broke the grip easily, turning his wrist over and pushing down hard, so that he had to go with the movement. The other Carl got his arm round my neck for about a second, until I stamped hard on his instep and punched backwards at his groin. His hold broke, and then I was between the two of them as they circled me, and I wanted to hurt them so incredibly badly that they would never, ever forget me.

  And then suddenly, as if nothing had happened, they were backing away, and straightening their coats, and I realised that Barnes must have said something I never heard. He walked up between the Carls, coming very close to me.

  'So, we get the idea, Lang,' he said. 'You're really pissed with us. You don't like me at all, and my heart is broken. But all that's kind of beside the point.'

  He shook out another cigarette for himself and didn't offer me one.

  'If you want to make trouble for us, Lang,' he said, gently exhaling smoke through his nose, 'best thing is for you to know what it's going to cost.'

  He looked over at my shoulder and nodded at somebody.

  'Murder,' he said.

  Then he smiled at me.

  Hello, I thought. This could be interesting.

  We drove out on the M4 for about an hour, turning off, I would think, somewhere near Reading. I'd love to be able to tell you exactly which junction, and the numbers of the minor roads we took, but as I spent most of the journey on the floor of the Diplomat with my face being ground into the carpet, sensory data in-flow was a little restricted. The carpet was dark-blue and smelled of lemon, if that's any help.

  The car slowed for about the last fifteen minutes of the ride, but that could have been for traffic, or fog, or giraffes on the road for all I know.

  And then we reached a gravel drive, and I thought to myself - not long now. You could scrape up the gravel from most driveways in England, and come away with about enough to fill a sponge-bag. Any second now, I thought, I'll be outside, and within screaming distance of a public highway.

  But this wasn't an average drive.

  This one went on and on. And then it went on and on. And then, when I thought we were turning a corner and pulling over to park, it went on and on.

  Eventually, we stopped.

  And then we started again, and went on and on.

  I had begun to think that maybe it wasn't a drive at all; it was simply that the Lincoln Diplomat had been designed, with fantastically precise manufacturing skill, to disintegrate into very small pieces as soon as it exceeded its warranty mileage; perhaps what I was listening to now, pinging and bouncing off the wheel arches, were bits of chassis.

  And then, at last, we stopped. I knew we'd stopped for good this time, because the size twelve shoe that had been resting itself on the back of my neck was now sufficiently invigorated to slide off and get out of the car. I lifted my head and peered through the open door.

  This was a grand house. A very grand house. Obviously, at the end of a drive like that, it was never going to be a two-up, two-down; but even so, this was grand. Late nineteenth-century, I reckoned, but copying earlier ones, with a lot of Frenchness thrown in. Well, not thrown, of course, but lovingly bonded and pointed, beaded and mitred, bevelled and chamfered, very possibly by the same blokes who did the House of Commons railings.

  My dentist leaves back numbers of Country Life scattered around his waiting-room, so I had a rough idea of what a place like this must have cost. Forty bedrooms, within an hour of London. A sum of money beyond imagining. Beyond beyond imagining, in fact.

  I had begun idly to calculate the number of lightbulbs you'd need to run a place like this, when a Carl took hold of my collar and plucked me out of the car, as easily as if I'd been a golf-bag, with not many clubs in it.

  Thirteen

  Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

  GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

  I was shown into a room. A red room. Red wallpaper, red curtains, red carpet. They said it was a sitting-room, but I don't know why they'd decided to confine its purpose just to sitting. Obviously, sitting was one of the things you could do in a room this size; but you could also stage operas, hold cycling races, and have an absolutely cracking game of frisbee, all at the same time, without having to move any of the furniture.

  It could rain in a room this .big. />
  I hung about by the door for a while, looking at paintings, the undersides of ashtrays, that kind of thing, then got bored and set off towards the fireplace at the other end. Half-way there I had to stop and sit down, because I'm not as young as I was, and as I did so, another set of double-doors opened, and some muttering took place between a Carl and a majordomo figure in striped grey trousers and black jacket.

  Both of them glanced in my direction every once in a while, and then the Carl nodded his head and backed out of the room.

  The major-domo started towards me, pretty casually I thought, and called out at the two hundred metre mark:

  'Would you care for a drink, Mr Lang?'

  I didn't have to think about this for very long.

  'Scotch, please,' I called back.

  That'd teach him.

  At one hundred metres, he stopped at a frequent table and opened a small silver box, pulling out a cigarette without even looking down to see if there were any in there. He lit it, and kept on coming.

  As he got nearer, I could see that he was in his fifties, good-looking in an indoor kind of way, and that his face had a strange sheen to it. The reflections of standard-lamps and chandeliers danced across his forehead, so that he seemed almost to sparkle as he moved. Yet somehow I knew it wasn't sweat, nor oil; it was just a sheen.

  With ten yards still to go, he smiled at me and held out a hand, and kept it there as he came so that before I'd realised it, I was on my feet, ready to receive him like an old friend.

  His grip was hot but dry, and he clasped me by the elbow and steered me back on to the sofa, sliding down next to me so that our knees were almost touching. If he always sat this close to visitors, then I have to say he was simply not getting his money's worth out of his room.

  'Murder,' he said.

  There was a pause. I'm sure you'll understand why.

  'I beg your pardon?' I said.

  'Naimh Murdah,' he said, then watched patiently while I readjusted the spelling in my head. 'A great pleasure. Great pleasure.'

  His voice was soft, his accent educated. I had the feeling that he'd be just as good in a dozen other languages. He flicked some ash from his cigarette vaguely in the direction of a bowl, then leaned towards me.

  'Russell has told me a lot about you. And I must say, I've been cheering for you very much.'

  Close up, there were two things I could tell about Mr Murdah: he was not the major-domo; and the sheen on his face was money.

  It wasn't caused by money, or bought with money. It simply was money. Money that he'd eaten, worn, driven, breathed, in such quantities, and for so long, that it had started to secrete from the pores of his skin. You may not think this possible, but money had actually made him beautiful.

  He was laughing.

  'Very much indeed, yes. You know, Russell is a very considerable person. Very considerable indeed. But sometimes I think it does him good to become frustrated. He has a tendency, I would say, towards arrogance. And you, Mr Lang, I have the feeling that you are good for such a man.'

  Dark eyes. Incredibly dark eyes. With dark edges to the lids, which ought to have been make-up but wasn't.

  'You, I think,' said Murdah, still beaming, 'you frustrate many people. I think perhaps that is why God put you here among us, Mr Lang. Wouldn't you say?'

  And I laughed back. Fuck knows why, because he hadn't said anything funny. But there I was, chuckling away like a drunk simpleton.

  A door opened somewhere, and then suddenly a tray of whisky was between us, borne by a maid dressed in black. We took a glass each, and the maid waited while Murdah drowned his in soda, and I just got mine slightly damp. She left without a smile, or a nod. Without uttering a sound.

  I took a deep slug of Scotch and felt drunk almost before I'd swallowed.

  'You're an arms dealer,' I said.

  I don't know quite what reaction I expected, but I expected something. I thought he might flinch, or blush, or get angry, or have me shot, tick any of the above, but there was nothing. Not even a pause. He continued as if he'd known for years what I was going to say.

  'I am indeed, Mr Lang. For my sins.'

  Wow, I thought. That was extremely cute. I am an arms dealer for my sins. That was every bit as rich as he was.

  He lowered his eyes with apparent modesty.

  'I buy and sell arms, yes,' he said. 'I must say, I think, successfully. You, of course, disapprove of me, as do many of your countrymen, and this is one of the penalties of my profession. Something that I must bear, if I can.'

  I suppose he was making fun of me, but it didn't sound that way. It really did sound as if my disapproval made him unhappy.

  'I have examined my life, and my behaviour, with the help of many friends who are religious people. And I believe I can answer to God. In fact - if I can anticipate your questions -1 believe I can only answer to God. So do you mind if we move on?' He smiled again. Warm, charmingly apologetic. He dealt with me like a man who's used to dealing with people like me - as if he was a polite film star, and I'd asked him for an autograph at a tricky moment.

  'Nice furniture,' I said.

  We were taking a tour of the room. Stretching our legs, filling our lungs, digesting some huge meal we hadn't eaten. To finish the picture, we really needed a couple of dogs mucking about at our ankles, and a gate to lean on. We didn't have them, so I was trying to make do with the furniture.

  'It's a Boulle,' said Murdah, pointing at the large wooden cabinet under my elbow. I nodded, the same way I nod when people tell me the names of plants, and politely bent my head to the intricate brass inlay.

  'They take a sheet of veneer and a sheet of brass, glue them together, then cut the pattern right through. That one,' he pointed towards an apparently related cabinet, 'is a contre Boulle. You see? An exact negative. Nothing wasted.'

  I nodded thoughtfully, and looked back and forth at the two pieces, and tried to imagine how many motorbikes I'd need to own before I decided to start spending money on stuff like this.

  Murdah had done enough walking, apparently, and peeled off back towards the sofa. The way he moved seemed to say that the pleasantries box was almost empty.

  Two opposite images of the same object, Mr Lang,' he said, reaching for another cigarette. 'You might say, if you like, that those two cabinets resemble our little problem.'

  'I might, yes.' I waited, but he wasn't ready to expand. 'Of course, I'd need to know roughly what you're talking about first.'

  He turned to me. The sheen was still there, and so were the indoor good-looks. But the chumminess was dying away, sputtering in the grate and warming nobody.

  'I'm talking, Mr Lang, about Graduate Studies, obviously' He looked surprised.

  'Obviously,' I said.

  'I have an involvement,' said Murdah, 'with a certain group of people.'

  He was standing in front of me now, his hands held wide in that welcome-to-my-vision gesture that politicians like to use these days, while I lounged on the sofa. Otherwise little had changed, except that someone was cooking fishfingers near by. It was a smell that didn't quite belong in this room.

  'These people,' he continued, 'are, in many cases, friends of mine. People with whom I have done business over many, many years. They are people who trust me, who rely on me. You understand?'

  Of course, he wasn't asking me if I understood the specific relationship. He just wanted to know if words like Trust and Reliability still had any meaning down where I lived. I nodded to show that yes, I could spell them in an emergency.

  'As an act of friendship towards these people, I have taken something of a risk. Which is rare for me.' This, I think, was a joke, so I smiled, which seemed to satisfy him. 'I have personally underwritten the sale of a quantity of merchandise.' He paused and looked at me, wanting some reaction. 'I think perhaps you are familiar with the nature of the product?'

  'Helicopters,' I said. There didn't seem to be any point in playing stupid at this stage.

  'Helicopters,
precisely,' said Murdah. 'I must tell you that I dislike the things myself, but I am told that they perform some functions extremely well.' He was starting to go a little fey on me, I thought - affecting a distaste for the vulgar, oily machines that had paid for this house and, for all I knew, a dozen more like it - so I decided to try and blunt things up a bit, on behalf of the common man.

  'They certainly do,' I said. 'The ones you're selling could destroy an average-size village in under a minute. Along with all its inhabitants, obviously.'

  He closed his eyes for a second, as if the very thought of such a thing gave him pain, which, perhaps, it did. If so, it wasn't for long.

  'As I said, Mr Lang, I don't believe I have to justify myself to you. I am not concerned with the use to which this merchandise is eventually put. My concern, for the sake of my friends, and for myself, is that the merchandise should find customers.' He clasped his hands together and waited. As if the whole thing was now my problem.

  'So advertise,' I said, after a while. 'Back pages of Woman's Own.'

  'Hm,' he said. Like I was an idiot. 'You are not a businessman, Mr Lang.'

  I shrugged.

  'I am, you see,' he continued. 'So I think you must trust me to know my own market-place.' A thought seemed to strike him. 'After all, I wouldn't presume to advise you on the best way ...' And then he realised he was in a jam, because there was nothing on my CV to indicate that I knew the best way to do anything.

  'To ride a motorcycle?' I offered, gallantly.

  He smiled.

  'As you say.' He sat down on the sofa again. Further away, this time. 'The product I am dealing with requires a more sophisticated approach, I think, than the pages of Woman's Own. If you are making a new mousetrap, then, as you say, you advertise it as a new mousetrap. If, on the other hand,' he held out his other hand, to show me what another hand looked like, 'you are trying to sell a snake trap, then your first task is to demonstrate why snakes are bad things. Why they need to be trapped. Do you follow me? Then, much, much later, you come along with your product. Does that make sense to you?' He smiled patiently.